The Magical World of Madame Métier

by Daphne Rose Kingma

  Despite this lengthy over-work, Monsieur Sorbonne felt quite happy. For he had found, if not his life’s work, for the moment at least, a quite engaging position.

  CHAPTER 7

  Mademoiselle Objet Is Not So Happy

  One day when Monsieur Sorbonne came home uncharacteristically early from work—he had finished a portion of his exhibition plan and designs and decided to come home in time to take Mademoiselle Objet out to dinner—he found her, hands scratched raw and herself in a puddle of tears, sitting on a chair in the kitchen. So distraught was she that neither his coming home, his hello, nor his coming-home kisses seemed to be able to brighten her spirits.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. But she didn’t answer. She just scratched her hands.

  “You’ve got to do something,” he said, finally. “You can’t just keep scratching yourself to the bone.”

  “But there’s nothing to do. It’s all done!” she said, pouting. She was a crank—he could see it. She was using her two scratched-up hands like two combs, running them fretfully back and forth through her hair. “You think that I can just sit here for hours while you’re at that ridiculous museum deciding whether to put sackcloth or velvet behind your stupid Etruscan ruins!”

  “No, I don’t. Not at all,” said Monsieur Sorbonne, trying somewhat haphazardly to console her. But Mademoiselle Objet, still scratching, and now even more in a state, went on.

  “You’re off fiddling with pot shards while I just sit here all day alone, no more pot shards to sort, no things to arrange, no items whatsoever any more to organize. You don’t understand! You’re busy, but I’m here with NOTHING …”—and here her voice hit a high-pitched range the likes of which Monsieur Sorbonne’s ears had never before entertained—“TO DO! Of course I’m scratching my hands! There is NOTHING! NOTHING! NOTHING left for me to do!”

  And here she let out a howl that was so high-pitched and piercing that Monsieur Sorbonne was frankly terrified. She had really gone round the bend, he was thinking, and he wondered what, if anything, he could do for her and if—or how—he could survive himself.

  “And FURTHERMORE!” she screamed—she was a race car now, careening out of control down a hairpin curve on a mountain road, about to go over the edge—“YOU haven’t done a thing around here! You haven’t even taken that film with all those photographs you took of me a thousand weeks ago to be developed!” And with that she picked up the little metal film canister that she had placed in a prominent location on the kitchen counter and hurled it in his direction. Then, grabbing a sweater and her purse, she stormed out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.

  CHAPTER 8

  Monsieur Sorbonne Is in Shock

  Monsieur Sorbonne was in shock. This all reminded him of something. The feeling he was having, that just being himself could be all wrong for somebody else, reminded him of being somehow too wrong to be kept by his mother and father, and of being, as a consequence, shipped off to live with his uncle and aunt.

  He felt once again not good enough—to belong anywhere, to be chosen, or kept or loved just as himself by anyone at all. He felt wrong somehow now for working, just as in the past when he was a child, he had felt wrong simply for being born.

  Tears fell from his eyes. He was sad, heartbroken, really. He loved Mademoiselle Objet, but her outburst had terrified him. He felt helpless, devastated in the face of it, and wondered how or if he could win back her heart or bring her to peace.

  Quaking like a sycamore leaf in the wind, he picked up the small metal canister, tucked it in his left jacket pocket next to his red silk handkerchief, and went out to get the photographs, belatedly, developed.

  CHAPTER 9

  Mademoiselle Objet Is in Shock

  Mademoiselle Objet was in her own kind of shock when, desperate, she hit the streets. She had done it again, the terrible thing. The words had come flooding into her brain like a venom, and like an artillery of poison darts, she had just hurled them. Having done so, she now felt a kind of relief. The pent-up everything had been released and she had regained a kind of equilibrium; but what, oh what, she wondered, had her outburst done to Monsieur Sorbonne?

  As if that weren’t enough, her hands were driving her wild. Her outburst had brought on another onslaught of the rash, and, after slamming the door, she had started to scratch as if there would be no tomorrow.

  What could she do?! If only there was a cure, an object with which she could quiet her brain, so that no matter how distraught she became, she wouldn’t explode. If only she could somehow desist the ruinous scratching of her hands.

  Thinking this, she suddenly thought of Madame Métier, the woman she had seen first at the Flower Vendor’s Stand and then with Monsieur Sorbonne on their hotel room TV. Perhaps she could help, with those cremes she’d been talking about. Believing some good would come of it, Mademoiselle Objet determined to somehow find her.

  CHAPTER 10

  Madame Métier Hears a Knock at the Door

  Madame Métier was already in her dressing gown (a white silk robe printed over with lovely red roses) when she heard a knock at the door. She had tried all day to make some sense of her room, and, in spite of the beneficent presence of the shell, the pink bowl of which she had filled with the petals of various roses, she had accomplished almost nothing.

  There had been several phone calls, orders for cremes from persons who had seen her on TV. These she had somehow managed to fill: calendula/saxifrage creme for the deeply-burned hand of a three-year-old who, enchanted by the flickering flames, had put her hand in the fire; lemon/aster creme for a mother whose temper flared at dinner time; lily/violet creme for a girl whose heart had been broken when her fiancé had jilted her.

  To each of these, she had added a note. She had found some old tissue paper and wrapped all the jars, then crumpled outdated newspapers and new magazines and put each creme with its letter into one of the cardboard boxes she had ordered for this purpose.

  She was about to seal up the boxes and mail them all off when she discovered that she could find neither her packing tape nor her scissors. She looked at length, rustling through frond and leaf and petal piles, but the scissors and tape were both exactly nowhere to be found.

  Defeated, she had decided to make herself a tea. She had just settled into the white wicker chair by the window to read a fashion magazine and had started perusing the new lingerie, when, most unexpectedly, she heard a knock at the door.

  With a red silk rope, she sashed up her robe and started down the stairs.

  CHAPTER 11

  Mademoiselle Objet Is Impatient

  Thinking that no one was home and that, once again, her worst fears were about to come true, Mademoiselle Objet pounded fiercely one final time on Madame Metier’s door. Which instantly opened.

  “How can I help you?” asked Madame Métier. Her voice was steady, a pillar of calm in contrast to the imperious staccato of Mademoiselle Objet’s somewhat desperate door-pounding. In person and at close range, she was much taller than Mademoiselle Objet had imagined, a woman of stature, queen-like, who had white-blonde hair and very blue eyes. There was a shining about her that made her seem young, but where she had smiled many times she had lines on her face revealing more age.

  “Have you come about the ad?” asked Madame Métier, reaching her hands across the little distance that separated them, and taking Mademoiselle Objet’s really quite ruined hands very gently into her own. “Oh, but of course not,”—she suddenly remembered it had been only last night that she had posted the envelope—the ad could not have already appeared. “It isn’t the ad, then,” she concluded. “So why are you here? How did you find me, and how can I help you?”

  Mademoiselle Objet was instantly calmed by these simplest of questions. “Find you?—I went to the Orphans’ Hospital first because once I saw you there, but no one on the night shift had heard of you or knew your name. So then I went to the flower vendor man, where I also saw you one day, and he told me your name. Then I
called the Phone Informations and asked for your address. I hope you don’t mind.” She withdrew her hands from Madame Métier’s and held them up in the porch light. “I was desperate,” she said. “It’s this horrible, awful, endless, deadly ugly rash.”

  Madame Métier observed them, and taking her by the hand, invited her in. Then pointing the way, she proceeded to guide her up the long flight of stairs to her workroom. “You’ll have to pardon the mess,” she said, as she situated Mademoiselle Objet on the couch, “but it’s out of my control.”

  Mademoiselle Objet could scarcely believe her eyes. This room was an outright disaster, or, depending on how you looked at it, a veritable feast. Never once in her entire life of setting things straight had she ever beheld such a maelstrom of things out of place. These items all were interesting and difficult and strange—a world-class challenge, she thought, getting those petals and fronds boxed up, controlling those strewn-around cardboards and boxes for packing. Her hands were itching, as it were, to get to work.

  “So let’s have a look at these hands,” said Madame Métier, and, taking the young woman’s hands very tenderly into her own, she half-closed her eyes as if with some far inner vision the more clearly to perceive them, and thus ascertain what exactly was causing the problem. She lifted each one of them, smoothing them both, top sides and palms with her palms. Then she paused, held them both still for a moment, and looked out the window.

  “You have such pretty hands,” she said to Mademoiselle Objet finally. “But you’re mean to them. And you’re mean to yourself in some other ways. And I think,” she said, pausing and now even more slowly rubbing Mademoiselle Objet’s hands as if like a genie in a bottle they might offer up a message, “you were mean today to somebody else.”

  “I was,” said Mademoiselle Objet, who now, across from Madame Métier was quietly sobbing. “You’re right, I was terribly mean, and now of course I regret it. I screamed and yelled at the one I most love. About something—right now I can’t even remember what. But I was terrible. I screamed and I even threw something at him, and then I slammed the door and ran out. And now I’m so sorry. I’m horrified, but I don’t know what I can do—how I can fix it. Which of course I want to.”

  Beside her, Madame Métier was in a sort of half-trance. Like a reader of the Tarot, she was turning Mademoiselle Objet’s hands over and over like the backs and fronts of fortune cards, studying them one at a time, topside and under, palms and tops, nail petal surfaces, smooth tips of fingers underneath.

  “Your hands aren’t happy right now, with what you’re giving them to do. They like intricate work, and you’ve insulted them. They feel ignored, degraded, and forgotten. But I will give you some cremes to make them feel better—and help them remember the wonderful tasks they would so much prefer to do.”

  So saying, she let go of Mademoiselle Objet’s hands, and passing her own hands very softly across them one final time, she stood up and went to her table and picked out two small jars of cremes. “This one is for healing your hands,” she said, offering Mademoiselle Objet a small white glass jar, “and this one,” —she handed her a small translucent blue glass jar—“is for the man—the one you most love. Tonight, before he goes to sleep, have him rub just a little under his eyes, so in the morning he can see you differently.”

  With that she stood up and started down the stairs. Mesmerized, Mademoiselle Objet followed her. “How much do I owe you?” she asked, when she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Nothing,” said Madame Métier. “Today’s consultation is free. These are still experimental cremes. But someday,” she laughed, a tinkling and delightful laugh, “you can help me clean up my room.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Monsieur Sorbonne Contemplates Certain Things

  Monsieur Sorbonne left the house and, after dropping the film tin off at the Films Development Store, went out for a walk. He wanted to think things over; he needed to recompose himself.

  Mademoiselle Objet’s high decibel performances were very troublesome indeed. They scared him half to death. He wondered if they would improve or worsen over time. Had the enchanting Ms. Hyde become a Mademoiselle Jekyll overnight, and would she go on forever changing back and forth? That was the question, and yet, in spite of the question, she did have a point. He had been gone long hours at the Artifacts Museum; she had run out of things at home to arrange and rearrange, and her rash was truly irksome. Thinking about it now he realized in fact that it was more than merely irksome. It was frightening. Scratching it as she did, she was ruining her pretty hands.

  And what about him? Why did he stay so long afterhours at the Artifacts Museum? Did he love it, sorting out pot shards? No. Did he love it, designing backdrops for plus-ancient things? Not particularly.

  He realized, as he contemplated it now, that he stayed so long at his work because he hoped that by staying so late, his work would start to have meaning. It hadn’t, though, come to have any meaning. It had just taken up time and saddened and frightened Mademoiselle Objet with his absence. It was paying the bills, that was all. It did nothing for his spirit. Was it possible, he wondered, ever to have a work that had meaning, that nourished your spirit, that gave you the sense that your life had a purpose? Or would work always be only work—the thing you did to pay the rent, to buy the clothes, the food, and all the distractions from work that enabled you to go on working?

  Contemplating all this got Monsieur Sorbonne somewhat riled up, and, stopping at a Coffee Restaurant, he sat down at a small corner table and ordered a large cafe creme and a chocolate charlotte.

  On the table next to him lay the first edition of the evening news. Fingering through it while waiting for his mini-repast to be served, he stumbled upon an ad:

  Organizer of objects, chaoses, and mélanges.

  Office magician needed. Desperately. And at once.

  It was odd, the ad, he thought, but it seemed perfect for Mademoiselle Objet, and after he picked up the film, he would carry it home.

  CHAPTER 13

  Mademoiselle Objet Is Penitent

  When Mademoiselle Objet got home she was very penitent indeed. She was glad beyond words that she had found Madame Métier and that she had obtained the medicinal cremes, for although it was only minutes ago that she had administered the premier application of the creme, her hands seemed already to have somewhat improved.

  Just the same, she was still feeling bad about how she had treated Monsieur Sorbonne. Her explosions frightened her. They seemed to come up out of nowhere and she always wondered if this time she had gone too far. When would she cross the small invisible line in his heart, the point from which he couldn’t recover, and what could she possibly do to recompense him for her tirades? Worrying thus, she heard the turn of his key in the lock.

  She was so overjoyed to hear it, that at once she raced to the door and threw her arms around him. “I’m so sorry, sorry, sorry” she said, “for everything! You know how I am—I get to a point and then I just go over the bend. I’m so sorry!” she said once again, but before he could get a word in edgewise, she pressed on … “But I did go and find that Métier woman. I got us both some medicine. Mine’s already working and yours …”

  “Settle down,” said Monsieur Sorbonne. Her apologetic hysteria was almost (but not quite) as hard to take as all her violent volcanoes of anger. “That’s enough,” he said, and he sat her down on a chair. “Let’s start all over. I’m glad you’re sorry. Thank you. I do hate the way you carry on—frankly, it scares me to death. But I also need to apologize. I have been gone too much and you do need some things to arrange. So here,” he said. “Look at this,” and, kissing her on the forehead, he handed her the newspaper with the curious ad.

  CHAPTER 14

  Mademoiselle Objet Speaks with Madame Métier

  Mademoiselle Objet slept peacefully next to Monsieur Sorbonne, who also slept peacefully after dabbing the special creme under his eyes. In the morning they had a nice breakfast of teacakes and tea, and
afterward, when Monsieur Sorbonne had departed for the Artifacts Museum, Mademoiselle Objet rang up the number in the ad.

  “How can I help you?” asked Madame Métier on the other end of the line.

  “No, you don’t understand,” said Mademoiselle Objet, who was astonished to discover that it was Madame Métier who had answered the phone. “I’m calling to help you. I’m answering your ad. For an organizer of objects, an arranger of items. It’s me, Mademoiselle Objet. I was there with you with my scratched-up hands just yesterday.”

  “How wonderful and odd,” said Madame Métier. “How amusing and delightful, and how fortunate it’s you. Then you certainly don’t need me to explain. You’ve already seen it. You saw it all yesterday.” She laughed the lovely, smooth, flutey musical laugh that Mademoiselle Objet had heard first yesterday, and which had already started to carry in her heart the sweet faint joy of a small familiarity.

  “Can I come right now?” asked the enthusiastic Mademoiselle Objet.

  At the other end of the phone, Madame Métier distinctly paused. She was suddenly wary. There would be plenty of time to “make order” as her mother had always called it. There would be days and weeks and years of tidying up, she could feel it. Thinking of this she felt suddenly sad, as if somewhere inside she knew that an era was ending, that soon she would have to become more focused on her work. She wanted one more high-noon picnic on the beach.

  “Not now. Not just yet,” she bargained. “I have an important appointment at noon. Come tomorrow at nine.”

  “No, not tomorrow!” said Mademoiselle Objet. “Today! Let’s start today. I’m already ready. Besides, I’ve seen your room. I want to get going!”