I Always Loved You (13 page)

“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.

T
he 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.

W
ithin 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 expectations 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.

Sometimes Degas stopped by. “It is memory,” he said to Katherine. “Mary is remembering you. It is all the life and love you have given her that she uses to paint you.”

“Memory?” Katherine asked.

“If an artist reproduces only what he sees, then where is the artistry?”

Degas seduced Katherine's warming regard with a display of impeccable manners on his subsequent visits, which were suitably brief, and which Katherine thought showed a respect for propriety. Since that first disastrous dinner, there had been other, better evenings, with suggestions of joint summer excursions to the Bois de Boulogne for the horse races, to seduce Robert, who was a lover of racing, as was Degas. He even invited Robert to his studio to see some of his paintings of horses, which Robert, not knowing what a great exception this invitation represented, had yet to accept.

When Katherine's portrait was finished, Mary painted Lydia, who had recovered sufficiently by February to both sit for her portrait and get about town, accompanying Mary to the Opéra, where the gilded chandelier and searing limelight ameliorated the oppressive dark of winter. Mary, in need of ever-widening subjects, carried a small sketchbook in pockets she had sewn into her evening dresses for the purpose. Sometimes she and Lydia met Louisine Elder and Mary Ellison there, who forgave the rasp of Mary's pencil during the performance as she sketched the theatergoers, the embellished ceiling of painted cherubs floating in a blue sky, and the ornate curves of the crystal chandelier from their box, composing pictures in her mind, bending over her book to finish even as the performances ended and people stood to applaud. Mary avoided Degas's night, which was Monday. She did not want to greet him on the fishbowl of the grand staircase, where every turned head was remarked on, and every whisper repeated the next day.

Lydia loved the portrait that Mary was painting of her. In it, she wore her most daring evening gown and a string of tight pearls, and she was being painted as if she were seated in a loge at the Opéra. She had begun to feel much better, despite the loathsome visits to the abattoir, though she didn't like the bemused and sympathetic expression on the doctor's face even when she was feeling her best. Mary insisted that her skin shone with such luminosity that she would certainly be better now for all of time. Lydia hoped that was true. The swelling in her hands and face had exhausted her and the headache had felt like death. In the weeks afterward, it had been difficult to go out, for she could hardly appear in public when her face took on that chipmunk puffiness and her stomach swelled to twice its normal size. And she descended into such a
fog
. But it was true, all the dullness in her skin had disappeared, and she was happy to be in Paris again.

“Is my picture to be an answer to Monsieur Degas's danseuses?” Lydia said. “Degas paints the dancers and you paint the audience?”

“Not as an answer, no,” Mary said, hoping that no one else would draw the same conclusion, though the picture was an answer, of sorts. One had to paint something, and she could not draw cafés or bathhouses as the men did, nor did she wish to impinge on Berthe's glorious dressing rooms. The answer had come to her one night as she despaired. She didn't want to sit women in chairs forever and paint them as if they spent all their lives embroidering. Her portraits needed a context, and the Opéra was perfect. But Lydia's painting was taking longer than usual. For the first time, Mary was painting a detailed background: It wasn't just a picture of Lydia; it was a picture of Lydia
at the Opéra
. And she was still learning the new technique. The style change mystified her family, who had been schooled by Mary to believe that academic art was the ideal art and that all her training had been leading her toward success in that realm. Mary had fueled that belief over the years by sending home newspaper clippings of her triumphs at the Salon. Now she was declaring that she'd been set free from the prison of the Salon. She talked on and on of rendering form by indicating it with color rather than establishing it with line, of lightening her brushstrokes and palette, of abandoning the formal for the informal. She detailed the best ratio of poppy seed oil to paint, varying it as she painted layer upon layer, pushing the pure colors out of the way with her wet brush laden with yet another color, juxtaposing tones so that she could render high and low lights. Day after day she talked of applying the new techniques she was finally inhaling from her conversations at the Manets' Thursdays, where she had given up being the polite newcomer and cornered Pissarro when he was in town, or begged Renoir to discuss tones and values. Her family had yet to go with her. Robert said he would rather die than suffocate in a parlor of writers and artists, and Katherine claimed that she was still too American to plunge into such a bohemian crowd.

•   •   •

Winter gave way to a warm, if wet, spring, and across Paris artists were once again in the clutches of Salon fever. For the first time, Mary was not at the mercy of a jury, but the impressionist exhibition was scheduled for June and by the beginning of April she had only four canvases ready: a portrait of her father, one of her mother, and two of Lydia. She was beginning to despair. What else to paint? She was not Degas. She couldn't find a thousand ways to paint a woman in a loge. They would always be elegant, always coiffed, always caged. Daily, the sense of panic widened. Unable to afford a model, unable to paint outside in the rain, unable to think of another pose for her family, she fretted her time away in the studio. She set her easel at the window to try to capture the street scene, only to fail miserably. She stalked people in the Place d'Anvers, hoping someone would sit so that she could sketch them surreptitiously, but everyone flew past in the blustery wind. She even considered visiting a café, but the horror of being a woman alone defeated her.

To distract herself, Mary went with Lydia to the Opéra on a Monday night, the only night that week that Mary could obtain cheap tickets. During intermission, they ran into Degas in the doorway of the grand foyer, a strategic location from which he liked to observe the ascending and descending patrons on the grand staircase, with their stunning dresses of silk and brocade, their headdresses bobbing in the shimmer of the thousand candles that graced the crystal chandeliers set high above the staircase. One had only to stand and gaze at the architecture to be amazed; the dancing and singing onstage were mere dessert.

Degas took one look at Mary and grasped her by the elbow, steering her to a balcony overlooking the grand staircase, out of the crush of patrons crowding into the foyer in search of mid-show sustenance in the form of champagne. Lydia trailed behind, but turned her back on them, enacting the faithful blindness of sympathetic chaperones throughout time. She gazed over the staircase and sipped from her own flute of sustenance, bubbling water in deference to the doctor.

“What is the matter?” Degas asked Mary. “Are you ill? Or is it something worse?”

“I don't know what to paint. I can't do another portrait of my family or I shall go mad. Not that I don't love you, Lyddy dear,” she said over her shoulder.

“Of course not, darling,” Lydia said. Chaperones might be blind but they were never known to be deaf. Besides, she wasn't certain she wanted to sit again for Mary. The brief spate of good health she had enjoyed in February seemed to be abating. It was little things, noticeable only to her. Her rings too tight on her fingers, the darkening of her urine. It was embarrassing being ill with such an indelicate malady, one so private that she felt shame even with the doctor, who examined her with a serious but furtive air, and who studied the contents of her chamber pot even while she was in the room. Coming to the Opéra with Mary was a way to forget, as well as to appease her mother's worries over the nature of Mary's friendship with the French artist she feared might hurt her daughter, but about whom Lydia had no reservations. Besides, it was nice to be out and pretend she wasn't ill; she told no one, but she counted every day as possibly her last, a grim yet realistic approach Mary would consider too dire and dramatic. Mary wanted Lydia to believe, and so she pretended to believe, to make Mary happy.

“I have no money to pay a model,” Mary said to Degas. “I don't know what to do.”

“You must find your subject.”

Mary said, “Like yours? Ballet, horses, brothels?”

“Obsessions are an artist's gift. Obsession is poetry,” Degas said.

The intermission chimes rang and they parted, but not before Degas asked Lydia about her health, pressing his hand into hers, taking from her the champagne flute and hunting down a waiter so that she wouldn't have to be bothered.