I Always Loved You

by Robin Oliveira

  “Are your paintings selling, Monsieur Degas?” Robert asked, after the polite talk of their ocean voyage and the stress of their move had been dissected while they devoured the exquisite tart, the pastry crust so flaky that not even the heavy cream drowned out its buttery lightness. Occasionally, Mary had to translate Degas’s rapid French for her father, but he was able to negotiate the conversation if no one strayed too far into the irregular verbs or conditional tense. But her father could be, with his limited capacity, just as rude in French as he was in English. Mary set her fork on the table, a drop of cream falling onto the white linen tablecloth, newly unpacked from its trunk that morning.

  “Father, you cannot ask Monsieur Degas such a personal question.”

  Degas, seated across the table from Mary, shrugged and said mildly, “How does a man live as an artist? An important question, indeed,” but he said nothing more as the grandfather clock, adjusted this morning by the clockmaker, ticked in the ensuing silence.

  Robert, used to being heeded and obeyed, waited for a longer explanation that did not come. Mary knew that a question like that from anyone else would have earned a resounding storm of mockery from Degas. She turned a pleading gaze on her mother to take up the mantle of conversation before her father could untangle the evasion and realize that he’d just been handled by a guest in his own home.

  With a barely perceptible nod toward Mary, Katherine said, “Monsieur Degas, why don’t you tell us about your family? I’m sure we’d love to meet them.”

  “Madame, my parents have died. I have four siblings, one of whom lives in New Orleans and has a family there. I went to see them several years ago. I very much liked visiting your country. Have you been to New Orleans?”

  “We haven’t been to the South,” Katherine said. “We travel to Europe instead. No decent Northerner can abide the South after the war, but I suppose our quarrels didn’t affect a Frenchman on tour.”

  “You are here in Paris as many years after our war with Prussia. Have our recent troubles affected you in any way?”

  “I suppose not,” Katherine said. “Though I do miss the glorious Hôtel de Ville and the Tuileries Palace. So lovely, those buildings.”

  “I thought the Communards here had some basis, you understand, for their fury, perhaps as your Southerners had basis. After all, you did destroy their way of life.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The war changed everything for your Southerners, did it not?”

  “You cannot tell me you condone slavery?”

  “Not at all. You mistake me,” Degas said, avoiding looking at Mary. “It must be the language difficulties.”

  “I’ve lost no French,” Katherine said, bringing a napkin to her lips and appealing to Mary.

  “I should have warned you that Monsieur Degas says things he doesn’t mean just to roil the conversation,” Mary said, fixing Degas with an imploring gaze, which he returned with a blank stare of innocence.

  “Then he should hardly have any difficulty answering my question,” Robert said, his French suddenly more fluent than it had been all night. “On average, Monsieur Degas, what do you think you sell—how many paintings a year?”

  “Why don’t you just pull out your ledger and show him our finances, Father?” Mary said rapidly in English. “Or better yet, empty your pockets and let him count your coins, and then he can do the same so you’ll be satisfied as to his economic circumstances.” She switched to French and turned to Degas. “I’m sorry, Monsieur Degas. My father’s interests in art, as they are in anything, are mercenary, not aesthetic. He doesn’t believe in buying art, so I don’t know why he is asking.”

  “I like a good argument, mademoiselle, just as it seems your father does,” Degas said. He addressed Robert: “I don’t keep records, Monsieur Cassatt, if that is what you are asking, so I cannot fulfill your request. To keep me eating, I do portraits in the afternoon. Tell me, didn’t Mary say you were in railroads? What will you do in Paris now that you are retraité?”

  Mary flashed Degas a grateful smile for the expert diversion.

  “Mary’s brother Aleck is the one in railroads. I’m in stocks. Or was.” Robert took a sip of coffee. “Maybe I’ll take up painting in my spare time. I’ll have nothing else to do.”

  Degas’s smile turned brittle. “My dear Monsieur Cassatt, you will find that painting is not very difficult when you don’t know how, but that it’s very difficult when you do. But, you’re right, take it up, as you might horse racing. It’s a pleasant enough pastime. Anyone with a brush can do it. Or perhaps we could exchange occupations. I could go into stocks,” Degas said. “Would an hour of instruction from you suffice to prepare me? That seems plenty for such a straightforward endeavor.”

  The evening was threatening to end in outright war. Mary was grateful when Anna carried in a bowl of cut apples doused with brandy, a smattering of pecans and figs, and the morning’s leftover brioches on a tray. She set the brandy ablaze, then smothered it with a cloth and spooned the caramelized fruit over the stale brioche. Mary watched the girl march away with the tureen, astonished at her timing and resourcefulness.

  “We Cassatts are a practical bunch,” Robert said. “Mame is our first artist.”

  “Mame?” Degas said.

  “My endearment for our Mary. I confess I don’t understand why she should continue working if she can’t sell what she paints. What is the purpose of any endeavor if not to make money? And how does an artist tell whether or not he is successful? For that matter, how does one know whether or not she is any good at all, or whether she is just daubing at canvases and deluding herself?”

  “Father, you insult our guest, and me,” Mary said.

  “It’s a valid question. As your father, I have a responsibility to ask whether or not you are wasting your time.”

  “Don’t ask Monsieur Degas. Ask me,” Mary said.

  “Do you believe, Monsieur Cassatt, that Mary will only be a great artist if she makes a lot of money?” Degas said.

  “In business, that is how we define success.” Robert turned to Mary. “You cannot pretend that you do not want to sell your paintings.”

  “Of course I want to sell my paintings.”

  “Then why is it so terrible that I asked?” her father said.

  “Because you are talking about money.”

  “We in France despise money,” Degas said. “We despise its necessity, having to run after it, to think about it, to have to acquire it, to settle accounts, to owe people things.”

  “Thank God the world isn’t run by artists,” Robert said, seemingly unable to think of a further reply to a man who didn’t appreciate the value of money.

  “No artist wants to run the world,” Degas said.

  “More is the pity,” Lydia said, breaking into the conversation in her honeyed voice. They all turned to her now, as if remembering for the first time that she, too, was at the table.

  “Just so, mademoiselle,” Degas said. “Tell me, the North Atlantic didn’t undo you, I hope? When I crossed, the waves were terrifying.” He asked more questions about her plans and whether or not she would sit for her sister, complimenting her on her command of French and promising to escort her to the Louvre, showering such chivalrous attention on her that the rest of the evening passed without incident.

  Degas took his leave toward eleven, before the omnibuses shut down for the evening. Anna had dried his hat by placing it on a napkin in the kitchen near the stove, but his coat was still damp and someone had stolen his umbrella from the landing.

  “If you wish to never see me again,” Mary said, “I will understand.”

  “On the contrary. Your father matches Zola in his ignorance. Why would I deprive myself of such fun?”

  “You were good to my father, but he had no right to your charity.”

  “Oh, but he is your father, mademoiselle,” Degas said, and placing his hat on his head, he strode onto the landing and down the echoing stairwell, its walls already
peeling paint, toward a rendezvous with some friends at the nearby Cirque Fernando, where he liked to watch the elephants, jugglers, horse riders, and the performer Miss La La, who executed the most bizarre skills while suspended from the ceiling by a rope gripped between her teeth. Some people accused Degas of being a recluse, but Mary had no idea how that rumor had ever begun. He was out every evening, either at a café concert, in his seat in his loge at the Opéra, eating dinner with friends, haunting a salon, or taking in the spectacle of the circus, delighting in every diversion, low or high, that filled the dark winter evenings and the sublime summer twilights, dreaming always of what to paint next, unencumbered by parent, wife, or child, free of every obligation save that of repaying his father’s debt.

  “Mame?” her father called.

  “Coming,” Mary said, and shut the door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The doctor, a Monsieur Girard, emerged from Lydia’s bedroom, his black bag in hand, and walked briskly into the parlor, where Robert and Mary awaited him. Mary had gone that morning to the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, on the Île de la Cité, to beg his presence, which had required a wait in his reception of two hours and a promise of double his payment if he would come directly to their home that evening after his clinic. She had not had to exaggerate to persuade him. After Degas’s visit, Lydia suffered all night long from a headache she described as an expanding balloon in her head. Overnight, her hands and face swelled so much that the skin was as tight as a leather glove. Katherine and Mary stayed up all night with her, plying her with laudanum to relieve her pain, and now, as Katherine followed the doctor down the hall after chaperoning his visit, a grim pallor washed across her fatigued face.

  “It is, I think, a problem of, if I may speak frankly, her elimination,” the doctor said. “Her urine is dark and frothy, which does not bode well. My prescription is that she must eat no meat, no poultry, no fish, just vegetables and fruit, but no sour fruit. Not a grain of salt is to be had. And no more laudanum, Madame Cassatt—and no wine, either. She must be stringent, for any careless indiscretion of diet may do her great harm. I must emphasize this rule most carefully. Any indiscretion can harm her irreparably.”

  “I hurt her, didn’t I, with the laudanum?” Katherine said.

  “It was the alcohol in the laudanum that was injurious to your daughter. I will get you the oil of poppy for her instead, to relieve headache, should it recur. She will help herself immensely if she can maintain discipline. But you must speak to your cook. You must insist. No salt in the food. No broth. No egg or bacon for breakfast. No bread. Just vegetables and fruit.”

  “For how long?”

  “For a while.”

  “But she cannot live on that forever.”

  “No, she cannot.”

  “But she will live?” Katherine said.

  “She must follow my prescription. She must also drink fresh blood daily at the abattoir, as soon as she is able. The one behind des Invalides provides a facility with clean glasses and the blood is always fresh. I will return tomorrow and every day after until she is well, then weekly after that.”

  Katherine and Mary exchanged looks. “Blood?” Katherine said.

  “It’s very helpful in cases such as these,” the doctor said.

  “Shall I go and fetch it for her now?” Mary asked. “If it will make her better?”

  “No. It will coagulate by the time you bring it to her and will be useless. She must take it there.”

  “But what if she isn’t well enough to go?”

  “Patience, mademoiselle. I will be back tomorrow. Give her coffee to rid her of the fluid that is making her swell. It will help her headache, too. I would bleed her, but the coffee will do for now. She is my patient and I will do everything I can to keep her from harm. You did well to come find me. How did you know to ask for me?”

  “I didn’t. I asked at the reception and the man there recommended you.”

  “Then you are lucky. Someone else might have killed her.”

  The grim words impaled Mary’s heart.

  “Should we have moved her from America? Was it too much for her?” Robert said.

  “Perhaps. It is impossible to know. Bonsoir,” he said to Mary and Katherine. “Do not worry. Worry never helps,” a sentiment that Mary thought distinctly French.

  When Robert and the doctor stepped outside to conduct the unsightly transaction of payment, Mary said, “She has visited Paris many times before, Mother. It cannot possibly be because she traveled here again. None of this is your fault.”

  “Was the dinner overly salty, do you think, last night?”

  “Lyddy hardly ate anything.”

  “She never does. Or she doesn’t when she doesn’t feel well. I should have noticed. Ask Anna to make coffee, would you, please, Mary? Oh, I’ll do it. You go sit with Lyddy. But don’t tell her about the blood. That will just make her ill all over again.”

  In Lydia’s bedroom, a low candle burned in lieu of the gas. She lay in a tangle of sheets, her cheeks so swollen her eyes were nearly shut, her right forearm thrown across her forehead.

  “Mama is bringing coffee. The doctor says it will help with the pain.”

  “Everything is swimming.”

  “It’s the laudanum. No more for you.”

  “I hate it, anyway. It makes the pain go away but I am so dizzy and stupid that I can’t utter a decent word. I’m sure the doctor thought I was simple.”

  “No one would ever believe you simple.”

  “Am I to live?” Lydia said.

  She would not have asked, Mary thought, but for the loosening of her tongue by the laudanum. Mary’s throat caught and she could not answer.

  “Is it that bad?” Lydia said.

  “No.”

  “You should never lie. You’re terrible at it.”

  “The doctor claims he’s brilliant.”

  “Is he?”

  “Of course.” He seemed brilliant, anyway. Or at least confident, and at this point that would have to pass as brilliant. “The French are gifted at medicine. Moving the family here was my conspiracy to get you near the best doctors. I arranged it all,” Mary said.

  “You just defeated your own argument. You didn’t want us here and you know it, Mary. And now I am ill and making things worse for you. I promise I will get better so that you can paint again and you won’t have to spend your days chasing after doctors and your nights taking care of me.”

  “It is Father I mind.”

  “He may grumble, but he doesn’t steal your days by keeping you up all night.”

  “If you apologize one more time, I will make you eat dinner alone with Monsieur Degas.”

  “Hardly a punishment.” Lydia lifted her arm and turned her head toward Mary. “Is he your beau?”

  “No.”

  “Then what is he?”

  Mary shrugged. “I cannot say.”

  “Well, he is not from Altoona.”

  Mary laughed. “Oh, darling Lyddy. What have I done without you?”

  Lydia yawned. “What you have done since I was last here: tried to get work done. Didn’t you say there was coffee?”

  Mary rose. Lydia was still pale, her skin dry and taut, but nothing, it seemed, not even illness, could alter her essential good nature, and it was this, Mary thought, more than diet or animal blood, that might save her. Abigail Alcott she missed, but Lydia was goodness itself.

  She shut the door behind her and went into the kitchen to try to hurry the coffee, where she found Katherine making lists for a weeping Anna, who had to be restrained from throwing the saltcellar out the window.

  The sole care of the family was deemed too much for Anna, and within days Katherine Cassatt hired a German woman, Mathilde, to help her.

  1878

  Chapter Twenty

  Within a week, Lydia’s health improved; she made daily forays with Robert to the abattoir to drink a glass of blood, releasing Mary to go back to work, but this release was preempted by her family’s e
xpectations regarding dinner times, family outings, dress shopping, and the vagaries of French plumbing. Not even her mother’s and sister’s previous extended visits had prepared Mary for her family’s constant presence and many demands.

  In the first week she repeated, “I can’t; I’m working,” so many times that that was all she seemed to say anymore, which meant that she left home in a terrible mood, arrived at her new studio in a terrible mood, and then first had to light the little stove because the room was bone cold. There had been so many advantages to living, essentially, in her studio, advantages she had lost in the move. She spent the mornings shivering until the coal warmed the air, preparing the many canvases she had purchased for the months ahead. It was now only six months until the fourth exhibition of the impressionists. Six months! How was she to produce the plethora of canvases she needed to make a presence? She couldn’t paint just one or two and submit them, as she had for the Salon. No, she needed at least eight, perhaps more, and she hadn’t ever produced that many original paintings in a year, let alone six months.

  Mary begged her mother to model for her, and hoped that once Lydia’s health stabilized she could paint her too. It would be a new beginning, painting her family, after the long drought of preparing for her parents’ arrival. Family cost nothing, unlike models, and the time they spent together might ease their disappointment with her dedication. Even her father said that he would submit to the brush. He had given her expenses a thorough going-over and praised the economy she’d shown in choosing the modest studio for its reduced rent, though he remained utterly indifferent to its drawbacks, strict in his belief that Mary must do everything to keep herself within budget, even tolerate the mess of horse and gutter that was the countrified Boulevard de Clichy. And so, once the Christmas and New Year’s festivities passed, with their bags of oranges and exchanges of gifts, her mother rode with Mary on the omnibus crowded with clerks and shopkeepers bundled against the wet Parisian chill to the bitter cold of her studio, which they mitigated with hot tea brewed on the spirit lamp while the coal gathered strength. Far from Robert’s impatient probing, they spoke of Lydia’s health, Mary’s brothers, Aleck and Gardner, and the news Katherine read in the newspaper, propped open on her lap while Mary worked.