She left the window but stayed at that end of the room, and Thomas was at the foot of the beds. He had picked up his pajamas and her nightgown, which he held out to her. “I’ll go down the hall,” he said. “Why don’t you change?” She took the nightgown and smiled.
Four years earlier, on the night before Thomas left to go to college, they had met at the old peach dock on the Retreat to say goodbye, and they had taken off some of their clothes and had done something. There had been the smell and stickiness of Thomas’s wetness on her thighs, and as she ran back home through the dying peach orchards that night, she stopped to rub off the flaky residue with some tall grasses, but in the years since then she had heard the talk of other women, the other help at Colonel Murphy’s especially, and she concluded that she was still a virgin, and that her first time might hurt. That she might bleed, the way Mandy had done, or not, the way Esther had not done, their first times. That she would have to guide him without hardly knowing herself where he should go. That she should relax and let herself become slippery. That he would find pleasure in it and she would most likely not find any at all. That it wouldn’t take very long no matter what. But pleasure could come for her, in time. She’d heard her parents, Abel and Una, in their bedroom, trying so hard not to make noise, whispering, shushing each other, but at the end of it, her father was always silent, but her mother moaned and purred, and from the sound of it, it seemed to feel good.
Yes, they had done something like this before, and even before that Thomas and Beal and Randall had swum and played on the beach in their underwear or even naked countless times, so it was not modesty about her own body or about his that seemed to stand in the way, and not the prospects for pain or pleasure, but simply about doing it right. Would they—could they do this right? She didn’t want Thomas to fumble or fail, as what was about to happen pretty much rested with him. She thought this as she undressed. Mary had given her a “trousseau,” as she called it, along with a little speech saying that since they didn’t know when or where they would be setting up their first house, this trousseau was mostly for Beal. What it was, mostly, was undergarments, and Beal laughed, remembering how curious she had been as a child about what white women wore under their dresses. Since then, as a maid in the colonel’s house, Beal had plenty of opportunities to learn what white women wore under their dresses, plenty of opportunities to wash these soiled garments and attend to other women’s monthly necessities. She had been expected to wear proper undergarments, but she held the line against anything with steel in it or bone—no bustle or hoop. Never. She didn’t care what ladies wore; she wasn’t anyone’s lady.
When she had shed everything, she stood in the middle of the room taking note of herself, as if her nakedness had been let out of a cage. She loved being naked; she always had. When she swam with Thomas and Randall on the river shore, she was the first of them to strip and the last to get dressed again. She didn’t mind that Thomas always stole peeks at her. But now, when she heard Thomas turning the key, she hurriedly slipped her gown over her head and stood in the moonlight to greet him.
“Do you want to lie with me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you nervous?”
“A little. Are you?”
As if in response, she noticed the movement of his erection in his pajama pants. She supposed that was all the answer he needed to give. Suddenly she had a vision of them from outside their window, the two of them standing face-to-face in their nightclothes. From outside the window they looked like a very young man and an even younger woman, but a man and woman in love. Exiles for love, meeting in a foreign land in this rented room. This sudden out-of-body view took just an instant, but it was strange, as if someone or something, an angel maybe, had put it there for her to see. It helped. The city would now let them be; Mama and Daddy and Miss Mary and Madame Bernault were gone; there was no one else in Beal’s world. She took his hand, and in the darkness of this French night it didn’t seem any paler than her own, just a hand.
He led her to the bed, the one that had been turned down for her. She hiked up her nightgown, and he dropped the trousers of his pajamas, and they seemed to do it all just fine; they kissed and hugged, and Thomas explored her body with his hands, which to the surprise of them both made her jolt spastically. He stopped, as if he had caused her pain, as if she were saying she didn’t want him to touch her there. “It’s okay,” she said, feeling breathless. “Don’t stop.” Her own hand brushed against his penis, and she was horrified by how big it seemed; it would never fit into the firm folds between her legs. But then he took a position above her, aligned his body with hers, and by some sort of magic or design he was entering her in a way that was very right—yes, she breathed, right in there. Before this moment she had never conceived of a there in her own body, a place somewhat apart from the day-to-day, but Thomas had surely found it. It did hurt a little, though in the morning there was only a tiny rose blush on the sheet, and when it was done, Thomas was holding her and saying her name the way she loved to hear. Not so much to it, really. Even in Paris, France.
3
The interview with Mother Digby had gone just about as Thomas had expected. One thing he did not want to hear was some nun expounding on the challenges he faced, on the barriers Beal would encounter as—he had expected her to use this word and she had—a “Negress.” But of course, expounding on challenges was what she had done. Thomas could take refuge only in the fact that she clearly held him in no higher regard than she did Beal. In fact, if he discerned correctly, she was no big fan of Mary’s either. When he said he was exploring various possibilities for a career in business, she acted as if this were code for doing nothing at all. She looked at Thomas and saw idleness; she thought he was stupid. He was supposed to think she was treating him perfectly properly, but he was also supposed to feel bad without really knowing why, to go away with a gnawing disquiet. He’d seen this performance from his mother dozens and dozens of times: how perfectly fascinating, she would say. And Mrs. Bayly would, Mother Digby supposed, “have to find some way to pass her time”; the thought made her flick her hand into the void. Thomas wanted to strangle the old witch, but that morning he had seen some of the challenge. They had slept in each other’s arms on that small nuptial couch, but as soon as the dawn began to break and the roosters, swallows, and pigeons began their racket, Beal was awake and up and dressed, because that is what she had done at dawn every day of her life. What was she supposed to do then? The evening before, Madame Bernault had mentioned to them that the next street over was the market street for the area. Beal knew plenty about early-morning markets. Thomas was still half asleep when she said she was going to see what French people ate, and it seemed proper enough to him for her to go see it while he roused himself, bathed, and got dressed for breakfast. She came back in the cheerful company, in fact, of the hotel owner, who was carrying six long loaves of bread, but how long would that remain interesting to her?
Now, on the way out, as a sort of parting shot, Mother Digby said, “I think you will find that a number of young Americans are taking up residence here. Artists,” she said, once again curling her lip, “in many cases.”
“I do not expect to be seeking out either Americans or artists,” he answered. “I am here because I am trying to get away from Americans, and I don’t think any artist would have much interest in me.”
“Quite,” she had answered, but after lunch Thomas was indeed heading off in the company of an American who called himself an artist. The sun was already low, and as they wound through the twists and turns of these ancient streets, Thomas was intermittently bathed in light from the sun behind him and groping in the darkness of shadow. Some of the buildings, five-story apartments, seemed modern; some of them seemed nothing more than peasant cottages sandwiched in between. Every few blocks there was a whole new line of shops, their fronts plastered with signboards advertising wonders that seemed unlikely in these dreary little hovels. Stanley and Thomas had t
o keep stepping up onto the stoops and sidewalks to avoid the drays and wagonettes hurtling down the middle of the street. The whole purpose of all this vastness, it seemed, was to cram more than two million souls into the tightest, dingiest spaces imaginable. It seemed like the life of moles; any people Thomas could glimpse in these gloomy caves stood as black silhouettes. In the midst of all this, Stanley Dean kept up a continuous stream of facts and details: here’s the café where all the medical students go after class; here’s where we buy paint and canvas; there, you can see the towers of Saint-Sulpice; here’s where my friend has a room. The closer they got to what appeared to be Dean’s destination at the center of the Quarter, the dingier it all looked and the more Thomas felt out of place. As a child of the flatlands along the Chesapeake Bay, the two elements that were irreplaceable for him were light and wind. Beal felt the same way. Light and wind: when you have been raised in both, you cannot live without either. That’s what Thomas believed. Struggling down these cramped, airless streets reminded him of being all but lost in the miles of his father’s peach trees, where you could be overcome by the oily fragrance of the blossoms or the buzzing of bees and wasps. But just as it used to occur when Thomas finally reached the edge of the orchards, Thomas and Stanley Dean rounded the last corner and burst into the light of a broad intersection of boulevards and a large open plaza in front of a largish church. Thomas exhaled with relief. There were cafés on two of the corners, and they seemed to be filling up. Dean suggested that they might sit for a lemonade or a beer.
“That would be fine,” said Thomas, assuming that Stanley was angling them into one of these, where there seemed to be an ocean of chairs and little tables with groups of two or three hunched in conversation.
“Oh no,” said Stanley, turning Thomas around the corner toward a humbler establishment at the bottom of the block, the Café Badequin, the sign said. “That is where we go,” he said proudly. The sidewalk was narrower here, just wide enough for a single line of tables. Two old gents were playing cards at one end, but at the other there did seem to be a larger group convening.
“In fact,” said Dean as they walked down the block, “one of my friends at the Académie here is a Negro from Hartford. He was planning to go to Rome, but found he was quite at home in Paris. He might be here. Perhaps your wife would like to meet him.”
“I’ll ask her,” said Thomas. “Perhaps.”
“I hope I am not overstepping, but your wife is quite striking…”
From the way he trailed off, Thomas assumed he was about to say “for a Negro,” which at home had been the obligatory suffix to her name. But in fact Dean had something quite different in mind.
“Do you think she might like to sit for a drawing sometime? A charcoal? A pastel?”
“That’s something people do?”
“Yes. We talk about it all the time.”
“Talk about what?”
“Finding people to draw, to paint. Women really, to be honest. Men are boring to paint.”
“Why Beal?”
“Because she is so unusual looking. Do you mind me saying that about your wife?”
“I don’t know,” said Thomas. “I don’t know what married people are supposed to mind, or not mind.”
“Do you think she would agree to sit?”
“I wouldn’t know, really.”
“Would I have your permission to ask her?”
Thomas said yes, and in fact, he was charmed by the idea of having a drawing of her, a painting even. He could not begin to form a real opinion of this man—whether he was simply open and friendly or slightly pathetic; whether as an artist he had any talent at all; whether this interest in Beal was something Thomas welcomed. But they had arrived at the end table, where Thomas was introduced as “just off the boat and looking for a place to live,” which wasn’t exactly right, but was truer than Stanley Dean knew. Thomas noticed that none of these men seemed to be the promised Negro, unless a Negro from Hartford had extremely light skin.
“Are you joining the Académie or the École for your lessons?” asked one alarmingly pale and unhealthy-looking man.
“Donald Makepeace, from Chicago,” said Stanley.
“Well, neither,” said Thomas. “I’m not an artist.”
“Neither are we,” said another of the group in a thick and cultured Richmond drawl. “So said le Maître Rodolphe this morning,” he added.
“But he’s willing to take our money just the same,” said Donald.
“After all, the Académie is on Dragon Street.” They all laughed, a joke of some sort.
“Thomas and his wife are relocating,” said Stanley. Clearly, he was pleased to have made this catch.
A heavier, dark man in the corner had been reading and did not bother to look up when Thomas was introduced. His forefingers were yellow with nicotine, and his stringy hair curled over his collar. He seemed very much the oldest at this table of students. When Dean used the word relocating, he glanced up and curled his lip. “Must be nice to be rich,” he said, and returned to his reading.
“Arthur Kravitz, from New Jersey,” said Stanley.
The Virginian—Fred Shippen—broke in. “Arthur, give the man a chance. We know nothing about him, do we?” It passed as a defense of sorts, though Thomas didn’t love being spoken of as if he weren’t standing there, as if any additional information about him could tip a judgment against him. Arthur did not respond. “So what are your plans?” the Virginian said, beckoning for Thomas to sit beside him.
“Moving here was actually quite sudden. We haven’t had a great deal of time to plan. I am not sure we know exactly what we are going to do.” Thomas realized as he was saying this how feckless it made him sound; the image of Mother Digby came to his eyes. But he didn’t have anything truly more impressive to say. “I will be investigating my options this winter.” This earned nothing but another snort from the dark man behind the newspaper in the corner; Thomas couldn’t fault him.
“You make it sound as if you are on the lam,” said Fred.
“I wouldn’t say that, really,” answered Thomas, and he didn’t elaborate on his “really,” though Stanley was harmless enough and Fred seemed a friendly and well-mannered person. There was a moment of silence, and then Stanley introduced the fact that Thomas was looking for a tutor in French, which elicited the final disagreeable snort from fat Arthur. “Oh yes. First step. Master the language. By all means.”
The waiter brought their drinks, and Thomas had a chance to look around. This was indeed the student quarter, as Stanley had promised, and what was on view was not high fashion, but the freedom that seemed to be in every garment, every gesture, every meeting of friends, male and female, on the sidewalk. Here in this rather carnivalesque bustle, Thomas had simply no idea what he’d gotten into, what he and Beal faced. He wanted to see her now, and he truly wanted to avoid walking the long way back to the hotel with Stanley and then perhaps being forced to invite him to join them at dinner, and when Fred the Virginian stood up and announced he had to go, Thomas jumped up to join him. Stanley seemed torn about loosening his grip, but finally the pleasure of staying behind and gossiping about him, about Beal, won out. That’s how Thomas figured it. He and Fred walked single file up the street, and when they reached the boulevard, they stood for a moment to introduce themselves more formally like the well-raised Southern boys they both were. “Why are you here, really?” Fred asked. “In Paris.”
“There’s no reason for us to be in Paris. It’s just where we’re getting started. I’m not that comfortable in cities, actually. I grew up on a farm.”
“I grew up at a college. My father is a professor of anatomy at the University of Virginia. He thinks drawing nudes is a fine thing to do. He just thinks I should dispense with the skin.” He laughed, seemed to encourage Thomas to see the humor of the thing. Yes, thought Thomas, Fred Shippen’s father did sound like a man with a wit; his own father had not wasted time on jokes.
“But…” said Fred.
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“I’m sorry,” said Thomas. “But what?”
“But then, why in France?” he asked, as if he had been purposefully thrown off the scent by his own disclosures. “Why have you left the United States and come to France?”
Thomas didn’t blame Fred for being a little exasperated by what may have seemed his evasiveness. Thomas was not one to evade, but from his earliest years he had the habit of answering questions with a precision and a literalness that a lawyer could admire; he gave no one the benefit of implicatures. It frustrated him as a child to be scolded for being fresh; You didn’t ask that, he would say in his own defense. But at last Fred had asked the right question and got a direct answer. “I am in France because of my marriage. It’s a long story. We had to leave Maryland. My wife is colored.”
For a moment the good Virginia boy had nothing to say. At last he said, in a strangely admiring tone, “Just as I thought. Running from the law, in a way.”
“Maybe it’s better to say we were exiled. But what we did was illegal in your home state. I’m not really sure about mine, but it didn’t matter what the law said. Our families tried to stop us.”
“Hers too?”
“Of course. Why not?” Thomas may have answered with more keenness than he intended; he was trying to be likable here.
“Well,” said Fred, slightly bruised. “I’d think it would be quite a step up for her. Why wouldn’t her parents want that?”
“Her parents wanted only what was best for her. If I’d been in their place, I wouldn’t have let her go with me without a fight. Her brother used to be my best friend, and our friendship ended over it.”
This time the pause in the conversation felt more fraught. “I’m sorry,” said the Virginian. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”
“It’s all right. I know that wasn’t what you intended. Beal and I have seen it all.” Thomas said this and hoped it was true, though he wasn’t sure. “She risked a whole lot more falling in love with me than I did. It took me a long time to figure that out, even though my sister had told me that over and over.” They had reached a corner where Fred announced he had to branch off. “I have enjoyed meeting you,” Thomas said. “I’m sorry if I sounded belligerent.”
Thomas and Beal in the Midi Page 6
