The Painted Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page A

family and my schoolmates. Occasionally I went to the market with Mother and looked longingly at the girls who came in from the country with their families to sell cheese, or sturgeon, or rabbits. They stood outside in all weathers, calling to people as they passed, flirting with customers, making change, wrapping things into parcels and tying them with string. It seemed so much better than my own life. Their hands were red and chapped, but they were doing something useful. And they were free, at least freer than I was.
     
    When I was supposed to be doing my homework I drew in one of my school notebooks. I drew little girls with curly hair and giant eyes. Their heads were always too big for their bodies. I drew dancers arabesquing but couldn’t figure out how the neck melted into the back. My dancers all had jutting shoulder blades like fish fins. I attempted to draw Helene while she slept and only succeeded in terrifying her when I threw my slate and the paper it held across the room in disgust. I had more luck drawing clothes than the people who wore them. I drew the empress’s beautiful glove, and tried to recreate her dress, even though I had only seen the sleeve. I thought the dress must be brocade of a golden peach color. It would not have a princess collar, but would plunge from little cap sleeves adorned with skeins of pearls. Fastened to the shot-gold lace at her décolleté would be the largest ruby brooch anyone had ever seen. Of course such a dress would not provide much warmth, so I designed a white fox cape and matching hat. I was quite satisfied with the results.
    Once I had drawn the dress, I was inspired to play drawing room. We gathered some of Mother’s old evening dresses from a hall closet and supplemented them with various scarves, robes, tea towels, jewelry, whatever we could find. We were forbidden to touch any of it, of course, but Mother was in bed with a headache and wouldn’t appear until supper, which was hours away.
    When we were dressed Helene began choreographing a dance inspired by a famous troupe of dancing sisters. Every so often one of us ran to the bed and ate from a bag of chocolates we had smuggled into the house after school.
    Our dancing quickly unraveled into quarreling. Helene had teased me about my clumsy dancing, which only made me clumsier, and I stepped on the hem of my dress and tore it. I believe I then hit her with my shoe. Pauline came between us and caught a heel in the eye, which made her scream. I ran away before I could be evicted from the game. So there I was, not dancing, pouting in the windowsill.
    Helene tried to entice me back. She held out her arms to me and fluttered them in what was an annoyingly passable imitation of a sylph, though her gray silk taffeta robe was much too big and hung from her arms like laundry on a clothesline. Then she began to sing. Helene knew that when she sang she was nearly irresistible. She had a high, clear voice like a choirboy. Her bright hair curled around her face like a Raphael. But I was her sister, not an admiring teacher or a proud parent or a gushing parishioner. I ignored her. She finished a stanza and then, when she got no response, stopped.
    “You’re just being lazy,” said Pauline, who was really too old to be playing this game but had done it to humor us. She was squeezed into a high-waisted pink organza evening dress and looked like an overstuffed pillow.
    She didn’t like our games much anyway. Pauline was practical like our father. She was the only one who could soothe Mother when she had one of her hysterical crying fits, and the only one who could make the noodle pudding with cinnamon and raisins the way that father liked it. I thought she was depressingly lacking in imagination.
    I said nothing. I opened and closed the clasp on the rose-shaped brooch I was wearing on my sash. The jewels in the brooch were pasteboard, of course, but they looked remarkably like rubies and pink diamonds.
    Helene shrugged at