by Liza Wieland
Before her, the figure in the snow, a vision, a ghost.
Also invention. Her father died when she was eight months old, so she could not have seen this. And yet. And yet, who knows what sights and sounds and visions an infant’s memory can hold.
That’s very nice of you, Elizabeth says. But you hardly know me.
True, Clara says. I’d like to get to know you better. And you must call me Clara. How are you liking the apartment, apart from the clocks? And the quartier ?
It’s a lovely apartment, though I do think I’m somewhat allergic to your antique books and incense burner and your rugs, and perhaps the draperies. I’ve had this problem since I was little. Maybe Christine could dust more?
I will certainly speak to her, Clara says. She stands and walks to the window. She lifts a panel of drapery, sniffs, makes a face.
Anyway, we’ll be traveling in the next month or so, to Rome and perhaps Madrid.
Clara stands very still. Elizabeth wonders if she’s heard someone at the door or the telephone.
How long will you be gone, Miss Bishop? she asks.
Two weeks, maybe three. Please call me Elizabeth.
That’s quite a long time. I think I shall miss you girls. You must . . .
Clara turns away suddenly, crosses the room to the large writing desk, produces a ring of keys from the pocket of her skirt. She unlocks the middle drawer and removes a red leather book, the size of a small Bible.
I have contacts, she says. Friends you might call on. Just in case.
That’s very kind, Elizabeth says.
Such interesting cities, Elizabeth. Though quite tumultuous now, I understand. The rest of Europe seems to be in a stew of revolt. Please be careful. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.
Clara unlocks another drawer and lifts out a box. Calling cards. Of course she would have those, Elizabeth thinks. Clara selects three cards, begins to write on the backs of them. She looks up once, at Elizabeth, her gaze uncertain (as if Elizabeth might have quietly left the room), then tender, her smile gentle. Motherly, Elizabeth thinks.
You should have these, too, Clara says, holding up a card. As you move about the world, you sometimes want to leave a bit of yourself behind.
I do, Elizabeth says. Though I had not thought of it quite like that.
While Elizabeth is being treated for an infection of the middle ear, Louise brings her the English newspapers and chocolates. Mrs. Crane insists she have a nurse, and Louise hires a Russian woman called Nina, who bakes bread, makes endless cups of tea, and knits, small pink-and-white mittens for an army of little girls. The pairs are attached by a long braid of yarn that will travel inside the child’s coat, up her sleeves and across her shoulders, invisibly from hand to hand. The sight of these attached pairs illuminates a dim memory: a large black glove on the ground, Elizabeth reaching to pick it up, her mother saying no, no, her voice a screech from far away. Elizabeth is afraid to turn and look, afraid she won’t recognize the woman making that terrible sound.
My muse now seems to have folded its wings, Elizabeth writes to her friend Muriel in New York, and stuck her head under one of them.
But she hasn’t flown the coop, Muriel writes back. That’s promising. Close the window, so she can’t escape.
She doesn’t want to escape. What would she do in the world anyway, besides feel silly and exposed, out there with Gide and all the other exhibitionist writers in Paris? And everywhere else.
What am I doing here? Elizabeth says to Nina, who will not understand her, not really.
Nina cups her hand around her own ear, smiles as if she knows a secret, and bows her head over her knitting.
What makes me think I can write anything, ever, at all?
Nina rises and comes to stand by the bed. She places a cool hand on Elizabeth’s forehead, frowns, holds up the bottle of sleeping pills.
A good idea, Elizabeth says.
Nina leaves the bedroom. Elizabeth hears her in the kitchen running water into the kettle, arranging tea things on a tray. If only such questions could be answered by the taking of tea, the wisdom of Earl Grey and Lapsang Souchong, whoever he was. She closes her eyes.
And then, what seems like a moment later, Clara brings in the tea tray. This may be a dream, Elizabeth tells herself. I should just keep still until it’s over.
I know I’m a bit of a surprise, Clara says. My husband thinks so, too.
Oh! Elizabeth says. I wasn’t . . . Nina didn’t say you were . . .
This room is so dreary, Clara says. No wonder you’re ill.
It’s allergies really. And bright light seems to give me a headache.
But Clara has already opened the drapes. Sunlight pours over the carpet and across the bedclothes. Elizabeth waits for the pain that will certainly bloom along her jaw and up into her cheekbone. Clara busies herself arranging cups and saucers. She assumes or remembers that Elizabeth takes milk and sugar.
I haven’t any idea why dry leaves and hot water are medicinal, Clara says, pouring out a splash of tea. Not yet. You want it stronger.
Thank you for coming, Elizabeth says. But I’m really doing so much better.
I wanted to make sure. You know sometimes you let an infection like this go, and it just gets worse. And the next thing you know, you’re just . . . beyond.
Elizabeth watches Clara arrange and rearrange the cookies on the tray into neat rows, then a circle, and finally into a star. Her concentration is brittle, liable to shatter at any moment into something that might be embarrassing.
I’m catching up on my reading, though, Elizabeth says. I’ll need more books from your library maybe this week.
They’ll be waiting, Clara says. That’s the beauty of a library. American books waiting for all you flummoxed American readers.
Flummoxed! Elizabeth says. Well, I suppose that’s true. My French is still so hopeless. I wonder if that makes the surrealists easier or more difficult to understand.
Probably easier, Clara says. You know, I’ve found myself rereading Edmund Burke. I’m not sure why. Ignorance makes things appear beautiful. Of all the funny ideas. Though I think I may be misquoting.
She hovers over Elizabeth awkwardly, bending to adjust the pillows. Elizabeth resists the urge to close her eyes.
Thank you, Clara, she says.
Well, you don’t want to harm your back. If a girl your age spends a long time lying prone this way . . . Anyway, my husband has got me doing all this reading. He thinks I’m a bit at loose ends. He says it would be good for me to contemplate beauty. I have no idea why. Who has time to consider beauty anymore?
What do you mean?
I mean I would think twice about going to Rome right now. Or anywhere in Spain. People I know would try to dissuade you.
I know. But we’re here. In Europe, I mean.
You picked a difficult time.
It picked us. College graduation. I mean, what else do girls do? And I have some money. Inheritance from an uncle.
Not from your mother? Mrs. Crane said she heard—
Not from my mother. I think that tea is probably strong enough now.
Yes, of course it is.
Clara pours their tea, then settles herself in the armchair beside the bed.
You’re smart. You and Miss Crane and Miss Miller. You’re smart not to tie yourselves down with husbands just yet. They tend to not want one to do anything useful. Just to be available at a moment’s notice. Pack up, Clara darling, we’re going to Morocco tomorrow! Dinner tonight at the embassy, darling! Sometimes I don’t even know which embassy until the car pulls up in front. And then I have to think quickly—do I shake hands with this one, or not? Do I bow or curtsey? Do I use a knife and fork or, God forbid, my fingers? Does this one know English or French or German? Am I even allowed to speak?
Clara sits back, out of breath, and gulps at her tea.
So, she says finally. You’re smart. Even if it hurts a little.
The last postcard from Robert Seaver
, forwarded with the mail from New York, reads, Elizabeth, go to hell.
Where is that? Elizabeth says, where’s the hell he requests I go to? No, not requests. Directs me to go. Banishes me. Where he is? Maybe he told me to go to hell to meet him there?
I need to take you for a walk, Louise says. We need to get out of this apartment. Get some air.
No, Elizabeth says. Or yes. You’re right. Let’s go into the Luxembourg Gardens, down to that statue. The angel. Some angel. Oh damn it. Any angel.
I don’t think the angel statue is in the Luxembourg.
No? All right. The statue of George Sand then. I want to go stand there. George Sand looking over her shoulder.
Yes, Louise says. Let’s go now. Just get your jacket.
They leave the apartment, make their way out into the street. Parisians drift past them, glassy-eyed, frightened.
Is he really dead then? she asks. How could he be dead and send a postcard?
He sent it before, Louise says. He must have.
But what if it’s a hoax?
There’s little margin for error here, Elizabeth.
But there’s no proof either.
It’s not a hoax, Louise says. You know it’s not.
They are standing in front of the statue. George Sand. Womanly and thoughtful, her stone dress rendered impossibly light, filmy about the shoulders and throat, gray at the hem as if she’s ghosted through the streets of Paris for sixty years.
She’s not looking over her shoulder, Elizabeth says. She’s been disturbed from her reading. Look. Her face is completely blank. No emotion.
She’s marble.
I wish I was.
I don’t like this kind of mess for you.
What do you mean by mess?
You know what I mean. Entanglements.
You can’t stop that, Elizabeth says.
But I can try. It’s not good for your writing.
Well, the mess comes for you no matter what, doesn’t it? Even if you go thousands of miles away and across an ocean. I probably killed him.
You didn’t. If anything he killed himself. But it was probably an accident, like his mother said.
He said he couldn’t bear losing me. And I said—what did I say? I don’t think I said anything. I think maybe I said I would be traveling for a while after graduation. And he asked why would I do that, and I think I said something about the weather. How it was so unpredictable. Something like that. Something neutral. Impersonal. I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have encouraged him. I was just trying to . . . I don’t know what.
I know what, Louise says. Look at the statue again. She’s been shocked by something. She’s holding on to the low wall or bench or whatever it is because otherwise she’ll fall down. If Margaret were here, she’d be able to tell us what it is, what news George Sand has just heard. She’d be able to tell us why this (Louise takes a small guidebook from her pocket and reads) François Sicard sculpted her in a dress and not trousers. She’d tell us it’s 1847 and George Sand has just heard that Chopin died.
Oh, Louise.
Or it’s 1849 and Marie Dorval has died. Marie Dorval, to whom she wrote, I want you either in your dressing room or in your bed.
That’s not in the book, Louise, Elizabeth says.
No, it’s not. It’s in my head.
If Margaret were here, she would never tell us any of that.
That’s right, Louise says. Exactly.
Clara appears nearly every day, without warning, seeming sad and unlike herself, a little lost. She walks past Elizabeth or Louise in the foyer and wanders through the apartment as if she can’t quite remember how she used to navigate through the rooms, even though no one has moved a single piece of furniture. This little journey changes her mood, restores equilibrium. She returns, takes stock, and announces with her usual certainty that Elizabeth can’t possibly be well yet because she still looks exhausted.
The morning after Robert Seaver’s postcard, Elizabeth is still half drunk. She wakes with a pounding headache. Her room, the bathroom, the kitchen appear fuzzy and tilted. And there is Clara, standing inside the front door, waiting for someone, for her. Clara looks desperate. Clara wants to please someone. The expression is familiar, and at first she can’t place it. Then she can. She says the words before she can stop herself.
You look like your daughter.
Clara shakes her head, turns away to set her handbag carefully beside the little basket that holds the day’s mail, the house keys, coins for the delivery boys, a black-and-gold fountain pen.
I suppose I do, Clara says. Only, as you know, she can’t be looked at any longer, so what does that really mean? She leads Elizabeth into the sitting room.
I want to tell you something, she begins. I used to believe that money and position could protect me. But then my daughter died, and my work on Shakespeare was made a laughingstock. So I have new work to do. I loan library books to Americans, and I travel. I worry and want to do some good in the world. And now I find myself drawn to you—as if something in you calls out.
I can’t imagine, Elizabeth says, what such a call would sound like. A screech?
Sometime in the next month, Clara says, I believe I will be making a trip to Normandy. I have some business there. It’s a place you ought to visit.
I’d like to get back to the sea.
Yes. I recall that you are fond of sailing. Perhaps you could help me.
How would Clara know that, about sailing? Elizabeth wondered. Maybe from Mrs. Crane. There’s no telling what Louise’s mother might have said.
I doubt I could be much help, Elizabeth says.
You would be perfect, Clara says. She stares into her glass. I would have asked Suzanne. We used to travel together quite often. She especially loved New York, as I believe you do. I took her there years ago, to begin college.
That must have been very exciting.
And then she begged me not to leave. And I said she needed to grow up.
Oh! Elizabeth says. How awful.
For whom? Clara asks.
The question rings through the empty apartment. Clara must have spoken louder than she meant to. She makes an odd gesture: she puts her fingers to her lips, shushing herself.
Elizabeth feels her face redden. For both of you, she says.
It was. How could I have done such a thing, Elizabeth? How could I have refused my own daughter? She came back by herself. And then the midnight call from the doctor, the mad drive to the hospital, the arrival too late.
Elizabeth takes it all in, silently. The clocks chime all over the apartment.
There’s so much time in here, Elizabeth says.
Yes, Clara says. It’s all in here. All that time. So much of it. But out there—
Here she rises from the sofa, crosses the long sitting room to the windows.
The world looks so perfectly green, Clara says. If I let my gaze drift just out of focus, I can see Suzanne at play beside the Medici Fountain, gathering the little white clover flowers, a pink dress billowing around her.
She closes her eyes.
I’m sorry, Elizabeth says.
There she is again, Clara says. Five years old. She’s writing with a black-and-gold fountain pen. The café near the École Militaire. What was the place called? La Terrasse?
I sometimes tell myself Suzanne isn’t gone forever, Clara says. Even though I remember holding her cold body in the hospital. No, she’s just away. That’s easy enough to imagine. I’m so often in Paris now that I can tell myself Suzanne is alive in New York—and soon she will come for a visit. I imagine she will look older, thinner, more oddly dressed than the last time.
I do the same about people I miss, Elizabeth says.
I wasn’t a good mother, Clara says. Why did I spend so much time going on about Suzanne’s clothes? All those wasted minutes. I could have been talking to her, finding out who she was. Once I took a photograph. From behind the camera I said, I’ll show you how ghastly you look in that ou
tfit.
That photograph, Elizabeth thinks.
Clara lifts her head, Elizabeth sees, to take in the sky, the enormous pillowy clouds drifting by.
There’s time everywhere, Elizabeth says.
She doesn’t know what she means. She might go to the window and embrace Clara, and she waits for the desire to pass. Louise will be home soon. Louise would not understand. Or maybe she wouldn’t care. Maybe it was Elizabeth who did not want to be caught in such an odd and pathetic tableau with a woman she hardly knows. That was an odd way to put it: tableau.
There was a man named Robert Seaver, Elizabeth says, who proposed marriage, and I refused him. He shot himself. Now I’ve received a postcard from him.
What did it say?
Go to hell.
Clara turns from the window. Her eyes are dry.
I know it’s early, but is there any more scotch? she asks, then laughs, a sound like choking.
I think so, Elizabeth says. I think I left some.
Of course there’s more! Clara cries. I bought it, didn’t I? And I bought extra. I stocked the bar before you arrived! I polished the glasses!
I’m grateful, Elizabeth says. I promise I’ll replace what I drink.
I wish Suzanne had sent me a postcard, Clara says. Just one. Though I would have preferred thousands. A postcard every day.
But not telling you to go to hell, Elizabeth says.
No, not that. Though I would have deserved it.
I don’t know if I deserved it. I don’t know.
My daughter died, Clara says. When a person dies, you can’t argue with her anymore. I’d like to take you to see the Mona Lisa, which Suzanne detested. She said it was possibly the world’s most stupid famous painting. We had a disagreement about it, and now I would like to end it by telling Suzanne she was right. It is indeed a stupid painting. I would absolutely capitulate if I could have my daughter back. Yes, I would say, you are absolutely correct. The Mona Lisa is too small to capture all this attention. And yes, the smile is—what outrageous thing did Suzanne say that time?—the smile is not mysterious, it’s foolish, like an inebriated girl who wants a man to know she’s had this bit to drink and is open to suggestion.