Painting the Light

by Sally Cabot Gunning

  The sight of the brand-new South-Central Station jolted her awake. How could such a grand thing, all eagles and columns, a modern-day colosseum, spring up in her absence? She walked along looking up until Henry finally took her arm to guide her to the next shock—the entrance to the underground tunnel through which the trains now ran. Two nickels bought them entry; Ida peered down the brightly lit, gleaming white tunnel and for the first time in her life Ida felt a stranger in town, as if Boston had left her behind and gone on without her to become something else.

  15

  Henry made a motion toward engaging a hack to take them from the Park Street station to the Parker House, but as they each carried nothing but a small carpet bag, and Ida could already see the familiar sites ahead of her, she wanted to walk. Henry took her bag from her and they set out. The bare, gray winter Common didn’t lure Ida, but she’d always thought of the white arrow of the Park Street Church steeple as a kind of beacon: Parker House tea and cake ahead. Her pace freshened. At the Granary Burial Ground she slowed to glance at the gravestone of James Otis.

  “Did you know,” she asked Henry, “that well over one hundred years ago he agitated for the woman’s vote? First admitting them to the educational avenues reserved for men and then giving them the vote?”

  Henry gave Ida a thoughtful look. “And yet here we are.”

  Yes. There they were, Ida thought, thinking of Rose Amaral. Tea with Rose Amaral. Soon. But there, now, was the Parker House, a fairy castle of a thing encased in marble, bedecked with turrets and bay windows, with the single word engraved over the door as if everyone who mattered would already know what it was: Parker’s.

  Ida allowed the bellman to take her bag and walked up the marble steps and over the plush carpet. How far away the farm seemed to Ida at that moment! She looked around for Henry but found he’d disappeared; a wash of alarm swept through her until it occurred to her he’d no doubt wanted to allow her to engage her room without him lingering nearby. Ida completed her registration and was just stepping into the elevator as Henry appeared at the front desk; she blushed because she felt silly, and heated again because she felt dangerous. And yet, oddly, safe.

  Ida’s fifth-floor room faced west, giving her a near view of the Common and a far view of the Charles River. She’d thought to soak in the tub first and then venture out to the assayer’s office, then if time remained, to visit Mr. Morris at his studio, but she couldn’t stop looking out. When she got through looking she started touching—the buttery dresser, the velvet loveseat, the feather bed—and then circled back to the window; by the time she drew herself away it had gotten too late for the tub. She fixed her hair, repositioned her hat, put on her coat, and jumped when the phone rang.

  “A Mr. Barstow for you, ma’am.”

  “Please connect.”

  “Hello.” He sounded close. Intimate.

  “Hello,” Ida said.

  “If you need anything I’m in room 508. How is your accommodation?”

  “I don’t see how our shabby little estate can afford two rooms at the Parker House.”

  “I hope you aren’t suggesting something shocking,” he said, in such a perfect imitation of Aunt Ruth that she burst out laughing. Oh, how good it felt!

  “I’m going out,” she said, collecting herself.

  No argument. None of Lem’s You’re going out alone? None of Ruth’s and Hattie’s Where are you going? What time will you be back? “Very well. Meet at the dining room at six?”

  “Six. Yes.”

  All the way to the lobby Ida felt the weight of her reticule, as heavy as her guilt. She should have told Henry. She should have taken him with her. But once on the street she took a deep breath and realigned her shoulders; what she hadn’t done was done—only what she would do lay ahead.

  Again, Ida chose to walk. Winter in Boston could be many things—damp and gloomy, dry and crisp—but it always came with a wind that could discourage the most determined walker in venturing beyond a single block. This day’s wind blew with her, though, propelling her past Horticultural Hall so fast Ida almost missed a placard announcing the eight p.m. lecture.

  Ida continued along School to Somerset and onto Bowdoin Street, where a pasteboard sign in a second-story window declared it the offices of Samuel A. Greave. The stairwell smelled of mice, living and dead. Ida gripped her reticule around the neck, reached the top of the stairs, and through the glass-paned door spied a man behind a counter hunched over a tray of what looked to be jewelry.

  Ida stepped in. “I wonder if I’m where I belong. I’m looking for—”

  The man’s eyes lifted, widened. Damp, flaccid lips parted. “Whoever it is, I’m it. Samuel Greave.”

  “Yes. Mr. Greave. I wonder if you’d be able to evaluate the worth of what appears to be a gold nugget.”

  The lips snapped shut. The eyes narrowed. “Hand her here.”

  Ida didn’t want to. She didn’t like those lips, those eyes, the general air of the man. But it didn’t matter if she liked the man, did it? She’d come here for a purpose. She opened her reticule and extracted a single nugget. She set it down on the counter and almost before it had touched wood the man’s rakelike fingers clawed it up. His other hand fumbled in a drawer for a jeweler’s loupe, which he fixed to his eye.

  “What’s the name again?”

  “I didn’t say, but it’s Mrs. Pease.”

  The loupe came down. The man squinted at her again. “From—?”

  “Boston. If you don’t mind, I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

  Greave stared at her a few more seconds, pulled out a small scale, and plopped the nugget onto it. “Just over half an ounce. Ten dollars. You got any more in there?”

  “It’s gold, then?”

  “It is that. Where’d you get it?”

  “It was in the family.” Ida held out her hand for the nugget. “Thank you, you’ve been most helpful.”

  Again, Greave squinted at Ida. “Pease, you say. And where’d you say you were from?”

  “Boston. I am in a hurry.”

  Greave replaced his loupe and looked at the nugget again. He removed the loupe and pointed at Ida’s bag. “Looks like you’ve still got some weight in there.”

  Ida plucked the nugget from the man’s fingers, returned it to her bag, and swung for the door.

  “Hold on there, missy. You show me what’s in that bag and I might do better on my number. I might just take the whole lot off you.”

  “Not today, thank you.”

  As Ida pushed through the door she felt movement behind her; Greave, rising from his chair, coming around the desk. She hurried down the stairs into the street, uneasy in a way she’d never been in Boston; an irrational fear that Greave intended to follow her assailed her. She walked fast to the corner and turned; a man stood on the street in front of Greave’s building, but Ida couldn’t tell if it was Greave or not. To be safe, Ida turned left instead of her intended right and added a few more unnecessary turns. When she looked behind her again she saw no Greave. Bloody gold. It caused her to hear things on the island and see things in Boston. Enough.

  Ida corrected her route, pondering what she’d just done. She could have used that ten—she could have used whatever Greave planned to give her for the lot of them—but something wasn’t right about the man, the offer. If Ida were a cat, the fur on her back would have risen the minute Greave seemed to start at the name Pease, at the way he seemed to doubt her when she said she was from Boston, at the way he whisked the nugget off the scale when Ida leaned in to look. There were men who looked and acted and smelled dishonest, and Greave was one of them.

  And then there were men like Ezra. What was the truth of Ezra?

  Ida paused to look around her and was startled to see that she wasn’t far from her old home, that if she simply climbed Mount Vernon Street she’d be standing in front of their old, blue door. Blue, her mother had said. Absolutely not, the Wymans’ door is blue, her father had countered. Green, then, her mother ha
d said, a nice peacock green, which Ida could have told her father was actually blue but didn’t. A longing to see if that old blue door was still there battered Ida; she started to walk past the turn but stopped in the middle of it.

  Ida climbed the hill and there it was, perched above the same sloping lawn, centered on the brick facade of the same old town house: the blue door. And there was the sagging railing her brother had hit with the carriage. And if she walked around back, no doubt Ida would see the mismatched carriage house doors, still waiting for replacement, and the brown stubble of the rose garden. And the marble birdbath. And the cherry tree.

  Ida stayed where she was, in the street. For the most part they had been a happy family, able to laugh over the blue door even if her father swore every year that he was going to have it repainted, a ritual Ida suspected he kept up only to give the others their annual burst of amusement. If Ida closed her eyes she could see their faces and forms so clearly she might believe they lived there still, without her, perhaps inquiring over breakfast every third day or so where Ida had gone, but she’d never contributed that much to the family conversation anyway, preferring to keep to her corner. Her paints. Her dreams. What she remembered most about her father were those rare moments when the stiffness cracked and he bellowed out a great laugh. What she remembered most of her mother was the way she always seemed to be hurrying out of the room. Her brothers she remembered as alternately looking out for her or tormenting her, which left her hovering in perpetual thrall to them, never knowing which side of which brother would appear next.

  For the first time, standing there in the street, Ida reflected on what had gone on in her father’s and brothers’ heads as their ship went down. Did they have time to reflect? Did they regret something they’d done or not done with their lives? Ida guessed not; all three men had a way of taking what came and moving on without dissecting it; Ida suspected her mother had simply dissected it once too often and then couldn’t put the pieces together again.

  But what of Ida? What would she have done differently if she’d known she’d be standing on the street outside her former home, alone? Married the neighbor’s son as her mother had urged? Taken her father’s advice to give up art school and spend her time perfecting her domestic skills? Talked more at breakfast? No. No. Again, no. But she might have listened harder to the silence and remembered it when Ezra came to call.

  On her return trip Ida continued to look back at each turn, occasionally spying a Mr. Greave scurrying in and out of shadows but always he turned out to be nothing but more shadow. She shook off her silliness and took the wide loop that would bring her past the museum in Copley Square, but she stood in front of it a long time before braving the marble steps and granite columns. Once inside she ignored the Flemish tapestries, the armor, the Egyptians and Greeks, and headed straight for the school, stopping in front of Mr. Morris’s old door to listen. The voice inside was a woman’s, but the words were Mr. Morris’s—define the whole . . . respect your spaces . . . make your strokes bold, cheerful . . . She twisted the knob and cracked the door open. Inside the narrow frame she saw one of Mr. Morris’s former students, a woman named Helen Ballou, whom Ida knew well and wasn’t surprised to see in this new roll; when Ida informed Mr. Morris she was leaving Boston to marry a Martha’s Vineyard sheep farmer his attention had taken an abrupt turn toward Helen, and there it had stayed. Ida had never been asked to assist with a class again. As Helen expounded she circled the room with Mr. Morris’s same purposeful stride, his same confident air. No no no. Yes yes yes. Ida might have—no, would certainly have—been the one circling that room if she’d stayed in Boston.

  Ida turned her attention from Helen and fixed her gaze behind her to the nude man reclining against a length of blue cloth on a white dais. Every woman in the room studied the man with intense concentration, working charcoal over paper just as if they stared at . . . well, a stuffed owl. But now Helen spied Ida and moved to the back of the room, pointing to the hall. They stepped outside, and Helen immediately engulfed Ida in a hug much warmer than Ida had expected. She held Ida away and took her in.

  “Ida Russell!”

  It felt so good to hear her old name that Ida didn’t correct her. “It’s good to see you, Helen. You’ve taken over his class? Does he not teach at all anymore?”

  Helen peered at Ida. “You don’t know?”

  Oh, Ida hated it when a sentence began that way. “Tell me and I’ll be able to answer that question, Helen.”

  “William drowned eight months ago. He was vacationing in New York. He walked into a pond and didn’t come out. Some thought it was deliberate; a large mural he’d devoted himself to was destroyed by damp, and he’d been . . . despondent.”

  Ida stood stunned. Silent.

  Helen laid a hand on Ida’s arm. “I know, Ida. I know. I’m sorry to have to tell you all this standing in a hall, but I’d best go in. How long are you in town? I’d love to sit with you and catch up, to hear what you’ve been working on. Or come join the class! I actually have some sway here now; I could say you’d come to help teach—one swing around the easels and then you sit and paint as long as you like, no charge.”

  “I’m here but a single day,” Ida answered, and the relief she found in the honest excuse dismayed her.

  “Next time, then. Or write me here. I must go.” Helen hugged her again and disappeared through the door.

  Ida stood where she was. After a time she laid her hand against the closed door and closed her eyes. She could not, she would not, credit it—that Mr. Morris, her Mr. Morris, had done as her mother had done. Ida had never told Mr. Morris of her family, but she’d once heard some students in the class whispering about her, about her mother, about her father and brothers, behind barely compressed lips. If students knew, surely Mr. Morris knew, but he would never take her mother’s painful tale and use it as a pattern, a guide. He wouldn’t do that to her. But of course it was nothing to do with her.

  Ida made a sharp pivot and strode down the hall toward the door. She could not mourn one more time. Not for Mr. Morris, not even for her past life. Or were they so entwined that there was no sense in attempting to separate the two? The man, the school, had been everything to her while she lived here, but now that man and that old Ida were both gone. Ida dashed at her tears and pushed out into Boylston Street, her beloved Boylston Street, for the first time in her life feeling the trespasser, whatever had made this place her own now gone.

  Ida walked. It was all she could think to do. Scenes washed over her like haphazard waves on a rock-strewn beach, diverted left and right as they hit the boulders, at times running backward to confront themselves on the way in. Her earliest impression of Mr. Morris had been the right one; he’d picked her out, cultivated her, seen something in her work that deserved greater nurturing. It had all been borne out the day he’d tapped her on the shoulder as she’d been packing up her easel.

  “Hold a minute, Miss Russell, if you’d be so kind.”

  The day had already been a rewarding one; the model, a young woman clad in a lilac dress and holding a white parasol, had presented certain challenges: how to keep the parasol from dominating the scene, how to do justice to a face half in shadow, how to capture the expression of boredom and yet translate it from a bored young model to a young woman bored by . . . what? Was she waiting for a friend? Tiring of a beau? Tiring of her life as a young woman of privilege, gravitating from one senseless social gathering to another, just as Ida had tired of it? Yes, that was the note. And Ida had gotten it just right, she thought, or nearly so, and she’d stopped at a place where she knew what came next, which solved half the next day’s struggle.

  Ida lingered as the other students packed away their paints and easels and funneled out the door. Mr. Morris fussed about with some papers until the last student was out, and then lifted his eyes to Ida.

  “I’ve an appointment in New York regarding a large commission. I’ll be gone for the next two classes. I wonder if you’d take my pl
ace here.”

  Nothing, Ida thought now, nothing had ever astounded her more, thrilled her more. There had been a second’s hesitation; how not to hesitate when she was being asked to teach before she’d even finished being a student? But quite soon after—surprisingly soon after—Ida remembered one of Mr. Morris’s favorite maxims: An artist never stops learning. It was fair, then, to keep learning as she taught. And she remembered a second Morris maxim: Be bold.

  And so she was bold.

  And yet somehow Mr. Morris had lost all his boldness.

  Ida walked and walked, Mr. Morris keeping company inside her head, until she remembered Henry. She would be late to dine.

  Ida’s recent weight loss meant the old heliotrope and mauve dress didn’t fit as glovelike as it once had, but it allowed for the gentler lacing of the corset from which Ida had so long ago removed the stays. Now when Ida walked she enjoyed the luxurious sensation of actual movement inside her dress. As she entered the dining room Henry stood, bowed, grinned, and again, even despite Mr. Morris, or perhaps because of it, Ida found it impossible not to grin back. She needed that look in his eyes, needed this single night of distraction; she would not waste it wallowing in Mr. Morris’s despair. Anger washed through her, the same old anger, at Ezra, at her mother, and now, at Mr. Morris. They had had enough of her nights or, in the case of Mr. Morris, were bound to have more of them, but they would not have this one night too. Ida forced her mind to the way the chandeliers turned Henry’s hair to gold while dulling everyone else, the way her own locket seemed to glow brighter than any other jewel in the room, as if Ida and Henry were the subject of a painting and everyone else was just the background. Yes, she would stay in that painting—for this one night alone.