Chapter Text
It all started on a blind date.
Which, I mean, when I tell people that’s how I met the love of my life, they assume I mean Phil. Don’t get me wrong, Phil is great, and I love having him in my life and have no intention of changing that any time soon. But he’s not what I’m talking about.
Phil was a friend of a friend of my roommate; I was working on finalizing my thesis topic for my PhD (art history, with a planned focus on the intersection of technological changes and shifts in the art world in the middle third of the nineteenth century). He worked in a bank, not at the university, which was probably for the best. Academia is a small world, and it can get super incestuous when ninety-five percent of the people you meet are, if not actually in your fairly small field, in something related.
So, Phil wasn’t an academic (although he had worked as a freelance translator while getting his CPA), and math (especially money math) has never exactly been my strong suit, but we found plenty of other things to talk about. A shared fondness for murder mysteries, the more ridiculous the better; a couple of fandoms in common; a similar sense of humor. And he was over the moon proud of his older sister, who was apparently making a major name for herself in the world of classical piano, so. You know. He clearly appreciated super-nerdy niche careers, even if he didn’t have one himself.
Besides, it was nice to get a break from going through all of the preliminary research I’d gathered, trying to find a thread to follow and spin into my actual thesis.
It was even nicer when the Agatha Christie movie we saw was better than we expected, and then we spent almost two hours at my favorite Middle Eastern place (best falafel in town) just talking, until they kicked us out at closing time.
Phil was sweet, and kind, and funny, and I’ve always been a sucker for boys with big blue eyes.
Naturally, we ended up back at his place.
He lived at home with his parents--which, no judgement; I’d probably still be living with mine if I hadn’t had to move halfway across the country for my PhD program--but they were out of town for the week, and I like to give my roommate a little more notice before asking for privacy.
His couch was also a hell of a lot nicer than mine.
We’d been getting into a nice rhythm, and then Phil had come up for air--and to strip his shirt the rest of the way off--when it caught my eye.
I’m still not sure what exactly drew my attention. The piece isn’t large; including the frame, it’s only a little bit bigger than a standard letter-sized piece of paper. A simple portrait of two men at a window; one seated, the other standing.
“Oh, hey, what’s that?” I asked.
“Huh?” Phil said, blinking a couple of times, then turning his head to see what I was looking at. “Uh…the painting? It’s…a painting? I don’t know, it’s been there for as long as I can remember.”
“Right,” I said, sitting half-propped-up on my elbows, still looking more at the painting than the (admittedly very pleasant) view of shirtless Phil. “…sorry. Uh. Art nerd brain activating.”
“…right,” he said, and sighed a little, but sat all the way up himself, climbing off me and pulling one of the couch cushions over onto his lap.
“Thanks. Sorry again. Can I take a closer look?”
“Go ahead,” he said.
I smiled at him and headed over to the other side of the room, leaving my own shirt behind.
Could be anywhere from the late 1820s to the 1840s, I guess, I thought. Men’s fashion didn’t provide as many clues as women’s fashion in that period. At least not to me--while I had done some research into fashion and textiles, if only because I was interested in the development of dyes and other pigments, my focus had always been more on painting.
My phone was on the coffee table, right where I’d dumped it when it started getting in the way; I picked it up. “Can I…?” I asked.
“Sure,” Phil said, running a hand through his hair.
“Great.” I took a quick picture of the painting on the wall--I knew a couple people who might have a better time dating it by the clothing than I would.
Right. So, I have at least a vague time period. What else?
The subjects weren’t young men; I’d guess both were somewhere between fifty and seventy or so. The seated man seemed like the older of the two, but that was hard to gauge even with a photograph. He had broad shoulders, a full beard; was wearing a fairly plain dark suit. First impression: quiet, steady, calm, strong. A vague melancholy, but not overwhelming. Just a general vibe.
The other man was positioned just to the side of and slightly behind the chair, standing absolutely perfectly straight--but not stiff; more like the kind of ingrained upright perfection you see in career military men. Impressive muttonchops, rather than a full beard. Everything about him said stern, severe; except for one hand, resting almost gently on the back of the chair.
It was definitely posed--most portraits before the Impressionists were anyway--but there was almost a sort of casual intimacy to it, anyway. What kind, I couldn’t say. But whoever these men were, they were close. One way or another.
“Do you know who the artist was?” I asked.
“Uh, my great-great-something grandmother, I think?” Phil said. He got up off the couch and wandered over to stand next to me. “Like I said, it’s been hanging there as long as I can remember, and I think it’s been in the family forever.”
“Right.”
With that in mind, it could have been an amateur piece; plenty of upper-class and bourgeois women and girls studied painting as just part of how to become an Accomplished Young Lady. But there was something familiar nagging at the corner of my mind. Something about the hand on the back of the chair, or the eyes, or…
If I could get a closer look, really get into the fine detail of brush strokes and other aspects of the composition, maybe it’d fall into place. But the style was definitely familiar, and not in the sense of ‘this was the work of a talented schoolgirl; I’ve seen half a dozen like it before.’
More specific than that.
“What was her name, do you know?”
“Family stories always call her Mémé Cosette,” he said. “But that was a nickname, I think. Her real name was…very French, but, well, that side of my family’s French so that’s, uh, not really surprising.” He frowned. “I know I know it, hang on.”
Well, worth a shot. “Maybe it’ll come to you in a minute,” I said. “Is this the original frame?”
“Far as I know,” he said. “Sorry, like I said, it’s been there forever. Just sort of…part of the living room.”
So, maybe. “Can I take it down? I’ll be careful, I promise.”
“Sure,” he said. “…Emilie? It started with an E, I’m absolutely sure.”
“Right,” I said, absently, focused on taking the wooden frame off the wall.
A simple thing, and definitely actual wood, not plastic; probably not brand new. So, it could have been original, or not too much later than the portrait. Or it could have been a decent frame from ten years ago. Once again, hard to say for sure without further study.
I flipped it over. There was a handwritten inscription on the back.
Papa et J----
28 août ’34.
And the handwriting was--
Oh my God.
“Eugenie? No, that’s not--Euphrasie? Yeah, I think that’s it.”
I had always thought that, when people said their heart skipped a beat, it was a poetic exaggeration. But, hand to God, in that moment, mine did.
“Ari?” Phil asked. “You okay?”
“Euphrasie,” I said. “Euphrasie Pontmercy?”
“That…sounds right,” he said. “…wait, you know her? Uh, of her?”
I turned the painting back over, and--yeah, yes, absolutely, that was it. That was what I was seeing--the distinctive way she did detail work in her early period, particularly in the shading around the eyes and hands in her rare portraits. The things that show the most humanity, as one of my high school drawing teachers had put it. I’d still need a closer look, outside the frame, to be absolutely sure, but.
“I--yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I…I know her.”
And the inscription on the back--Papa et J----, 28 août ’34. Papa and J----, August 28, ‘34. 1834, obviously. And--Papa.
Holy fucking shit.
“Wait,” Phil said. “Was…was Mémé Cosette actually famous? Like, people study her?”
“She was pretty well known for a while, but mostly it’s the length of her career that makes her interesting,” I said. “Not like she was a major player in any of the art movements she was on the fringes of, but she adapted some of their techniques to her own style as time went on, and…yes. Yes, people study her.” I took a breath. “Is there…do you think there’s any chance your parents would let me borrow this? To do more detailed study and analysis, I mean. Maybe. Maybe write a paper?” Or a thesis?
“Probably,” he said. “I mean, you can always ask, and I don’t see any reason why they’d say no?”
“Great,” I said. “Uh. Just let me…” I took a couple more pictures with my phone--the portrait, the frame, the inscription--and then carefully, and hopefully without being too obviously reluctant, hung it back in its place on the wall. “…I’m sorry, Phil, I have to…”
“Yeah, of course,” he said. “Rain check?”
I blinked and--we’d had a good time, before I sort of ruined it, and he was very beautiful, standing there with his shirt off and those big blue eyes. “Definitely,” I said, leaning in to give him a very quick peck on the lips on my way to collect my shirt. “I’ll call you. For more than just the painting. Promise.”
He smiled, and. Oh, yeah. Definitely calling him back.
Later. In a few days.
First, though. That painting.