The Flourishing of Floralie Laurel

by Fiadhnait Moser

  As the music slowed and the curtains closed, Floralie snaked back through the crowd. Focus, she thought. The drawer, the compartment, the book. She repeated the words over and over again as she flew down the corridor until at last she reached the dressing room.

  She cracked open the door; it was empty. She crept inside, tiptoed over to Colette’s vanity table, and pulled open the second drawer, as quiet as possible. The pounding of her heart, she thought, could very well have been an elephant stampede. She brushed aside the hairpins, pearl earrings, silk flowers, and gauze . . . nothing. No secret compartment, no floriography.

  Floralie slammed the drawer (immediately regretting it as the sound reverberated around the room) and sat on the wood floor, arms crossed. And then something squeaked. Floralie narrowed her eyes, for the sound had not come from the room, but rather, within the drawer. Floralie pulled it open, and the squeaking grew louder. She knew that sound well . . . It sounded like Philomenos.

  Floralie pulled the drawer all the way out from the vanity table and placed it beside her. When she looked inside, she found a mouse hole chewed inside a tiny door at the back of the drawer. This must be it. Floralie unlatched the door . . .

  Her fingers trailed along the wood, gathering cobwebs and dust under her nails. She twisted her elbow to reach farther into the compartment. Still, no book. And then Floralie’s pinky finger brushed against something that made her arm shoot out of the compartment. Something dead; something spidery. But as her hand came whizzing out, so did the spider—or, at least, what Floralie had thought was a spider. Indeed, it was dead, but it was not an insect. It was a flower.

  A bony hand grabbed Floralie’s shoulder; she whirled around. Colette towered over her, wide eyes blazing. “Imposter!” she screeched. “Imposter in the dressing room!” Her voice bounced off the line of mirrors, and footsteps pounded from the hallway. “What are you doing in my things? Little thief, are you? Stealing my pearls, no doubt? Hand them over.”

  “I—no—I’m not—I haven’t taken anything, honest!” Floralie curled her fingers around the flower.

  Mr. Bertrand burst into the dressing room. “What’s going on?” he bellowed.

  “This girl is an imposter!” declared Colette, digging her fingernails into Floralie’s shoulder.

  “No—well, yes, just listen!” pleaded Floralie.

  But Mr. Bertrand would not listen. He seized Floralie’s arm and dragged her into the corridor. He slammed her against the wall, his nose an inch from hers. His breath smelled like onions and burnt cabbage. “What are you doing in Mademoiselle Beauchene’s vanity? Is that one of our costumes?” he snarled.

  “No—no, it’s my mother’s! Please, Mr. Bertrand, please! I’m Floralie, Viscaria’s daughter, Viscaria Laurel, don’t you remember? She danced for you up until a few years ago. I used to come here all the time . . .”

  Mr. Bertrand’s grip slackened, but his eyes grew hard. “Viscaria,” he spat. “So you are the spawn of the dancer who nearly single-handedly demolished my career?”

  The memory of Mama crumpling onto the Palais stage crashed through Floralie’s brain. And though Floralie had watched from a balcony seat, the jagged breaths of Mama still beat in her ears.

  “I just need to know what happened to her,” said Floralie. “All I was doing was looking for something she may have left behind—something important.”

  But Mr. Bertrand would not listen. He clutched her forearm and dragged Floralie down the hall, up the staircase, and toward the wide doors. And then he hissed, “I shall let you go now, but only because I take pity on your pathetic life.”

  Mr. Bertrand threw Floralie out into the street, and she landed with a splat in a puddle. The doors swung shut, and Floralie dragged herself up, brushing mud off the wili costume. Two figures appeared from the fog and rushed over to her—Mr. Tullier and Miss Clairoux.

  “What are you doing here?” said Floralie.

  “It’s intermission, of course,” said Miss Clairoux. “Like we said, we’d meet you here. Goodness, why are you all wet?” she added, stroking Floralie’s hair.

  “No time for chitchat,” cut in Mr. Tullier, scanning Floralie up and down. “Where’s the book? Did you find the book?”

  “No,” breathed Floralie. “I didn’t find a single—” but Floralie stopped short.

  She uncurled her palm . . . The petals of the cobwebbed flower hung by threads to the stem. And then the flower disintegrated in her hand, slipped through her fingers . . .

  Memory was tricky that way. How it played hide-and-seek, cat and mouse. How it turned over itself like a shaken hourglass. Floralie remembered. She remembered everything now. Mama left flowers. Like this one behind her vanity, she left them in places that meant something to her; always, they were different. A celandine behind a gargoyle on their family trip to Switzerland, a butterfly weed in Papa’s sock drawer, a lupine in Mama’s windowsill, a laurestine beneath her bed.

  “The musée. We’ve got to go to La Musée de l’Orangerie,” said Floralie, for Mama had left her last flower there, behind a very particular painting that Floralie had come to know well. After all, the museum was the last place Floralie and Mama had visited before things changed. And now, things were about to change. Everything was going to change.

  After the ballet master officially kicked Mama out of the company, she wore her pointe shoes for an entire week, and though her feet bubbled with blisters, not once did she take them off. It was not until Sunday that she yanked her feet out. She buried the shoes in the garden, muttering prayers all the while. She came back into the house weeping over a mourning bride flower. But she said to Floralie, “I have you, and my love for you dances with far more grace than any ballerina. That is all that matters.”

  La Musée de l’Orangerie was hardly a ten-minute walk away. The rain swept through Paris as Floralie, Miss Clairoux, and Mr. Tullier swept through the streets. While Floralie raced through the puddles, passersby looked on in a mixture of amusement and disdain at the girl in the mud-spattered ballet costume.

  Floralie had no time—or breath—to explain to Miss Clairoux or Mr. Tullier. They simply had to trust her. “This way,” said Floralie, beckoning to Mr. Tullier and Miss Clairoux.

  The Tuileries Garden, large enough to fit a small village, blossomed with street performers and tourists, families and newlyweds. Floralie raced through the rows lined with tulips and daffodils, colors blurring in the corners of her eyes. The rush of the River Seine filled Floralie’s ears; they were close. In no time, a grand building complete with pillars and sparkling windows towered over them. The front doors barely kept shut as visitors filtered out in a constant stream—it was nearly closing time.

  Floralie, Miss Clairoux, and Mr. Tullier squeezed inside and waited in line for barely three minutes, record time for Floralie. When they stepped up to the ticket counter, the teller scanned Floralie’s outfit and raised his eyebrows.

  “And . . . how may I help you?” he asked.

  “Three tickets, please,” said Floralie.

  The teller glanced down to his watch and frowned. “We close in a half hour.”

  “Perfect!” spat Floralie. “I mean—yes, that will do fine.”

  Miss Clairoux exchanged a pocketful of francs for three tickets and maps, and Floralie whizzed down the hall.

  “Ma chérie, wait!” called Miss Clairoux from behind. “What exactly are we here for?”

  Floralie skidded to a stop and turned back.

  “A painting,” breathed Floralie. “Mr. Tullier—you were Monet’s gardener; you must’ve known his paintings better than anyone. You’ve got to help me look.” Floralie recalled the image from A History of Dreamlands. “This one is of a girl with a flower basket. She’s walking through Monet’s garden at Giverny, and she . . . she looks like me,” Floralie suddenly realized. She felt the way one feels upon remembering a dream months, years even, after having dreamed it. “It’s called Young Girl in the Garden at Giverny. Please, you must know—”

>   Mr. Tullier nodded. “I know the one. Of course I’ll help.” Floralie thought that may have been the most agreeable thing Mr. Tullier had ever said.

  The three zigzagged through long corridors and zoomed up grand stairwells. Each painting Floralie passed was a new wonderland, someone else’s garden. The paintings tugged at her fingertips, inviting her into their gardens. Each one was like a mother telling her child a bedtime story. She could have stared at every painting for hours, got lost in them . . . but no. She had to focus. The painting, the painting, the painting.

  When they came to Monet’s department, Floralie stopped short.

  “It should be here . . . somewhere,” she muttered.

  “She left flowers in places that were important to her,” Floralie explained to Miss Clairoux and Mr. Tullier. “And the last one she left was here.”

  Floralie strode into the room full of Monet paintings, and Mr. Tullier and Miss Clairoux hurried to keep up.

  “So . . . ,” said Miss Clairoux, huffing, “what you’re saying is that your mother left a flower here—by a painting?”

  “Yes. I found the painting in Nino’s book—A History of Dreamlands. I thought I remembered the title from somewhere, and it was my mother. Every time we visited the library, she pored over that book. That’s why my own drawings were in the book, and that’s why the painting was circled. My mother circled it. That girl in painting, that’s not just any girl. That’s Viscaria.”

  The black-and-white photograph from A History of Dreamlands did not do the painting justice. Mama gazed somewhere over Floralie’s head, just beyond the painting’s edge, eyes lost in wonderland. Her white dress was not white, but fashioned of the most delicately curated colors—the palest of pinks, hints of cerulean blue, tints of viridian green. Her back was turned to darkness, and she carried her poppies and daffodils into bright light, a place of windswept flowers almost as radiant as her. Nearly as vivacious.

  Miss Clairoux gaped at Floralie, then at Mr. Tullier. “Is that true? Our daughter? The subject of one of Claude Monet’s paintings?”

  Mr. Tullier smiled wider than Floralie had ever seen him smile. “Clever girl,” he muttered, patting Floralie’s shoulder.

  Floralie clutched Miss Clairoux’s hand as they treaded closer to the painting until they were inches from it. “We left the flower together,” said Floralie, “when I knew she would be leaving soon. The day we left it, Mama told me the flower was the ‘gap’ in her. And in the letter in the flower box, she said I would find her in the gap between petals and leaves . . . This is the flower. This is the flower that will lead me to her. And we left it right . . . here.”

  Floralie recalled Mama tucking the flower behind the frame at the edge of the painting’s left-hand corner.

  “There. That little girl will keep her safe for me,” Mama had said. She was talking about the flower between her skeleton-thin fingers, but still called it her. She hadn’t always spoken about flowers in that way; it was one of the reasons Papa had her sent off.

  “Will you be kept safe, Mama?” Floralie had asked.

  Mama’s fingers went limp as she tucked the flower behind the painting. “I will be. But, my wildflower, some flowers are not meant to be kept safe. Some flowers are meant to grow by train tracks and on mountaintops.”

  The words had sounded like poetry, and now, they rang in Floralie’s ears as she stood on tiptoes, reached for the top of the painting. Her fingers traced the edge of the frame . . .

  “Tu! Arrêtez!”

  Floralie whipped around.

  A guard hurtled toward Floralie, arms outstretched, navy coat flapping. “Oui, tu! Petite fille!”

  Floralie scrambled back as the guard lunged. Two more guards caught notice and rushed to the scene, shoving tourists and art students out of their way. As Floralie struggled to her feet, a hand gripped her ankle and she fell back. Another hand grabbed the neck of her dress and yanked her to her feet. Floralie’s vision muddied, and people swirled around her, paintings spun, corridors melted. She felt like a bug lost in a labyrinth of carnation petals, too small to tell what exactly was happening.

  “Non, monsieur, she’s with me!” shouted Mr. Tullier.

  A flock of tourists gathered near to watch the spectacle.

  “S’il vous plait!” cried Miss Clairoux. “She’s just a child.”

  The guard’s grip on Floralie slackened for but only a moment as he glanced from Miss Clairoux to Floralie, and back to Miss Clairoux again. Floralie seized her chance to break free, but the guard only grabbed her shoulder, sinking his fingernails into her skin.

  “Stop it! That hurts!” Floralie shouted, once in English and once in French.

  “Saisissez-les, aussi!” the guard instructed, and the two other guards grabbed Miss Clairoux and Mr. Tullier.

  “FLORALIE!” The voice echoed from the tourists. It was a boy’s voice—strange accent, crackly, unfamiliar. It sounded like one of Sappho’s poems; there were gaps in every consonant, mouse holes in every vowel.

  Floralie strained her neck to see around the guard, who only yanked harder at her shoulder. A boy in rags stumbled through the tourists toward Floralie.

  “Nino?” gasped Floralie.

  The guard whirled around, twisting Floralie’s arm. “Et lui!” he spat.

  The guard clutching Miss Clairoux’s wrist stretched out his free arm and seized Nino by his hair. Nino squirmed, but the guard would not let loose.

  Floralie’s guard turned to the tourists and barked, “Sortez! Maintenant! Zis musée is closing!”

  The guards dragged Floralie, Miss Clairoux, Mr. Tullier, and Nino down six hallways and four flights of stairs until they came to the very last door of a long and narrow corridor, surely underground. Floralie’s daydreams overtook her, and she was plunged into visions of prisoners hanging by their thumbs in decrepit stone dungeons. Floralie crouched in the corner, scrabbling for food in the cracks of the floor, the stench of unwashed feet filling her nostrils, as a big-bellied guard stood watch above her . . .

  Floralie’s guard kicked open the door, launching Floralie back into reality. He threw in Floralie, Miss Clairoux, Mr. Tullier, and Nino, then slammed it shut. A fourth guard sat behind a desk cluttered with papers and empty coffee mugs. He was older than the others, a ring of gray hair circling a large bald patch. The moment he set eyes on his surprise visitors, he fumbled for his hat and stuffed it over the patch. He spoke in lightning-fast French that even Floralie had trouble keeping up with, but she had no trouble understanding that he was angry with the guards.

  “She was tampering with a Monet,” explained Floralie’s guard in French. “Found her with these two”—he gestured to Miss Clairoux and Mr. Tullier—“and then this one showed up.” He jabbed a finger in Nino’s side. “But that’s not all.”

  Floralie’s guard sifted through a pile of newspapers in the corner of the desk and pulled up yesterday’s. “C’est elle,” he whispered. “C’est Floralie Laurel.”

  He flipped around the paper to reveal a photograph of Floralie on the front page.

  The guard knelt down to Floralie’s eye level. Three inches from her nose, he breathed, “Is zis you, petite fille?”

  Floralie’s mouth twitched, but no words came out. No, no, no, her mind screamed, but her lips spat, “Yes.” He hardly even needed to ask. The portrait was a mirror image of Floralie.

  The four guards exchanged glances. Finally, the bald guard sprang from his chair, pulled a key from his pocket and jammed it into the door’s keyhole. Nino’s guard let go of his hair, and Nino crumpled to the ground. The guard babbled in French to Floralie’s guard, “Just look at that reward, Benoît! We’ll be rich!”

  “Non,” said the bald guard. “I am head of security here, and I will be rich.”

  “But I caught two of them!” barked Miss Clairoux and Nino’s guard.

  “But I caught the girl!” shouted Floralie’s guard.

  “Silence!” fumed the bald one. “We’ll figure out the money later!
I’m calling this number,” and he snatched the paper from Floralie’s guard and picked up the telephone.

  Nino and Floralie exchanged glances as the guard dialed. Nino’s hand enclosed in Floralie’s, and he squeezed tight, as if no time had passed since he left. As if the argument in the garden hadn’t even happened. As if nothing had changed, nothing at all.

  The guard cleared his throat at the telephone and babbled to someone on the other end. “Oui, yes, we ’ave found ’er . . . La Musée de l’Orangerie . . . Non . . . Yes, I believe so. Merci beaucoup,” and he hung up.

  Floralie’s stomach dropped as the guard turned to her. “You wait here,” he hissed. “And silence.”

  Floralie’s hair clung with sweat to her forehead. “Allons-y,” said the head guard to the others, and they marched out of the office, bolting the door behind them.

  Floralie looked from Nino to Miss Clairoux, and then to Mr. Tullier. “Shh,” she hushed. She crept over to the door, pressed her ear against it, and listened to the shuffling of feet, a cough, and a breath. “They’re guarding the door,” she whispered. “We’ve no way of getting out.”

  Miss Clairoux closed her eyes. “This is my fault,” she muttered. “I should never have brought you here.”

  “It’s okay, our plan could still work,” said Floralie. “We’re all in this together.”

  “F-Floralie’s r-right.” Through his stutters, Floralie recognized Nino’s accent as Greek.

  “Mes chéries, as much as I love you, we’ve got ourselves into deep troub—” Miss Clairoux stopped short. She covered her heart, cheeks paling. “Who was that?” she breathed. “Was that you, Floralie? I could have sworn that sounded like a boy . . .”