“We hope to go. There’s so much to do. First, my husband and I must find a place to live. Now I’d better go find him.”
“He’s handsome,” Caroline said, but after May said goodbye and began searching for Ernst, she heard her say to the other, “I suppose he knows she has a rich sister.”
May’s face burned as she greeted Ernst. They walked through a few more galleries before heading down the grand stairs for another look at the Venus de Milo. On their way out, they stopped at the shop, where he bought a plaster copy of the statue with a forthright gaze, broken arms, and perfect breasts and torso. He whispered, “She reminds me of you.”
She wanted to throw her arms around him right in the museum and kiss him deeply, coming up only for air. But even in Paris, all she could do was smile and ache and wonder if they were right to look for a home in the city. Maybe there were too many rooms in the Louvre, too many cabarets in Montmartre, too many soirees where she might want to show off her ring, and too much gossip. All could become distractions from what was important.
That night, she suggested they look for homes outside the city.
“But you love Paris,” he said.
“We wouldn’t move far, but find a town on the rail line so you could get to work without much trouble.”
“Won’t you miss your friends and the museums?”
“Now that I have you, I don’t care so much about company.”
“You were so eager to show Miss Cassatt your violets.”
“I’ll show her later. Right now, we need to make a home.”
“If it’s what you want, then we will look for a little house in the country.”
The next day, they heard about a cottage in Meudon, which was about seven miles south of Paris. They took the train there and toured the kitchen, parlor, and two bedrooms.
“It’s charming,” May said. “Though isn’t the rent more than we should spend? And what a view!” Beyond rose and currant bushes was a hill where lime trees grew around an abandoned château with partially burned towers.
They went into the other bedroom, where Ernst opened the tall window. “We can see the river!”
As she stood by his side, he grabbed her by the waist and lifted her. “We’ll get a rowboat. You can find your water lilies. I’ll gather them all for you.” As he put her down, he lifted her hair off her shoulders. She felt a breeze on the back of her neck.
THE COTTAGE CAME FURNISHED, BUT BEFORE ERNST began work helping manage a grand magasin, they unpacked and fixed up the rooms. They bought pots of pink geraniums for the windowsills. May rubbed the bedposts with beeswax and piled satin pillows under the blue canopy. She hung some of her landscapes in the salon and gave the portrait she called La Négresse the place of honor on an easel. She set her stuffed owl on a table in the second bedroom, by the French windows that opened like a door. “This will be a fine room for a studio.”
“Yes. I’m sorry you’ll be taken from it when we have guests.”
“I love being just with you. Let’s wait a little longer to have company.” She expected that he might have written to his mother that she was a “few” years older, which was what she’d written to her family. Now that they had an address, she must write to her sisters. She didn’t expect Anna to leave her boys, but Louisa might come to visit.
“It will also be a good room for a baby,” he said.
“Hush.” It seemed bad luck to want too much. “We have everything now.”
“Of course. But children would bring even more joy.”
“Do you still think you can have everything you want?”
“I never expected so much. Then you told me, yes. I have more than I ever dreamed was possible.”
Soon they hired a femme de ménage, though after kissing Ernst good-bye each morning, May busied herself with housework, too, for Adrienne didn’t always do things just the way she liked. May swept the floor and set a bowl of cream on a windowsill for the neighbor’s cat. She exchanged a few words with the girl who stopped with her wheelbarrow of carrots and turnips. Meudon didn’t seem much bigger than Concord, but May’s French wasn’t good enough for her to become familiar with most neighbors. But having grown used to starting work after a hike from her rooms to a studio, she walked in the morning, passing a man leading a donkey pulling a milk wagon, women carrying straw baskets, and clerics in long black robes headed to church. She sometimes climbed the hill to the château for a view of red-roofed villas, windmills, woods, and the river winding through the valley.
She returned home, then brought her watercolors to the garden, which smelled of clover, meadow saffron, mallow, and mint. She filled her palette with blues, reds, and yellows, then, rather than trying to sketch the details of every stem and blossom, worked as lightly and quickly as the leaves blown in the wind. Before the paints had a chance to dry, she swiftly chose whether to tip her paper to let the colors run or follow a mistake to somewhere new. She let her brush flutter as often as it landed, creating a gray-blue sky that blurred the lines between the distant hill and flowers near her feet, the way memory shaded the present.
Late in the afternoon, she tacked her watercolors on the wall to dry. The housekeeper fixed dinner, then tactfully disappeared just before Ernst came home.
“My darling,” he shouted one evening, as if they’d been apart for weeks instead of the day. He handed May a long loaf of bread and a Delft vase.
“It’s beautiful.” She held up the vase to the light, standing by their mirror with a black-and-gilt frame, which he’d already brought home and which was tall enough to reflect the whole salon, with its deep scarlet rug and drapes they’d bought at the Bon Marché. “But no more presents. We promised to watch our money.”
“We must celebrate our first month of marriage.”
She kissed him, and said, “More mail came.”
They unwrapped a package from his parents, a handsome box with May’s new initials, “M. A. N.,” embossed in gold. Inside were rows of silver forks, spoons, and knives padded in velvet. Ernst began translating the letter his mother had written in German, then hurried through it and summed up. “My mother is surprised, of course. Her first child to marry and she wasn’t there, but she understands we didn’t want to wait. She’s anxious to meet you.”
May opened the letter from Louisa, who wished them luck and enclosed a check. May was grateful, but she couldn’t help feeling the money was not only a gift but also a message that Louisa didn’t believe the two of them could make their own way.
A few weeks later, May polished the candelabra, cut back the geraniums, and arranged to rent a piano. She left up her watercolors of the garden but took down the nude drawings of Ernst she’d tacked on the bedroom walls. Adrienne’s cooking was good, but May gave her some days off and experimented with several fancy dishes. At the last minute, she decided against them all and asked Ernst to bring salmon salad, Gervais cheese, and a pâté back from Paris. She arranged fruit in their grape-leaf bowl and rolled pale yellow napkins to set beside the shining silver. She picked up the cat, who smelled of lavender after napping in the garden.
The next afternoon, she and Ernst walked to the train station. Smoke spewed from the locomotive as it slowed to a stop. Ernst ran toward his mother, sister, and brother, who took turns lifting each other and pounding each other’s arms. A slim woman wearing a nicely tailored traveling dress looked from her sons to May. Beside her, a young woman wore a pink dress with a black band around her waist. Both were quite tall and had blond-brown hair. Ernst’s mother’s hair was a little darker and his sister’s a little lighter than May’s.
“May, is it all right if I call you that?” Madame Nieriker walked forward. After hesitating a moment, she put her hands on May’s arms. She twisted around and said, “Ernst, you never told me how beautiful your wife is!”
“Maman, I told you in every one of my letters!” Ernst introduced Sophie, then pulled off his brother’s hat. “Max, race you to the house!”
Their feet stirr
ed dust as they ran. When Ernst sprinted ahead, Max threw out an arm. They scuffled, laughed, yelled, and ran again. As the women climbed the hill, May pointed out her favorite chestnut trees. Madame Nieriker exclaimed over the cottage. “C’est adorable!” She proclaimed the salon charming and headed straight toward the painting May called La Négresse. “That’s such an attractive easel. I’d like to set up one like it. It makes the room look so artistic.”
“And a good painting,” Sophie added.
“Yes. Ernst, you didn’t tell me how talented your wife is!”
“Of course I did, Maman!”
After supper, May, Madame Nieriker, and Sophie, who was about fifteen, played cards. Ernst and his brother lounged on the sofa with their arms around each other, laughing and talking in German, English, and French. Ernst spoke of his work in the department store, and Max described what he did as an architect in Baden. Ernst pored over the plans he spread on the table, then said, “I only wish the buildings might be lighted incandescently. Scientists know how to do it, but they aren’t certain how to divide electricity so it can be measured as easily as gas is rationed.”
The brothers argued about whether the British Mr. Swan or the American Mr. Edison had the better ideas. Ernst mentioned that some men traveled to Brazil to get platinum to test as filaments in light bulbs.
“We should go!” Max cried.
“Your brother has a wife and responsibilities.” Mrs. Nieriker looked up from the cards in her hand.
“They say there are dazzling flowers high in the treetops. May could paint them,” Ernst said. “And she says I must follow my heart. I love the violin, but my dream isn’t music. I want to help create a clear light.”
Madame Nieriker shook her head. May, too, felt uneasy hearing about traveling to another continent. Soon she helped her mother-in-law and Sophie get settled in the blue room.
During the next few days, Max accompanied Ernst to work or stayed curled up with The Origin of Species. Madame Nieriker played the piano or knitted. May gave Sophie painting lessons.
“You know so much about art,” she said.
“I used to hold classes back in Concord. I think of teaching again, but of course American girls cross the sea for lessons with French painters, not from me. Rosa Bonheur started a free art school for young ladies under twenty. I don’t expect I’ll ever be as successful as she is, with her grand paintings of horses, but I’d like to start a school like that someday.”
“I’d enroll,” Sophie said.
“If you’re serious about art, you must live in Paris,” May said.
“I wouldn’t know who to take classes from, or where to live, or buy clothes, or anything,” Sophie replied.
“That’s a problem for many. There should be a guidebook,” May said.
“Ernst says you have a writer in the family. Perhaps such talent runs in your blood. Why don’t you write such a book?”
“I have learned a lot during my travels.” May had recently looked through a slim book called How to Take Care of Your Eyes that Louisa had sent, noting that it was part of a series with practical advice overseen by Mr. Niles. “I have a friend who might consider publishing such a guidebook, but I’m so busy now.”
“You’ll be even busier after your babies come. Take my advice, please.” Madame Nieriker put down her knitting needles. “Don’t give up your art. I had help with my children, but there were always quarrels to settle, cups of milk to pour, lost toys to be found, or small heartbreaks to help mend. But I made sure to spend twenty minutes a day at the piano. It made a difference to shut the door.”
Tears brimmed in May’s eyes; she was touched both by the kind words and the thought of children, which she rarely let herself consider. She, who’d always hoped, didn’t dare to hope that much.
ON SATURDAY MORNING, EVERYONE WALKED TO THE river, where water splashed the sides of rowboats that curved up in front, like tipped crescent moons. May could hear women talk as they scrubbed clothes and linens in a washhouse boat. While waiting for the ferry, May watched children chase butterflies with green nets.
They rode the boat to the Pont de l’Alma, where Ernst dropped a franc into the cup of a blind woman who sang “Sweet Marie.” He hailed a carriage to bring them to the World’s Fair Exhibition Palace, a huge building with long corridors filled with shops and displays of china dolls, antique pistols, and a pyramid of watch cases. They looked at paintings of military victories and surrenders, medieval tapestries, a lighthouse lamp, a model of a deep-sea diver, and stacks of mattresses arranged like a castle. Ernst and his brother liked the huge looms from Birmingham, a demonstration of a Swiss embroidery machine with three hundred needles, and other machines. One turned out folded newspapers. Another cut, weighed, and wrapped soap. Their favorite exhibit was the gold-prize-winning display on the new kind of gas.
After a long wait in line, they climbed up inside of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s large copper head of Liberty. May squeezed into a place to look out a window in the crown, over the treetops and crowds. It was hard to breathe with people crammed so close, or maybe she’d drawn her corset strings too tight. She was glad to walk back to the boat, and when everyone talked about going back tomorrow, she offered to stay behind to get dinner ready and tend to the garden. It had been good to be in Paris, but it was coming time to plant peas, cantaloupes, and herbs.
THAT SUMMER, MAY OFTEN PAINTED IN THE GARDEN, concentrating on passing light more than solid shapes, letting poppies spill off the page rather than stand in the center. She used the wrong end of a brush to scratch or scrape away paint to expose the white paper and suggest texture. The spaces made what she left more vivid. She stopped painting outside only after blossoms fell and leaves turned to shades of russet and gold. On the first anniversary of Mother’s death, she arranged a garland of dried leaves around her picture and spent most of the day crying.
Winter came without the drama of New England blizzards. Cold rains fell, as well as snow that quickly melted on the grass or streets. Still, May couldn’t ever get quite warm even sitting right next to the fire. Her chilly hands were too tight on a brush, so instead of painting, she began writing the book she hoped would be of use to artists trying to make their way in Europe. She offered advice on travel arrangements and safe, economical places to stay in Paris, London, and Rome. She named reputable teachers, studios, and shops, and she even gave tips on how to roll, pin, and pack clothing and the usefulness of a bit of dried ginger aboard ship.
SOMETIMES SHE JOINED ERNST ON THE TRAIN TO HIS work, getting off at the Montparnasse station to visit her old friends at Monsieur Krug’s atelier. They asked questions about Ernst and her painting, but May missed what could be said only when hour after hour, day after day, were spent together. When they showed her work they might send to the Salon, May promised that this year she’d send a painting, too.
After she and Ernst spent New Year’s day quietly at home, she painted several still lifes, then she chose to submit her portrait of the woman from northern Africa, for she still liked the interplay of warm and cool tones, a suggestion of something both direct and shy in the gaze. And since she’d painted it in the class with Monseiur Krug, she could put his name by hers.
After Jury Day, she told Ernst, “I’ll spend the next six weeks painting and waiting to collect another refusé card.”
“That’s not possible!”
She squeezed his hand, moved by his belief in her, but also feeling a need for company who understood the odds. She sat at her little desk by the window and wrote to Louisa:
Our life here is simple. Truly, you would hardly know me in this village with no theater or galleries. All I need now is Ernst and my paints. The French way of life would suit you, too. Houses are small, so there’s less to clean. We hired a femme de ménage, but even without Adrienne I could manage, as the French have all the baking, washing, and ironing done outside the home.
We have a second bedroom that I’ve readied for you with a blue china bowl and pitch
er I set on the washstand and sewed blue cretonne curtains I hung around it. You’d have the best view in the house. The hills of Fleury and a castle. Lu, if you could see what I have, you would understand why I stay here.
May thought of writing about the river, where they might row and forgive each other for everything. But she signed her name, sealed the letter with honey-colored wax, and left it by the kitchen door for the postman.
21
İN THE GARDEN
May gripped Ernst’s hand as they made their way through crowds exclaiming over paintings of Napoleon, a maiden holding a jug of milk, foundlings reading prayer books, and Renoir’s mother with two children. A portrait by John Singer Sargent, an American whom May had met last year at the Cassatt’s soirees, attracted an admiring circle of ladies wearing spangled gowns and men holding gold-tipped canes. Ernst whooped when they reached May’s painting. He said, “La Négresse is almost as beautiful as the woman who painted her!”
“Hush, people are looking.” Her face turned warm.
“Naturally they are looking at this masterpiece. Let me see in my programme who painted it. Why, it says M. Nieriker. What a talented lady she must be. And how much does it cost? Ah, it’s not for sale.” He snapped the program shut. “A pity for so many, but who could put a price on such a work?”
“I’m happy that my first Salon acceptance wasn’t just luck. Two paintings make a career seem likely. Come, there’s much more to look at.”
“We’ve seen the best. And I wanted to surprise you with a dinner reservation, but I had to make it early in order for us to get back to Meudon before the trains stop.” He ran his hand down the back of her silk dress. She felt the fabric tug slightly between the buttons and reminded herself to be more cautious around the croissants and cheese that Ernst brought home from the city. Though on recent mornings, perhaps anxious about the reception of her Salon painting, she could only sip weak tea at breakfast.
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