“Where have you been?” asked Lucien. “Where is Maman? I’ve barely been able to keep up with the customers and not burn the pastries.”
“Maman is tired. She won’t be working today.”
Lucien handed a customer a boule, the large round loaf that was their specialty, then took the customer’s coins and thanked her before turning to his sister. He could never remember his mother skipping work except to visit her own mother, or out of retribution for some offense, real or imagined, by his father.
“Is she sick? Should I send for a doctor?”
Régine smacked him in the back of the head with a baguette, which he interpreted as, “No, you do not need to send for a doctor.”
Two old men who had been killing time at one of the small café tables laughed.
“Ah, Lucien, you don’t need a wife, eh? Not with a sister like that.”
“Family business conference,” Régine said. She breezed by him in a way that seemed even more menacing than the normal breezing by of their mother (even though Régine was half her size). She caught Lucien’s apron strings and pulled him backward into the kitchen.
Before Lucien could get fully turned around she was brandishing the baguette like an axe handle, ready to dash his brains out with its delicious, crunchy-chewy crust.
“How can you use that storeroom, Lucien? How can you paint in there, after what happened to Papa?”
“Papa always wanted me to be a painter,” Lucien said. He didn’t understand why she was so angry. “And we’ve always used that storeroom.”
“As a storeroom, you idiot. Not as a studio. We could hear you two in there yesterday. Gilles pounded on the door when he came home from work and you ignored him.”
Régine had married a carpenter name Gilles, the son of a dance-hall doorman, also from Montmartre. They lived in the apartment upstairs with Madame Lessard. “Where is Gilles? Did he not go to work either?”
“I sent him down the back stairs.”
“Régine, this is going to be a great picture. My masterpiece.”
The baguette came around fast and wrapped around his head. The Lessards had always prided themselves on their light, delicate crust, so Lucien was somewhat surprised at how much it hurt, even now, after all the practice.
“Ouch. Régine, I am a grown man, this is none of your affair.”
“There was a woman, Lucien. With Papa.”
Lucien suddenly forgot about being angry, about having to run the bakery alone or being ashamed about his sister listening to him having sex. “A woman?”
“Maman was in Louveciennes, visiting Grand-mère. Marie and I saw her, well, just the back of her as she went into the storeroom. Some red-haired slut. Marie went to see what she could. That’s what she was doing up on the roof when she fell.”
Régine was breathless now, and not from distress she had constructed in order to get her way. Lucien had seen that often enough to know this wasn’t it.
“Does Maman know?”
“No.” Régine shook her head. “No one. No one.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t know anything. We just saw a woman, just the back of her, but she had long red hair, the slut. We saw her go in the storeroom with Papa and he locked the door. I didn’t know what happened. Then when Marie fell—I didn’t know what to do. It was too much.”
Lucien took his sister in his arms. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. He was probably just painting her.”
“Like you were painting yesterday?”
Lucien held her and patted her back. “I have to go. I really am painting Juliette today. Painting.”
Régine nodded and pushed him away. “I know.”
“We were together, before, Régine. I thought I’d lost her. Yesterday was—was a reunion.”