The Sculptress V.S. Alexander (ebooks that read to you .txt) 📖

exchanging money had never crossed her mind. Embarrassment rose in her as she blushed from her own naïveté and lack of preparation.

The woman, who had perhaps experienced similar situations with American soldiers, regarded Emma’s plight. “The station is up the street, away from the estuary. If you walk straight ahead you’ll find it. The stationmaster will exchange your money because he is prepared for such situations. Don’t be surprised if he charges you a fee—he earns extra for his family that way.”

As the proprietress completed her instructions, a child darted in from the kitchen and ran to the woman. “Maman, Maman,” he shouted as he spotted Emma. He clutched his mother’s black skirt and stared at the suitcase near Emma’s legs.

“Chut,” the woman chided him.

The boy grimaced and clenched his jaw. His thick black hair was chopped short in front; so much so, it resembled the points of a pinwheel; his handsome face was marked with reddish circles on olive cheeks. He was an angel living in a time of war. Emma understood the child’s anxiety about the strange woman who stood before him, but she knew there were bigger terrors on French soil of concern to his mother.

“Thank you,” Emma said to the woman, keeping her eyes off the child. She turned to leave the café.

“Where are you headed?” the woman asked.

“Paris.” Emma looked over her shoulder at the pale visage.

The woman parted her lips but didn’t smile. “Good luck. I don’t think you Americans will be strong enough to win the war—to beat the Boche. I hope so, but I don’t believe it. The Germans are invincible. I fear for our lives.”

“Please . . . can the child understand? You’ll frighten him to death.”

“My son? He knows too well what war can do. His Italian father is dead—killed at the Front.”

Pain spread over the woman’s face, her eyes swelling as the lids reddened with sorrow. The boy called out again for his mother and clutched her skirt in his balled fists. Emma reached to comfort her, but the woman drew away.

“I’m sorry,” Emma said, retreating, “I am truly sorry.”

The woman composed herself and muttered, “Bon voyage.”

Emma thanked her and walked out the door, past the napping cat, into the bright sunlight that filled the street like a soothing balm.

* * *

The boy’s face from the café floated before her as she stared out the train window.

What remained of the watery reeds and willows slid by in a rush of green. She circled a finger against the glass, absorbed by the past, and then erased her hazy smudges with a handkerchief. For the first time in more than a week she was without the company of soldiers.

The branches of a dead tree flashed by the window, the skeletal limbs so close they scratched against the glass, causing Emma to flinch in her seat. A woman across the aisle stared at her for a moment, then averted her eyes and returned to her reading.

The unsettling day, the child, the dead tree, pushed unwanted thoughts into her head. Faces. Why does everything revolve around the face? She remembered the boy on the street in Boston who had made fun of the disfigured soldier, her Diana, the melting faun, the face of Linton Bower as Narcissus, the drawing of Lieutenant Stoneman, the boy she had encountered only a few hours before. That face had upset her the most.

She clutched her abdomen.

The woman looked up from her book again, eyed Emma suspiciously, and reached for her bag, as if contemplating a move to another compartment.

Emma smiled and removed her hands from her stomach.

The woman shifted warily, but remained in her seat.

Perhaps the brioche she had eaten before boarding had caused an intestinal upset. The stationmaster directed her to an old woman who sold the sweet rolls on the platform. But if she considered the truth, the cause of her upset, a memory that would not die—one that appeared like a phantom—terrified her and then vanished, reopening the wound it had carved years before. The faceless baby shocked her into rigidity, Emma grasping with stiff arms the seat in front of her, her breath rushing in and out of her lungs. Why was the horror, the remorse, so strong now that she was on the verge of working with faces and reuniting with Tom?

She shivered and focused her mind on her husband’s picture in Boston, the familiar face comforting her. Soon she would be in Paris to begin a new phase of her life. Perhaps the faces from the past would fade as new ones were introduced.

A wounded French soldier on crutches, his right leg and shoulder swathed in bandages, his face partially covered in gauze, hobbled through the compartment. He turned his head and glanced at Emma, allowing her to see the dark recesses underneath the material, portions of his nose and mouth taken by the war.

The woman across the aisle frowned, waved her hands, and shouted in French above the train’s clatter. Emma didn’t understand the angry words but she knew the woman wanted nothing to do with the disfigured soldier—she wished him far away from her.

The man shrunk under the woman’s withering barrage and lurched away.

Emma turned back to the window.

The train hissed to a stop at a village. The tracks had veered from the river’s path and the land sloped higher now, purple hills filling the horizon. At the small wooden station, faces stared up at her from the platform. She turned away and closed her eyes.

* * *

Emma lifted the brass knocker at 56 rue de Paul. A sharp metallic ping reverberated through the building as she leaned against the door. The trip had been exhausting, but her excitement about being in Paris had shored up her failing energy somewhat.

Her hands trembled—whether from tiredness from the journey or the anticipation of meeting Dr. Jonathan Harvey, she was uncertain. She rested her suitcase against her leg and longed to be happy, alive in the City of Lights, free from Vreland