“Us! There is no us!”

  “But there is, don’t you see? We are made of the same cloth, from the same pattern.”

  “And would to God I could tear you into shreds! You have stolen my existence—the life, the child I was supposed to have. The child he had ripped out of me.”

  Sonya was, for a moment, silent. “Were you pregnant by him?”

  Jeannette’s mouth was clenched in anger. She exhaled slowly. “Three times.”

  Three times. She will never forget the feeling of the blood flowing out of her, all that blood, as if she would never stop bleeding. The iron smell of it. The sense of weakness washing over her—the fear, each time, that she was dying.

  The beautiful little dream she’d had, each time, of a baby—their baby. A little ballerina, all her own. A little fashion plate for Paul. A life she’d so stupidly allowed herself to dream of until he made that dream impossible—and he’d made her feel like such a fool for dreaming it.

  The doctor—if he was a doctor—that last time, wiping his hands and saying there would be no more pregnancies for her, and maybe she’d be glad of it.

  Jeannette pointed and flexed her foot under the table, registering a small pain in her Achilles tendon. “He promised to marry me. And then he married someone else, someone much younger, from a prosperous family. But you no doubt know the story of his life just as well as I do.” She looked resentfully at Sonya. “I knew from that moment in Pavlova’s dressing room, when I saw your girl, that she was his. That she should have been mine!” Jeannette sat up a little straighter. “You could give her to me, you know.”

  Sonya’s expression changed then to one of amused disbelief. “Baila?”

  “You have two others! Why should you have three children while I have none?”

  Sonya would never have been able to even imagine such a question, before hearing it spoken—she could hardly credit it now. What a notion! “You don’t have the slightest idea about what it means to give birth to a child, do you?” Jeannette’s wounded expression told Sonya how insensitive her words had been. She licked her lips and tried again. “How could you, deprived of your own family, ever suggest that I give Baila away? As if she were a pair of shoes or a coat. Or a cat.”

  Jeannette glared at her. “You will! I’ll make you do it! I’ll make a dancer of her. I’ll make her into a star in whose light Pavlova herself will pale by comparison. Karsavina too!”

  Sonya wondered then if her sister wasn’t quite right in the head. How could any sensible person make such a plan, with little to no knowledge of the individual child involved?

  Baila was more physically hearty than either of her sisters, but Sonya knew as well as anyone that the Pavlovas and Karsavinas of the world were freaks of nature. Apart from her athleticism and prettiness, Baila was an altogether ordinary child. Sonya was always glad of it, feeling burdened enough by Olga’s prodigious brain.

  “You could help her,” Sonya said. “You could even form her, if her natural inclinations tend that way—and, honestly, I think they do. I was planning on getting her ballet lessons, when I’ve saved enough money.”

  “Oh, and am I to play the maiden aunt in your household?” Jeannette was thinking about her own maiden aunt, and what a misery she had made of Jeannette’s childhood after her mother died. “Ballet is a calling, not a hobby.”

  “She’s only a child. She’s not yet eight years old.”

  “I have no interest in being your family friend.”

  “How can you say that? We’re sisters.”

  “Sisters!” Jeannette spat the word out with contempt. “Either you give the child to me—or else I will make sure that none of you ever see me again. Even if it means leaving Paris!”

  “You can’t be serious!” Meeting her sister’s gaze, Sonya tried to fathom what could be going on in Jeannette’s mind. Was she unbalanced? Or was she merely stuck in her own point of view, in the way that people in the arts tended to be? It took a single-mindedness to do what they did. Sonya considered her dressmaking to be work, rather than art. It was a way—the only way she knew—to keep bread on the table for herself and her children.

  Sonya wished, in this moment, that she could stop time—because, she knew, time was running out for this long-held dream of hers. She wished she could have a long and leisurely interval of time to think about what she and Jeannette might have shared. The family meals. The larger apartment they’d find, with three bedrooms, all the rooms filled with sunlight. Walking in the Bois de Boulogne with Jeannette and the children, all of them wearing pretty dresses and wide-brimmed hats. The two of them getting dressed up together, sharing secrets, sharing makeup and accessories, readying themselves to go out to some festive occasion. To the theater! To a soirée, for surely they would, together, move into social circles Sonya could never have penetrated on her own. She imagined their laughter as they shared their observations afterwards. She hadn’t yet heard Jeannette laugh.

  Sonya realized that she didn’t have the slightest idea, really, about what life was like, and had been like, for this ballerina—this performer—who sprang from the infant who had been her identical twin.

  Whatever hopes and dreams Sonya had draped around Zaneta were like garments she had designed, cut out, and stitched together without reference to anyone or anything real. It had all been a fantasy based on what she imagined Zaneta might be, tailored to what she herself had longed for, all these years. But Jeannette—this actual, flesh-and-blood person sitting beside her—wanted nothing to do with the garments of Sonya’s making, which were completely unsuited to her, anyway. It was clear that life had throttled Zaneta, and shrunken her heart, until she was cold and unfeeling, bitter and cruel. Jeannette wanted nothing to do with the love Sonya had nurtured and hoarded for her twin all these years—the love that had kept Sonya from loving anyone else wholeheartedly.

  She’d never questioned her assumption that, of course, her twin would love her in return. What a self-deluded fool she’d been! Sonya was determined now: she wouldn’t mail that carefully worded letter she’d written to Daniel, urging him to come to Paris to meet their sister. She wouldn’t mail the joyous letter she’d written to their brother Lev. Zaneta was, after all, dead—and Sonya’s dream of finding her long-lost twin was dead now too. Jeannette wanted nothing to do with her. Jeannette hated her.

  Here she was, almost thirty. When her daughters grew up and moved away, she would be as alone as she’d always felt inside. She always knew she’d end up abandoned and alone. It was her fate.

  When Jeannette took out her purse to pay the bill, Sonya stayed her hand. “No, Jeannette—I will pay.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! Karsavina gave me the money for this lunch. I’m not a thief.”

  “What are you then?” Sonya allowed herself to look into that mirror of her sister’s eyes a final time before getting up to leave.

  Monte Carlo

  1910

  Jeannette, is it you?”

  “Paul? Didn’t I tell you not to call me here—not to call me ever?”

  “Listen to me! She’s dying. You must go to her!”

  “Dying? But how is that possible? She was the picture of health when I saw her.”

  “The child was very ill. It was pneumonia—”

  “The youngest?”

  “The middle one.”

  Jeannette takes a deep breath, exhaling again.

  “Are you there?”

  “Yes.” Another pause. “Who is dying? I don’t understand.”

  “Your sister is dying. Sonya is dying.”

  Jeannette can only think how she wished for this—and yet the thought of it is terrible to her now. “I’m—sorry, of course. I thought you said it was the child who was ill.”

  “Sonya exhausted herself in caring for her. And then, she herself got ill, as soon as it was clear that the child would live.”

  “You don’t even know the child’s name, do you?” said Jeannette.

  A pause. “No, I don’t. Do you? She’s your niece.”

  “She is nothing to me. Only the little one—”

  “Listen to me, Jeannette! I want you to take the night train to Paris.”

  “There’s a performance tonight. I can’t afford to lose this job.”

  “The train leaves half an hour before midnight. For the love of God, it is a dying woman’s last request.”

  “She means nothing to me.”

  “But you have meant so much to her.”

  “Is that my fault?”

  “I will pay you. I’ll do whatever is necessary. She begged me, ma puce.”

  Jeannette can’t remember ever having heard Paul cry before. Clearly, he’s crying now, although he’s doing his best to disguise the sound of it.

  “All right. But I don’t want to see her children. I don’t want them to see me.”

  “As you wish. It can, I’m sure, be arranged.”

  “Wait! The little one—she can be there.”

  “There will also be a nurse there, in case you are hatching any plans, Jeannette.”

  “How little you think of me!”

  “I know you.”

  “More’s the pity.”

  “I’ll send my car to meet your train tomorrow morning at the Gare de Lyon.”

  Paris

  1910

  Paul arrives at the flat an hour before Jeannette is due. He brings an enormous bouquet of lilies and tuberoses and a basket of food. He instructs the nurse to see to it that the two older children are shod in boots and dressed warmly enough to spend a few hours out of doors. And then he enters the room where Sonya has been in a deep sleep, making that horrible sound she’d started making the day before—a sound like the ocean, each labored breath like a wave washing heavily up against the shore and receding again.

  The sight of her is deeply disturbing to him. He doesn’t understand how the doctor, who performed, it would seem, such a miracle with the child, has yet been unable to turn the course of the illness in Sonya. He thinks about his wife, so precious to him—and little Rosine, and all the other children he hopes they’ll make one day. It’s indescribably painful to even entertain the idea that death could come to any of those he loves so well.

  Sonya is also dear to him. He has, he knows, a capacious heart. Gently, tentatively, he bends to plant a last kiss on her forehead—then crosses himself. He’s so little accustomed to doing so these days. “God bless you, Sonya. Jeannette is on her way now. She’ll be here soon.” Sonya makes no indication that she can hear him, sleeping on, making that terrible death rattle.

  All three of Sonya’s daughters are sitting close together in the other room, dressed in their hats and coats. “Go in now and kiss your mother,” he says to Naomi and Olga, touching each child’s head. “We’re going out for a ride in my little boat—and a stroll, if possible, in the Bois de Boulogne.”

  “And I, Monsieur Poiret? Am I not to go too?”

  “Next time,” he says. “For now, Baila—your name is Baila, isn’t it? What a lovely name.” He cocks his head, looking at her more closely. There’s something familiar about the child. Something that reminds him of Rosine. His heart contracts again with love for his child.

  He truly abhors death—death and illness. “For now, you’ll stay here with your mother and the nurse.” He wonders what Jeannette’s angle is, wanting to see this child but not the others. It’s imperative—it’s clear that it’s going to become imperative—that Jeannette take an interest in all three of them. Who else did they have? He turns to the nurse and says, “Under no circumstances is the child to leave. Do you understand me?”

  The nurse, who is being paid to follow his instructions, nods her assent.

  When the two older girls emerge, ashen-faced, from the bedroom, Paul hurries them downstairs. He lifts them one at a time over the flooded threshold, up onto the raised walkway, helping them down the ladder and into his boat. There he changes into a captain’s hat before manning the oars.

  

  After they’ve gone as far as they can in the boat, Paul ties it up and puts his bowler back on. Hailing a carriage, he instructs the driver to take them as close as possible to the Parc de Bagatelle.

  What a relief for the two girls, to be outside again after being stuck for so long indoors, in and around the sickroom, locked up with all their most horrible fears.

  It’s thrilling to watch the sights around them. The horses, up to their knees in water, toss their heads and snort as they pick their way over ground they can’t see. Their carriage is surrounded by boats and rafts of every description. Well-dressed ladies and gentlemen walk in single file along the raised sidewalks, holding onto their hats, using their umbrellas for balance. Wide-bottomed matrons are coaxed up and down ladders, their huge skirts ballooning out behind them in the wind. Scowling workmen carry furniture and supplies wrapped up in bed-sheets. Medics carry people on stretchers. Everyday Parisians are going about their business, walking like high-wire artists from the circus along the narrow, rickety, makeshift walkways.

  The Bois de Boulogne is more swamp than park now, with leafless trees rising up from the black waters. Their driver finds a place where the pathway is dry enough—and Paul hands the girls down, one at a time.

  There are no roses blooming, of course, in February. But the pond is already filled with the gold and yellow blooms of water lilies.

  Naomi is especially attentive to the sight. “It would, I think, be wonderful to paint here, en plein air.”

  “You are—”

  “Naomi, monsieur. Don’t you remember? I was the one who came to fetch you last month, when my sister was so ill.”

  “Of course. You’re the twelve-year-old—Sonya’s first-born. Your name escaped me only momentarily.” He takes a better look at her. “So you have an interest in art—perhaps you hope to be an artist someday.”

  Olga pipes up. “Oh. she’s forever painting flowers and vines and that sort of thing. Never faces. Isn’t that right, Noni?”

  “Yes. I like colors best. Bright colors and designs. I very much liked seeing the fabrics Mama worked with, when she was working for you, Monsieur Poiret.”

  “A few of Mama’s friends have wanted to buy Noni’s paintings.”

  Naomi demurs, “They’re just designs. It would be lovely, though, to see them made into upholstery fabrics or wallpaper. Some people might, I suppose, want to buy them.”

  Paul is silent, possessed by a new idea—although he says nothing of it. After a while, he turns to Olga. “And what of you? You seem like a very intelligent sort of girl.”

  “Is that because I wear glasses, monsieur? People often make that assumption. But, really, a near-sighted girl is just as likely to be stupid as a girl who sees with the acuity of an eagle.”

  He stops to take a better look at her. “And your ambitions are—?”

  “I should like to be a writer. Not a poet or a novelist but someone who writes social commentary and theater reviews.” She pauses, furrowing her brow. “Perhaps I might like to try to be a playwright one day.”

  “How old did you say you were? Are you a child—or simply an adult who is very small?”

  “That is amusing, monsieur. On my next birthday, I will be eleven years old. I was born at the turn of the century.”

  He looks in turn at Naomi, who pipes up, “And I was born two years before—in the last century. It makes me sound very old, doesn’t it?” When neither he nor Olga says anything more, Naomi asks, looking down at the ground, “Can you tell us, Monsieur Poiret—is our mother going to die?”

  They watch a duck with a dozen or so ducklings in her wake cross the path and leap, as if falling, into the pond, all of them gliding away without a sound.

  “All of us will die one day, my child. And none of us can know when that day will be.”

  He wonders, as soon as he has said it, about the truth of this pronouncement.

  How could it ever come to pass that Paul Poiret will one day cease to be? In Paris, as in all the places in the world that matter, fashion rules supreme. He is only becoming more and more famous and successful. His is not a star that will burn brightly for a while, only to be extinguished. The gods have given him the most highly coveted gift of all: like all the greatest artists throughout history, he possesses the power to make the world see female beauty, and female allure, through his eyes.

  Yes, his body—despite his amazing constitution—is mortal. He cannot deny it. But he knows in every cell of his being that no one will ever forget either his name or his art.

  Poor Sonya! What will she leave behind but these children? He resolves then and there to be of use to them, if Jeannette will allow it—for surely Jeannette will rise up to her responsibility. Even if Jeannette fails in this, he will find the means to help them, anyway. It’s unthinkable that Sonya’s three lovely girls should be left alone and undefended, without a protector.

  

  Jeannette hardly sleeps at all on the night train from Monte Carlo, staring at her own reflection in the dark window—wondering what will happen when she reaches Sonya’s apartment. Who will be there. How she’ll be received. Whether Sonya will be alive or dead.

  She removed her makeup, and changed out of her costume, in the little toilet compartment on the train. There wasn’t anything suitable among her things to put on—nothing black.

  In the backseat of the car Paul has sent for her, she thinks about the black dress her father brought to her, on that day he told her that her mother was dead. On that day when everything good and sweet in her life disappeared, in an instant, until she found ballet. Until she ran away to Paris. Until—for a while, at least—she found Paul.