“What a memory you have! Who told you that story?” Degas laughs.
“You did! Just last week!”
“Ah! Well. I think that story must be too sad, or else too boring.”
“Mais non! It’s a good story. You rescued Achille, don’t you remember?”
“Ah, yes. Well, either I did, or our tutor. He ended up rather wet, I think, but he was a good type, and we had a splashing fight, while Achille sat on the bank covered in towels, and I defeated my tutor utterly, something he was quite used to, in fact.”
“I wish I could swim here,” says Odile. “Maybe in the duck pond.”
“The duck pond is filthy, mon chou. A gendarme would fish you out, in any case, and reprimand you severely.”
“I would slip away from him, then, and find another place to swim.”
“You are a person of exceptional vision and courage, Odile,” her uncle says.
viii.
By the time May lets us rest, I am overwhelmed by the heat.
Edgar helps Odile out, and then, with unusual gentleness, he offers me his hand, and I slowly move to the edge of the carriage. He holds my arm as I come down the step.
“You look tired,” he says.
“Sit on the blanket, Lyddy,” May says, spreading our old picnic blanket with the Scottish plaid on the edge of the lawn. “Mathieu! Go to the café, and buy some camembert and bread. Oh, and see if they have a good pâté, maybe some saucisson. We’ll have a splendid picnic.”
She gives him money. Mathieu looks relieved to stretch, and then to jump into the driver’s seat and flick the whip, touching Bichette’s rump.
“Chocolate too, Mathieu!” May calls to him. “And cider!”
“D’accord, mademoiselle,” Mathieu shouts, as the carriage rumbles down the allée, a cloud of dust blooming behind it.
“I see myself!” says Odile. She’s gazing at May’s picture. “See my pink dress? And my shoes? I am very, very quiet, aren’t I?”
“You are the queen of quietness,” says Edgar.
“Mademoiselle Cassatt too,” Odile says.
“Mademoiselle Cassatt is astonishingly quiet as well.”
Looking at Degas, I am aware of his eyes upon me. He seems to slice through my skin, layer after layer. So now we know something of each other’s secrets, he seems to say, his eyes dark, inquisitive. Yes.
Sitting on the blanket, I can see the picture on May’s easel. It has a darkness I had not anticipated. I recognize myself, and Odile, and Mathieu, yet we look odd, somber, as if on a grim errand. Each of us stares in a different direction, but we don’t look as if we’re really seeing anything. The luscious colors of Odile’s face and hair and dress make a splash of brightness, but surrounding her loom darker colors: the black and dusky red of my bonnet, the various blacks of Mathieu’s hat and coat, Bichette’s tail, the whip. In the background, the trees, which in reality (I glance at them now) look so welcoming and summery, with their crowns of green, appear shadowy. And I look solemn and determined, stoical, as I stare straight ahead, holding the reins and the whip. Of course, the picture is not finished.
I see this painting, suddenly, as a message from May to me. I know you’re on a journey, the painting says, to another, darker place. And even though you betray me by leaving, I grant you companions—a child, a groom—to accompany you when I cannot follow. I cannot make your journey joyous, but I promise at least to record your passage.
May and Edgar sit next to each other, on the other side of the blanket, as Odile comes racing past us, Batty at her heels. When Mathieu returns, he hands the lunch to May, then tosses Batty a stick. May tears the bread, and Edgar opens a pocket knife to cut into the round of cheese. I pour the cider into our glasses.
As I eat the camembert on bread, and taste the delicious little pickles, cornichons, I gaze at May’s painting. She has pictured something red flowing out of my heart. I look down at my silk jacket and my scarf. They hold different shades of red, yes, but May has changed these reds into something other than a jacket or a scarf, something pouring, a river, with tributaries. And here, around my dress, just under my knees, she’s painted a second ribbon of crimson, and on Odile’s dress too, bands of another shade, the red of mashed strawberries.
My cider spills in the grass. I right my glass, and rise, moving slowly, as if through water, toward the carriage, hoping to open my parasol. Perhaps this nausea and dizziness come only from the heat.
“Mademoiselle Cassatt! Vous voyez? See how Batty can jump!”
I try to smile at Odile as she holds up a stick for Batty, and then the sky, and the trees, and May, and the others, seem to swirl upside down, and I discover that I have collapsed to my knees in the allée.
ix.
At home, I am ill again, very ill. I am barely aware who sits next to me in my bedroom. It must be May. I know her touch. I see the deep blue of her dress, but I feel too sick to look at her. She brings me the basin, when I ask her, and she smooths my hair as I open, like a sluice. I am in pain. I am in pain. God help me.
Outside my window, over the sounds of the avenue, I think I hear a child’s voice, like the cry of a strange bird, high and floating.
Shadows hover in my room, deep black, gray, even red. I had not thought shadows could come in so many colors.
Lyddy, someone says. It’s Mother. Her hand is cool and soft on my forehead. Are you are you all right. I shake my head and I begin to cry. Do you feel pain. Pain. Yes. Shall I call the doctor. What can a doctor do.
Hours pass, days, and I wake to see a girl with taffy-colored hair by my bed. Is this a dream? I wonder, but then I know she is Odile. She wears her hat and a white coat, and gloves. In the shadows stands Edgar. I hope you recover soon, he says to me. Your sister is at a loss without you. I try to smile but my face won’t bend that way anymore, and I say, Are you well? And he says, oui, and I ask the child too if she’s well, and she says oui, mademoiselle. She holds out a bunch of red tulips, and May takes them, or is it Mother, and says thank you, ma petite, she will love these when she’s feeling well enough to gaze at them, and when I look again, Edgar and the child have gone.
I see Thomas, in the afternoon light, sitting calmly at the foot of my bed, gazing at me. You’re not dead, then? I ask, bewildered, and he smiles. Well, you see me, don’t you? he asks. Yes, I see you. He laughs and shrugs, ordinary and handsome as the day. Bending closer, he asks, Then what is death?
x.
I open my eyes to see May sitting on my bed, dark circles under her eyes. I hold still, waiting for the pain, but for the moment the pain is not here.
“Is it morning?”
“Oui.”
“Have I been sick long?”
“Oui. Days.”
“And—” I hesitate. “Is Odile all right?”
“Of course she is.”
“Will she come back?”
“One day, I’m sure. Marguerite decided to take them south, to Nice.”
“But the painting?”
“I’ve finished it.”
“How?”
“Well, I painted your face, actually, most of you, before you fell ill, Lyddy, remember? And Mathieu and Odile posed for another couple of days.”
“Who held the reins?”
“Louie did. She came with us, to help me finish.”
“So—it’s done?”
“Yes.”
“Et—do you like it?”
May looks sad. “I do like it.”
“I know it must have come out well, May.” from my heart, a river of red, mute, terrifying
“Yes. And now you must get better.”
But this is a task I seem to have forgotten how to do.
May draws open the curtains, and the light hurts my eyes. How long has it been since I have seen light?
I think of the painting.
And am I on a journey, then? And who goes with me?
xi.
In the afternoon, before May returns, the bell rings, and in a moment I
hear Mother talking to someone.
“Degas is here,” she says, poking her head into my room. “Would you be able to come say hello?”
The idea of walking from one room to another overwhelms me, and I feel unnerved, too, at the thought of facing Edgar on my own, without May. I’m not sure why I feel this. I shake my head, and Mother’s face disappears.
In a moment, she pokes her head into my room again.
“Could he come in here to see you, Lyddy, just for a moment?”
I hesitate. I must look awful, raggedy and pale; I haven’t had a real bath in days.
“I—” I look around my small room, and touch my hand to my hair.
Mother guesses part of my panic. She brushes my hair, sweeping it into a simple chignon, and brings me a fresh cap. Then she helps me sit up, and wraps my white shawl around my bed jacket.
When Edgar comes in, Mother gives him the armchair by my bed, and she sits on the ottoman by my dressing table. Looking slightly awkward, beneath his usual ironic pose, he studies my face. For once, to my surprise, I welcome his look. I realize with a stumble of my own heart that I wish to be seen by someone who can see with clarity.
Mother and Edgar chat about his family. When Mother leaves the room for a moment to find her sewing, I look at him. My shyness slips off, like a dress, to the floor around me, something I used to wear.
“You’re better?” he asks.
“Oui, pour le moment.”
He considers my words.
“A moment can hold great value.”
“I wish for more than that.”
“Of course you do. Who would not wish for more?” My eyes sting.
“My family finds it hard to acknowledge how little time I might have. I think May’s beginning to acknowledge it.”
“Et toi? Do you find it hard to acknowledge as well?”
“I don’t want to vanish.”
“Vanish? Mais, the vanishing isn’t the point, is it?”
I rub my cheek fiercely. I do not wish to cry. “What’s the point then?”
He shrugs. “Seeing. Creating something.” He catches my eye now, and holds my gaze. “You do that. You know that, more than most of these types of humanity. You see things, I can tell.” Her arm around his neck, two figures embracing. I claim this picture for my own. He adds, “You’ve given more than you may know to your sister.”
I have come to a new landscape with this man, a sober place, without many trees. The light shines strongly here, and yet much is in shade. It is not a desert, yet the desire for water, I know, will not be fully satisfied.
“I love her,” I say.
“Oui, évidemment, and you give her something else, too. You give her—” He pauses, searching for words. “A sense of something terribly valuable, something she must work her way towards, in paint.”
“And that’s good?”
Edgar laughs a short, sharp laugh. “Good? Oui, c’est bien. All of us need something to work towards—to claw our way to, if necessary—to crawl on our bellies to, through mud and across stones, in order to touch and understand a mere part of it.”
“But I wish for this myself,” I say, astonished at my fierceness. “I wish to be the one clawing, and crawling, surging toward something I love and wish to have.”
Naked, this look between us, unhinged. Edgar seems to listen to what I can’t say, how I wish to live, to enter the arbor, to swim into the kiss, to break my pose and walk into my own life.
“How do you know you don’t?” he asks with quick urgency, his voice low. “How do you know you don’t labor towards something? You seem like one who must know about such effort.”
“I’m dying.”
“Oui. I know.”
“And I haven’t created anything. I have nothing to leave behind me.”
“But you allow yourself to be in the picture.”
“That’s different.” My voice sounds harsh, broken.
“Is it? I wonder. And besides, one can labor towards something that never becomes art, or even visible. But you can have it in here.” He touches his eyes, and then he bends closer and says, quietly, “You know, you’re the one she loves most in the world. She will never love another as well. How can you say you leave nothing behind?” He moves back into his chair, and gazes at me with dark eyes. “You’re magnificent, after all.”
I let his words float in the air, fall around me, like cherry blossoms. N’importe quoi, I would say to anyone else, at any other time, but in this dream-like moment, in this desert, blooming, I accept the words as an unanticipated gift.
Degas rubs his eyes, and I think of something May told me a couple of weeks ago.
“His eyes are bad.”
“Bad?”
“He can’t see well. When he looks at something, he can’t see the center.”
“How can that be? He paints. He paints constantly.”
May looks at me soberly and shrugs. “Of course he paints.”
“But—what will happen?”
“I don’t know. He thinks he may go blind.”
Lydia Seated at an Embroidery Frame
and then I’m holding a small May’s hand, and we’re in the meadow behind our house at Hardwicke, and we walk through the high grass, among the fireflies, through the gate and past the barn, and the garden, toward the house, and I can see light inside, and Ella’s at the front door, waving us in for bed, and
Paris, juin, 1881
i.
Sewing the piece of silk onto my embroidery frame after breakfast, I picture Elsie’s clear eyes.
“What do you think Elsie would like on her pillowcase?” I call to Mother, who’s reading the paper in her bedroom.
Mother comes slowly to my door. I hear her slippered steps on the rug, her sighs.
“Have you looked in those, Lyddy?” She motions toward my pattern-box and the magazines piled on my dressing table.
“I’ve looked through everything.”
“You might try flowers again.” Mother plumps herself on my bed and takes off her specs, cleaning them with her shawl.
“Elsie’s can’t look too much like Sister’s, though.” For Sister, I embroidered a pillowcase with a border of roses, twining, like the roses in the arbor, one hot day in August, scorching, fragrant.
“What about wildflowers?”
“Wildflowers. Yes.” Perfect, I think, for isn’t Elsie just like a wildflower, brightly colored and uncultivated? I wish children could always stay that way. May is more like that, still, than most women I’ve ever known. I remember, last summer, how Elsie couldn’t restrain herself from picking the flowers in the garden. May and I took her to the riverbank and let her gather bunches of wildflowers, instead, and grass too, which seemed to Elsie as splendid as flowers.
“I know American wildflowers best, though,” I say.
“Well, Elsie’s an American, through and through,” Mother says drily. “I still have my book of American wildflowers.” She pushes herself off the bed, and walks slowly out of my room. “I’ll find it for you.”
As I pore over the pictures in her book, I relish the flowers’ names, the way they seem to sing and to bite: trillium, columbine, dog-tooth violet. I yearn suddenly for my sketchbook, the one in which I drew wildflowers in pen and watercolor the summer I agreed to marry Thomas. I wonder if Mother still has it, stowed away in a chest, here or in America, or if it sits somewhere among Aleck’s papers.
I mark the wildflowers I like best, and then I begin to sketch a design on paper. I want something modern, not old-fashioned—a clean, spare form. I toss out design after design. I’ll know the right one when it comes to me.
Our apartment feels quiet today. Father has gone riding, and Mother is reading now in her room. May is at her studio, I think (and who is with her? and what do they do? I picture Edgar lounging on the chair near her, smoking, rubbing his eyes, the pigeons whirring, May talking to her new model).
Today I feel as if I have fallen out of the whole picture. Sometimes, t
his morning, I have the sense of foreknowledge: this is how the world will be when you are no longer here. This is how it will go on without you. I wish to throw my arms around the day, embrace it fiercely, make it impossible for it to let me go.
That afternoon, a month ago, when Edgar Degas came to my bedside, he seemed to offer me a picture of myself, one to strive towards. In this picture, I possessed grace and strength and valor. And he had the kindness to claim that it was I who had presented him with such a vision. “You show me how to live,” he said, “if only I could do it as you do.”
ii.
One June afternoon, I begin my stitching on Elsie’s silk. I try to pour all my thoughts into this one task, this here and now. I’ve been so ill this month that I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ll ever pose for May again, or whether she’ll even ask me.
I’ve designed seven circles, to be stitched in a grass-green running stitch, on the white ground, each one framing a wildflower. I’ve chosen flowers I hope Elsie will recognize: buttercups, Indian paintbrush, wild sweet William, clover, pink lady’s slippers, bee balm, wild columbine.
I hear May open the front door. She comes into my room as I’m threading the needle with a yellow silk, to begin the buttercups. She looks as if she’s run up the five flights of stairs to our apartment.
“You’re home early.”
“Yes, I am.”
May pulls off her burgundy gloves and lays them over the wooden bar of my embroidery frame. She looks hot.
“Did you go to the gallery?”
“Yes. I saw some good things there. I’ll have to bring Louie back with me and urge her to buy something. Renoir has a new one for sale, and Camille Pissarro has some good things.”
Lydia Cassat Reading the Morning Paper Page 8
