Chapter 1 #2
Suddenly a door slams in the hallway, causing a teacup to shudder precariously on the table in front of us. I grab for it, but not before it crashes, scattering the tiniest of shards across the recently vacuumed floor.
“Stella?” A confident male voice booms in a smooth and well-mannered British lilt.
“In here, Matthew. I’m just chatting with the cleaning girl.”
“Bonjour, bonjour,” the voice comes again. This time it’s firmly attached to a body striding through the foyer.
It’s not just any body, but one of the more perfect specimens of a body I’ve ever seen, or at least that’s what I would think if I hadn’t firmly sworn off men after what happened with Pascal.
This guy is in his early thirties, so two decades younger than Pascal.
He stands a couple of inches over six feet, which usually turns me off since I’m barely five foot one.
His camel hair overcoat hangs neatly on his arm and he’s wearing the kind of well-tailored suit that only European men, or those who spend a lot of time in Europe, can pull off.
The pants are ever so much tighter around his waist, legs, and ass than their American counterparts.
They fall right at his ankle and the jacket nips in at his trim waist. There’s an actual yellow pocket square in his pocket.
The slight stubble on his tanned cheeks is a direct contrast to how neat and proper the whole outfit is.
“And who do we have here?” He offers me his hand despite the fact that I’ve already been identified as the help. His palm is Oil of Olay soft, his fingernails buffed and shined. Never trust a man with a manicure, Emma. I hear my mother’s voice so clearly in my head.
He picks Madame Swanson up and swings her around like she’s his long-lost lover and they have been reunited after a war. I’m worried he’ll break her.
The woman’s entire demeanor changes in his presence. “This is Matthew, my step-grandson.” She practically giggles as he plunks her back down on the couch.
He shakes his head. “I don’t refer to Stella as step-anything. She’s more my blood than my own mother. I adore this woman. Don’t I?” He gives her a wet kiss on her cheek that causes her face to light up the same way it did when she admired Van Gogh’s blossoms.
“Emma is taking a break from cleaning the floors.” Stella Swanson titters again, patting her knee and indicating that he should sit down. For a moment it’s hard to suppress a smile as I imagine him plopping onto Stella’s lap like a child. He opts for the couch instead.
I stand, cupping the shattered pieces of the teacup in my hand. “Be careful where you walk. I’ll get a broom after I finish the kitchen. And I can be back tomorrow to take care of the linens, madame.”
“I can do it.” Matthew pulls out the pocket square and leans down to wipe up the rest of the tiny shards before handing them to me. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He lights a cigarette. The entire apartment already smells like smoke, much like Pascal’s always had.
“I’m glad you’ve finally found some help,” he says to Stella.
The Swansons are the level of rich that would seem to employ an entire staff, and yet there’s no evidence of anyone besides me working here these days.
“You’re American?” Matthew asks me as I try to sneak out of the room. “What are you doing in Paris?”
He’s clearly the kind of man who can chat up anyone, about anything. The opposite of me. I prefer to blend in with the wallpaper and wait for people to share the secrets they only whisper alone in the dark.
“I came here to clean apartments.” The sarcasm trickles out before I can stop myself and I instantly regret it. “I mean…” I stammer.
But both Matthew and Madame Swanson laugh. The sound isn’t cruel. They do it in a way that feels like we’re all in on the joke.
“Isn’t that what they all say?” Matthew says. “Every single American girl I meet at the bars in the Marais tells me the exact same thing. Everyone comes here to clean apartments.” I can feel his gaze on me, and I wish I didn’t enjoy it. Being invisible is preferable.
“How long have you been here in Paris?”
“Two years,” I say, no longer in the mood to lie.
But even though it’s the truth, it sounds impossible.
Has it really been two years since I came here as a bright-eyed young art student hoping to study with some of the most exciting instructors in Paris?
Sometimes I look back on that first year now with shame because I enjoyed myself too much.
I fell in love with the wrong man. I spent all my savings in the first few months and maxed out half a dozen credit cards.
When the scholarship was abruptly canceled due to lack of funding, I was left with less than nothing.
“Two whole years! You’re practically Parisian by now,” Matthew says. “You must have come as a teenager.”
I’d been twenty-two then, but because of my small stature people have always mistaken me for much younger than I actually am.
I just smile politely and move into the kitchen, where I can quickly wipe down the countertops, scrub the dishes, and leave the rest of the cleaning for tomorrow.
The two of them speak in hushed voices in the other room.
They talk in French, which I’m proficient in, but they probably wouldn’t believe that.
It’s money they’re going on about. Matthew is pushing some on his grandmother; she’s refusing it.
“I don’t want it from you,” she says sharply. “I want what I deserve.”
“I’m working on it. Caroline and Father are being difficult. As usual.”
“I would call it something other than difficult.” Stella sounds angry, an emotion I’ve never heard from her.
I know from the obituary I read that Caroline Swanson is Matthew’s older sister.
The two of them both work for the family business.
They were mentioned as vice presidents in the piece.
For the first time I realize there are no family photos in the apartment, odd for a doting grandmother.
The water echoes loudly in the steel sink as it warms to the right temperature to get this morning’s fried egg off the pan, and I concentrate on that. Because of the sound, I don’t hear anyone sneak up behind me.
“If you’re ever looking for someone to show you a different sort of Paris, the real Paris, I’m more than happy to be your guide,” Matthew whispers in my ear, not touching me at all, but making his towering presence over me very well-known.
The air around him crackles with an intensity that I’ve never experienced before, not even with Pascal, who could command an auditorium of his students with a single word.
What is the real Paris to a man like this?
“It was so lovely to meet you, Monsieur Swanson. But I’m afraid I’ll be going home to the States soon.” I don’t want this to be true, but it will be if I can’t make enough money to enroll back in school before my student visa runs out in a couple of months.
“What a shame. We could have had some fun,” he purrs as he walks away.
Once he’s out the door, his grandmother is distracted, as if she wishes she had followed him instead of being stuck inside with me.
I wonder how often she leaves this dark room.
Every time I visit, she’s in the exact same spot, smoking her cigarettes and sipping her tea.
I’ve never even seen her rise to go to the bathroom.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning, Madame Swanson,” I call out, pulling my hair into an unruly high bun and sweeping my freshly cut bangs out of my eyes.
The bangs were a mistake, they almost always are, but I’d watched a documentary about Jane Birkin that convinced me I would look quintessentially French with some fringe. I do not.
“Oh, please. I need you to stop with that. Call me Stella. ‘Madame Swanson’ makes me feel ancient, which I am, but I don’t need to be reminded of it.
Though Paris is a nice place to be an old broad.
They love older women here. Respect us. No one sees through us the way everyone does in America.
I suppose that’s what I wanted for the end of my life. To be seen.”
I stare once again at the peach blossom, focusing intently on a single petal until the rest of the painting blurs away.
“I miss my art,” she says suddenly, her voice slurry. It hadn’t been tea in those teacups. “They’ve taken it all.”
The faded squares on the wall make more sense now.
“I don’t subscribe to the idea that art should be protected like a newborn baby, kept in a box in some climate-controlled bunker.
Art should live and breathe. That is what the artists have always intended,” Stella moans cryptically.
What is she talking about? Bunkers? “The artists wanted their art to outlive them. It should change and sometimes even evolve alongside us ridiculous mortals. But that is not the way some members of my family see it. To my stepson, a painting is a mere commodity that you sell to the highest bidder or stash away in a bulletproof vault in a climate-controlled cave underground while it grows in value. In the end they want to lock it all away.” She stands and stumbles, crashing into an end table but ultimately steadying herself before I can rush to her side.
“I’ve got you. Let me help you into bed,” I say. This kind of care is a routine I know well from taking care of my own mother for so long. Together we stumble down the long hallway.
We finally make it into the apartment’s main bedroom.
It’s entirely empty save for a mahogany four-poster bed that looks as though it was carved in the Middle Ages.
It probably was. Above the headboard only one thing hangs on the wall: a massive silver sword mounted horizontally, its blade catching the moonlight wafting in from the balcony.
I heave Stella up onto the mattress. Her eyelids are closed by the time I get her beneath the covers and pull them up to her chin.
“Emma?” She calls out just as I’m shutting her door.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Emma, please don’t let them lock me away too.”