(Lest They Leave - Chapter 11)

[madscenes]

CHAPTER INDEX

CHAPTER 11




That the Roux house was a house of freedom, was Eloisa’s first lesson to Sylvie and the most vivid impression she was left with, as the evening went on.

Somewhere else, down the Boulevard des Capucines, Don Carlos was playing to an empty seat on the third row of the parquet and outside, Edgar was waiting for her in the parking lot, and that place was a whole different world, wasn’t it? Where she couldn’t ever kiss Eloisa on the lips, where they couldn’t sit so close together that there was no space in between or hold each other’s hands, like you did with your baby.

The Roux house was another plane, like Heaven was, where they didn’t live their lives depending on men at all. Here Sylvie didn’t have to think about Charles, she didn’t even have to think about Armand, though there was a sense of sadness to letting go of that connection, too.

All she had to think about here was Eloisa, and how Eloisa passed between every girl at this party, introducing Sylvie to them all, throwing names around, here was Fleur, here was Catherine, here was Sandrine and every time, the girl in question would smile and ask, a new one, Eloisa? So charming, they’d say, or so cute or so young, depending on who they were. What kind of person. And eventually, Sylvie started wondering how many of these girls had been the new one at some point.

As they, around midnight, still an hour left in Paradise, she was counting down with a certain feeling of dread, wandered aimlessly between the ballroom and the open kitchen where Giovannina had had the cook put out little bowls of fruit and plates of cake, Sylvie – with a tiny piece of chocolate cake on a tiny little plate in one hand – finally found the courage to ask Eloisa, “Have you slept with many of them?” Her eyes were focused on the route of her feet in those sandals, the hem of her dress billowing in and out of her line of vision. The plate weighed nothing.

Either Eloisa didn’t notice her discomfort, or she simply didn’t care for it, because she replied, “Chérie, not many. All of them. We’re not exactly a whole battalion, we must take what’s there.” Her accent was more pronounced now than Sylvie had heard it before, and she thought of Giovannina Roux, and she realised they were familiar in that way as well, the two expatriates. They were familiar in every way. Including ways Sylvie could never replicate, she knew. She couldn’t even hope to.

She couldn’t even pronounce Eloisa’s name right, the Italian way.

Her tone was downcast when she noted, “We must take what’s there or get slapped, right?” It was a reference to that first night at the Dubois ball, to what Eloisa had said, then, thinking maybe the other woman wouldn’t remember, maybe it meant so little. Don’t slap me, she’d warned before kissing her, because many girls had, before Sylvie, apparently. Many girls who weren’t the same type as them. And all of the girls here, who were, right, Eloisa had slept with.

Only now did Eloisa turn her face towards her, studying her profile, her averted eyes, persistent in their avoidance. She halted in the middle of the dim hallway, stepping closer to Sylvie and taking the plate of cake from her, like some Marie Antoinette, let them eat, dropping it onto the dark blue carpet, uncaring, before forcing her to back up against the wall and after another stubborn moment, to look up at her, too. At long last. “Little Sylvie,” she cooed, hands finding her hips, like weights there, grounding her.

How far from Heaven she was, like this, feet against the floorboards. And how frighteningly close she was standing, really, even so. She watched Eloisa’s lips, painted a blushing cherry red and caught the scent of her as well, her ever so recognisable perfume wafting against her face. Sylvie wanted nothing more than to kiss her again and not get slapped for it and when she refrained, because she simply couldn’t make herself, she felt like the greatest coward above the seas, under the skies.

Charles used to say, years ago, after the Great War, too much freedom kills people. That’s why there must be structure, systems, society.

There must be performances of Don Carlos in opera houses filled to the brim. There must be arranged marriages between the king and the queen on a chessboard. Weren’t those human structures, systems and wasn’t that society? Sylvie hated it.

“You’ve got some memory on you,” Eloisa laughed, low in her throat and leaned in all the way, until their noses were bumping, lips brushing again, the moistness of lipstick, the hotness of breath. Their eyes met, so close that their faces were nothing but blurs. “Why do you think I said that? Because I thought you’d hit me? The difference between you and every girl here, topolina, isn’t that I’ve slept with you, it’s that you’re so very good, you would never hit me, no matter what I did. Every other girl in the world, inside this house and outside of it, they would jump at the chance.” Bump, bump went their noses as Eloisa tilted her face to the side, as if studying Sylvie from another, new angle. “That’s what makes you special.”

Staring ahead of her, Sylvie felt her breath escape her in little shallow puffs against Eloisa’s mouth, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think. She was good? She was special? She didn’t realise she was crying, until Sylvie was stretching her neck and kissing away her tears.

“And the thing about special things, chérie,” Eloisa carried on, making Sylvie shake her head quickly, desperately, she couldn’t take any more, no more of these truths, how was she supposed to bear them? She wasn’t strong enough! But as always, Eloisa didn’t care too much about her objections, finishing insistently, “Is that they make a fool out of you, if you leave them behind unclaimed.”

Sylvie was shaking. And Eloisa was holding her, smiling against her skin, her hands their own system of support where she followed the slopes of Sylvie’s body up, like she knew only that one direction. Thank you, thank you, Sylvie whispered with her head buried against her shoulder, thank you for seeing me, good and special and sweet. The actress was smoothening down her hair, that was how far she had got, her short strands of wheat and sunshine and gold. Those nuances. They were highlights against Eloisa’s long curls of orange-red.

“Listen,” Eloisa whispered back, like secret-sharing and pinky promises in bottomless closets long ago, Agnès singing in a voice lighter than air, forever always you and me. “I’m not promising I’ll always be here, but I promise you, for as long as I am, you’ll be mine.”

By every definition that matters, it meant. You’ve made it so, it meant. And you’ve made it well, it meant on top of the rest. Frantically, Sylvie pulled her in for a kiss. It was wet and inelegant, and she was sobbing into it, against Eloisa’s lips, but if nothing else, it was there, lest she disappear.

The other woman hadn’t promised to stay, she hadn’t set the clocks, she wasn’t going to chime, so Sylvie could know beforehand. When.

Yet, who wanted to know things, when knowing things took so much work? Who wanted to know things, when you could be kissing instead, and when kissing only took enough want, enough will and you were going… somewhere…

“Come back soon,” Giovannina Roux invited her later as they were getting dressed to leave, Eloisa and her. Leaving Heaven. Leaving Paradise. Leaving edibles behind on the floor, half-eaten. She was truly Eve now; where did you go from there? Sylvie smiled, because she figured she had learned the answer now.

You go forward.


~*~


In time to pretend she’d actually watched Don Carlos with the rest of the bourgeoisie rather than clamouring for freedom like a true revolutionary in one of the Parisian coffeeshops, now owned by the very rich that their kind used to eat, what irony was that anyway, Edgar drove her back to the townhouse, not looking in what direction she came from when Eloisa dropped her off in front of the opera house, not asking, not saying a word as the automobile slowly moved through the dim summer night, the deserted streets. He kept his eyes on the road. He kept his mouth shut.

Sylvie smiled the whole way, looking out the window at a city that was suddenly not only hers, but also hers. In which a place existed to which she had a claim. A place where she belonged.

Who could have asked for a greater gift? Even now, as her birthday had come to an end. When she was a year older, twenty-three.

Charles was still out, when she got back, in theory she hadn’t needed to hurry, except that the night staff would have had something to report to him, otherwise, and like this she could go to bed, lie awake till sunrise and it wouldn’t be due to worries or gloom or loneliness. It would be due to elation. An uplifting feeling of change, something was giving, finally, and for once, it wasn’t her. Thank the goddess, wouldn’t you say? Thank Eloisa.

As the first golden light of dawn touched her duvet, Sylvie fell asleep. She slept until long past noon without being disturbed. She woke to a brighter world.

The days that followed, amounting soon to more than a week, Saturday until the following Monday, had the world remaining a kind and accommodating place, like some vacation from reality, like some prolonged getaway. She spoke to Eloisa on the phone twice and met her Thursday morning at the Café de Flore, a different corner table than she had shared with Armand, but the same intimate air. They had their croissants, they had their coffee at her brother’s expense, and they talked about all the places in Paris that Sylvie had yet to discover. That Eloisa could show her, effectively putting Edgar out of work again. She had a car, and she knew the way. This city is bigger than the both of us, Eloisa told her, making Sylvie once more wonder whether she ever missed her native country, the city she had left to come here. Then, she remembered Marseille, and realised she didn’t miss hers either. She rarely spared it a thought, and if she did, it was for comparison, an exercise that Marseille never won.

Therefore, she didn’t ask.

They gave each other la bise as they said goodbye on the sidewalk in front of the café, parting ways because Eloisa was rehearsing a new play, not Shakespeare this time. I look forward to it, Sylvie said. Eloisa’s kisses lingered a little longer than the gesture strictly necessitated after that.

Yes, the world was indeed kind and accommodating, wouldn’t you say?

And the weekend was long, lonely; from memory, she drew portraits of girls Eloisa had slept with, sketching a quick self-portrait as the last in line. In black and white, she looked like another person. Sylvie barely recognised herself anymore.

Thrilling, wasn’t it? She liked to think so.

That morning, she had Edgar take her to the market in Le Marais, just to get out of Charles’ shadow which was even longer than the house’s. The house made no demands of her once she left its grounds, Charles’ name clung to her wherever she went, mademoiselle Gallard this, mademoiselle Gallard that. Once, it had been her father’s name, now it was her brother’s, and would she ever be known by her own, alone?

Armand had said she needed to give it time, hadn’t he? Before she would be some Dalí, equal to that. But he hadn’t told her what to do about this prickling impatience in the meantime, her nice and bright and ducky guy. True, some things were worth waiting for. Others weren’t. Sylvie still couldn’t tell the difference very clearly. At this point, she was beginning to doubt whether Armand himself was still in the first category.

Where the market divided into two sections, several rows of stalls had been put up, people selling everything from flowers to fruit to live fowl, the crowd was dense, and she was bumped from more than one side at once. Sorry, she heard in a myriad of voices. Sorry, she muttered herself, repeatedly.

Sorry, a dark male voice said, curtly, when the impact of the man’s shoulder sent her stumbling to the side. A hand shot out to quickly steady her. Don’t be such a ruffian with the girls, a hoarse, slightly shrill female voice teased. Sylvie knew who it was, even before she looked up, and up and up, at her assailant’s face, however. She knew that voice by heart, she knew the both of them. Her eyes wide, she met his.

Charles.

Charles. She looked to the side. Next to him, clad in a long coat of fur with matching diamonds, stood Eloisa. She looked like a model out of a magazine. Sylvie didn’t look at Charles at all, after that, except for cursory glances. Although it hurt, seeing her with him like this all over again, Sylvie couldn’t make herself stop.

Their gazes locked, Eloisa’s and Sylvie’s, but the actress’ were like another person’s eyes, they were completely in character. They were playing some loathsome role. Well, Shakespeare did say, all the world, right? He did say that. Merely players.

It’s time for Molière now anyway, Eloisa would have said in another context, in another reality, in a world where she had slept with all the girls there. Here, she turned her head slowly towards Charles, smiling up at him and exclaiming, “You do know how to pick them, Charles. Your own sister.” Then, after a pause, she looked back at Sylvie, something shifting in her expression and along with the pet name that came over her lips, “Little Sylvie,” her eyes were saying: shh, remember.

Oh, Sylvie remembered, all right. She remembered the pressure of the wall on her spine when the actress had pushed her up against it and told her, she was special, she was good, she remembered how they had kissed, how they had been free in that house, Giovannina Roux’s home, a house with shadows that were for showcasing, not for hiding.

That place exists, but not here, Eloisa’s eyes said.

Why not here, Sylvie’s responded. There wasn’t even a question mark following that statement. It could be here, it meant.

They should be the ones to decide that.

“What are you doing here, Sylvie?” Charles asked, more directly than the discussion his baby was having with his baby sister, checking his pocket watch, Father’s spare, and letting his eyes scan the crowds as if he was eager to get a move on. He probably was. Sylvie was more inclined to stay, to never move until they took that world back.

A revolutionary, again.

“I needed a change of scenery,” she replied, doing like he did and taking in their surroundings. Three stalls over, a man was selling flowers, huge bundles of roses, every colour. Sylvie added, “And I was hoping to buy new flowers, the roses you gave me for my birthday have wilted.”

Eloisa followed her gaze, giving Charles’ arm, from which she hung elegantly, a tug, saying, “You should buy your sister new roses, Charles. Be a good older brother now.”

She was a different kind of actress, all of a sudden. She was Titania and Cleopatra and other familiar roles. Playful. Sylvie beamed and turned her face up towards Charles, going for a pleading look. He glanced between them, like he knew they were misbehaving, like he knew they were up to something, but there was no way he could tell what it was, then he shrugged and handed Eloisa some coins that she took with a kiss to his cheek. Sylvie hated that, but loved the rest. Was that a fair trade?

“Buy my sister some flowers,” he commented, walking over to another stall nearby, selling watches, the new and stylish wrist-hugging kind.

They went together, Eloisa grabbing her by the elbow, dragging her along. “No faces like that,” she muttered under her breath, stopping at the flower seller’s stall and pointing at the biggest bunch of pink roses she could find, saying, twenty of those, before turning to Sylvie again. “Remember the world I showed you. I gave you that experience, I will give it to you again. Be patient, chérie.”

“I have been patient for so long already,” Sylvie begged. “Don’t make me wait anymore.”

“Play a game with me,” Eloisa said, an unusual seriousness to her voice. The flower seller bundled twenty pink roses for her, and she paid him, taking the huge bouquet and handing it to Sylvie, who took it in her arms. It wasn’t from her brother, she wanted to believe, it was from Eloisa, for sure.

“A game?” Sylvie asked.

“It’s called waiting, topolina. Play it with me, please.”

Just like that, they were heading back for where Charles was irritably awaiting, not playing their game at all, arms crossed over his chest at the sight of the many roses, but he didn’t say anything, not even as the two girls stopped right in front of him. He looked at Sylvie with a dark, unreadable air that could mean, go away as much as anything. She never really knew, with him.

Until now, she had never really known anything. The waiting game might indeed be best for now.

She turned to Eloisa and stepped close enough for two light cheek kisses, the flowers safe in her hold. “Thank you,” she remarked, “I’ll remember.”

Smiling, Eloisa nodded towards Charles, and Sylvie already hated it, she hated it before she even knew what was to hate. “A kiss for your brother to thank him for his present, too,” she said, either teasing or covering her tracks, safeguarding herself. Maybe both those courses of action, together.

If only Sylvie’s response could have been to say, lick my fanny first. Or something else lewd. Instead, she stepped up to Charles and kissed his cheek, hoping she was hitting the exact same spot that Eloisa kissed before. She couldn’t taste her on him, but she could smell her, that perfume. Charles was stiff and unapproachable against her front, so she drew back after only a second. Eloisa took her place, burying her fingers in the fabric of Charles’ sleeve. Something Sylvie hated even more.

“Au revoir,” she said. To Charles. To Eloisa. To the both of them, cradling her roses and backing away slowly, trying not to bump into anyone else. “Au revoir.”

Which didn’t necessarily mean see you, really. It didn’t necessarily mean soon.

That was to say, who could surprise her more than they had, showing up all out of the blue? Armand? Fresh home from Africa, earlier than expected. A lovelier surprise, that would have been. She missed his steadiness. She missed the way he would allow her. Everything. Maybe he was in the first category, after all. Things worth waiting for.

So, like that, the world felt a little less kind and accommodating than it had this morning, but Sylvie still made herself turn around and face it.

In the end, it lay between her and home, and she knew where to go from there.


~*~


Paris was sizzling in August, and as the date drew nearer for Armand’s planned return, Sylvie looked out the window at the scorched garden and wondered how much different France might still appear from any part of Africa under these circumstances. Drought, the newspapers reported. The wheat suffered. The wine. The whole country was holding its breath. Its wine merchants. Its bakers. Meanwhile, the coffee distribution routes had been reestablished and people could, if nothing else, still get their cafés au lait.

No revolutions today, then, not unless Sylvie started one herself. She was constantly on the verge of it, these days.

Eloisa would be starring in a lesser-known Molière comedy at the end of the month, and she was preoccupied with rehearsals, their phone calls fewer and briefer and always in code, she didn’t have the time to meet, and you, chérie, don’t have the discretion, she’d said the last time they talked. It was said with a smile, Sylvie could hear it, but it still stung.

As such, Sylvie missed in two directions at the same time. She missed her girl, and she missed her guy, and when she thought about the heatwave wreaking havoc across France, she accepted how this might by some be considered a luxury problem to nurture. The luxury of abundance. Blessed are the poor in spirit, Marguerite and Marceline would have said, but rich or poor – to Sylvie, it didn’t hurt any less.

Nevertheless, maybe it did make her more patient. Maybe it did make her wait, because what alternatives did she really have? She couldn’t go back to having less than nothing. While subzero temperatures sure made absolute zero seem warmer, a pleasant spring day in Paris was still preferable to that. If you asked her, not that anyone did. Not Charles, not Eloisa. Armand wasn’t around to.

Then, finally, on the 14th of August, a Sunday, the grand Dubois mansion sent out for her again, a message relayed to her by Léon in a grave voice – he’d caught her on her way down the main hallway, moss green carpets swallowing the slap, slap, slap of her sandals – requiring her immediate attendance, seeing as their son, who had been travelling throughout Africa, as if she didn’t know all that, had now returned and was ready to have his portrait finished. That part, she didn’t know, but she was happy to learn about it. Truly happy. Happier than she’d have expected to be.

After everything.

She changed into one of her old dresses from her days in Marseille, the black one that had already been splotched by paint last time, and packed a few personal belongings, box of face powder, powder puff, lipstick, that she really didn’t know why she’d need. She wasn’t there to be pretty for him, she was there to work. Finish his portrait, they’d said, as if she was anywhere close to that part of the process. She’d be living with them for a few weeks to get so far, would they like that?

Would she?

Frowning, she thought about Armand, Armand’s kisses, drowned in a shower of others since, and the way Armand always made her feel, which was still unrivalled, all of this stayed with her while she got into the automobile, Edgar closing the door to the backseat behind her. “Where to, mademoiselle?” he asked, by now having learned not to wonder in most other situations. The ones involving Eloisa Paolo, specifically. Sylvie was so lucky that he knew how to tell the difference, wasn’t she? He just needed to take a good look around. Was the Italian actress anywhere to be seen? No? Then, he was her chauffeur again, not her secret keeper.

“The Dubois mansion,” she instructed him, and the car roared as they soon rolled down the driveway leading from the fake manor house of the Gallard family, or what was left of it, you might say, to the main road.

Upon arrival, he was waiting for her in the studio, the cloth removed from the painting like a welcome back, and as she saw him in comparison to the Armand in her picture, she could tell something had happened while he was in Morocco, because the real Armand, the very real Armand standing next to the paint and the canvas, looked less unburdened and heavier in spirit somehow than his counterpart. It wasn’t only the way he was tanned within an inch of his life, it was the darkness that had crept into his eyes. Not you, too, she thought to herself, thinking about the shadows in her brother’s gaze that she had never comprehended. Oh, she had loved the Armand she understood. The Armand who understood her.

“Sylvie,” he said when they laid eyes on each other, almost at the same time. She was the slower one between them. She hadn’t expected him to be there, not right off the bat.

“Armand,” she replied, realising they felt like two strangers again, he didn’t carry himself like the nice, bright and ducky gent anymore, to whom Charles had introduced her at their party. She had to control the sudden urge to ask him to dance the Charleston with her. Kick this weight off of him.

Slowly, she began finding her tools, her brushes and her paints and her palette, full of its dried sheen of colour. Once these things had been laid out, she put on her smock and placed herself in front of the easel. Armand sat down on the stool, same position as last time, weeks ago, but he didn’t look the same, even so. How to salvage that?

He’d once requested that she ask about Morocco later. Was later, now?

It wasn’t.

“Did you celebrate your birthday like I told you to?” he wanted to know just as she was opening her mouth to inquire, effectively interrupting her train of thought. Sylvie looked at him, meeting his eyes, darker now, but still kind, still understanding, and she smiled at him, a careful but genuine smile. Wide, even if she wasn’t quite beaming. She couldn’t make herself, the atmosphere didn’t lend itself to it, but this she could give him. The honesty.

“I enjoyed it,” she said. “With or without you, Armand.”

Returning her gesture, he smiled back at her and this, finally, made his face light up until he was a familiar sight again. Sylvie began painting, her tiny, tiny brushstrokes. She was working on his features, the curve of his lips.

“Please don’t stop smiling,” she begged him, it was for more than the portrait, its likeness. It was for her own sake as well.

It made him smile more. Like that, they both were, and the atmosphere felt lighter, and he was the first one to laugh, a low chuckle, and Sylvie followed him with a laughter that sounded like bells. They shared that moment; it felt like they were both gripping for it desperately.

“I missed you while I was gone,” he said after a while. Smile fading, but likewise had the shadows, they only lingered around the edges of him at this point. Meaning, there was room for the tree roots coiling around him in her portrait, it wasn’t a background she had to change, it still rang true for what she saw, when she looked at him. And she did look at him now.

The consistency made her inexplicably delighted at first. How a month didn’t change anything fundamental. On his behalf, and on her own. Then, it started frustrating her more than she could say, and in a way she didn’t completely understand, her inner revolutionary, the acid part of Eloisa’s acid drops. Because there were so many things that they could benefit from changing, he could and she could, Eloisa could and maybe even Charles. Maybe even him.

This world isn’t where you’d want it to be, she’d heard him say to others after the Great War. It isn’t where it’s at.

She hadn’t understood back then, fourteen years old was no age at all, but Sylvie thought she understood at long last. Still, now she never heard him say it anymore. They couldn’t even share that. All they shared was Eloisa, and Sylvie hated that, detested it, absolutely loathed every second, every minute.

Was Armand waiting for her to repeat it back to him? I missed you. She couldn’t, though, she couldn’t make herself say it. “I forgot about you, after some time,” she admitted, wanting to be completely forthcoming with him, not holding anything back, even the less flattering parts. “I regret that now when you’re here. When I remember how wonderful you are.”

Strangely enough, it made Armand smile a second time around. Small and soft, and he looked down at his hands, saying, “Forgetting is good, it means you’ve been spending your time well.”

He spoke like he knew. Again, she wondered about Morocco.

“And you, did you spend your time well?” she asked him.

The shadows were back in his eyes. Remember you’re only guests there, she thought, willing them to fade once more, while Armand responded with a thoughtful, “I did what I came to do. We’ll see how it ends.”

Sylvie kept up her tiny brushstrokes. She was marking his jawline, it wasn’t tense in the painting, the way it was on him while he got to his feet in front of her, turning towards the nearest window, looking out. Hands behind his back. His shoulders were broad, and she wondered what burden he was carrying, because they looked like shoulders bearing a yoke. When it came to burdens, she only knew that of Atlas, her brother, and even that she only knew in part. There was a side to it she never saw, of course.

“How do you want it to end?” she asked his back this time.

“Happily,” was his response which said very little. For whom, she wanted to keep pushing, but didn’t, imagining his reply would be, for all of us, Sylvie, and his use of her name, even just in her imagination, made her stop pursuing, finally. He deserved his secrets, too, as well as she deserved hers.

Although she neither wanted them nor needed them, really.

They were simply there.

Studying the stature of his back, the muscle visible beneath the layers of fabric, his shirt clinging to his upper arms and shoulder blades, she decided that if they did have a happy ending, Armand and her, she would paint him from behind, so he could keep the things he held in his heart to himself. Protect them from the vulgarity of public attention. Everyone would be too busy staring at his backside, at the curve of his buttocks and the strength of his thighs. Like that, they could hide the rest in plain sight. Simply by being a little indecent.

Was that what Eloisa did? And was that another lesson she had passed on to Sylvie now? Hiding by forcing others to look elsewhere. The stage. The gossip columns. It didn’t strike her as something Armand would ever want to consider, Eloisa wasn’t the type of woman he liked, and a part of her, an old part, a small part by now, loved him for it. It was a steady choice. It was a stable choice. It was a sympathetic choice.

Everything that Eloisa wasn’t, it was, right?

She put her brush down next to the jar of water, intending to keep working in a moment, but for now she remarked, gently: “It’s only real happiness if you’re still yourself. So, don’t let anyone change you. Not even me, Armand.”

His shoulders dropped slowly. His arms fell down along his sides. He didn’t stop looking out, but Sylvie wondered what he even saw out there. If she’d see the same as him, were they to stand next to each other. With Charles the answer was always no. With the Armand she knew before he left, it was the opposite. This Armand? She couldn’t tell, but she’d be interested in trying, she thought. She wanted to think so. Anything else was too sad.

“Will you stay and have supper with us tonight?” he asked, when he finally turned back around and faced her, his chest open, his face, too. The shadows had scattered. The hopefulness and the softness she knew had taken their place. “My parents insisted that I extend the invitation.”

Welcoming it all back, like she had been welcomed back here, Sylvie smiled, repeated an old phrase from a long time ago, at least four weeks, “Do you want me to accept it? After all, I have nothing to wear.”

With a light shrug, he bowed his head, like he was a little embarrassed to say, “I bought you a dress when we passed through Italy. It’s ready for use, the maids have aired it and steamed the skirt. I got you shoes and the rest, too.” Then, hurriedly, like he was afraid of being interrupted: “A belated happy birthday, Sylvie.”

Frozen mid-motion, she stared at him. She stared at the remarkable generosity and kindness he was extending to her, and for what? A few kisses. A common connection, a shared experience, non-exclusivity and the promise not to own, but to hold and treasure. The promise to wait. Her nice, bright and ducky guy! In the span of a second, she went from watching him uncomprehendingly to beaming. Yes, it meant. Yes, I’ll stay for supper.

Because he looked back up at her with a smile of his own, saying, “I hope that answers your question.”

Sure, she had forgotten, but now she was duly reminded. His care remained the answer to everything.


~*~


If monsieur Dubois regarded himself as King, then Armand’s return was the return of a king’s son, but you’d think it was a changeling that had gotten off at the train station and taken a taxicab home, wouldn’t you? Rather than the real deal.

That was Sylvie’s thoughts about the heavy atmosphere around the table, though they were taking supper in a smaller dining room than last time, the stripes on the wallpaper alternating between copper and blue this time, more intimate, less royal, because Armand’s parents would frequently glance over at their son, as if they were either afraid he should suddenly disappear or that he had already disappeared, and this was a ghost sitting in their midst.

Besides sharing their worry to some degree, Sylvie acted like nothing was wrong at all, complimenting the dessert, which was as far into dinner as they’d come, and without incident. It was a quieter affair than the first time she’d dined with them, the Dubois patriarch and his frail ice queen. Their handsome, soft-hearted son. She wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was it a good sign or an ill omen?

Was the worst yet to come?

Was the best?

Next to her, Armand was watching her carefully and it was this attentive interest of his that confused her the most, because there was a sort of steely direction in his eyes that he hadn’t at any point before attached to their relationship. Not in plain sight, at least, where she couldn’t help but notice. Or it could be Sylvie who had changed, naturally, her vision that had broadened while he was away. Her world that had shifted, irrevocably. His parents, too, seemed to notice his intentions, his father across from her, the man who had undoubtedly begotten him and his mother who must have helped that process in some capacity as well. They exchanged a long look.

“Mademoiselle Gallard,” monsieur Dubois said after a prolonged silence and before that, an inane conversation about vineyards in Southern France, how much they suffered in the heat. “Do you have any kind of plans for your future?”

Are you getting married, it meant when you asked a girl that, didn’t it? Are you getting hitched? For a man, it could mean everything and nothing, but for a girl, it was that one option. She immediately understood, and she glanced aside at Armand who met her gaze for a long moment, but he didn’t redirect the debate or interrupt. To someone else? To our son, was the implication.

How proud Charles would have been of her in that moment. And it was when she realised that even the thought of Charles’ satisfaction didn’t fuel her own anymore, that Sylvie realised she was truly associating with Armand on her own terms now. That she was free to answer whatever she wanted to this question about her objectives in relation to him.

Because her objectives could be anything and everything, only her own feelings set the limit.

“I would very much like to get back into art school,” she said, then. That was her answer. She didn’t miss Marseille, but she missed the academy, and she missed honing her skills under the guidance of people better and more experienced than her. What a grown-up thing to want, wasn’t it? Really, soon she’d grow out her hair, too, and become respectable.

Next to her, Armand straightened up, nodding in understanding and his parents immediately interpreted it as a cue to do the same; soon the three of them were nodding in tridem, which made Sylvie bite the inside of her cheek not to laugh out loud. How silly this situation was. Armand, at least, saw this and his lips pursed. He was close to laughter, too.

Not exactly respectable. Either of them, were they?

“Well. Are there jobs to get in the art world?” monsieur Dubois tried to pursue the subject matter, his wife looking from Armand to Sylvie and back again, before softly placing her hand over her husband’s on the still pristine, white tablecloth, the same way Sylvie had done to Armand last time. She remembered. She suspected they both did. She smiled at the other woman but didn’t make to copy her.

Armand and she hadn’t actually touched, beyond Sylvie letting him lead her into the dining room by the small of her back, after she saw him again at the studio. They’d kept space and things unsaid between them. Sylvie needed time; if she wasn’t pursuing Armand for Charles’s sake anymore, why was she pursuing him? Was she pursuing him, and if so – was she pursuing him in the right way? What could she possibly want from him that Eloisa couldn’t give her?

Besides the obvious.

And don’t be lewd… She was referring to his emotional investment, of course.

“Art isn’t a job,” she replied, “It’s a calling. You’re either an artist or you’re not, you can’t turn it on and off for money like a new automobile.” The last comparison was spoken quite cheerfully, and she popped a spoonful of the crème brûlée into her mouth, like the bohemian status of the painter didn’t mean that she would undoubtedly struggle on her own, that she would undoubtedly live another kind of life, should she find herself without her brother’s support – or Armand’s, were that to be the case. But Sylvie was ready.

That was what she was saying. Struggling wasn’t a deterrent to her.

She had worn her fair share of beautiful dresses and pearls and diamonds. Those things didn’t make anyone happy. If they did, why was she still haunted by her parents’ ghosts from the bottom of the Atlantic, by Eloisa’s Cleopatra and by Eloisa herself, and who knew which ghosts would come next? She didn’t care to be rich, if she couldn’t be true!

For a moment, Armand’s eyes bore into the depths of her where her soul hid, and she could tell, he knew what she was talking about beyond the words themselves, artistic snobbery and money analogies. He knew it with his whole person. And that was why he now interrupted, saying: “Imagine where our world would be, if that was the case.”

If the nature of a person could be altered so easily.

Over the remainder of dessert, they discussed what kind of art artless people could possibly produce. Whether modern artefacts like cars were to be considered artistic. Or if inspiration was like fuel in any and all senses of the word. It was pleasant, but it didn’t touch upon the crux of the matter.

How some things were unalterable. It could rain lead, fire, plagues from the sky – it could even rain money or Hurricane Charles could pass over their place, and it wouldn’t change their shape.

If nothing else, the atmosphere lifted after that. Armand wasn’t a changeling any longer, he was back to himself, and he was back in France, back to his home, his roots. What Sylvie was back to, she wasn’t too sure.

Not yet.

She sensed, however, that he’d like to search for the answer with her, and for that she was more grateful than for the black dress he had brought with him from Eloisa’s native country, all lace and black stones. It was knee-length, or it would have been a real funeral garb, but with a hint of pale shins, it was a hider of secrets instead.

Like you, he’d whispered to her, leading her into the dining room, hours ago.

The idea made her feel alive, as if she was actually in Giovannina Roux’s home once more, rather than the Dubois manor and she’d say, ultimately that spoke in Armand’s favour.

How his could be a house of freedom, too.