Chapter 7
Among his veritable trove of talents, Erik had now mastered feeding his child without allowing her to make a mess of the kitchen. He would hold her upright on his lap with one hand (she couldn't quite sit on her own yet) and use the other to handle the spoon. With the free hand he did not possess, he could keep her from grabbing at everything in sight. Picking things up and dashing them to the floor had become a favorite hobby and, while he admired her destructive tendencies, cleaning up after Émilie had quickly become irritating. So he would move the plate, the bottle, the flower vase with the dead roses, just before her little fingers could grab them. He did not, however, think to move his face away from her groping hands. Too focused was he on balancing porridge on a spoon that he didn't notice the little fingers at the edge of his leather mask, tugging when they found it could move.
Erik realized only at the last moment, just as the ties came undone, and reached to hold the mask against his face with both hands. The spoon clattered to the floor and Émilie – Émilie slipped sideways.
There was only an instant, not enough time to think. Yet Erik saw everything as if it took a lifetime. Through the narrow eyeholes of the mask, he saw her falling, her white gown tangled between her legs and her curls cast over her face.
The mask fell and he snatched her from the air, from the stone floor. From harm.
With trembling hands, he held her tiny, fragile body against his heaving chest and pressed his lips to her forehead.
It was the first time he had kissed his child without a barrier of leather or porcelain. First time he had kissed anyone other than Christine. The feeling of her soft skin against his lipless mouth, so different from Christine's happy greetings and passionate embraces and those terrible kisses of redemption. He had felt the urge to protect Christine too, but the instinct was always coupled with anger or hatred or jealousy. With Émilie there was nothing else. Just love, fierce and pure like a drug. Erik felt his heart clench as if Émilie was crushing it between her mischievous hands.
He kissed the tears from her cheeks next and laid his own cheek against her soft curls. His deformed cheek. Immediately, he drew away from her as ecstasy and adrenaline grew cold and heavy. He unwillingly raised his head.
The sight of his naked face shocked Émilie into silence. Where her father had been before, a stranger now held her.
"Mon cœur…" he breathed, unable to do anything else. Despair overwhelmed him, stronger than before, that what had been revealed could not be unseen. The feeling quickly rose to obscure his vision and twist his thoughts. His daughter's tearful face faded from view and instead he saw hundreds of faces, pointing, jeering, cowering. He had always worn his mask around Émilie and never considered she ever need see him without it. That, he had believed, was the benefit of being the one to raise her. She would learn not to indulge curiosity, or even to wonder what lay beneath the mask. He knew that he could never have prevented it in Christine, but he had intended to prevent it in his daughter.
There was none of the familiar rage. He did not want to shake the girl or scream at her, nor did he want to overturn chairs and tables. He only wished he could hide his face and pretend nothing had happened.
But how could he now? How could he put the mask back on? How could he be denied the joy of gazing at his daughter like this, the edges of his vision blurred by affectionate tears rather than a mask?
Her bottom lip began to quiver.
Quickly, Erik retrieved the mask from the floor and held it before his face.
"Don't be frightened, mon cœur. It is only Erik. It is only your papa."
Her eyes lit up in recognition. He drew the mask away and she frowned.
"Surprise," he said, desperate.
Confusion held the upset at bay. She was close enough that, when she reached out a hand, her fingers brushed the thin, dead skin of his cheek. He flinched away at the painful caress. At this rejection, the tears again welled up in her eyes.
"No, no, Émilie," he rushed, quickly putting his face back into arms' reach. "It's alright. Erik is sorry. I'm not used to…to gentle touches." She hesitated this time, but Erik understood her, or at least whatever part of her was him. She wanted to touch him and study him, this new, peculiar thing before her. Not to mock or hurt, but merely to know, just as he would observe a grand building and feel the rough stone beneath his palm. Gently, he took her hand and brought it back to his cheek. Realizing permission had been given, she began to explore the ridges and hollows she found there as he watched intently, closing his eyes only when a finger came too close. She touched the loose skin where his nose should have been and then slid down to his closed mouth.
He smiled beneath her fingertips, though he imagined it more resembled a grimace.
But she recognized it. She withdrew her hand and gave him a toothy grin in return, though it turned to a cross frown when his heavy sigh ruffled her curls.
He covered his face with the mask again, delighting in her squeal, and then her clap when he pulled it away again. It was a game to her, this man with two faces, and Erik happily indulged her for precious moments. When he finally rose to collect her breakfast dishes, he set Émilie firmly on his hip and, to free his other hand, gave her the mask she had so wanted. For a moment she studied it, sticking her fingers through the eyeholes and trying to bend the stiff leather, and then put the edge of it firmly in her mouth.
He made a face at her, though it felt awkward to purposely contort those muscles, and said lightly to the ghost in the room, "Darling Christine, your daughter did better than you."
