Little Woman in Blue

by Jeannine Atkins

  “She will visit us.”

  “You don’t understand. She would only come if she thought she could be of help, such as with a newborn. She won’t come now. Not ever.”

  “Then we will go there. Someday, when our little girl is old enough to travel and remember what she sees.”

  “Could you leave work that long? It would be expensive.”

  “We’ll find a way. Then she can see Anna, too, and her cousins. They’ll adore her!”

  “We’ll have a boy. I know it.”

  “Then can we name him after my brother, Max? But we won’t have a boy.”

  “I’ll be happy as long as he or she has your nose.” She tried to steady her voice. “Ernst, perhaps I am too much alone here.”

  “You must meet more of our neighbors.”

  “When we first moved here, I only wanted to be with you or to paint. Now I suppose they think I’m a snobbish American.”

  “How can they not love you?”

  She felt tears well again as her eyes ranged over the crimson drapes, the mirror with its lavish frame, the reproduction of the Venus de Milo. She wanted to hear milkmen’s clattering tins, boys shouting news as they sold papers in the mornings, and, at twilight, watch lamplighters lift sticks to light gas jets. May missed the atelier, painting while surrounded by other women’s determined, shifting elbows, and the way Mary Cassatt tried to lure her with pastels. Even if she didn’t go to the café concerts with yellow chairs and blue benches, she’d like knowing they were close.

  “Let’s look for a place to live in Paris,” she said.

  “You love it here!”

  “I know you must work, but the train takes about thirty minutes each way to Paris and back. That’s an extra hour when I might be with you.”

  “You won’t be alone for long. My mother and Sophie are coming soon.”

  “They’ll be happier in Paris, too. Sophie shows a talent for painting, and I might be able to arrange lessons for her with Monsieur Krug. Your mother would enjoy the concerts and ballet.” May thought how they’d have places to go to, leaving time when she could be alone with Ernst and their baby. “We won’t need much, but just enough room so we can rent a piano for your mother.”

  “You seem to have it all worked out.” He smoothed her hair, twining his fingers in her curls. “Won’t you miss the garden?”

  “I’ll have everything I ever wanted.”

  22

  EVERGREEN

  May heard church bells ring as she set pots of geraniums by the tall windows. They’d sold the red carpet and drapes and the gold-framed mirror. Now that she was with child, she wondered why she’d ever cared about such things. They bought a secondhand rug and cotton curtains, so except for the broken-armed Venus, which they couldn’t give up, the parlor reminded her of the one in Concord. May tacked her garden pictures to the bedroom walls, satisfied with the way she’d shown that lines shifted, like the edges of rivers or clouds. She set Mother’s picture next to the old music box on the mantel, glad that she’d kept it all these years, for it would be lovely to wind the crank to play tunes for a newborn.

  Early in November, Ernst’s mother and sister moved into this apartment on the Left Bank to help prepare for the baby’s arrival. Having them around reminded May of how everyone in her own family had stayed home. Still, she smiled when Madame Nieriker took the quilt, rag, or broom from May, called Sophie, and amiably chided, “We came to be of use!”

  May gave painting lessons to Sophie, who did the shopping and brought up any mail that had been left at the table where the elderly landlady sat with her little dog. Fewer packages arrived since they’d moved, but one day, she brought up a package May tore open to find a copy of Studying Art Abroad, and How to do it Cheaply. She ruffled through the pages looking for a check, snatched it out, and waved the book through the air. She looked through it, satisfied that all her words seemed clearly printed and grateful that Mr. Niles hadn’t asked for a preface from her sister.

  Madame Nieriker cooked a celebratory dinner. Afterward, they sat in the salon for champagne, followed by pistachio macarons that Sophie brought back from the neighborhood pâtisserie. Ernst dramatically read aloud a few pages, then said, “This is the best book ever written. Soon you will be as famous as your sister!” he declared.

  “Who is her sister?” Madame Nieriker looked up from the hat not much bigger than her fist that she was knitting.

  “Maman, we told you,” Sophie said. “Some of my friends are devoted to those four sisters. They told me there’s a beautiful girl in the book. I’m not much of a reader, especially in English. But they ask if she’s like you, May.”

  “I’m luckier. I found your brother.” May stiffened as a pain shot through her lower back.

  Ernst picked up his violin and bow, but he stopped playing when she winced. “Is it time to call for the midwife?”

  “No, no.” May shook her head.

  “I know you’re happy with the one our landlady recommended, but I’ve talked to some fellows at work. They say you’ll be safer in the hands of a doctor. That’s how it’s done here these days.”

  “Midwives did fine by me,” Madame Nieriker said. “I don’t claim to understand modern ways, but I wouldn’t have wanted a gentleman present.”

  “Your mother knows what she’s talking about. She had nine.” May glanced at Sophie, who kept her face close to the forget-me-nots she was embroidering around the neckline of a small gown. May put her hand back on her round belly, thinking how she might have once felt embarrassed by a strange man in her bedroom. Now that she was getting close to her time, all her old worries had been replaced by a conviction that all would be well. “If a doctor would ease Ernst’s mind, I don’t object. We should find someone soon.”

  MAY WAS SLEEPING WHEN HER WATER BROKE, SOAKING her thighs. She pushed Ernst out of their bed, asking him to get his mother. Madame Nieriker tore off the damp sheets and put on fresh ones, while May wiped her sticky skin. Then she lay back down with Ernst, waiting for pain that ebbed and returned, waiting for her baby.

  After the sun rose, Madame Nieriker told Ernst to fetch the doctor, then moved books and bracelets from the table, opened and shut the windows, rearranged the blankets, and murmured about this or that little thing. This first irritated, then calmed May. Hearing horses clip-clop on cobblestones, she stood at the window and looked down at a woman selling bundles of grape leaves and bay branches. She screamed as pains shot up toward her chest.

  “Lie down,” Madame Nieriker said.

  “Will it ever stop hurting?” May asked.

  “My poor dear. Let me brush your hair.” Madame Nieriker settled May in the bed, then left the room when she heard footsteps. A minute later, May greeted the doctor with smiles and grimaces. He assured her that everything was going as it should and promised to come back soon.

  Madame Nieriker banished Ernst to the parlor.

  “Don’t go!” May cried.

  Madame Nieriker took her hand. “I’m here.”

  May squeezed her hand, then yanked back her arm. Heat flared through her body and behind her eyes. She clenched her mouth. Why hadn’t anyone told her how torn she could feel inside, what heaving through her hips? How much could she endure? She longed for her mother and called, “Ernst!”

  He cracked open the door but left after his mother sharply spoke a few German words.

  “He’s pale. Is he all right?” May asked.

  “Yes. He’s getting the doctor.”

  The doctor returned as the pains grew more intense and frequent. Was his jacket stained with blood? Was it hers? May screamed as everything around her funneled into her belly, which felt torn in two. “Am I going to die?”

  “Darling, one thinks that, but we don’t.” Madame Nieriker wiped her forehead. “It will be over soon.”

  When it seemed that she could not bear another pang, May lifted herself on her elbows, cried out, fell back on the bed, and raised her knees. At last, with shrieks, gasps, shaking,
and wonder, she felt a baby slip into the doctor’s open hands. He patted May’s legs with cloths. After he cut the cord, she struggled to sit up, crying, “Where’s my baby? Is she all right?”

  “The baby is fine.” Madame Nieriker cradled her in her arms and shouted, “Sophie, bring warm water! Ernst, come see!”

  Ernst kissed May’s neck, shoulders, and hands. He dabbed tears and sweat from her face before looking at the crying baby. He whispered, “She’s a girl.”

  May reached for her child, her exhaustion lifting. “I never thought I’d have a daughter, not really. How I wanted one!”

  Madame Nieriker finished wiping blood from the baby before handing her to May, who asked, “Shouldn’t she stop crying?”

  “She will,” Madame Nieriker said.

  May pressed her to her chest, then touched each tiny, curled finger. Her fingernails were translucent pink and white, like seashells. Her feet were as crinkled as tubes of well-used paints. Her eyes were bleu ciel. Her nose looked rather flat and long, like her mother’s, but that was perfect, too. She wrapped her hands around the tiny feet and gently pressed her nose against her belly. “She isn’t too thin, is she?”

  “She’ll be plump soon enough. Now let’s wrap her up so she doesn’t get chilled,” Madame Nieriker said. “You haven’t told us her name.”

  “Louisa?” May looked at Ernst. “That’s a good name, isn’t it?”

  “Louisa May Nieriker,” he said. “I like that.”

  “We must send her proud aunt the news at once.” May touched the skin by Ernst’s green eyes. The pain was ebbing now, the way everyone had said it would.

  DURING THE NEXT FEW LONG DAYS, MAY SLEPT IN short blocks of time, waking when the baby cried and putting her to her breast. Each small sound posed a challenge to figure out what the baby wanted. Each leg unfolding, each hand curling, was part of a conversation May must respond to, and she did, even when dazed or dizzy from sleeplessness. When she managed to soothe wails or wiggling, she felt the perfect understanding she’d longed for.

  May padded about in her nightgown and robe, never entirely dressed or sure of the time or day. Her belly hurt, so she only nibbled the edges of crêpes or ate a few Muscat grapes. Sometimes Madame Nieriker brought little puddings, but it grew hard to lift a spoon or swallow. She and Ernst arranged pink roses and ferns sent by friends they turned away, asking them to come back later. May wasn’t sure she’d ever need to see another person, but she said, “Soon we must show our darling to everyone.”

  “You won’t always be so tired. You need to get back your appetite,” Madame Nieriker said.

  Sometimes pains shot through May’s belly and back. Her head throbbed. She couldn’t keep up with the conversations about doctors. All she longed for now was to hold the baby and sleep. One afternoon, she woke to the sounds of voices, then confident, heavy footsteps the length of Louisa’s stride. With a racing heart, May threw aside blankets, letting a bootie, which were always falling off the baby’s feet, skim to the floor. She knew her sister couldn’t stay away! She called, “Come in,” amused that she would knock.

  But it was Mary Cassatt. Her dark eyes were wide and her mouth slightly open as she faced May, who wondered if she looked so alarming. She wished she’d at least put on a clean robe and brushed her hair.

  Mary set down a hatbox. “What a beautiful baby! Your mother-in-law let me admire her, then told me no one was to be let in to congratulate the mother. I assured her I wouldn’t stay long.”

  “Yes, isn’t Louisa darling? I’m glad you came. I’m so happy, so lucky. Just a bit tired today.”

  “I brought you something.” Mary lifted a plumed hat from the box, then dropped a fistful of paint tubes onto the bed. “I expected you’d get enough booties and blankets. A new mother needs fresh paints and a Reboux hat.”

  May scooped up the bouquet of tubes of carmine, yellow as brilliant as daffodils, and another the hue of butter in winter. She read the labels on several shades of blue: L’azur, l’indigo, bleu de prusse. “These are lovely. I’m sorry I haven’t seen you since the Impressionist show. Was it successful?”

  “Yes. For the first time, there was a profit.”

  “Congratulations! I hope I can get to your studio soon. Who would have thought a baby would leave me in bed so long?”

  Mary turned and, for the first time, looked at the garden paintings tacked to the wall. “These are new. And magnificent. Here is the world as you see it, and no one else.”

  “It’s not what people want.”

  “Not yet, perhaps. Sometimes people buy art because they don’t understand or even admire a piece. They like to pretend that they do.” Mary propped up the pillows behind May.

  May leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment. “Do you remember the morning we watched paintings arrive at the Palais?”

  “Of course, on Jury Day.”

  “You said that one day you hoped to have paintings worthy of being shown among the old masters. Mary, you already do. Your work will be remembered.”

  “Your life will be remembered. Your happiness is an achievement.” Mary kissed her cheek.

  EVERY MORNING, MAY EXPECTED HER FATIGUE TO LIFT, but as the days passed, her arms and legs often felt so heavy that she could barely manage to shuffle from one room to another. After another few days, she could hardly hold the baby. Chills wracked through her feverish body, then her skin felt as if it were on fire. As she slept, minutes blurred into hours. Pain slashed through her back and belly. Her eyes stung so that she could barely keep them open. When Ernst returned from work, he held cloths on her hot forehead and handed her a teacup. He said, “You need to keep up your strength.”

  The broth smelled foul to her. She put down the cup with shaking hands. “I’m trying.”

  “Of course you are.”

  Madame Nieriker hired a wet nurse and asked the doctor to return. May couldn’t lift her head to make out much of the murmurs and raised voices beyond her shut door, words about medicine, time, and unclean hands. Fever pulsed through days that had no shape. Sophie set advent candles in the windows and green boughs across the mantel. May craved the scent of pine, the garlands like those she and Louisa had arranged at Anna’s wedding. Where were her sisters, her mother? Where are the lilies of the valley? May couldn’t tell dreams and nightmares from waking, minutes from hours. Who were all these people crowding around her? She waved everyone, or their shadows, away. A baby cried and cried. Church bells clanged. She heard someone say, It’s the sickness. It’s the medicine. They knew nothing. They were so kind.

  Then at last, the mist lifted, and her room was filled with a clear light. May’s lips were cracked, her dry skin was flaking, but her tongue felt soft instead of swollen. She pushed off the covers. Who had put all these quilts on her? She wiped sweat from her forehead and neck and cried, “Ernst!”

  He rushed to her side. His worried face became radiant as he turned to call, “Her fever broke!”

  May stared at her husband, who looked as if he hadn’t shaved for days. Where had be been? Why did he look so scared?

  Madame Nieriker appeared in the doorway. She threw out an arm to hold back Sophie and said, “We must check the baby.”

  May kissed the corners of Ernst’s mouth, the side of his neck, the skin under his ears. When they drew apart, she saw that her watercolors of violets, poppies, and roses looked too bright on the walls. Nothing was as she meant it to be. She swung her legs over the side of the bed. They buckled as she tried to stand.

  “What are you doing? May, you’re better now, but you must rest,” Ernst said.

  She put an arm around him and hobbled to her wardrobe. She began pulling out dresses, dropping them to the floor. “I’ll send these to my sisters.”

  “May, you’ll wear them again. The doctor says women often get such fevers after childbirth. My mother says it happened to her.”

  “I need to put everything in order!” Her voice was sharp, surprising even her.

  They fo
lded her gowns, the blue for everyday, the golden silk that she’d worn to the Salon and to her wedding. Ernst helped her take the watercolors off the walls and stack them. She touched the painting of the violets he’d given her in London, the day she’d understood that even as petals unfurled, then darkened, something new would bloom. “Darling, you won’t let anyone forget my paintings? I worked so hard.” She touched his face, which was pink with held-back tears. She rested her finger in the dent on his nose. “I’m sorry I can’t give you more.”

  “You gave me everything.”

  “Will you help me back to bed? Where is Louisa? When is my sister coming?”

  “Soon, dearest.”

  “I promised to show her the water lilies. She’ll never find them herself. They’re so close, but she won’t look.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Nothing mattered. Everything mattered. She was dying, she knew it, and she’d never truly thanked Louisa for all that she’d given her. May was so proud of her; had she ever told her that? How many sisters pay to send another across the ocean? Louisa was the best of sisters and daughters and aunts. She’d known everything about love.

  “You’re right. I need to rest,” May said.

  After Ernst shut the door, she cried not from the pain, which the medicine eased, but as she’d cried after Beth died, after her mother died. But she didn’t have much time for grief. She felt life closing around her, and her hope channeled into a single desire. Exhausted, but also restless, she managed to slide from her bed, dragging a blanket. Her pulse ran fast. With an effort, she opened her trunk, remembering another one that had been filled with a tattered tablecloth, scuffed boots, and crushed hats, worn by girls who pretended to be pilgrims, princesses, or pirates. Why hadn’t they known they were perfect just the way they were?