“So I want to thank you, ever so much and so dearly,” Madame Métier said finally, patting Mademoiselle Objet’s hands one final time and then releasing them, “for all you do for me.” She laughed a little, tinklingly. “And the plants thank you, too. For so long, I believe, they have wanted to be recognized for their mysterious healing properties.”
Mademoiselle Objet was scarcely able to hear this. Her hands now felt strangely alive and tinglingly warm. In fact, when she looked down at them, they were no longer scratched up and raw, but perfectly smooth, and she herself felt mysteriously calm. She wondered what had just happened; but when she looked at Madame Métier once again, she was just sitting there across from her at the kitchen table, her white-blonde hair nicely framing her face, her hand on the loop of the teacup looking exactly, precisely and only, like herself.
Mademoiselle Objet was confused. Had the light cloud not happened? Had her hands not only moments ago been in ruins? Had she not felt the mysterious tingling in her hands, and were her scratched-up hands now not once again restored to perfection? In uncharacteristic silence, she finished her tea. Then, looking across at Madame Métier, she found herself wondering for a moment if perhaps it wasn’t the plants, but Madame Métier herself who had the mysterious healing properties.
CHAPTER 2
Madame Métier Is Encouraged
As time went on, Madame Métier felt an overflowing sense of joy about her work, and feeling her own good fortune reminded her, in contrast, of the wired-up young man in her father’s hospital room. It had been weeks now since she had seen him. She had been so engrossed in her work, with the training and acclimatization of Mademoiselle Objet, that she had all but forgotten about him. Or, feeling the hopelessness of his situation, had she quite intentionally put him out of her mind?
Thinking of him suddenly and sadly one early morning when she was buying calla lilies at the Flower Vendor’s Stand, she decided to stop by and see him—if indeed he was still there.
Walking down the hospital halls toward room 5244 and carrying the stately calla lilies, Madame Métier felt suddenly bereft, sensing that she had arrived too late to say a final farewell and instead, had come here to mourn him. When she approached she saw that the door to his room stood open, but when she looked inside, the room itself was empty. The green shades were drawn half-down and, in the empty room, on the empty bed, pillowless, but freshly made, the white sheets had been stretched so tight that for a moment the bed looked like a catafalque.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. As if it were his grave, she laid the calla lilies down across the foot of the bed. Then, shaken, she left the room and started down the hall.
“Can I help you, Madam?” asked the nurse who was standing at the door.
“No, thank you,” said Madame Métier.
“Were you looking for someone?” the nurse persisted.
“Not exactly. Although there was someone … she turned backward, pointing to the empty room.
“Ah yes, 5244. Now I remember you,” said the nurse. “You did look familiar. The young man … you used to visit him. He’s gone. His parents came and took him away.”
The minute she heard the words, Madame Métier could see that for several weeks now, she had been expecting the news—that they had finally pulled out the plugs. What a mercy it was in the end—such an ordeal. He’d been trapped in his body so long.
“Yes, most remarkable,” said the nurse, interrupting. “They took him home two weeks ago. In fact, just a few days after you saw him, he started to open his eyes. And then he began to speak again. It was quite miraculous, really. The doctors were amazed.”
“So now he’s at home?” Madame Métier was incredulous.
“Yes, and doing quite well, so we hear. Up and even starting to walk. It really is a miracle.”
“Thank you,” said Madame Métier, and feeling an eclectic mixture of joy, uneasiness, and sorrow, she walked back into the room. Then, retrieving the calla lilies from the bed, she closed the door and started for home.
CHAPTER 3
Madame Métier Goes Home
When she got back to her workroom, calla lilies in hand, the morning was more than half over. Mademoiselle Objet, who had been there alone, had everything perfectly organized—the table, the jars on the table, the fronds, the pink phone call memos, to say nothing of a tidy stack of orders and miscellaneous items to be attended to.
“Look at the beautiful flowers! Those are incredible!” said Mademoiselle Objet, getting up from her chair, walking across the room and, with her pretty fingers, examining the edges of the stately calla lilies, which, like a scepter, Madame Métier was holding.“What are they? They’re gorgeous. What do they cure? Do you have a recipe for them? Are you going to make a new creme? If you are, they’d be perfect for the TeleVisions show.”
“They are calla lilies,” said Madame Métier, slightly overwhelmed by this barrage. “As to their healing properties, I’m not quite sure yet what they’re meant to cure. But I do know this—that they are the symbol of resurrection.”
“Well, forget resurrection,” said Mademoiselle Objet. “Put them in water. We’ve got a lot of work to do, answering all this fan mail. And isn’t it wonderful,” she said, “we have fourteen fan letters today! Everyone loves the new cremes. There were four letters on the rosebud creme alone. I’m so excited! I just love it! I’m so happy to be working here. I feel like we’re doing something important. Those people who came here last week, those five To-Be-Seens, every one of them has already written to say that all their symptoms are gone, that their pain has been relieved. Isn’t it wonderful!?” she said, emphatically again.
Madame Métier was somewhat overcome by all this effusive expressiveness. There were times, she thought, when Mademoiselle Objet’s excitable aspects far more than outweighed her orderliness talents. Her excessive enthusiasm seemed, at times, quite overbearing, and especially now, when she herself felt confused. “I’m going to put these flowers in water,” she said, and walking across the hall to her bedroom, installed the lilies in a crystal vase which she set to one side of the mirror on the white chest of drawers. Then she sat down for a moment on the northeast corner of her bed.
She was still caught up with the strange scene at the hospital. Room 5244. She felt foolish. She had, in effect, gone to wish the young man a good death. And then he hadn’t died. After she had given up hope, the doctors and all those machines had effected a most remarkable cure. He was, if not entirely well now, certainly improved. Medical science had cured him.
Madame Métier was distraught. What, after all, was the point of her cremes? No one and nothing, it seemed, could hold a candle to the metallic wonders of modern medicine. Could a calendula creme hold its own against a respiration machine? Could a blessed thistle tea pull rank on a plastic feeding tube? He’d been getting better all along! And she’d been too stupid, too fixated on her cremes to even recognize it.
What a fool she was, to have ever imagined that cremes, in themselves, could actually heal anyone. Only medical science could do that. Her cremes were a topical ointment at best, and she an old-fashioned eccentric, enthralled by her father’s botanical legacy, making cremes for her own esoteric enjoyment.
Having train-wrecked her mind with these harsh disparaging thoughts, she returned to the workroom, reeling.
Never had Mademoiselle Objet seen Madame Métier in quite such a mentally disheveled state. For the first time ever her mind seemed to be in the same sort of terrible disarray that her worktable always was. “What’s happened? What’s the matter with you!?” she asked.
Madame Métier pulled up the blue embroidered hassock and told Mademoiselle Objet the story—how she had found the young man, how he had been supposed to die, how they were going to pull out the plugs, how several times she had sat there with him, how she had put her hands on his forehead, how she had taken his hands into hers and told him good-bye, how weeks had passed, and how today, when she went again to see him, he was already g
one. Not dead, but whole, healed and alive. How medical science had cured him.
Mademoiselle Objet, somewhat transfixed by Madame Métier’s long accounting, the mellifluous lovely sound of her voice, though still listening, was twirling a tiger lily petal on the table with her index finger.
“I’m having a crisis of faith,” Madame Métier concluded. “I feel as if everything that I’ve done—that I’m doing—is a total waste of time.”
“That’s not true,” said Mademoiselle Objet. “I’m sure you had some effect. In fact, you’re probably the reason why he’s still alive.” Then, as if she herself had unwittingly stumbled on something, she added, “You did it. Don’t you see! You did it. You healed him!”
“No, I do not see,” said Madame Métier. “And I did not. How could I have possibly healed him? Why, I didn’t even bring in my cremes. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I never even applied to him any cremes of any sort. I administered no healing. I just sat there beside him, and sang him a song.”
“Well, I see I can’t convince you,” said Mademoiselle Objet, “so let’s at least answer these letters.” She picked up the pile of fan letters. But Madame Métier had not the slightest interest. She sat on her blue embroidered hassock with a sad look in her eyes, in her mind running over the story of the dying-now-alive young man.
Madamemoiselle Objet looked at Madame Métier, who sat motionless on her hassock, her face as still as a looking glass. Finally, she said, “Well, I see that it’s hopeless trying to get you to do any work. You’re lost in your crisis of faith. You’re useless. Why don’t you just go to the beach and have an adventure?” she said a little cattily. “I’m going home.” And with that, she put the tiger lily petal back in the dried petal box and picked up her purse.
“By the way,” she said, finally heading for the stairs, “it isn’t your stupid cremes that heal. It’s you! Haven’t you figured that out yet? It’s you!—your presence—that heals everyone.”
CHAPTER 4
Madame Métier Goes to The Beach
Madame Métier was upset. She was upset that she hadn’t been able to work. She was upset by Mademoiselle Objet’s upsetness, and even more that she had been the instrument of it and had caused her to go home. She was upset by the disappearance of the young man—to whom, if he was going to live after all, she would have wished to say good-bye. She was upset because, in view of the undeniable powers of modern medicine, she had to rethink in detail what she was doing with her cremes. And she was upset because Mademoiselle Objet had had a fit, maligned her cremes, and then had the absurd audacity to suggest that she herself might have something to do with the process of healing.
She put on her red bathing suit, and with only a bottle of crystals water and the small notebook in which, when things were troubling her, she sorted her feelings out, she headed for the beach.
It was already past noon. The sun had passed through its middle arc, and as she settled herself at the rock, she felt a vague sense of defeat, that old “square-one feeling” as she called it, the sensation of having, in medias res, to review a situation in its whole entirety, and then, once having reviewed it, perhaps having to start over … at square one.
Acknowledging this in itself brought a certain measure of relief. She opened her notebook, drew a large square and labeled it Square One. Then she made a few notes. Having reviewed her crisis of faith, she felt oddly renewed, as if she could either go on—or not—with her cremes. “To begin again,” she wrote, in conclusion, “is a process of expansion, an act of faith.” Then she drew a cheerful, almost exuberant arrow and beneath it wrote the words: “Now Anything is Possible.”
Having thus righted herself, she closed her notebook, and, putting it into her basket, which she then hid in a cave in the rocks, she went for a walk down the beach. It was amazing, wasn’t it, how looking at something directly, facing it and writing it down, could have so salubrious an effect. She felt free. Life was generous and kind. It would give her whatever she needed—more work with her cremes, or something entirely different. The sky was a luminous radiant blue, billow-spattered with clouds of translucent white. The sun warmed her body like a promise as, now feeling peaceful, she walked along.
Strolling thus, she felt a hand on her shoulder. “You look very beautiful as you walk,” said a voice that by now was somewhat familiar. “Do you mind if I walk a while with you?”
It was the angel young man who had come up beside her.
“Of course not,” she said. “In fact, it would be nice to have your company. Where did you come from?”
“I’ve been walking behind you for about a mile, but you were so lost in thought, or in something, that you didn’t notice.”
His footfalls, barefoot and quiet in the sand, repeated exactly her own. With his left hand he took hold of her right, and for a while, wordlessly, they walked on.
“This crisis that you think you’re in,” he said finally, as a warm breeze enfolded them both, “you don’t have to change things. It isn’t a crisis that calls for revisions. It’s just another picture, a side-view confirmation of what you’re doing.
“Until now you haven’t had to decide if you really believe in your work. This was the first, how shall I call it? Opportunity to believe. Someday there will be others. To make your work more deep and true.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, yet there was a powerful sincerity to what he had expressed.
“Thank you,” she said, “for telling me.”
“Thank you,” he said, “for listening so deeply.”
He squeezed her hand tightly, then let it go, and, turning to face her—his back to the rock wall alongside the beach, her back to the sea, the sunlight a luminous shimmering curtain between them—he looked into her eyes. Then reaching his arms out toward her he gathered her into a strong, encompassing embrace, and softly, knowingly, kissed her.
“I need to go now,” he whispered. Then he turned, and with long, loping, beautiful strides, he walked away down the beach.
CHAPTER 5
Mademoiselle Objet Has a Crisis of Faith
When Monsieur Sorbonne came home, Mademoiselle Objet, who had made herself a cup of tea, was sitting on the couch and desperately scratching her hands where, once again, her vicious rash had started to appear.
He was shocked, he had to admit, for, so long as she had been in Madame Métier’s employ, her rash had been nonexistent. But before he could even inquire as to what was going on, she started telling him all about Madame Métier, how she had come in late to the workroom, calla lilies in hand—“a symbol of resurrection,” she said cattily—and then instead of working had had what amounted to a breakdown.
“She wants me to help her. Her workroom would be a total disaster without me, and now, just when things are starting to happen, she decides to have ‘a crisis of faith.’ There are millions of phone calls, a million fan letters, a million people who want to be seen, and she decides to have doubts about what she’s doing. I just can’t handle it!” she said, giving her hand a cat-like clawing for emphasis—or relief. “I count on her to be calm,” she went on, now veritably almost tearing at her own flesh. “But she’s eccentric! Distractable! And Difficult! And full of doubts! She’s impossible to work for, and I never want to see her again!”
Here, thought Monsieur Sorbonne, Mademoiselle Objet had finally gone ’round the bend. Not only was he overwhelmed by her outburst, he was also, he had to admit, distinctly troubled to hear this news of Madame Métier, who, from even his secondhand proximal position, he counted on to be calm, and therefore to calm Mademoiselle Objet. He prepared her a fresh cup of chamomile tea, plumped up the pillows on the bed, insisted her into it, and, handing her one of her poems books, left her there to prepare himself some dinner. Not long after, although it was still early in the evening, she drifted off to sleep.
Having finished his dinner, Monsieur sat down to read an artifacts magazine; but he was distracted by Mademoiselle Objet’s condition
. One’s work, as he knew all too well, could be a diabolical thing. One did it, he knew, in hopes of achieving some small sense of purpose. In working for Madame Métier, Mademoiselle Objet had magically done that; but today, when it hadn’t gone well, she was left with a sense of hopelessness, futility, really; and that was scary. He understood for a minute how people could work at jobs that had no meaning. If there was no meaning to have, there was no meaning to lose.
He was concerned about Mademoiselle Objet’s pretty hands. If Madame Métier couldn’t heal them, who could? And if, in her presence, they started their plummeting descent to ruin, who knows what could happen? He was miffed, he had to admit, at this seemingly unstable, definitely eccentric Madame Métier. Taking matters into his own hands, he decided to go to her house and have some words with her.
CHAPTER 6
Madame Métier Contemplates The Kiss
Madame Métier herself felt very tingly and delicious when she got home from the beach. It was amazing how, in the course of a day, so many things could occur, how she could have a crisis of faith, offend her employee, accomplish no work, come to terms with herself, be told some mysterious things by a stranger and, quite unexpectedly … get kissed.
Contemplating all this as she pulled on her spattered-with-red-roses white silk dressing gown, a soft little smile began to tango its way across her lips. He had actually kissed her, this angel young man with the round, blue, beautiful eyes, and his kiss had called back to her certain things about her womanly self, which, while she had been so occupied with her cremes, she had all but forgotten.
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