Page 64 of The Velvet Hours
She looked up at me. “You look just like her, Solange.”
“Yes.” My voice softened. “Everyone says so.”
“I only met her twice...” Her voice was softer, gentler than I had heard it before.
“She must have been just a little older than you are now when she and your father last visited me here. She was pregnant with you.”
I felt a lump in my throat. I turned away from the portrait.
“Yes,” I answered her. “Papa told me.”
She lowered her eyes. “I suppose he must have.”
There was an awkward pause between us. I didn’t know how to fill the air with a response.
Finally Marthe broke the silence.
“I don’t believe in regrets, Solange. I believe in starting new chapters...” Her eyes were no longer somber, but filled with sparkle.
The writer in me appreciated the line.
“Let’s eat out tonight,” she said, her eyes alight. “I’ll tell Giselle she needn’t prepare us dinner.”
“A restaurant?” I couldn’t remember the last time I had dinner out. I was used to only nursing a cup of coffee and a croissant for hours when I took my notebook to write in a café. And Alex and I had met only a few times at the café near Place Saint Georges.
“And not just a brasserie. A real restaurant!” She clasped her hands. “We can mark our new start together with a glass of champagne!”
***
Marthe spent the next hour preparing for our little sojourn into the city. As I finished unpacking my case, I heard the water run in the bathroom. Then the patter of her footsteps across the floor.
I waited for her in the parlor, which gave me the chance to finally study the portrait of her without her being there. Nearly all of my prior meetings with Marthe had taken place with me seated in one of the velvet bergère chairs directly across from her. I hardly ever moved from that spot, as I had been invited to the dining room just once, and only recently had I gone into her bedroom when she showed me her letters organized by ribbon color. I desperately wanted to look at the portrait more closely, but always had found it difficult to take my focus away from Marthe when she was telling her story.
Now that I was alone, I treaded closer to the painting, my heartbeat escalating with each step.
I approached it cautiously. It appeared even larger with no one else in the room. Within the carved gilt frame, Marthe’s energy and sensuality seemed to burn off her skin. I noticed how Boldini had her fingers pulling slightly on one of her sleeves, thus revealing her bare shoulder, and exposing her broad décolleté as though it were its own white canvas. Around her slender neck, he had painted her pearl necklace in exquisite detail, leaving the butterfly clasp hidden behind her hair.
I studied the brushwork. The swirls of pink and apricot paint. I looked at her face in its pinnacle of youth. The flirtatious glint in her eyes. I traced her profile with my eyes, trying to see if there was a marked change in how she now looked forty years later.
Even now, one could see the sharpness of her cheekbones, her straight nose, her long white neck. Her skin was certainly more feathered, and the jawline not as taut, but the beauty was still evident.
“Solange.” I heard her voice coming from the doorway. She stepped into the parlor. I turned to face her, but I was so surprised by what I saw I hardly recognized her.
Marthe was standing in the parlor wearing a pair of wide-legged trousers and a cream-colored, silk blouse, with her hair twisted back in a tight chignon. I had never seen her wearing anything other than her flowing silk dresses that went down to her ankles that echoed another time. But now, the woman standing before me looked thoroughly modern.
“Do you like them?” she said, patting down the placket of her pants.
“I sewed them myself.” She gleamed with an understandable sense of pride. “I was intrigued after I saw you wearing a pair during one of your visits. I sent Giselle out in search of the gabardine and the pattern.” She laughed. “I’m still handy with a needle and thread, aren’t I?”
I walked closer. “You look smashing. I’m impressed.”
She had painted her mouth not in the rose pink she typically preferred, but a soft red.
Again my eyes ran over her.
“Really,Grand-maman, the trousers suit you so well...”
She let out a small giggle that made her sound far younger than her years. “Thank you, Solange. I’ve been looking for the opportunity to wear them.” She shook her head back, and the delight on her face was clear.
