“But he also paints for himself?”
“He does, though not as much as he used to. It makes Maman crazy. She thinks he should only paint what he will sell.”
She paused in front of a mirror and tried on a greenish top hat. “He paints for art’s sake, not money’s sake.”
For some reason seeing her in that top hat made my neck hot, so I pulled over a stool and resumed my search farther into the cabinet.
“Don’t you see?” she continued. “Sometimes art springs unexpected from a deeper place. Your soul, it has a story to tell, and the drawing, the painting, the sculpting, are only the medium for that story.”
They were heady words for a fifteen-year-old. But her eyes reflected in the mirror were resolute. She understood this passion, this itch, this frenetic creating that seized Papa. I never had, but this young girl, somehow she did.
She turned. “You’ve grown up surrounded by this.” She waved a hand around the studio, at the dust and light and smudges of color. “I’m sure you know. Art can be personal, emotional, spiritual. Glorious and expansive. Restorative, even. It’s more than shapes on canvas or brushstrokes or curves in clay. It’s…well, it’s expression.”
“And when it’s a commission—when Papa is painting fairy-tale queens or Parisian bankers—where is the expression in that?” I leaned against the cabinet door.
“He paints them as he sees them. It is not a photograph, is it? No. It is a fairy-tale queen or a Parisian banker as viewed by Monsieur Claude Crépet.”
I pointed at the tiny clock perched on the windowsill. “If you wish to do more snooping, Madame Je-sais-tout, you are running out of time.”
She set down her sketch pad on the mauve sofa. “Where does he keep the rest? The ones he doesn’t hang and he doesn’t sell?”
Up on the top shelf of the cabinet, I found a small box of square red Conté crayons. I slid a few from the box and wrapped them in my handkerchief. “Most are unframed. In the next room. Some are unfinished.”
“Here?”
I looked up to see the end of the scarf float through the adjoining doorway.
“Mademoiselle, you should come out of there.” I abandoned the cabinet and walked across the studio. Halfway, then stopped. “Papa doesn’t allow anyone in that room.”
“It’s only canvases, all stacked up. Does he sell these ever? It’s horribly dusty in here.” Then, to herself, “Oh, how fascinating!”
“What’s fascinating?”
“They’re studies, done up in pencil. Nymphs, satyrs, a feast.” Frames rattled. “There’s a finished one. Dancing women in white dresses, like Botticelli’s Primavera.”
“Be careful,” I called.
She sneezed. “And here are some all covered up. I wonder what—” She broke off with a stifled gasp.
“What is it?”
“It’s…your mother.”
“Maman? In a painting? He always teased that she couldn’t sit still.” I moved towards the door.
“No, stop!” She sneezed again. “You shouldn’t see this one.”
“Why not?”
Clare was silent for a space. “Because…because she hasn’t a stitch on.”
I froze. “She hasn’t?” I backed away from the doorway.
In a house of artists, there was no shortage of nudes on the walls. They had been, dare I say, instructional to me in my formative years. While other adolescent boys had been speculating about breasts, I had an array—in oil paint, that is—to peruse. But never, never my own maman. I sank onto the mauve velveteen sofa in dismay.
“It’s really quite elegant,” she said from the other room. “The painting, I mean. She’s holding three roses and lounging on that purple sofa out there.”
I sprang to my feet.
“Oh heavens, there are more.”
“More?” I repeated in horror.
“Here’s one where she’s standing in front of a mirror, trying on a top hat. Goodness.” The hat Clare had been wearing came bouncing out through the doorway. “One where she’s reading Le Figaro and eating a slice of melon. And this one she’s in a chair with…what is that? A butter churn?”
“I think we should leave,” I called in to Clare, but she continued flipping through stacked canvases with a rattle.
“Here’s one with a horse. Well, that doesn’t look comfortable.”
“Mademoiselle.”
“And here’s…” But she didn’t finish her sentence.
“What?”
She appeared in the doorway, holding a small framed canvas in her hands.
“Please, mademoiselle, I don’t wish to see a painting of my maman.” I crossed fingers, like one might do to ward off bad dreams.
“But it’s not. It’s not your mother at all.” She turned the canvas around to show a redheaded woman wearing nothing but a pair of high black stockings and an enigmatic smile. “It’s mine.”
I didn’t recognize Madame Ross in the painting, though the one time I’d met her, more than a decade before, she’d worn a hat and considerably more clothing. I could see the resemblance to Clare in the tilt of her chin and the steady gray eyes. Clare’s hair was that same deep auburn. And those long fingers, wrapped around the handle of a fan in the painting, they looked like the very ones holding the frame. Which, I noticed, were white-knuckled, indeed.
“Monsieur, are you quite finished?”
I looked up to see her mouth drawn in a tight line. “Finished?”
“Ogling my mother. Are you finished?”
“I wasn’t ogling, mademoiselle,” I said quickly. “I was comparing the resemblance.”
I instantly knew it wasn’t the right thing to say. Two spots of color appeared high in her cheeks and I could feel my own following suit.
“In the face.” I said it perhaps too loudly. “In the face only. I was looking nowhere else.” But of course, saying that made my gaze go right to Madame Ross’s nibards. She had a small mole on the left one.
“Monsieur!” she exclaimed.
I covered my eyes. “Mon Dieu, put it away.”
“Why did she…why is it…here in your father’s studio….”
“Well, it’s one of his works,” I offered helpfully, peeking out from between my fingers. “See? His initials are right there in the middle, painted over her—”
“I know where they’re painted,” she said, face flaming.
“It’s really quite clever, how he’s incorporated the two Cs right into her—”
She cleared her throat pointedly.
“Pardon.”
“But why?” she wailed. “Why on earth did he paint my mother in…such a state?”
“And why did she pose in…such a state?”
Clare refused to answer that.
“Are you so sure it’s accurate? That he didn’t just paint her face and then, well, imagine the rest?” I uncovered my eyes. “Now right here…does your mother really have a—”
“Luc René Rieulle Crépet!” She flipped the painting around, away from my view.
“You’ve remembered my full name.”
“And you’ve forgotten your manners.” She glared at me over the top of the frame. “It’s my mother you’re talking about.”
“Pardon, mademoiselle.” I went to close up the supply cabinet, trying very hard not to think of nibards.
When we left the studio, Clare kept her eyes fixed on the hallway rug.
“Papa has painted me before.” I tried to sound reassuring. “Many times.”
“And your mother. Many, many times. Once with a butter churn.”
I made another attempt. “They were good friends, our parents.”
She sped up, still refusing to look at me. “Better friends than I thought.”