In the midst of this, her newly acquired ability to focus, she was able, with Mademoiselle Objet’s assistance, to lay out an entire plan for the TeleVisions station, a series on the magical properties of plants. “We shouldn’t perhaps call it ‘magical,’” she said. “Someone might misunderstand. We should call it simply the ‘healing properties of plants.’” And so, not long after her program introducing the calla lily creme, she started filming a ten-part series on medicinal flowers.
Meanwhile, orders for all the original cremes kept flooding in. From time to time she still made visits to the Orphans’ Hospital. She had also started making speeches, to a variety of groups, about the healing power of plants and their electric energy and how to extract the power of light from living botanical foods.
In all she did, she now seemed more quietly, insistently radiant at the center. Day by day she had become surprisingly efficient; and Mademoiselle Objet, in her presence, had become remarkably calm. It was less interesting, less dramatic to be sure, the way they now passed the days, but to Mademoiselle Objet, it was heaven. She could now endlessly bathe in Madame Métier’s luminous presence, and she sensed that for Madame Métier, too, these days held a special magic.
“You’re happy, too, aren’t you?” she asked Madame Métier one afternoon, when as usual, after work they were sitting together and drinking tea.
“Yes. I am,” said Madame Métier dreamily, looking out the window. “I have always been happy by virtue of the miracle of having been chosen to be alive. And I have always been grateful for my work, for this exquisite relationship with the spirits of plants. I’ve been happy—in spite of our sometimes misfits of the past—that you’ve been here to help me so long. But I’m happy now because now I also have love.”
She stumbled a little as she said this, was aware of the tiniest clattering of her pale-blue teacup against its pale-blue saucer. Uncharacteristically, Mademoiselle Objet said nothing. In the pale-violet light of the late afternoon she waited, leaving a space in the air should Madame Métier choose once again to occupy it with words.
“I’m so fortunate,” Madame Métier went on, “to now finally, also, be loved as a woman.” She wasn’t sure whether, once having made this disclosure, she wanted to say more or if she preferred simply to let it stand as it was, a fact that was also a mystery, without elaboration.
“I’m in love,” she said finally, setting her teacup down like a period at the end of a sentence.
Once again, Mademoiselle Objet said nothing; then finally she couldn’t resist. She knew that Madame Métier had once been married to a handsome doctor, and her curiosity got the best of her. “You weren’t in love when you were married?” she asked.
“No,” said Madame Métier. She looked out the window, drifting. “I was young,” she said, “very young. I married for the wrong reasons. As you perhaps know, marriage just in itself isn’t always a guarantee of love. It’s a habit of the human condition, a way we have to go about living—and sometimes, for the fortunate few, it is also about love.”
She paused. She felt revealed in saying all this, like an open sardine tin with all its silvery contents exposed. She wondered, in fact, just why she was saying all this. Was she saying it for herself or of Mademoiselle Objet? She didn’t know. And yet she felt open, willing to speak for some reason, like a person, merely, a woman with a woman’s life, not as a maker of cremes; and it was from this new, this unfamiliar and vulnerable place, that she was choosing to say all these things.
“Personal love … that’s what I’ve never had,” she said, finally. “Love in the body. The love of a man for a woman.”
She listened to what she was saying. Each sentence seemed like a statement from a billboard, so bold, so huge was its message. She could feel the great silent complexities that each of her sentences contained, and yet she felt utterly unable to elaborate. Her skin sang. Her heart was full. That was all she knew at the moment. Finally, she said simply, “Thank you for asking. Yes, I am very happy.”
CHAPTER 10
Madame Métier and Monsieur L’Ange Are Surprised
They spent many days and nights together, Madame Métier and Monsieur L’Ange. Days walking, late afternoons in twilight, strolling along the white beach where first they had met, stopping sometimes at sunset to have a small picnic or go out to dinner. And it was one afternoon at the beach, her broad-brimmed straw hat protecting her from the sun, the two of them sitting against a rock (the very rock she realized, against which she had been sitting when Monsieur L’Ange had first appeared through the silver mists in the distance), that once again in the distance, through mist, Madame Métier could see a figure approaching.
It seemed, as she watched, almost as if Monsieur L’Ange had doubled himself, so reminiscent was it of their first meeting, almost as if, while sitting here at her side, he was also simultaneously approaching. But the person who now approached, though familiar, was not, of course, him.
“You look so beautiful sitting there together,” said Monsieur Sorbonne. “I hope you don’t mind if I should take your photograph. Actually,” he confessed, “I already have. But now I’m asking permission—to take another, or several more, if you don’t mind.”
“Thank you. That would be lovely. Please do,” said Monsieur L’Ange. “Your timing couldn’t be better.” Beside her now, he stood up, and when he held out his hand, she stood up beside him. As she did, her beautiful hat brushed his shoulder, going suddenly askew and revealing her face.
Seeing it was Madame Métier whom he had just photographed and seeing the young man beside her, Monsieur Sorbonne felt a red prickle of embarrassment start climbing up his neck, as if untimely, he had discovered her secret.
Seeing her now in this young man’s presence, he felt not only embarrassed, but, he had to admit—could it be?—a tiny bit jealous. As he observed her, wrapped in another man’s arms, he realized how deeply he was connected to her, not only through Mademoiselle Objet, nor even through all the changes that had come over him when he photographed her. As he saw her here, being so tenderly embraced, he realized that he, too, though differently, so deeply loved Madame Métier.
Allowing himself to feel his great love, his jealousy dissipated, and he allowed himself to appreciate them, man and woman together as the embodied image of love. As in the past when he had been so singularly transfixed by Madame Métier, he was now transfixed by the pair, the duo, the double, the blue-eyed almost angelic lightness that resided in both of them, how each was so perfectly the complement of the other. “If you don’t mind, then,” he said, “I’ll take a few more photographs.”
“That would be lovely,” said Madame Métier.
Pausing, breath-taken, in front of them now, he invited them, majestically and deeply, to invade the wisdom of his film. Holding the camera box, snap-snapping, he could feel their spirits imprinting themselves, like the shape of two ghosts in a darkened hallway, on the retina of his camera’s eye.
“Thank you,” he said, when he finished. “And now I will leave you to your evening.” Behind him, orange, violet, and pink, the sun fell magnificently down, and turning to leave the lovers behind, Monsieur Sorbonne walked quietly on.
CHAPTER 11
Madame Métier and Monsieur L’Ange Return Home
Having been thus photographed, and having packed up the crumbs of their picnic, Madame Métier and Monsieur L’Ange walked down the beach in the early dark of the summer evening. Madame Métier had always liked it, walking with him. For although he was much taller than she, their legs were of exactly the same length, and as they walked, their hip joints matched up joint to joint, in a way that made her feel protected and connected, very similar to him. This gave her a feeling of ease, of grace, as if even in his stride, she had found her perfect reflection.
When they came into the house, she made them some tea and brought it up to the bedroom. It was a soft, very warm summer evening and in the bedroom, already, Monsieur L’Ange had opened the windows. Somewhere, not f
ar in the distance, someone was having a garden party, a wedding reception, perhaps, and Madame Métier could hear the faint sounds of the music, the traces, ever so elegantly, on the evening air, of a song, the words of which she faintly remembered.
It was a song about angels and heaven and remembering forever, and she started singing it out in a whisper, and presently he joined her.
“You know that song?” she asked him finally.
“Yes,” he said, “I’ve always loved it. And I will remember you.”
Madame Métier was slightly taken aback when he said that. The summer had been so long and sweet, so peaceful and graceful, and she had grown so accustomed to waking with him in the morning, sleeping beside him at night, that she had forgotten that he was under a sentence.
“Do we have to think about that?” she said sharply.
“We don’t have to,” he said, brushing his fingers across her lips and kissing her. Then, with the notes of the music floating in on the warm evening air, he unveiled her, layer by layer, until she lay there, her whole pale, petalled self before him.
And when he made love to her then, she could see—not his face in the room, but his form in light, and around him many beings of light. She could see, too, that he spoke to them, almost without words. Then, vaguely, she saw that he introduced them to someone—a woman? herself?—and she saw that they were glad when he did. It was beautiful there, the peace of it beyond anything she had ever seen or felt or imagined; and when she returned to the room, to the bed, and Monsieur L’Ange, he was already asleep beside her.
But she could not sleep. She knew she had seen where he would go, where she herself would one day go. She felt deeply blessed that she had been given to see it, but she lay fitfully awake all night, receiving again its unimaginable beauty, and falling only at sunrise, finally, to sleep.
CHAPTER 12
Mademoiselle Objet, Having Changed, Has a Relapse
Mademoiselle Objet was once again in a huff and Madame Métier was once again late, very late, coming in to the workroom. Sometimes it seemed like nothing did, after all, really change. Madame Métier had had little epochs of organized-ness—it had actually been almost two months now, sans relapse, that she had worked. But then she would start disappearing again in her red bathing suit, or showing up late to the workroom after staying up way too late with that man—whoever he was.
Given all that, Mademoiselle Objet, herself, was capable of a relapse. Here she was once again, self-focused, self-centered, judgmental, the whole nineteen yards, tap-tapping her pencil on the table, feeling her rash, her demeanor beginning to verge on hysterical. It was amazing, wasn’t it, she was thinking, how you could come so far, only to discover, in an odd moment or two, that in fact you had traveled no distance at all. It made her angry, furious, really, that her own condition seemed still to be so contingent on this eccentric teenaged middle-aged woman.
Desperate, she opened a jar of sunflower creme and applied it to her hands with exactly no result. She tried another, wisteria salve, and as she was wildly, madly applying it, Madame Métier, fully dressed, eyes red and exhausted, walked into the room.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “You look awful! You look like you’ve seen a ghost! Something terrible’s happened! I don’t like this man, whoever he is. He’s scaring you and wearing you out and taking you away from your work. And, frankly, I wish he were dead!”
So saying, she slammed down a huge pot of creme whose white glass jar shattered, leaving a jagged, gooey mess all over the workroom table. She had just started for the door, when, with a sudden uncharacteristic forcefulness, Madame Métier spun her around and seized her by the shoulders.
“You can leave,” she said, “but leaving won’t help, because what you hate, what you resist, what you are trying to escape from is exactly what you need to face.”
“What do you mean?” asked Mademoiselle Objet.
“That what you want is control. And that life cannot be controlled. It has a mind and a heart of its own, and it will have its way with us. And that as long as you try to control it, you’ll miss the point.”
“And what is the point?” said Mademoiselle Objet, with her former usual cattiness.
“To surrender,” said Madame Métier. “To receive what is trying to be given.”
“And when you do, then what?” snapped Mademoiselle Objet.
“Then life will offer up its miracles.”
Across from her, Mademoiselle Objet was silent. She had no idea what Madame Métier was talking about, yet she could feel a dizzying, almost electric current passing through her entire body, and she suddenly knew the truth of it. Finally, Madame Métier said, “You may go now. In fact, I think you should go. But please, I do hope you’ll come back tomorrow.”
“I will,” said Mademoiselle Objet, amazed at herself, and feeling disoriented still by the tingling, strong, strange energy that had just passed through her body, she added, “I certainly will, and I hope that until then you will be all right.”
CHAPTER 13
Monsieur Sorbonne and Mademoiselle Objet Have an Afternoon Tête-à-Tête
Shaken by this latest difficult upset with Madame Métier, Mademoiselle Objet was relieved, when she got home, to see that although it was just after noon, Monsieur Sorbonne was already there. He had taken the afternoon off, he told her, because he couldn’t wait.
“Couldn’t wait for what?” asked Mademoiselle Objet quietly.
“To see the photographs,” he said.
As if she already knew they were special, she sat down at the table and waited for Monsieur Sorbonne to open the large gray envelope.
One by one, he pulled out the prints. In the first, at a distance, a beautiful couple, the woman wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat, in another, two lovers entwined and about to kiss, a picnic spread out before them on the beach.
Apprehending, vaguely, the form of Madame Métier, Mademoiselle Objet felt an immense and overwhelming regret for all the vicious terrible things she had just said. She was stunned, she had to admit, by the haunting similarity between Madame Métier and this angelic looking young man, by the fact that in spite of the really quite obvious difference in their two ages, there was a similarity in their elegance, a mysterious appropriateness to their connection.
“They match,” she said, quietly. “They’re a pair. They belong.” And now, along with feeling ashamed about her most recent terrible unkindness, she felt a faint rush of excitement, a fine, bright happiness for Madame Métier, because clearly she had found someone so perfectly suited to her. She waited almost eagerly now, poised, suffused with a quiet delight, for the further revelations of the photographs.
Monsieur Sorbonne pulled out another. Here they were at close range. Madame Métier had removed her hat and the two of them were looking adoringly at each other, strands of her pale hair blowing out in the breeze and forming a sort of halo around them, although, remarkably, once again, in the black-and-white photograph, their eyes had printed out crystal blue.
Silently taking this in, Mademoiselle Objet said nothing. Hand quivering on the print, Monsieur Sorbonne also said nothing. He turned the print over face-down, exposing another image. Here too, Madame Métier and Monsieur L’Ange were both smiling, lips poised in a half-formed, soon-to-be delivered kiss. Her eyes were still blue, but his—and Monsieur Sorbonne and Mademoiselle Objet both observed this in silence—had faded, gone gray almost to black, and around his hair there had formed a pointillistic mist of light that hovered in a circular cloud above him. Silent, Monsieur Sorbonne turned the image over, then lifted up the final print, which now lay alone on the table.
In this photograph, Madame Métier was herself, as her beautiful self she remained. But to her left, where before Monsieur L’Ange had been, there was now only the faintest pale, shadowy apparition. He, as himself, was no longer there. In place of his face there were only two black holes for his eyes, and around him and above him, pixillated and radiant, was a shimmering circle of
light that spread out beyond him, reaching to the farthest limits of the page.
CHAPTER 14
Madame Métier and Monsieur L’Ange Have Dinner
Wearing a red silk dress and her new emerald-green silk stockings, Madame Métier was sitting in shadow and looking across the table at Monsieur L’Ange where, interestingly, back and forth, light and dark—chiaroscuro—candlelight played across his face.
They had just finished dinner. Madame Métier was tired, and yet she felt happy because of the many events of the day—the debut of her new TeleVisions series, the launching of the new calla lily creme (“the antidote for deep heartbreak”), a peaceful sweet interlude afterward, with Mademoiselle Objet, the bouquet of long-stemmed white roses Monsieur L’Ange had just brought her, the sitting here with him now by candlelight—as if her life at that moment held all the joy it could ever contain.
“I have never been more happy,” she said dreamily. “I will never, ever, be happier than I am at this very moment. I have always, as you know, been happy because of my work—I have seen it always as a gift. But you have given me—how can I say it?—the purest joy of being alive …”
She paused. Could she actually say them—all the beautiful heart-swelling words? “This being with you … in love. It has been so very beautiful—a resurrection of the body, and of all the elegant exquisite feelings in my heart … so tender and sweet and … real. I had never imagined or expected to experience … love I could actually feel.”
She paused, stirring with a small silver spoon her after-dinner cup of tea. “All this beautiful love you have brought me, this feeling of bliss in the body, of just pure joy in the simple moments of being alive, this is why—I suddenly now understand it—this is why we all come to earth.”
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