At the Edge of Summer

I was far enough from Mille Mots that Papa couldn’t hear my calls, though I shouted myself hoarse. The stones crumbled back down on top of me when I tried to climb up. The skies darkened and I swore I heard wolves howling. I stayed awake all night, hands crossed over my head, until Alain, checking his snares early in the morning, found me, crying, shivering, and bruised up and down. He brought Papa, who took off his jacket and hauled me up with a rope. I had nothing worse than a broken ankle, but Maman was on the next boat. Papa spent two days filling in that well himself and was once more her cher Claude. I never did set off on a quest again.

I didn’t tell Clare all of this, as we stood in the hallway in front of Papa’s portraits. She’d noticed the faded ribbon around my wrist in the painting and that made me feel vulnerable enough.

I think she knew that. She didn’t say anything, didn’t touch the painting again, but she moved very close, so close I could hear her breathing.

“Maman came back, though,” I said without thinking, then felt awful for saying so. Because for Clare, her mother hadn’t.

Her face was closed. “You must have needed her so much, she felt it across the miles.” She tipped her chin up at the portrait. “The way you kept that ribbon close, so close that you forgot all about it while you posed.”

“I didn’t know Papa saw all of that.” The ribbon, the marbles, the boy frustrated that his maman had disappeared.

“I told you that art is more than circles and lines. More than branches and fruit and piles of stone. It can tell a story.”

“Then what is your story?” I asked.

“Maybe not so different than the one your father captured here. Though instead of a ribbon, I have a green dress.”

The one she was wearing now, far too elegant for a fifteen-year-old girl. It had been her mother’s, I knew now.

She turned serious eyes to me. “Luc,” she said, and I realized it was the first time she’d called me by my first name. “Do you think she’ll return?”

“What?”

“You wished as hard as you could, and your mother returned for you.” Her eyes glistened, but I knew she wouldn’t cry. “Do you think mine will? Will she come for me here?”

I knew Maman had been writing to friends, to colleagues, to old classmates from the School of Art, seeing if anyone had an address for Maud Ross. “Not a word from her,” I overheard Maman say to Papa. “What are we to think?”

I wished I could tell Clare that everything would be fine, that her mother was safe and near and missing her madly. “Mademoiselle,” I said. “Clare.” Her eyes flickered, and I knew it was the first time I’d used her name, too. “She left home to draw her story. All you can do is draw your own and hope that she sees it one day.”

She swallowed a sigh, but she nodded.

“But don’t wait for that. Don’t wait for her or for anyone to see what you’ve created.” Papa had always been too expectant of critics, and Maman too shattered by indifference. “Draw it for you. Draw it because it’s your Something Important.”

“Something Important? I’m not sure I’ll ever find that.” She rubbed at a smudge of pencil on the side of her hand. “Why do we choose to draw what we draw?” she asked. I wasn’t sure she wanted an answer. “Aren’t they the things that speak to our heart?”

Once I thought it was nothing but tennis that spoke to my heart. But standing in the east hallway, with Clare standing in front of me, waiting, I wasn’t so sure. I pressed my pocket, where I had the Conté crayons wrapped in the handkerchief. My fingers itched to trace her face. “I think they must be.”

The next weekend it rained without cease and I didn’t come out to Mille Mots at all.

I had a theme to write on Alexander the Great and not nearly enough time to get it done. Macedonia, Egypt, Persia, Babylon—did he have to conquer so many places? I sent a telegram to Maman and then shut myself in my turne with far too many books and maps. When I emerged from the library, blinking, there was an envelope waiting at Uncle Théophile’s apartment, addressed in a round girlish slant. Monsieur Crépet, she wrote, that one spontaneous “Luc” put aside for the formality of a letter.

I’m sorry that you could not come to Mille Mots this weekend. Your maman said that you had much studying to do. Is it more philosophy? Anyway, it’s raining here. You aren’t missing much of anything. I’ve been trapped inside the château so that I’m not swept away into the Aisne (your maman swears it could happen).