“What is it?”
She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have brought this up on your first morning home. But Sebastian was so clearly back to himself last night with you in his orbit. It was difficult to miss. I can see his aura dim when he’s been away from you for too long. You fuel him, ma belle. I’ve always known that his talent feeds off yours. And some of that is all right. He’s a showman, a salesman, a dealer. He needs to have artists to present and promote. But he’s too dependent on you. And it worries me.”
My mother had never been so forthright with me about my twin. I had always thought of myself as the weaker one. I had never considered that he might be dependent on me.
“There’s no harm to it, though, is there?” I asked.
She drank some coffee before continuing. “I’m not so sure. I don’t often get uneasy, and when I do . . .” She stopped talking. Took another sip. “Sebastian is just too reliant on you. Be aware of it, Delphine. All right? I don’t want him to drain your spirit.”
“Of course.”
“Now, let’s unpack your paintings,” she said, standing, seeming relieved. “I want to see the work you were doing.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for a critique,” I said.
“I’ll go easy on you.”
“You never have before.”
“You never needed me to before.” She smiled down at me and smoothed down my unruly curls again, the way she’d been doing since I was a child. She was my beautiful mother, La Belle Lune, the extraordinary artist who had restored my sight, had given me my talent, and yet could be as critical of my work as a stranger.
The crates weren’t in the house but just down the path, in my mother’s studio. With our arms linked, we walked there together.
Inside, we pried open the wooden containers and pulled out my Petal Mystique series of canvases. My mother didn’t examine them until we’d removed them all and leaned them against the walls.
I’d never seen them all in one grouping that way, and I, too, studied them closely. She nodded as she stood before one and then another.
“These are good. Almost groundbreaking. Surrealistic, with a decided féministe bent. The boys will be angry when they see them. They haven’t accepted a mere female into their midst except as a model.”
Then she unrolled the drawings and canvases I’d done since the accident.
The jungle settings and hyperrealistic beastly men and women in various states of passionate embraces were hard for me to look at for long. I hated recalling my state of mind when I’d created them. Despite what they were missing—technical polish and more resolution—I couldn’t deny that a part of my soul, dark, angry, and wasted, was exposed in these charcoal strokes. They were nothing like anything else I had ever produced. I couldn’t predict if my mother was going to like the work or what it told her about me.
As she looked at them, I didn’t see my mother but the artist, Sandrine Duplessi, in her studio, seriously contemplating a young painter’s frenzied work of two months.
Finally, she turned to me, her benign expression unreadable. “I’m sorry, ma petite belle.”
She turned away from my work and walked to the center of the room, where I’d been standing, and joined me. It wasn’t until she got closer that I realized she had tears streaming down her face.
“What a terrible time you’ve had. I knew it was bad. I felt it when I shut my eyes and focused on you, but I didn’t have any idea. How lost you have been. Yes? And still not found.”
And then she took me in her arms, and I let my own tears flow freely.
Chapter 14
Book of Hours
June 9, 1920
My secret outings with Mathieu have affected all areas of my life. When I am not with him, everyday activities such as studying, painting portraits, and dining with Grand-mère seem hazy and unfocused. As if I am in limbo, waiting for when we will be together. Everything only comes into focus, all of my senses only come alive, when I see Mathieu.
“Here is a place lovers come to hide,” Mathieu told me, as we walked through the Jardin des Plantes. He pointed out a Lebanese cedar planted in 1734 and led me up a stone walkway to a shining pergola made of iron, copper, bronze, and lead. Beneath that, we walked through a tunnel into a deep green valley with a stream running through it and masses of delicate flowers.
We sat among them and kissed.
“Victor Hugo once said that life is the flower for which love is the honey,” Mathieu said, when we broke apart, breathless, both of us wanting more.
I buried my face in his neck and inhaled his scent. “Honey! There’s honey in the fragrance you wear. What is it called?” I asked him.
“A perfumer makes it for me, quite near your great-grandmother’s house. Let me take you there. I want to buy you a perfume. And then put it on you here . . .” He touched behind my ear. “And here . . .” He ran his finger down my neck. I arched to expose more skin to him. “And here, too . . .” He touched my collarbone. “And then here . . .” His fingers slipped down my chemise to my décolletage. “Will you allow me?”
I was about to say of course, when he kissed me again, and all words were lost.
The shop was, in fact, on the same street as Grand-mère’s house. I knew it well. My great-grandmother bought her perfume there. But I’d never stepped inside until Mathieu took me there this afternoon.
All the walls were paneled in mottled antique mirror. The ceiling, too, was mirrored. The corners were decorated with pink-tinged fat angels and flowers in a mélange of pastels, painted in the style of Fragonard. The four small Louis XIV desks scattered around the room looked like originals, as did the smattering of chairs with avocado-green velvet seats and the glass and rosewood cabinets filled with antique perfume paraphernalia. Oversized bottles of the house’s fragrances lined mirrored shelves, with the signature fragrances front and center: Blanc, Verte, Rouge, and Noir.
Mathieu introduced me to an older man whose son he’d served with in the war. Charles L’Etoile invited us to sit down.
“Now, tell me about yourself,” Monsieur L’Etoile asked. “What colors do you favor?”
“Very deep burgundy, silver lavender—”
“Turquoise,” Mathieu added.
I smiled at him.
Monsieur L’Etoile dipped his pen in a crystal inkwell and wrote down my answers.
“Do you prefer the forest or the beach or the garden?”
“The garden and the beach. We had both growing up.”
“Where was that?” he asked.
“Cannes.”
“I know the area well.” Monsieur made more notes. “We grow our own roses not far from there, in Grasse. Just a few more questions. What is your favorite fabric?”
“Cashmere.”
“And do you prefer the sunlight or a night sky of stars?”
“A moonlit sky.”