Chapter 6
Véronique spent her first night at home going through the boxes from her apartment. It had all been carefully and professionally packed by the movers. There were boxes of some books and papers, a few decorative items. She hadn’t kept much at her apartment. The rest of it was mostly clothes, and she came across Cyril’s things that he had left there when they went to Brussels. Some shirts, a blazer, jeans, a pair of beautiful chocolate brown suede shoes that looked very English. She put them aside, trying to decide if she should give them away or send them back to his mother. She thought it best to send them to her. She might want them out of sentiment, and Véronique didn’t want to give them to strangers. She carefully put them in a box to send to her.
She went through the rest of her own clothes. She couldn’t imagine wearing the evening gowns again. She no longer led that life and wouldn’t be invited to black-tie evenings by Chanel and Dior. How could she wear an evening gown with a face like hers? It would be pathetic to pretend that her life hadn’t radically changed. She put all the fanciest clothes away to save them. She wasn’t ready to part with them, but didn’t want to look like a freak or turn herself into a laughingstock or an object of pity.
She only put the most sober and unremarkable of her clothes on hangers, things she might actually wear, although for the moment she could only see herself in jeans and old sweaters with her surgical mask in place whenever she left the apartment. She couldn’t eat in public with the mask, since it covered her mouth too, so she wouldn’t be going anywhere, and she had no one to eat out with anyway. She didn’t feel ready to call any of her old friends, nor the girls she knew while modeling. She was never close to any of them. Many of them had been jealous, and most models didn’t work for long, and moved on, and so many of them were teenagers.
She spent the night organizing the closet in her childhood bedroom, and making piles to give away. She couldn’t see herself in six-inch heels either, or satin evening shoes. They were no longer part of her lifestyle. She wouldn’t be showing off anymore, or making appearances at gala events or invited anywhere. That was her reality now. She told herself it didn’t matter. All that mattered was putting one foot in front of the other, and doing what she had to. She had reorganized her closets and the clothes she put in them by the end of the night, and fell into her bed gratefully. There was a big mirror over the dresser in her bedroom. She took it down before she went to bed, and replaced it with a painting she had always loved from her mother’s bedroom. It was the portrait of a young woman, looking dreamily out a window, toward a green field that stretched into the distance. It had an airy, summery feeling to it, and reminded her of her mother. It had felt strange going into Marie-Helene’s bedroom and taking it. Her mother’s bedroom was larger than hers, but Véronique had no intention of moving into it. She was going to continue sleeping in her own room.
When she woke in the morning, she had a heavy feeling, as though she had the weight of the world on her chest. Then she remembered. She was home, and her mother wasn’t and never would be again. Véronique felt as though she had returned as a different person. The person she had been six months before was a stranger, and was now as dead as her mother.
She spent the rest of the day opening the boxes from her old apartment. She picked up her mother’s things left around the house, her glasses in the kitchen, a handbag she’d left in her study, a nightgown the cleaning woman had left folded on her bed, as though she would return. She put it all in her mother’s dressing room, and decided to deal with it later. She wasn’t ready to part with her mother’s things yet. Her toothbrush and toothpaste were still in her bathroom, some old medications, her perfume and makeup, and some eye creams. Eventually, she’d have to throw it all away, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it yet. She had another hard task to attend to first.
She called Bernard about arranging for the burial of her mother’s ashes. She had decided not to have a memorial service. It would be too painful, even if it meant cheating her friends and clients of the opportunity to say goodbye. She’d already been gone for six months. Véronique wanted to bury her mother in private, with only Bernard present. She didn’t want to have to explain the surgical mask to anyone. She felt selfish keeping it private for that reason, but she thought her mother would have understood, and given her the leeway to do it as she wanted.
Véronique called the priest herself, and reached one she didn’t know at their parish. Her mother hadn’t been a regular churchgoer, but went from time to time when the spirit moved her. Véronique explained the circumstances to the priest, and he was shocked and deeply sympathetic. Bernard called to tell her that he had purchased a double plot at the cemetery, so that one day she could be buried with her mother, if she chose to. They had given him available times for a graveside funeral service, and she communicated them to the priest. They chose Friday in the late afternoon. The cemetery was a half hour out of the city, and Bernard said he could be there. He would bring the urn with her ashes with him, so Véronique didn’t have to deal with it.