I release her and look down into her upturned face, stroking her cheek. “How was Oxford? How was the train up?”
But she shakes her head, looking up at me with sparkling eyes. “Oxford was Oxford. The train was too slow. How are you? How are rehearsals going?”
I walk her out to the cab rank, holding firmly to her hand as if she might disappear if I’m not very careful. “Rehearsals are exhausting, and I’m all the better for seeing you.” I am exhausted but it’s because I’m not sleeping well, not because they’re working me harder than I’m used to. We’re using a rehearsal space near the theater and I’m singing even longer hours than when I was in the studio in Paris, though I expected that. Giselle’s been calling me every few days but I let her go to voicemail. I’m tired of her gloomy prognostications. My voice is fine, I think savagely. But all the same I can’t shake the unease that dogs me everywhere I go. It’s worse in the small hours when Evie’s in Oxford. When she’s with me I can prop myself on my elbow and watch the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest as she sleeps; it soothes me. She soothes me. She’s the one good thing in my life and I wish I could tell her how grateful I am that we have this time together. But if I do I’m sure she’ll be able to read all the things I’m not saying in my face.
Not telling her is taking its own toll. Piercing remorse shocks me from sleep most nights. I’ve never been the sort of man to keep secrets from those I care about and I can’t deny it to myself any longer. I care about Evie. It goes deeper than finding her an adorable, sexual creature, or admiring the way she thinks. I share things with her when she’s with me, things that surprise or interest me. Things about my work that I’ve never shared with anyone before. When she’s not with me I wonder what she’s doing.
I want the very best for her, but keeping secrets from her will eventually bring her pain. While I’m lying awake I imagine her, in February or March next year, hearing that my career is over. At first she might feel sorry for me but as she learns more she’ll discover that I knew the end was near the whole time I was with her, and I didn’t tell her. Will she feel shocked? Betrayed? Will she send me an angry email telling me that, as she was writing my biography, this would have been useful information to know? But it won’t just be professional betrayal she’ll feel. It will be personal, too, because she’ll wonder why I didn’t trust her enough to tell her, especially after all the trust she’s put in me.
Fuck.
I should tell her. But at the same time I don’t want her pity and she will pity me if she knows. This blasted disorder will taint our relationship just as it’s infested the rest of my life and ruined my last relationship. She’ll look at me differently, like Marion did, and treat me like damaged goods. Something broken. Half a man.
It’s my voice and my decision, I think, my jaw set.
As she nestles close and kisses me in the cab rank I feel myself relent. She should at least find out about the disorder from me, rather than a newspaper or her father. Once we’re over and I have to go back to Paris I’ll tell her, so she won’t have to find out some other way. That’s the best I can do. I just hope it will be enough and she won’t hate me for keeping secrets.
“Hot shower and pajamas for you, food delivery, couch?” I say, reciting our usual midweek routine, and she smiles up at me. I’ll slip into the shower with her, soaping her body, sliding my fingers over and into her sensitive places and making her come. I won’t feel like I’ve welcomed her back properly until I’ve made her come.
“Perfect, daddy.”
Later after we’ve eaten, she sits on the couch, tapping on her laptop and wrapped in a silken robe with her hair knotted on top of her head. I’m beside her memorizing the score for Jane Eyre, singing the notes in my head. After a while I notice Evie smiling at her screen.
“What’s so amusing, minette?”
“This chapter. I’m working on your book and I think I’ve got this section just how I want it to be. Would you like to hear?”
I settle back and listen, watching her mouth as she talks, enjoying the sound of her voice. It’s the Chapter about my time in New York and subsequent return to Paris, when I was riding high on my success in Phantom and behaving quite insufferably to most of my colleagues. She’s told it starkly without trying to wallpaper over my worst moments, but with wry humor as well, and the Chapter ends with something deprecating I said to her in Paris. Not during one of our interviews, I remember, but while in bed with her after she’d emerged from that small, silent space she sinks into after sex. I love that moment, when she blinks those pretty eyes at me, takes her thumb out of her mouth and whispers daddy, letting me know she’s ready to talk again.
When she finishes reading I just stare at her, grinning.
“It is all right, isn’t it?” she asks, chewing on her lower lip.
“It’s perfect. What a wonder you are. I wish—” I wish I could be there to hear your stories, always. Read all the intimate details that sing on the page, but resonate especially with the one who loves you. She puts her head on one side, waiting. I can’t say that. I’ll be overstepping the boundaries we agreed upon. “I wish I could write like you.”
“Oh, really?” she teases, sitting up and closing her laptop. “You were allotted your own small measure of talent, Monsieur d’Estang, so don’t go getting greedy.”
She pads to the bedroom and I follow her with my eyes. I am greedy. I want what I can’t have. A minute later she returns with a bundle of silk and when she opens it on her lap I see some small dolls, half finished.
“You’re sewing again, minette. How wonderful. I meant to ask you why you didn’t bring your sewing to Paris.”
She lays out two unclothed calico figures on her knees and then small pieces of colored cloth that I think must be pieces for clothing. “Well, I wanted to be very mature and professional, not sit in your living room playing with my little dollies.”
“And now?”
She leans over and kisses me. “Now I can just be myself,” she whispers, and my heart turns over, seeing the happy expression on her face. “Can you guess who these two are?”
I look at the pair, and see the neat hairstyle with the center parting on the female figure, and the bright green eyes of the male figure. He’s scowling and a dark lock of hair falls over his forehead. “Heathcliff and Cathy.”
She rolls her eyes. “Daddy, you know they’re Jane and Rochester.”
I slap my forehead in mock surprise. “Of course, how silly of me.” I watch my little girl thread a needle and begin to apply it to a miniature gray dress, and my thoughts turn to the items I purchased the other day and have hidden under the bed. Hearing her call me daddy in that happy, singsong voice makes me think of other ways she says it, with soft desperation, with pleading. Keeping my voice casual, I ask, “Baby, shall we do something special tomorrow night? I feel like getting dressed up and taking you out.”
She looks up, smiling. “That would be lovely, daddy. Yes, please.”
“Good, good,” I murmur, watching her, my mind going to a dark, depraved place. Does she suspect what I have in store for her as she sits there sewing and humming softly to herself? My eyes travel over her bare legs, the deep V of the robe that’s fallen open, exposing the cleft of her breasts. Such pretty, unmarked skin. Like a canvas. Her needle dips in and out of the cloth, her face sweet with make-believe and daydreams.
No, she doesn’t suspect a thing.