Chapter 87 Luce in Paris

Chapter 87 Luce in Paris
Paris in August was different from Paris in January.

The light was the first thing. Longer and more certain of itself, the particular confident gold of a city that had made its peace with summer and was offering it without reservation. The streets were quieter in the way of a city whose residents had mostly left for August, replaced by people who had come specifically to be there, which gave everything a different quality of attention than the ordinary daily life of the place.

Daniel met us at the airport.

He looked at Luce in the carrier against my chest and his expression did the thing it did when he encountered something that moved him before he could prepare for being moved.

"She is bigger," he said.

"Three months will do that," I said.

He looked at her for a moment.

She looked back at him with those dark eyes doing their inventory.

"Hello Luce," he said quietly.

She appeared to find him acceptable.

Noah had already identified Gerald's preferred position in the airport and was conducting a tour.

The hotel was near Daniel's apartment this time, at his suggestion, in the 3rd arrondissement, close to the café where he had sat with Rosa in nineteen ninety three and not known what he was looking at. He had mentioned this without apparent design and I had understood the design immediately and had not commented on it because some things were better received without comment.

We settled in on the first day.

The family in its assembled August configuration. Eleanor who had come because Paris in August was something she had decided she deserved. Marcus and Victoria with James, who was four months old now and had opinions about everything including airport security and French hotel pillows. Catherine who had come because she had become someone who came on family trips without requiring an explicit invitation because she had been given to understand she was family and had accepted this quietly and completely. Serena who had come because Noah had included her on the list he had produced and nobody had questioned the list.

The museum on the second day.

Isabelle met us at the entrance and looked at the group with the warm particular expression she always wore when we arrived, the expression of someone who had built something important and was watching it be used by the people it was built for.

She looked at Luce.

"So this is Luce," she said.

"This is Luce," I confirmed.

Isabelle looked at the baby in the carrier against my chest with those direct alive eyes.

"She has the hands," Isabelle said.

"Yes," I said.

"Good," Isabelle said simply. As though the continuation of the hands was a matter of significant importance that had been satisfactorily confirmed.

We went inside.

The exhibition was in its final weeks. The Barcelona transfer was scheduled for September and the Paris room had the particular quality of something approaching its completion, not diminished but aware of its own finitude in the way that made looking at it more urgent and more complete simultaneously.

The self portrait at the center.

Rosa Santos with the brush and the interior light.

I stood in front of it with Luce in the carrier and looked at the painting and felt the particular quality of standing in a room with something true that never diminished no matter how many times you encountered it.

I turned Luce gently so she was facing the painting.

She was four months old and could not understand what she was looking at in any cognitive sense. But she looked at it.

With those dark eyes.

With the focused inventory she brought to things that held her attention.

She looked at the self portrait for a long time.

I felt her hands, Rosa Santos's hands, moving against the carrier in the small specific way she moved her hands when something was engaging her completely.

Daniel came to stand beside us.

He looked at Luce looking at the painting.

"She sees it," he said quietly.

"She sees something," I said.

"Yes," he said. "That is the same thing."

We stood there together for a while. The three of us. Daniel and me and Luce between us, three generations of hands connected to one woman's seeing, standing in a museum in Paris in August with thirty five paintings around us.

Noah appeared.

He looked at Luce looking at the painting.

He stood beside her.

"This is Rosa," he told her seriously. "She is the one with your hands. She kept going." He paused. "That is what we do in this family. We keep going."

I looked at my son.

At this five year old who had absorbed an entire year of this story and had distilled it, without knowing he was distilling it, into four words.

We keep going.

That is what we do in this family.

I pressed my lips together very firmly.

Damien appeared beside me.

He looked at Noah. At Luce. At the painting.

At me.

His hand found mine.

We stood in the Paris room with thirty five paintings around us and our family assembled and the August light coming through the museum windows in the particular gold of a city that had made its peace with summer.

Later we went to the café.

Daniel's café. The one in the Marais where he had sat with Rosa in nineteen ninety three and not known what he was looking at.

We took three tables pushed together, the full assembled impractical configuration of a family that had become too large for single tables and had stopped apologizing for it.

The proprietor, an old man who had been running the café long enough to have been there in nineteen ninety three, looked at the group and at Daniel and said something in French.

Daniel translated quietly.

"He says he remembers a young woman who used to come in the evenings," he said. "Dark haired. Always had paint on her hands. Always sat by the window." He paused. "He says she had a nice laugh."

The table was very quiet.

Noah looked at Gerald.

"Gerald says he wishes he had known her," he said.

Daniel looked at the table.

Then at me.

Then at Luce in my arms.

"He did know her," Daniel said quietly. "In a way."

Noah considered this.

"Through the hands," he said.

"Yes," Daniel said. "Through the hands."

We ordered coffee and pastries and juice for Noah and something warm for the babies and we sat in Rosa Santos's café in the Marais in August and the afternoon light came through the window the way it must have come through in nineteen ninety three when a young woman sat here with paint on her hands and a nice laugh and kept going regardless.

Luce fell asleep in my arms.

Her hands curled against my chest.

Those hands.

I looked at them for a long moment.

Then I looked at Paris through the café window. At the street outside doing its August afternoon thing. At the city that had received Rosa Santos thirty years ago and had kept the paintings and had waited, the way cities waited, without knowing what they were waiting for.

Someone had come.

We had all come.

And the light through the café window was exactly right.

It always was.