“Our nephews and nieces will be visiting,” May adds. “Our brother Aleck will be coming over from the States with his wife and four children. My sister is eager to begin spoiling them again.”
“I think we spoil them equally.” I smile, just to think of them. I think of Gard too, on his own now in Philadelphia, a bachelor still. I long to see him. Outside the window, high up, the white-fleeced clouds have begun to come apart, into feathered fragments.
“And will you work there?” Degas speaks to May, his voice gravelly and low.
“I’ll do what I can. I can paint outdoors, in good weather.”
“Yes. I’d like to see what you do.”
“You’ll come and see.”
“Oui. I’ll come and see.”
“Lyddy seconds my invitation.”
“Bien sûr, of course I do.”
The light has moved from my chair to the floor beside me, and soon, I know, it will become something diffuse, not pouring in these bands onto the parquet. It will become, more, a thought, an idea of light.
iv.
“Ready for a rest, Lyd?”
As I move out of my pose, I see my sister standing by her easel, looking exhilarated and tired. Degas lounges in the armchair nearest May, his eyes heavy-lidded, like a lizard’s in the sun. He rises slowly to his feet, as I rise.
Looking at the painting, I see a woman, clothed in pink and white, the white (my dress’s lace) making a brilliant cloud around her neck, and again at the opening of her sleeve, with a tumult of color (the hyacinths) around her head. I bend closer to the woman’s face, her chin half-hidden in the whiteness, her forehead in the swirls of golden-red, her eyes, touched with quick strokes of blue, looking elsewhere, her mouth half-smiling, holding in her thoughts.
Look at me, I long to say to her. Tell me, what are you thinking, as you begin to bring this gold-rimmed cup to your mouth? Absurd, I know, this longing.
The Cup of Tea, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, from the Collection of James Stillman, Gift of Dr. Ernest G. Stillman, 1922. (22.16.17) Photograph © 1998 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Alors?” May looks at me, questioning.
“It’s beautiful, May.”
“Do you really like it?”
“Of course I do. The color is beautiful.”
Can’t you think of another word? I wonder. May is waiting for something more. I feel unable to tell her all my thoughts: how I yearn to be this woman, to be composed of this swirling, lovely world, not Lydia, not myself, feeling exhausted and cold suddenly, my head hurting, as Degas looks over our shoulders.
“Very pretty,” he says.
“Pretty! Don’t insult me.”
He throws her a teasing, dark smile. “Oh, well, you know it’s very good,” he says. “You have an enviable sense of line. A woman shouldn’t be allowed to have such a sense of line.” He adds, “Of course, you’re lucky in your model.”
“The model has little to do with it,” I say.
“Au contraire. A model has an immense amount to do with it.” He looks at me with amusement.
“Of course she does. Lyddy, you’re absurdly modest.” She points to her canvas. “I’m going to do more with the dress and the background, and a bit more with the face. I can’t make you pose any longer today. And the light’s changed.”
“I can come tomorrow,” I say, although my head is beginning to ache in earnest. My illness rushes back to me, sometimes, like this.
“Lyddy.” I feel May’s hand in mine. I have bent over, and someone has lowered me into a chair.
“I’m all right, May.”
I feel her hand on my forehead, and then her fingers under my chin, untying my bonnet.
“Some water for her, please, Edgar.”
“Of course.”
Soon a cup is held to my lips, but I shake my head.
“I’ll be all right.”
And then I am inside my illness again. All that happens means nothing to me—the long walk out of May’s studio to the street, the cab ride home. I am half-aware that I have ceased to care what anyone thinks of me, even Degas, who rides with us in the cab, looking strangely shaken.
V.
Days can be passed this way, lying in bed, shrouded in the duvet I love when I am well, and that now seems to rub and hurt, to be all wrong, just as the world is wrong in each detail. Sounds that could give pleasure to someone healthy seem to prick me until I’m a bloody mess: Lise placing the washing bowl on my table, Mother’s voice calling to May, the clattering of silver and plates, Batty’s yips, and, muffled but upsetting, the sounds of avenue Trudaine.
I am not fit for this life. I hold still, hoping the illness will decide to go away, leaving me empty and picked clean, a thin replica of myself, but at peace and alive, like small bird bones on a cliff, that miraculously begin to sing.
I call to Lise, or to May if she’s home. My mouth opens and my stomach pitches and heaves. Mother comes too slowly, and I can’t bear to ask her to clean up my messes. Lise is immature, and dislikes illness; she wrinkles her nose and holds her breath, sighing and making a show of taking the basin away. May’s better, because she has courage, and backbone, but she cannot disguise her distress at my condition.
Why is it that I feel at fault for this sickness? Surely I am not at fault. In the midst of my collapse, I feel fury at my family, the way they tiptoe around me and look at me with hushed faces, as if I’ve already died; and yet, at the same time, they seem impatient with me. Be healthy or go, choose one or the other, I imagine them thinking, we can’t bear to accompany you further into this illness.
vi.
May has become restless. She’s lost days, nursing me. Often she has even had to bathe me, for I’ve been too ill to bathe myself. I worry that she’s disgusted with my body, pale and ungainly, my breasts heavy, too intimate for a sister’s hand, the washcloth moving here and there, my body a place I wish I could leave, like walking out of our garden at Hardwicke, and slipping through the gate into the meadow.
Yet I love to have May near. She’s been painting and working, on prints, I think, each morning (and who does she see?), but she comes home midday now, instead of continuing. Sometimes she reads to me, and sometimes, when I’m feeling very sick, she sits on my bed and holds my hands. When we’re both lucky, her presence makes me feel calm, and allows sleep to come.
I cherish time with May. But I do not wish to pay this price for her presence.
vii.
I wake this morning to see May in the chair next to my bed. Someone has opened my curtains, and the sun spills onto the far wall, and onto my embroidery frame. May looks tired and determined, her face framed by her crimson bonnet and royal blue silk scarf. She’s wearing a light gray coat. If I could paint you now, I think, this is how I’d see you, tired and luminous, your face half in shadow, the light around you changing the air to cream. She begins to pull on her beige gloves, and to work at the pearl buttons. She glances at me appraisingly.
“You look better.”
“Well, that’s a blessing.”
“You’ve worried me.”
“I worry myself.”
I watch her button the last button and smooth her coat. For a moment, I think of my body as a kind of landscape, across which I can travel, checking the trees and roads, seeing whether the bridges have held during the tumult of this week. It feels like a luxury simply to have a thought.
In the midst of this calm, I remember the painting. How must it look, in the light of May’s studio?
“What day is it today?” I could ask, what season? What year?
“Monday.”
I try to calculate how long I’ve been sick. May seems to guess my thoughts.
“You’ve been in bed for five days.”
“Ah. I’m sorry about the painting, May.”
“The painting’s almost done. It can wait until you’re well.”
I study her face. She looks pale, and the circles under her eyes look deeper. She has been up
with me many times this week, in the middle of the night. And am I at fault, then?
“What will you do today?”
“Oh.” May looks careless. “I have lots to do.”
“You have another model?”
May looks at me quickly.
“I can always find someone.” She gazes at me for a minute. “I won’t be able to find anyone like you, Lyd.”
“Nonsense.”
“You know it’s true.”
She looks out the window.
As she leaves my room, I say, “Courage, May.”
viii.
Being ill, one has lots of time to think. Too much time. One’s whole life comes to the bedside, to pay a visit, welcome or unwelcome. At some moments, the visitor seems to be some monstrous and misshapen figure, crouched on my chest, refusing to leave and presenting picture after picture of all that I remember. I find myself sifting through my insults to others, to May when she was little, to Aleck, to Gard, and to Robbie, before he died. I remember too my sense of bereavement, waving to Aleck from the ship as it embarks from New York. He grows smaller, to the size of a dab of paint, and I feel that in that figure, almost invisible now, resides my own childhood. Will you marry Thomas? he asked, as we sat on the kitchen steps together one night. I was twenty-three. Yes. Yes, I will. And, strangely, May Alcott threads through these memories, unbidden. I picture her as she looked when I last saw her, her ill face framed by the white pillow, her eyes closed. For three weeks last December she lay in a coma, in her house in Meudon.
Such thoughts become part of my illness, entwining with my nausea and my headache—a whole ocean pounding in my head. Can memories hurt? Then these hurt. I feel at moments as if I’m in an ongoing dream of sickness and grief, yearning to wake up into a new day.
In the midst of my illness, I discover an urgent wish to pose again. As I lie here, absurdly weak, I long to enter May’s studio, to hold the cup and saucer again, or a book, or anything.
To model for someone is always a surprise; you never know what they’ll make of you. After I posed for Degas, last winter, he completed various pictures using his original sketch—etchings, pastels, some placing us in the Etruscan gallery, one in another room of the Louvre. Looking at them, I saw, with painful lucidity, how he might see me—I mean, how he might actually see me, outside of the picture. The way he had posed both of us had been comical, really. We looked like two tourists braving the Louvre. I sat to the side, the guidebook held up to my face, covering my chin, while May stood, insouciant, attractive, her curved back to the viewer, her umbrella at a sharp angle to the floor, appearing far more interested in her own elegance than in the incomprehensible and stirring art she faced.
Of course, May and I couldn’t know how we would look, especially once Degas added the image of the Etruscan gallery. In the etching, May contemplated and I peeked at a splendid sarcophagus of a half-naked husband and wife leaning and looking out of a glass case, as if to gaze back at us. When he showed me this version of the picture, I felt offended, to see this timid woman, hiding behind a book, barely able to look at the sumptuous couple, lounging in their eternal bed. I know it’s silly to feel offended by the way someone portrays me—after all, this was not meant to be a portrait—but I felt offended nonetheless. May just praised the etching for its sense of composition and line, and she laughed, unbothered, at the wit of it.
I wish I could have responded with May’s self-confidence, with her love of the satire in Degas’ art. She’s right to respond this way. But all I could think was, Of course. Of course this is how he must see me. I found myself arguing with him in my imagination, a fruitless exercise, telling him, But you’re wrong, I’m not such a timid soul. Whatever I look at, I look at wholeheartedly and with as clear an eye as even you can turn on the world.
ix.
When Mother comes into my room, I welcome her presence as a relief and a distraction from such thoughts. In the chair next to my bed, she sits quite naturally in the present, here in our apartment, knitting, reading the newspaper, writing letters to friends in America, and to Aleck and Gard. She enjoys my company, and makes few inquiries into my inner state. I join her on the surface, in this here and now, leaving the welter of my emotions out of the picture. As I talk to her, I fold up most of my nettling memories, wrap them in paper, and tuck them into drawers, as Cora and the other maids used to do with our clothes when one season turned into another, in each house we occupied. I look around the room, and out the window, aware of the light, the color of the sky.
“I’m writing to Aleck,” Mother says, adjusting her specs. “I’m asking him whether your youngest brother Gardner has any thought of marriage in his frivolous soul.” Her silver hair is in a chignon under her cap. Her rings flash small bits of color.
I embrace the thought of handsome Gard, and of Aleck’s brood, Eddie and Sister and Robbie and Elsie. I remember how I held Elsie, the youngest, on the day of her birth in Philadelphia. Such a tight little bundle of flesh, her forehead silk. I put my hand in the basin of warm water, to wash the baby, the bloody sheets, Lois a bloated and exhausted ghost of herself. Will she live? I wondered, frightened.
“Elsie must be so big now.”
“Oh, yes. Lois says she’s a handful.” Mother looks at me with a wry smile.
“The children will love the country.”
Mother nods. “May will have to take them on lots of expeditions.”
“She’s been talking about showing them Versailles too.”
“Versailles would be splendid. They can see the fireworks.”
“Maybe May will paint the children.”
“If they can sit still,” says Mother. “You know May has no patience for wriggling.”
Children are excellent medicine.
x.
I am awoken, mid-afternoon, out of a troubled sleep by May sitting on my bed. She’s breathless from her walk up the five flights to our apartment. My dream disperses (a soldier, his face blasted, my own hands red with blood).
I rub my eyes and look at May, as she unbuttons her gloves, pulling at the buttons in her impatience.
“I’ve found a new model, Lyd. Actually, two.”
“I’m glad,” I say, although I catch another feeling before it tries to slip away: jealousy, is it?
“One of them is quite young.”
“Ah bon?” My jealousy bites more sharply.
“Yes. And quite restless.”
“Restless?”
“Wriggly.”
I stare at May, and she laughs. “En effet, it’s hard to sit still when you’re under a year old.”
“Ah.” I’m aware of my relief. “You’ve found a child?”
“Our landlady’s great-nephew. Her niece is visiting, from Dieppes.”
“How did you ask them to model? You’ve asked the child’s mother, too?”
“Yes.” May looks very satisfied with herself. “I met them just outside Madame Phillippe’s apartment. The baby lay asleep in his carriage. He has golden hair, Lyd, like a cherub, a Tiepolo cherub.”
“I’d love to see him.” My bedroom feels small suddenly, even smaller than usual, as confining as a hatbox.
“I’m sure you’ll have a chance to see him. They’re staying for a week with Madame Phillippe.”
“Bring them up for tea, May.”
“If you feel well enough.”
“I’ll feel well enough. In a day or two. I’m sure the baby would love Batty.”
“I’m not sure Batty would love him. But I’ll try to bring them up anyway.”
xi.
This afternoon, May has brought a picture home, a pastel. Two figures, a woman and a baby, embrace, the child’s arm tight around her neck. I’m amazed by the way she’s shown only the delicate sides of their heads; you can’t see their faces at all. The mother bends in, to kiss the baby, and all one can see is the line of the mother’s cheek and part of her brow, the soft cheek of the baby. How astonishing, to place the kiss just out of our visio
n. It’s as if May’s saying, this is something you can only imagine, for these figures have no need of you. Your look can only go so far.
“How did you do this, May?”
“I had to get it down quickly, especially the shapes, and this line.” She traces the soft “V” of the mother’s cheek, cradled between the baby’s small arm and head.
“Mais, how did you think of this pose?”
“I wished for two figures, so close they seem to mesh. I wanted the faces to be a mystery.”
“I can almost feel the baby’s cheek.”
May is quiet for a moment. Then she adds, “I wished to create the sense of a moment of utter closeness. It’s quick and spontaneous, but, in the painting, it holds, it stays.”
I think of Degas’ dancers, exhausted, hard at work, isolated from each other and from the dance master, or from the men who linger in hallways off-stage. Sometimes you see only legs, the torso cut off by the painting’s frame, and often you find yourself in an odd relationship to his figures: spying on them, or looking down at them. The space between them is fraught, nervous. I can’t remember seeing a picture of Degas’ in which two figures embrace, right at the center, so close you could touch them, and I certainly can’t imagine him painting a subject like this, so fresh and joyous, so spontaneous: a mother and a baby, utterly in love. The strength of the lines, the boldness of the colors and the design, is pure Mary Cassatt.
“I know of no one else who could have created this, May.”
She looks at me, flushed, triumphant. “I know.”
I look again at the pastel: the rich blue color of the armchair, the deep green of the woman’s dress, the gold and white of the child’s hair and chemise, the auburn of the mother’s hair, the restless greens and reds of the wallpaper pattern behind them, the mysterious and gorgeous shadow, in red, between the mother’s face and the baby’s. The whole composition centers there, in that red shadow, in that ardent and unseen kiss.
Lydia Cassat Reading the Morning Paper Page 4