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?”
I was freezing cold all of a sudden, and no, I wasn’t ready, but I swallowed and I nodded. She pulled up the cloth.
Despite her doubts, Clare had done it. That curve of my brow, the shape of my lips, the angle of my cheek. She’d taken half of a ruined face, a handful of memories, and she’d made me. No one else could have done it.
“Magnifique.” I reached for it, almost. “Of course it is.” What was I imagining? Something as stiff and distant as the plaster casts lining the walls? Something that wasn’t me? “Mademoiselle…Clare…can I have a moment, please?”
She opened her mouth as though to protest, she bit her lip, she nodded. After a moment of withheld breath and withheld words, she retreated to the other side of the room.
I was left alone with my own face.
As perfect as it was, it was unsettling. To see half of my own face, too shiny, a single gaping hole for my eye, staring up from the table. Half of a carefully stubbled cheek, a half a mouth caught up in an almost-smile, a look I hadn’t worn in far too long. Too perfect. It could have been a painting, a sculpture, something hanging from the wall of a gallery. It was vivid and lifelike, but it wasn’t real.
Was this my choice, then? To be a gargoyle or, instead, to be a work of art? I touched the metal with my index finger. Perhaps these days I was as cold to the touch.
“Luc.” Clare was suddenly at my elbow.
She stood by me, so shining and hopeful. I thought of all her patience and persistence, when I’d given her nothing but bitterness in return. She didn’t demand, just said, “Please.”
I picked up the mask. Clare was right. She did make a thing of beauty. I put it on.
For a moment everything went dim. She fussed and adjusted, her fingers light as pearls. I blinked and, through the narrow left eyehole, I saw her stop and press a hand to her mouth. So quickly, I wondered if I was wrong. I wondered what she saw.
It rubbed at the edges, the way a new pair of shoes did. The weight of the metal pushed against my scars and made me feel every ridge. It was cold and smooth as ice, but Clare had done well. The mask skimmed my face like a second skin.
She finished fiddling with it and asked, “Would you like to see the mirror?”
“Take me outside,” I said, drawing a deep breath. “That’s all the mirror I need.”
She waited a moment, but nodded. “Good,” she said. Again that quick hand to her mouth. “I can see how the colors hold in the sunlight.”
I let Clare lead me down the stairs and out into the light of Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.
Between the sun and the opening for my left eye, I couldn’t see much. It was like a single horse blinder. My cheek sweated beneath the metal, then itched. I reached up to scratch underneath, but she pulled my hand down. I stumbled on the cobbles.
“Stop worrying,” she whispered. “You’re counting your steps.”
“It’s like being in a cave. I can’t see the sky on that side.” My arm tensed beneath her fingers.
“Then tip your head up.”
And so I did. I stopped, and turned my face up to the sky. Cool air dipped beneath the mask. Above me, clear blue.
“Luc,” she said softly, “look.”
The narrow streets of the Left Bank were busy with people coming home from work or the day’s shopping. Smartly dressed shopgirls, women in long striped aprons and wooden sabots, students in faded black jackets, vendors in dark smocks. Women in flowered straw hats, some with books or music cases tucked under their arms, brushed past shabbily dressed men with ink on their fingertips. Everyone was so brisk and sure. But, most important, they didn’t give me a second glance.
What would they see if they did? Smooth metal and a false smile hiding a man with shaking knees, who clung desperately to the woman next to him. A perfect face on an imperfect man.
I scrabbled at the edges of the mask. The metal bit into the pads of my fingers.
“No, no, Luc!”
“I can’t see,” I said, though my mind was still filled with blue sky. “I can’t breathe anymore.”
“You can.” She took my hands, took my whole weight as I sagged. “Remember…remember when we’d pick grapes down near the pasture? We found a beehive and you were stung twice.” She was trying to do what she’d done that day in the studio, when she held my hands and brought me back to Mille Mots with her. When she tried to make me forget my fears. “And remember when you’d bring me bread and jam from the kitchen when Marthe wasn’t looking?” My breathing had slowed. It almost matched the rhythm in hers. “You’d spread your jacket out on the lawn and arrange the treats just so, like a little picnic only for me.”
It was only for her. Always.
“And remember when I followed you to the caves? We ate so many oranges the air smelled like happiness. I ducked into the cave and you waited right outside for me, worrying the whole time. You know, that day was the first time I wished you’d kiss me.”
I let go of her hands. “Stop trying to make me remember.” I stumbled backwards into the street. “Stop trying to make me hope.”
“Hope?” She straightened. “If nothing else, I wished to give you hope.”
I ran a finger beneath the edge of the mask to wipe away sweat. “I thought you wanted to give me a future.”
“Exactly,” she said, her eyes too bright. “With a mask, think of what you could do.” She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Remember the pamphlet I mentioned? The Institut National?”
“You think I can just pick a new future from a pamphlet?”
“See it as a new beginning.” Through the narrow eyehole, I could see her, standing straight and cold on the pavement. She’d forgotten her jacket. “Whatever skill you want, whatever job you’re hoping for, you can have it.”