“No, because of what my parents found out about you.”
I’d expected this to happen. Was prepared for it. My mother had discussed it with my sisters and me since we were little. How to defend ourselves and explain our gifts. How to diffuse the misconceptions. I’d even collected a list of luminaries, from Arthur Conan Doyle to Thomas Alva Edison, who visited psychics.
“My mother and father are quite horrified,” Tommy said.
“Of course they are. Monty died a horrible death. And the way the news stories described it all . . . my blindfold and the lewd drawings. Of course they are, but—”
“Not about that, darling,” Tommy said, with a hitch in his voice that confused me.
For the last two years, we’d been an item that had raised quite a few eyebrows in the Prouts’ world. Their son was a golden child, who’d excelled at tennis and mathematics, who’d left Harvard in his junior year to enlist, who’d come home a war hero and immediately joined his father at the family bank. As far from an artistic soul as anyone could be, Tommy was a swimming pool. I could see all the way to the bottom without spying any surprises, unlike in the sea’s depths, where all was hidden even in the brightest sunshine.
The relationship had been exactly the kind I’d craved after my mysterious and painful foray into passion with Mathieu.
My mother told me that the moment she met my father, she knew she would love him forever. That didn’t happen to me. But the first time I saw Mathieu, I did think I already knew him. I recognized his face from dreams that I’d put down in my journal. In some of those early surrealistic exercises, he was a lion. Golden and strong. Powerful and sleek.
For weeks, I had tried to convince myself it was a coincidence—that I must have seen him on the street before visiting the bookshop where I actually saw him in the flesh for the first time. But as hard as I tried to convince myself, I knew I didn’t believe it. How, then, was it possible that I’d drawn him before ever seeing him? What did it mean? Those questions were the leitmotif of my life. How was any of what I did possible? What did any of it mean? And what was the purpose?
By the time I was five years old, I had been drawing with a talent that my mother told me she hadn’t developed until she was in her twenties. When I was eight, I was blinded when a child threw lye at me and destroyed the soft tissue of my eyes. For fourteen months, my life was in shadows, without light or color or shape or form. Then my mother’s magick restored my sight. But with it, I had second sight. How? Why did my mother have an ability that others in our lineage didn’t? And why were only the women in our family affected? All my sisters had gifts but not my twin, Sebastian. And why did I have to paint Mathieu’s portrait and see that nightmare in the shadows? I’d run away from him, from Paris, and saved his life, but I couldn’t save our life together. I had fled to New York, only to wind up in the midst of this scandal.
“Delphine, we have to call this off for a while,” Tommy said now.
“But you said it yourself. I just drew the picture. I’m simply a line in today’s tabloid story. Forgotten as soon as another scandal breaks. You said it yourself. I wasn’t the one caught in my brother-in-law’s bed. I didn’t hold the gun on Monty. I know your family has a certain standing. Haven’t you explained to them that it’s not sorcery that helps me draw, just simple thought reading?”
He took my hand. “They didn’t take any of that seriously. What they found out today is worse.”
“What did they find out today?”
“It makes us . . . it makes it all impossible.”
“What does? What are you talking about, Tommy?”
“Delphine, why didn’t you ever tell me you were Jewish?”
Chapter 5
My studio on Tenth Street was haunted. Not by ghosts. That was my older sister Opaline’s special gift, communicating with those who have passed over. No, my studio was haunted by the frustrations of all the artists who had come to New York to try to make their mark. Who worked tirelessly at the ethereal task of taking brush in hand to create a statement worthy of attracting a gallery owner’s attention. Of tempting a stranger to part with his lucre in exchange for a piece of the artist’s soul on his wall. Of capturing the interest of a critic to write favorably of just one painting. Of getting noticed by a museum director who could move him or her out of the masses of artists in the shadows and into the spotlight’s glow.
The artist who had inhabited my studio before me had failed at all those efforts and hanged himself. Which was the reason my rent was so much lower than that of others in the building. Robert Stanislaw’s sad end didn’t discourage or frighten me, as it had several other prospective tenants, but it did bother me enough to write my mother and ask her what I could do to cleanse any lasting negative influences he’d left behind.
Dear Delphine,
Gather one pure beeswax candle for each area of the studio. A crystal goblet—use something lovely. A small dish of sea salt. A vial of sandalwood oil. And five branches of dried sage.
First, open all the windows. Then dissolve the sea salt in hot water and put it in the glass. Sprinkle the floor with the water. Next, anoint each candle with sandalwood oil and light them. While they are burning, put the sage in the sink and set it on fire. Once it’s burned down but still smoking, walk through the studio with it, making sure you smoke out any place where shadows can gather. All the while, whisper an invitation to the energy, telling it that it’s free to go, that you are releasing it.
Finally, spray some of your lovely House of L’Etoile perfume to help put your energy into the air and because you might not like the scent of all that sage.
All my love,
Your Maman
There wasn’t much Stanislaw had left behind that I’d kept. The High Victorian wallpaper and furniture in the studio had been depressing to live with. Brown not being one of my colors, I’d had the place painted a soft, light peach color to go with the hardwood floors I had discovered under the carpets. I decorated in autumnal colors. Rugs and fabrics in rusts, ambers, topazes, and forest greens.
Once I’d lit the candles and filled the room with the scents of sandalwood and sage and then my own fragrance, the energy did feel clean and positive, and it remained so for years. But all that changed after Monty’s funeral. Even the winter sun coming in from the skylight felt too bright for my eyes. Any hint of hope or joy seemed blasphemous.