At the Edge of Summer

That’s why his letters surprised me. They weren’t at all serious. Hiding behind pen and paper, Luc bantered, joked, teased, in a way that he didn’t often do in person. That was the Luc I thought I’d meet again someday. In all of those sunshine daydreams I had of coming back to Paris, of climbing the paths in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont and painting by the Seine, that lighthearted Luc was there by my side. None of the adolescent awkwardness we’d known before. Instead, the comfortableness, the humor, the friendship we’d built through our letters.

But here I was, in Paris at last, with Luc at last, and there were no smiles. His face was drawn and weary. He had no laughter left.

With my knife, I sculpted the Luc of my letters, the Luc of my daydreams. I curved the left side of his mouth upwards in a smile. I quirked an eyebrow in a moment of suppressed mirth. It didn’t matter. Mrs. Ladd would make me change it in the end.

To my surprise, she didn’t. She paused once at my table, nodded down at the plaster, and said, “That’s the face of a man healed.”

Each morning, he’d arrive at nine-thirty in his wrinkled gray suit and secondhand fedora to sit with the mutilés and a glass of wine that he’d nurse for hours. Though he always held a book in front of him, I pretended he was watching me over the top of the spine. And then hated myself for wishing. He was waiting for a mask, to allow him to move on, and here I was sighing like a schoolgirl and stretching out my work so he wouldn’t have to leave. He’d stay until three o’clock and then, with a quick glance my way, would slip out the door.

One day when he arrived, it was to a sketchbook and pencil waiting at his usual seat. He blinked, and I smiled to see him so startled. He looked up, questioningly. I nodded. That whole morning, as I pressed the sheet of copper against my plaster sculpture, as I traced each line and curve until it held the imprint of Luc’s face, he warily regarded the sketchbook. I trimmed away the extra copper and the right half of the face; he had no need to cover that. As I smoothed down the raw edges, Luc finally picked up the pencil. Arm held stiff, he began to draw.

After he left, when I was cleaning up, I opened the book. He’d roughed in a soldier, a poilu in a dented helmet and greatcoat. Though the soldier’s shape was blurred, his face was full of careful detail. Weary lines, a grim line of a mouth, yet eyes boyish wide. It wasn’t anyone I recognized, but it was someone Luc knew well.

The next day, when I put the copper into the electroplating bath, he wasn’t alone. A few other mutilés had pulled chairs nearby and were watching Luc work. He didn’t say a word, but they kept his wine refilled. He’d added two other soldiers to the sketch, both facing away. One leaned on a rifle, the other was praying. By midday there was a fourth soldier, sitting with his head hanging between his knees.

On the third day, Luc tore sheets from the back of his book. There was now a tableful of mutilés with paper and pencil, sketching away at trees and houses and airplanes. Every once in a while he’d look up from his own drawing to offer a quiet suggestion or two. Meanwhile he added a parapet and row of sandbags behind his penciled poilus.

The next morning, when I took the gleaming half mask from its bath, Luc finally approached. He didn’t even glance down at the drying mask, waiting to be painted. He only looked at me.

“Thank you,” was all he said. “You knew what I needed.”

When I looked at his sketch later, the young soldier in the middle held a sword, a great sword with a twisted pommel. In the midst of war, he looked invulnerable.

You knew what I needed.

The day the mask was ready, I was as nervous as Christmas morning.

I’d spent months hiding—behind my scarf, behind my guilt, behind my excuses. At Mabel’s insistence, I went reluctantly that first time to Mrs. Ladd’s studio. I knew I was going to another mask, albeit one more tangible than the regret I’d been wearing. I didn’t expect more than a more polite way to hide my memories. I didn’t expect to be fixed.

Then I met Clare. There’d never been façades between us, even when we had nothing but letters. She’d put on a falsely cheerful front for her grandfather, as I had with Maman, but we didn’t with each other. Our words, our pictures, our ink-smudged fingerprints in the margins, all were honest. With Clare in the studio, my defenses slowly began crumbling. They wouldn’t have mattered to her anyway.

I’d held her hand while she sponged plaster off my cheeks. I’d watched her across the room while she spent far too long making the mask. These past weeks, my heart made me more vulnerable than my ruined face ever had.

But here she was, as nervous as I was, fingers tapping the underside of the table, waiting to pull the cloth from yet another mask. She’d seen me bare, and yet was handing me something to cover all that again.

“I did the best I could,” she said right away. “Well, are you ready?”