To Leslie, Ryn said, “I’ll just run down and let her in. Want to put the teakettle on?”
After clattering down the steps (you’re being careless again, she admonished herself; want another broken ankle?), she held the entrance door open. She gave Daisy a warm squeeze and told her Leslie had been wanting to get better acquainted. “I finished my book,” she told Daisy. “We’re celebrating on the balcony in the fresh air and admiring the fountain.”
“Congratulations! That’s wonderful,” Daisy answered, her voice eager.
At the landing, Kathryn was surprised to run into Shirley again, from the third floor.
“Reckon y’all are having a regular party today,” Shirley commented, almost hopefully.
“Not really,” Kathryn answered. “Leslie has been wanting to meet Daisy.” With that Kathryn opened the door and gestured to Daisy to step in.
Quickly Shirley asked Daisy, “Who was that little girl you were walking with?”
“She was just a little lost child,” Daisy answered firmly. “That’s all taken care of now. I took her home with me for a little while until we contacted her mother.”
After Leslie’s door was closed, Daisy said softly, “I’m afraid someone feels left out.” She rolled her eyes toward the closed door. “But I do appreciate your not inviting her. My hearing seems to be acting up.”
PRACTICALLY SLAMMED THE DOOR IN MY FACE, Shirley thought. Not so friendly today. Oh, the hoity-toity Dr. Writer was pleasant enough if you met her on the street, but she never asked anybody inside. Howdy-do, and that was it. And Daisy had been a neighbor when Shirley lived on Belgravia, but now that Shirley had had to move, well, she might as well be dust under their feet. The flats were good enough for some people, but what about an ordinary couple, like Trevor and her, near retirement age? Shirley closed her eyes at the idea of retirement. She saw a black wall. They’d lost a third of their retirement money when the economy went bad.
Quite on purpose, Shirley stamped up to the third floor, but her eyes were full of tears. She hoped they heard her, that cozy little trio! Better to be angry than sad, she thought, wrenching open her condo door and slamming it shut behind her. Now that reverberated, for sure! She would sit on her balcony. She would time them. There was only one front door, and Ms. Callaghan (people said her third husband had left her) and Mrs. Shepard would have to go out it.
Goodness, it was high up here. Enough to make a person feel dizzy. High and very bright, for the third-floor balconies, having no other stories above them, were open to the sky. Clouds were moving in from the southwest. That was the direction tornadoes came from, but these clouds were like white heaps of meringue; nothing menacing there. Shirley herself felt like a small, upright thundercloud. But the northwest sky was turning gray. Nobody else had such a view as this. Perhaps royalty commanded this kind of vista. Who was that guy in Texas who got up in a high tower with a high-powered rifle and picked people off, one by one, below? He was a groundbreaker, the first lunatic to decide to just kill strangers at random because the world was a rotten place. Which university? The idea had trickled down to schoolchildren now. What was wrong with education? People were lucky she wasn’t like that. Still she could understand how they felt, those snipers and suicide bombers. She wondered if the whole world would ever go to war again.
Shirley sat down in one of the iron spring chairs. Getting it up to the third floor had been quite a challenge. She had carried it by one arm, and Trevor had carried it by the other. Although they had laughed about it, the method had worked. Whenever one of them was tired, they stopped and rested, balancing the clumsy chair on the edge of the steps. She checked her watch. She wouldn’t waste too much time on lookout. Even though it was mid-October, up here the afternoon sun was almost too hot. Three o’clock. The trees were fiery; the red leaves like fury consuming itself.
At a quarter past three, an ice-cream truck came down the Court, broadcasting “Clementine” in a tinkling bell version. “Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine. You are lost and gone forever . . .” But that’s not true, Shirley thought, not of anyone she had ever really loved. Both her parents were still alive, and all her siblings. Her husband enjoyed his new job; he was cheerful nearly every day when he came home from work. He said he was getting used to the stairs; the climb was good for him. It was just the house that was lost, the place she had loved so much on Belgravia Court.
Placing her hands beside her mouth to make a megaphone, she called out, “Ice-cream man, ice-cream man, I want some!” But the truck and its music were making too much noise. You had to be down there waving at him to make the ice-cream man stop. The truck didn’t even circle around the south end of the Court to come down her side of the grassy median. Crossing Belgravia, it just went on out the south end of St. James onto Hill Street.
But someone below was shouting her name. When she looked down, she saw Daisy, both her hands placed like parentheses beside her mouth.
“Come see me sometime soon,” Daisy called.
Shirley shouted down, explaining she needed to get started on supper before Trevor came home, but Daisy didn’t seem to understand. She put one hand behind her ear. Finally she shouted, “I can’t understand. Just come see me, soon.”
To indicate she understood, Shirley nodded her head up and down vigorously. She had forgotten Daisy was a little deaf—not bad, but sometimes she liked to be close to you and looking in your face while she listened. The noise of the fountain was louder than rain. In return to Shirley’s gesture, now Daisy nodded her own head up and down to signal that she, too, understood; then she fluttered her hand in good-bye and turned to walk toward home, back to Belgravia.
So the trio had had their little party. It hadn’t lasted long. Nice of Daisy to holler up an invitation. Not too high class, but that was one thing about Daisy: she knew when to ignore all that and just be human.
AFTER DAISY LEFT LESLIE’S CONDO, Ryn lingered yet another moment. She sensed there was something else Leslie had intended to say to her, but they’d gotten distracted. Yes, she loved the digressive nature of their conversations, how one thing led to another, but wasn’t there something else she needed to learn from Leslie? Ryn remembered an old metaphor about her congeniality with Frieda. Our minds are like two meadows, she had told Frieda, with no fence in between. Yes. How free, how verdant, it had been. And just this afternoon, Ryn remembered, Leslie had said about their conversation: It’s as though I get to fly.
“End of day is a natural metaphor for end of life,” Leslie suddenly said. “In the morning, we wake up to consciousness from some other place. At night, we leave consciousness. In between, a day holds something of the variety of life, something of our generosity, something of our failures. It’s a natural shape for narrative.”
RYN NEEDED METAPHOR, something that could contain it all.
Outside, by herself, she looked at the fountain, the scrolled underside of the chalice and the surface of the receiving pool with its myriad bowls of dancing water. She would walk some more. Maybe over to Third Street to admire the mansions there. Perhaps she would walk till it was nearly time for Yves to arrive. Well, she’d save a little time to shower and change clothes. And what was it—the glue that held it all together—when you had to face the terror?
IX
VIGNETTES
PORTRAIT
WHEN I FIRST HEAR THE EXCLAMATION “Why, she paints like a man!” I am pleased; I take it only to mean that my work is truly excellent. But insult is also intended, and the innuendo, indeed the idea is expressed overtly, that my brush is my manly part!
I cannot help but note that it is soon after I have been commissioned to paint the queen that a rumor is bandied about at court and among intellectual and artistic circles that I do not do my own work, but that a man has done it. A woman could not have done so well, they claim. I think some women in these groups might accept my talent were I more ugly than they. I think some male painters would be less aggrieved if I did not command
more lucrative fees than they.
My gender makes up part of my individuality as an artist, just as it does for any man, but we are distinctive for the complexity of our individuality, of which gender is only a part. For some that consideration of gender may be minor (I think it is for me), but for others major. My teachers have been men, as were most of the old masters; no wonder there are traces of “masculine” technique in my work.
The dear queen, because she is powerful in her own way, is the victim of much more vicious gossip about her person. Men are frightened of our power; hers as a monarch, daughter of the powerful Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. Antoinette is labeled l’Autrichienne by those who criticize her. But what is shockingly disgusting is that Antoinette is depicted in cartoons as a harpy, or as a hermaphrodite, with both male and female parts. They want not just to slander her but to suggest she is unnatural, a monster with monstrous powers, someone to be hated.
I am also slandered morally as the mistress of the minister of finance, the Vicomte de Calonne, whose portrait I painted. While I consider it one of my most successful works, the work was painted in bits and pieces, due to his busy schedule, and he scarcely had time for even a conversation of any depth. Rumors include the idea that he paid me with some sweets known as butterflies, each wrapped in a banknote of large denomination, and another slander is that my fee was high enough to bankrupt the entire treasury and the money was delivered in a pie! The truth is that M. de Calonne paid me only four thousand francs, which one may compare to a fee of eight thousand from M. de Beaujon for a painting of similar size and detail, which no one considered an extravagant payment.
“YOUR BABY WILL COME TODAY,” my experienced friend tells me.
“But that is impossible,” I reply, “for I have someone sitting for a portrait today, and my subject arrives soon for her appointment.”
My friend would not be dissuaded, but my whole body (ponderous but so what?) leaps upward from reclining to sit ready before my easel and to dwell in the delight of my work. Despite my readiness for work, my friend insists on sending for the doctor. She assures me that I will not have to look at him till the crucial moment, for she will hide him in our home so that his presence will not offend me. Indeed, I am so absorbed, as usual, that I forget he is in the house.
Thus Julie is born, after a good day’s work, with the odor of turpentine for cleaning my brushes still on my fingers when I first hold and love her as herself. I cannot describe the joy I feel when I first hear the voice of my child, her small cries.
WHEN I LOOK IN THE MIRROR, I see no hint of masculinity in my visage, and I determine to paint a self-portrait that will depict my nature aright. While I have a dual identity, that of new mother and also of artist, I look merely like a young girl, and that is my truest nature perhaps.
I am standing by myself, a bust portrait, looking straight out at the viewer. It is 1781 and my baby is very young. I am alone in the picture: I wear a white blouse and it fits close to my neck and falls in three simple ruffles; my blouse and my pale face comprise the center of light which is surrounded by darkness, for I wear a black hat that blends with the brown background, and a black lace shawl curves around my shoulder.
A cerise ribbon bow is planted among the ruffles of my blouse. It is a very pert and girlish bow, pleased with its own crispness. When I painted Marie Antoinette for the first time, in a dress with very wide panniers, there was a similar bow placed lower, one that blended with her ivory dress, and my bow chimes with hers.
In my self-portrait below my breast, there is a wide cerise band that matches the ribbon bow, but the sash is in shadow and not of much importance in the composition, except to help mark the bottom of the painting. The third use of the inviting cerise color is used upon my lips.
The most beautiful part, and the most beautifully painted part, of the picture is the opal earring that hangs from my right ear. The other side of my face is in shadow. On the illumined side of my body, below the pretty earring, the form of my right breast, small but pleasantly rounded, is clearly suggested by the way the blouse fits me. My face shows a hint of a smile just beginning.
Perhaps I wish to say, through this painting of 1781, Though I am now a young mother I still look like a girl, for the neckline is high and modest; I am still myself; I paint with serious ardor. I label this painting Self-Portrait with Cerise Ribbon.
I PARTICULARLY RESENT THE IDEA that I am extravagant when my husband is the extravagant one, and against my advice he is having a house built for us in Rue du Gros-Chenet. M. Le Brun is in a holy fury about the rumors of extravagance, which only serve to ignite him to wild flights of fancy. “Let the rumors fly,” he declares. “After you die, I shall build a pyramid in my garden that reaches to the sky, and I shall have engraved on its sides a list of all your paintings. Then they will know how you earned your fortune.” I try to chuckle at this fantasy, but it is disconcerting for my husband to imagine me dead, while he spends on. I wear muslin and dress my own hair, and I don an elaborate dress only when I visit the Château de Versailles to paint the queen. Here at Rue de Cléry, he consigns me to a small antechamber and a bedroom, which also serves as my salon. It seems not to matter; friends from all stations of life are eager to be invited to my salon in my bedroom or to attend a small supper in the anteroom.
On these occasions, when he wishes to attend, M. Le Brun is also a convivial part of the company. He takes great care with his appearance. In the summer months at home, he dons a white damask coat, often with a shawl collar. His stockings are also white, but the buckles on his shoes are gold. His breeches are made of expensive Oriental nankeen. Perhaps it is to fit in with the nobility that he powders his hair when he knows I detest powdered hair.
WE HAVE BECOME TRAVELERS! For the sake of purchasing new acquisitions for M. Le Brun’s business (paintings owned by Prince Charles are being auctioned), we are traveling in Flanders and Belgium.
In Antwerp, as soon as I see the Rubens portrait of the famous Chapeau de Paille, I feel inspired to treat light as he has treated it, in a painting of my own. Rubens uses two light sources, the ambient daylight and also the bright direct rays of the sun. The simple daylight, then, becomes “shadow” in the interplay, and the highlighted parts are the direct sunlight. In order to embody what I have just learned by viewing Rubens’s portrait, I commence a new self-portrait. I feel that I do dwell in daylight, while I am working on this self-portrait. In Brussels!
It is glorious to be out in the world, beyond France, and there is a freedom in the very sky which I’ve rendered behind my figure in this self-portrait. I feel that I am myself. I have stepped forward, in this self-portrait, as an artist, for I hold my palette and brushes in my hand as I paint them.
How better to learn a technique for matching the inner life, the emotions, with their outer representations than by painting oneself ? Then alone does one know the truth of the inner matter and of the putative match appearing on the canvas. Certainly any painter tries to enter the soul of her subject through the imagination, but that inner reality of another is actually inaccessible, in the visual arts, except as it is expressed in bodily gestures or in facial expressions we fancy we have learned to read. Only when one is painting a self-portrait can one check for accuracy between what one is feeling and what is rendered on canvas. As an artist, I feel free and full of joy, of self-fulfillment.
Even while my hand does its sure work, my mind compares and contrasts this work to my Self-Portrait with Cerise Ribbon.
Now I do not look self-contained or thoughtful; I look confident. Joy is alive in every stroke of my brush. I am wearing the same opal earrings in both paintings, but this time the viewer can see both of them, for I am looking straight ahead into the daylight.
I’m wearing now a straw hat (not a black hat) with blue, white, and red flowers encircling its flat crown. The brim of the hat swoops in a lazy S sideways over my brow and is quite fetching. The hat brim prevents the direct light from illumining part of my face. T
here is, loosely defined, what one might perceive as a curved shadow across my face, but it is actually the ambient light. The brightest part of the painting, in the direct rays of the sun, shows my right cheek, my neck, and my bosom. The neckline of my dress is no longer modest and girlish but dips low, and a white lace collar ripples around my bosom revealing a young woman’s décolletage. The bow is loose and wilted, used, not crisp.
In the earlier painting, my hands, lest that excite envy, were not even included. What is important now is that, in my left hand, I am holding my color-laden palette and a bouquet of paintbrushes; and my right hand, which is near the bottom of the painting, is open and relaxed, ready to pluck a brush from the bundle and commence work. The colors on the palette are the same colors as those of the flowers on my hat. The painting says, “Yes, I am an artist, and as for those flowers on my hat, why, it is I who have just painted them.”
This painting is glorious with color, authoritatively used. Someone might say I was influenced by Rubens, and that would be true. But his lady in a straw hat is looking up in a coy fashion, while I look fearlessly forward. My painting says my hands are more interesting than my bosom. His does not convey this idea: quite the opposite. His says: Here is a coy woman with a lovely bosom; mine says: Here is a woman who is an artist; her hands are the instruments of creation, and she chooses to re-create herself, here, on this canvas.
And that shade of blue that I have achieved for the sky? It is the sky I loved as a little girl, bold and confident, supported as I was by both my parents; it is the sky behind the painting of John the Baptist on the wall of the Church of Saint Eustache.
But my lips! Yes, they are the Cupid’s bow of the fresh girl-mother, but the smile is definite and inviting. Why? I have been treated to great courtesies, M. Le Brun and I, by the Prince de Ligne, who is the most seductive man I have ever seen. In return, I smile at him and his world, and even at Rubens!
The Fountain of St. James Court; Or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman Page 29
