by Diana Forbes
To my intense relief, he agreed. Better yet, Mother agreed not to chaperone us.
We strolled to the trash can I had found on West Newton and Tremont. Stone walked slowly but without the use of a crutch. The girls from the Girls’ Latin School spilled out of their classes, and as some had blossomed into fine young ladies, I glanced at my walking partner to weigh their effect on him. One student, a pretty young wisp of a girl, stopped in front of him, held out her hand to him and said in perfect Latin, Manus lavat manum, punctuated by a burst of laughter from her friends.
He barely looked at her, surely a testament to his sturdy character.
However, moments later he blatantly insulted the trash can I’d chosen for him! He circled around it like a distressed vulture. “This is the most ordinary-looking trash receptacle I’ve ever seen,” he said. “What in the world makes this one special?”
I studied the wooden barrel teeming with pieces of paper and other garbage. “Didn’t you come to Boston to paint trash cans? Well, this here is a trash can.”
“That looks exactly like a trash can,” he snapped, slapping his hand against his knee. “You can’t expect me to include that ugly object in one of my paintings.”
“I thought the whole point of your movement was to paint what’s there,” I said icily.
“Yes, of course. To paint what’s there, but amplified. Otherwise no one will pay any attention to it.”
I was beginning to think that he looked at me as a found object of little significance rather than a woman who could amplify his life in any meaningful way.
Thursday, June 29, 1893
Some people chase windmills. We chased trash cans.
One afternoon we hiked until we ended up outside the hideous Chamber of Commerce/Grain and Flour Exchange. The curved building resembled a gaudy crown with triangular points circling the top. Stone looked up at the massive structure and sighed.
“There are no trash cans to paint here, unless you consider the building before us,” he said, rapidly moving his hand over his omnipresent sketchpad. (The fact that he found the architecture appalling didn’t prevent him from drawing it.)
“If you hate the name Ash Can, then why do you search for trash cans?” I asked, furious that we had walked there for no reason and that he was tearing apart the building. His lacerating tongue moved even faster than his piece of charcoal, and as usual my shoes felt like tiny torture devices for feet.
He looked up from his sketch and grinned. “Just because detractors create a nasty name for a movement doesn’t mean there’s no value in the name.”
“Oh, you mean like the word ‘suffragette?’” Only our sworn enemies ever call us suffragettes.
He stuck the piece of charcoal he was using behind his ear. “God, you’re smart,” he said with his beatific smile. “We might call ourselves ‘The American School of Realism,’ or something equally crusty that has no cachet. Then our naysayers coin us ‘Ash Can,’ and the name sticks. You and Verdana might nickname yourselves, ‘The Boston Contingent of the Rational Dress Movement’ or some such, but no one can even remember the name.”
“We’re both too close to our own movements to name them correctly.”
“To our enemies,” Stone said, rolling up his building sketch and toasting our naysayers with it.
“To our enemies,” I cheered.
Friday, June 30, 1893
A word of caution: never toast your enemies. It accords them too much power.
Back on the home front, Mother behaved like the enemy within. When she wasn’t complaining about the size of my flat, she expressed terror that the slime and bustle of Boston would mow her down. But whenever I suggested that she simply return to Newport, she wouldn’t hear of it. Boston was a dangerous place. I needed her, apparently, to protect me against the many ills the city held in store for me. I was fortunate to have a mother such as her who cared so profoundly for my well-being.
Another refrain of Mother’s was how poorly I was performing at my one chance for love, as she called it—my rapport with Stone Aldrich. Never mind that I had already destroyed my one chance for love with Sam Haven. She had now set her sights on Stone Aldrich and was disturbed that he hadn’t set his sights on me. “He’s philosophical and idealistic about art, and you’re idealistic and philosophical about your cause, too,” she said. She twisted her wedding ring around and around her puff-ball finger. “Why doesn’t he see it, I wonder? He must be very observant to be an artist, dear. But it’s as if he’s blind in this one area.”
Love—what did it mean to love someone? And was that the same love as love for one’s country? Or a cause? And could one ever become so devoted to a cause that there was little flame left over for a person?
One afternoon when he was out painting the eternal business of life, as he called it, by which he meant the very busyness and overcrowding Mother so despised, she sat me down in the kitchen. She warned me that I was babying him too much. “He already has a mother. Men are not looking for mothers. They’re looking for mistresses.”
“He’s not. He treats me as an equal, Mother. It’s unusual, but I like it.” I watched her face deflate. “It’s liberating—”
“Has he ever kissed you?” Mother tracked me with her gimlet eyes.
“No. Not even on the cheek.”
She stamped a heavy foot. “Well, has he painted you yet?” She must have read the answer in my silence. She threw up her arms in exasperation. “Answer me. I am not a mind reader, Penelope.”
“No. We walk here and there, and he paints trash cans.”
“I see,” she said, as if she didn’t. She paced around the parlor a few times, then stopped. “In a few days he’ll be fully recuperated,” Mother warned. “And then he’ll be gone. You have to do something—now!—to make him see you, not as an equal partner, but as a woman.”
Surprisingly, I agreed with her. But there was a problem as glaring as a lone trash can on a Boston street: I needed a Muse on how to become a Muse.
Saturday, July 1, 1893
What could I do to make Stone see me as a woman?
When he wandered into the parlor with his perennial sketchpad tucked under his arm the next day, I vowed to find out. I asked him if we could visit the Boston temple. Perhaps the building could be memorialized in one of his future paintings, I said.
But secretly I hoped the pilgrimage would present an opportunity to tease out his feelings for me. Was there a future for us? As the temple was miles away, I suggested we hire a brougham.
“Get my charcoal, woman,” he declared. “I’ll pay for the ride.”
With the mandatory seven pounds of undergarments weighing me down, he had to help me into the carriage. Women’s dependency on men: this was what the suffragists railed against, but we had no choice in the matter. The dictators of fashion all lived in Paris and had no regard for practicality. Our dresses kept us inside during the rain, snow, and blistering heat. We couldn’t walk about when leaves were on the ground. And, even when it was sunny and temperate, we needed considerable assistance climbing stairs and ducking into carriages.
Movement was encumbered and labored, even down to breathing. So, it was no surprise that my breath stopped short when his hand lightly grazed against mine to adjust the window. But that alone couldn’t explain why I felt faint when he steadied my hat. Or the velvety tickling of butterfly wings against my stomach when he said my hair reminded him of fire.
When the carriage hit a bump in the road, I lost my balance. I keeled close to his arms, which were open and seemed poised to catch me. And when the carriage swerved hard to the left to avoid an oncoming buggy, Stone reached out and propped me upright. It was then that I smelled his scent, a pine musk that reminded me of the woods behind my parents’ home.
How I wished he would take advantage of the fact that we were ensconced in a traveling cocoon and kiss me! I leaned in a little closer to him. “Do you ever think about the future?” I asked.
“No, my dear. “He tin
kered with his eyeglasses. “As a painter, my mission is to memorialize the present.” He was forever bending the frames this way and that, trying to get them to sit straight on his face.
“I was asking about your personal future,” I pressed. “Do you ever wonder if you’d be more prolific, say, with a full-time Muse?”
“A full-time Muse?” He laughed. “Why, I’d have to be married to—”
He turned his head away from me to look out his window. “Oh my gosh.” He slammed his hand against the inside of the carriage and jerked his face away from the glass. “Duck!”
Placing both of his hands on his ears, he bent over his lap and hid his face.
I peered out the glass on Stone’s side of the carriage and spied a rotund, pale-faced man staring back at me. His large, round eyes resembled twin brown saucers. His brown, ill-fitting suit had the severe shine of too-worn fabric.
“Do you know him?” I whispered, eyeing the stranger through the glass.
“Never seen him before,” Stone shouted, his head still between his knees. “Driver,” he yelled, “what’s the delay?”
A swell of pedestrians had gathered in the street right outside Adath Israel Temple, a red brick building with a giant circular window boasting a six-point star etched in the glass. The pedestrians blocked all traffic. Around them swarmed a murder of crows, hoarsely cawing. Some of the children in the crowd chased the birds, prompting the mothers to chase after their children. Seeing that Stone was indisposed, I reluctantly reached into my pocket and paid the driver the fare.
The balloon of a man continued to study me through the window. How I longed for him to fly away! Abruptly the carriage door jerked open, and he yanked Stone outside by his arm.
“There ya are—ya grimy bastard,” the stranger yelled.
Fringes of dark hair, beaded with sweat, peeked out from under his brown hat. He looked as if he could eat Stone for dinner. Leaning in, the man swiftly punched Stone in the gut, causing him to keel over.
“Stop it!” I screamed.
I scrambled out of the carriage as the crowd outside dispersed. I wedged myself in between the two men before the stranger could deliver another blow. “Stop it. Stop it. Both of you,” I cried, trying to pry them apart as Stone lunged forward. “Talk it out like gentlemen.”
“I want my money back,” the stranger said, stepping back and wildly swinging his arms. “Now!”
Stone slowly unclenched his body, forcing himself upright. He righted his eyeglasses, then stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets. “I’m afraid that’s impossible, Jacob,” he said. Stone rocked backward on his scuffed boots. “The gallery that promised to show my cityscapes just reneged. But I’ve made another arrangement with a serious art collector, so if you can be patient…” He glanced at Jacob’s red face. “I’ll even give you one of my paintings as collateral in the interim. That way, you know I’ll make good on my promise.”
Jacob spat in Stone’s face. “Someone finally explained the meaning of your paintings to me,” Jacob sneered. “If ya think I’m gonna support an Insurrectionist—a no-good agitator, then ya got another—”
Stone tore a piece of tracing paper from his sketchpad and slowly wiped the spit off his face. “I’m sorry you feel that way.” He tossed the wet paper on the ground. “You’ll have your money in three months.”
The man lunged at Stone, latching his hands around his neck.
I pushed him away—hard. “Get away from him, Jacob!” I yelled.
Jacob’s eyes grew wider and rounder. He made a great show of putting his plump white hands down at his side. His jacket pulled across his bloated frame. Pointing a trembling finger at Stone, he cried, “Miss, Stone Aldrich took my money—swore he’d pay me back with interest—and now won’t give me back a penny.”
“I’m sure there’s a rational explanation,” I said. But was there?
“Best I can do is write you a check,” Stone grumbled, tapping the outside of his jacket. Reaching inside his inner breast pocket, he pulled out a small booklet. “But I advise you not to cash it until I can put more money in the bank. I wouldn’t want the check to be made of rubber.”
Jacob raised his hands, palms facing up. “And if your bank goes under?”
A crow cawed and flew away, blighting the sun. I drew in my breath. Every day yielded another story about bank runs. Would Stone really make this desperate man wait?
Stone glanced at the red brick building touching the sky. “We have to hope and pray for the best,” he said. “But just so you’re aware, I fully expect the deal with the collector to be solid, and I’ll come out of it on the other side a millionaire. I promised you a handsome rate of return, but you—you’re the one who’s reneging.”
Retrieving a fountain pen from the inner reaches of his jacket pocket, he leaned against an elm tree and wrote the man a check for three thousand dollars. It was the largest sum I’d ever seen written down.
Stone blew on the check to let the ink dry, then tore the page from the booklet with a flourish. “Here you go. It’s your original loan repaid, no more, no less.”
Jacob eyed the check, then tucked it inside his jacket pocket. His brown suit glinted when the sunlight hit it in a certain way. “I’ll wait as ya suggest,” he said. “But if this bounces, make no mistake: I’ll kill ya.” He lifted his hands to show what he would do to Stone’s neck—first strangle it, then break it in two. “I’ve got six kids. If I don’t succeed, one of them will. That’s what we do to liars where I come from.”
“On second thought,” Stone said, putting up his hand, “cash it.”
Jacob stared at Stone as if he were a madman.
“Oh, yes, it will hurt me,” Stone continued, leaning back on his boots. “I daresay, it will hurt the bank. But you’re right. You have a lot of mouths to feed, and family comes first.” He grabbed one of Jacob’s hands and shook it. “Thank you for believing in me enough to lend me the money in the first place.”
Jacob studied Stone’s face with a frightening intensity, then dove into the carriage we’d hired, which clattered away.
“What in the world was he talking about?” I asked.
“The man’s a loan shark. He loaned—”
“No. About you being an Insurrectionist.”
“Some people ascribe meanings to my paintings that aren’t there,” Stone said tartly. “My paintings incite nothing—except for contempt from some well placed art critics.” He reached into his pocket, fished out a cigar, clipped the end, and lit it. A sweet, toasted smell perfumed the air. He squared back his shoulders, puffed out his chest, drew on the cylinder, and exhaled.
I wondered if I should start smoking. Maybe smoking fortified you against life’s wounds.
Stone offered me the cigar. I placed the large, damp end in my mouth and pulled on the tobacco roll. It tasted like leather and perfume mixed with chocolate and coffee. And corroded newspaper. I coughed, nauseated, and handed the stogie back to him. The sky spun.
I said, “I wish I had the money to give you, so you could pay back that creep.”
He snorted. “I’d never take your money. For God’s, Penelope, quit worrying about me.”
Mother was right, I thought. He didn’t want me mothering him. I should get him to paint me instead.
We found a small embankment up from the temple and Stone started sketching it. His hands shook badly.
“Now Stone, you know how I hate sitting for you. But I feel giving that horrible man his money back today was the right thing to do. So, if you’d like to sketch me, I’d be happy to try and sit still for once. And if you later want to commit the sketch to oil paint, that would be lovely.”
He laughed. “I need to get three thousand dollars first,” he said. “I’d better persuade my art collector to move up his payment before that loan shark comes back and breaks both my hands.”
Sunday, July 2, 1893, 5 p.m.
By unspoken agreement, Stone did not mention the loan shark incident to Mother, and neither did
I. Neither of us wanted to upset her fragile constitution. I especially did not want to get her nerves in a twist, as I knew that trying to dislodge her from my flat would accomplish that all on its own. Over high tea the next day, I decided to broach the topic.
I mentally rehearsed my next words, knowing that no matter how diplomatically I phrased them, everything would come out wrong.
“Mother, you’ve done a masterful job of nursing me back to health,” I started. I stirred some sugar in my tea, hoping it would sweeten my voice. I dropped more sugar into my tea. “But I fear you’ll be missed back home.” I drained the cup.
How could Father and Lydia live without her?
Mother pressed her lips into a line no fool would cross. “I had planned to stay for several weeks, dear.”
I adopted a tone designed to placate. In dulcet tones, I thanked her for all she had done but assured her I could look after my own affairs.
She stared up at the tin ceiling as if counting its rust spots, which had recently appeared in leopard-like abundance. “Don’t delude yourself, dear, you need me more than you think.”
She was undoubtedly right about that, as I failed to see how I needed her at all.
Pointing at our guest, I said, “Stone is welcome to stay for a few more days if he chooses, but for all four of us to be cramped up and living together is a bit—” Bohemian, I almost said, but stopped knowing how she abhorred Bohemians.
She tightened her lips. Small wrinkles formed along the perimeter. “Mr. Aldrich cannot stay without a chaperone present. What will the neighbors think?”
“Nothing,” I said. “This is Boston.”
“You don’t have neighbors? Or they don’t think?
“Yes.”
She looked at me as if I were deranged. “They’d think poorly of me, dear, even if they didn’t blink an eye at you.”
If there were such a thing as a Boston marriage, could there be such a thing as a Boston family? If so, perhaps it could simulate a family without being a real one composed of annoying relatives.