I looked up at the girl on the canvas. “I said it’s nice but you have to know, Auguste Marchant never impressed me much. It was a sore spot between Roger and me.” I shrugged. As I turned to Luke, my boots made a little squealing noise on the marble floor. I had been pleased with my outfit earlier that night—a short black skirt and boots—but now something about it felt like a costume. I could almost feel the soft, worn fabric on the girl’s dress, and I wanted to wrap myself in it.
“Oh, that’s beautiful, poetic even. Marchant doesn’t impress you much. I’ve waited lifetimes to hear that… lifetimes.” He shook his head and raked his hands through his hair, looking like a frustrated teacher with a stupid student. “It’s you.” He pointed to the painting like I was daft. “Don’t you see that?”
I wish I’d said something incredibly profound to Luke Varner at that moment, but I didn’t. Instead I cocked my head, looked back at the painting, and said, “Huh?” I walked over to the plate with my hands on my hips and read “Girl on Step (Barefoot), 1896.” Then I bent down and did something odd—something I’d never done before—something I didn’t even know that I knew how to do. I looked at the brushstrokes. From my upward angle, I could see the thickness of the paint, the layering, the reduction, and I understood intimately how this painting had been created. As I stood up, I didn’t know what had compelled me to study a painting that way. I walked over and sat down next to him on the bench. I leaned over and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “It says it was painted in 1896.”
He stood up. Pacing in front of me, he put his finger up to indicate he’d thought of something. He walked over to me and leaned down, his eyes meeting mine. I could smell the wine on his breath, along with something like a vague cologne that pleasantly shocked me. “Actually, it was painted in 1895. The plate isn’t accurate. Use your imagination a little, would you? Come on. Look at it! Really look. Try to remember!”
I peered around him from the bench. The girl in the painting stared back at me. She wore her hair in a simple ponytail; wisps had come free and framed her face. She reminded me of myself when I was thirteen, before braces, surgery to fix my broken nose, and the vibrant copper hair color to replace my more natural auburn shade. The girl’s hair was magnificent and unruly. As I looked at her, it seemed like I had gone to a lot of trouble to not look like this girl. Her eyes were sad and mournful. “She looks very sad.”
“You were very sad.” Luke seemed resigned to the fact that I didn’t believe him.
I stood up and smoothed my skirt. I wanted something to do with my hands so I picked at some imaginary fuzz. “This has been a very interesting date, Mr. Varner. Really interesting.” I smiled at him and walked out of the room and then out of the Hanover, the click of my heels echoing down through the empty museum. Luke Varner didn’t follow me.
When I got back to my apartment, I realized that some of the things he had said to me had gotten under my skin. It wasn’t that I believed him; but I didn’t not believe him. The stuff he knew about Sara’s mother and Roger had been unsettling. I guess he could have found that out from Mickey, but I didn’t think so. This man seemed to know my thoughts intimately.
Sleep came easily that night. My limbs fell heavy and I dreamed of France: fields and countryside, sunflowers and stone homes, wells with buckets and cold limestone floors all in colors of yellow and green that I don’t think I have ever seen in my waking life. Deep jeweled greens from the forest, silver blue-greens from the shrubs, and intense Kelly greens from the soft summer grass.
The grass seemed so real, it felt like I could reach out and touch it.
4
Juliet LaCompte
Challans, France, 1895
The June morning felt surprisingly warm as Juliet set foot onto the stone porch, expecting it to be cool under her feet. Instead it was hot on her toes and she jumped back into the kitchen. Her mother looked up and frowned before returning to scrubbing the pot. “Hurry back. Don’t wander.”
Juliet stepped lightly onto the porch and found it not so shocking on the second attempt. She glanced at her mother and then ran full speed down off the slab steps and onto the warm wet grass. The rain from last night clung to the grass, and it squeaked under her feet as if she were scrubbing each blade with the shift of her weight. She held her bucket out as she ran, cautious not to drop it. Her path to the well took her past Monsieur Marchant’s house. She stopped before the high stone wall and stretched up on her toes. Although she was taller this year, she still couldn’t see over the fence. Juliet contemplated the bucket for a moment and then turned it over and stepped on it for a better peek at the property. The door was open and a white curtain blew out onto the small garden. So the rumors were true. Marchant was back.
“Goodness, girl, you’ll fall and kill yourself. If you want to come in, simply walk through the gate.”
Startled, Juliet lost her balance and stumbled off the pewter bucket.
“I’m sorry, sir.” She looked down at her feet. He had drawn them so well last year. She peered up to find him staring at her.
“My… you have grown since last summer.”
She bent over quickly, gathering her bucket to run. She didn’t understand why she felt like such a stranger to the man who’d been so familiar with her last year, having painted her dozens of times. He was dressed in a crisp white shirt and simple brown pants. These were his country clothes, Juliet thought, not the things he wore in the salons of Paris. She could see him considering her for a moment more. “I just wondered, sir…” She looked up. He’d grown a beard over the winter that was almost entirely gray. The hair on his head, the color of the fallow field beyond the stone wall, had also begun to gray at the temples and fell loose around his face like he had forgotten to cut or comb it. “I just wanted to welcome you back this summer.”
“I think you might want to come by tomorrow morning, young Juliet. Tell your mother I will pay her again for your services.” He turned and walked toward the gate, and Juliet could see that he was pulling a pipe out of his pant pocket and filling it with tobacco. She looked down at her own cotton dress and considered how dirty it was and how she must look to him. Her hem was caked with mud from chasing the chickens and her budding breasts were popping through the thin cotton with the shamelessness of a child. Juliet folded her arms in front of her. She was about to turn sixteen and was not a child anymore.
Juliet watched him turn the corner and unfasten the gate, puffing on his pipe, never giving her a second glance.
She took the bucket and ran down the soft green hill toward the well. Juliet primed the pump with quick movements. It had taken her years to be able to work the pump without putting the weight of her whole body into it. The water was clear, so Juliet figured one of the Bussons’ servants must have been there earlier and cleared the stale water away. She washed out the bucket and then, after examining it to make sure there was no dirt in it, she filled it to the top. Getting the water was a job that fell to Juliet each morning. At nine, her younger sister Delphine was not yet able to carry the weight of the bucket all the way to the house. The metal of the handle cut into Juliet’s hands, so she trotted quickly up the hill switching from the left to the right. She could manage 102 steps before she had to stop and switch hands—this was up from the 54 steps when she’d started counting. Stopping in front of the Marchants’ gate, she adjusted her bucket and peered in at the house. She did not see him, but she spied Madame Marchant in a blue cotton dress coming out onto the porch, her belly swollen with pregnancy. Juliet grabbed the handle and trotted off the path toward home.