The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood

now, standing here in front of these Monets, she missed her mother with a sharp pain in her gut that made her hurry out of the room. She considered calling her, and telling her that she was here, at the Musée d’Orsay, that the Monets were lovely.
    But she didn’t. She couldn’t. She was supposed to be in Florence, studying Renaissance art.
    In front of a Degas—it had to be a Degas, she knew, it was ballet dancers rehearsing—she stopped. Her breath caught. Unlike the way she imagined Degas’s dancers in her mind, up close Maggie saw that they looked tired, their faces hard and set, weary. They slumped and stretched and held their aching backs. She wondered if she looked that way too?
    She hadn’t noticed the family standing beside her. They were American. A blonde mother in a navy blue sweater set; a father and son both dressed in khakis and V-neck sweaters, the father’s lemon yellow, the son’s baby blue; the little girl, maybe only sixor seven years old, wore an improbably frilly dress, and imitated the poses of the dancers in the painting. The mother eyed Maggie, and herded the family away from her slightly.
    She hadn’t noticed the tour guide either, until he spoke.
    â€œAs Paul Valéry said, ‘Degas is one of the very few painters who gave the ground its true importance. He has some admirable floors.’”
    The family laughed.
    â€œOf course,” the tour guide continued, “this is all the more appropriate for dancers in that the parquet is their main work tool.”
    The mother nodded, clearly the one in charge of her little brood.
    â€œWho’s the man there?” she asked, pointing to the sole male in the painting.
    â€œThe ballet master,” the tour guide told her. “He’s beating time on the floor with his baton.”
    The tour guide glanced at Maggie and winked, as if they were in cahoots. He was American too, with a slight hint of a New England accent and an unruly shock of brown hair that kept falling into his eyes, which were a startling blue. He looked as if he were in prep school.
    She pretended she hadn’t been eavesdropping and focused on a vague point in the painting, The Ballet Class .
    â€œThe girls look . . . well . . .” the mother stammered. “Streetwise?”
    â€œThey are,” the tour guide said. “Some of the city’s poorest young girls struggled to become the fairies, nymphs, and queens of the stage. At the ballet, you see, Degas found a world that excited both his taste for classical beauty and his eye for modern realism.”
    â€œStop twirling,” the father said sternly to the little girl, who kept twirling.
    â€œSophie, you’ll like this bronze sculpture over here,” the tourguide said, taking the little girl’s hand and leading her to Small Dancer at Fourteen .
    Maggie followed too, trying to keep a safe distance. But the tour guide was on to her. He grinned in her direction, flashing one deep dimple.
    â€œOriginally, she had real hair, a real tutu and real dancing slippers,” he explained.
    â€œI have to peepee,” the little girl said.
    After some negotiating—“Can’t you hold it? We’re almost done, aren’t we, Noah?”—the mother took the little girl to the bathroom. Relieved, the father and brother plopped onto a bench, both of them pulling out their phones.
    The tour guide—Noah—walked over to Maggie.
    â€œYou got caught in the rain,” he said.
    â€œBrilliant deduction,” she said.
    â€œAnd I’m guessing you’re not a tourist? You live here?”
    â€œMore brilliant still.”
    â€œI’m always happy to hang with fellow expats,” he said. He took a card from his shirt pocket. “I live over near the Pompidou,” he added.
    She shoved the card into her coat pocket.
    â€œNear the doll hospital? And that little bookstore?” he said.
    Maggie wished she could