Daring Chloe

by Walker, Laura Jensen

  “Dude. Check it out.” Becca materialized beside me. “Think that was after he cut off his ear?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it’s just the angle of the pose, and his other ear can’t be seen.”

  She peered closer. “Nah. I think he’d already cut it off and just didn’t want everyone to see.”

  As we moved on to the next Van Gogh, I was surprised to see a middle-aged woman sitting on a little stool with an easel set up before her — painting.

  Copying Van Gogh!

  I raised stunned eyes to Tess, who whispered, “Painters-in-training are allowed to practice their art, copying from originals. It’s done all the time.” She nodded to the far side of the room where a man at another easel was copying what looked like a Monet.

  We continued to wander, dazed, through room after room of Impressionists — Renoir, Cézanne, Degas, Monet, Morisot. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her. The woman with the green umbrella.

  My breath caught.

  I’d first been introduced to Monet’s La femme a l’ombrelle in my junior high art class when my teacher was showing us examples from different artists. Monet’s woman in white on a windswept hill with a blue scarf flapping in the breeze and a green umbrella resting on her shoulder had spoken to me like none of the other paintings the teacher had shown us.

  She was so beautiful. So free.

  So with my charcoal and colored pencils, I’d tried to capture her on paper. And failed miserably.

  And now here she was. The real thing. In person.

  Slowly, I made my way over to her. She was larger than life. So much larger than life.

  My eyes welled up.

  I’m not sure how long I stood there. I was vaguely conscious of the rest of the group moving on and other people coming and going, but still I stood there.

  Staring.

  Weeping.

  Silently.

  My fingers itched to pick up a paint brush again. I hadn’t painted in over a decade — not since my sophomore year in high school when Billy Preston had jeered at my pathetic attempt at a self-portrait. I was the least talented student in my art class, and I knew it.

  Everyone knew it.

  And still my fingers itched.

  A hand touched my shoulder. “Chloe?” Tess said. “We thought we’d have lunch here before heading on to the Louvre.”

  In the café on the fifth floor of the Orsay, we found a table behind the huge, gorgeous clock overlooking the river Seine.

  Becca and I both ordered the tartine paysanne — a ham, cheese, and mushroom pizza-like sandwich on a toasted baguette.

  “Mmm, this is to die for,” Becca said.

  I nodded, my mouth full.

  “This is the prettiest museum I’ve ever been in,” Kailyn said. “It’s so open. The building itself is kind of like art. And I can’t believe how many paintings I knew.”

  “Me, either — like that famous Renoir outdoor café scene I’ve seen everywhere, all my life — except for the real thing up close and personal.” Paige sighed. “I love Renoir’s women. They’re so lush and curvy. And real. Not like all the size zero models today.”

  “I knew there was a reason I should have lived back then,” Annette said.

  I didn’t answer. I was still thinking of my Monet.

  “I hear ya on the real women,” Becca said. “That’s why I liked the Toulouse-Lautrecs. The people in his paintings always look like they were having a good time.”

  “They were,” Tess said dryly. “Sometimes too good a time. The absinthe really flowed freely back then.”

  Becca finished off her Evian. “But it was the sculptures that really rocked. Did you see that one cool polar bear? Huge!”

  My roommate had a thing for animals, especially the more exotic ones.

  “One statue ticked me off though,” Becca continued. “A woman on her knees reaching out and begging a guy not to leave with another woman. I hate when women do that.”

  “Congratulations, mon amie ! ” A triumphant smile split Tess’s face. “You have now had what we call an art awakening.”

  “Say what?”

  “Art seeks to evoke some response from the viewer — good, bad, disturbed, excited,” Tess explained. “The sculpture that so angered you is called The Age of Maturity by Camille Claudel. And the man she was begging not to leave was none other than Rodin.”

  “The Thinker Rodin?” Kailyn asked.

  Tess nodded.

  “But who’s Camille Claudel? Never heard of her.”

  “Me either,” Annette said.

  “I’m not surprised.” Paige tore off a piece of baguette. “She’s been pretty much relegated to obscurity. Camille Clau-del was an incredibly talented sculptor who struggled against the male-dominated artistic establishment of her time. She became Rodin’s muse and mistress — one of them, at least — but was an amazing artist in her own right. Unfortunately, she supposedly went mad, some say due in part to Rodin’s rejection, and her family had her institutionalized. She spent the last thirty years of her life confined to an insane asylum where she died, never having sculpted again.”

  “You’re kidding.” I set down my toasted sandwich, my appetite gone. “How awful.”

  “Makes me glad I didn’t live back then,” Kailyn said. “Women really got the shaft.”

  “I’ll say.” Becca scowled.

  Tess was staring at Paige. “I’m impressed with your art history knowledge. You’ve been hiding that from us.”

  “Actually . . .” Paige blushed. “I only know about Camille Claudel because I rented the movie from Netflix.”

  “Still. You know more than I did.” Annette finished her coffee. “That sounds like a movie we’ll have to rent when we get home. Maybe on another Paperback Girls — I mean Getaway Girls” — she grinned — “movie night?”

  “Count me out. Too depressing.” Becca stood up. “Are we ready to go?”

  “Not quite. We haven’t even been to the gift shop yet,” Kailyn said.

  Becca recoiled in mock horror. “Oh no. What was I thinking?”

  As we approached the gift shop en masse — minus Becca, who said she’d wait for us outside — I spotted a great white T-shirt with all the artists’ signatures scribbled on it in black, including my favorites: Monet, Degas, Van Gogh, Renoir. I found a medium and held it up against myself. “I know this is incredibly touristy, but I’m getting it.”

  “Love it!” Annette said. “Do you mind if I get one too?”

  “As long as you don’t wear it on the same day.”

  “Deal.”

  Only problem, the sizes run small in France. I had to get a large instead of my normal medium.

  “Bonjour. Excusez-moi, s’il vous plaît,” Annette said to the slim young woman behind the counter. “Do you have anything grande?” She pointed ruefully to her hips. “Je Americans are non petit.”

  The dark-haired mademoiselle in a black pencil skirt and crisp white blouse gave a slight smile and shook her head. “Non, madame. Désolée.”

  “C’est la vie.” Annette giggled. “I’ll just have to lose weight when I get home.” She bought two T-shirts, one for her and one for Kailyn.

  Paige decided to buy the same shirt too.

  And a Water Lilies watch.

  And a Renoir tote bag.

  And a Degas mug.

  And an Impressionists calendar.

  And tons of postcards.

  “We’re going to have to start calling you Kailyn,” I said, staring at her loot. “I didn’t know you were such a shopaholic.”

  “I’m not.” She blushed. “I usually hate shopping. But who knows if I’ll ever get back to Paris again in my life, so I’m going to take full advantage of it. You only live once, right?”

  Annette gave her a thumbs up. “This is my first time back in thirty years, and I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for book club, so I say go all out!”

  In addition to my artsy T-shirt, I picked up a small, easy to-pack, unfram
ed print of my woman with her green umbrella. Then I caught up with Tess in the postcard section, where she was trying to decide between a Monet and a Renoir to send to my parents.

  “Tell you what. You send the Renoir, and I’ll send the Monet.”

  “Deal.” She headed to the cash register, three postcards in hand.

  “Is that all you’re getting?”

  “Yep.”

  “No prints for your house?”

  “Nope. Once you’ve seen the real thing, nothing else will satisfy.”

  “Really?” I looked down at the Monet I planned to hang in my bedroom. Would it satisfy me now that I’d seen the real thing?

  I hesitated.

  But then I thought of what Paige had said. And who knew if I’d ever come back to Paris again? This print might be my only remembrance of my lady on the hill. I took it to the cash register. And while the clerk was ringing up my purchase, I added in an address book with a Renoir dancing city couple on the cover for Julia and Justin.

  Becca whistled softly as we entered the Louvre less than an hour later. “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  I punched her on the arm.

  “Be sure you hold on to your map of the exhibits so you won’t get lost,” Tess warned. “It can be quite a maze in here with all these different corridors.”

  “Where’s my trusty GPS unit when I need it?”

  On the Metro ride over, we’d agreed to get the Big Three out of the way first: Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, and the Mona Lisa.

  Venus de Milo was just as gorgeous as I’d thought she would be in all her white marble purity, but it was The Winged Victory of Samothrace all alone at the top of a long, sweeping stone staircase that took our collective breath away.

  Even McArt girl Becca.

  We stood rooted to the bottom of the stairs by the imposing vision. At last we began our ascent. Intellectually, I knew that the ancient sculpture at the top of the stairs was a stone statue — Nike, the Greek goddess of victory — but as we drew close, she looked so real, as if the draped robes around her body were rippling in a strong breeze.

  I circled her slowly. Reverently. Transported back in time. Until Kailyn’s voice brought me back to the present.

  “What I want to know is how come all these famous women statues have parts of their bodies cut off? That’s kind of creepy.”

  “In Venus’s case, it was because Hercules was a little too rough when he was skipping stones,” Becca said.

  “Anhhnh.” Tess made a buzzer sound. “Wrong answer. Someone’s watched too many Disney animated features. I read somewhere — and I think this was for Venus, although I’m not positive — that when the statue was found, it was dragged roughly across the ground to be transported and in the process, broken.”

  “Whatever. It’s still creepy.”

  “What do you suppose Jenna would think of these statues?” Paige asked. “I don’t think she’d like them.” The corners of her mouth tilted up. “She’d think it was some kind of conspiracy to keep women silent and housebound, or in this case, museum-bound.”

  “And she’d have a point there.”

  “Serious?” I turned to my roommate.

  “I’m just sayin’.”

  Tess linked her arm through mine. “Well why don’t we go visit a woman who’s managed to keep both her head and her arms?”

  By the time we made it to the front of the interminable line to see the Mona Lisa, I was disappointed. I’d been expecting to be moved the same way I had been by Winged Victory, Van Gogh, and my Monet umbrella woman when I first laid eyes on one of the most famous paintings in the world.

  Mona Lisa just didn’t do it for me.

  “She’s so little,” Kailyn said in a disillusioned whisper.

  “Yes, but notice her eyes.” Tess nodded at the painting. “Wherever you go, it’s like they’re following you.”

  Not me. Guess Mona just wasn’t interested. Maybe if I’d taken my hair out of its ponytail that morning.

  As we stepped away from the claustrophobic Mona crowd, we synchronized our watches and agreed to split into pairs and meet back at the Metro exit in an hour, well before the six o’clock closing, to beat the departing hordes. I set off with Becca in tow in search of the Rembrandts. But we got so turned around in the labyrinthine corridors that we never did find them. Lots of Greek sculpture and Egyptian antiquities but no Rembrandts.

  Lots of aching feet too, even though we were wearing flats.

  Becca finally mutinied. “And that’s it for me too. I’m museumed out. Come on, I need an espresso.”

  “But we might not get a chance to come back here again.”

  “And that would be a problem, why?” Becca cut her eyes at me. “Look. My feet hurt, my eyes are glazed over from looking at so much art, and if I don’t get some caffeine in me soon, I’ll never make it through the rest of the night.”

  Kailyn and Annette had the same idea. We ran into them in a café under the pyramid, drinking café au lait and sharing a pastry.

  “Great minds think alike,” Annette said as we joined them. “I told Kailyn I needed a break. I was feelin’ a little overwhelmed.”

  “Tell me about it.” Becca plopped down in a chair.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Annette added. “The Louvre is really impressive — amazing, actually — but if I had to choose, I think I prefer the Musée d’Orsay. More intimate. I could be a bit biased though, since the Impressionists are my favorite.”

  “Mine too,” I said. The waiter appeared, and Becca ordered espresso and a pain au chocolat, a croissant with a huge chunk of chocolate inside, while I opted for a hot chocolate and a millefeuille, which turned out to be the most delicious Napoleon I’d ever had.

  We chatted for a few minutes about our cooking class beginning the next morning, and then Kailyn looked at her watch. “Time to go meet the others.” She exchanged an eager smile with her mother. “And then you and I have a date to go shopping! Chloe, Becca, want to come?”

  “It’s what I’ve been dreaming of,” Becca said. “Not.”

  I passed too in favor of a power nap on my red toile.

  After a leisurely and amazing three-hour dinner that night — that had Becca twitching with impatience — we decided as a group to end our second day in Paris with a ride down the Seine on a Bateau Mouche. And as we sat in our seats waiting for the boat to launch, my tower did her twinkling Christmas tree magic once again.

  “Ooh.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ooh.” A chorus of delight and wonder in a dozen languages swept through the boat and a barrage of cameras clicked and whirred as Japanese, German, American, and every other kind of tourist began snapping away and the Bateau Mouche began its slow glide down the river.

  I hit the French mix on my iPod and Edith Piaf sang “La Vie en Rose” in my ear as we glided by the still sparkling Eiffel Tower. I felt like I was in a movie. Or watching a movie of someone else’s life.

  This couldn’t be my life. Safe, sedate, nonadventurous Chloe, drifting down the Seine in the City of Lights, passing glorious buildings and famous monuments bathed in amber lights against the night sky.

  What could be better than this?

  Drifting down the Seine in the arms of a man who loves me?

  Maybe.

  I looked around at the faces of my friends. They were all lit up and shiny and filled with wonder.

  Maybe not.

  As we approached Notre Dame, “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Misérables filled my ears. I shivered. And not from the cold. My heart swelled and felt as if it would burst from my chest any moment. I motioned for Tess to come closer and stuck one of the ear buds in her ear. Her eyes widened, and a dazzling smile split her face at the same time as her eyes filled with tears.

  “What are you listening to?” Paige, sitting on my other side, asked.

  I gave her the
other ear bud and watched her face do the same thing as Tess’s. Paige gasped. And Becca, who was sitting in front of us, turned around and shot us a curious look. “What are you guys doing?”

  On our return loop, just as we passed under the Pont d’Iéna bridge to the Trocadéro, the eleven o’clock Eiffel light show started. Once again, my iron lady was clad in a shimmering gown of sequins.

  The entire boat gasped again, and cameras clicked all around me.

  Jesus could have come and taken me home right then, and it would have been fine by me.

  That night when we got back to the hotel, I sat in the lobby and tried to journal all that I’d seen and experienced so I’d never forget it. I wanted a record of all the special moments so that in years to come when I wanted to relive my Parisian adventure, the words would remind me.

  But how can you capture with mere words something so beautiful? Something that needs to be seen?

  I’m no writer. I can’t use words to paint a picture.

  I clicked my mechanical pencil, wondering if I should attempt to sketch the details of my amazing day. Closing my eyes, I once again saw my exquisite Monet umbrella woman standing on the hill, her scarf waving in the breeze.

  My pencil wavered over the paper. Dare I try to draw her?

  Not in this universe.

  He was Monet, and I was just Chloe.

  I set my pencil down and closed the journal.

  23

  The French do live by one principle that Americans sometimes forget, despite having coined it most eloquently: Garbage in, garbage out. The key to cooking, and therefore living well, is the best of ingredients.

  French Women Don’t Get Fat

  “Bonjour Mesdames et Mesdemoiselles,” the petite middle-aged woman greeted us the next morning in her cozy Paris apartment. “My name is Jacqueline Marceau,” she said in her lilting French accent, “and I am the chef. Welcome to my home.”

  “Bonjour Madame Marceau,” we said in unison like the twelve little girls in two straight lines.