The Blue Bath

by Mary Waters-Sayer

  She stopped. It was too late. She turned back.

  On her way back to her hotel she walked past the Tuileries—trying to identify one tree from the many through the bars of the fence. It seemed that she should be able to do so. Whatever else was gone, Paris remained.

  She swam through the eddies of cars on the place de la Concorde, emerging on the other side in front of her hotel both more alert and more tired than she had been when she started out. Back in her room she felt the kind of loneliness that comes of full days and empty hotel rooms. But it was brief. There were calls to return and work to be done.

  There had been only one other visit to Paris. She and Jonathan had gone there for a weekend just before Will was born. It had been his idea—a surprise for her. She had cried in the taxi from Gare du Nord to their hotel as the city unfolded around them, her feet not even touching the ground. The kind of hysterical, uncontrollable sobs that you cry as a child. She could not stop the tears. Could not catch her breath. Jonathan had been alarmed. He had never seen her cry like that. She had attributed it to hormones and he had accepted the explanation. Later she had felt bad about the lie. Up to that point, her history with Daniel had been a lie of omission. She had never told anyone about Daniel. He remained hers alone. Sacred and apart.

  A sudden awareness of the prolonged silence put a stop to her ruminations. She looked up to find that Daniel was studying her. He made no attempt to fill the gap in conversation. Even when she broke away from his gaze, she could feel his eyes still on her. She laced her fingers together nervously on the railing. Did it used to feel like this when he looked at her? She remembered it differently. Turning back to face him, it was her turn to grasp at conversational straws.

  “Congratulations on your show.”

  He turned away from her to gaze out over the park. His voice, when it came, competed with the wind coming off the park and the traffic noise rising from the street below.

  “Did you see it all?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled. An abbreviated smile—pressing his lips together, and took in a deep breath, exhaling his words into the air above the park.

  “I suppose I should have…” He paused, still gazing out over the trees. It seemed to her that her presence was unnecessary for the conversation. That it wasn’t really she whom he was addressing. “Look, no one knows who the girl in the paintings is. Even Martin didn’t know until last night.”

  She could not think what to say and so remained silent.

  He paused again and glanced over his shoulder at her. “I suppose I should have asked you.” At this, he turned away again and laughed.

  She shivered, suddenly chilled, and waited to see if he would continue. The wind coming off the park was beginning to pick up. Daniel turned back toward her, but looked past her. She had forgotten how pale his eyes were. They seemed to be the exact same color as the cloudless winter sky, as if she were looking through him to the sky beyond. She thought about how much else she might have forgotten.

  “Listen, Kat,” Daniel continued, once again addressing the congregation of tall plane trees on the edge of the park. “I know some of the paintings were probably a surprise to you. Martin thought we should talk to you to assure you that we will keep you a secret. And to make sure you were okay with all this.”

  He glanced back at her briefly, as if to make sure that she was still there. “I told him that you would be. At the same time, we recognize that you were a part of this and we are prepared to compensate you for that.” He recited the words flatly, automatically. She imagined him discussing this with Martin. She heard the words he had just spoken coming out of Martin’s mouth.

  Her face felt suddenly hot against the cold breeze. The naked trees beyond him, stripped bare of their leaves by the wind, seemed to beseech her with their sharp, twisted appendages.

  “A bit late to be asking this, don’t you think, Daniel?” Her voice, when it came, was small and sharp.

  A moment passed and she thought maybe he had not heard her over the wind. Then he turned slowly to face her, his features finally stopping at an expression, although one that she did not recal. She returned his gaze, suddenly remembering that she was stronger than she knew. That she was capable of much more than she realized.

  “Yes. I suppose it is.” This time his voice was heavy with sarcasm. “But it’s not as if you left a forwarding address. And it is not as if you weren’t willing at the time. You remember Paris, don’t you, Kat? I admit that I have wondered since then what it was for you. The hope of immortality? Or just plain vanity? Either way, it looks like you got what you were after.”

  “That was twenty years ago, Daniel. I don’t remember giving you permission to keep painting me forever.”

  It was the word “permission.” His features hardened into a mask of barely controlled rage and he stepped closer to her, so close that she could feel his breath on her face. There was so much fury in his eyes that she wondered for a moment if he was going to hit her.

  “And I don’t remember giving you permission to…”

  “Stop!” Her shouted word had the desired effect of preventing him from finishing his sentence, but she knew that it was powerless against the long-pent-up memory gathering inside of her, savage from neglect.

  She could hear him breathing. When he spoke again, his voice was just above a whisper. “I need to know why. You owe me that.”

  “What exactly did you think we were going to do? Raise a baby in a tiny, filthy studio?” She shot the words into the wind.

  Before he could reply, Martin appeared in the doorway, clearing his throat and making little attempt to hide the fact that he had been listening in. The wind pulled at some papers he held in his right hand. Daniel stepped back as the smaller man moved to position himself between them. Daniel turned away but she could see his shoulders rising and falling under the thin fabric of his shirt and knew that he was breathing hard.

  “Listen, Katherine.” Martin’s voice was even and low, making her realize how loud theirs had become. She forced herself to look away from Daniel and to focus on him. “Daniel has a real chance here—his work is finally getting the kind of exposure and attention that it deserves. You know at least part of what he has been through to get here. We are just trying to do the right thing here. We want to make sure that his work can continue to be seen. If you take a look at what we are proposing, I think you will find that we are fully prepared to give you a reasonable slice of the pie.”

  She reached out and took the papers from Martin’s extended hand without glancing at them. Martin watched her expectantly, a willfully sympathetic expression fixed firmly to his poached face.

  She glanced at Daniel’s back. The breeze grabbed at the papers in her hand and she was tempted to open her fingers and allow the wind to take them.

  “I don’t want any pie.”

  It was the kind of sudden and dramatic exit that she had never quite been able to pull off. She turned on her heel and stalked off the terrace. Pausing to grab her coat off the chair, she passed the open door to the bedroom and glimpsed an empty champagne bottle, upside down in a silver bucket on the floor beside the bed. A glass, or maybe two glasses, lay beside it, half hidden under folds of discarded bedding. Heart racing, she made her way down the long hallway without looking back and jabbed at the call button for the lift. It arrived mercifully swiftly. As she stepped inside, her face hot, she heard the hurried footsteps as the doors began to close. Instinctively, she retreated farther into the lift, pressing her back against the dark wood paneling. Despite all her entreaties to a higher power, a hand interrupted the closing doors. It was not the hand that she expected.

  Martin stepped into the lift and let the doors slide closed after him. They stood facing the closed doors. She could feel her heart beating erratically inside her chest. She wondered if Martin could hear it as well. He turned toward her. She focused on the indicator panel above his head, as it counted down the floors.

  “Look, Katherin
e. I know all this must be quite a shock to you. Not just the paintings, but seeing Daniel again.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.” She kept her eyes fixed on the indicator as they descended.

  Seven.

  Six.

  “You may not believe this, but Daniel is trying to do the right thing. The truth is that he doesn’t have to give you anything.”

  “Good. I don’t want anything from him.”

  Five.

  Four.

  Kat glanced down briefly at Martin’s blurred reflection in the brass doors in front of them, his smart outfit reduced to wide smudges of color. What had Daniel told him about her? About them?

  Three.

  Two.

  “I would strongly advise you to take what we’re offering and go back to your life. This is Daniel’s time, let him have it.”

  “Who decided that this is his time? You?”

  One.

  Ground.

  The doors to the lift slipped open soundlessly and stealing a glance to her left Kat saw Martin’s soft face tilted earnestly toward her, his neck overflowing the confines of his heavily starched collar. Exiting the lift, she paused to get her bearings, and felt something alight gently on her arm. Looking down, she saw his short, pale fingers, like caterpillars, on her sleeve.

  “Just think about it. You owe him as much.” His voice sounded kind. “It would be a shame if we had to do this publicly.”

  He paused and took his hand off her arm. She thought maybe he was done and she began to move away from him.

  “You’re married now, aren’t you, Katherine?”

  She stopped instantly and turned back to him. He smiled, his eyes receding into the flesh on his face. She felt as if she had been punched. Glancing around the yellow and black marble lobby, at the uniformed staff bustling about on the slick floors and conversing in hushed tones, she felt that someone should have heard the threat. That it didn’t belong in a place like this. That it would have stood out from the other muted words being spoken around them.

  She turned away from him and, without looking back, walked out of the hotel. Eschewing the black cabs queuing in the curved driveway, she crossed the four lanes of busy traffic on Park Lane, emerging in the peace of Hyde Park. She let her feet carry her through the park, treading on the paths she had looked down on just minutes before. If she looked back, she would have seen the balcony of Daniel’s room. Was he still there? Watching her as she walked away? How small he would have seemed from such a distance.

  She was already well into the park before she remembered her paranoia, but the temperature had dropped and there were fewer people on the paths than there had been earlier this afternoon. As she crossed from Hyde Park into Kensington Gardens, the lines of trees revealed themselves and the seeming wildness of the landscape gave way to pattern. The sharp point of the spire of Saint Mary Abbots Church was visible above the tops of the trees. He thought she wanted royalties? Money? Was that what this was all about? Was that why he had wanted to see her? As she grew closer the trees gestured wildly at her in the wind, a mute warning.

  She closed her eyes, remembering how the sun had come out that afternoon. She had sat in her eighteenth-century-poetry class and let the instructor’s words float past her and out the open window where the city shone under a slick layer of rain. All but one that had laid itself at her feet. One that needed no translation. “Sacrifice.” A word that she had heard all her life and yet it was only now, hearing it in this foreign tongue, that she felt she truly understood it.

  She thought that it was terrifying to realize what you were capable of. She had heard her voice on the phone to the clinic, saying words that she could not remember learning in any language class. She could see herself waiting outside the bank to withdraw the money and then taking the short journey on the crowded Métro. Breathing the thick, sooty underground air.

  And then she is there, in the waiting room, alternately examining the severe metal edges of the receptionist’s desk and counting the crooked floor tiles. Actively avoiding the faces around her, just as they are avoiding hers. She hears her name being called—both familiar and not in the smooth inflection of the native tongue. She has given her real name, feeling that it is important somehow that it be her name that is called and she who answers it.

  She lies back on the table. Knees up, legs apart. The dark-skinned nurse sits beside her, hair smelling of almond oil, long fingers squeezing her hand, as she whispers comforting, French words—Kat’s mind suddenly rigid, unwilling to translate. The insipid Monet print on the wall, its colors blending together even more through her tears. She doesn’t move when she feels the tightening inside of her, the dull ache in the center of her. She has learned well to stay still for him.

  And then it was done. Her incomprehension that the city looked much the same on the way back to the studio. Perhaps the air was a little warmer, the light a little colder. There were fewer people on the Métro and her shadow on the boulevard was shorter. Were it not for the dull ache and the slow, steady dripping between her legs, all might have been as it had been. She was grateful for this. She felt it was only right that she should be cut, damaged. That there should be a wound that she could feel. Real, physical evidence of what she had done.

  Walking along the wide straight boulevard, she recognized the sharp buds on the trees. It was spring again. She recognized the smell of the city after the rain, the high-pitched buzz of the scooters, the creaking of the awnings being extended over the cafés. It was all suddenly familiar. She had been here before. Not everything was new anymore and some things never would be.

  chapter eight

  In Paris, Daniel hadn’t seemed to have a job outside of painting, although to be fair she didn’t really know what he did while she was in classes during the day. She had thought about asking, but was unsure that she wanted to know. And while he exhibited and sold some of his work, she doubted whether that was enough to support him, modest though his lifestyle was. She told herself that it was possible that he was living off the proceeds of some works that he had sold previously.

  And yet, finding the bag of white powder at the back of the cupboard had not been a complete surprise. Dropping it lightly on the table, she had stared at it for a while. She thought about tasting it, but realized that would simply rule out sugar or salt. Not the confirmation she was looking for.

  Confronted, he was unrepentant. “I do it for the money. For canvas, for paints, for brushes, for rent. I do what I need to do.”

  “Is that it, then? A noble end justifies the means?”

  “I don’t need to justify myself to anyone.” He paused and when he continued he spoke slowly and deliberately. “Listen to me. What I want, more than anything, is to be great. To be remembered. More than rich or famous, or even happy. That is what I care about. And I am willing to do whatever is necessary for it.”

  “Maybe you need an agent.”

  He had stiffened. “I’m not interested in playing that game. Meeting with buyers, explaining my work, telling them what they want to hear, playing the artist. I don’t care about any of that. I want to paint. I don’t care about selling.”

  Kat picked up the bag of white powder from the table, feeling its scant weight in her palm. “We all sell something. Why not sell something you believe in?”

  * * *

  IT WAS AUTUMN in Paris. She could smell it in the air. That little hint of something almost like cold apples. Kat waited at the front window of the gallery. Dusk was gathering together into night and the shadows were disappearing. Daniel was not there, as she had known he would not be. A small student exhibit in an obscure gallery in a far corner of the Marais; she had seen a call for submissions for it on a board at school. Daniel had disdained to submit, but had not stopped her from doing so. His piece had been accepted.

  The man she was expecting was the sixth attendee. Besides the artists themselves, there had been only five visitors that evening. Kat had counted. Although surprise
d to hear from her, he had agreed to come to the show and had not asked any questions. Harry Harper was a lion in the New York art world and an old friend of her mother’s. Kat remembered him vaguely from her childhood, but had not seen him in many years. After all that time, he was little more than a familiar name in her memory, but she recognized him immediately when he came in through the door. An older man with unlikely dark hair, he did not smile, but greeted her cordially, taking her hand between his large smooth ones.

  “Hello, Katherine.”

  “Mr. Harper. Thank you so much for coming.”

  He dismissed her sentiments. “Not at all. How is your mother? How unfortunate that I was unaware you were in Paris. Marie-Claire and I would have had you to dinner.”

  “That is very kind of you.” She smiled at him and the conversation abruptly stopped, as they moved from the darkness into the brightly lit gallery. She was uncomfortably aware of how he was now staring intently at her face in the sudden bright light. He seemed not to be fully conscious.

  “Shall I show you the paintings?”

  Shaking off the spell, he waved her off.

  “If I may? Let me have a look around and I will tell you whether anything catches my eye. That way, we will all know there is no favoritism at play.” He spoke seriously, his expression grave.

  As he moved toward the first wall of paintings, she returned to the window.

  She was watching the streetlights come on as darkness set in when his reflection caught her eye in the glass. She followed his small, measured steps against the dim backdrop of the empty street. She saw the way he paused when he came to Daniel’s work and stood back from it for a long moment, as if everything else in the room had suddenly become invisible. He continued around the room at the same measured pace, all the while sneaking glances back at Daniel’s canvas. Flirting with it. Completing his slow circuit of the room, he returned to Kat. He indicated Daniel’s painting on the far wall. “Is that the young artist you rang me about?”