At the Edge of Summer

I stood before the gate of 70 bis Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, a package in my hand. It had arrived Monday, wrapped in brown paper, addressed to my apartment. The only person who had ever written me there before was Mabel.

It was a santon, made from red Picardy clay. He was shaped and painted with loving care. But he wasn’t a shepherd or a water bearer or one of the usual santons Maman put in the Christmas crèche. This one, with palette and brush, was a painter. A painter wearing my old face.

On the back, written in gold with a feather-fine brush, were the words, An artist must see beyond the shadows to the colors hiding there. When I opened it, when I traced the script on the back, I felt something strange. For the first time in years, I felt hope.

I wrapped the statuette and went through the gate. The courtyard, with the crooked tree and basin of rainwater, was quiet.

The studio wasn’t as bustling as my first visit. Two women, dressed sensibly alike in crisp white blouses, dark skirts, and neckties, smoothed clay over cast molds. One woman, in a gray smock, with a paintbrush tucked behind one ear, stood near the window and squinted at a mask in her hand. It was the older woman, who I’d met at the gate with the basket of pears. I couldn’t see the mask, but it glowed with enamel, the colors of flesh stretched across bone, of shadows and ridges. I began to see why the waiting mutilés looked so hopeful.

Madame Ladd, I spotted right away, in careful consultation with a small bearded man who looked so French and provincial and artistic. Papa would’ve felt at home in this studio, with its airy sunlight and the sounds of Paris through the windows. If he ever traded the tranquility of the countryside for a studio, it would be one like this.

Under the flags, soldiers were grouped in a cluster of horizon blue, smoking and laughing. Tumblers of wine and dishes of chocolates were scattered between checkerboards and playing cards. One young man, in an apron and narrow spectacles, refilled glasses almost overeagerly, wiping down tables after each pour. One half of the room a studio, smelling of clay and turpentine and the sharp tang of galvanized copper, and the other half practically a café.

I didn’t even realize I was looking for her, searching every face in the room, until a pert woman stepped up. “You are Monsieur Crépet? Monsieur Luc Crépet?” She tucked bobbed hair behind her ears.

It still felt odd to hear my name, as though I were the same person I was in the past. The same Luc. “Yes. I have an appointment.”

“I’m Pascalle Bernard.” She tightened the sash on her apron. “Today, I will be taking a cast of your face.”

“Mademoiselle, you?” I glanced around. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude.”

“You’re not,” she said, though with an edge to her voice. “Is there something the matter?”

“No, but the artist who sketched me the other day…” I stepped farther into the room, wondering if she was tucked into a corner. “She…”

“Mademoiselle Ross?” She drew her lips into a bow. “She is not in today. I will be beginning your mask.”

I took a step backwards. “I don’t know.”

“Please, monsieur.” She waved to the young man with the apron and bottle of wine. “Évrard! Come, bring a glass.”

The man filled one and bounded across the room, sloshing wine as he went. He wiped the edge of the glass with his towel and then offered it to me.

“I might not—”

“Just a glass of wine.”

I took it. The glass shook in my hand.

“Don’t be nervous,” Mademoiselle Bernard said.

“I’m not nervous.” I straightened. “There should be nothing to be nervous about, correct?”

“Nothing.” She nodded to the young man. “You know, Évrard here came to the studio thirteen times before he stayed long enough for a mask.”

Évrard hung his head, but the smile didn’t leave his face.

“And see what it’s done for him.” She gestured.

Tucking the towel into his waistband, Évrard reached behind his ears and unhooked the temples of his glasses. But when the glasses pulled away from his face, they brought a mask away with them, a mask I hadn’t noticed until now.

The smile that didn’t leave his face, it was painted on. The eye, the nose, the cheek, all replaced what was missing below. He had lost so much more than I had, yet, when he slid the mask back on, I realized what he had gained.

The paint was smooth, and the pale color of his skin, even down to the shades of dark stubble on his cheek. So thin that, when it was on, I saw no seam. It must have been a glass eye, but it sparkled the same pale blue as his other, surrounded even by curls of eyelashes. He raised his hand in a salute. Without thinking, I saluted back.

“Do you see, monsieur?”

Hands still shaking, I drained the glass. “Where do I sit?”

Mademoiselle Bernard led me to a chair in the corner. “We will make many casts of your face. We need both positive and negative casts…positive means that—”

“If you please,” I said softly. “I grew up surrounded by artists. I understand positive and negative.”

She looked delighted. “Then you have nothing to worry about. You are safe in my hands.”

“I’m not nervous,” I said for the second time that day. This time, though, it wasn’t said to convince her. I was trying to convince myself.

“As I said, we’ll need to have positive and negative casts of your face as it is now, and then, from these, we’ll build up your face as it was then. We’ll cast it in copper and then an electric deposit of silver.”

Despite myself, I was interested. “Why in silver?”

“It will add to the mask’s durability.” She smiled. “We’ll paint it, fit it with the attachments that will secure it to your face, and voilà! You, monsieur, will have a new face.”

Although I tried to avoid it, my fingers flew to my cheek, to the rough pits and gouges. “And the old face?”

“It’s still yours, monsieur,” she said quietly. “A memory of a time when you were stronger than what you were fighting. A reminder that you came home.”

I exhaled. “I think I’m ready to begin.”

With a quick smile and a nod, she led me over to a low chair, backed against a table. “If you’ll sit, please, I’ll make you comfortable.” She brought a stack of bed pillows to the table and covered them with a spotted sheet. “Lean back against these.”

I settled back as she draped me with another sheet, from the neck down. “I feel like I’m at the barber for a shave.”

She picked up a bowl of something pale and creamy. “Nearly.” She scooped up a fingerful. “It’s Vaseline. I’ll rub it on your face and—”

“Please…” Suddenly my jokes didn’t feel so funny. Just nervous conversation, as they often were. “May I?”

“What, rub on the Vaseline?”

I held out my hand for the bowl.

Instead she set it down and leaned against the table. “Monsieur, I know you are sensitive to your condition, but, to help you, we must touch your face at times. Please let us.”

“No one does.”

Of course, the doctors in the hospital had touched my face, when it was still raw and oozing. Surgeons had cut it and stitched it up again. Mabel had washed it and changed the dressings. But since leaving the hospital, since it had begun healing, pink and tight and itchy, that all stopped. Even I avoided touching what had become of me.

Until the first day I came in the studio, and Clare so unexpectedly put her fingers to each side of my face, feeling the scars of the last four years, feeling everything she’d missed, no one had touched me with such gentleness. I didn’t trust that anyone else could.

“I’ll do it.” I took the bowl and, closing my eyes, began smearing the Vaseline onto my face.

“Be sure you get plenty in your mustache and brows. And along your hairline, if you please.” I kept rubbing until I heard her say, “That’s enough.”

I opened my eyes to lashes stuck together.

“You can keep them closed if you’d like. I’ll prepare the rest of your face for the plaster.” She pulled a wad of cotton wool to stuff each ear. “We don’t want any plaster to drip in there.” And a soft, thin piece of fabric twisted into a rope, snaked along my hairline and was tucked behind each ear.

“Is this how it feels to be packaged in a crate, I wonder?”

“I see your humor has returned.”

“At least until you start.” Through my gummy eyelashes, I saw a bowl on the table, filled with a thick white soup of plaster. “That’s what you’ll put on my face?”

“Yes, but quickly, before it begins hardening.” She gave it a few more stirs as I settled back deeper into the stack of pillows. “There. That should be ready. The quills and then you can close your eyes.”

“Quills?”

She held up two hollow sections of quill, cut short. “Now this will only be uncomfortable for a moment.”

The two quills went in my nostrils, so it was more than a little uncomfortable, and it definitely was longer than a moment.

“Close your eyes now.”

The first few drops of plaster hit me as heavy and cold as mud. She dripped it across my face, then up over my forehead. I felt it spatter on my eyelids, and squeezed them shut even further. “Relax,” she said firmly, and I tried to oblige. Wet plaster slid along each side of my nose and I inhaled sharply through the quills. “Relax.”

“Easy for you to say,” I mumbled, but she pressed a damp finger to my lips. I flinched.

“Still, now. Please.”

Plaster covered my mouth. If I tried to scream, it would fill my mouth, roll down my throat. I dug my fingernails into my legs.

I wasn’t getting air. Those two quills in my nose, I knew they weren’t enough. I breathed so fast I could feel them quivering. I need…I need…I couldn’t even tell her.

“You’re fine, monsieur,” she said calmly. With the cotton in my ears, her voice was wavy, like I was underwater. Or maybe I was faint. I was blacking out, hurtling into the void, going to die. All of those stones in the old well were falling down on me. The ceiling of the quarry was closing in. I’d be buried alive.

And still she wasn’t stopping. I could feel the layers on my face getting heavier and heavier. Surely the weight would crack right through my skin and seep into my blood. I wanted to tell her to stop, to tell her that was enough, that surely she could make a mask with what she had right now, but when I tried, my lips tasted like plaster.

So heavy, and hot. How long did she say it needed to stay on? It had been at least a few minutes, more than a few, many agonizing minutes. So hot; was I burning?

“You’re fine,” she said again, and I tried to shake my head. “No!” I said. Or maybe it was her, because she was pinning me down, holding my head still. “You mustn’t move. Monsieur Crépet, no!”

But I had to move, I had to escape, I had to find a place to breathe. How could they do this to a man and say it was for his own good? My throat tightened. Oh, God, it was closing up. I was dying. I reached up, to touch the mask, to tear it away. I had to.

Then through the fog, a voice broke through, “Pascalle, no!” Commanding. “You can’t hold him down like that.” The weight on my chest eased, let go. “He’s terrified of small spaces. Oh, Luc.”

Like an angel, Clare was there. “Louise, open the window.” Light fingers unbuttoned the top of my shirt. Cool air reached my chest. “Pascalle, that wet cloth.” She was speaking English, in a tumbled rush. “Luc,” she said in a low voice, “I have you.” Quickly, quietly, she repeated that over and over until my breathing slowed. She took my hands, sticky with plaster, in hers. “I have you.”

A chair squeaked and she sat next to me, still holding my hands. “Do you remember, Luc, all of the wood violets that grew around the chestnut tree? We’d step right over them and the air always smelled sweeter. I was so silly, but I used to take a handful up to my room and pretend that you picked them for me.”

I squeezed her hand.

“And all of the cicadas! Their song was our symphony that summer.” Her hands were warm. “Remember the fable of the cicada who spent all summer singing rather than storing food? La Fontaine, wasn’t it? You told me that’s why you never hear cicadas singing in the city. Parisian cicadas would never forget their larder.” She laughed. I’d forgotten her little peal of a laugh, so rare. “I understand that now.

“And do you remember the time Bede went missing? Marthe packed us a bag with oranges and brown bread and cheese, and we hiked all day through the pines looking for his footprints. And when I fell and bumped my head, you ran to the stream and carried back the water in your two hands for me to drink. Hardly a few drops by the time you found me again. Did I ever tell you how vile that water was? Muddy and dank. But I drank those palmfuls of water because you brought them.”

My lips moved against the inside of the cast. I wanted to tell her that, yes, I remembered. That I would’ve gone to the Amazon and back for water if it would’ve made her feel better.

“Here we go,” she said, and I felt other hands on the side of my face, easing the plaster cast off. When it lifted, my eyes found Clare’s. “Do you remember what you said to me the day we met?” she asked.

I remembered her standing in the front hall of Mille Mots like a lost fairy queen. She looked so sad and scared and defiant, all at the same time. I’d offered my hand and ended up giving up my heart.

“You are safe with me,” she said.