At the Edge of Summer Read Free Page A

serving.”
    “In my free time, I’m a university student.” He took a squat glass from a shelf and filled it with water.
    I’d never seen a university, not in person. Mother used to keep a photograph hidden in the drawer of her dressing table, of her with a young and exuberant Madame Crépet, posed with sketchbooks in hand in front of a serious-looking building. Inked across the border was,
Eena and Mudge, pens at the ready!
“Are you studying art, like our mothers did?”
    “Oh, even better.” He spooned out something thick and as brown as winter leaves. “The ancient world. Philosophy. Rhetoric.”
    I tasted the jam with the tip of my tongue. “Apples?”
    “Medlars. They’re best picked after the first frost.”
    “So what will that make you in the end? Aside from Aristotle?”
    “A teacher. The École Normale Supérieure, it puts out the best teachers in Europe.”
    “Teaching?” I put the spoon in my mouth. “That’s so…”
    “Bourgeois?” He raised his eyebrows. “I know.” He disappeared into the larder.
    “It’s not what I expected from the son of artists.”
    “Maman, she rebelled against her parents by running off to Picardy with a painter twice her age. I rebel by becoming respectable.”
    “I don’t know if you could ever be respectable in that red sash.”
    He returned to the table with cloth-wrapped bundles and covered plates, a knife between his teeth like a corsair. “Once a bohemian, always a bohemian, I suppose.”
    “Did you grow up wanting to be a teacher?”
    “Of course not. I wanted to be an expert swordsman, naturally. And an ornithologist. And, for one solid summer, a brilliant English detective, like Sherlock Holmes. Mostly, though, I wanted to be a tennis star.” He offered a paper-thin slice of ham on the tip of the knife.
    It nearly melted on my tongue. “So sweet!”
    “Bayonne ham. It’s cured in sea salt and air-dried on the ocean shore.”
    I imagined I was tasting the sea. “Aren’t you already a tennis player?” I knew nothing about the sport, but he’d come in swinging his racket like an expert.
    “Not just a player. A star. Like Paul Aymé or André Vacherot or Max Decugis.” He brushed back a dark curl from his forehead. “Playing in the Championnat de France, the French Covered Courts Championship, the Riviera Championship. They even have tennis in the Olympics now.”
    I’d never heard of any of those men or any of those tournaments, but the way he said their names, the way his face glowed and his words slipped over one another in excitement, I leaned closer. “And will you? Will you be a star?”
    He busied himself unwrapping a wedge of bright orange cheese. “There’s nothing all that practical about dreams like that.”
    “Whoever said dreams had to be practical? If they were, we wouldn’t have to hide them in the middle of the night.” I didn’t wait for him, but broke off a crumbling bite of cheese myself.
    He looked up under a fringe of lashes. “So what are yours?”
    The cheese was sweet and nutty and utterly delicious. “My dreams?” I brushed crumbs of cheese from my lips. “Well, I’ve never told anybody. I’m sure you can guess.”
    “Mimolette.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “The cheese. It’s Papa’s favorite.” He cut me another piece, but held it just out of reach. “Confess all or the mimolette goes on the fire!”
    “Of course it’s art.” I hopped down from my stool and snatched the slice of cheese. “The Glasgow School of Art, like our mothers. I want to learn to draw, to paint, to sculpt, to carve, to etch, to…arrange, to design. To learn anything they’ll teach me there.” I ate the cheese in a single bite. “And I won’t leave school, like my mother did. To give up on all of that, for marriage?”
    “My
maman
left the School of Art to marry, too.”
    “Was your father also a student there?”
    “Worse. He was her instructor. It was quite the scandal.”
    “Mother spoke fondly of your father. She