Little Woman in Blue

by Jeannine Atkins

  “There will be more speeches. Anna will be more patient since she can hardly hear them,” Louisa said.

  “The rum punch may help.”

  “I’ve had enough of men who think they can mark the beginning of our nation’s freedom and not invite a single woman to speak.” Louisa shook her head. “No taxation without representation, they say. Rubbish. We still don’t have the vote, and I pay the highest taxes in town.”

  “Things will change.” May linked her arm through Louisa’s as they walked past leafless elder bushes to the river’s edge.

  “Before the war, we were told that slavery must be abolished before women could get the vote. It’s been ten years since we trounced the South, and the old promises are forgotten.”

  “I thought you were tired of speeches.” May glanced back toward the statue. “I expect Dan was right to avoid the ceremony.”

  “They might have mentioned his first teacher.”

  “Dan is always gracious about thanking me, but everyone knows teachers don’t get publicly honored.”

  “Especially when they’re women. Mr. Emerson might at least have asked to see your sketches before they gave Dan the commission.”

  “I was in Europe when the competition was announced. And I’m not a sculptor.”

  “Dan had never done such a big statue either, had he? I dare say they’d have asked you if you were a man.”

  “Art isn’t easy for men either. Dan told me the commission only paid for the clay. He got nothing for his work.” May heard Freddie and Johnny shriek as they dipped their hands into the cold water, piling up rocks to dam puddles. She said, “Do you think they’ll become engineers, like Julian? Building roads and bridges?”

  “They can be anything.” Louisa looked at her. “I know you always wanted children.”

  “No one can have everything. You told me that years ago.”

  “Back when I was young enough to think I knew something. May, did you ever give your answer to the world?”

  “What?”

  “A long time ago, you told me that sometimes a view speaks to you, and you painted to answer back.”

  “I’m only now finding the right language.” May watched a blackbird dart past the yellow willow branches. Small waves swiftly changed from blue to green to gold. “I still see the beauty here, but I can’t paint it.”

  “I understand. Sometimes I think I love home more when I’m away.”

  May looked back at the statue. “Dan’s sculpture is grand, but what I admire most is that he didn’t need to hear the applause. He chose to work instead.”

  “You’re like that, too. Far more than the girl I foolishly wrote about in my book, the one who stopped making art. I admire the way you never gave up.”

  “And now one of my students may be the genius. I hardly spoke more than a few words to Dan, but I can’t help feeling a bit proud. A teacher’s greatest reward is to see her students go beyond her.”

  “Perhaps. But you were meant for something besides coaxing work from others.”

  May shook her head. “Do you want to go rowing soon? There’s a boat kept at the old Manse they let anyone borrow. In another few months, we can even see the water lilies.”

  “I want to see them, but I suppose you’d rather be in Paris. Rose told me she’s been begging her teacher to go with her. I don’t want people saying how the Peckham girl goes where you haven’t been. Why should I have wealth if I can’t help my sister?”

  “What? Go to Paris?”

  “You might learn enough in a year to show everyone what a woman can do.”

  “And an Alcott?”

  “You must show everyone that a woman from our little town can put a painting in that big art show you always talk about.”

  “My work might not get in. I sent something to the Salon when I was in England, and it was refused.”

  “You don’t think I’d be impressed by a single rejection? Don’t you remember all the editors who turned down my work? I’ll provide enough money for you to stay a year, if you’re careful.”

  “Thank you!” May threw her arms around her. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you, but I’ll try. You’ll see your sacrifices were worthwhile.”

  “You don’t have to pay me back.”

  “But I want to give something. When I sell a great painting, I’ll buy you a ticket to visit. You could look for that Polish revolutionary of yours. And it could be like it was years ago in Boston. You writing. Me at an easel.”

  “Was it ever like that, the way you remember?”

  May wondered if she could see more clearly in memory, paint this river as she couldn’t paint it while hearing the skim of ice crack, the small waves ripple. “I love it here, but I’ve never felt I quite belong.”

  “I’ve felt that, too. But I can see it, the beauty you showed me. The dazzle of broken ice. The boys’ round shoulders, the round rocks.”

  May hoped that classes in the capital of art might show her how to paint so people could not only see but hear and smell the river, understand its currents, mud, and the long, hidden roots of lilies. “And you made your mark, as I hope I can in Paris. You wrote a book that let readers see themselves, or who they want to be.”

  “I thought you hated my book.”

  “I didn’t like being painted as an affected niminy-piminy chit. I don’t see those sisters as you do, but you got a lot right, too. We loved each other.”

  Louisa looked at her, then away. “I’d like to come. But right now someone needs to stay with Mother. She doesn’t want a stranger to watch her. I still hear about the one who pulled the cords under the bed so they were either too taut or too loose. She never could fold the newspapers just the way Mother likes.”

  May felt her chest tighten, then loosen, at the thought of Mother recently asking when her baby, Abbie May, was coming home. May didn’t like to leave her, but she thought love must be more than loyalty. She said, “I’m grateful for everything you do. Mother never thought she’d have a soapstone sink or furnace.”

  “She says it makes the parlor too hot. She misses the way we all used to gather around the hearth.”

  “And you helped Father publish some of his writings.”

  “You understand that Marmee isn’t well, don’t you? When she was so ill a few months ago, she had me make a list of where things should go. We all know you want the green-and-white china.”

  “The only thing I care about is her diaries.”

  “Anna and I want those, too. Maybe you can copy them as you did with Mr. Hawthorne’s.”

  “I didn’t mean the diaries should go to me.” They were the one thing Mother prized that she’d kept, perhaps because she couldn’t sell them as she had old wedding presents and inherited treasures. May didn’t want to read them, expecting they were full of stories of how much she’d given up. But one day, she wanted to hold them. She said, “More than anyone, she made us strong and want to keep working. But why are we talking about this? She’ll be all right. And so will you.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about myself. But it’s true that ever since the war, I brood that my life will be cut short. Maybe I’m wrong. You and I will grow old together. But if I don’t, will you be with me when my time comes?”

  “Don’t talk like that. Nothing is going to happen.”

  “I’ve been blessed with more time than I thought I’d have. But someday, I want to know I won’t be alone.”

  “I’ll be with you.” May straightened Louisa’s bonnet and pushed back a wisp of her hair that had fallen from its pins. She watched the water ripple in lines that would never be exactly the same, with a murmur that seemed unchanging. Promises were made, promises were broken. The river flowed on.

  17

  THE CİTY OF LİGHT

  May and her friend Rose walked up the steep streets of Montmartre. People wearing ragged clothes lined up with tin pails in front of cafés with red awnings, while cooks ladled soup made from leftovers. Women leaned over wrought iron bal
conies on yellow houses, calling to friends returning from markets with baskets of black radishes, carrots, and romaine lettuce tied with wisps of straw. Newsboys sorted morning papers. Street sweepers yelled at cats. May smelled leeks, tobacco, horses, and the long loaves of bread women tucked under their arms.

  She and Rose stopped at a crèmerie for warm rolls and bowls of milky coffee. They’d found a respected art school and a nearby apartment a few months ago, and by now, May ordered without pausing over French words. As they walked to the studio, May savored both the sense of just living her life, forgetting she was in Paris, and the spells of feeling tremendously lucky to live among people who cherished art, food, and fashion.

  She and Rose entered the atelier, which was in an old warehouse with tall windows. They took off their hats and gloves, greeting women who were mostly American and British, with one Spanish, one Swiss, and one who was French. They chatted about the weekend, gave each other advice about paints and perspective, and laughed at the caricatures of the instructor that one girl drew in the margins of her sketchbook. All twenty students were single and younger than May, except Fanny Osbourne, a handsome woman about her age who’d left a husband in California.

  Monsieur Krug, the artist in charge of the studio, usually came in to check their progress only on Tuesday and Friday mornings. A monitor had overseen the drawings from plaster casts they made in fall, and after the first snows, which swiftly melted on buildings and streets, he directed a model. Now he bent over, making chalk marks on the floor to note the placement of easels, so that if they were nudged aside, each student could find the angle from which she began, and not accuse the model of changing her pose. May didn’t expect any of these women would speak harshly, but she’d heard the men’s classes were rowdier.

  May tacked paper to her easel, which today stood right in front of the model’s platform, a position granted by Monsieur Krug as a reward for what he considered one of the best sketches last week. He’d also honored her by hanging some of her work on the wall. May was delighted, but such acknowledgment wasn’t enough. Her whole body felt tight with determination to get work into that spring’s Salon.

  As a graceful, dark-skinned young woman stepped out from behind a screen, Fanny whispered, “I heard she’s from northern Africa.” A hush fell as the model took off her robe. May swung her arm wide as if she were swimming, sketching shoulders, arms, breasts, hips, and legs. Such a drawing would be kept within these walls. Though women could submit work to the Salon, they were forbidden to display nudes, leaving such to men who named the paintings after goddesses or subjects like liberty or purity.

  The following day, May daubed paint on her palette, primed the biggest canvas she’d ever used, and began a portrait. She chose to paint the model as she looked before she disrobed, so that she could display it in public. Her hair was tucked under a gold scarf that picked up the earth tones of her skin. May painted the chemise slipping over one shoulder, as the woman glanced to the side. She put much of her face in shadows, which she found as compelling as the features. She meant to leave something out, to suggest what might never be known, but remained hidden between the glances of the artist and the person who posed.

  She finished the portrait by February, when everyone began concentrating on work they could send to the Salon jury. She painted a stuffed owl she’d bought at a flea market and set on a stack of leather-bound books. Each precise stroke briefly turned her panic about passing time into patience. She was finally satisfied with les petites taches, the small brushstrokes she blended until they were glossy. She coated the surface with lacquer so it would look as if it had been found in an old church, stained by centuries of candle smoke and incense.

  Monsieur Krug found this work impressive, but the next week, May began another still life of yellow, green, and red apples, a jug, and a bottle on a polished table. Unlike Turner, who showed backgrounds as intriguing as what was placed in front, May kept the wall behind the objects evenly dark. And hearing le Maître’s footsteps, she hastily mixed Prussian blue with sienna to deepen the colors. Smocks and silk dresses rustled as the women stepped aside to make a path between the easels. Monsieur Krug stopped in front of the portrait Rose was painting of May, wearing her blue dress with a frill around the pointed neckline and a matching plumed hat, tilted stylishly down. He said, “Pas mal.”

  He briefly commented on other work before turning his eyes to May’s still life. “Bien fait!”

  The words warmed her cheeks, but as Monsieur Krug turned to another canvas, she said, “Pardon, Monsieur. Surely there’s more I can do. Do you have any suggestions?” The lessons were pricey, and she wanted more than a word or two.

  In his heavily accented English, he said, “Perhaps the bottles and bowl could be darker. Unless you aspire to be a student of, what do they call themselves? Les Impressionnistes, les Indépendants? Independent of what, all rules of perspective? All admirers? Then you could make those apples as yellow as you please, or why not orange? Why bother spending years studying nature?”

  “Merci, Monsieur.”

  “Patrons want what’s enduring, not some impression of the moment. Hundreds of years of art can’t be wrong.”

  “Merci.” She felt annoyed by the way the artist’s eyelids drooped, suggesting that he thought it beneath himself to be teaching, particularly a class of women. But his paintings regularly appeared in the Salon. If being listed as one of his students helped win her a place, she shouldn’t complain about his meager advice.

  Soon after the rounds ended, most students scrubbed their hands, untied each other’s smocks, and pinned on hats. Some were met by maids or footmen who escorted them home to the more fashionable sections of Paris. But May kept working, and she insisted that Rose stay, too. They rinsed their brushes only when the sun began to set, then headed home on streets crowded with men wearing berets, cravats loosely tied over open collars, paint-stained jackets, and wide trousers. Many painters lived in this hilly neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris. The light was better than on the narrow streets of the Left Bank and the rents cheaper than on the Chaussée d’Antin, where wealthier artists lived. They passed stalls where men gambled at wheels of fortune or tossed balls at clay statues of politicians. A pigeon darted from a blue slate roof to a catalpa tree. As boys lit gas lamps, May pulled her cloak closer. She averted her eyes from a box by the door of a convent, where she’d heard infants were sometimes placed, for the nuns to find them homes.

  During the following weeks, she thought about which painting to submit, while Rose worked on the portrait of her, making her chin shorter, her eyes longer, and her nose slimmer. May liked the shimmer of her blue dress, but she felt taken aback by the wistful, determined, and perhaps melancholy eyes. She hadn’t known that anyone saw the loneliness, which sometimes weighed on her shoulders. She still wore her hair down most days, though it was darker than it had been, and she noticed fine lines around her mouth and eyes. But May thought she’d aged more from a growing, heavy impatience. She’d lost her old need to make determination look pretty. She was still kind when she commented on her friends’ work, but she had less time for niceties, went more directly to the truth. Instead of signing her name in the corner, she twined together M and A, in red script, thin as embroidery thread.

  ON A MORNING IN MARCH, MAY AND ROSE LINGERED AT the round wooden table covered with a jar of jam, a tin box with tablets of paint, a hair-curling stick, dominoes, and an antique dagger May had bought at a flea market to use in a still life someday, but which meanwhile she used to open letters or pierce bread to make toast over the grate. The atelier was closed today, as both Monsieur Krug and the man who monitored planned to join other artists watching thousands of submissions arrive for the Salon jury. May was sending the painting she called Fruit and Bottles, while Rose had chosen her portrait of May, though she was now having second thoughts.

  “Even if our paintings don’t get in, we’ll have a chance to look at other fine art. Most painters have to collect a d
ozen refusals.” May was trying to prepare herself, as much as Rose, for a possible rejection.

  “How can we wait six weeks to find out our fates?” Rose asked. “I can’t stop thinking about those men pointing umbrellas or walking sticks at our paintings, saying Oui or Non! I heard that last year, one artist sent a note with his canvas, saying that if it was refused, they should look for his body in the Seine.”

  “Only a dramatic Frenchman would throw himself in the river.” May got up from the overturned potato box, went to the window, and glanced down to the street. Horses hauled wagons filled with art toward the Palais de l’Industrie, where members of the jury would mark the backs of paintings: “a” for admis or “r” for refusé. She said, “Let’s go watch the paintings arrive.”

  “We can’t. The streets will be mobbed,” Rose said.

  “Why should men have all the fun?” May took out her poplin walking suit with its braid trim on the shoulders and cuffs.

  “You can’t go alone,” Rose said.

  “I’ll ask Mary Cassatt.”

  “She won’t go. She’s too dignified.”

  “I’ll find out.” May had met this artist from Philadelphia, who she guessed was a few years older than she was, soon after she arrived in Paris. She often attended the Thursday-evening soirees at the apartment Mary shared with her parents and older sister.

  May hurried down the stairs, pulling on gloves the color of pale lemons. She walked past houses with lace-covered windows and balconies jammed with pots of geraniums. Round tables and wrought iron chairs had been set in front of cafés and pâtisseries, where customers lingered over croissants and espresso. May liked seeing Parisians idling in full view. If someone in Boston wanted to daydream or gossip, the last thing she’d want was for someone to catch her at it.

  She reached the Cassatt apartment, where a maid led her into the parlor with red-and-gold striped wallpaper, mahogany tables, and chintz-covered chairs. Mary, her mother, and her sister, Lydia, all wore loose morning dresses.