Sacré Bleu

“I know, but you’re the baby. It’s sordid. Maman says she has no son now that you’ve ruined that poor girl.”

“Two days ago she threatened to have a Russian man set Juliette on fire and feed our children to Madame Jacob’s dog.”

“That was before she heard you two. She won’t come out of her room until lunch or you have gone to confession, whichever comes first.”

“But I’m twenty-seven years old, did you think that I was never with a woman?”

“Well, you never bring them home. We thought perhaps someone had taken you to bed out of pity, maybe. And girls now do drink a lot.”

Lucien brushed the crumbs out of his hair. “I’m not married because I’m a painter, not because I can’t find a woman. I’ve told you, I don’t have time for a wife. It wouldn’t be fair to her.”

“So you say. I suppose we should be grateful that you’re not chasing boys like that horrible Englishman that came into the bakery.”

“Oscar? Oscar is brilliant. Speaks French dreadfully, but a brilliant man.”

“Go,” Régine said. “I will watch the store. Go paint. And don’t tell Maman what I told you. Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t be sordid.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t become reclusive like Papa.”

“I won’t.”

“And leave the studio door open, so we can see what you’re doing.”

“I won’t.”

“Go,” she said, gesturing with her broken baguette. “Go, go, go, little brother. Go to your slut.”

“I love her.”

“No one cares. Go!”

ALL MORNING, WHILE HE WENT ABOUT HIS WORK IN THE BAKERY, LUCIEN HAD been telling himself, Today I am an artist. I will make art. I am not going to throw her on the lounge and boff her senseless, no matter how much she begs. He really hoped she wouldn’t beg, because he wasn’t that sure of his resolve. And even if I throw her on the lounge and boff her senseless, I’m not going to ask her to marry me.

He found her waiting by the shed door when he came out of the bakery. She wore a festive white dress with blue and pink bows and a tall hat that looked more like a flower arrangement than headwear. The sort of ensemble a girl might wear to dance in the courtyard of the Moulin de la Galette on a beautiful summer Sunday afternoon, not an outfit you would put on to wa

lk a dozen blocks so you could take it off for a painter.

“Don’t you look pretty.”

“Thank you. I brought you a present.”

“And you’ve wrapped it beautifully,” he said, putting a hand on her waist.

“Not that, you goat, something else. I’ll show you inside.”

As he unlocked the door, she took a hinged wooden box from her bag and opened it. “Look, color! The man assured me it’s the finest quality. ‘Pure pigments,’ he said, whatever that means.”

There were a dozen tubes of paint, large, 250-milliliter tubes—enough color to easily cover the canvas, unless he used the thick impasto method that van Gogh liked, and he didn’t think that technique suited his subject. Each tube had a small label of paper pasted on it with a dab of the color, but there was no writing, no note on the mixture.

“But I was going to go buy paint from Père Tanguy this afternoon.”

“Now you can start painting instead,” she said. She kissed his cheek, set the box onto the table he’d set up for supplies, then she noticed a changing screen had been set up at the far end of the studio. “Oh là là. Is that to preserve my modesty?”