13, Rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro [60]
“I love you, Louise. I wrote these because I love you. I don’t need to keep them because I have all the melodies memorized. It would make me happy for you to have them. To play them, even, Louise.”
“Oh, I love you too, Garance. You’re like a daughter to me.”
“No, I’m not. I don’t love you like that. I love you like music.”
Ah, the girl had to go and say it. Louise’s last attempt at willful obtuseness falls before Garance’s relentless drive to speak her heart. Louise’s hands begin to shake as they clasp her precious and unsettling gift.
“Garance, you are just confused. You love the music that I teach you. I see your passion for it, and you think that I am a vessel for your passion, but this thing that you feel, it is not a thing of the body.”
At this pronouncement, Garance laughs, and before Louise can be offended at having her sage advice dismissed so swiftly by a mere child, the girl drops her bag to the floor and seizes Louise in her arms. The girl’s fierce embrace will admit no refusal. Louise feels Garance’s hands, still cold from her walk in the fresh, dim morning outside, against her warm and drowsy back. The girl’s face is nestled in the side of her neck, in her loose hair. The girl says with great emotion, “I can feel your skin, Louise, through your nightgown.”
Louise reaches around and rubs the girl’s shoulders, in a gesture of comfort. The side of her neck, though it is warmed by the girl’s breath, is ashiver with goose bumps. “My dear, please. It is not a thing of the body,” she repeats.
The girl quivers at this, and Louise cannot tell now whether Garance is laughing or weeping. She is about to reassure the trembling child that all will be well when the trembling child pulls her face out of Louise’s neck and presses her lips fiercely against her teacher’s mouth.
For a moment, Louise is so startled that she does not move. She even has the fleeting thought that the kiss is not unpleasant, the soft curve of the girl’s jaw so unlike a man’s.
It is this thought that makes her pull back and scramble away, standing up so quickly that the little red notebook falls from her lap and lands at her feet with a decisive thwap.
“Garance!” she says, angry now, angry that she has come down to see this girl in her nightgown without so much as shielding herself in a robe first. The additional layer of cloth on her overwrought body would have been a great help. Her body has been through entirely too much over the course of the past day!
“Oh, do you not love me anymore?”
“Of course I love you. Now please go to school.”
The girl closes her book bag but makes no move to stand up. Her face is flushed and she looks about to cry.
“Darling, please,” Louise says, gently now. “It’ll be all right and you will get over this, this thing. It’s not really from your body, my dear. It’s from your music.”
“Don’t you see, Louise? It’s the same thing. Music is a thing from the flesh. It’s all the same. If you make me make music, then you’re in my blood.”
Louise feels like she might faint. This whole business is too much. Why did the girl choose today? Today is not the time. Not that any time is right for such absurdity, but today especially is not the time—not after Xavier.
Louise stands as straight as she can manage, attempting military authority with her posture, attempting to shield the warm storm of bewildered femaleness that rips through her entire self. She enunciates clearly when she gives her order. “Garance, go to school immediately.”
The girl stands and picks up her bag, her mouth mellowing into a weak smile. “Am I coming back for my lesson tomorrow?” she asks.
“If you wish.”
Garance nods, shoulders her bag, and leaves quietly. The two of them have accepted this moment. The moment has passed. It is already something else. They have already forgotten.
THAT CONFOUNDED GIRL!
With Garance gone, Louise looks over her gift. On the last page of the notebook, the written music interrupts itself, the melody merely stopped midsentence.