Lydia Cassat Reading the Morning Paper

by Harriet Scott Chessman

“Et Degas?”

  May touches my embroidery frame. “Degas has a stunning pastel. I should buy it, just so you can see it. I’m thinking of urging Louie to buy it.”

  She looks over my shoulder.

  “Oh, Lyddy, I like your design.”

  I hear a new note in May’s voice: sorrow, is it? or just tiredness? She walks about my room, touching my hairbrush, smoothing my bed, straightening my books.

  “You’re reading Tennyson?” she asks, opening a little gold book.

  “Yes.”

  “Ah! ‘The Lotos-Eaters.’ ”

  She sits in the armchair by my bed and begins to read.

  After a while I ask, “What are you painting these days, May?”

  She looks up and shrugs. “Oh, not much. I started another picture, with a friend of Louie’s as a model, but it didn’t go well.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It was all right, just—a bit flat. I’m looking for a new idea, really.”

  “And your prints?”

  “I’m tired of prints, for the moment.”

  May reads, as I stitch one of my buttercups.

  “Lyddy.”

  I look up.

  “Could I paint you again?”

  Her question almost makes me tremble, I’m not sure why.

  “I look dreadful.”

  “How can you say that? You look just like yourself.”

  “I have no color.”

  “You’re simply fair.” May gives me a teasing smile. “I’ll give you color, de toute manière.”

  “I feel so heavy, May, you’ve no idea. I’m like a hippopotamus in my slowness, these days. I’m not sure I could even walk as far as your studio. I have such stupid aches.”

  “I can paint you right here, then.”

  “Ici?”

  “In your room.”

  “Mais—the oil paints will smell, won’t they? And there’s hardly space enough.” I look around my room.

  “The smell won’t be so bad. We’ll air it out each day, afterward. And I can manage with the space.”

  I look at her face, the shadows under her eyes.

  “Do you have no other model right now, May?”

  “Of course I have other models. It’s you I want. I’ve been dreaming about this picture, Lyddy, of you at your embroidery.”

  You allow yourself to be in the picture. A sense of something terribly valuable.

  “All right. I will.”

  “Merci.” May embraces me hard. “Do you think you could begin tomorrow morning?”

  “Tomorrow morning, yes.”

  May rises and opens my wardrobe. She sifts through my dresses.

  “And—could you wear this dress?” She holds up my salmon-pink silk with the high collar and the flower-print.

  “Bien sûr, of course I will.”

  iii.

  In the morning, after breakfast, I put on my salmon-pink dress, and arrange my hair, and then I look at the buttercups I stitched yesterday. I can picture Elsie tracing the green stems and the buttery flowers, with her finger, before she sleeps on a hot summer’s night, when the light still holds on the lawn outside her window, or on a night in the middle of winter, when all the world seems hoary and blank, and her pillow is a field.

  Remember me, I wish to say to this young niece. Don’t allow me to be forgotten. And isn’t this what I wish to say to May, and to others? To Edgar too, the one I had always thought of as merely brutal, whose kindness shimmers, in a certain light, like quick gold brushstrokes touching his shoulders, his face, throwing one utterly off guard. You’re magnificent, he said, and I thought in that instant, to my great surprise, if I could love anyone now, it would be this man, arrogant and imperfect as he is, for in that moment, in our strange landscape, I felt shaken, touched, as if he had opened up my very flesh. I know this is not love as May knows it, but it is a kind of love, springing from some hard truth, gazed at together, truth and longing.

  When May comes in with her easel, I notice her burgundy gloves, still draped over the frame.

  “Shouldn’t you move your gloves, May?”

  May follows my glance to the frame.

  “I had forgotten the gloves, but actually, I like them there, Lyd. I think they add something.”

  I shrug. As May sets up her easel, and prepares to paint, I thread my needle with a light blue floss, for the wild sweet William, and begin a fishbone stitch for the petals. Each small flower has five petals, like five slender blue hearts, and all of these flowers together create a burst of color.

  I almost hold my breath as I try the first few stitches. I can never be sure if my design will come out right. The color shines against the white ground, and in a few minutes I can see that the petals, although simple, will look much like the myriad petals of a sweet William.

  iv.

  “Could you hold your hands still for a moment, Lyddy?”

  I hold still, gazing at my right hand, held just above the silk, in the act of pushing the needle through. The needle shines, silvery, in my fingers. Mother’s porcelain thimble crowns my second finger. The silk is pierced by silver. I keep my left hand still, just under the cloth, holding the needle as it comes through beneath.

  May sits so close to me that I can hear the smallest rustle of her skirt. Her lemony cologne mingles with the stronger smell of the oils.

  When Edgar visits, in the late morning, he looks hot and winded. As I break my pose, I can see his damp shirt beneath his summer coat. I feel a kind of humming inside me.

  “Your sister told me you were posing for her again,” he says. “I wished to see for myself.”

  I smile, and my face grows hot. And are you in love, then? I ask myself. And what do you expect to happen? Nothing. Nothing. Only this, his eyes upon me, the air between us quickly threaded through with something blue, gold, barely visible. I can have this much.

  May is looking at me, curious. She looks as if she’s forgotten what she’s doing, why she’s here. She almost asks me something, but then seems to think better of it.

  All I can think is that this humming is something I acknowledge and accept. I am guilty of nothing more.

  Degas tosses himself into the chair by my bed, as May helps me find my pose again. She touches my shoulder—“Good, Lyd”—and then my chin—“C’est bien.” Before she moves away, she holds her hand to my cheek. Her hand is warm, and I am for a dazed moment on a lawn in Pennsylvania with May, her small hand hot on my cheek, as she turns my face toward her to gain my attention. Lyddy.

  I feel my face hot, still, as I look at my embroidery, the needle threaded with a rich purple for the wild columbine. I make a few stitches with the floss, hoping I can fill in one part of this upside-down flower, this gay plumage, fool’s cap, before May asks me to hold my pose.

  “Would you like me to read?” Edgar asks. “How about this? Tennyson?”

  Lydia at a Tapestry Frame, Collection of the Flint Institute of Arts, Gift of the Whiting Foundation, 1967.32.

  I know May will ask for “The Lady of Shalott,” and she does. It was her favorite when she was little. Tennyson’s words, in Degas’ voice and accent, seem to break off bits of color, the rhymes sweeping the colors into arcs, as strong as nets.

  She left the web, she left the loom,

  She made three paces through the room,

  She saw the water-lily bloom,

  She looked down to Camelot.

  I used to love this poem, although I find it a bit sillier now, too romantic and melodramatic, and Edgar seems to think so too, for he adds a touch of mockery to his reading, undercutting Tennyson’s sense of tragedy, as the Lady sings her dying song, on her way to Camelot, heartsick for love of Lancelot. Yet, as Edgar reaches the end, his voice becomes more serious. May and I join him for the last lines, from memory.

  He said, ‘She has a lovely face;

  God in his mercy lend her grace,

  The Lady of Shalott.’

  The poem floats in the room.

  “Pa
s mal,” Edgar says. I look at my fingers, pushing the needle through, with the deep purple thread. I wish I could see his face. I feel his eyes on me, scraping and gentle, grave and amused, passionate and objective.

  “You must wish for a rest, Lyddy?” May asks.

  “I’m all right,” I say, but I think, No, it’s not rest I desire, but to be here, with this light, this needle, these eyes.

  vii.

  After tea, May dresses, to see friends, she says, at the Comédie Française. I picture Edgar, sitting just behind her, half in shadow.

  After writing a letter to each of Aleck’s children, I stand in the lamplight, in my bare feet and robe, looking at the painting May has begun of me. It’s already a striking picture, showing a woman behind an embroidery frame, sewing, her head bent forward. A waterfall of white splashes on the left side of the canvas—the curtain, that must be. May has made a line, in gold, along my neck and shoulder, and my right arm. She has brought the most detail to my face so far. But what is that splash of deep burgundy, almost black, near the middle of the picture? Looking at my embroidery frame, I see May’s new gloves lying peacefully over the top.

  a sense of something terribly valuable

  In bed, I open my Tennyson to “Tithonus.” A luscious, slow-moving poem, a love-poem of sorts.

  I wither slowly in thine arms, / Here at the quiet limit of the world.

  I wake out of a dream (I am on a boat, and the sky has grown dark. Someone stands behind me, touching my arm. As I turn, I see that it is Edgar, only he’s younger, much younger, his face more open, eager. He brings my hand halfway to his mouth, and). A figure shadows my doorway. I am frightened for a moment (a woman was murdered just last week in Paris, I remember, the details lurid in the papers), but of course the figure is simply May. Her white nightgown glimmers in the blacks and grays of my room. She eases herself around the embroidery frame, where the white silk floats like a dusky window.

  “Lyddy.”

  “Yes, May.”

  “May I come into your bed?”

  May has not made such a request in a dozen years at least—more—although when she was little she often slept in my bed; I knew, whenever we moved to a new house, she would come down the dark hallway and slip into my bed for reassurance, night after night. We moved so often.

  I raise the duvet, and May comes in beside me. I give her part of my pillow and touch her face. Wet, is it? I stroke her cheek, and she comes close, her arms around me, her face cradled in the hollow between my shoulder and my breast.

  “Are you all right, May?”

  I touch her hair. My dream lingers strangely.

  Wrapping my arms about her, I feel her delicate shoulder blades, her thin arms. She smells like tobacco smoke, bittersweet, and wine, and something else too, licorice maybe, or sweet, ripe pears. Her lemon cologne is faint now. She seems hot, almost feverish. Her hair brushes against my neck.

  “Was the play good, May?”

  “Oui.”

  May moves away from me. She sits on my bed in the dark now, close to me. I can almost see her hair, thick and curling around her shoulders. I cannot see her face.

  “I went to Edgar’s house afterwards,” she adds after a moment. I’m surprised, and can’t at first think what to say.

  “Ah bon! Who went with you?”

  “Oh, a few people,” May says carefully. “I don’t think you know them.”

  “Did you enjoy their company?”

  her arm around his neck, her face joyous

  She lies next to me again, on her back. I can see her face gleaming pale in the dark. She’s quiet for a long time, and then she says slowly, “Yes. Yes, I did.”

  I urge myself to be glad for my sister, to grant her her invisible triumph, known only to herself, and, in all quietness, to me. Good jumping, May, Aleck says, and I say, Be careful.

  May’s voice swims out of the dark, thick and strangely harsh. “You won’t leave me, will you, Lyddy?”

  May brings her face to my shoulder. I feel the heat of her breath on my skin.

  “Stay here, don’t be sick. I won’t be able to live if you become really sick again, and leave me.”

  “You will, though, May. Tu vivras. You’ll live as well as you possibly can.”

  I’m overwhelmed by him.

  “I won’t be able to paint.”

  “You will paint. You’ll paint gorgeous things.”

  I’ll come and see what you do.

  “You don’t understand, Lyddy. You can’t know. I need to know you’re in the world. No one else is like you. Personne.” She adds, “I always thought I’d have you.”

  You’re the one she loves most in the world.

  Then what is death?

  “Well, you have me still. Je suis encore là.”

  I lie awake in the darkness and listen as May’s breathing becomes more regular. I hear the city’s early-morning sounds: horses on pavement, someone calling to another, a train in the distance. I hold my sister, against the darkness.

  viii.

  The sky glitters this morning, almost turquoise. Paris shimmers, laid out in a bowl of gay shapes. How strange to be ill on such a day.

  Sitting at my embroidery frame after breakfast, posing for May, I gaze again at my wild columbine. I’ve been able to make only a few stitches. I yearn to fill in my second flower. My back aches, and I cannot feel the thimble on my second finger. I cannot even feel the needle, either above or below the silk ground. I was sick again this morning, and May looked discouraged as she helped me wash my face and get dressed. I wonder whether this will be May’s last picture of me. I think May wonders this too, because there’s a new quietness between us. She’s intensely focused on her work, and she paints for a long time without a pause.

  When Mother comes in for a little while, to read to us, I ask her for “Tithonus,” because this poem hovers in my mind today. As she approaches the end, I listen to each word.

  Yet hold me not for ever in thine East:

  How can my nature longer mix with thine?

  Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold

  Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet

  Upon thy glimmering thresholds

  “Is Degas coming for tea this week, May?” Mother asks, after she’s finished reading.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  Release me, and restore me to the ground

  “Is he busy these days?”

  “Oui. Very.”

  Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave:

  Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn.

  “Do you think you’ll put this one in the Impressionist exhibition, next year?”

  “Je l’espère.”

  Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;

  I earth in earth forget these empty courts,

  And thee returning on thy silver wheels.

  x.

  Two more days of posing, and on the third day, after a long morning, May says, “Time to rest, Lyddy.” Her voice sounds oddly gentle. As I move out of my pose, I see May absorbed in putting away her paints.

  “The light’s changed, Lyddy. We should stop.”

  May looks at me for a moment, her hand on her hip.

  “Would you like to see? I think I almost have it.”

  I can’t imagine May painting another, at least of me, that I could love as well.

  In the picture, I bend slightly toward my embroidery, utterly absorbed in what I’m sewing. One can see the silk ground only from underneath, where my hand dissolves into loose brushstrokes, deep pink, white, blue-gray. What are you embroidering, I ask myself, a landscape? a boat? It could be anything. I’m bent at my labor.

  I see now that May’s painting creates a kind of memory. Whether or not anyone ever knew me, she will offer a memory of me, for the world to claim. And I see something else: she pictures me as a woman who has had her wishes fulfilled. The day is luminous, the woman’s dress a meadow, as she bends to her creation, on her own, desirous simply of
what she already has. I yearn to be like this, to have the grace of such satisfaction.

  “You’ve made a whole world, May.”

  “You like the feeling of it?”

  “It’s very absorbing.”

  “I like the way this turned out.” May points to the line of the embroidery frame, and I follow her finger right up to the maroon splotch in the middle—her gloves. I think, surely May will be doing more with that. Surely she won’t leave it here, marring such a perfect image.

  But May says, “I could almost call it done right now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oui.”

  I gaze at the daubs of paint, especially in the lower half of the painting. Suddenly the whole picture seems to waver. To allow that paint to stay, so unformed—has she ever done this so fully?

  “Will you do more with her hand?”

  “Maybe not. I like it like that. It’s like photographs, Lyddy, when the person moves, or the camera moves, and things blur.”

  “Yes, I can see that. But in a painting, you have a chance to catch things very still?” I think of the hours I’ve sat here, my neck aching, precisely to help her paint such stillness.

  “But what if things aren’t always meant to stay still, Lyddy? Think of it. The world moves, the light changes. Your hand moves, as you embroider.”

  “But it wasn’t moving all the time.”

  “But if I hadn’t been painting you, and you’d simply been embroidering, it would have been.”

  I feel confused, as if I’m trying to present an important argument to May, but I’ve lost the thread. Why not allow incompleteness, change? I think, and I almost laugh, as I realize how May has met my own thoughts. Even this image of utter satisfaction must show its own artifice, its fragility, its readiness to dissolve into paint, the raggedness of desire.

  If May has painted me on an island, then, she has made clear how the sand shifts, how the water works at it, shapes it, dissolves it. When there’s lightning, a tree falls, and lizards dart into the underbrush. And that river of color, there (I study the maroon, the burgundy—what color is it?): maybe that’s the mud of the island itself, or the blood (my blood), the unformed stuff of it. And is it the blood of illness, then, or of life? Or is it of illness and life, both, all rolled together in a terrifying and luscious stream? It’s over my heart, in the picture, almost as if it springs from my heart, or from May’s toward me. She knows more about me than I had thought. The color is at once a mistake and a defiant splash: Here I am, pigment, stuff, the raw material, and what are you going to do about it? It’s blood, and desire, and love, and pain, and fury. You can’t staunch it. The question is: how to live with it?