I Always Loved You

by Robin Oliveira

  Yes, Mary thought, at least there was that. But he was cruel and facetious. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be with a man who would break someone’s heart for the fun of it, especially someone he claimed to love, as he said he loved Berthe.

  “Do you still have time?” Berthe said. “To reconsider?”

  Mary nodded.

  Berthe took Mary’s elbow. “Good. Then let’s forget our sadness tonight. Show me everything. Show me what you have done.”

  Shaking off her confusion, Mary introduced each canvas, telling Berthe the problems she had had with each, the challenges she had overcome, her terror at how they would be received. They were all there: Eloise in the blue chair, the portraits of her family and a second one of Mary Ellison, a series of pictures of women at the Opéra, two commissioned portraits. At some point, a knock came at the door and Eugène, his cravat askew, stepped inside and listened too. He followed them about the room, taking time in front of each of the canvases to study them.

  When Mary finished, Berthe said, “They are all beautiful. Every one of them.”

  “Mademoiselle Cassatt paints just like you, doesn’t she, darling?” Eugène said, directing his conversation to his wife, as he often did. “Your touch is a little lighter, Berthe, but Mary’s impasto is brilliant.”

  “What a lovely compliment, Monsieur Manet,” Mary said, thinking that Eugène might be too dim to be able to silence Degas and too in love with Berthe to believe anything bad of her, but that he was entirely adept at kindness. “Tell me, how is your darling baby? Is she wonderful?”

  “Yes, she is. I’ve gone mad with love—haven’t I, Berthe?”

  Berthe smiled a vague, far-off smile and said, “Yes. Mad.”

  “Are you tired, darling?” Eugène said.

  Berthe smiled a weak assent and Eugène took her by the elbow and guided her out the door into the party. As Mary watched them go, Eugène attentive and careful, Mary thought that the art of love might just be blindness: the willingness not to see the truth of anything, to blur life’s sharp edges and drift on an impression of one’s own making, to act as if the life you lived was the life you wanted.

  • • •

  Later, after the harried ticket taker had finished wiping up the spilled champagne and lugged the empty bottles to the dumbwaiter, she held out the keys to the apartment to Edgar and Mary, who were the last to leave. It was past midnight. Mary’s family and the Nierikers had taken their leave an hour ago. Caillebotte, exhausted, had left in anticipation of the next day’s ordeal, as had Portier. Degas snatched the keys from the girl and pocketed them, promising that he would lock up and return in the morning in time to open the door. “Now, off with you.”

  “Monsieur Portier will not be happy with me if something goes wrong. You promise you’ll be here?” the girl said.

  Apparently, she had noticed whose pictures were still missing and had drawn her own conclusions as to Edgar’s reliability.

  “Yes, yes,” he said.

  The sound of the front door shutting echoed in the empty apartment. The girl’s retreating footsteps clattered on the marble stairs, the only sound penetrating the apartment turned gallery. Mary and Edgar had been arguing when the girl had interrupted them. They began again now.

  “If you wanted to have your little joke, you could have just said something to Édouard alone. You put me in a terrible position, having to make up an explanation that anyone could see was a wild concoction.”

  “I didn’t put you in that position; your father did.”

  “But it was you who brought it up.”

  “It isn’t a secret, is it, what’s been going on between them? Berthe certainly knows. And God knows Édouard does. You Americans are too prudish when it comes to such things.”

  “My point is that you were thoughtless. It was not a small thing for Berthe. She was devastated.”

  Now that the party was over, the apartment had grown cold. Edgar would admit no weakness, but his hand traveled to his watering eyes, naked tonight of their glasses. “This meddling of yours comes from my unbridled affection for you. Obviously it caused too much liberty of opinion. Now you think you can say anything to me.”

  “But how can I trust you?”

  Edgar appeared unmoved. “I might be mischievous—”

  “Mischievous? You should have seen Berthe. Whatever happened between her and Édouard is not for us to know, and certainly not to advertise or for you to use as a weapon for your personal amusement.”

  “As I was saying,” Edgar continued, “I might be mischievous, but you are guilty of crimes too. You reveal little of yourself. You can be formal, withdrawn, self-possessed. You sometimes seem as if you need no one. You certainly don’t need me.”

  Mary was exhausted, suddenly. What had that kiss been but need? “Tell me,” she said, “do you love anyone? Anyone at all?”

  The flickering shadows of the gaslight revealed the charcoal outline of Edgar’s face, but nothing of what he wanted. Four hours ago, she had touched that face, had found comfort in his arms, had believed that he loved her. Now she felt battered and alone.

  The gas hissed and blinked in the jets. Edgar stood very still, all the warmth washed from his rigid frame. He said, “How are you getting home?”

  “The family carriage is waiting for me. The Nierikers took everyone home.”

  Out in the hallway, Mary pulled on her coat and descended the marble stairway while Edgar pretended to have trouble with the lock. The carriage was well away before he emerged from the building. Or at least this is what Mary assumed, since she would not look back.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The exhibition was worth seeing for the same reason that one would go to see an exhibition of pictures painted by the inmates of a lunatic asylum.

  Impressionism has arrived. It is of today, so to speak, of the period; it is the chrysalis of a butterfly.

  Madame Mary Cassatt enters boldly into the ways of impressionism. This is all fine, but why is the décolletage of a young woman in a theater her primary interest? I assure you, madame or mademoiselle, this was quite unnecessary.

  Mary Cassall exhibits ingenious, extremely interesting portraits set in boxes at the Opéra. One, of a young red-haired woman in a box, has as a background a mirror in which the hall is vividly reflected; it is the picture of this painter that most boldly strikes visitors to the exhibition. The reflected flesh is a revelation of a most particular talent.

  Mary Cassatt should not forget that the one thing in the world that is particularly sweet, fresh, smooth, and transparent as dew is the skin of the woman, so why paint it as if she were plastering a wall, thereby obliterating its velvety delicate freshness?

  A new watercolor by Mary Cassatt merits attention for its fine tone and boldness of key.

  The work of Madame Mary Cassatt betrays a preoccupation with attracting attention, rather than an attempt to paint well. Her study of a woman with a fan, of a woman in a loge, indeed all her canvases provoke laughter. But if I place twenty meters between myself and the work, I can distinguish something: I perceive a shimmer, in the shade, the air, the hint of a subject, again, this subject is disgusting; but really, is it necessary that I have to look at a picture from twenty meters, neither more nor less, to find anything that is not mediocre?

  An American, Miss Mary Cassatt, aims also for the strange, and forces herself to appear more eccentric than she is at heart.

  Decidedly, Raphael can sleep well in his tomb; Rubens in his.

  We admire Mlle Cassatt’s paintings and pastels, her soft and exquisite tones, and serious rendering of form. We note especially Woman in a Loge, in which the woman’s head and shoulders are reflected in a mirror with astonishing accuracy.

  Now, for the fans of a good joke, we will post a picture by Madame Cassolt. (Wherein a caricature follows.)

  In such sublime company (Degas’s), it is necessary to cite M. Mary Cassatt. She shows a portrait of a woman in a loge that is too horrible. The poor woman h
as shoulders direct from Zola’s L’Assommoir, and behind her can be seen gilded boxes where the gilding has been replaced by an egg yolk that threatens to splash on her shoulders. And, she surrounds this victim with a green wooden frame. A second supposed masterpiece is adorned with a red frame.

  Seated around the dining table, the Cassatts traded the papers in a circle, reading only the good reviews aloud, endeavoring to hide from Mary’s ears the cutting words she was nonetheless reading for herself. For long minutes, nothing was heard except the rustling of papers, the schwep of pages turning, and the occasional sigh accompanied by listless waits for the next paper to be passed. From time to time, Robert asked the meaning of a certain word, and it was always some terrible reminder of the mayhem, like mediocre or eccentric, nothing that shone with the brightness of the rare positive remark written on Mary’s work. That morning, after breakfast, Robert had gone out and gathered all the papers, braving yet another deluge of April rain, a paternal duty and privilege he exercised with taciturn diffidence. Returning, he set them on the table and commanded, “Shall we begin?” Mary hoped he might absent himself to spare her his judgment, but he pulled out his chair and sat at the head of the table, presiding over the reading as if he were conducting a meeting. His officious presence exacerbated the unease Mary had suffered since the day after the party, when the exhibition opened. Half the attendees broke into laughter and the others shook their heads, asking, “Why is this considered good?” and their companions tittered that it wasn’t. She had fled to her studio, where she hadn’t been able even to prepare a canvas, let alone think of painting another thing. But the reviews were ten times worse, permanent words of disdain that she could never escape.

  Now, Mary dreaded her father’s comments, certain he would revive his tired argument that to be an artist was to embark on folly. “Have I seen them all?” she said.

  “I think so,” Katherine said. The sterling silver coffeepot and an untouched plate of croissants were marooned next to the island of untidy and creased newspapers heaped in the center of the table. Two dozen papers, at least. It had been only five days since the opening, and there were still all the art journals and the weekly papers to come. “At least the exhibition wasn’t ignored,” Katherine said, in an effort to make some sense of the disaster.

  “Two reviewers misspelled my name. Some think I am married. How can they claim to know anything of my art if they can’t even get the simplest details correct? My name is in the catalog. It’s in the catalog.”

  Katherine and Robert exchanged glances. Mary would be impossible for the rest of the day, and when Mary was impossible, life was impossible.

  “My dear, if I may, you said Edgar warned you,” Katherine said.

  “Oh, Edgar. What does he have to worry about?” To no one’s surprise, his reviews had been laudatory. Brilliant and exquisite in his truth and execution. Provocative and bold. Monsieur Degas is, as always, one of the stars of the group. Envy swelled. It was awful to be compared to him, to be reviewed as horrible while his work was deemed exquisite. Since the party, he hadn’t sought her out, and wouldn’t, not even to console her, not now, not after the question. But she didn’t even know whether she could have faced him anyway—or anyone, after this. All her armor, all her pride, was not equal to the humiliation of being publicly belittled. Le tout Paris would read these reviews, at least those who cared about art, which was everyone in the city. And no doubt Edgar, in his cavalier independence from critical judgment, would read none of the reviews, would remain unaware and unaffected that he had been praised above everyone. No wonder he could tell her to disregard the reviews; it was easy enough to do if you were the critics’ darling.

  “You mustn’t act as if Edgar emerged unscathed. On the whole, they loved him,” Lydia said. “But not Le Figaro. Mr. Wolff eviscerated him.”

  “As I recall, Mr. Wolff didn’t even mention me. I was lumped in with ‘les autres.’ Not even worthy enough to mention. It seems my fate is to be either ignored or attacked.”

  “They didn’t attack just you, Mary. They were equally as unkind to Monsieur Caillebotte. And they called Monsieur Forain a cretin.” Lydia touched Mary’s hand. “At least they weren’t that cruel to you.”

  “Wonderful. I lie somewhere between cretin and exquisite. Right in the middle, where mediocrity resides.” Mary rose and paced around the table. Her little dog trotted at her heels, following her with mincing steps, her button eyes anxious and uneasy. “One of them used that word, didn’t they? Mediocre?”

  “Another said you were ingenious,” Lydia said.

  “And another that I was strange.”

  “You sold a painting to Alexis Rouart,” Lydia said. “If that isn’t success, what is?” Rouart was a wealthy industrialist and an old friend of Degas’s who had been taken with one of her pastels. Mary had been thrilled, but now that victory seemed small in the light of this merciless drubbing.

  “‘Her canvases provoke laughter—’”

  “Stop it, Mame. That’s enough self-pity,” Robert said. He stood, resting his hands on the edge of the dining table. “What is the matter with you? If you are going to abandon your work because someone speaks ill of it, then it has never really been your work, has it? It becomes theirs. You give it up. Do you want to do that? Your work is different; you declare it so; you want it to be so. But you cannot expect the world to understand when you ask them to look at work that is different than what they are used to seeing. The human mind is not equipped to adapt so rapidly. People have been told for so long what is good by the École des Beaux Arts that when something new comes along, they cannot adjust their thinking. Your work doesn’t look anything like what they have been told is good. Ergo, your pictures must be bad. It’s confused logic, but logic nonetheless. And it will alter with time. You must give it time. Why yield your confidence to a bunch of jackals?”

  Mary, Katherine, and Lydia stared at Robert, who sat down, took a sip of his coffee, then replaced the cup in its saucer. His posture, ever militaristic, was even more so this mid-morning, his white cravat tied as beautifully as if he were going to the Élysée Palace, his jacket brushed free of lint and gleaming black in the morning light despite his earlier dash through the deluge.

  “The truth is,” he continued, “you cannot fight logic, ill-conceived or otherwise. You must simply wait until the formula changes by exposure. This is what your exhibition is for. You are exposing the world to something new until at some point, it will no longer be new. Until that time, you are different and therefore unacceptable. But not to everyone. You had some glowing comments. It is upon these you must focus. Forget the rest. They mean nothing.”

  Mary put her hand to the back of a chair, to bolster herself. “You are not ashamed?” she said. The question, hoarded for two decades, simply appeared, voiced by her heart.

  “‘Revelation of a most particular talent.’” Robert lobbed this lovely phrase across the dining table. He had lingered over the words, exquisitely turned in the French, and as he had translated it in his mind into English he had memorized it, to use it as a weapon, but he had not imagined having to use it so soon, nor having to use it on Mary. He had imagined smiting the press with it, or defending her honor at dinner parties, or writing letters to American newspapers, quoting the generous appraisal as one might quote a stock price.

  The truth—the truth Mary just revealed that she knew—was that he had often been ashamed of Mary. Few parents in Philadelphia had had to contend with the kind of single-minded stubbornness that Mary had exhibited almost from the moment she was born. And it had only gotten worse. He had never believed that sending his daughter to the Pennsylvania Academy would result in her desiring to become an artist. It was only meant to finish her, to give her something to do, to distract her until she married and had children. When she had insisted on traveling through Europe on her own to study, when she wouldn’t listen to reason, when his concerns were dismissed with a roll of her eyes and endless arguments about whose life
hers was to lead, he had foreseen this moment, when her welfare would be disregarded by savages, when the fabric of her soul would be riddled and torn, when she would be discussed publicly as an entity to be dissected and examined and declared wanting. What did a father live for, if not to protect his daughter? And what did a father do if his daughter refused protection? He had had no weapons other than to forbid, and that, he had learned long ago, had been an impotent sword. He had long believed that it would have been better had Mary been born a man. She could have gone into business, would have been as successful as her brothers, running a railroad like Aleck or trading stocks at Cassatt & Company like Gardner, saving herself from this tenuous occupation with its dependence on subjective yardsticks wielded by envious and misinformed critics. To succeed in art? The endless question continued to haunt him. How was he or anyone to measure her success? He had long given up the standard of sales. Those seemed elusive, uncertain, improbable.

  “I don’t understand what you do, Mame; I don’t pretend to. But if you let go now, it will be as if you never understood anything about yourself at all,” he said. “And if you let this nonsense deter you from your work, then I will be ashamed of you.”

  This moment of grace, this moment when Robert Cassatt surrendered so that his daughter wouldn’t, was met with a barely audible gasp, a release of years of tedious rebellion and steely resolution and the enduring sorrow a daughter suffers when her father denies her heart. A few years later, her father would try this trick again on Lydia, believing in its power, but he would fail—there would be no moment of grace; the gasp exhaled would be another kind of letting go, one that would age him by a decade. But now Mary rounded the table and tangled her arms about his neck. He smelled of soap and happiness, the scents of her young childhood, before they knew how to make one another miserable, before she understood that filial desire could sabotage paternal love.