“What is this?”
“You know what it is.”
She knew he immediately recognized the style. “You posed for van Dongen?”
“Pablo, be reasonable. You are gone for hours at a time most days, and Kees is one of our friends from the old days. We know his wife and little daughter, for God’s sake.”
“He’s still a man and you posed for him with your clothes off.” He stalked across the room toward her as she buttoned up her long black skirt. Picasso took her wrists and pulled her forcefully against his chest, stopping her. There was desperation in the movement. “Have I not given you everything you have ever asked for? This apartment, elegant clothes, a wardrobe full of hats, gloves and shoes, and an entrée into any restaurant in Paris you like so that you don’t have to do that demeaning work any longer?”
“It’s not work to me, it’s freedom.”
A silence fell between them, and Fernande turned her lower lip out in a little mock pout and her green eyes grew wide. “Does this mean we are fighting again today, too?” she asked.
“It’s a disagreement. Only that.”
“We quarrel too much, I fear.”
He pressed a kiss onto her cheek and released her wrists. His hands snaked around her then and moved down to the small of her back, drawing her close against him. He was so good at seduction, Fernande thought, and she tried not to think again of the blinding number of women on whom he had honed his skills. She was good at manipulation, but they both knew he was better.
He tipped her chin up with his thumb so that she could not look away from his eyes. “Yet, we always reconcile, which is the enjoyable part,” he said.
It was difficult to feel angry about how forceful Picasso could be when her desire for him had already claimed her. She wanted to be right back in that big warm bed with him, even if there was an element of predictability to their relationship now. After all, they loved each other, and at the end of the day that was enough for her. It had always been enough for him, too.
“I want you to tell van Dongen you can’t pose for the painting.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“It is not a question of trust.”
Fernande could hear the sudden edge in his voice, and she wondered how much he knew of what she did during the long hours when he was up in Montmartre working. “Of course it is.”
“I will not say I am sorry for trying to protect you all of these years, after what your husband did to you. You deserved much better than that.”
She thought of saying that she did not deserve to be so high on the pedestal upon which he had placed her five years ago. But she could not bring herself to because some part of her still craved his adoration. Instead, she pressed a hand to his chest, knowing the curves of him so well, knowing what would make his body respond. It surprised her when he gently brushed her hand aside and turned to look at the little monkey, who had perched on top of the dog’s large, shaggy back. Watching Picasso, Fernande’s heart felt heavy all of a sudden. She was not certain why.
“Let’s go across the street to L’Ermitage for lunch. Just the two of us, hmm?” she asked, trying to sound kittenish. She felt a strange new barrier between them and she did not like it.
“All right. But don’t give me a hard time when I want to bring the leftovers back for Frika.”
“Sometimes I think you love that dog more than you love me.”
“Dios mío, Fernande, I am still here, aren’t I?”
“I can’t do it! I won’t!”
She heard her own voice first, when she remembered what had happened the last time before she left home, and the memory of the scene was quickly vivid again in her mind.
Eva’s parents did not react to her protest. Her mother stood silently at the stove stirring the iron pot full of beet soup. Her father sat across from her at the small kitchen table, his elbows heavy on the table and his meaty hand clenched around a half-full mug of wine. He was always so irritable when he drank that sour-smelling cheap wine but no one dared to tell him.
“Kochany Tata,” Eva pressed, hoping that the tender term of endearment would soften him. Yet she knew there was a note of something more harsh in her voice that she could not contain. It was something he would hear because he knew her so well.
The scent of pork, ginger and sour wine was bitingly strong with the tension.
“And what is wrong with Monsieur Fix?” her father asked. He was hunched over and looking up from his glass with glazed, heavy-lidded eyes, as though life itself had gotten as burdensome for him as it had for her mother. He was not yet forty. “You’re too good for the man, are you?”
“I don’t love him, Tata.”
“Opf, love!” he grumbled, batting a hand in the air. “It has all been settled with his family. A girl like you should have a husband, a house full of children and a secure life here near your parents.”
She cringed as though he had pronounced a death sentence on her. A girl like you. What he meant was a plain sprite of a girl, still unmarried at the age of twenty-three, still untested by men, relationships and the world. How she should respond so as not to ignite his anger, Eva did not know because she was not desperate for marriage. The only desperation she felt was to make something of her life. Her mother continued stirring the soup.
“I won’t marry him, even if he is the only man in the world who ever wants me.”
“You will.”
“You don’t understand me, Papa! That life would kill me, I know it would!”
“He is the first serious offer you’ve had. By God, you will marry him.”
“I’m a grown woman! You ask too much.”
“You will always be my child, Eva Céleste Gouel—you do as you are told, and there is nothing more to understand,” her mother declared, finally breaking her silence as she tossed down the wooden spoon and it clattered onto the tile floor.
“No! I tell you, I won’t!”
Suddenly her father slapped her and the force of the blow to her cheek turned her head. She felt the sting of surprise, since her father had never in her life struck her before. Her parents loved her. They had always loved her. As she turned slowly back to face her father, she tasted the trickle of blood from a crack in her lip. “You are our daughter, you owe us for that, and by God in His heaven, you will be Monsieur Fix’s wife, if it kills you!”
Finally her mother spoke. There were tears shining in her eyes. “Eva, please. He is stable enough not to abandon you if you fall ill again. That pneumonia last winter nearly took you. You have always had a weak constitution, your lungs especially. Something bad will happen to you if you go off where we cannot protect you. Something awful, I know it!”
“Eva? Are you listening to me?”
The memory still had the power to claim her. It slipped like a phantom back into the corner of her mind as she gradually heard Sylvette’s voice again. The room they shared was dark so Sylvette could not see the tears in her eyes. The sound of crickets flooded the room through the open window as she realized Sylvette had been telling her a story she had not heard.