At the Edge of Summer

The day the mask was ready, I was as nervous as Christmas morning.

I’d spent months hiding—behind my scarf, behind my guilt, behind my excuses. At Mabel’s insistence, I went reluctantly that first time to Mrs. Ladd’s studio. I knew I was going to another mask, albeit one more tangible than the regret I’d been wearing. I didn’t expect more than a more polite way to hide my memories. I didn’t expect to be fixed.

Then I met Clare. There’d never been façades between us, even when we had nothing but letters. She’d put on a falsely cheerful front for her grandfather, as I had with Maman, but we didn’t with each other. Our words, our pictures, our ink-smudged fingerprints in the margins, all were honest. With Clare in the studio, my defenses slowly began crumbling. They wouldn’t have mattered to her anyway.

I’d held her hand while she sponged plaster off my cheeks. I’d watched her across the room while she spent far too long making the mask. These past weeks, my heart made me more vulnerable than my ruined face ever had.

But here she was, as nervous as I was, fingers tapping the underside of the table, waiting to pull the cloth from yet another mask. She’d seen me bare, and yet was handing me something to cover all that again.

“I did the best I could,” she said right away. “Well, are you ready?”

I was freezing cold all of a sudden, and no, I wasn’t ready, but I swallowed and I nodded. She pulled up the cloth.

Despite her doubts, Clare had done it. That curve of my brow, the shape of my lips, the angle of my cheek. She’d taken half of a ruined face, a handful of memories, and she’d made me. No one else could have done it.

“Magnifique.” I reached for it, almost. “Of course it is.” What was I imagining? Something as stiff and distant as the plaster casts lining the walls? Something that wasn’t me? “Mademoiselle…Clare…can I have a moment, please?”

She opened her mouth as though to protest, she bit her lip, she nodded. After a moment of withheld breath and withheld words, she retreated to the other side of the room.

I was left alone with my own face.

As perfect as it was, it was unsettling. To see half of my own face, too shiny, a single gaping hole for my eye, staring up from the table. Half of a carefully stubbled cheek, a half a mouth caught up in an almost-smile, a look I hadn’t worn in far too long. Too perfect. It could have been a painting, a sculpture, something hanging from the wall of a gallery. It was vivid and lifelike, but it wasn’t real.

Was this my choice, then? To be a gargoyle or, instead, to be a work of art? I touched the metal with my index finger. Perhaps these days I was as cold to the touch.

“Luc.” Clare was suddenly at my elbow.

She stood by me, so shining and hopeful. I thought of all her patience and persistence, when I’d given her nothing but bitterness in return. She didn’t demand, just said, “Please.”

I picked up the mask. Clare was right. She did make a thing of beauty. I put it on.

For a moment everything went dim. She fussed and adjusted, her fingers light as pearls. I blinked and, through the narrow left eyehole, I saw her stop and press a hand to her mouth. So quickly, I wondered if I was wrong. I wondered what she saw.

It rubbed at the edges, the way a new pair of shoes did. The weight of the metal pushed against my scars and made me feel every ridge. It was cold and smooth as ice, but Clare had done well. The mask skimmed my face like a second skin.

She finished fiddling with it and asked, “Would you like to see the mirror?”

“Take me outside,” I said, drawing a deep breath. “That’s all the mirror I need.”

She waited a moment, but nodded. “Good,” she said. Again that quick hand to her mouth. “I can see how the colors hold in the sunlight.”

I let Clare lead me down the stairs and out into the light of Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.

Between the sun and the opening for my left eye, I couldn’t see much. It was like a single horse blinder. My cheek sweated beneath the metal, then itched. I reached up to scratch underneath, but she pulled my hand down. I stumbled on the cobbles.

“Stop worrying,” she whispered. “You’re counting your steps.”

“It’s like being in a cave. I can’t see the sky on that side.” My arm tensed beneath her fingers.

“Then tip your head up.”

And so I did. I stopped, and turned my face up to the sky. Cool air dipped beneath the mask. Above me, clear blue.

“Luc,” she said softly, “look.”

The narrow streets of the Left Bank were busy with people coming home from work or the day’s shopping. Smartly dressed shopgirls, women in long striped aprons and wooden sabots, students in faded black jackets, vendors in dark smocks. Women in flowered straw hats, some with books or music cases tucked under their arms, brushed past shabbily dressed men with ink on their fingertips. Everyone was so brisk and sure. But, most important, they didn’t give me a second glance.

What would they see if they did? Smooth metal and a false smile hiding a man with shaking knees, who clung desperately to the woman next to him. A perfect face on an imperfect man.

I scrabbled at the edges of the mask. The metal bit into the pads of my fingers.

“No, no, Luc!”

“I can’t see,” I said, though my mind was still filled with blue sky. “I can’t breathe anymore.”

“You can.” She took my hands, took my whole weight as I sagged. “Remember…remember when we’d pick grapes down near the pasture? We found a beehive and you were stung twice.” She was trying to do what she’d done that day in the studio, when she held my hands and brought me back to Mille Mots with her. When she tried to make me forget my fears. “And remember when you’d bring me bread and jam from the kitchen when Marthe wasn’t looking?” My breathing had slowed. It almost matched the rhythm in hers. “You’d spread your jacket out on the lawn and arrange the treats just so, like a little picnic only for me.”

It was only for her. Always.

“And remember when I followed you to the caves? We ate so many oranges the air smelled like happiness. I ducked into the cave and you waited right outside for me, worrying the whole time. You know, that day was the first time I wished you’d kiss me.”

I let go of her hands. “Stop trying to make me remember.” I stumbled backwards into the street. “Stop trying to make me hope.”

“Hope?” She straightened. “If nothing else, I wished to give you hope.”

I ran a finger beneath the edge of the mask to wipe away sweat. “I thought you wanted to give me a future.”

“Exactly,” she said, her eyes too bright. “With a mask, think of what you could do.” She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Remember the pamphlet I mentioned? The Institut National?”

“You think I can just pick a new future from a pamphlet?”

“See it as a new beginning.” Through the narrow eyehole, I could see her, standing straight and cold on the pavement. She’d forgotten her jacket. “Whatever skill you want, whatever job you’re hoping for, you can have it.”

“Men like me, we take what we’re offered. We can’t afford to expect anything more.” I touched my metal cheek. “A man like me can’t hope.”

Arms wrapped around myself, I left her standing on the pavement in her sweater.

—

When I got back to the apartment, I needed to wash away Clare.

Demetrius whistled “Mademoiselle from Armentières,” so I shushed him. Lysander, ever the fretter, took up my shushing. I poured out a pitcher of water and splashed a handful their way, until they bristled with outraged squawks. Lysander smoothed down his feathers; Demetrius swore in English.

I took off my new mask and scrubbed with icy water until my arms and face were red. I stripped off all my clothes—the outfit I’d picked out with such care that morning for the studio. The pressed suit, the shirt the color of cornflowers, all neat and all new, like I was setting off for a wedding. I changed into a soft pair of old pants. Dripping, shirtless, I stared down at the enameled face on the washstand. I wondered what Clare saw.

But when a knock sounded on the door, my heart gave a funny leap. I threw a towel over the parrots’ cage. I fastened my mask over my wet face and pulled a clean shirt from the hook.

It was her.

“What are you doing here?” I nudged open the door, enough to see the pale curve of Clare’s face beneath the brim of her red hat. “How did you find me?” Behind the door I buttoned my shirt one-handed.

“Mrs. Ladd gave me your address.” She hesitated. “Are you angry?”

I ran a hand through my damp hair. “No.” A cold drop slid down the back of my neck. “But I’ve been home for an hour at least.”

“And I’ve been standing across the street for an hour at least.”

I leaned against the door, waiting, ignoring those funny little leaps in my chest.

“I just…” She twisted the cuff of her jacket. “Luc, you said back there that a man like you can’t hope.” She barely breathed the next words. “But you can.”

I hadn’t heard her right. “Do you—”

“May I come in?”

I glanced back over my shoulder, at the stained and threadbare rug, the unmade bed, the foul-mouthed parrots, the cracked, dirt-streaked window I kept open because the latch was busted. “No,” I began, but she pushed through anyway. And stopped.

Though my single room was gray and narrow, pale frames hung from each wall, each containing a single pencil drawing. The reasons I lived in this dingy room, why I never had money for the streetcar, why I bought day-old bread. Clare stood in the middle of my room, her open hands straight down at her sides, and spun to see her own drawings.

“I saw them and—” I started, but she cut me off with a chop and a shake of her head.

She’d seen me lying back on that table in the studio, plaster in my eyebrows, my face under the light. Now I was seeing her just as naked.

All of those memories, jumbled up, came back, all of those rare instances of Clare’s face as open and unguarded as it was right now. How her eyes shone at the first sight of the Brindeau caves, how they laughed when she saw my childhood portraits, how they stared into mine that moment when she touched my face and I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to again right now.

“I never thought I’d see these again,” she breathed. She stepped to one framed drawing of a man, craggy-faced and harsh, yet holding to him a small boy with such tenderness that you almost didn’t notice his withered arm. “He was born the day the war began. The bluest eyes, like his father.”

I cleared my throat. “Your cross-hatching…I thought they were blue.”

“As cobalt.” She turned to a picture of a young soldier balancing a harmonica on two stubbed wrists. “He brightened the hospital with his music.” A woman, pale hair tied beneath a head scarf, sat with elbows on her knees, bared forearms puckered and scarred. Her chin rested on open palms with seven fingers between them. “She’s from Belgium, a nurse who I met at the Princess Louise Hospital. Lost everything but her grandmother’s knitting needles. She made me this scarf, you know.”

Eyes still on the framed pictures, she unwound the scarf from her neck and passed it to me. It was as soft as new grass.

“So you were the one who bought all of my drawings,” she finally said. “Monsieur Santi said I had a secret admirer.”

“Secret…” I handed back the scarf. “I didn’t think you’d want to know it was me.” I wrapped my arms around my chest, suddenly aware that I didn’t have a jacket on.

She stopped her perusal of the drawings. Those bright eyes were turned on me. “I don’t hear from you for years—not a word—and when I find you, it’s to see every drawing I ever sold hanging on your walls.” Her voice lowered, brittle at the edges. “You never even asked what I’ve been doing these past years.”

“I don’t have to. I can see.” I waved a hand around the room at the frames. “You were off capturing life. Like you told me all those years ago, telling a story through art.”

The last framed drawing was of a man seated shirtless on a bed, one trouser leg rolled up. A wooden leg rested lengthwise across his lap. He held it loosely, watchfully, reverently, but he looked out through a thick tangle of hair with eyes warm and appreciative.

“I don’t know your subjects, but I know how it feels to be on the other side of your sketch pad.” I dipped my head. “For a moment, you made them feel whole.”

She touched her cheek, as though holding in a blush. “Is that how you felt sitting across from me in the studio?”

That’s how I’d felt that very first time she sketched me, under the chestnut tree. I nodded.

“It’s my job,” she said, and twisted the scarf in her hands.

“These days, I frighten small children.” I tried for a smile. “It was nice to sit and not frighten anyone for an afternoon.”

She took a step forward. “Do you think your face bothers me?”

“It should.”

“It doesn’t.” She reached out, her hand smelling warm like clay, and unhooked my mask.

I tried to catch it, to put it back on, but it slid off. “Please, no,” I said, and closed my eyes. I heard a soft clink as she set it down.

And then I felt her lips on mine.

I allowed myself half a second. Half a second when the world was all right, and then I pulled back. “No. No, no, no.” I opened my eyes. She was right there, so close her exhales brushed across my neck. So close she couldn’t help but see the wreck of my face. “Please.”

She moved forward, half a step, and dropped an index finger on my lips. “You didn’t ask what I was doing all of these years.” Through her glove, her finger was warm. “So I’ll tell you.”

From outside the window, the bell at Bonne-Nouvelle rang out three, but I stayed still in the middle of the room.

“Once upon a time, there was a boy who taught me to see the world through the eyes of an artist.” She drew her finger straight down to my chin. “A face is circles and angles, shadows and light, bones and muscle, tension and desire.” She traced up the right side of my face. “The line of a jaw?” And down the left. “Beauty.”

“I don’t—”

She stopped my words again with that soft finger. “I’m not done telling you my story.” She gave a little smile and her hand trailed down to my shirt, damp from my bath. “Even after that boy left my life and, far away, grew into a soldier, I remembered what he taught me. I searched for beauty, through Morocco, through Algeria, through Mauritania, through Glasgow, through Paris. I haunted the halls of Fairbridge and the School of Art, I wandered the winding streets of the Latin Quarter, seeking those truths in lines and shapes that the artist-boy taught me to look for all those years before.”

As she talked, she slowly drew out the buttons of my shirt until it hung loose and open. I shrank back into my shirt, but she slipped her hand, so warm in that glove, onto my chest. I swallowed.

“I’ve thought about that boy. I’ve wondered what he looked like, grown up. I’ve tried to picture those brown eyes I remember watching me under the chestnut tree. The sound of his voice, the one time he accidently asked if I’d stay forever, that sound was just beyond my imagination. I knew, if I ever met him again, that he’d be taller. Stronger. More comfortable in his own skin.” With both hands under my shirt, she slid it from my shoulders. “I found that.”

I caught the shirt before it fell from my left shoulder. “But I’m not.” And suddenly felt barer for the admission.

“Luc, you are.” She eased my hand and the shirt away. “The first time you walked through that studio door, you met my eye. You dared me to think of you any less.”

I followed her gaze to my shoulder, that knotted, crooked mess that, thankfully, kept me from the army. The shoulder that still ached when it rained and when I tried to hold up a brush for more than a few minutes. The shoulder that Mabel had tried her best to massage into usability. Clare covered it with her palm.

I flinched, but she didn’t move her hand.

“How did it happen?” was all she asked.

I sucked in a breath. “Trying to prove something that doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Trying to win.” I closed my eyes. “Could you…could you take your glove off?”

She did. “Luc, what are you afraid of?”

“This.”

And she kissed me again. This time I didn’t stop her.

I forgot that my bed was unmade, that my carpet was threadbare, that my window was cracked and streaked with grime. I forgot Paris, Bauer, the letters unsent to Maman. I forgot Chaffre and every soldier I ever shot. I forgot that I was a man broken. In her kiss, I remembered. Every sweating dream of her, every restless sketch of her fifteen-year-old face, every crossed-fingered wish.

“You have to see.” She took my shirt the rest of the way off.

I let her. “See what?”

She put her lips to my shoulder, then my cheek, then my mouth. “How beautiful you are to me.”

She showed me. She pushed me back onto the unmade bed, dropped her own clothes on the threadbare carpet, and, with sunlight streaking through the cracked window, we made love. Later, as I fell asleep with her warm in my arms, she murmured, “I always did like summer.”