Belle Epoque (32 page)

She shrugs. “Fine, as long as I can show you off. I want to look my best.”

We walk into a café on the corner and Isabelle chooses a table by the window. We both order a tisane but nothing to eat and we sip our tea quietly. I’m overwhelmed by all the things I’ve wanted to tell her since I was unmasked by her mother, but I don’t know where to begin. Isabelle decides to break the silence.

“This is all there is to it? You just sit there and make me look good?”

I stare at the stray tea leaves swirling in my cup. “What did you expect?”

She slams down her cup, and I jump. “I thought I’d get a show, a performance. Some made-up tales from my performing monkey, perhaps.” She’s ready for a fight.

“Is that why you came to the agency, Isabelle? To humiliate me?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks. Now there is pain pushing through her temper. “How could you lie to me for so long?”

I’m not used to seeing Isabelle vulnerable, and it only makes me feel worse. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I had no choice.”

“Everyone has a choice, Maude.” Her face is ashen, and her black-cherry eyes have lost their luster. “I trusted you. We were friends, but the whole time you were working for my mother?”

My guilt feels like a corset of iron, crushing the life out of me. “I wish I had told you from the beginning, but I needed this job desperately.” My explanation sounds pathetic.

“Was everything a fabrication? Our friendship? All your conversation and opinions?” Her voice sounds composed, but her hands are trembling. “Did you make up a personality I would like?”

I’m horrified that she could think I would go to such lengths. “No, of course not. I spoke my mind with you. I didn’t pretend.” I reach out my hand to touch hers. “You’re my friend, and I didn’t want you to be sold off to that pig of a man. I could have tried to convince you to say yes to Xavier, but in the end I couldn’t go through with it. I defied your mother, and her punishment was to reveal everything to you.”

Silence descends on us again, and I wonder if the marriage is still taking place.

“It’s ridiculous, this agency,” says Isabelle eventually. Her face is stony. “Explain it to me.”

I take a breath. It shouldn’t sting for me to talk about it; I should be used to it by now. “Durandeau calls us foils, like the thin piece of metal placed under a jewel to make it shine brighter. Or you can think of us as ugly stepsisters for a client who wants to be Cinderella for a day.”

“I don’t understand.” She looks at me intently, her brow creased as it is when she’s studying.

“It’s about the rule of comparisons,” I say, feeling impatient. “My plainness augments your prettiness. Doesn’t that make sense to your scientific brain?”

“It’s outrageous.” She folds her arms and sits back in her chair, as if she refuses to accept my explanation.

Is she angry at me or at the concept? I can’t tell. “Do you know how much women are prepared to spend on beauty?” I ask. “Mother Nature is not democratic. Look at the orchid compared with the dandelion: one exotic and rare, the other a common weed.” My throat is dry and I pause to take a sip of tea. “And so with beauty,” I continue. “Some have an advantage, some a cross to bear. Some just fade into the background, forever plain and obscure—invisible, inconsequential.”

“Such as you?” Isabelle asks.

Why must I explain what’s so obvious? It’s painful. “Yes, such as me,” I whisper.

She picks up her tea and swirls the brew around. “I don’t believe it. There is no empirical scale for beauty. Humans are
more complex. By your reckoning, there is a formula of elements numbered like the periodic table, but there are other attributes to measure, aside from physical appearance, that can render one person more or less attractive than another.”

How can she be so stubborn? I can’t believe I have to argue a point that everyone else in the world accepts. “Such as what?” I ask, getting irritated. “In this city, physical beauty rules supreme.”

“Intelligence, wit, kindness—in short, the quality of person you are. Then there’s the other factor you haven’t mentioned: the beholder of the gaze, yet another human complexity.”

She puts her cup down on its saucer firmly, punctuating the end of her speech, a hint of triumph in her eyes.

I shake my head. “It’s easy for you to argue your point,” I say. “You are beautiful. I am not. You can afford to be charitable in your argument. It’s like a rich person saying ‘Money isn’t everything.’ ”

She doesn’t let up, because this is just the kind of mental challenge she relishes. “I’m not simply defending the repoussoirs,” she says, leaning toward me. “I’m making the argument for myself. In my mother’s eyes, I’ve never been beautiful or good enough in any way. I’m not a copy of her, not pretty enough or feminine enough to secure the right husband. Don’t you see, Maude? The rule of comparisons is an endless circle, for there will always be greater and lesser people than yourself.”

Her argument has silenced me. She’s right.

Isabelle continues, “If only my mother could see that there is far more to me as a person than where my physical features depart from the perfection of hers. I have a mind, I have opinions,
I have feeling and compassion for others. I have a heart, where she has a block of ice.”

The waiter approaches.
“Quelque chose d’autre, mesdemoiselles?”
But our grave faces make him leave us alone. As he walks away, Isabelle continues.

“When you and I became friends, I got more confident. I felt galvanized by your faith in what I could do. I really believed in my Sorbonne dream. But when I found out the truth …” She trails off and shakes her head. “I felt the whole world was against me.”

Knowing the consequences of my betrayal is worse than imagining them.

“What about this ridiculous job?” she asks. “Are you going to remain at this degrading agency? If it were up to me, that nasty fat man would be put out of business.”

I laugh. “How on earth would you do that? Besides, it’s not just me who depends on this job. The agency employs lots of girls.” My tea is cold now. I push it aside. “I thought I’d quit after I saved some money. But I ended up blowing through my wages trying to emulate a real debutante. I bought myself new clothes and shoes. The truth is, if I lose my job, I risk destitution.”

Isabelle doesn’t argue; she just listens.

“Can you imagine how I came to work here in the first place?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

And then I tell Isabelle my story. I tell her about my father and his plans for me with the village butcher, about the excitement of running away, the grueling search for work, my garret
room and the soul-crushing first visit to the agency. I can feel my eyes fill with tears. “I had to return to the agency. I had no choice.”

Isabelle reaches out and touches my arm. “It’s not right, Maude,” she says softly.

“It’s not your fault people are vain and cruel,” I murmur.

A young couple takes a seat at the table next to us and I try to pull myself together, wiping my tears away.

We’re both silent for some time. Isabelle stares down at her cup of tea. Then she breaks the silence with a sigh. “I have to get back home soon. Geneviève is waiting in the carriage. Mother thinks we’re shopping for my trousseau. Why she would believe me, I don’t know.” But still, she doesn’t make any move to leave.

“That means the wedding is still going ahead, then?” I ask. I hate to think of it.

She nods. “In July, supposedly.”

“What about the Sorbonne?”

She shrugs. “Those dreams don’t exist anymore.” She sounds numb.

This makes me sadder than anything. After everything that happened, the countess wins. “There must be a way,” I say. “Can’t you sit the
baccalauréat
exam and just see what happens? All isn’t lost, surely.”

“The exams are next month. It’s too late, Maude,” she says, resigned.

She pushes her chair back. But before she gets up, she hesitates and says, “If you like, I could come and see you again. Durandeau doesn’t know who I am, and I have money to spend.”
With those simple words, a sliver of hope is restored to my heart. Maybe there’s a chance at rescuing something of our friendship.

“I’d like that,” I say.

She nods. “Very well, then. The Durandeau Agency has a new regular client.” Her smile is perfect mischievous Isabelle.

L
IFE APPEARS, ON THE OUTSIDE
, at least, to have returned to normal. I have been on some undemanding dates with a variety of midlevel clients, as well as weekly outings with Isabelle. I have persuaded her to sit the
baccalauréat
exams in May, to prove to herself, even if to no one else, that she is capable of attending university.

Our friendship strengthens a little more each time we see each other, but we both dread our uncertain futures: our lives are out of our control. Meanwhile, the countess is content that Isabelle is showing a newfound interest in shopping.

Paul is on my mind; he is the one person I have to speak to and try to make amends with. I just haven’t been able to find the courage. He is swirling through my thoughts as I eat lunch in the agency dining room with Marie-Josée.

“Did you hear Laurent is leaving the agency?” Marie-Josée asks me. “He’s going to manage a hotel in the South.”

“Leaving? That’s disappointing.” I push away my plate. The
boiled ham is tough and chewy. “I suppose that makes sense. He’s good with people. But I don’t like the idea of the agency without Laurent.”

Marie-Josée nods. “He’s been here since the beginning. One less friendly face, isn’t it.”

“Do you think it’s a sign?” I ask. “Laurent is smart. You think he’s leaving a sinking ship?”

“It’s possible.”

“Could the repoussoir thing be just a craze, a fashion that won’t last?”

Girard suddenly looms at our table. “Maude, Marie-Josée, Monsieur Durandeau would like to speak with you both in his office.”

“We’re almost finished,” says Marie-Josée, nodding toward her lunch.

Girard taps the table with her finger. “Now!”

I exchange a look with Marie-Josée as we push our chairs back and follow Girard out of the dining room, along the hall to Durandeau’s private apartments. Since I lost the Dubern contract and he didn’t fire me, Monsieur Durandeau scares me less. Right now, I’m not filled with the same sense of dread I used to feel when summoned by him.

When we arrive in his office, he is seated behind his desk wearing yet another new suit and fiddling with the rose in his buttonhole.

On the chaise longue that’s positioned along the wall perpendicular to his desk, my eyes meet a curious sight—my belongings (boots, hat and coat) as well as Marie-Josée’s are strewn across it.

Durandeau looks up and we stand at attention in front of the large desk, so vast and empty it reveals how little he has to do with his time. I doubt the inkwell has been opened in weeks. Girard stands just to the side and behind Durandeau to get a good view of whatever dressing-down we are about to receive.

“I’ll put it simply,” Durandeau begins. “One of you has committed a crime against the agency, and one of you shall pick up her belongings after this little chat, leave the establishment and never return.”

I look across at Marie-Josée, trying to confirm that she’s as shocked as I am. The familiar feeling of fear in the face of authority returns and swarms in my chest.

He turns to his second in command. “Madame Girard, if you would present the evidence.”

Girard eagerly makes her way to the chaise longue, and from under Marie-Josée’s shawl, she pulls out the countess’s sable fur mantle and brandishes it as far as her arms will stretch. I glance at Marie-Josée. Why would she be so foolish as to bring it back to work? She looks at me apologetically.

“Madame Girard informed me some time ago, after doing a thorough inventory of the Countess Dubern’s wardrobe, that this item was missing. Instead of jumping to the conclusion it was the fault of Mademoiselle Pichon, she encouraged me to wait until we had proof.”

Girard chimes in, “Marie-Josée, I found this item among your belongings when I was doing my routine inspection of the dressing room this morning. Do you have anything to say to defend yourself?”

“It’s not her fault,” I begin, but Marie-Josée speaks over me.

“It was me. I took it from the special wardrobe weeks ago.”

“No,” I protest. My heart starts pounding. “Fire me, it’s my fault.”

“Mademoiselle Pichon,” says Durandeau. “You are already in enough trouble, having to work off your debt to the agency for botching the Dubern job. I don’t doubt you had a hand in it. But for simplicity’s sake, Marie-Josée”—he points at her—“you are dismissed as of this moment. Mademoiselle Pichon, your debt to the agency increases with this second blight against your name.”

I look in horror from Durandeau to Marie-Josée. She gives me a weak smile. There’s no bravado or jokes. She doesn’t throw a hand on her hip or deliver any comeback. She’s suddenly vulnerable, and I can only watch in silence as she picks up her belongings and leaves the agency for good.