“Yes, I’ll come in. I’m certain she’s coming back to meet me here.”
As I stepped over the threshold, I wondered who he was to her. A lover here for an assignation? No, he was too young. My grandmother was still an attractive woman, but too seasoned for a young man. He had something of the poet in his eyes and sensitive lips. Had he taken her for his muse? Several famous courtesans had written books about their lives. I’d read one: Mémoires de Cora Pearl. Had my grandmother decided to tell her story? Was this man her biographer? Or maybe he was a painter. I remembered there were portraits of women in our family hanging on the wall going up the staircase. I used to love looking at those strange paintings, all done, it appeared, by the same artist. Except that would have been impossible. They covered centuries, from the first painting of La Lune herself, from 1609, to Grand-mère’s aunt painted in 1832.
What if she’d sold the house to this man? Maybe that’s why he was hesitant about letting me in. I wasn’t sure about my grandmother’s finances. Perhaps she was no longer the mistress of the count who filled her coffers and gave her enough jewels to open a shop. Every time she’d visited us in New York, she had more treasures to show us. Maybe she had decided to sell the mansion and lead a simpler lifestyle and had not yet wanted to tell me.
I walked up the steps as if it was totally natural for me to act the mistress of the manse. And without my grandmother in residence, I might as well be.
As I stepped into the foyer, I felt an overwhelming sense of finally being where I belonged. I hadn’t been inside since I was fifteen, but this house had been alive in my memory all this time. I felt as if the marble floor itself was elated to feel my weight. As if the antique mirrors on the walls were delighted to be filled with my image.
Was it my imagination, or did the Limoges china vases’ shine intensify, did the silver flower bowls gleam brighter, did the crystals in the chandelier twinkle more? It seemed as if all the inanimate objects recognized me and glowed in welcome, pleased that someone who loved them had returned to notice them and pay them homage again.
“Am I keeping you?” I asked, thinking that this way I might discover what he was doing here.
Another smile, slightly secretive, as if he knew something but was waiting until I figured it out. “It’s quite all right.”
Could he be taking lessons in lovemaking? I hadn’t thought of that before, but my grandmother had told me of similar arrangements. Sometimes shy young men employed women like my grandmother to teach them to be bolder or educate them in the subtleties of seduction so they might be better able to please themselves and their lovers. Sometimes fathers made the arrangements, other times older brothers.
I didn’t want this to be the case with him, but my mind was wild with the possibility of it. I could not stop myself from imagining my grandmother sitting beside him on the settee, stroking his face, brushing the dark waves of hair off his forehead, and whispering instructions to him.
He was speaking, and I had missed the first few words.
“I’m sorry?”
“I do have a certain amount of work to get done, but I was going to make myself coffee before I began. Would you care for some?”
“The kitchen is in working order?”
“Yes, why wouldn’t it be?” he asked.
I shook my head. Of course my grandmother knew how to lie. “I must have misunderstood,” I told him. “I thought my grandmother had said that there were certain repairs the house needed.”
I followed him into the kitchen. Nothing here looked broken, outdated, or amiss.
There was a pot of water boiling on the stove and an apparatus beside it that I had never seen. Nothing like the percolator we had at home, this was a tall glass cylinder. The man put ground coffee in the bottom, then poured the water on top of it and placed a silver disc attached to a plunger on top of the water.
“Now we wait,” he said. “Have a seat. Or should you be inviting me to have a seat?”
I sat at the marble-topped table where I had sat so many mornings, a young girl drinking milk and eating pain au chocolat that my grandmother’s cook had just taken out of the oven.
He sat down and looked at me. It was, I’m sure, meant to be an uncomplicated glance, but his eyes—dark forest-green eyes—-lingered too long on my lips. His fingers moved to his watch fob, and I saw him finger a heavy gold ring. “Forgive me,” he said suddenly. “My name is Julien. Julien Duplessi.”
“Mine is Sandrine Verlaine.”
“Mademoiselle Verlaine,” he said, and bowed his head slightly, dark waves of hair falling forward.
I liked how that sounded in French. Mademoiselle Verlaine . . . not Madame Asch. My new name without Benjamin’s surname -attached . . . I knew women who had divorced, but none had returned to her maiden name. Was there a court procedure for such a thing?
The smell of the coffee permeated the kitchen. Monsieur Duplessi got up and attended to the process. He pressed the plunger down and then poured the steaming beverage into two of my grandmother’s china cups. I’d never seen their pattern outside of this house: a white background with a dark midnight-blue band encircling the rim, inside of which a galaxy of silver stars and moons danced. Created by Limoges for the Maison de la Lune.
Opening a paper bag, Julien removed three buttery croissants and placed them on a plate. The mixed scents of the coffee and the baked goods made my mouth water. Had my grandmother brought these for him? No, she’d left our apartment and come straight here. Had Monsieur Duplessi stopped for them? What kind of guest was he that he felt so at home here, he brought food with him?
Noticing me eyeing the croissants, he pushed the plate toward me. “Please, help yourself. I can always go and get more if I get hungry. There is an excellent bakery just a few doors down.” He paused and then added, “But of course you know that.”
“So you plan to stay the day?” I asked.
“Yes, of course. Every day for several weeks. It’s going to take quite a while.” He looked pleased at the thought.
“I imagine it will,” I said even though I had no idea what he was talking about and less of an idea how to ask.
But for the moment it didn’t matter. Nothing did. Not that I was alone here with a stranger, in the kitchen of all places. Or that we were so informally sitting across from each other. Not that my grandmother might in fact return—though I doubted it. None of that mattered because for the first time in two weeks the ache of my recent loss receded. I felt as if I was where I wanted to be. In this house, be it in the kitchen or the parlor. Just here in this house in Paris.
And even odder, I wanted to be here with this stranger. Breathing in the same air. Observing him. Listening to his low, sultry voice, which warmed me through. I watched him put his lips on the rim of the cup and then, as he was taking a sip, look up and find my eyes on him. He didn’t smile. Didn’t respond. And he didn’t look away. Oh yes, I wanted to be here feeling the sweet and sharp sting of— What was it that I was feeling?
I vaguely remembered it from that long-ago spring I’d spent in Paris when I was fifteen. Leon Ferre had stirred me like this. It had been as much about the clandestine aspects of being with a boy for the first time, hiding from my grandmother and doing what was forbidden, as it had been about him, but it was real. I used to ache to touch him and have him touch me. For that brief time, ten years ago, I had been fully awake, and then, after the tragedy of him dying, I had gone back to sleep.
Now, many dreams and terrible nightmares later, my mind was tricking me. Teasing me into thinking I might be able to feel. But I couldn’t. My body would never respond.