Lydia Cassat Reading the Morning Paper

by Harriet Scott Chessman

  I’ve told May that I wish to start a little garden on our balcony this spring, in Paris, because I won’t be able to wait until summer.

  “Oh, Lyddy,” she says, “summer will come again before you know it.”

  “Lyddy?”

  “Oui?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Oh, I was just thinking about gardening.”

  “Gardening?”

  “It’s amazing, how gardens help you understand each season.”

  “Except for winter, I suppose, when snow covers everything.”

  “Remember the snowdrops, by the front steps of Hardwicke, May, how they pushed up through the snow?”

  It’s like a dream I had, that August afternoon, here in Marly. As I walked in the garden, after lunch, I came upon something I could not at first comprehend. Two figures, one in dark trousers, a white shirt, blue suspenders, one in a yellow dress, embracing. The world bent closer, and slowed: the allée, the summer leaves, the roses climbing the arbor.

  ii.

  May’s moving quickly now, brush to palette to canvas, and I resist the urge to move. To pose, after all, is to agree to a form of enchantment.

  I hear Batty’s bark, muffled through the trees and growing louder. Soon I hear Vivi running along the allée, and Batty scrabbling and barking—tin, tin, tin!

  “You may rest, Lyddy.”

  I move slowly out of my pose, to see Vivi rushing up, flushed and winded. May bends to pick up her little dog.

  “Alors, monsieur,” she says, stroking his small head as he pants, “what adventures did you have with Vivi?”

  Batty’s eyes glitter as he licks her hands.

  “He barked at a squirrel, mademoiselle, and almost fell into the stream.”

  May laughs. “Poor old Batty!”

  She stretches. “Shall I release you, Lyddy? It’s almost one. Father will be anxious to begin lunch, and your sister will be waiting for you, Vivi.”

  I stand up, trying not to wince at the pain in my back.

  “When will Elsie come back to Marly, mademoiselle?” Vivi asks, taking my hand.

  “Oh, soon. In a year, maybe,” I say.

  “A year! I’ll be so much older then. Do you think she’ll know who I am?”

  “Bien sûr. She’ll know you right away.”

  My back hurts, but I take a breath and feel Vivi’s hand in mine, her fingers fine and warm. Vivi hops beside me as I walk, and we slowly follow May and Batty into the house.

  iii.

  At lunch, I do not feel well. Mother glances at my empty plate, and then at me.

  “Are you all right, Lydia?”

  “I think so.”

  “Have some of this superb rillette,” Father says, offering me a slice. “Thanks, no.”

  May offers me the bread, brought this morning by Vivi’s older sister, and I tear off a piece. I like the feel of it, textured, dusted with flour on the crusty top.

  Mother sighs. “It’s quiet without the children,” she says. She has said this at each meal since the children left. May and I glance at each other.

  “Perfect day for renting a boat,” adds Father. “Nice and hot. The children loved that, the day we rented the rowboat, at the pond in Louveciennes, eh, Kate?”

  The children took turns that day. Eddie and Robbie went first with Aleck, while May and Father and I stayed on the bank of the pond and helped the girls feed the fat ducks and geese, and two swans. Once Aleck brought the boat in, May took Elsie and Sister out to the center of the pond. I can still see their broad-brimmed straw hats, the picture they made. It was a bright, clear day. The pond looked as blue as lapis. I sat on a bench under the willow, playing I Spy with the boys and Aleck, as Father read the paper and Mother dozed.

  Aleck has become stiffer, more formal. Marrying Lois did not help. Poor old Lois, with her aristocratic American customs and her doughy imagination. And poor Aleck too; he’s caught up in that cautious, smug world, most certainly. But with each day of his visit, especially when Lois stayed in Paris and we had Aleck all to ourselves out here in the country, he seemed to become younger and more carefree. That day by the pond, he took off his shoes and socks and waded, just as we used to wade in ponds at home, catching tadpoles. I had good talks with him, over morning café, and sometimes in the evening as we walked in the garden. His absence feels like the violent loss of some part of me: a rib, a lung.

  “I think I might walk over to see Berthe Morisot,” May says, “tomorrow or the next day.”

  “How is her daughter?” Mother asks.

  “Very well, I think.”

  “She must be two years old now?”

  “Almost. She celebrates her birthday this fall.”

  “Healthy?”

  “Very healthy.”

  “We should make a quilt for the little one, shouldn’t we, Lyddy? We have the perfect material, from those two dresses you don’t wear anymore. I had been about to give them away.”

  I nod. I hold my sides, willing my illness to go.

  “Madame Manet is very lucky,” Mother says. “And her child’s lucky, to grow up in the country, especially in the summers.”

  “Country children are always the healthiest,” says Father.

  “Is Berthe painting again, May?” I ask.

  “She writes that she’s done some of the child, and the nurse.”

  Mother looks as if she wishes she could say something to May. I can guess what it is, and I know she feels she can no longer address the subject directly to my sister, especially now that the picture has changed, with Degas often in the foreground. She used to urge her to think about marriage, to place herself in such a way that marriage could become a possibility for her, but always May would respond high-handedly, “I’m an artist. I am independent. That’s the only way a woman can do it.” “You could still have your art,” Mother would say, ruffled. But she didn’t think of May’s art as something real, something genuine. She still finds it difficult to think of May as choosing all this.

  Mother still has hopes, though. I know she would love to see May situated like Berthe Morisot—Madame Manet—married to a wealthy man, well-connected. Lois too enjoys such a marriage. Aleck has become so rich.

  Father, of course, agrees, and yet, ever since the Impressionist exhibition last spring, when May’s paintings sold so well in spite of the critics, he seems to have begun to let the thought go. I picture him on a shore, watching a ship (“The Marriage of My Youngest Daughter”) sail away, just as my own ship sailed, and turning back to business. He looks at her, more and more, with simple admiration, of the kind he might feel for a manly acquaintance who’s struck it rich, in railroads or in stocks.

  “I can’t imagine Madame Manet gets much painting done, with a small child around the house,” says Father.

  Mother sits up very straight. “Well, she has a nurse, after all. And she has only the one child.”

  “One is a handful, even with a nurse, you know that, Kate. Madame Manet certainly can’t be working as hard as May does.”

  “I don’t mean to suggest that she works as hard.” Mother looks indignant. “I’m only saying, she’s very fortunate to have a family, and her art too.”

  May sighs. “Well, she is fortunate, there’s no doubt of that.” She adds, sharply, “And May Alcott too was fortunate once.”

  Mother looks pained. She liked May Alcott, and so did I. “This is for you, Lydia,” she said, holding out a little sketchbook. “It has some sketches of you and May in it. I thought you’d like to have it.” Her face a blasted winter landscape, stark white and shadowed. May doesn’t need to bring up her death so often, and with such bitterness.

  “Bearing a child always carries a risk,” Mother says, looking suddenly tired.

  “A risk, yes.” May tosses her head. “She could have become a very good painter, and then she got married, and look what happened.”

  I glance at May’s face, furious and stubborn, and I think about how happy May Alcott was with
her husband in their house in Meudon. Her baby Lulu lives in America now, with her Aunt Louisa, the writer.

  “You’re right, May,” Mother says, “that did happen. But look at me. Five healthy children I gave birth to, and here I am still, an old woman, with healthy grandchildren.”

  Five healthy children, I think, but one has been dead for more than twenty years, and another (I put my bread on my plate) is healthy no longer, and what about the two who did not live more than a day, or a month?

  “You never had the ambition May does, though, Kate,” says Father.

  “I had my own ambitions, thank you.”

  “Of course you did,” he says, with compunction. He adds, “And you’ve been a model to your children.”

  Mother glances at him. “Well, I don’t know about that. I just—it’s just that having a family, and children, is natural, and good. It’s a contribution in its own right.” Mother’s hands flutter above her plate. She touches her spoon, her white linen napkin, the asters in the vase.

  I shift uncomfortably in my chair. Father shrugs his shoulders and breathes a noisy sigh, as May stabs at her salad and then lets her fork clatter onto the plate. All of us are as quiet as church, until Hélène comes in to take away the dishes and bring the fruit and cheese for dessert.

  iv.

  This afternoon, lying on my bed after lunch, the pain is mild, compared to last spring and other times, but I am terribly aware of my illness.

  I look at the mound of books on the table. Mostly poetry, at the moment, especially that of May’s friend Stéphane Mallarmé, but my head is sore. I can’t imagine deciphering the words; the thought makes me nauseous.

  v.

  Two figures, so close I cannot distinguish them. A fabulous and strange beast, clothed and passionate. Can people’s boundaries dissolve? I wonder, confused in that one slow moment.

  vi.

  May pokes her head around the door, and looks at me with dark eyes.

  “Lyd?”

  I create a smile for her.

  “Yes, May.”

  She comes in and sits on my bed, close to me, catching up my hand. Her hands knead my fingers, as if she wishes to mold them like clay.

  “You’re all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it something you ate? Mother worries about the rillette.”

  “I didn’t touch the rillette.”

  “You’ve been so well.” She pauses. “Haven’t you?”

  “Largely, yes. I’ve been well.”

  “I know you’ve had trouble sleeping.”

  “May.” I speak gently and slowly. “You know my diagnosis.”

  May looks impatient. “You’ve been fine, though, only sometimes with a little sleeplessness, and then—” She studies my face.

  “I know doctors can do very little. But they’re not wholly ignorant.”

  May twists her mouth just as Mother does. It would be comical to me, if I did not feel so sorry for her, and for myself, at this moment. I glimpse May’s world as it will look when I am no longer here. I do not always feel necessary—in the grand scheme of things, I feel quite unnecessary—but the picture shifts when you look through the eyes of another. I see May, sitting upright, in front of her canvas, holding her palette and her brush, and looking at—air.

  And as soon as I imagine this, another picture flies into my face: in my place is another, some young woman dressed in a dress I might have worn. On her lap is Batty, or in her hand is a crochet hook, and blue thread. She reads, or holds a cup.

  May’s stubbornness on the subject of my health begins to distress me more than my diagnosis. I feel sometimes as if I’m in a rowboat, all on my own. And this is all right, if I can still see land, and houses, and my sister and others walking on the shore. But to be cut off from the shore, to have only seabirds and the impersonal sun and salty waves to witness what’s happening in my boat—this is too much.

  “Promise me you’ll remain healthy, Lyd.”

  “How can I promise what I can’t control?” I say, bitterly, throwing the words at her.

  vii.

  The woman’s head turns, and I see May’s face—but how could her face have arrived here, in this arbor? I feel that I’ve become caught in a picture, or else this picture has been thrust into my face, and I must hold my eyes open to see.

  viii.

  After two days, my illness subsides and I’m able to pose for May again in the garden, crocheting. On the second day, at noon, she looks up and says, with satisfaction, “C’est fini.”

  I’ve held off looking at the painting, this time, I’m not sure why. I’ll miss this chair on the path, the garden around me, sunshine and insect murmur. Soon, these mornings in the garden at Marly will have vanished, just as the mornings and afternoons of the summer have already vanished, leaving only pictures in my memory. We’ll be returning to Paris, and other people, our other life, more crowded and rushed, May darting across the city, to see friends, to go to a gallery.

  “Do you like it, Lyddy?”

  I look. May has created a calm scene: a woman in a garden, with a white lace bonnet and a blue dress, edged with colorful embroidery, and a dusky red row of plants behind her, leading up the allée, to the dark windows of the villa. She’s crocheting something blue. And what is that double band of red on her lap? Ah, the sash of my dress. It startles me.

  “Lyddy?”

  “Oh, I do. I do like it.”

  May waits. I contemplate the face of this woman.

  “The lines of the face—look as if they’re dissolving.”

  “Do you like that?”

  I try to smile. “Oh, May, it’s magnificent. Yes. I’m amazed by those lines, her eyes, her mouth, how it’s all present, and yet—”

  I feel May listening hard.

  “It’s as if you’ve shown how fragile all of this is.”

  “All of this?”

  I am embarrassed. I fling my arms out. “This garden, summer—”

  May studies my face, and then she looks at the canvas.

  I see something else, but I find it difficult to say this to May. It’s illness she’s discovered. I gaze at the shadows around the woman’s eyes (my eyes), the muted color of her mouth (my mouth), the down-turned lips. I comprehend how May sees her (me)—not what she acknowledges, perhaps, but what she knows.

  “Do you like the light in it?”

  “The light is fine.”

  “And her hands?”

  “Yes, her hands are well done.” I add, “It’s a thoughtful picture.”

  “Thoughtful?” She moves closer to me, as she looks at her painting, as if to see it through my eyes.

  “Oui. She’s absorbed in her crocheting, but it’s more than that. She looks as if she’s looking inward. I suppose it’s her eyes that make me think that.”

  May’s cheek, hot and damp, touches mine, just as on a hot Pennsylvania summer day, when she’s small, and I’m carrying her somewhere. She’s clinging to me, her face hot and wet on mine.

  May puts her arms around my shoulders and kisses me full on the cheek.

  “Of course she’s thoughtful. It’s a portrait too, you know.”

  “I’m not so thoughtful.”

  “You’re a contemplative, Lyddy. I’ve always known it about you. If you were a Catholic—God forbid!—you’d be in a nunnery.”

  I shake my head, but I picture with a rush of delight a cloistered garden, like the one we entered in the old abbaye south of Paris, stone archways, and a calm filled with something—if I were a nun I could call this thing God.

  ix.

  And, God in Heaven, what am I to do with this other picture, arriving in my life during one dazed moment in the middle of a summer afternoon in our garden in Marly? The woman is May—I see her face, her yellow dress. The two figures make a picture no one will paint, or see, yet it’s framed, in a green like the green of the arbor, on the walls of my memory. I claim it for my own.

  x.

  As May begins to put
away her brushes, I catch one more glimpse of the painting.

  The blood-red leaves lead to the dark windows, the red (heart’s blood) on my dress a sash, a slash. How can May paint such darkness?

  Maybe it’s this talk about nunneries, but I feel a yearning for some sign—of grace, of a future life that holds more than darkened windows. Why should it be only Catholics who see such signs, like the girl who had the visions at Lourdes? I would be grateful simply for a dove, winging its careful way out of the sky. In the face of that wish, my own world seems suddenly spare and stoic and Protestant.

  xi.

  “Do you love him?” I ask her, as the shadows grow blue around us, once Degas has left on the train. It’s August, and the air’s still hot from the day. A scull passes on the river, with swift, long strokes, as the blade slices into the water again, and again. “Oh, well.” I can just see her shrugging, tossing her hands into the air. “Do you?” I ask again. She hugs her elbows, and looks at the water, and then she comes closer.

  “I’m overwhelmed by him.”

  “Do you intend to marry?”

  She laughs and I think she’s mocking me, but then she says fiercely, “I couldn’t marry him, Lyddy. You of all people know that. How could I? He would crush my painting, me. I couldn’t possibly survive it.”

  “Then what in Heaven’s name are you thinking?” I ask, in anguish.

  “I can’t say what I’m thinking, Lyddy, but I can’t bear to feel I can’t have this in my life, ever. This is not Philadelphia. Am I to live with no feeling, like—?” Like you, she almost says, and I feel the cut of her words against my face.

  “I’m not asking you to live with no feeling, May,” I begin, and at once I’m aware how my own life must look in her eyes, a desert, parched under a hot sun.