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pride.
    But Émile is not bothered. No. He drops the coins at my feet. “For LeBlanc,” he says. “You’re not fit for the streets. Don’t want you on the streets.”
    He leaves me in the alley, pulling up the neckline of my blouse, picking up coins.
    Almost eighty francs, enough to keep the fists of Monsieur LeBlanc from pounding at the door, enough for pork crackling and full bellies, enough to make spinning a tale about vanishing from the Opéra as easy as swallowing soup.

Marie
    I t is an ugly picture, Maman seated on a chair, her head dropped back, her lips gaping, a bit of scum clinging to the corner of her mouth. I lean in close, smell her hot breath. Absinthe. Yes, always absinthe—the bite, the whiff of anise. And why not? Why not wash away the troubles of a widow with three girls to raise? I say it to Antoinette, so full of scorn to find Maman still here when the washhouse opened an hour ago. Antoinette grasps Maman’s shoulder, gives her a rough shake.
    “Leave her. Leave her be.”
    “The washhouse won’t be keeping her, skipping days, soused half the time, sure as sure pulling off buttons and scorching everything in sight.”
    “She’ll go later.”
    “We need water,” she says, picking up the zinc bucket, pausing to look at me, hard. “Don’t give her none of what you got left. She don’t mind asking, and she finished a bottle last night.” Already I put into Antoinette’s hand the wages I collected at the Opéra yesterday, all but the ten francs she told me to put aside for a new practice skirt or sash or a pair of stockings without holes. She has taken over from Maman the paying of the rent owed to Monsieur LeBlanc. She stands, feet apart, arguing over every sou.
    She pulls her shawl down from the peg. Then she is out the door, and I listen to her footsteps, quick on the stairs.
    She could speak properly if she cared to. I know, because sometimes she mocks me, mimicking my correct speech, never once mistaking a “she doesn’t” for a “she don’t,” a “have” for a “got.” And once when we were walking in the boulevard Haussmann, a young man with a silk cravat bowed to Antoinette and handed her a bouquet of flowers, pale pink with tiny bell-shaped heads bobbing in the breeze. She spoke with him a good few minutes, perfect French, before she noticed the pack of boys watching and snickering across the boulevard. She lifted her chin then and threw the flowers in his face. After that she was off, down the pavement, and when I finally caught up, she looked to be fighting tears. “How I wanted those flowers,” she said. “Should’ve kept those hateful flowers.”
    A little gurgling noise rises up from Maman’s throat, and her head flops forward hard enough that the snap of it causes her to wake up. She blinks a couple of times, her chin pulled in tight to her chest, shying away from the daylight creeping into the room. Her wandering gaze comes upon me, putting a wrapped-up wedge of hard cheese into my satchel for my midday meal. “Marie,” she says, her face changing from vague and doughy to rosy and warm. She has correctly remembered yesterday was the last Friday of the month.
    I clutch the ten francs in my pocket. I am soft, and she knows.
    “How about a meat pie for your supper, or a roasted chicken might be nice?” she says, pulling herself up onto unsteady feet.
    “You’re late for the washhouse.”
    “A touch of the colic this morning.”
    “Maybe fried potatoes,” I say, thinking of the half dozen on the larder shelf.
    Swaying, reaching for the table brazenly, like there is no shame in needing it, she says, “Roasted chicken was always your favorite.”
    I would rather a roasted chicken, a bit of mopped-up gravy, but I know where she is headed. “You know the expense of meat, Marie,” she will say. “It’s more than I got to spare.” Or it could be even worse. The last time she went without a bottle too long, she turned weepy and made a claim to have loved