Ch 8

She will only be visiting for five days, then she plans on going to Venice, Italy to sing before the ungrateful Italians who think that they have something more to offer than the French.

Tomorrow I will attempt to change her mind.

For little over a year I have thought of this moment, this second chance at winning back lovely Christine. She knows I want her back. I think she would have known even if I had not written to her over the years.

Truth be told, I hadn't meant to send Christine anything. I had seen the letters with her return address on the envelope and knew that if I should I write anything—anything at all—she would break correspondence with Meg and Madeline. I could not afford this loss for even if she was not near me, at least I knew where the mother of my child traveled. I was not part of her life, but she could still be part of mine.

My simple reading of her letters to Meg and Madeline ceased when my lovely diva traveled to Africa. At the time she had a daughter with the de Chagny boy, a little thing named Suzette that she worried about constantly. Had the infant been weaned she would have left her with a nanny, but instead she toted her child through the continent.

I still remember how I read and re-read the letter she addressed to both Madeline and Meg. My hands shook and my throat tightened. Little Suzette had caught malaria. She passed in her mother's arms on her half-brother's fourth birthday.

What could I do but offer her my sincerest condolences? After all, I had once mourned Alexandre, whom I had thought dead well before his birth. Of course I couldn't ask Madeline or Meg to send word on my behalf. They suspected I read their letters but would never agree to send one.

I had to have them send my message without them being aware, which also meant my note might go unnoticed.

Being that she was still in Africa, however, I expected she would see my writing and know I cared for her and respected her enough to mourn the child she created with another man. In heat-sensitive ink, I wrote three words: my deepest apologies.

If she saw this she would expect to see more, I rationalized. From that moment on I began sending messages with each letter Madeline and Meg sent out. I wrote my letter before they did—just as I had done this past night, in fact—and knew without a doubt that she would have my love for her, seen or unseen.

For months I took the letters, once the original recipients finished reading, and held them over a fire, hoping beyond hope, beyond reason, beyond everything that she had done something for me. It didn't matter what she said. I would have even been happy with her telling me to leave her alone. At least I would know that she had seen my words and knew my feelings for her had never changed.

Ironically it was a week before Christmas when she sent a letter to Madeline. It was a very short note—as most of her letters had been since little Suzette had been taken back to France and buried. Christine was in Spain singing to the Spanish Royal Family at the time. Her husband was back at home handling finances and politics. I pitied her being so alone during the holiday, without a man to love her or a child to cherish. She said that Spain was beautiful. That was all she had said to Madame in her note.

But on the back, just for me, in letters that would disappear seconds after she wrote them it said quite simply: Thank you, Erik.

My God, I had thought. She still thinks of me. She knows. She cares. Christine cares for me.

Why else would she have responded?

So now, like the lovesick fool that I am, I stand before the fire and read her words again, tracing with my finger the lengths of eloquent penmanship she sent to me. She drew a small rose in the corner of the page in regular ink for the world to see, a long-stemmed rose with black petals.

And no thorns.

How I love this woman.

oOo

By the time I saw Alex, it was well past noon. Exactly when he dressed and came down for lunch, I had no idea. I had locked the door and sat down to read the few letters that had not been committed to the flames and lost track of time, such was my focus. Each letter looked as it had the day Christine mailed it from Sidney, Rome, Cairo, New York, Madrid and Budapest. I kept them safe within this cedar box in the shape of a book in the astronomy section, the one subject Alexandre finds of no interest.

For hours I read them word for word, memorizing them word for word, imagining how her lips would move if she read them aloud to me. I thought about how she sat at a desk with her legs crossed at the ankles, pen poised in her right hand as she sat on a terrace or an outdoor café. I imagined the wind in her hair, the way she played with her necklace, smiled at a child passing by.

Alex knocking on my bedroom door dissolved my thoughts of Christine. I neatly folded everything, taking great care to maintain the exact creases, and returned them to the box. I placed the false book under my bed and opened the door.

"Why can't I go?" he asked the moment the door swung back. His dark curls of hair had been combed back from his face, revealing a small scar on his forehead from an incident as an infant.

I sighed in disgust. "How long have you been avoiding your trip up here? Didn't your grand-mere tell you I wanted to speak with you as soon as you woke?"

"She was gone," Alex whined. He offered a shrug and began wildly swinging his arms. "I had to make myself breakfast since no one else was in the house."

Apparently I did not count, but I ignored his comment. He relied on Madeline, his grand-mere, as he called her, to feed him while Meg made certain to provide snacks any time he walked into the kitchen. They doted on him terrible, which was ironic considering how often Madeline thought I spoiled Alex as an infant.

"And Uncle Charles? Have you even begun your studies for today?"

"There was nothing to eat. I fixed myself something and missed my morning lesson."

"How very utterly convenient," I murmured.

Alex said nothing in return. His pouting was intolerable when there were so many greater issues at hand. I turned away from him. Even though I knew the answer, I asked anyhow. Sometimes it is better to say something, anything rather than allow silence within a room.

"Where did your grand-mere go?"

Alexandre was quiet. He was perceptive. I forget that he is no longer an infant barely aware of his surroundings. He knew she is here, his mother, and it angered him that I would not mention her in front of him.

"Why can't I see her?"

"Is that all you intend to ask?"

He exhaled sharply. "I could have taken the letter myself," he mumbled.

I ignored his statement and returned to my desk. There was business at hand: operas needed to be sent to different houses in hopes of publication and performance, bills needed to be paid, statements from the bank needed to be looked at before my meeting with Christine.

"Monsieur Lowry said Egypt interests you," I commented.

"Why can't I see her?"

"Is that all you intend to ask?"

Alex held his tongue as he stood in the doorway. I could see him from the corner of my eye, his body rigid, hands balled into fists. He was nothing short of furious for me denying him an answer.

His temper was worse as a toddler. He chipped one of his teeth when he threw himself on the floor and hit his face on a stool. Every time something failed to agree with him, he made his anger into a theatrical performance and fell onto the floor. Madeline was surprised he made it past the age of five with all of the flopping about that he did in his early years. He has changed much. Now when he is in a fit of anger, he stands allows his anger to boil. He has a wall built up, one with apathy for bricks and confusion and misunderstanding as mortar. Each day the wall grows higher and my son is lost behind it. We have put much effort into this terrible contraption. Still, we do nothing to bring it down.

He does not realize I am acting on his behalf, that my love for Christine is woven with my love for him. For too many years I have been denied, but I have decided I will at last have all of the pieces fit together.

"Father," Alex said at last. He hesitated, waiting for me to turn and face him.

"What is it?" My fingers tapped the masked side of my face, staring at the numbers on the receipts. Madeline had been a bit free in the last month with purchases at the meat market. When she returned from the hotel I would ask her about the expenses. "Speak," I ordered, flipping through my bank book.

Alexandre said nothing. It wasn't until the door clicked shut that I even realized he had left the room.