The Reinvention of Love

a basin and some water. I wash. I dress. I see to my hair. I go downstairs.
    Madame Vacquerie’s family have returned. I don’t know where she sent them, but it couldn’t have been far. When I go downstairs, they are all in the foyer. The men bow to me. Monsieur Vacquerie says some words that I forget the moment he utters them. Charles’s brother Augustus, one of Victor’s most ardent disciples, asks repeatedly after my husband.
    “He’s not coming,” I say, with more anger than I mean. Augustus nods and backs away from me.
    I have slept later than I wanted. It is mid-morning. The bodies of Charles and Léopoldine were taken away late last night, to be placed in their coffins, to be readied for their burial today at noon.
    Monsieur Vacquerie ushers me into the dining room for breakfast. The table that just yesterday held the body of his son, now holds cups and saucers, plates of rolls and steaming jugs of coffee.
    Madame Vacquerie is seated at one end of the table. She nods to me as I enter the room.
    “Madame Hugo.”
    “Madame Vacquerie.”
    She is formal with me. She is closed to me now. I can see it in her face. Her family have returned and her grief now belongs to them. Her husband passes behind her, places a hand on her shoulder. She puts a hand up to cover his, and the gesture makes me so lonely.
    I eat more than I want to at breakfast, but again I am ravenous and can’t help myself. Death has made me a glutton. Madame Vacquerie, on the other hand, barely touches her food.
    Augustus tries to engage me in conversation about Victor, but I ignore him. When I have the opportunity, I take my leave and slink from the room, go back into the library and stand by the table where Léopoldine used to lie, sobbing until a maid comes to find me to tell me that my carriage is ready.
    The words are said. The coffins are wheeled out to the open graves. The wind suddenly whips up when we are standing there, and the priest’s vestments fill with air and make him look like a chess piece.
    The words are said. The bodies are lowered. The words aresaid. The dirt hits the wooden coffin lids, like rain lashing at the window on a winter’s night. The words are said. The wreaths are placed. The hands are clasped. The wind subsides.
    I stand at my daughter’s grave to the end, after everyone else has left to go back to the house.
    It seems impossible that Léopoldine is in this box, in this hole in the ground, and that I will have to leave her here, cold and alone, for all eternity. I can’t believe it. I do believe it. I can’t believe it. And it is hard not to think that this is punishment, that I am being punished by God for my sin of adultery, that Léopoldine was sacrificed because I am a sinner. It is hard not to believe this is my fault.
    When I return to the house the reception is under way. I know almost no one, sit by myself in a corner of the drawing room, drinking tea and trying not to eat too much cake.
    Madame Vacquerie is seated beside her husband. She sits up straight, talking to a young woman. I can see from her posture that she is holding herself upright, that if she didn’t make this effort, she would collapse. At the graveside of her son, she fell to her knees in the dirt and had to be hauled to her feet by Augustus.
    A mother’s grief is not pretty.
    I look around the room, at all the strange faces, at the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. I look at the statue, the bust I passed yesterday morning on my way to the library, and I realize with a start that it is a bust of Victor. And I remember how upset he was to lose Léopoldine to marriage. He had sent her this head of himself as a way to assert his continuing presence in her life. Although, this was not how he had described it to me. He had told me that she would be lonely for him. Interesting that Léopoldine put it in a neutral place, the drawing room, rather than placing it in her private chambers.
    But Victor did love his daughter. We loved her together. She was ours, and that bond between us will never be broken. From now on, we will be her archive. All the years of her life will be stored in our memories. She will only exist there. Victor and I are the only ones who have known her intimately since the moment of her birth. We will be more united because of her death, not less.
    At that instant, a maid comes towards me from across the room. She carries a silver tray, and on that tray I can see there is a letter.
    It is from my husband. He