Claire had relished wandering the streets of Paris, once. Perhaps she still did, deep inside. She trudged, allowing her feet to carry her where they would. Strangers jostled, and their impatience signaled her approach to the market. Navigating by instinct, she eventually came to a quaint shop with a forest green door. The wooden sign overhead read, “M. Lefebvre, Apothecary”.

She lingered outside. “No, thank you,” she would say, or, “In a moment,” to every door held open by arriving and departing patrons both. She wondered whether this shop was for her, and whether the plants in the window were truly happy.

“In or out!” called a svelte woman, when next the door opened. “You’re making everyone nervous.”

Claire looked straight down and slipped inside, touching nothing.

Faint aromas — lavender and licorice memories of Basque Country — beckoned her to shelves catalogued by source and benefit in a library of remedy devoted to the public good. Tinctures, potions, little glass mercies of all sorts, abounded in an otherwise spartan hall. She scanned tag after tag. Her lungs squeezed, and she laughed without mirth. No need to count the money she had brought. There was no expense which lay beyond the reach of Jules’ knowing.

“Maïté, you have brought me this far,” she whispered, fingering the broken remnant of the wooden cross. A jagged edge caught her by surprise, and a scream welled within her. She again looked down, and studied her shoes in embarrassment.

Finally lifting her head again, she locked eyes with the shopkeeper. Never breaking the gaze, Claire crossed the aisle and slid Maïté’s folded drawing across the countertop. “This. Quickly.”

The shopkeeper reviewed the drawing, and breathed in. “I see. She said you might come. Follow me.”

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The following morning, Claire awoke in sole possession of the bedroom. Her faux pas always left Jules in a sullen mood. She lie in bed, probing her extremities with her mind. Tallying the cost of her mistake, she was surprised to discover no pain, or even tenderness. Jules must have been angry indeed.

From the sanctuary of the duvet, Claire blindly wobbled the drawer of the bedside table just enough to spider two fingers inside, and pinch a cleverly-beaded rosary. The relic was already ancient when she received it — a bequest from Maïté — but even so, had begun to show its age. Each of its corpulent “mysteries,” long since warped and stripped of paint, seemed to flaunt their plainness.

Claire crossed herself and took the crucifix in her hands. As she recited the creed, her mind drifted to her marvelously multifaceted friend. Beautiful drifter. Agrarian savant. Dancer.

Fool.

Claire felt a snap between her fingers.

“Oh, no, no, no.”

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Cursing her tendency to work the wood as she prayed, she opened her hands. The little cross had split cleanly in two. The lower half, now so obviously hollow, presented her with a tiny scroll, penned in a tidy feminine script.

Dearest Claire,

I have long prayed that this letter would arrive at the right time. If you’ve found it, your prayers have failed you, and your world is cracking.

The important thing is that our sisters delivered the rosary. Hold it tight. It will hold you, cracks and all.

Maïté

Claire studied the precise drawing beneath Maïté’s words. It was an unfamiliar plant, carefully isolated on the page. Ferny leaves, finely divided. Glabrous, toothy edges. Delicate white flowers, lacey like a bride’s veil. One long tap root anchored an attachment of more fibrous roots. The drawing was so beautiful. It terrified her.

And what of the curious arrangement of letters, and arrows, surrounding leaf, root, and flower?

						C R
	                        	  O            E
					  N 	         D
                          			S  I

Claire stared at the drawing. For how long, who can say? In what tongue does one account for dread? Her stomach knew the words, but lacked the patience to translate them. Move! she willed herself. The world awaits!

In the end, it was only the prospect of Jules’ return that set her feet upon the floor, and made them walk.

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“Are you listening to me?”

Claire looked up, held his gaze while her mind searched for a cubby in which to stash the bits of memory Jules would rather she forget. She felt like a child caught playing with a toy whose detriment she could only guess at. “Forgive me. I was ... distracted.”

“Oh, my sweet, simple Claire.” Jules’ face softened, and he clasped her cheeks in his hands. “You of all people should know that my forgiveness doesn’t matter.” His stale breath lurked around them, all his violent niceties blurring and confusing her memory.

What had she forgotten? His preference for potatoes? To tidy up? That play is for children, and muddy boots do not become a woman associated with his reputation?

Claire’s quivering body and clenched jaw sought equilibrium against his grasp. As she rooted herself in the moment, Jules’ words came back into focus.

“Are you even listening to me?!”

One glimpse of his onyx ring, and she remembered.

“Yes. I’m sorry. I ... forget my place,” she said, regurgitating the script he’d taught her. It would keep her safe for the moment.

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“Father, forgive me for what I am about to do,” Claire found herself praying one night.

When she met Dominique, Claire had reservations. Taken at face value, the nun and the lithe dancer had nothing in common. Dominique was born in Paris, attended the finest schools, and once entertained the king with her breathtaking grace. In truth, Dominique was a stage name, as they all were. After hours in their tent one night, Maïté admitted to Claire that obligation would eventually call Dominique home, and their bosom friendship was sealed.

Two weeks later, Claire sat upright and alone in the dark after the late show. Dominique often stayed later than everyone else, receiving the compliments of this gentleman or that. Claire prayed with eyes closed, and sipped the tonic that would heal her mistakes. She had just decided not to wait for her tentmate when the flap suddenly flipped aside, revealing a woman’s silhouette.

“Claire!” It wasn’t Dominique’s perfectly lazy Parisienne accent, but Maïté’s choppy, Basque-inflected whisper scream. “Help me! I don’t know what to do!”

Familiar with the matins hour, Claire’s body knew how to move in darkness, her mind preparing itself for the unknowable. She slowly, deliberately, rose from her bed.

“I did it. Or maybe not. I didn’t mean to ... but it happened, just as you said!” Maïté stammered, shaking. “The body is outside.”

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He assailed her with his words, bruising her in ways that wouldn’t raise any annoying questions.

Those words were simply a fresh bouquet atop the coffin of her dreams, which she buried six feet underground the day she said, “I do.” A coffin she couldn’t afford, in a plot she shared with her mother, and her mother’s mother. She was grateful for her son. It was too crowded there, in the dirt.

Carnations for the fabrics she’d find, and put to use in a little shop of her own. Daisies for seven years old, and the conviction that a treehouse is the best kind of house to live in. And lavender, with echoes of that summer outside Paris, when she learned to do wicked things, and how to hide the evidence.

Like smoking. And flirting. And sometimes both at once.

Her mother understood all along that Claire was destined for a different life -- and when the time came, she proudly announced to the village that her daughter had been accepted as principal flame swallower in the nearby circus. Her father had more trouble reconciling that life with the habit she’d adopted among the sisters of Our Lady of Perpetuity.

For Claire, every choice was obvious, even if her reasons were occasionally problematic. She wanted a family -- a great big one -- and while she loved her sisters, conventical life separated them too much from the petty conflicts raging in their prayers for one another. But the circus! Every group had its politics, but at least in the circus, everyone’s judgments tumbled through the open air.

In the menagerie of clowns, animal whisperers, and contortionists, Claire encountered a communal life that embraced its mess. In fact, the parade of misfits catalyzed conflict. She had never felt so alive -- one day in love with the tightrope walker, the next morning, enchanted by the hypnotist. She found equilibrium each night, swallowing the flames and breathing them out again.

One breath -- one prayer -- at a time.

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