Mira's Diary by Marissa Moss Page A

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    Then I had an even scarier thought—maybe Mom was more experienced at time travel than I was, but she still wasn’t good enough to control it either. Maybe she didn’t know how to get home. Maybe we were both stuck in the past.
    I tried not to think about that as Degas introduced me to a middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed moustache and beard who was dressed in white flannel with a beret perched jauntily on his head.

    â€œMira, this is Émile Zola.” So here was the notorious writer at last! He seemed so ordinary, except for the unusual choice in clothes (white flannel?), yet somehow he was really important to Mom. Important to both of us then. Because somehow if we did something right with him, we’d both go back home. I just had to figure out what that thing was and trust that Mom was a better time-traveler than I was an artist.
    â€œAnother American niece of yours, I presume,” Zola said in thickly accented English.
    â€œNo, no, Mira is a friend. My brother, René, the one in New Orleans, sent his daughter to stay with me for several months a couple of years ago. You can see how much she improved my English. A lovely girl! It is so important to have family, you know. I regret that I never married, but the thought of a wife criticizing my painting was more than I could bear. Remember how much Madame Manet harped on poor Manet?”
    â€œRemember how he cut up your portrait of the two of them because you didn’t do justice to her…ahem…beauty?”
    â€œGiven her actual face, I did the best I could!”
    â€œWell, you could have had a wife like Madame Renoir, a sweet cream puff of a woman,” observed Zola.
    â€œBut I would have had to be a sweet cream puff of a man, like our friend Renoir. No, a bitter, old curmudgeon like me would have ended up with a shrill harpy. I cannot change who I am.”

    â€œNor would we want you to, though we all fear your sharp wit,” said a man with bright button eyes and a moustache so big it covered half his face. I wondered if he was hiding something in all that hair—a dueling scar or a massive pimple.
    â€œI thought Oscar Wilde could be cutting. Then I met you!” he continued. The man was James Whistler, an American painter who had moved to Paris. Degas introduced me to him, praising his etchings, but to me he was the guy who painted that famous picture of his mother in a rocking chair, the one that’s a recurring joke in cartoons.

    â€œI don’t know Renoir well, but he didn’t strike me as such a cream puff,” I said.
    â€œCompared to Degas he is!” Mary laughed. “Renoir knows how to relax. Degas knows only how to make art.”
    â€œThat is not true!” Degas objected. “I go to the theater, the opera, the ballet all the time. Almost every night!”
    â€œAnd then you go straight home to bed,” teased Whistler. “Paris is known for its clubs and dance halls but you don’t take advantage of them.”
    â€œI leave that to Toulouse-Lautrec,” said Degas. “He can have them!”
    â€œYou admire his paintings then?” Zola asked.
    â€œActually, I do. His posters for the Moulin Rouge have the look of Japanese prints.”
    â€œI agree with you, Degas.” Zola nodded. “In fact, I was thinking that he would make the perfect illustrator for a new book I’m thinking about.”
    â€œA book?” I squeaked. Wasn’t he supposed to write about Dreyfus? Wasn’t that what Mom wanted? If she wanted Degas to support Dreyfus, that had to be what she wanted Zola to do.
    â€œMonsieur Zola is a writer, not an artist,” Degas explained. “Perhaps he is not yet translated into English. Are you, Zola?”
    â€œI should hope so!” he huffed. “How else would Whistler know my work?”
    â€œThat is why painting is superior to writing—no translation necessary,” Whistler said.
    Mary was