I Always Loved You

by Robin Oliveira

  “Just bring them, Degas.”

  “Oui, maître.” Lately, Edgar had taken to calling Gustave maître. Master this, master that.

  “When?” Gustave asked.

  “Soon.”

  “I—” Gustave began, but the pretty woman who had been recruited from a local shop to sell tickets interrupted him. A competent young thing, she nevertheless appeared beside Gustave with an expression of great worry. “Can you come? The turnstile is here and they want to know where to install it.”

  “Convince him, Mademoiselle Cassatt, would you, please, before I go insane?” Caillebotte said, his chiseled face shadowed with the usual stubble.

  The tails of his military-style coat whipped behind him as he led the ticket taker toward the apartment entrance and the problem of the turnstile.

  Mary said, “Why haven’t you brought in your work?”

  Edgar threw up his hands. “It can’t be helped.”

  It could be helped, but Edgar didn’t want to help it, and when Edgar didn’t want to do something, he didn’t do it, something Gustave knew as well as Mary. It would be hopeless to try to cajole him, and so she didn’t try. They were all exhausted. Putting together the exhibition had been a nightmare. Many of the original group had “turned traitor,” as Edgar put it: Monet had been too discouraged over his recent work to send anything, so Caillebotte had written everyone who owned one of Monet’s paintings to send it in on loan; Renoir had been accepted to the Salon and so was banned; Cézanne had decamped even without acceptance to the Salon; and Berthe hadn’t worked since the birth of her daughter, Julie. Miffed at the multiple defections, Edgar had invited new artists, whose excited murmurs were now breaching the door. They were unknown to Mary—Marie Bracquemond and her husband, Félix, Jean Louis Forain, Paul Gaugin, Henry Somme, Albert Lebourg, and Federico Zandomeneghi. Also this year, Degas had declared that they would banish forever the foul appellation of “impressionist” by leaving out the word “independent,” as if the critics had somehow misread the title. This year the catalog had been printed with the bland heading of “Catalogue de la 4e Exposition de Peinture.” The complicated politics could drive someone crazy, Mary thought, but tonight she let them go. She was in an exhibition, she had eleven canvases, and despite the lump in her throat, on the other side of the door champagne corks were popping.

  Edgar was standing in the center of the room, studying her. “Despite your nerves, you are happy,” he said.

  “I am both thrilled and terrified,” she said.

  He went to the door and shut it. In the gaslight, the last of the raindrops clinging to his coat sparkled like jewels. “I should have asked you for permission to shut the door, but I have something I wish to say to you. I also should have spoken earlier this week, but you were busy. What I have to say is not, perhaps, what you want to hear, and I do not wish to diminish your happiness, my dear, but I want you to be prepared.”

  Mary shifted as bile began to rise in her throat. God, what an impossible thing it was to debut. Not that this was her first exhibition, but it was the one that mattered most, the one at which she could not bear to fail. All the others—the Pennsylvania Academy when she’d first begun, her Salon appearances—were nothing compared to this one.

  “I want you to know that after tonight, everything will change for you, and not necessarily for the better. These last two years, you’ve been able to paint by yourself, for yourself, with no one caring or knowing what you were doing. But tonight is the eve of everything. In a few days, a dozen reviews will be published, and another dozen the day after that. Everyone will have an opinion of your work. They will say, on the whole, very stupid things. They will be extraordinarily mean and personal in their attacks. They will care not a jot for your hard work or your artistry. They will endeavor to make you suffer. They will claim that your style parts too much from standard taste, and in their ignorance will disparage you without reserve. Not every critic, but most. And these are people who cannot even mix a color, let alone render something as simple as an apple on a canvas. But they will believe themselves right and influence the public for the worse. They will be wrong, of course. What I want you to understand is that you should not allow their ignorance to destroy you.”

  How different Edgar’s tone was than last year, when he had canceled the exhibition and spoken of public flogging and intense ridicule. She crossed the room and lifted her hand to his face. He smelled of graphite and oil and turpentine; he smelled of work, of Paris, of all of art, of everything she wanted. He had helped her. Nothing on these walls would have been made if not for him. He had drawn it out of her by believing in her.

  Edgar lifted her hand from his cheek and kissed her palm. He peeled back the lace at her sleeve and kissed the inside of her wrist. His lips traveled up her sleeve to her elbow. Years of practiced decorum, of discipline, of restraint slipped away as Mary closed her eyes and touched her cheek to his. His beard was rough and wet from the rain. The edge of his glasses grazed her cheek.

  He said, “I once made a promise to Tourny to be careful with you, and I have been. Do you still want me to be?”

  A small moan escaped her mouth, an assent she had not known she would make.

  He hesitated only a moment, then touched his lips to hers. Hers parted for his, just a breath. It had been so long since anyone had kissed her. The dalliances of her youth—single kisses stolen behind doors at the Pennsylvania Academy, brushed lips on horseback rides with neighbor boys before anyone caught up with them—had not prepared her for this. She had been so long untouched that she had forgotten what it was to be caressed. Her fingertips grazed his cheek as he kissed her. His hand on her shoulder pulled her to him. They sank into one another. The noises of jubilation beyond the door fell away. There was only the roar of breath and heartbeat.

  When the kiss burned away, they parted, hands entwined. Neither of them spoke. The surprise of it, the rightness of it, were equal. No youths they, but the pleasure still made them smile. The world outside the door gradually came back to them, but they did not hear the door open.

  “Mary—oh, I’m sorry,” Abigail said.

  Mary released Edgar’s hands, embarrassed, but relieved that it was Abigail and not her mother who had interrupted them. “Abigail. Wait. Please come in. I would like you to meet Monsieur Degas. Monsieur Degas, my dear friend Madame Nieriker.”

  “It is a great pleasure to meet you, madame. Mary has spoken of you often.”

  “And she of you,” Abigail said. “For a very long time.”

  “Come,” Edgar said. “Before someone else bursts in on us and thinks we are all flirting.” With his hand to the small of Mary’s back, he guided the two of them out the door and into the party.

  • • •

  “You cannot tell me you don’t know this story,” Edgar said.

  “Tell us, tell us!”

  The Cassatts, Degas, and Abigail and Ernest Nieriker were standing in front of one of the many blank spots in Degas’s section of the exhibition. Edgar had been explaining that one of his missing pictures was a portrait of the art critic Edmond Duranty, whom he had painted in his book-lined study. Mary’s parents and Lydia, who had arrived in fashion in the new carriage that Aleck had recently purchased for them, had been teasing Edgar about his empty walls, if you could call Robert’s stunned silence at Degas’s tardiness teasing. “They are where?” he had said, shaking his head at Edgar’s airy excuses for the canvases’ absence.

  “I tell you,” Degas said, “this story is famous. A few years ago, Édouard Manet didn’t like something Duranty wrote about him. So Édouard slapped him in the face at the Café Guerbois. Duranty demanded that Édouard apologize, but of course he wouldn’t, so a few days later the two of them boarded a train to the Saint-Germain-en-Laye forest with a pair of seconds, and there dove at one another with their swords. Right off, Édouard inflicted a nasty scratch on Duranty’s chest, the seconds called off the match, and they all rode home together, friends again.”


  “You’re lying,” Mary said. She had grown gleeful. As the evening had worn on, it was as if someone had exchanged Edgar for someone else. He had become a maître d’, a bon vivant, a host extraordinaire. From time to time, the memory of the kiss revived itself, and she had to keep herself from taking Degas’s elbow or otherwise giving herself away.

  “I am not lying,” he roared. “Émile Zola was Édouard’s second. Ask him.”

  “He wasn’t!” Lydia said, laughing. Tonight she had drunk two glasses of champagne, worrying Mary, but Lydia swore that any medical upset would be worth the celebration of Mary’s triumph.

  “My dear Lydia,” Degas said. “You missed everything by meeting me so late in life. You should have known me a decade ago. I was excitement at every turn.”

  “Attempted murder is certainly one way to handle the press,” Robert said, shaking his head, mystified as he always was by the antics of the French. Ernest Nieriker colluded with him in disapproval; they had already agreed that they were out of their element.

  “We will smite them all, Robert, just as Édouard did.” Degas shifted his champagne glass and called Édouard over, who had escaped the cloying crowd and lodged himself in the far corner, where he was draining a third glass of champagne. His expression was one of irritation; tonight he had had to explain a dozen times why he wasn’t exhibiting with his friends.

  “Édouard. Come over here. Tell them what you did to poor Monsieur Duranty.”

  Édouard hobbled through the crush of guests toward the knot of Cassatts, enduring the pitying looks of those who had heard that it was now confirmed that he had the Neapolitan disease. It could not have remained secret much longer; he walked now with a cane. It was difficult maneuvering without knocking himself or someone else over, so he took his time, stopping to accept the affectionate kisses of sympathetic admirers, all women, all beautiful.

  When he reached their little circle he stood slightly tilted, leaning on his cane. His cheeks had grown ruddy in the stifling apartment. Someone had opened a window, but little of the night’s cold breeze penetrated the crowd.

  Manet said, “I claim no victory,” though secretly he had loved the excitement of the thing, the harsh clang of the swords, the thrill of fear when he thought for a moment that he might have killed his good friend after all. The police had wanted to arrest them both, but when they learned that Duranty had needed not a single stitch, both of them had been released without even having to pay a bribe. “It was the right thing to do,” Édouard said. “Duranty never wrote a cruel thing about me again. Rather like how you dispatched Monsieur Zola when you first met him, Mademoiselle Cassatt. He’ll never write a thing about you now. He wouldn’t dare.”

  “Have you been arguing with critics too, Mary?” her mother asked. Tonight Katherine, attired in a new gown, looked every inch a well-outfitted Parisian dowager, albeit more trim than most. She and Lydia had embarked on a walking campaign for Lydia’s health, abetted by the freedom that their new carriage—a gift from Aleck, who was now more successful than his father had ever been—afforded them. Daily, they strolled the Rue de Rivoli, their arms entwined and parasols unfurled, shopping the windows of dressmakers and bookstores. And Robert, too. Lately, he had been able to give up his cane.

  “I merely asked Monsieur Zola some questions and gave him my opinion on one of his books,” Mary said.

  “You did?” Abigail said. “When?”

  “She chased him away. He lives in Médan now,” Degas said, “in a pile of a house that L’Assommoir bought him. He rarely comes to Paris anymore, though he did write me a note, Mademoiselle Cassatt, to beg me to make certain you won’t be here next Tuesday, when he plans to come see the exhibit.”

  “He did not,” Mary said, laughing and looking about the crowd. Excepting Zola, the cream of Paris intellectual life had crowded into the new apartment on the glittering Avenue de l’Opéra: Alphonse Daudet, the great descriptor of Parisian life; Paul Gachet, the celebrated physician who attended nearly everyone in the room with the exception of Manet and Lydia; Antonin Proust, a member of the Chamber of Deputies who loved fine art; Stéphane Mallarmé, the pursuer of Zola; the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, whom Mary hoped might one day represent her; the artist James Tissot, who had abandoned his adopted London to visit Édouard but who was now flirting in the kitchen with Méry Laurent; James Whistler, also in from London; and the writer Edmond de Goncourt. Even Guy de Maupassant was holding forth with Pissarro in the dining room. Anyone who mattered in society was here tonight, but more important, anyone who mattered to Mary was here tonight. Satisfaction flooded through her. Her parents were at ease in the luminous crowd; Lydia was laughing with Edgar; Abigail and Ernest had easily fit in; and Edgar, from time to time, touched the small of Mary’s back and smiled quietly at her. But even more gratifying, a thousand compliments had come her way tonight; everyone had sought her out to tell her how much they admired her work. In all her life, no other night had matched this one. The pinnacle had been achieved, everything glorious at once: the promise of love, the promise of recognition, the promise of success.

  Berthe and Eugène arrived and made their way toward them through the tight assemblage. Eugène towered above Berthe and scowled at anyone who bumped into her. Not quite wan, but not quite well, Berthe exuded fragility. It was her first outing in practically a year, having been released only a week ago from her confinement.

  Édouard kissed Berthe on the cheek and greeted Eugène with another. “You look glorious, Berthe. Doesn’t she look well, everyone?”

  She didn’t look well, but everyone exclaimed over her robust health and general beauty and asked about the baby. Introductions were made, Abigail quietly elbowing Mary when she learned that it was Berthe Morisot she was meeting.

  “It’s as if everything we said that day at that exhibition has come true,” Abigail whispered to Mary. “And you owe me an explanation of just what was taking place in that room.”

  “I don’t know what was taking place,” Mary whispered back.

  “I think I know,” Abigail said, a teasing smile playing across her lips.

  “Tell them what you told me the other day, Madame Morisot,” Degas said when the chatter died down. “Tell them what you said about Bibi.” Bibi was the nickname Berthe had given to her daughter, and everyone had adopted it.

  “I beg your pardon?” Berthe said.

  “You remember. You said that Bibi looked just like her uncle.”

  Berthe blanched. Édouard looked away, out the window, over the heads of the crowd, as if he were stifling a second urge to duel.

  “What did Degas say, Mame?” Robert said. “I didn’t hear.”

  Lydia, too, looked to Mary for an explanation, as did, for some reason, everyone, including Berthe, whose doleful gaze fixed on Mary. The noise of the room fell away as Mary sought her footing. A moment ago, Edgar had been nothing but charm, and before that, nothing but intoxication.

  “I think what Monsieur Degas meant is that Eugène and Édouard look so much alike that Eugène’s daughter could not fail to look like a Manet. Her father and uncle have such similar countenances. Really, Father, don’t you think they look alike?”

  The brothers, weary of the scrutiny that had been foisted on them since they were children, nonetheless struck a pose on opposing sides of the circle: chin up, shoulders back. Evidence in court.

  “Yes, they are quite similar,” Robert conceded.

  “Yes, they are,” the Nierikers agreed.

  Berthe, unsteady, said, “They overwhelm all the Morisot in my Bibi. There is nothing of me.”

  But Berthe had made a second mistake. She should have said Eugène overwhelms all the Morisot in her Bibi, and she knew it. Her pale face blushed a bright vermillion.

  Mary said, “Berthe, will you indulge me and let me show you my work? Excuse us, everyone.” Before Berthe could answer, Mary took her hand and plowed through the tightly knit crowd clogging the hallway to the bedroom where her canvases hung. She
shooed everyone out and shut the door.

  “Degas is terrible,” Berthe said.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not going to defend him?”

  “Of course not,” Mary said. “Why would I?”

  “Aren’t you—?”

  A chill ran through Mary. “No, we are not,” she said in a flat voice, shuddering to think what she would have said an hour ago. We might. Or, Soon.

  “Ah. Then the gossip is wrong.”

  “There is gossip?”

  “Of course. This is Paris. You didn’t think his attentions to you would go unnoticed, did you?”

  “But why would you listen, Berthe?” Mary said. You, of all people, she wanted to say.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been cooped up with the maids too long.” Berthe’s hands flew to her flushed face. “Why does he persist in making me miserable?”

  “I don’t think it’s you he’s teasing. I expect it’s Édouard. They might be outside killing one another right now.”

  “Sometimes, I think I should never show myself in society again. All that time at home, in bed, isolated, waiting for Bibi . . . it was a less exposed life.”

  Mary hesitated, but tonight had altered any intention of restraint she might have exercised even a few hours ago. She feared that Berthe might consider what she was about to ask her cruel, perhaps as cruel as Degas’s jest had been, but Berthe had tried to warn her a long time ago. In fact so many people had warned her not only to take care, but that Degas was not as he seemed, that now the kiss, in all its splendid beauty, seemed an act of immense folly.

  “Tell me, Berthe, do you regret anything? I’m sorry to ask. I mean no harm, truly. But has it been worth it?”

  Rain and wind lashed at the window glass. Berthe looked around the empty room as if searching for an anchor in the deluge.

  “Live without having loved? I don’t know if I would have wanted that. Sometimes, though, the shame is too much to bear. I can hardly believe I allowed it to happen. And Édouard has been so cavalier. So many women, while I . . .” She looked away, her gaze running over the pictures her mind was not yet registering. “But for me, he was the only one. And I can’t help that I love him. I wish that I could, but no amount of wishing has made it so.” In her despair, she was very still. “I can’t help you, Mary. I thought once that I could, but I know what it is to be lost. I am no model, no seer, no lighthouse. Nothing I can say will get you home, except that at least Degas is not married.”