The Velvet Hours by Alyson Richman Read Free Book Online Page B

ceramics. I could close my eyes and envision the more alluring treasures he concealed behind the curtain.
    We would sit in her living room, a tray with two porcelain cups of tea between us, nibbling a small plate of chocolates that Giselle had arranged with care. On sunny days, the shutters would be ajar, so that the daylight cast a beautiful glow over the room. Materials that I had always believed to be gray now appeared almost opalescent. And Marthe’s face, too, seemed to change with the sunlight. Illuminated from the shadows, it was easier to see the faint lines by her eyes, and the softness of her skin no longer tight against her cheekbones. But, still, like a well-seasoned actress, she knew her best angles and she used them to her full advantage.
    During the course of my visits, she had yet to reveal how she came to sit for the large portrait. Nor had she mentioned how she came to own her luminous pearls with the emerald butterfly clasp. Yet, for weeks she had managed to keep me enraptured. I held on to her every word, anxious for the next installment of stories. She came alive when she spoke, her neck grew slightly longer from beneath her collar, and her eyes grew wider. And though she used her hands to emphasizecertain elements, she never raised her hand further than her waistline and her fingers never opened. She used them a way a bird might use its feathers, to give her words flight.
    When I was in her company, it was easy for me to understand how seductive she must have been at the pinnacle of her youth. But I had yet to figure how she sustained her financial independence after all these years.
    She did not appear concerned about money. Somehow, she had managed to prevent the struggles of the outside world from penetrating her apartment. There were luxuries aplenty. Not just in the furnishings and artwork of her living room, but in the smaller details like the full-time housemaid, the expensive chocolates, and the abundance of bouquets of fresh flowers. Even her perfume smelled regal and refined.
    In contrast, my father continued to work even longer hours as he, like the rest of France, struggled to make ends meet. On the streets, people mirrored the country’s depression on their faces. Their expressions tight. Their clothes more and more somber. The newspapers screamed headlines of factory strikes and the growing rise of Facism throughout Europe.
    But my grandmother’s apartment offered a respite from all that. It remained my refuge, a place where I could lose myself for a few hours of the day in the cocoon of another person’s life story, one that was so much more interesting than my own. Those hours were like velvet to me. Stories spun of silken thread, her own light and darkness, unabashedly drawn.
    When I exited the large oak doors of her apartment building, however, the chill outside seemed even more brutal than before I had arrived. And the beauty of her apartment made the lack of ours more apparent. I began to write on the days I did not see her, in a café not far from our house. I’d bring my notebook and pen and sit beside the glass, my imagination trying to conceive a way of weaving what she told me into a book. I could envision her as a young girl with herbasket of laundry, her worn gray dress and her apron. I could then see her as a young woman pulling a needle through yards of chiffon, as well as her singing on the stage, her face illuminated by the gaslights, then later cloaked in the shadow of Charles’s carriage.
    I had never once stepped outside Paris, yet I could imagine with ease the pale green of the water in Venice. The plush banquettes of Caffè Florian, where Charles baptized her with her new name.
    And then I would return home. I’d walk up the narrow steps to our apartment on the Rue des Saints-Pères. I’d find the living room with my mother’s needlepoint pillows. The small wooden dining table. I’d light the stove and boil myself a cup of