At the Edge of Summer

Mrs. Ladd had urged a morning off. “You are tireless, Miss Ross.”

“These men have given so much,” I told her. “My time is the least I can give.”

“Miss Bernard did express some concern.” She folded her hands. “She said there was a guest the other day who…affected you.”

Mrs. Ladd had the ability to make suggestions sound like privileges, mays instead of shoulds. While Pascalle nodded and made shooing motions behind Mrs. Ladd’s back, I said, “Thank you,” and stayed home the next day.

I’d taken to watching for the post anyway. I kept hoping that the Crépets would write to me, tell me they were wrong, tell me that they wanted to help. I sat by the window of the apartment, letting my artist’s imagination conjure up scenes of happy family reunions. In all of them, I hovered along the edges of the embraces.

I kept myself busy that morning off. After a slow breakfast of tea and a newspaper I wasn’t really reading, I bundled up in my coat and cherry-red scarf. I walked to Les Halles through a hesitant snow. I’d make Grandfather a flamiche, if I could find leeks.

The market in Les Halles wasn’t as bright as any in Africa or Spain. No woven rugs or baskets of couscous or cones of ground spices. The produce wasn’t as shiny, the fish not as fresh, the flowers not as plentiful as the other markets I knew. Pascalle promised that it once was and that it would return to that as soon as France recovered. In the meantime, the market was crowded with housewives and cooks doing their shopping quickly with downcast eyes and half-empty bags. American soldiers, ruddy and clean, brushed past the old poilus, faded after four years of war. Those refugees who had nothing to return to, they crouched on corners, waiting patiently for the charity of strangers. My heart ached for them, always, but I couldn’t buy enough bread to feed every lost one in the city.

The flower seller, in her spotted head scarf and layers of bright-dyed skirts, waited on her usual corner. “Flowers, ma chère?” She held out a small, fragrant bunch of violets. “Ask your sweetheart to buy you flowers?”

I gave her a few coins, like I always did, but left the flowers for the next customer. “No sweetheart yet, mademoiselle.”

And there hadn’t been. I had my easy friendship with Finlay, but both of us knew it could never be more than that. There’d been a boy in Lagos who tried to kiss me, and one in Seville whom I’d let. There’d been one in Marrakesh, an American artist, who sketched me nude when Grandfather was gone. But none that I’d call “sweetheart.”

I told myself it was because I didn’t want to compromise. What good was gaining a sweetheart if it meant losing everything else?

What are you waiting for? Finlay had asked me once. Who are you waiting for? I always answered, No one, because I wanted that to be the answer. And because any other admission would break my heart. I didn’t want to confess that, even then, even not knowing, I was always waiting for Luc.

I went back to the apartment with my shopping, unpacked my groceries, arranged and rearranged the few stores on my shelves. While I was out, Grandfather had come back from his morning coffee at Café Aleppo, and he’d fallen asleep on the sofa still in his shoes. I paced. I washed my hair. I tried out my new marcel iron. I paced. Who are you waiting for?

I wished I’d brought Luc’s old letters with me from Perthshire, so that I could spread them all out on the bed the way I used to, so I could try to remember a time when he would meet my eyes instead of looking away. But the letters were tucked in my dresser drawer at Fairbridge, wrapped in a silk scarf. Memories, however, weren’t so easy to tuck away.

I had a letter that morning, from Finlay. His letters lately had been infused with regret. They’d been doing life drawing, which always made him think of his sister. His letters were filled with lines like, Stubbornness is no excuse for loss, and I’d give up my other leg to go back in time, and Why do you still write to a miserable soul like me? But this last letter was all about the new life model, Evelyn, an aspiring art student with, from the sound of it, the longest legs in Scotland. It held an uncharacteristic note of hope.

I thought to write him back. Tell him about Luc. If I went to post a letter, it surely wouldn’t hurt anything if I stopped by the studio for a moment. A quick moment. I’d be passing by and, anyway, I needed to give Pascalle her scarf back. I could even bring her a spot of supper. She’d appreciate it, to be sure. Bread was hard to come by, but I had half a loaf and cut her off an end. As I buttered bread, sliced cheese, scrubbed a pear, and packed it all in a basket with a half bottle of wine, I managed to convince myself that this had been the plan all along. If it so happened that a letter had come to the studio from Monsieur Luc Crépet, so much the better. I brewed mint tea for Grandfather to have when he woke from his nap. I forgot all about Finlay’s letter. I caught up my basket, spread a blanket over Grandfather, and headed to the studio.

I heard Pascalle’s shout when I was halfway up the stairs. I dropped the basket of food and ran the rest of the way up.

Inside the studio, Luc leaned back on a stack of pillows, his face covered in a thick layer of wet, white plaster. But he was kicking and twisting between strangled cries. Pascalle held him firmly. Across the room the waiting mutilés craned their necks over their checkerboards.

I didn’t even pause to take off my coat. I hurried across the room and took his hand. “Luc,” I said, “I have you.”

He quieted at my voice, so I knew I had to keep talking. I pulled out memories and long-forgotten adventures. “Do you remember when” and “there was that time” until the sentences ran together. But at each word, the tension left his hand a little bit more. I hoped he wouldn’t hear the quaver in my voice, the hitch of worry that made me breathless. When the mask was lifted, he stared straight up at me, not a hint of that guardedness. “You are safe with me,” I said. I hoped he believed me.

Luc’s eyes stayed on me as I took the cast to the drying table, as I helped him sit up, as I carefully sponged the plaster and Vaseline from the edges of his face with warm water. I didn’t rush, though it was the end of the day and the sun slanted low through the windows. I let those precious still seconds with Luc last.

“Clare,” he said. The first time he’d said my name in years. “Clare, will you?”

The question hung in the air. Behind me, the room quieted as artists and mutilés gradually filtered out, headed to suppers and homes and dreams still to come. Mine was right here.

“Luc.” I felt his name against the roof of my mouth. It tasted like summer. “I’ll help. Of course I’ll help.” I combed down his damp hair with my fingers. “But not only for the mask.” I hated the words as they came out of my mouth. “You have to do more than walk the streets again; you have to walk through life.”

He broke my gaze at last and put his face to a towel. “You make it sound so easy.” His voice muffled through the thick fabric.

“I know it won’t be.” I thought of Finlay, of his ups and downs, of his estrangement from his family, of those days when he had to fight with himself just to leave his flat. But also of his classes, Evelyn the model, and his newly hopeful letter. “But the mask is a bandage. To heal, there must be more.”

“Is there more?”

There had to be. Luc walked through the door of that studio, and suddenly the future stretched out, past the battlefields and shells. If he couldn’t step beyond all that, then what use was seeing the future at all?

I squeezed the wet sponge, leaving drops of water on my skirt. “Have you found employment?”

He shook his head. “Who would hire someone like me?”

“A hero of France?” My voice echoed in the room. Even Mrs. Ladd had gone down to the courtyard, to rinse the bowls and plaster brushes. “Plenty.”

That old guarded look was coming up again. “Wounds and medals don’t make a hero.”

“I’m sure you could take up your old place at the university. Finish your studies. War interrupted that.”

“But then what? I studied to be a teacher.” He wiped the corners of his eyes with a thumb. “I wouldn’t inflict myself on a roomful of students now.”

“You’ll have your mask.”

He stayed quiet. I didn’t know if he was considering or ignoring.

“Tennis?”

He reached to his shoulder in response. I wondered what old wound hid there. “Those days are past.”

“You could coach, I’d think. Couldn’t you?”

“Clare.” He sighed. “Don’t.”

“Maybe you need something new.” Water dripped into the basin. “I have a pamphlet I’ll send with you. There’s an institute now, you know.”

“To teach invalides and mutilés a trade. I know.”

I tried to push a brightness into my voice. “You can learn just about anything. Tailoring, shoemaking, tinsmithing. Clockmaking, I think. Typesetting, binding…oh, all sorts of things.” I blotted along the curve of his cheek. “I had one fellow who trained to be a bookkeeper. He thought of industrial design—that’s a choice, too—but decided—”

“Please stop.”

“Close your eyes again.” I moved the sponge to the skin beneath his brow. “Why not art, then?” I said quietly.

“Art?” Behind his lids his eyes moved. “I was never that good.”

“At teaching, you were.” Like at that lesson under the chestnut tree, my fingers were on his face. “I don’t know how you would have been at history or philosophy or whatever you were studying to teach, but as an art tutor, you were—” My voice caught. “You were very good.”

He exhaled against my wrist. I knew he was remembering the same scene. “And did it work?” he asked.

“Did what?”

“The lesson.”

“I ended up at the School of Art, after all.” I couldn’t keep the pride from my voice.

He smiled, the first one I’d seen in eight years. “See, you were too busy to miss me.”

“But I did,” I said without thinking. “Miss you.”

I expected more of that smile, but his face tensed. “Still so teasing, are you?”

“You once said you were always at my service.” The sponge reached the edges of his scar. “There were days I wished for a knight.”

“That night you spent in Paris,” he said. “You could have used one then.”

He had to be guessing. He didn’t know about the taxi ride to that house, about Stefan in the mirror, about the night huddled in the cemetery of a little white-stoned church. My fingers tightened on the sponge. “What do you mean?”

“What happened that evening.”

How could it be more than guessing? I didn’t tell him. I’d never told a soul. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Water dribbled between my fingers.

“You didn’t travel with—”

“No,” I said, too quickly. The taste of Suze rose on my tongue, and it made me flush. I’d gone with Stefan. I’d taken the drink from him. I hadn’t locked the door. “I told you, nothing happened.” I dropped the sponge in the bucket with a splash.

He opened his eyes. “Please don’t. I’m…sorry.” He was saying it for now and for all those years ago. “Clare, I’m sorry.” Maybe even for Stefan and the night in Paris. “Don’t go.” He reached up and touched the knob of my wrist, just once.

Everyone else had left, but I had stayed by his side. And I would, as long as he’d let me.

I turned my hand. Our palms brushed. “I promise.”

—

The mask took me a month to complete. It wasn’t because I wasn’t diligent. No, it took me so much longer because I wanted it to be perfect. It was Luc. I couldn’t give him any less.

I cleaned the negative cast we took of his face. With fresh plaster of Paris, I made a positive and smoothed out any little lumps and divots left behind by the casting process.

“It was a good cast,” Pascalle complained. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No, you followed the procedure,” I said quietly, scraping my knife across the dried plaster. “But this is one I need to do myself.”

She stirred a bowl of wet plaster of Paris. “This will start hardening in a moment. You need to take the next cast.”

“It’s not ready yet.”

I fiddled with smoothing until I’d ruined that bowl of plaster and had to mix another. Pascalle sighed, but she helped me make the second negative. We then filled it with plasticine clay to make a positive “squeeze.” An inelegant name for a piece of sculpture.

I lifted the plaster cast off the gray plasticine. Luc’s ruined face looked up at me from the table and I swallowed back tears.

“Miss Ross.” Mrs. Ladd was suddenly at my elbow. “Miss Bernard told me you’ve been crying.”

“No, I haven’t.” I shot Pascalle a look across the room, but she was studiously involved with a brush and some turpentine. “I’ve been tired.”

She settled into a chair across from me. “You understand why we cannot cry in the studio.”

“The soldiers are sensitive to their appearances,” I said automatically. “They have a difficult enough time with reactions outside of the studio. I know. But…”

“But you’re only crying over a squeeze. Is that what you were going to say?”

“Yes.”

“Miss Ross,” she said, “look at those soldiers sitting over there.”

Though they sat with wine and hearty conversation, there was an alertness about them. A tense watchfulness. They were like deer ready to bolt, waiting for the first sneer or startled look.

“They don’t care that you are only crying down onto a squeeze. In that squeeze, in that other ruined face, they see their own.”

I swallowed, and I nodded.

“Is this the same soldier as the other day?” She reached across and pulled the plasticine closer. “It is a clean cast. He doesn’t appear too bad. You should do well on this one.”

“I hope I can.”

“You always do. Why are you doubting now?”

I ran a finger along the edge of the plasticine face and didn’t answer. I couldn’t tell her how seeing all of the details, being able to touch each and every scar in the clay, made it seem so much more real to me. That, even though I helped soldiers worse off than Luc all the time, helping him meant so much more.

“Would it be better for someone else to work on this one? It doesn’t have to be Miss Bernard.” Everyone had seen my frantic run into the studio the other day, when Luc was panicking beneath the wet plaster. I’d dropped the basket of Pascalle’s supper. The stairs still bore a dark streak of wine.

“No, please. I can do it.” I looked up. “I’ll hold it together.”

She sat quiet for a moment, her hands crossed on the table. Finally she sighed. “Do you think me heartless? Unaffected by what I see in here every day?”

“Of course not, Madame.”

“When I first came to France, before I opened the studio, I went out and toured the hospitals. I needed to see the state of the French soldiers. I even went out closer to the lines—guided, of course—and saw these injuries when they were fresh.”

I held my breath. I couldn’t imagine; when their faces were contorted with more than emotional pain.

“I’d come back here, to the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, which wasn’t yet a studio. It was an empty room. I’d sit here alone and sometimes I was overcome.” Her eyes misted in a quick instant, but she blinked and forced a sunny smile. “We are like the masks. We need to be. Strong metal covering vulnerability. They both exist, mademoiselle.”

“But even the strongest copper can crack.”

She smiled gently. “We don’t let it.”

I went back to my squeeze, feeling too fragile to be made of metal but knowing I had to, for Luc’s sake. For the sake of all the men in the room. So I ignored the scars, the pits, the ridges, and I concentrated on his eyes.

While taking that first cast, a soldier sat with eyes closed, covered over with thin slips of tissue paper. The plasticine squeeze gave us the chance to open those eyes with a burin and a steady hand. It was a necessary step for those soldiers who needed an eye on their mask to replace one lost. Luc didn’t, but I still etched them in. I wanted it to be the Luc I remembered.

I sat, with burin in hand, my own eyes closed against the reality of the room, and tried to remember his. It wasn’t hard. They were the one thing I recognized when he came back to the studio. Brown like almonds, narrow, ringed with thick, dark lashes. Those eyes that startled wide that first morning when I ducked his tennis swing in the front hall, the eyes so intense and watchful as I tasted my first mouthful of ginger preserve, those eyes that shone in the dark the night that Grandfather took me away from Mille Mots. I knew them well.

It was short work to etch them in, but I wasn’t satisfied. Turn up a little more at the corner. No, too much. A few more flecks here, where, in my memory, it was darker brown. A gleam, a strength, a surety. I could do my best, but those last, I couldn’t etch in.

When Mrs. Ladd was ready to lock the studio, I still sat, curls of clay littering the table. She took the burin from my hand. “Miss Ross. Clare. He’s waited this long for a mask. Another day won’t matter much.”

But it wasn’t just “another day.” I spent three days alone working on the squeeze, until Pascalle was glaring and even Mrs. Ladd looked drawn. Then I cast again with plaster of Paris, one negative and one positive. On this last positive, I built Luc’s face.

I worked slowly, carefully, scraping away the plaster grain by grain. I had my sketch right beside me, the sketch that first revealed the battered soldier as my lost childhood love. I worried over every line in the sketch. I doubted my memory.

But I also doubted my doubt. Maybe there was something, some chink in his armor. An honest something to hope for. With each scrape of my knife, with each shower of plaster dust falling onto the table, maybe, maybe, said my heart.

At the end of each day, I caught up the dust into my palm. I went to the Square du Vert-Galant and stood with my feet on the point of land. It was the place Luc had mentioned in his letter, the place where he said he always felt the breath of Paris on his face. Now, it was my quiet spot in the city. I let the wind carry away the palmful of dust into the river and I hoped.

That first week, after Luc touched my wrist and asked me to stay, he didn’t come to the studio at all. Then one day he appeared in the doorway, shy, hat in hand like a suitor. I blushed to see it.

But he didn’t talk to me. He just nodded and went to sit with the other mutilés and their checkerboards. Another patient. I bent my head and tried to forget he was right there, watching.

I smoothed out his left cheek, his jaw, the corner of his eye. With my knife, I gave him that angled cheekbone I remembered. That straight jaw that always tightened when he was nervous. That left eye that crinkled at the corner in one of his unexpected laughs. Luc, always so serious. Even as a boy—studying, working, wishing he could do more for the château—he always looked like he carried the world on his shoulders.

That’s why his letters surprised me. They weren’t at all serious. Hiding behind pen and paper, Luc bantered, joked, teased, in a way that he didn’t often do in person. That was the Luc I thought I’d meet again someday. In all of those sunshine daydreams I had of coming back to Paris, of climbing the paths in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont and painting by the Seine, that lighthearted Luc was there by my side. None of the adolescent awkwardness we’d known before. Instead, the comfortableness, the humor, the friendship we’d built through our letters.

But here I was, in Paris at last, with Luc at last, and there were no smiles. His face was drawn and weary. He had no laughter left.

With my knife, I sculpted the Luc of my letters, the Luc of my daydreams. I curved the left side of his mouth upwards in a smile. I quirked an eyebrow in a moment of suppressed mirth. It didn’t matter. Mrs. Ladd would make me change it in the end.

To my surprise, she didn’t. She paused once at my table, nodded down at the plaster, and said, “That’s the face of a man healed.”

Each morning, he’d arrive at nine-thirty in his wrinkled gray suit and secondhand fedora to sit with the mutilés and a glass of wine that he’d nurse for hours. Though he always held a book in front of him, I pretended he was watching me over the top of the spine. And then hated myself for wishing. He was waiting for a mask, to allow him to move on, and here I was sighing like a schoolgirl and stretching out my work so he wouldn’t have to leave. He’d stay until three o’clock and then, with a quick glance my way, would slip out the door.

One day when he arrived, it was to a sketchbook and pencil waiting at his usual seat. He blinked, and I smiled to see him so startled. He looked up, questioningly. I nodded. That whole morning, as I pressed the sheet of copper against my plaster sculpture, as I traced each line and curve until it held the imprint of Luc’s face, he warily regarded the sketchbook. I trimmed away the extra copper and the right half of the face; he had no need to cover that. As I smoothed down the raw edges, Luc finally picked up the pencil. Arm held stiff, he began to draw.

After he left, when I was cleaning up, I opened the book. He’d roughed in a soldier, a poilu in a dented helmet and greatcoat. Though the soldier’s shape was blurred, his face was full of careful detail. Weary lines, a grim line of a mouth, yet eyes boyish wide. It wasn’t anyone I recognized, but it was someone Luc knew well.

The next day, when I put the copper into the electroplating bath, he wasn’t alone. A few other mutilés had pulled chairs nearby and were watching Luc work. He didn’t say a word, but they kept his wine refilled. He’d added two other soldiers to the sketch, both facing away. One leaned on a rifle, the other was praying. By midday there was a fourth soldier, sitting with his head hanging between his knees.

On the third day, Luc tore sheets from the back of his book. There was now a tableful of mutilés with paper and pencil, sketching away at trees and houses and airplanes. Every once in a while he’d look up from his own drawing to offer a quiet suggestion or two. Meanwhile he added a parapet and row of sandbags behind his penciled poilus.

The next morning, when I took the gleaming half mask from its bath, Luc finally approached. He didn’t even glance down at the drying mask, waiting to be painted. He only looked at me.

“Thank you,” was all he said. “You knew what I needed.”

When I looked at his sketch later, the young soldier in the middle held a sword, a great sword with a twisted pommel. In the midst of war, he looked invulnerable.

You knew what I needed.