When she was ten or eleven, she’d been absentmindedly sketching at the dining room table one day, trying to put to paper two sea lions she had seen at the Central Park Zoo, whiskers waving, mouths open as they bobbed their heads at each other. It had seemed to Lucie that the two were talking to each other, and she’d been fascinated by the idea that animals could seem so human. She had just turned her pencil over to erase an eye she had drawn—it needed to be shaped more like a gumdrop than a teardrop, with brows that made the creature look earnest—when her mother had appeared at her shoulder, gasped, and snatched the paper away.
“What do you think you’re doing?” her mother had demanded, staring at the drawing in horror. Even then, Lucie had been aware that the rendering was good—better than the work of an average fifth-grader, anyhow. Shouldn’t her mother be proud? Instead, she was acting like she’d caught Lucie swigging from one of Arthur’s bottles of Calvert Reserve Whiskey.
“Drawing,” Lucie had responded, confused by her mother’s reaction. “Well, sketching, really. The big one looked like he was laughing, you see, and I was just trying to see if I could…” She trailed off when she saw her mother’s horrified expression.
“Laughing sea lions?” Under her breath, her mother added something that sounded like, “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
“Wh-what did I do wrong, Maman?”
Her mother leaned in, her nose so close that it touched Lucie’s as she said through gritted teeth, “Listen to me very carefully, Lucie. Foulons are not artists. Artists abandon their children.”
At that moment, Lucie understood her mother hated art because she hated the LeClairs. Lucie didn’t remember Mathilde well, though sometimes she could recall the feel of the other girl’s hand clasping her own, the sound of her laughter, the joy of coloring together with bright crayons on old scraps of paper. She knew enough, however, to know that Mathilde’s death had been as unavoidable as that of her brothers and her father. How could her mother still feel such anger toward an innocent little girl, or toward another mother who had lost a child just as tragically as she had?
Now, art was Lucie’s only rebellion, her form of denying her mother’s version of the past. Her mother had created a prison for her, with rules Lucie had long ago stopped trying to understand, but painting was its key. Art allowed her to fly away from this place, to soar over the ocean to France, to imagine a great, wide world out there that wasn’t filled with recrimination and anger over things Lucie couldn’t control. It was also the last connection she had to Mathilde; her memories of the months before the bomb were foggy, but she remembered drawing together almost every day.
It was Tommy who had talked her into signing up for an art class when he saw her absently sketching in a notebook while their history professor droned on one day. She had been drawing the world from the bottom up; she’d become fascinated with the act of lying on her back in parks and committing to memory the way the lampposts and trees around her seemed to strain and reach for the sky. “I’m signing up for a modern art course,” he had said without preamble, the very first time he’d spoken to her, though she had noticed him and his long, black eyelashes across the classroom. He had noticed her, too; she had felt it.
“That’s nice,” she had replied tentatively.
“I’m signing up because I heard it was a breeze. You should sign up, too, though,” he said. “Since you’re an artist.”
“But I’m not.”
“Sure you are,” he said with a grin, gesturing to her notebook, filled with sketches that had simply poured from her mind onto the page. “Obviously. So c’mon. Sign up with me, will ya?”
And so she had discovered a whole new world she hadn’t known existed, a world of people who saw life in shapes and colors and sought new and innovative ways to put the images in their heads on paper. Tommy brought her a blank sketch pad on the first day of the next semester, and when she opened the card that went with it, she found herself smiling. May I take you on a date? it inquired in polite chicken scratch, and when she’d looked up and said yes, he had grinned and pumped his fist in the air like his Yankees had just won the World Series.
That night, she had sketched the bookshop in France, the one she knew would always be different from the one her mother had painstakingly re-created here. Her mother was obsessive now about having every single thing exactly in its place—books all aligned at ninety-degree angles, the shelves situated just as they’d been in France. But the store that lived in Lucie’s memory was perfectly imperfect—dust here, an upside-down book there, a few errant spines leaning at the wrong angles—because Lucie’s mother and father had once been too busy living life to worry about perfection. That was the bookstore Lucie missed, the life Lucie missed. And with her pencil, she could bring it back.
For months now, she had been going each Sunday to Tommy’s apartment just south of Hester Street to paint and to have dinner with his family. She loved how they made her feel like she belonged, even though she wasn’t from Italy and often couldn’t follow their conversations. But they were loud and warm and made her feel included and wanted.
Most of all, though, she loved that becoming a part of Tommy’s life had given her a place to paint, at least on Sundays. Tommy’s interest in painting had petered out—he was easily distracted, and his latest hobby was repairing car engines with his cousin Domenico—but he gave her a few hours alone each week in the den to put the thoughts in her head on canvas. It was a cathartic release each week. “I don’t mind,” his mother had once explained. “If it makes Tommy happy, it makes me happy.” She had leaned forward then and kissed Lucie on the cheek, startling her. “And you, carissima, make my Tommy happy.”
But the third weekend in November, Tommy met her at the door when she arrived, her bag of paints and brushes slung over her shoulder, ready to tackle a piece she’d been thinking about all week. She wanted to paint Paris, like Olivier LeClair had done, but she wanted to do it her way, and she was itching to start.
“We can’t stick around here this weekend, doll. I tried to call you, but your stepfather said you’d already left.”
Lucie peered around him at his mother, who was puttering around the kitchen, pretending to ignore them while she muttered to herself.
“What happened?” she asked. “What’s wrong with your mother?”
“She’s sore because I’m ditching the rest of the semester to sell Christmas trees with Domenico.”
“What?” Lucie was certain she’d heard him wrong. “But your scholarship—”
He avoided her gaze. “Ah, Luce, school doesn’t come easy to me the way it does for you. I got a scholarship for being a poor immigrant kid, but the jig was almost up. C’mon, you didn’t know? I’m failing most of my classes. Might as well call it quits before they kick me out.”
“But—” She was at a loss. She wanted to tell him he was tossing away a wonderful opportunity, but that would make her sound like her mother, who had such a clear idea of how everyone’s life was supposed to turn out. Maybe Tommy wasn’t cut out for college. Maybe she wasn’t, either. She didn’t have the courage to stand up to her mother and tell her she wanted to pursue painting instead, but maybe it was good that Tommy was following his dreams. “Oh,” she said, unsure of whether to chide or congratulate him.
“Don’t be sore, Luce. Dom has a connection with a tree farm out in Jersey. They’re giving us the trees at rock bottom, and he’s got us an abandoned lot to set up on in Park Slope with John and Joseph. You remember them? We’ll sell a bunch of trees and make some real dough.”
Lucie glanced past him, through the doorway into the apartment he’d grown up in. She could smell his mother’s sauce simmering already. “And your mother…”
“Doesn’t exactly see it that way.” He frowned. “She says I’m throwing my life away just like Domenico is. But she never sees the big picture.”
His mother’s muttering got louder in the kitchen, and Lucie could hear her slamming pots around.
“I don’t think we’re invited to dinner today,” Tommy added unnecessarily.
Tears sprang to Lucie’s eyes, and embarrassed, she brushed them away while Tommy’s face fell.
“Aw, Luce, I thought you’d be happy for me.”
“Sure I am. It’s just—” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“Right. Painting.”
“Well… yes.” His apartment was the only place she could work freely, without worrying about Arthur or her mother catching her, and she hadn’t realized until that very moment just how much she needed it each week.
“Look, come see the lot where we’re gonna set up. I know you’ll see dollar signs, like I do.” He reached out his hand, and after a second’s hesitation, she took it. “We just gotta take the Brighton Line to Seventh Street station in Brooklyn. It couldn’t be easier…”
He continued babbling about subway directions as he led her away from his family’s apartment, down the stairs, oblivious to the fact that she was still fighting back tears. Where would she paint now?
* * *