OCTOBER 1909
ERIK
"Erik, where's Gustave?"
I looked up from my architectural sketches when I heard Nadir's voice from behind me, blinking hard to bring my eyes into focus after working for who knows how long. I enjoyed working as an architect, but had clearly forgotten how time-consuming it was. Retirement was already appealing and I had been barely been back to work for two years. "He's downstairs doing homework," I replied as I started to sketch again.
"I was just down there, Erik."
"So you would know that he's down there. This seems like quite a pointless conversation, Daroga."
"My thoughts exactly. Why would I be up here actively seeking out a conversation with you if I knew he was downstairs?"
"Well, maybe because-" I stopped myself short when I realized that I was indeed the one in the wrong: Gustave had gone to William's house after school today. I groaned quietly as I turned my chair around to face Nadir, who looked quite unimpressed with my parenting abilities. "What time is it?"
"It's 8 o'clock. You have been sitting in that chair for almost ten hours now," Nadir said. "Can you even feel your backside anymore?"
"It's quite comfortable, actually. And yes, I can feel everything because the chair is so squishy..." I trailed off, confused at my own statement. "What just came out of my mouth?"
"I don't know but you're never going to be allowed to forget it."
I rolled my eyes hard. Yet another thing for Nadir to tease me about. My supply of ammunition against him was dangerously low - that needed to be resolved somehow. "What time is it now?"
"I already told you, Erik. I really should limit how much time you spend up here. Get you to stop drawing houses and leave your own for a walk and some fresh air every now and then. It seems to be affecting your short-term memory quite substantially."
"I have a business to run and fat businessmen to impress - time limits are not allowed. What time was I supposed to pick him up?" I asked as I got to my feet and started to clear up my desk.
"7 o'clock."
I froze and turned on my heel, my eyes wide as I realized how late I was. Punctuality was something I always tried to have, but today, I had managed to mess it up royally. "I have to go," I said as I grabbed my jacket off hte back of my chair and slipped it on.
"Relax, they won't kill you for being late," Nadir pointed out. "They love having him over and the boys get along so well. William and Gustave certainly would not complain about getting to spend extra time together."
"Maddie just might kill me...hold on." I paused, frowning as I considered the statement that Nadir had just made. "They?"
"She's married, remember?" Nadir smirked a little as I managed to prove my memory loss more and more with every word I said. "Just because we aren't married doesn't mean others aren't either."
I gave him a firm nod, trying to make it seem like I hadn't forgotten that Madeleine was married. "Yes, of course. Married. She has a husband that I have met and just forgot about at this moment. Now if you'll excuse me, I must be off," I quickly said as I raced down the stairs.
"You've never met her husband?!" Nadir cried after me. "Explain yourself!"
"Later! I have to pick up my child!" I managed to trip out the door, only to end up stepping on my shoelace and losing my shoe in the process.
"Your shoe!" I heard Nadir yell.
"Thank you, I hadn't noticed!" I retorted sarcastically as I shoved the shoe half onto my foot and started to rush...well, shuffle to William's house down the road.
It had taken me longer than usual to get to Madeleine's because I didn't take a moment to try and fix my shoe. It had slipped off a few more times and I stepped on the laces so many times I lost count, but I couldn't afford to be a second later to her home. When she opened the door for me, her expression breathed confusion and amusement when she saw my flushed face and strange shoe scenario. "Erik? Did you jog here or something?" she asked.
"Well, sort of half jogged, half shuffled," I replied as I bent over to finally slip my shoe on properly. "My heel will be nice and blistered shortly, but I didn't want to be anymore late than I already was. I'm sorry, Maddie, but I got caught up in designing a particularly complex home for a client."
"Oh, you're so anxious. We don't mind at all. I made extra casserole for dinner, so we were all right. Come in, get a glass of water."
I thanked her as I stepped into the house and waited at the front door, hearing Madeleine call for Gustave before she returned with a glass of water in hand. "Work is busy, then, is it?" she inquired.
I sighed and sipped my water. "If you only knew," I replied. "This client wants three floors and five bedroom and pillars outside, all along with-"
"Maddie, is that Gustave's father? I heard the door open." I stopped mid-conversation when a voice I had never heard echoed through the hall. I quickly was able to put a face to the voice when a young man rounded the corner into the foyer from the nearby sitting room, the two boys right behind him. He was slightly shorter than me, and his darker hair and grey eyes, among other strong features, were a sharp contrast to Madeleine's strawberry blonde hair and smaller features. Exact opposites, but seemingly a match for one another.
"Ah yes! Erik, this is my husband," Maddie said with a warm smile.
"Good evening. Erik, was it?" the man asked. He took my hand in his and gave it a shake - a strong grip for a man of his thin stature. "A pleasure to finally meet you. I'm Charles Edwards."
I couldn't stop the laugh from slipping out of my mouth when I heard that - a laugh of disbelief at the rather absurd coincidence that had arisen. First her name and now this?! "No, it's not," I said with a chuckle. "Your name isn't Charles, right? Madeleine, he's just toying with me, isn't he?"
The young lady was quite confused at my question, as her husband's name had obviously never been much of a cause for question until this point in time. "Erik, what do you mean? Of course his name is Charles, why would he say otherwise?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe he enjoys joking around. Your name isn't truly Charles, it must be...John or something of that nature. You look like a John...Yes, John it is." I gave the couple a smile and glanced at Gustave, who was standing by my side and staring up at me, completely baffled. "Thank you for watching Gustave. I am eager to reciprocate the favour. Have a good night," I said briskly before turning and walking out the door, a bewildered smile plastered on my face.
As soon as he heard the door close behind us, Gustave looked up at me. "What in the name of all that is good was that?" he asked.
I chuckled a bit with a shake of my head. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing," I replied. I was still trying to wrap my head around the couple with my parents' names - how did Gustave expect me to explain something that I myself didn't understand?
"Papa, tell me!" Gustave laughed and pulled on my arm, trying to slow me down as we walked home. "You never get panicked like that, what happened?"
"In due time, I will tell you. Now, let's get you home. How was your day with William?"
When we got home, I found that Nadir had gone home and I could see that Gustave was nowhere near ready for bed, so I advised that he try and get some homework done while I cleaned up from my dinner earlier. His homework soon brought him out to the dining table, where he put down a small stack of pictures and spread them out on the table.
"Where did you get those?" I asked as I dropped my dish towel on the table and looked over his shoulder at the photographs.
"In a box in your room," Gustave replied, totally nonchalant about the entire thing.
"And...why were you going through those boxes in my room? Those pictures were buried - what else did you find?" I knew that some of my mother's belongings that I had inherited were in one of those boxes, so I wondered how far the boy's curiosity had gone.
"Not much. A few ladies' handkerchiefs and gloves, but I assumed those were Mother's. I saw a skull mask of sorts too. One of your Persian outfits?"
I laughed. "No, a costume I wore to a masquerade at the Opera House in Paris, actually," I replied. Not a complete lie - I just omitted that fact that I also lived at the Opera House. "Anyhow. That doesn't answer the question of why you were going through my belongings."
"Oh, well, I have a school project to work on. I have to put together a family tree with pictures and some descriptions about the people in the photos," Gustave explained.
"I see. Do you have any ideas about what you plan on writing?" I asked as I sat next to him at the table, ready to offer any assistance he needed.
"I'm not quite sure yet. I was going to try and pick out pictures first, and I thought I would start with you and Mother. Do you have any pictures of yourself, Papa?"
I took a deep breath. "I'm afraid not, my boy. With a face like mine, I'm not too keen on mirrors, never mind photographs of myself."
"Well, what am I supposed to do now? You're my father - I have to put you on here!" Gustave cried.
"Alright, calm down. We'll think of something," I said before I took a moment to consider an idea. "Why don't you bring one of my masks to represent me instead of a photo?"
Gustave's eyes lit up when he heard the idea. "You would let me do that? Which one would I take? You use your white one every day."
"I actually have two of these white masks, so there's no problem with you taking one of them. Just as long as you're careful with it - I don't need to see a child running out of the school with my mask on their face."
Gustave smiled. "I'll be very careful," he promised. He then looked back to the photos on the table and picked up a few of Christine to look at. "Mother looks so pretty in all of these. Help me pick one, Papa," he requested.
"How do you expect me to choose, Gustave?" I asked with a smirk. "I loved your mother in every moment and you expect me to pick favourites? Don't be ridiculous."
Gustave sighed. "She did always looks like a queen out of a book."
"That is for certain." I took the pictures from Gustave and started to flick through them. My heart swelled with every picture I saw - her eyes glittered and her smile glowed once more in these photos, even with their black and white colour. Christine Daae would always live on - that much was sure. "Well, she looks beautiful in this one," I said as I set down a photo of Christine in a dark blue dress with magenta accents and a hat of the same colour onto the table. "This one as well." Before I knew it, I had gone through the entire stack and set them all aside. "Right, so they're all my favourites."
"Okay, we're getting nowhere. Why don't we close our eyes and pick one at random? We know we can't go wrong with any of them," Gustave suggested.
"Yes, good idea." I nodded as I gave the pictures a gentle shuffle before closing my eyes as Gustave did to make a blind choice. When I saw the selected photo, I couldn't help but smile at it. "This is a wonderful memory. This was done after her debut in Hannibal at the Paris Opera House. I forgot I had this one actually," I remarked.
"So I can use this one for the project?" the boy wondered, wanting to make sure these precious items - relics now - could leave the house.
"Of course," I replied. "It would be fun to see your classmates' reaction to your mother in such...interesting clothes." The boy laughed and set the photo aside while I gathered the remainder and put them in my suit jacket pocket. "Now, are those all the pictures, Gustave?"
"Well, I was actually hoping for a couple more," he said. His voice had become quiet and sheepish for some reason as he spoke, which made me frown a bit. "You see, Mother only had one picture of her father and she left that in Paris. So I was hoping you would have something of your parents so I can talk about at least some of my grandparents."
Now it was my turn to hesitate. His quiet approach made sense now - he never heard me speak of my mother or father, so that relationship was a mystery to him. "You-You want pictures of my parents?" I repeated.
"If you're alright with that. I promise I will be careful with them."
"Gustave, I...I'm just not...not sure.
The boy looked confused. "Are you okay, Papa? You're stammering and you hardly ever trip over your words. Usually that's me," he said with a small smirk.
"I'm okay, yes," I replied quickly. "It's just...I only have one picture of my parents and I don't want it to get lost." That was an excuse he would believe...wasn't it? Even still, I knew that wouldn't put him in a fair position. He had never met any of his four grandparents - all four of them had died years before his birth. I at least owed it to him to see them, and it was time to get over my own grief and hatred. "But it's alright. I'll show you. It will put you in a better position to talk about them."
I slipped out of the dining room and up to my bedroom, where I found a few of my boxes pulled out of the closet. Gustave had pulled everything that he had taken out into neat stacks beside the boxes, and I did indeed find the things he had mentioned. The pastel-coloured handkerchiefs and lace gloves that had actually belonged to my mother. The skull mask that had accompanied my Red Death costume to the masquerade where I had presented Don Juan Triumphant. Besides that, I noticed a few other little things that he hadn't mentioned: The leather case that still held the score to my opera. A cross on a beaded necklace that my mother had worn daily sat on top of that case, as did a small golden band - my father's wedding ring, I realized. I bent over and picked it up, turning it over in my and before deciding to slip it onto my own ring finger. The metal was cool against. My skin and it was strange to feel. I had never worn a wedding band once in my life - some men had worn one twice, even three times, while I had never had the privilege of wearing one at any point. The ring was a symbol of the love my father had had for my mother and how much he cared for her. I should have been able to wear my own with my dear Christine. We should have shared a wedding and our first dance and a newlywed getaway...everything that my own parents had, I should have had. Now, I could never.
I sighed as I slipped off the ring, silently wishing I didn't have to but knowing that I did. I set it on my bedside table to remind me to give it a safe storage spot before I returned my attention to locating that picture frame. Thankfully, I had a rough idea of where it had been put, so it didn't take me long to locate it. I held the frame gently in my hands as I started to make my way back downstairs, examining the photos as I went. My father's kind eyes looked back at me, filled with humour and admiration. I realized that the two of us shared many physical similarities, and it made me think that i might have been quite handsome if I had been born with a normal face. And my mother...her photo looked so sweet and innocent, but I felt that I knew her too well to believe that.
"Here you are, Gustave," I said as I walked back to my son and handed him the frame. "So that is my father, Charles, on the left, and Madeleine, my mother, is on the right."
"Like William's parents' names...So that's why you panicked and called William's dad John! It was weird for you, wasn't it?" Gustave realized as he started to laugh.
"Yes, please don't bring that up. Not my finest moment."
"Okay, sure. But tell me something about them. Start with your father."
I nodded and took a deep breath as I sat in the chair next to Gustave and looked at the photos while I got my thoughts together. "Well, I didn't really know him," I explained. "He passed away exactly three months before I was born. What I do know was that he loved my mother very much and that he was an architect as well. I suppose that's where that love of architecture in me came from."
Gustave nodded. "He sounds like he was a nice man."
"From what I've gathered, he was. A friend of our family said that he was quite the comedian, but I suppose that gene skipped a generation."
"You can be funny, Papa."
I shrugged my shoulders. "Thank you, Gustave. I suppose I can be, although Nadir doesn't always think so."
"You two make me laugh," he said with a toothy smile.
"Is that so? Well, that's good. Now, if that's all you need for the project, I'll just put that away." I grabbed the picture frame from him and got up, desperate to escape the inevitable conversation about...her. I should have known, though, that with parents like Christine and I, the boy was not lacking in awareness or attention to detail.
"You forgot someone," he said.
"Did I? Did I really? I though I mentioned everyone," I remarked as I turned on my heel to face him again.
Gustave giggled a bit. "See, you can be funny."
I managed a stiff, breathy laugh. "Yes, funny. Of course."
"So what about your mother?"
I scoffed. "If you can even call her that," I said, only to bite my tongue when I realized that I had said that out loud. I wished I could take it back so bad, but I could already see the gears turning in his head as questions started to form.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he finally inquired.
"Gustave, it's difficult to explain and I don't want anything to upset you," i replied as I ran my hand over my hair.
"Oh. It's that bad?"
""You see, my boy," I said as I sat back down again. "My mother and I...had an interesting relationship to say the least." I paused for a moment, trying to pick my words carefully. I didn't want to outright say that my mother had hated me - although it wouldn't have been untrue - but I did not want to undermine such a difficult part of my life. "She wasn't very fond of me, to put it kindly. We had quite an estranged relationship. I'm not quite sure how much detail to give you. I don't want you to be uncomfortable."
I watched him put on a brave face and look at me with a confident, yet sympathetic, expression. "I'll be fine, Papa. Tell me your story."
I sighed and nodded. "In that case, I will be frank with you - she was afraid of me. She didn't even want me to touch her. She feared my deformity and her relationship with me would interfere with her reputation in our village. She tried to keep me from singing, as she thought such beauty from someone like me was sinful, but not even she could keep music from me. We ended up so distant that she once told me that..." I held my tongue, reaching up to touch my mask as I thought. The memory of my mother screaming at me and telling me that she wished I were dead tore me apart all over again. All the emotions, the trauma seemed to hit me hard all at once.
"Papa?" I dropped my hand and focused on Gustave. He was looking at me and patiently waiting for the story to continue. He knew all too well that there was more - he knew enough about me to know how complicated my life was.
"Never mind," I said, pushing my emotions back again. "One day, it all became too much. I ran away. I was younger than you, only nine years old, when I left and began my journey. A trek that would take me to Italy, Russia, Persia...and eventually right back to where I had begun. What an interesting circle I seemed to have gone around, hm? I went back to St. Martin-de-Boscherville. A fairly insignificant little place in France, as you saw. I had travelled home with the intention of destroying my childhood home, but instead, something possessed me to knock on the front door. Instead of my mother answering it, her good friend, Marie, did. I remembered her - she had always been kind to me. That day, though, through her tears, she managed to tell me that my mother had died only three days before I arrived."
I blinked hard and looked down at my fidgeting fingers. I was begging myself not to let tears fall, but it was tempting as I felt them welling up and burning my eyes when I held them back. I never spoke of my mother, so coming clean about everything all at once was very overwhelming, apparently. Now wasn't the time, though - I needed strength to get through this discussion.
"You would think that after what I had endured by her hand, I would have been relieved to know that she was gone," I continued shakily. "In all honesty, though, I wasn't sure how to feel. Somehow there was grief. She may not have been a brilliant mother, but that bond between a child and his mother is deep-seated, I suppose.
"Marie brought me to see her where she lay in her room. Her features were delicate, almost glass-like - still beautiful, even in death. I recall feeling relief - I could put everything between us behind me now after twenty-one years of holding a grudge. Even still, a desire to take her hand to say goodbye burned in my chest. And yet, I held back, still upholding her wish to never feel my touch." I took a breath, finally starting to get my emotions under control as I finished the story. "Anyhow. Those are your grandparents," I added, forcing a smile as I took the frame again and getting to my feet. The silence in the room weighed heavily on me, almost like I was drowning in it, and I glanced back at Gustave to see a shocked expression on his face. I sighed, suddenly aware that I had dumped all of that on my twelve year old son. Yet another one of my bad ideas. "I'm sorry, that was a lot. I probably should have told you all that, but even still, I don't want you to feel sorry for me. Thanks to my mother, I left France, and if I hadn't, I never would have gone on my journey through the world. If I hadn't done that, I never would have met your mother...and I never would have been blessed with you."
At that moment, Gustave got to his feet and walked over to me to give me a tight hug. "I still feel bad, Papa," he whispered.
I tipped his head up so I was able to look into his eyes. "I appreciate that. But you know what? Even with our strained relationship, I knew my mother well. Something that I know for sure is that she would have loved you."
The boy smiled wide and gave me another squeeze. "Papa, is your mother the woman in your drawings? I know most of them are Mother, but there was another lady. I didn't know who she was."
I raised my eyebrow. "Well, for one thing, we need to have a chat about you snooping through my things, but yes, those were sketches of my mother."
"She was very pretty. You have her eyes."
I sighed shakily, biting my lip to force myself to maintain my composure. "Thank you, mio soldatino. Just as you have your mother's beautiful eyes, I said as I gave his hair a ruffle. "Now, go get ready for bed. I'll be in shortly to say goodnight." I bent over and gave the top of his head a kiss before he took off for his room.
I followed him up and walked back into my room, setting the framed pictures of my parents on my dresser instead of back in its box. I paused for a second, simply staring at their photos, before I turned to my closet and started to pack my belongings back into their appropriate boxes. I slipped the Red Death's mask into the box with the score of my opera, then wrapped the crucifix necklace in my mother's handkerchiefs and set it in the box. I closed the boxes up and slid them across the floor, tucking them into my closet. As I pushed the door closed, though, the breeze coming through my open window caught the door and slammed it shut with much more force then I had intended. It wasn't the slam that made me flinch, though - rather, it was the sound of glass shattering as the vibrations from the slam sent something falling to the floor. I slowly turned and sighed when I saw the frame with my parents' photographs laying face down on the floor. I picked it up and gazed at the damage, gently running my fingers over the cracked glass. One main crack ran across my father's chest, but my mother's photo seemed to have taken the brunt of the impact - symbolic, almost. The glass had shattered over her face and the picture had shifted down in the frame, but it was the piece of paper poking out from behind it that made my brow crease. I carefully undid the frame's small latches and popped the back off to find a folded, yellowed piece of paper set behind the picture of my mother. Taking it out, I set it on the bed beside me while I fixed the picture and closed up the frame, making a mental note to purchase a new one. I turned to look back at the piece of paper sitting atop my sheets, trying to figure it out without even opening it. Who would have hidden it in there? Myself was my one guess. Had I hidden a note or sketch in there? A failed composition tucked away where I knew I would never look? Finally, I picked it up and unfolded it to see my first name written in a delicate script that I recognized immediately.
I hadn't hidden this note for myself. My mother had.
I didn't read past my name for a few minutes. My eyes stayed locked on where she had written it, too afraid to continue and discover the note's content. So, I busied myself with admiring my mother's handwriting - it was so neat and precise with thin clean lines connecting every letter and the dot above the letter 'i' in my name wasn't solid. That was the only feature of her writing I had inherited - hollowed dots when I wrote the letter 'i'. My handwriting had never been beautiful like hers; even with years of practice to avoid the illegible scratches I had produced as a child, I knew my personal font could never be as elegant as hers.
Eventually, my eyes dropped to the first line of the letter. I knew I could not just stare at my name forever, and something ached in my heart, urging me to read. I needed to know what she had said...about me. So, with a deep breath and a long blink, I began to read:
Erik,
It took me too long to sit down and write you this, and the truth is that I probably won't even be able to get it all down. I suppose I should start by telling you that I am truly sorry. I know those are empty words this late in our relationship, but I mean them to the truest definition. You deserved a better mother than me. You deserved someone who didn't make you feel like a monster. Dear God, the things I said to you...I would take it all back if I could. You had done nothing to deserve the treatment you endured at my hand. You were only a boy. I was supposed to love you but I couldn't provide you with that.
There was so much of my life that I wanted to share with you. so much of your father's life that I wanted to share. I wanted you to meet your aunts and uncles and all your cousins. I should have nurtured your beautiful voice, but now our home is empty without it. For all the times I said I wanted you gone, I never could have imagined how much I would miss you once you were gone.
I do hope you can find it in your heart to accept my apology. I do not ask you to forgive me because what I did was unforgivable. I just want you to know that I wish I could take it all back.
If you ever find this letter, I hope you have found love because you are worthy of it, just as all humans are. Because that is just what you are - you are human. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You are brilliant and strong, and you are human. I am proud to say that I can call you my son.
All my love,
Madeleine
I hadn't realized just how much my hands were shaking until I finished reading the letter. I stood and started to walk aimlessly up and down the length of my room, my tear-filled eyes locked on that last paragraph, those three words: You are human.
She never would have said that to my face when I lived at home. In fact, she told me quite the opposite, but...a revelation of that magnitude didn't dawn on someone overnight. My mother had felt that way for a while - that I, her son, was a living, breathing human with feelings and needs. She had just been too caught up in herself to tell me.
Although I doubted hearing that would have prevented me from running away from home, finding this letter sooner might also have brought me back to France sooner as well. I might have gone home and reconciled somewhat with my mother. I could have offered her complementary medical care that would have let her live a much longer life. Who knows...perhaps Gustave would have known his grandmother for at least a time.
I folded up the note again and tucked it into the breast pocket of my jacket, almost unintentionally placing it near my heart. All of a sudden, I had a mother. It was a sensation I had never felt before. Besides that, the thought that there was a family of mine scattered across France and who knows where else...and that was only my mother's side! Never mind the Destler side of me. Not that it made a difference. I wasn't going to reach out to my family only to be humiliated. This letter, though...it changed so much.
The note still tucked over my heart, I turned to my bedside table and pulled open the drawer to pull out my sketchbook. I sat on my bed and opened the cover, and the book flipped right to my sketches of Christine in the middle of the small book. I had opened to those pages and creased the book to draw there so many times that the book naturally fell open to that page every time now. Today, though, I turned closer to the start of the book and glanced at several pages with pencil sketches of my mother. I hadn't known what to do with my grief after her death, so I drew her over and over again, pouring my emotions out on the page.
As I flipped through the sketches, a small folded piece of paper fell out from between two pages. I picked it up and unfolded it, smiling when I found it to be one of the architectural sketches I made as a child. The lines were dark and messy, but the artistic ability was there, just waiting to be honed.
She made sure I got these little pictures back in my hands, passing them from architect to architect in order to reach me. She wrote that not and hid it so I would never find it, but poured her heart out to me as if I would. She left her fortune, her home...her everything to me. Her son that she never batted an eye at. Her only son. Her little boy, you could say.
Perhaps my mother did love me...in her own special way.
