“I’m going to be late,” Éliane said despairingly to Yolande who, at age five, cared not a bit about Éliane’s obligations. In fact, it was obvious from Yolande’s clenched fists that a tantrum was bearing down upon all the Duforts and unless Éliane could find something other than a stale knob of bread for breakfast, Yolande would erupt and Éliane would miss her morning lecture at art school.
“We’re all hungry,” Angélique, the next oldest after Éliane, snapped at Yolande.
Éliane stared around at the grim and silent faces of her sisters. Twelve-year-old Jacqueline’s beseeching eyes were fixed on Éliane, willing her to calm both Yolande’s histrionics and Angélique’s temper. Ginette, eight, was yawning, having been woken by the fracas of raised voices.
She was going to be late. But it wasn’t her sisters’ fault that their parents threw every available franc, including all of Éliane’s pay, into their moribund brasserie and thus there was no food in the house. She whirled around and, despite the almost physical pain she felt at even contemplating it, she gathered all of her sable paintbrushes, threw them into a bag and said in a firm but loving voice to Yolande, “I promise you’ll have a croissant for breakfast tomorrow. But only if you get dressed for school and let Angélique do your hair.”
Yolande jumped up from her teary puddle on the floor, her blonde hair bouncing like her revived spirits as she threw herself at Éliane. “Merci,” she whispered, head buried in Éliane’s skirt.
“I love you,” Éliane said, stroking her sister’s hair. Then, while Angélique was occupied with helping Ginette find her shoes, she spoke in Yolande’s ear, “Angélique is scared. It’s her first year of looking after you. Help her. Then she’ll see that she doesn’t have to worry about you so much.”
And to Angélique, as she kissed her goodbye, Éliane explained, “Yolande just wants to be loved. Hug her. Then she’ll behave.”
It had only been six months since Angélique’s fifteenth birthday. Her present had been to take over from Éliane the so-called privilege of getting the children ready for school, of bringing them home at the end of the day, collecting leftovers from the brasserie for dinner, feeding everyone and putting them to bed. Yolande and Angélique were each still chafing against the absence of Éliane, who now spent those hours at work.
Luckily Ginette and Jacqueline needed only a hug and a kiss and Éliane was able to leave, clattering around and around the whorling spiral of stairs from their third-floor apartment to the Galerie Véro-Dodat—a formerly resplendent Belle Époque passage couvert—below. It was lined with once-grand but now mostly empty mahogany shop façades, separated by chipped marble columns and still-gleeful cherubs—despite the fact that most were missing at least a toe, if not an entire leg. The dank odor of stale coffee emanating from her parents’ brasserie settled around the globes of the old gas lamps, causing any patrons foolish enough to venture into the galerie to flee with their tastebuds unsullied.
Once out on the street, she continued on to the Musée du Louvre where she would study and work, unshackled from her sisters. The journey made her feel both the lightness of relief and the heaviness of loss as all the hugs and kisses and tiny affections were now Angélique’s. Éliane hoped her sister treasured those affections the way she ought to.
At the Aile de Flore—the wing of the Louvre that stretched along the river—Éliane ran straight up to the École du Louvre. She took her seat in the lecture theater, looking over the rows of students for her brother Luc, but while Luc’s soul was devoted to art, his body worshipped at the cafés of Montparnasse and he was absent again.