There was a frosty silence befpre she said, “What he has done is take a vulnerable girl who was lost and seduced her into a relationship that is disgusting and depraved. It should be a crime!”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I took a breath. Almost as though my brain understood what I wanted to say better than my heart, I told her calmly, “I am a woman. I am a grown woman who fell in love with a man. I was never lost, Mother, but if I was, I am glad that Phillipe is the one who found me. There is nothing sick, nothing depraved, and certainly nothing criminal about the way we love one another. It is not my fault that when you look at the images, you see something unhealthy and disgusting. That’s all on you.” I closed my eyes, and before ending the call, I said, “Until you can understand that, do not call me again.”
After I hung up, I felt tears escape my eyes.
I wasn’t crying for my mother or for myself. I was crying for the man I loved. I was crying at the realization that anyone could think he was anything other than good.
Phillipe suspected he would find her down by the river.
As he steps around the final small bend, he spots her. She is close to the edge with a tiny light pointing to the journal she holds in her lap. The sun set around fifteen minutes earlier, and as she switches off the light, he knows that she is done for the moment. Uncertain as to what she is going to do next, she surprises him when she places the book beside her on the grass and lies down.
Closing his eyes, images started to flash before him—the sun, the rain, and then the night.
Shaking his head to dislodge the thoughts, he steps forward. As the leaves crunch beneath his feet, Gemma turns swiftly, pinning him with her stare.
“You scared me,” she accuses quietly across the empty space.
Phillipe understands that. Right now, Gemma is as consumed as he is. That’s what this place does. That’s what she did.
“I’m sorry.”
He follows her movements as she turns back to lie down again, staring up at the sky. Making himself walk over to where she is, he sits and looks down at her in her silence. When he realizes that he wants to reach out and touch her, he makes himself look away. Instead, he focuses on one of the trees on the opposite side of the river, where he always saw her standing.
“Will you tell me?” Gemma asks softly.
Taking a deep breath, he feels anguish splintering through his chest. Reaching up, he clutches the sweater covering his heart as he feels tears gather in his eyes. Swallowing deeply, he tries to form the words but finds nothing will come. Gemma’s small palm slips into his free one.
Turning, he looks to where she is sitting up beside him. He brokenly confesses, “I don’t know if I can.”
Compassionate eyes hold his while she reaches across them both, placing her other hand against his heart.
“Will you try?”
I can feel his sorrow as if it is my own as I grip his hand tightly. The hand he clutches around his sweater is locked against his chest. As he turns his head and eyes away from mine, I remove my palm but continue to hold his hand.
“I wanted to paint her here,” he starts softly.
Holding my breath, I try not to make a sound. I don’t want him to stop, but I have no idea if I’ll be able to handle what he is about to tell me.
“It was a beautiful day. The sun was out, and it was warm, not like now.” He stops for a moment and frowns.
He licks his lips nervously before continuing. “I had this idea. It was a vision of her.” He releases his grip over his sweater and drops his hand into his lap. “I always thought she was so…” He stutters here, and a shudder racks him as he continues holding my hand. “Ethereal. She was always so ethereal-looking. Her skin was so white and perfect.”
Turning his head, he pins me with his stare, and I notice for the first time that his eyes have tears in them.
“She was perfect.” Shaking his head, he looks back to the water or across it in the darkness.
“I asked her if she would mind posing in the water.”
Laughing a little, he squeezes my hand again. My heart thumps harder at every word that is coming from his mouth.
“She smiled and asked if she had to be naked. I told her, ‘No, I want you to be in a dress, a white dress.’”
The tight grip he has on my hand loosens, and I feel him slipping away from me. I try to think of something, anything, to keep him talking in the moment.
I ask, “So, you wanted her in a white dress? Why?”
This time, when his eyes meet mine, they look tortured. They look haunted as he turns back to face the water.
Out into the empty darkness, he whispers, “I wanted to paint her as I saw her, like my own gift from God. I wanted her to look like an angel.”
I try to imagine how he is feeling, but I find I have no words. Instead, we sit silently for I don’t know how long on the grassy bank of the Fleuve Sauvage de Fleurs. I can feel her presence in a way I never have before.
His angel is here.
Chapter Twenty-Six ~ Deceptive
Day 19
Deceptive ~
Perceptually misleading—that is how I have always seen myself.
People always tend to label me or make assumptions about who I am. I suppose that’s what happens when you’re different or have a handicap.
I woke up this morning to Phillipe curled behind me, his arms wrapped around my waist and his mouth against my neck. He told me a few days ago that he was done with the collection. He said Sacred was the final image, and he already sent it to town.
He was wrong. I knew I wanted him to paint one more picture.
I wanted him to paint Deceptive.
I wanted him to paint me from my perspective.
Stepping into the studio the next morning, I find him over in the chair I first saw him in weeks ago. Not one word is spoken as I move to the easel that is still set up where he left it yesterday. Steeling myself against what I’m going to see, I tell my heart to calm down.
I can feel his eyes tracking me. Instead of feeling uneasy like I did during that first meeting, I feel aware, and I feel loss. I feel the loss of a man I want and know I can never have. Turning to face the Sacred image, I am once again shocked by the knowledge that he never painted me in any of these replicas. It was always her. This time, I don’t back away from the recreation of her he has so painstakingly painted. No, this time, I reach out and trace my fingers down the violin.
“She truly is beautiful, not only her, but Diva, too.” I whisper to him, trying to let him know that I’m okay with this. I want him to know that I am resolved to the fact that I can never be her and that I can never have him, but my words are met only with the heavy weight of sobering silence.
I let my eyes travel over all the tiny details he has remembered, focusing on the position of her hands and the scratches on the violin. It is terrifying in its brilliance, and I know that each and every image he has recently painted is a perfect replica of the originals that are hanging in memory two floors below.
“There are no F-holes on any of the paintings after Solitary and Acquiesce. Why is that?” I realize belatedly and look over to him.