A Lady All In White

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Les Miserables (2012 film)

All her life, whenever she thought of her mother, Cosette had felt torn in two. As a child, she had prayed to remember her Maman. As a young woman, she had struggled to forget.

The only memory she still had was of a lovely, brown-eyed woman in white, kneeling down in the snow to whisper a last I love you into her daughter's ear. Cosette knew her mother had been wearing white because of the way the dirty slush outside the inn had stained her skirts. Madame Thenardier had rolled her eyes behind the departing woman's back, dragged Cosette inside, and equipped her with a cap, apron and broom by way of introducing her to her new place in the family. Shortly afterward, she had been told – and in no uncertain terms – just how lucky she was that when her own harlot mother found her too worthless to keep, the generous Thenardiers had agreed to take her on.

She had never heard the truth about her mother … until now.

My dear Cosette, read the letter, her father's plain handwriting grown unsteady with age and illness. I promised I would tell you the truth about my past one day, and how you came to be in my care. Marius can tell you about my early life, if he has not already done so; it is a time I do not care to relive. Suffice it to say, I made some unwise choices and suffered in consequence.

Cosette knew the story. Marius had no secrets from her. The idea of her noble-hearted father as a convict was impossible to believe, and yet all too likely to be true; stealing bread for his starving nephew sounded just like something he would do. She remembered the Inspector as well, that stern man in the black-and-silver uniform who had once warned the Thenardiers away from her. She did not hate him for investigating her father's crimes, any more than she would hate a thunderstorm or any other force of nature; all the same, for her Papa's sake, she wished his path and Javert's had never crossed.

But what you really need to hear, I know,the letter continued, is the story of your mother.

Cosette's breath caught. She was almost afraid to continue reading.

Her name was Fantime. I regret to say I do not know her surname, or anything at all about your blood father, beyond the fact that he refused to marry her. I only knew her briefly, you see, and in that time, nearly all she spoke of was you.

I will not lie to you, my child, by calling her an angel or a saint, but neither will I shame her memory with any of the vile, degrading names used so freely by the Thenardiers of this world. Your mother, like me, made a mistake. Like me, she was punished by society far beyond what she deserved. She worked in a factory until her fellow workers found out about you. When they dismissed her, she sold her jewelry, her hair, her teeth and even her body, to pay for what she honestly believed was the Thenardiers' generous care. She loved you more than anything, Cosette. Never forget that.

At first, I took you with me from a sense of duty. I was the Mayor of the town in which she lived, and the owner of the factory that employed her. I was there on the day she was dismissed, and I turned aside. Only months later, when I saw her in the street – having scratched a man's face in return for his having covered her scanty dress with snow – did I see the suffering to which my indifference had condemned her. She accused me openly, and she was right to do so. I had never known a woman with such fire in her soul, even under the most desperate of circumstances – poverty, shame, severe illness, separation from you – and I never have since. So I brought her to a hospital, and before she died, I promised her that her child would live in my protection.

The rest, of course, you know. In caring for you, my duty grew into a blessing beyond words. If Fantine could see you now, finding hope and love even in the darkest places, starting a new life with your husband out of the ashes of war, she would be as proud of you as I am. When I go to meet her in the life to come, I shall not be ashamed.

Ever your loving Father,

Jean Valjean

A small voice, high-pitched as a child's, was sobbing. Dimly, as if from a distance, Cosette recognized it as her own. She turned her face away from the letter and took out her handkerchief, not wanting her mother's life to be blotted out by tears. Although her eyes still registered the elegant, cream-and-gold bedroom she shared with Marius in his grandfather's town house, her mind was still caught in that snowy winter's night nine years ago. She could see Fantine, thin as a knife-blade under a cap of short dark hair, accusing the world that would not let her live. Giving everything she had – everything – for her daughter's sake.

How often had she sat awake in the middle of the night, even after her rescue, with the Thenardiers still snarling and cackling in her ears? How often had she prayed for her mother to come back, if only to ask her how she could dare to abandon her child? How often had she begged her adopted father for answers, only to build nightmares from his silences and wait for the day he would leave as well?

How wrong she had been. Even in death, he had not abandoned her.

Neither had Fantine.

Her mother had been real – neither the angel in white she had imagined as a child, nor the scarlet demon the Thenardiers had tried to make her. A woman, nothing more and nothing less, a woman who had loved without holding back.

… she would be as proud of you as I am, read the letter.

I hope so, Cosette replied.