The Witch of Painted Sorrows Read Online Free Page B

she’s something of a celebrity.”
    He didn’t use the word “courtesan” to describe her, but over time I came to understand that Grand-mère was a high-ranking member of France’s famous demimonde, one of the great grand horizontales . Thanks to certain wealthy gentlemen, these women lived in opulent apartments, wore the most stylish clothes and mesmerizing jewels, attended and turned heads at the theater, the ballet, and the opera, and frequented the finest restaurants and nightclubs. Even their names evoked fantasy: La Belle Otero, La Paiva, and the Countess di Castiglione.
    Like my grandmother, some of these women had been brought up by mothers who were in the profession and trained their daughters to follow in their silk-slippered footsteps. Others started out as singers, dancers, or actresses.
    Courtesans were not prostitutes who sold their bodies for money to buy a meal, but freethinking intellectuals who spun cocoons of sensuality and created an oasis of pleasure and escape for wealthy, powerful men. They seduced not just with their bodies but also with their wit and charm, and in return were paid handsomely for their companionship. Many had longstanding arrangements with their benefactors. My grandmother had been with my father’s father for more than fifteen years, until his death, and since then had been the companion to an Italian count for more than two decades.
    My father was not ashamed of his mother, but when he left Paris at eighteen to go to college in America, she had insisted he keep her a secret. To all the world he was the son of a French banker and his wife. It was true that Papa’s father had been a well-respected financier. But Albert Salome had never married my grandmother. Men like Salome never married courtesans.
    The banking scion had loved his illegitimate son and given him his name. He not only mentored him and sent him to Harvard University, but after my father graduated, Albert opened a branch of the Salome bank in New York City for his son to run.
    Shortly after that, my father met and fell in love with my mother. Even though she was Jewish and her father was also in banking, Ithink my French father fell in love with her because she was so different from him. Born in Manhattan, Henrietta was part of a big boisterous family, was light and lovely and my father said, had absolutely no secrets at all.
    But he had many, the most grievous being my grandmother’s identity. Philippe Salome’s mother, so the story went, died when the boy was only ten years old. Who was the femme fatale with the burning eyes and orange hair who came to visit our family in New York every few years? An eccentric and distant cousin. If she caused tongues to wag and gossip to fly, so be it. After all, one couldn’t be responsible for everyone in one’s family.
    “We lost someone so special, didn’t we, mon ange ?” my grandmother said sadly, bringing my thoughts back to the more recent past.
    My eyes filled. I had not really wept yet, not let out the full range of my grief. While the tears had come often in those long, lonely hours after my father’s death, then during the service and after in my cabin on the boat, I always fought them back. I needed to be vigilant and protect myself, not give in to my sorrow, until I was safe.
    And now that I was, I couldn’t hold back.
    My grandmother sat beside me on the settee, took me in her arms, held me to her chest, and let me shed my tears. Only when I was spent and finished did I realize she’d been crying along with me and that her tears had wet the curls on my forehead.
    “You’ll let me stay here, won’t you?” I asked.
    “With me, yes, of course, mon ange , for a time. But I wish you hadn’t come . . . I would have traveled to New York.” After a moment she disentangled herself. “Now tell me, why didn’t you ask me to come to be with you? That’s always been the way we’ve visited.”
    “I’ll explain all that, but first, did Mr. Lissauer say