“The Waiter” (Part II)

“I want you to be safe and loved,” he had told her—and he had kept his word.

She had stayed, he surmised, because she had nowhere else to go. Trying to repay him had proved disastrous; she was a poor cook and kept house no better, but she was not lazy. She was inept. Her chief talent lay between the sheets, and he had come from work one night to find her awaiting him in the nude; spectacularly so, he had to admit. A practical man would have taken advantage, but romantic François was still a virgin. Unable to speak, he had quickly removed his coat and draped it over her. She had donned her shift while he was in the lavatory, and though nothing more had been said, François had sensed a relief that surpassed his own.

No one had come looking for her. No one asked after her. The four who had ruined her soon found another to misuse, a girl of sixteen who believed their patter as Odette had done, and who was equally doomed to disappointment. François had not tried to warn her. She would not have listened. “I wouldn’t,” said Odette, when he had proposed to attempt.

“Why not?” he had demanded, and she had laughed before decrying him as a boy with no experience to support his wisdom.

“Of course, that’s not what I think anymore,” she had added, fearful of offending him.

François had reassured her. He had made a point of blending with the scenery and feigning indifference to the conduct of the café’s patrons—particularly the late night miscreants whom Odette had known so well. He liked the music, and some of the bawdy talk amused him, so he had managed to avoid intervening until one girl in particular had unwittingly captured his heart.

“What was it?” she asked him. “Why was I different from the others?”

“It was your accent,” he replied. “Remember, the absinthe made it more pronounced.”

She regarded him doubtfully. François stared back, refusing to bend. Odette held his gaze until she saw the truth behind it, then she dropped her lashes and let the matter rest.

As a surprise, he had taken her dancing on a Sunday afternoon and been surprised, himself. Odette did not know how to dance. She could kick and cavort and flip her skirts above her knees, but a proper waltz was as foreign to her as the receipt for her beloved café au lait. François had promptly enlisted the aid of a musician friend and set about teaching her the steps.

She had loved it.

From there, they had gone dancing every week, fitting it around a picnic or a stroll along the Seine and once, just once, when they returned to their little apartment above the boulangerie, Odette had taken his face in her hands and kissed his mouth so tenderly …

… and then she had fainted at his feet.

The doctor had come at once. Odette had roused before his arrival, but showed an uncommon stubbornness in answering his questions. François had waited in Mme. Bernier’s apartment and the arguing was easily audible through the adjoining wall. Confronted on his departure, the doctor had openly condemned Odette’s past behaviour and brutally recommended that preparations be made.

François had been so stunned that spindly Mme. Bernier had been called upon to steady him. The old dear had then descended the stairs, berating the doctor as she went, and François had crashed into the apartment as if he had been shot in the back. “Did you know?” he had demanded.

“I’m sorry,” Odette had said.

“You knew?” he had cried. “All this time, you knew and you said nothing?”

“Now you know!” she had raged back at him. “Throw me out!”

“I won’t. I can’t!” He had been near tears with shock and shame and an awful wrenching helplessness. “Odette, I love you!”

“Then let me go,” she had said, so coldly that he had known better than she that she was lying.

She had been true about one thing, though. She was grateful to him. She might even have been fond of him, but she did not love him.

* * *

She tired easily. Her appetite waned. She closed herself off from him and spent hours staring out the window, as silent and beautiful as falling snow on a frosty night. Now that her secret was known, her strength was not spent on pretense, and once in a while, she felt well enough for a brief outing. François brought her to the Moulin for café and music. Sometimes she rallied for a dance or two, and in those moments he almost believed that she was deceiving herself, that she was in love with him, her face was so radiant as she spun and swayed in his arms.

Mme. Bernier took it upon herself to mind Madame when François was at work. He came home at night to find them playing cards and drinking tea, but there was something odd about the tableau that he suspected involved the splash of green wool peeping out from beneath the bed.

He quit the café and took an apprenticeship at the boulangerie in order to be at home in the evening. The baker’s daughter taught him to make bread, and Odette observed that Stéphanie was in love with him. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, turning red to the tips of his ears. “I am not in love with her.”

“You might be, one day. Aim high, François. You deserve better.”

“Better than the baker’s daughter?”

“Better than me,” Odette said, before she dismissed him in favour of the view.

François had not thought about it overmuch. Idle dreaming had been a luxury in his father’s house and his job at the café had earned him more scorn than money. His brothers all worked in the same factory as the old man, for marginally better wages and far less satisfaction, but François had wanted something different. Not something more, necessarily, but something else, something brighter and more vibrant than industrial grit and numbing routine.

Saying so aloud, however, had been a mistake.

“Your father is as ignorant as mine,” Odette said, sadly.

François wondered if he had misread her and she did not want to go home after all. Then he realized that she would not have married him otherwise. “Do you love your father?” he asked.

“I did. Now I care less about his forgiveness than I do about finding a place in hallowed ground. You have given me that, François. I know that when I am gone, you will see me safely home.”

He had already arranged for a cart. When the time came, he would bear her body back to the man who had raised her, present himself as her husband, and see to it that she was buried with dignity in the churchyard of her childhood. He envisioned it over and over in the night, listening to the irregularities in her breathing as she slept.

Mme. Bernier now sat with him of an evening. She had offered to come at dawn, while François was occupied at the boulangerie, but Odette slept well into the morning and he was able to be with her when she woke. Stéphanie had badgered the baker into acquiring a steamer; without it, François feared his wife might not wake again, he was so convinced that the lure of his café au lait was the thing that roused her. There were no more outings, no strolls along the Seine or picnics in the park. Mme. Bernier insisted that she walk around the apartment, but she gradually grew too weak to manage even that. Standing became a rare triumph. François was obliged to carry her to the lavatory, where Mme. Bernier shooed him out for modesty and aided her in his place.

“She does not produce much,” the old dear confided.

“She does not consume much,” François replied.

She enjoyed the smell of bread baking, but refused to eat it. Each day, François made a baguette for her and she always gave it to Mme. Bernier. Stéphanie, who made the best sweet pastry in the neighborhood, tried to tempt her with beignets and frangipane, to no avail. François ate them instead, at her behest. “You must eat,” she reminded him. “It does me no good for you to starve.”

Their early days together had been awkward, but not difficult; not like this. They had been strangers then. Conjuring something to say had been a strain for entirely different reasons. At the time, he had been mystified and a little wounded, but now he understood her reticence. She had hoped to spare him by keeping distant. She had spoken of leaving but lingered longer and longer, until they were strangers no more and had become friends, one in love and one afraid to die alone.

“If you had known,” she said one night, “would you still have saved me?”

François did not hesitate. “I would.”

She lay on her side, facing him in his chair, her hand tucked between her cheek and her pillow, her hair a tumbling stream of curls over her shoulder. She burned less brightly these days. Her eyes were darker and her face more aggressively sculpted, but she was still hauntingly, desperately, beautiful.

She held him in her gaze for a long, silent moment. He thought that she might say it at last, but she sighed and closed her eyes as if she could not bear to look at him.

to be continued ...