The Reinvention of Love

give them to the unfortunate girl who begs in front of the church.”
    “Oh.” Mother looks at the clothes, as though seeing them for the first time. “What are you doing in my room?”
    “I just told you.”
    We stare at each other. Mother seems more stupid than usual these days. Perhaps she’s losing what little mind she has left.
    “Time for lunch, Sainte-Beuve,” she says. “You should leave those here.”
    I bundle the dresses onto her divan and scuttle past her out the door.
    I find a boy in the park outside the Hugos’ apartment and pay him to take a note upstairs.
    Will she come? I have signed the note as Charlotte so she will know who waits below her window, who paces up and down between the trees. My heart races and my mouth is dry. A small gust of wind pulls at the edge of my skirts.
    Adèle is there in a moment. She runs from the door of the building, in her mourning dress, my note still clutched in her hand. Because I am not dressed in a way she will expect, she runs right past me and I have to call out to her.
    “Adèle!”
    “Charlotte?” She comes towards me, looking confused.
    “Sister Charlotte,” I say, for I am dressed as a nun. I bought the habit this morning. It was all I could think of to do. I couldn’t risk getting caught by Mother again.
    We walk to the far end of the Place des Vosges, out of sight of the apartment. We sit on a bench in the shade.
    “I came as soon as I heard,” I say.
    Adèle turns to me. Her face is puffy from crying. She turns away again. “It’s hard to talk to you when you’re dressed like that.”
    “I’m sorry. It was the best I could do.” I tug at the wimple which fits a bit too snugly around my face. “It’s very hot in here,” I say. “I had no idea that it was so stifling to be a nun.”
    Adèle manages a faint smile. “Not that it doesn’t suit you a little,” she says.
    We sit in silence. I hold her hand. The wind moves in the trees above us.
    “Little Dédé is only thirteen,” she says, after a while. “We didn’t tell her right away, and now she thinks that her sister is speaking to her from the grave. For days we knew Léopoldine was dead, but Dédé still thought her alive. Perhaps this is why she feels her sister talks to her; because at the moment of her death, Léopoldine
was
still alive to Dédé.” Adèle shifts closer to me. “I don’t know how to comfort her,” she says.
    “What about you?”
    “What about me?”
    “How can I comfort you?”
    Adèle leans into me, her plump body slumped against mine, all weight and no vitality.
    “There is no comfort for me,” she says. “Just sit with me. For as long as we are able.”
    Once the proximity of her body would have sent me mad with delight. Now my body is simply there to hold up her sorrow, like a bolster on a bed.
    What lives and what dies? The body dies, but the spirit of love persists. Love dies, but the body that tasted that love continues, absurdly, to exist. There is no knowing what will leave us and what will remain.
    Perhaps this is the most frightening thing of all.

ADELE

    THEY LEAVE THE BODY OUT FOR ME.
    Madame Vacquerie meets me at the door.
    “Prepare yourself,” she says, her hand on my arm, leading me into the cavernous entrance hall. “She was in the water for a little while before they found her.”
    The house at Villequier overlooks the Seine, wide as a lake here where it feeds in from the ocean. The carriage drove along its banks on the way to this house. The water outside the carriage window a flat, blank sheet of grey and blue. No waves or wind today. A clear sky, and the river looking so picturesque, I had to keep reminding myself that my daughter had drowned there.
    It has taken all night to get here, and I did not sleep, but sat up in the rocking, darkened carriage, preparing myself for this moment, a moment for which I will never be fully prepared.
    Madame Vacquerie does not take her hand from my arm, and I am grateful for this. We do not know each other well, met briefly at the wedding a few months ago. We had spoken warmly to each other then, anticipating years of becoming acquainted, years of meeting up at the various occasions of our children’s lives. In fact, with Léopoldine newly pregnant, we were expecting just such an event at the beginning of the new year.
    “We have washed the bodies,” says Madame Vacquerie. “And the graves have been dug in the cemetery. We could bury them tomorrow.”
    “Yes, tomorrow.” I