Paris Red: A Novel (23 page)

T
he next day, after I
am done posing, I watch as he walks back to one of the red chalk drawings. He looks at it for a long moment, and then I see his arm begin to move.

He goes on working when I come to stand behind him, and it takes me just a second to see he is making the shadows of the drawing darker, a deeper red. There is a shadow behind my ankle, one beneath my knee, one behind my shoulder, and one along my wrist. The shadow at my wrist is different from all the others because it is on me, not on the cushions of the divan. So he puts the red chalk along my wrist. On my skin.

I do not know if he notices or not, but as he lays in the deeper color, both of his hands move, even the left hand that is not holding any chalk. The left hand seems to want to help with the drawing, so it moves a little, too.

I
wear a new dress on
Sunday when I go to see my mother. The talk about sewing and women’s breasts made me miss something about her, which surprises me. Or maybe I just do not want to spend the afternoon alone.

That I miss my father goes without saying.

When I walk in the door, my father hugs me and touches my hair, the way he always does.

My mother takes me in with her eyes.

She notices the dress—of course she notices the dress. That it is blue instead of gray, that it is made of something other than the cheapest fabric, that there is a bit of lace at the collar. That it is not a dress a brunisseuse could buy.

All of that works itself out in her face in the seconds before she embraces me. But she does not say a word of it. All she says is, “Go ahead and sit down. You’re father’s hungry so we have to eat. You know how he is.”

So I sit and the three of us eat. My mother and father and me.

After lunch my
father sits in the one comfortable chair there is.

“I have to rest my belly,” he says.

I help my mother clear dishes and wash up, and when we are nearly done, she says, “If you have time, I wouldn’t mind some help with two dresses. I promised one for tomorrow, and I still have most of the finishing to do. And I have another to get ready to fit.”

I look at her for a moment, and she must feel me doing it, because without even looking over at me, she says, “Of course only if you have time.”

“I have time,” I say.

And in that way we fall into our old Sunday habit of her working as my father sleeps and snores, and me helping with small tasks.

“Would you mind doing the hem on this one?” my mother says, handing me a pale green dress. “It’s pinned.”

And I know without even asking what she wants: a tiny, anchored blind stitch, which, if you do it right, disappears under the lip of the folded cloth, almost invisible on either side of the fabric. I knot the thread and begin, sewing as quickly as I can, but carefully.

For the first few inches of hem, I do the thing I always have done: I push all thoughts from my mind and just focus on the stitches until my fingers find the rhythm and the spacing. In a little while I can think again, but not for those first minutes. For the first minutes I cannot do anything except sew.

“You never lose the knack, do you,” my mother says when she looks over at me from her chair.

“I suppose not.”

We do not look at each other as we work, but every few minutes she will say something about someone she is sewing for, or tell me something about my father. And it occurs to me that it is peaceful in a way to be sitting there, but that it is also my mother’s way: she does not know what to do if she is not working. She would never be able to sit still in a chair until she fell asleep on a Sunday afternoon.

When I am almost finished with the entire hem, she comes over to the table where I am sitting and looks at the work. She shakes her head at me and before she walks back to her chair, she says, “I believe you do a finer stitch than I do.”

“I don’t think so,” I say. But it is still high praise, coming from her. If you work hard and do good work, you can have my mother’s respect.

“I see you have a new dress,” she says. “The color suits you.”

I look over at her, but she already has her head bent, is already back at her own work. I do not know what to say—I do not know what she wants to hear.

“I’m not at Baudon anymore,” I say.

We both go on stitching, not looking at each other, and in a moment my mother says, “No, I guessed as much.”

“I’m an assistant now,” I say. I know it is a vague thing to say, but it is true: he sends me out on his errands for paints and pastels, and sometimes just for lunch. And I am not about to say the words
modèle de profession
to my mother.

Besides, there are plenty of things about me my mother does not know about me. I never told my mother about going to Moulin’s with Nise, I never told her about the day that blood ran down my legs and dripped into my boots.

But if she has a reaction, she keeps it to herself. Instead of asking a question or saying something disapproving, my mother does not say anything. She just goes on sewing. And in a moment it comes to me.

If I showed up at the door looking poorly, she would have plenty to say. But I am wearing a good dress, and I look well. There is nothing she can say. And I knew that. I knew that when I got dressed this morning to come here.

So when I stand up with the finished hem, when I say, “Well, that’s a job well done,” I am surprised by what she does choose to say.

“It’s pleasant to work with someone here,” she tells me.

And in another moment she is taking the pale green dress from me, the hem completed, and handing me the bodice of the dress she has been sewing.

“If you would do one last thing and press these seams open, I’d be grateful,” she says.

So I go to the pressing board and move the tip of the iron up and down the tight rows of hand-stitching.

“I don’t know what we’re going to have for dinner tonight,” she tells me then, and her voice sounds fretful. “I don’t have time to cook and finish this.”

I think about telling her I could stay longer, but I do not. I just nod and go on moving the hot iron, keeping close to the seams.

W
hen he asks me if
I will go to Moulin’s for photos, I do not say anything at first. Then I say, “Why do you need his prints? I can come here every day. On Sundays, too, if you want.”

“It isn’t what you think. I need you to model, too,” he says. “But the camera bleeds away middle tones. I want to see that effect.”

I look away from him and then walk away from the table where we have been standing.

“Is that what you want to do?” I say. “Paint from a photograph?”

“Sometimes it helps,” he says. “But if you don’t want to go, I understand.”

Yet when he says that, I know I will have to go. It is not just that I want to please him, either. If I admit that any of it bothers me, it will be bigger than I am. Or maybe I just want to do whatever I can to make sure I am not the one who is erased.

I know it does not matter why I say what I say, only that I say it. So I tell him, “I’ll go if you come with me. To Moulin’s.”

He nods, and as soon as I see that, I wonder why I hesitated. Something in me feels powerful for having said yes. Because if I can give him the thing he wants, I will be the one who gains.

Because I have something he needs.

When we get
to Moulin’s studio, of course I see the same tatty lace spread on the divan. I wonder how many girls with dirty feet have lain down on it since Nise and I were here.

He greets Moulin and they spend a little time talking in their hearty way about this acquaintance and that, but I cannot bring myself to listen. When I step out from behind Moulin’s screen in one of the robes he keeps there, Moulin is the one to say, “All right then.”

And we start. It feels so awkward to be in front of Moulin with him there that I wonder why I wanted him to come at all. When I drop the robe on a chair and go to lie on the divan, my whole body heats up, and I can feel a little bit of moisture starting right there at my hairline.

“How is your friend?” Moulin asks as he fiddles with the camera. “Wasn’t it you who came here with a friend? Pâquerette?”

“She’s fine,” I say.

And because he can tell I feel uncomfortable around Moulin, he takes over the conversation.

“What are you drawing in your sketchbook these days?” he asks.

“Flowers. My room,” I say. “The window in my room.”

But my voice sounds strained, and I feel the strain in my throat and it hurts to talk.

“What else?”

But I don’t say anything and close my eyes for a few moments.

“Do you need to put your head down?”

When I nod, he says, “Just put your head down then. Rest for a moment.”

I turn over on the divan so that my breasts are pressed against the lace coverlet, and I shut my eyes. Shut out the room and Moulin. Shut him out, too.

And that is the first photograph Moulin takes. He takes a picture of me lying on my side and belly with my back to the camera. That is the sound that brings me back from wherever I have gone in my head: the sound of him at his camera.

So I turn around. Let them see me.

“I don’t know what to draw next,” I say—because I want to hear my own voice and want to be more than just a naked girl on a dirty divan. “What do you think I should draw?”

“Draw anything,” he says. “Anything that catches your eye.”

“What catches your eye?”

“Everything. Girls who stand in the street sketching. Girls in green boots.”

When he says that, I look at him.

“What else do you remember?” I say.

“The way you had your hair pinned. Some of it up and some of it down.”

“What else?”

“The night you slipped your hand over my leg at Flicoteaux’s.”

“What else?”

“Your feet on my shoulders.”

He says more private things to me, things that are not meant for others, but Moulin is just a noise behind the camera. He might as well be a shadow.

The two of us talking, that is what Moulin photographs. Even though he does not lie with me on the divan, he is there all the same. His voice is in my head and on my skin, and it is as if he is touching me.