I almost giggle at the melodrama but manage to keep a straight face. “That’s a long time to hold a childhood grudge.”
“Father is excellent at grudges,” he deadpans.
“How long were Stella and your grandfather together?”
“Nearly fifty years,” he says.
I’m honestly blown away by the number. “A lifetime for some!”
“Indeed. I want to protect her as best I can, but the rest of my family would love nothing more than to see her disappear.”
Don’t let them lock me away, her frail voice echoes in my head.
Matthew is finished with his glass of wine now. The waiter hurries to pour him another.
“Where do they want her to go?”
“There’s a facility in the country. She would be well cared for, but I don’t think it is quite time yet. My father and sister have been very insistent about it.”
Matthew pauses. “Maybe they’re right. I worry about Stella. She’s forgetful and confused.”
“Dementia?”
“I believe so. Though she refuses to be tested and it’s complicated.”
I know what that’s like. My mother began having her “episodes” after my father left even though she was very young. The brain is an unpredictable organ. She was a brilliant mathematician. Ahead of her time when it came to algorithms and digital networks. But her incredible brain came at a cost. She describedit as though her mind was overheating. There were weeks when she didn’t get out of bed, when I had to feed myself and get myself to school. Most days I didn’t go to class, and eventually that triggered something in the system, causing a social worker to come to our apartment to take me away for a little while, but Mom always got me back in a few months. There were other times she was so manic she banged her head against the wall until she had to go to the emergency room for stitches. She heard things that were never spoken, saw things that weren’t there. And other days she was perfect. A wonder. Being away from her is both a relief and one of the most painful things I’ve ever been through. I miss her every day.
But I don’t say any of this to Matthew. Our food has arrived.
“Just in time. I’m starving.” I state the obvious instead.
A waiter in a spotless white button-down shirt presents us with a croque monsieur the size of my head. A sandwich is never just a sandwich in France, but this one is especially beautiful. It’s massive, with thick, bubbling Gruyère and Comté cheese, browned at the edges and still melting in the middle. Pink ham spills out of the sides along with more cheese collecting in small pools on the edges of the plate. Without thinking, I run my index finger through it and sigh with pleasure when I put it in my mouth. This elicits a wide smile from Matthew. Next to the croque there is a platter of finely cut french fries stacked a half a foot high and thin slivers of lightly seared steak. The smells of meat, salt, garlic, cheese, and butter make my mouth water nearly as much as the proximity of Matthew’s thigh to my own beneath the table. Our legs keep brushing against one another, something I thought was an accident at first, and now I’m not so sure.
“You really pretended there was no menu when you ordered the two most basic French dishes,” I tease.
“There’s nothing basic about the food here. Trust me. And besides, he won’t make a croque like this for just anybody. Only the best customers.”
The explosion of tastes in my mouth makes my head spin slightly. It’s the butter. So much perfect French butter on absolutely everything.
“What is your favorite piece of art, Emma?” Matthew asks between bites. We both eat off all the plates, reaching across one another as if we’ve done this a dozen times.
I want my answer to impress him.
“Tamara de Lempicka’sLa Dormeuse.” A bold hyperrealistic portrait of a femme fatale in repose. She’s brash, sensual, and dangerous. She’s everything I’ve always wanted to be, both the woman in the painting and Tamara de Lempicka herself, though I’m sure few have ever heard of her.
“Obscure. But I like it. You know it recently sold at auction. The most ever paid for a painting by a female artist,” Matthew remarks approvingly.
“Do you think about all paintings in terms of money?”
“Of course.”
“I wish we didn’t have to assign monetary value to art at all.”
“That ship has sailed. We no longer have a choice in the matter. Art is money and money is art.”
I hate this, but I also know it too well. Surviving as an artist, especially as a woman, feels impossible most of the time unless you marry well or hit the fame jackpot. “It sold for two million dollars, right? I read about it in the paper. And still, that’s a fraction of what has been paid for the paintings by dead men,” I scoff. I sawLa Dormeusewhen I first arrived in Paris. It was featured in a private showing that Pascal brought me to in the grandiose apartment of one of his collector friends. Maybe Matthew was there, or even Stella. At the time I was just giddy to be a part of that world.La Dormeusewas being paraded around the salons of the very wealthy, leading up to her eventual auction. It was Pascal who told me Tamara de Lempicka’s story. The Russian Revolution forced her to flee to Paris, where she reinventedherself as an artist to support her family. She embraced the new art deco styles and bucked all the conventions of a female artist. She broke the rules of both cubism and neoclassicism with intention and elegance, mostly painting strong, stylized women not as passive muses but as commanding presences challenging the male gaze of traditional portraiture.
“It was a coup! Two million for a relatively unknown artist, mostly famous because she was beloved by an American pop star,” Matthew explains. “Madge is obsessed with it.”
