Céline and Gil in Mougins

GIL GALLANTLY CLIMBED DOWN THE ladder first, into the cavernous pit that had once been Grandmother Ondine’s old wine cellar. Then he held the ladder as I followed cautiously. When I reached the bottom I stepped gingerly on the irregular floor that had patches of muddy dirt, rock, sawdust. Gil took my arm to steady me and he shined his flashlight ahead so we could dodge old wooden wine racks, empty green bottles and broken glass shards. We picked our way carefully toward the area where we calculated that the cab of the dumbwaiter should be.

We were faced with a tower of heavy, decrepit, wooden crates that looked as though they’d been there forever and had to be removed one by one. My hands were quickly covered with dust from the splintered wood. But our efforts were rewarded, for behind it we found the bottom part of the dumbwaiter. Gil had brought some tools with him, and now he carefully pried open its door.

The cab was sitting right there in its tracks. Gil crouched down and aimed his flashlight in every corner. Impatiently I peered over his shoulder but couldn’t see much. Finally he straightened up, stepped aside and dusted off his hands.

“Nothing inside there,” he announced, sounding irritated now. “It’s empty.”

I moved closer and squatted beside it, running my fingers along each corner of the interior space, fruitlessly searching, as if my hands themselves could not accept the truth.

Gil turned to the two construction men who’d followed us down here. “Back to work,” he said tersely. They mumbled what was probably the French version of We told you so—why do you listen to this crazy woman? But the look in Gil’s eyes brought a swift end to their grousing. The silence that followed was, in a way, worse.

“Let’s go, Céline. We’re just in their way now,” he said. He was starting to look truly pissed off. I didn’t care.

“She did have her little hiding places,” I repeated aloud, more to myself. I heard Gil’s exasperated sigh as he walked away. My fingers were still idly exploring the floor of the cab, feeling the cool, dusty surface. I murmured a plea to Grandma Ondine, whose face I could conjure up clearly, thanks to that photo; and now her image in my mind was so sharp that I felt as if she were about to speak to me.

That was when my index finger found a hard bump on the floor of the cab. It was like a dried-out pea sitting in the far left corner. I pressed harder to see what it was. A little button.

Immediately the dumbwaiter responded just as if I’d said, Open sesame, for the floor of the cab slid aside on its spring, revealing an insulated compartment. I dipped my hand inside and brushed it against something with a slightly rough surface. My fingertips seemed to know what it was even before my mind could catch up, because my skin thrilled to the touch.

“Gil,” I gasped, then halted. I tried again. “Give me your flashlight!”

He’d stepped aside to check his phone for messages, but now he came hurrying back and handed me the light. I pointed the beam inside the dumbwaiter’s secret compartment.

The image of a woman’s face stared right back at me. “She’s in there!” I exclaimed, suddenly light-headed. My hands were trembling so much that I stood up, backed away and had to steady myself against the wall.

“Who’s in there?” Gil asked in astonishment. “The painting?”

“I’m afraid to yank it out and damage it,” I whispered, awed. Behind him I saw the startled, wary faces of the workmen who were now frozen in place, not knowing what to do.

Gil moved closer. “Let me do it,” he suggested. I watched as he diligently worked to ease the painting from its hiding place. I remained rooted to the spot, like an awestruck explorer who’d made a climb to the North Pole and was now frozen in time at the top of a silent world.

“Got it,” Gil said softly as he carefully lifted the canvas out of the dumbwaiter. The renovation crew, still unsure about the significance of this, understood that something lost had been found, and they broke into spontaneous applause.

Gil said in a low voice, “Come on, let’s get this upstairs where we can really see it.”

I snapped to, and scrambled up the ladder. He followed, reverentially carrying the portrait into Grandmother Ondine’s old kitchen. But, mindful of the sawdust and plaster all around us he said, “Let’s take this over to the pigeonnier where you can have a quiet look at your grandmother’s painting.”

The whole thing was so—well, surreal—that my feet seemed scarcely to touch the path, and I felt I was walking in another dimension. Aunt Matilda, Peter and Martin traipsed behind us. Gil unlocked the door of the pigeonnier and propped the painting on a chair as if it were on an easel. Then he stepped back so we could all look at it.

A stretched canvas on wood, unframed, about eighteen by fifteen inches. The painted surface, with its masterly strokes, was just as thrilling to touch now as when my fingers first made contact with it. The subject was a girl leaning out a window with her arms resting on the windowsill; but the composition was such that she was also facing toward us, as if simultaneously peering out into the world below her, yet watching us, too, with those big, intelligent eyes that were so alive and observant.

“That’s her. My Grandmother Ondine!” I exclaimed.

“She’s beautiful,” Peter observed.

“Yes,” I said, mesmerized. The model’s cheeks were flushed with good health, her mouth soft with happiness, her entire expression one of triumph and verve, as if she had conquered the world. I felt a share in her triumph welling up in my chest. Picasso had made something more than just a likeness; he’d captured in paint the very archetypal joy and tragedy of all hopeful young girls.

“You look like her,” little Martin said to me, wide-eyed. Gil nodded, looking surprised, as if he were seeing something new about me.

Aunt Matilda had been giving the painting an appraising look with a professional eye. Now she said in an awed voice, “Céline. Look at this.” She pointed.

Sunlight was streaming in the window, filtered through the branches of nearby trees, and as the wind stirred the leaves, the light fell in shifting ribbons across the painting. At that moment, one bright shaft of light illuminated a series of words and numbers, painted with a forceful black flourish that told me exactly what I needed to know:

Picasso in one corner, and 7 mai XXXVi in another.

“God, it’s him,” I said, peering at the signature. Gil stared at it, too, and I saw a fleeting glint of lust in his eyes as he registered what that signature was worth, especially to him in his current dire straits.

Then he recovered. “You were right, all along,” he said, looking impressed.

Aunt Matilda by now had sized up the situation in her inimitable way, and exchanged a knowing glance with Peter, who seemed to understand. “Come on, Martin,” Aunt Matilda said briskly. “It’s well past your lunchtime, and mine, too. I’m starved, aren’t you?”

“I could eat a bear!” Martin proclaimed. “A whole one!”

Aunt Matilda turned to Gil and me and said, “You guys take as long as you like. Peter and I are going to teach Martin how to play a card game called ‘Go Fish’.”

I scarcely heard her. I just couldn’t take my eyes off that painting. Gil and I walked around the canvas in amazement, saying inane but jubilant things like, “Can you imagine Picasso painting these strokes? Can you just see Grandmother Ondine sitting for this? What did they say to each other? When did he decide to give it to her? Why would she put it in a dumbwaiter and just leave it there? What would she have told my mom if they’d had more time together that last day?”

At the thought of my mother, I exclaimed, “Do you understand what this means? She was right, all along. She’s not deluded, she’s healthy and smart and she’s…free now!”

I nearly choked on that last word, free, and after that I couldn’t say anything except “Huh!” My dazed euphoria was finally lifting, and I could sense the beginnings of an emotion I’d been holding back for such a long time. It came rolling toward me now with terrifying force.

Gil looked up, alerted by my change of tone. “Maybe it means you’re free now,” he said astutely.

But I was like a warrior who’s been on a long slog and has suddenly been told the war’s over. I found myself trembling uncontrollably, even shivering, on such a warm day. My eyes were stinging with tears of relief. The surprised look on Gil’s face changed to utter comprehension.

“Hey!” he said softly, moving toward me, tentatively at first, then taking me by the shoulders. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” he kept saying soothingly, over and over, drawing me to his warm and reassuring embrace. Dimly I felt him kissing the top of my head, and then my face, as his lips found mine.

Normally, I might have hesitated. But this time I just couldn’t help stepping right into his arms and resting my head against his chest until the shaking stopped.

“Céline,” Gil murmured quietly, tenderly. “Sweet Céline.”

When he stroked my neck and face with his chef’s toughened fingers, so bruised and scarred, it somehow felt healing to my own invisible scars, and reawakened in my flesh a long-lost sensation of being alive and hungry; and our initially tentative kisses were the kind that kept feeding each other’s hunger all the more.

With all the tumult of emotion I was already feeling, this was one more cascade of delight on such an incredible day of surprises. I think we even laughed at ourselves while we kept kissing each other as we were finding our way to the bed. Some warm and vital river had resumed flowing through my veins, as if I’d been a half-frozen Alpine trekker all my life, and had now come upon a cabin with a warm fire where I could begin, at last, to feel human again.

—

WHEN I AWOKE, at first I couldn’t remember where I was. I felt sated and relaxed as I shook off the sleepiness. Then suddenly I sat up, trying to grasp something new and awful. Gil was gone. I jumped up wildly, my danger-instinct kicking in. I pulled off the sheet, gathered it round me and ran into the other room, searching.

The chair where the painting had stood was there. But the Girl-at-a-Window was not.

“Gil!” I shouted. Silence.

Then he came in from the kitchen door, having stepped outside the pigeonnier, holding his phone.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. I was still standing there wrapped in a sheet.

“Where’s the painting?” I asked sharply.

He looked embarrassed. “The sun was shining on it, full stop, so I moved it to a safe place.” He opened a closet which had several wide drawers. In one of them, the painting lay safely nestled on some clean towels. “I was afraid it would just disintegrate right before my eyes,” he confessed. “Silly, isn’t it?”

I sighed in relief, but I felt a strong premonition urging me not to put down my sword just yet. At first I couldn’t make sense of it. When I saw the angle of the sun in the sky, I thought I knew why.

“Gil, it’s late!” I said. “Don’t you have to deal with Rick? That means we’ve got to—”

“Take it easy,” he said firmly. “I’ve made some calls to hold him off a few hours. Consider your options. I can still sign Rick’s contract. I can just go back to Cannes and do the deed.”

“You certainly can not! Give away my grandmother’s mas to that bastard? Are you crazy?” I said indignantly, going into action mode and looking around for my cast-off clothes. “No way. I’m your partner now, remember? But how are we going to get the cash in time to pay off the loan shark?”

“Don’t be daft. You just got possession of a Picasso! You need time to think things through, in case you decide you want to keep it.” Gil was acting reasonable, like a parent with a hyperactive kid.

I hesitated only a moment, then thought of my mother and my whole reason for being here.

“Look, I can rescue Mom and Grandma’s mas—or I can keep the painting. I know what I have to do!” I insisted. “I just don’t know how to sell artwork really quickly, do you?”

“If you wait to put it up for auction, you can surely get a much higher price than if you simply make some quick sale,” Gil pointed out carefully, as if struggling to be straight with me.

“Oh, sure,” I countered, “and give Danny and Deirdre time to find out? Imagine the pair of them wanting to make a claim on it? That’s all I need! A legal battle could drag on for years. You don’t know those two. There’s nothing they wouldn’t stoop to. No, I can never go public with this. We’ve got to find somebody who’d just buy it, right now, no questions asked.” I paused for breath.

“Don’t you know anybody with lots of money and no scruples?” I asked dramatically.

Gil fell silent for a moment, then said thoughtfully, “Well, actually, I know a guy who’d kill to get his hands on it. He’s obsessed with Picasso.”

“Great! Who is he?” I demanded.

“Paul. He’s the guy who hired me to cook on his yacht,” he said slowly, a gleam in his eye now.

“The one you went off to work for when you had your nervous breakdown?” I blurted out.

Gil said quickly, “Look, I never had an actual breakdown. Not really. That was just the press.”

“For God’s sake, Gil,” I said in exasperation, “pick up the damned phone and call him, now!”

I must have seemed a bit manic, because he then looked me in the eye rather sternly, as if to extract a promise that I would not recant later. “Céline, this is your legacy from your grandmother. So, take the time right now to look at the painting and see how you feel. I want to know for sure that you can give it up and never see it again.”

“Can’t you get this Paul-guy to invite us on his yacht once in awhile, as part of the bargain?” I said. “So I can visit my painting?” But I thought I understood what he was trying to say, so I did as he asked. I padded across the room and for several intense moments I stood in front of that extraordinary portrait. This Picasso seemed too monumental for any one mortal to possess, and I told Gil so. I gazed into the girl’s eyes for awhile longer, thinking, Grandma, if you don’t want me to sell, then please, send me a sign!

But she only looked back at me as if to say, Don’t bother me, it’s your life now.

And since no tree fell on my head and lightning didn’t strike me dead, I turned away more resolved than ever. “I don’t think Grandma Ondine was terribly sentimental. If she was in this situation and needed it to help Mom and to keep the mas, I know she’d do what she must,” I said briskly.

Then I heard my phone buzzing with an incoming message. I fished it out of my pile of clothes.

“What’s the matter?” Gil said when I went pale after seeing the name of the caller. Now I understood my earlier instinct, summoning me back to battle. I put the phone on speaker mode so we could hear the voicemail message. It was from the hairdresser at the care home in Nevada:

Céline, your mother’s had an attack of some kind. They’ve taken her to the hospital as “only a precaution”, but you might want to be here. The good news is, this week your mother began speaking again and she asked where you were. I asked the ambulance driver which hospital they were taking her to. Here’s the name and address. But I heard your brother tell the hospital not to put through any phone calls or messages to your mom, nor to allow any visitors.

—

“DAMN IT!” I said under my breath, struggling shakily to climb into my clothes. “Those siblings of mine are going to be rotten, right to the very end. But this time I’m going to really fight for her.”

“Céline, you ought to call your lawyer,” Gil suggested. “You shouldn’t have to face those people without him. Tell me who to call and I’ll do it for you.”

I looked at him through a blur of tears. “You want to help me? Get me money. Lots of it, so I can finally defend my mom. Sell the painting, Gil. Do it now, wire me my share and pay off your thugs to save our mas. But first—please get Maurice to change my flight to Nevada, tonight!”

Gil gave me a hug, then stroked my cheek soothingly. What I saw in his eyes was lovely and I felt a joyous urge to savor it; in fact, it made me tremble, but I was already steeling myself for the battle ahead and he seemed to understand that.

“I’ll take care of everything,” he promised, picking up the phone. “Just leave it to me.”

I was too worried about my mother to even give it a second thought.