I Always Loved You

by Robin Oliveira

  Mary hadn’t felt courageous. For the past month she had felt frightened and nervous and exposed. “You are too kind, Abigail. And I’m glad you are happy. Happy you have everything you want.”

  Abigail reached across the table and took Mary’s hand. “There is something else.”

  Mary studied her friend’s face as the sun glimmered through the thick mist, noticing fatigue and a pallor she hadn’t observed before. Abigail broke into a smile, and the tiny lines under her eyes crinkled into a serene happiness.

  “No!” Mary said.

  “Yes. The doctor says November.”

  “But you’re older than—”

  “Not too old, he says. I’ll be more tired, and soon I’ll have to confine myself to Meudon, but you’ll come see me, won’t you, to relieve my boredom?”

  “Of course,” Mary said. “When I get back. Of course I will.” She willed herself not to worry. Berthe Morisot was nearly the same age as Abigail, and things had gone fine for her.

  “I’ll keep painting as long as I can, but the doctor says I will have to stop if my ankles swell.” She made a face.

  Mary laughed. They paid their bill and went outside, where the sun had broken completely through the clouds. They shared a fiacre, the driver dropping Abigail at the Gare Saint Lazare before driving Mary on to the Avenue Trudaine.

  She started up the long flights of stairs to share the news with Lydia, who would be thrilled. Lydia wanted a child, but her time for that was long gone. No doubt if Lydia had married and conceived she would have died during the pregnancy, her body too taxed by illness to carry the burden of the child. Being childless was Lydia’s central pain, Mary thought. For a moment she considered hiding the news, but Lydia would be furious if she believed she’d been protected.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  What have you done to her, Robert? She is on the verge of collapse.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You have pushed her beyond reason.”

  “I hardly think so. I am the one in my seventies. She is only thirty-five, for God’s sake. Why aren’t you worried about me? I’m tired too.”

  “You are not the one who has lost a dozen pounds and looks as pale as the sheets.”

  “You exaggerate.”

  “I do not.”

  Katherine and Robert Cassatt were breakfasting in the garden of the Hotel Gibbon, in Lausanne, Switzerland, having left Mary sleeping in her adjoining room. The Rue du Petit-Chêne was steep, but its rise was too modest and its situation too far from the lakeshore to view Lake Geneva from the hotel’s gated garden. To enjoy the lake, one needed to picnic on its idyllic shores, a proposition Robert had made last night, shortly after Katherine had arrived on the steamboat from Divonne-les-Bains, where she had accompanied Lydia for the waters while he and Mary had been traveling. But Katherine had taken one look at Mary on the dock and declared that Mary was going back to Divonne with her, and if Robert didn’t want to come he could stay alone in Lausanne. Under no circumstances was Mary to be forced to explore the steep hills and plunging ravines of the little city in the August heat.

  Their argument, which had ceased last night only for sleep, had resumed with their morning coffee in the garden, continued through the baguette and omelets, and had not yet concluded.

  “Did you at least let her work?” Katherine asked.

  “We could hardly have stopped the carriage at the top of Little Saint Bernard Pass for Mame to paint the landscape. And she doesn’t do landscapes, anyway. Why are you so cross?”

  “She is sick, Robert.”

  “The scenery was spectacular,” Robert said, going on as if he hadn’t heard Katherine’s objections. Café tables covered in white linen dotted the rectangle of lawn in the shade of the fragrant linden trees, where guests were breakfasting in the morning cool. Plans for excursions on the lake were being discussed in French and English. (The Italians were not yet up.) “Mame and I were the very first ones to cross the pass this summer. Little lakes of snow still lay on the ground. In July! Snow! You and Lydia should have come with us. The carriage driver was so adept. Down the mountain into Val D’Aosta he had to keep the brakes on the entire way or the horses would have run away with us over the edge and into the abyss. It was thrilling. And besides, we had to go that way, didn’t we, if we wanted to see something of the countryside? Mary was in heaven in Varallo. All her friends gave her party after party. Blame them for her exhaustion!”

  “Whether she is thirty-five or sixty-five, she should be your priority, not parties and alpine vistas. You should have seen that she was tired and brought her home immediately.”

  “But we had to travel down to Milan to catch the train, and it would have been a waste not to have seen the sights there. And I needed her fluent Italian if I was going to make any sense of the city. But I do agree, the train ride from Milan to Lake Maggiore and then the carriage ride over the Simplon Pass was very tiring. I myself could use a good week here to recuperate.”

  “This trip was to have helped Mary. You know how exhausted she was after the exhibition. And yet you dragged her all over Europe, just to please yourself. You were only supposed to see her friends.”

  “She could have said something. I was on the verge of canceling the trip myself, but I didn’t want to disappoint her.”

  Katherine sighed and pushed away her coffee cup. The experiment in family unity had imploded, just as she had feared it might. Last night, Mary had hardly been able to say a civil word to her father. “I’m taking her with me today. You can come with us or you can stay, but to be honest, I wish you would come. Lydia isn’t better, despite the waters, and now, due to your neglect, I fear for Mary as well.”

  “No one is as bad as all that, Katherine. Do find it in yourself not to exaggerate, won’t you? Can’t we be pleasant? We haven’t seen one another in a month.”

  “Fine. You can stay. But I’m going upstairs now to pack Mary and we’re leaving on the two o’clock steamer.”

  Katherine rose from the table and left her husband to bake in the rising August sun. The man understood nothing of women. Throughout their marriage, he had remained as staunchly oblivious to need as when they had first met, though it occurred to her now that perhaps Mary’s sudden vulnerability after the exposition had been what had prompted him to propose this trip in the first place; had Mary been her usual stalwart self, he would not have been able to manipulate her into being his tour guide.

  Upstairs, Katherine slipped into Mary’s room, parted the curtains to let in a sliver of morning light, then set about packing Mary’s dresses into her steamer chest, moving quietly, hoping the light and her activity would awaken Mary slowly. After a while Mary did stir, and Katherine pulled a bell for the maid to bring breakfast. They sat at the open window and admired the fine view of the blue lake and the soaring Alps, Katherine drinking coffee while Mary nibbled on buttered rolls and jam. Mary’s gaze, usually so direct and commanding, fell on her mother with a weariness so heavy that Katherine reached across the table to take her daughter’s hand.

  “He’s a demanding child. I don’t know how you do it, Mother,” Mary said.

  “I didn’t, darling. You did. It was good of you to indulge him, but now it’s time for me to take care of you. I’ll finish packing your things and then we’re off. It’s the easiest trip, just an hour by boat, and then we can stay as long as you like in Divonne with no demands on you whatsoever. Lydia will be so happy to see you.”

  “Oh, Mother, I couldn’t work. A sketch here and there. I’m so behind. This time last year, I had half a dozen canvases finished. Last time I had two years; now I will have only half a year to work for the next exhibition. Shouldn’t we just go back to Paris today?” A sharp edge of panic amplified the fatigue in Mary’s voice, making Katherine wonder how, in so little time, Robert had managed to decimate their energetic daughter’s resolve, for there was no mistaking it: Mary, as much as she might speak of work, had no energy for it.

  “You will
get so much more done when we return if you are rested.”

  “I suppose.” Mary looked out over the lake again, her gaze indifferent and unfocused, betraying no pleasure in the magnificent view.

  Katherine rose from the table and emptied the dresser drawers into the trunk, worried by how little opposition Mary had brooked, further evidence of her diminution. “And Monsieur Degas’s new journal can wait. Don’t let thoughts of him push you to think of returning before you are ready.”

  “He’s not in Paris.”

  “Has he written?” Katherine kept her voice even to avoid igniting an even more difficult conflagration than the one she had anticipated over returning to Paris. Mary was so circumspect about her relationship with Degas that Katherine was often left wondering whether one day he would ask Robert for Mary’s hand in marriage or disappear forever. Either outcome seemed likely.

  “Yes, of course he has. He always writes.”

  “How is he?”

  “He claims health.”

  Katherine waited for any other bit of information that might help her to understand the relationship between her daughter and that incomprehensible man, but as usual, Mary offered no hint as to their personal intimacies. Not even in this vulnerable state did Mary yield a clue. Of course, Katherine realized then that she was just as bad as Robert, taking advantage of Mary’s infirmity, but she’d been driven to it. Oh, how difficult it was to have an unmarried daughter with uncommon friendships.

  “I’ll finish and then you can bathe, Mary. If we hurry, we might make the noon boat, but don’t rush yourself if you haven’t the energy. Two o’clock will be just fine, and it will give us time for luncheon in the garden before we go.”

  • • •

  After her mother left, Mary rang for water and let the maids douse her shoulders and back in the shallow bath. The cascade, the copper tub, the light angling in through the window slats, all reminded Mary of Edgar’s bathers, and once again, she pushed away the memory of his latest letter, which she had hidden in her purse from the prying, gentle concern of her mother.

  Château de Ménil-Hubert, près Gacé (Orne)

  Tuesday

  Ma chère,

  I have considered and reconsidered your question, and find myself at a loss to convey to you how much you mean to me. Your regard, your friendship, your elegant taste, your quick tongue, your reserve, your lively brush, all foster an affection and respect for your being unparalleled by anyone else in my acquaintance. Is this love? Tell me, my dear, before the universe smites me for my neglect of you. You are to me what no other woman is. I miss you. Paris misses you. Art misses you. You are unfair to leave us so long bereft of your company. When you come home, I will come to see you and we will talk.

  We must make plans on your return for our journal. I’m so delighted you’ve agreed. Le Jour et la Nuit. Do you love the title? As you know, Caillebotte has agreed to finance us, and Bracquemond is eager to instruct us on all the elements of printmaking. Pissarro is in. We will be a merry four, transforming the world with shadow and light.

  Your Edgar

  The letter had been forwarded to her in their little rented villa in Varallo, and she’d read it on the hillside while her father napped on the porch in the afternoon heat. Of course, Edgar had waited until she had left Paris to speak of the question, suspended between them like the mists hovering above the tumbling creek rushing through Varallo’s treed couloirs. He could have said any of this to her in person in June, when she had finally assented and they had planned the great project for when she returned to Paris, but of course he hadn’t. He had sent this letter to torment her, to avoid being with her when he confessed whatever it was that he might be feeling. Letters were his shield, though this note lacked the usual winning mockery his other letters employed to such great defense. She didn’t understand how he could be so affectionate in correspondence and so withdrawn—punishing, even—in person. But even this reality came with its contradictions. On the last day of the exhibition, after supervising the carter’s stowing of their canvases to be delivered back to their studios, he had kissed her on the cheek, though he had offered no apology to Berthe or to her for his rudeness.

  And then nothing. She had met with him to agree to the journal, then left Paris without seeing him again.

  While she toweled off and dressed, the maids withdrew, coming to her assistance only to tighten her corset, which had grown looser over the past month as she thinned under her father’s obstreperous demands. He had constantly changed the itinerary, refused to leave the hotel room for days on end, then proposed innumerable outings and museum visits that required rushed parades through overcrowded exhibitions, complained that nothing was as it once was, and offended any Americans they met. After days of dithering, they finally boarded the train for Lausanne, where they were to have changed cars for Paris. But in Lausanne, her father declared himself infatuated and disembarked, shouting for the porters to search the baggage car for their trunks, commandeering a cab on the tortuous streets to take them to a hotel, any hotel. Beside herself, Mary had telegraphed her mother in Divonne to meet them in Lausanne lest she lose her mind. She didn’t even think her father questioned why her mother had come; his self-absorption prevented him from questioning a universe that met his needs, accepting any serendipitous blessing as his due.

  Looking in the dresser mirror, Mary pinned her wide-brimmed hat to her hair, piled carelessly upward in the heat. Every bone in her body felt heavy. She couldn’t remember ever once feeling so exhausted. The last thing she needed was to faint, and she believed she might. Never had she felt so fatigued, not even in Chicago, when the fire had raged. Overwork, the excitement of the exhibition, her family coming to stay with her, all had taken their rightful toll in these past two years, but they were nothing compared to the demands her father and Edgar imposed.

  Both men exhausted her. Each was impossible to please, to understand, to assuage. They claimed love, yet showed little. Seduced as she had been by her father to undertake this miserable trip, she was now wary to yield to Edgar’s charm, curdled as it was by his own question: Is this love? Did he suppose she was to answer, to instruct, to persuade him that the qualities he admired in her equaled love? And what of his other mention of love? Did she love the title? Day and Night? In other words, did she have the same amount of affection for a potential art project as he might or might not have for her? It passed intolerable. It was a shabby letter, elusive and teasing, no matter how proud he might be of his little missive.

  She took the letter from her purse and tucked it in the lining of her trunk, where her mother would never look for it. The clock said ten thirty. The noon boat, then.

  She placed her hairbrushes and combs in the trunk and shut it, locking it with the little key she kept on a chain around her neck. The project, the journal, would take time from her painting, and it would mean that she would be working at Edgar’s side, attempting to master the tricky planishing and etching to make something of beauty and mystery. The thought of the necessary intimacy, late hours, and shared meals frightened her now, but she suspected fatigue robbed her of perspective. She had grown incautious in the spring. She would not make the same mistake again.

  From her month traveling with her father, she had learned never to say yes when she meant to say no, although having to relearn that lesson shamed her. What was it about a father that could reduce a daughter to infancy in mere moments? She heard him through the door to their adjoining room, proclaiming to her mother that after undergoing so many social demands on the trip, he would appreciate a little solitude. He would stay on in Lausanne and return to Paris when it suited him.

  “Mother?” she said, opening the door to their room. Her father sat by the open window in an armchair, the white lace curtains billowing with the morning breeze. He was reading the English newspaper, his trousers crisp, his hair oiled and combed, his upward glance disinterested and casual.

  “You see?” he said, looking up from his paper. “Th
e bloom of health.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Degas dangled a screwdriver from his right hand and confronted the structure of lead pipes before him: two would-be legs, one curved by a vise, the other straight as a plumb line; a small crossbar masquerading as a pelvic bone; a backbone driving skyward; and canted clavicles. How to make a girl? At night, unclothed women paraded through his sleeping mind, not the women of Salon masterpieces, marbled and pristine, iconic and untouchable, ideations of sainted, unclad womanhood, but spectral women made of flesh, dirtied and troubled by hard work, eminently touchable, vulnerable, secret. They twisted and turned in their private ablutions, combing their hair, climbing from a tub, inspecting their feet. Or they danced and danced, their muscles knotted, dreading the abonnés’ arrival. Or they plunged their blued hands into deep sinks of scalding water, the copper pipes banging overhead. No Madonnas, his, just women as he imagined them in their intimate moments or at their work.

  He set down his screwdriver, went to his cabinet, and pulled open its doors. From a drawer, he retrieved his private work, work he never showed anyone, excepting Manet or Alexis Rouart, who would not condemn him. The world could hardly stand a picture of a nude woman squatting in a shallow tub, let alone these brutally naked, mercilessly rendered, shamelessly commercial women. Yet these prints were his antidote to insanity. Drawing the starkly etched, vulgar forms soothed him, somehow. Cartoonish, exaggerated, puerile in their clinical accuracy, he rendered prostitutes in no romantic terms: Women selling their naked flesh to clothed men. What he loved about this particular obsession was its emperor’s-new-clothes sensibility. There were twenty thousand legal prostitutes in Paris, and yet if exposed, these prints would engender a censorious public rage from which his career would never recover. What was it about the world that it could not face the reality it lived?