I Always Loved You (16 page)

Monet turned away and muttered, “‘We'? She hasn't even exhibited with us yet.”

Mary waited for Edgar or Caillebotte to say something, anything, to defend her against Monet's attack, but no one said anything.

She rose. “If I may, Monsieur Caillebotte, could you please ask the maid for my wrap?”

“Certainly,” he said.

Degas said, “Wait. I have to call for the carriage.”

Mary started for the door. Berthe hovered near the entryway curtains. Mary did not look at her as she passed. When she reached the door the maid handed her her wrap.

“Allow me, mademoiselle,” Pissarro said, appearing beside her. In a moment they were outside, on the street, where he was somehow able to hail a cab before Degas could rush after them.

Mary blinked back the hot traces of her anger. The street pulsed with silence. Rain splattered the windows of the carriage. As the cab twisted through the dark streets, the slap of the wheels on the water began to work on her like a lullaby, an effect she first fought, then surrendered to, wiping the spill of angry tears with a handkerchief. Pissarro looked out the window, pretending fascination with nocturnal Paris as street after street slipped by.

After a time, he said, “We didn't have an exhibition in '75; you know that, don't you? It sometimes works that way.”

“Yes. But it's possible, isn't it, that there might never be another exhibition? That you could all decide not to show together ever again? That your differences will divide you forever?”

Pissarro sighed. He did not even try to dissuade her. In his measured silence Mary knew that she had set her heart on a dream, and that now ruin might come from such unreasoned folly.

She pulled her wrap tighter against the infiltrating mist. “Have I made a mistake, Monsieur Pissarro, in trusting all of you?”

“I'm afraid it depends, my dear, on what you are after.”

“It was the first time Edgar has ever spoken to me like that,” Mary said. She could not come to terms with the man who had just embarrassed her in front of everyone: the man she so admired, the man who had given her the gift of Eloise, the man who had brought her disagreeable father a silk cravat.

“If I may, mademoiselle? Guard yourself. I have too many other things to worry about than your heart.”

“No wonder Berthe adores you,” Mary said.

•   •   •

Pissarro alighted from the fiacre with Mary on the Avenue Trudaine on the pretext of the pleasure of walking back to the Rue des Trois Frères, where he kept a cot in his studio. He insisted on paying for the cab, too, which mortified Mary, but she let him, resolving to convince her father to purchase one of his paintings in repayment. He kissed her cheek and glided away; his rounded shoulders, out of place on so tall a frame, marked him as an artist, but he could easily have been mistaken for a gentleman down on his luck, for he wore his thin corduroy coat and woolen scarf with great dignity.

She would have asked him in, but she was exhausted and it was late, and besides, her home didn't feel like her home anymore. Her father, having found much to complain about the apartment she had chosen for them, had embarked in January on a mission to find somewhere else to live. His purported excuse had been to return Mary to the ninth arrondissement and her life in the shadow of Montmartre, but she believed his dissatisfaction had more to do with the insular nature of the American colony. Mary had tried to warn her parents, but they hadn't listened, and soon Robert had discovered for himself the infighting and shallowness of the expatriates, who were always vying for an invitation to a ball at the Élysée Palace or the numerous fashionable Quai d'Orsay balls and receptions at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And at colony dinners, the conversation ran to inanities like the resplendent décolletage on display on the nine p.m. train to Versailles, or the impossibility of the hours spent waiting in coaches at the Élysée Palace for everyone to debark and be announced. After a month or two of barely concealed disdain, Robert had turned his back on his fellow expatriates. Better, he said, to become completely Parisian and die of loneliness—for his French still foundered—than to remain American and die of inflicted idiocy. And though Mary shared his impatience, his rejection of the apartment negated all the time she had taken to find a place for them in the precise part of town they had requested, time she had needed for her work. And the move to the Avenue Trudaine had taken up even more time, first to find the apartment, then to negotiate the impossible French bureaucracy, and finally to mollify the angry
portier
at the Rue Beaujon who had counted on them for a year. Once again, she'd had to find movers who wouldn't destroy everything, and in the end her father rejected most of the furniture she'd chosen anyway. Their new apartment remained sparsely furnished, because no carter could be procured to deliver new furniture now that every conveyance in Paris was needed to transport visitors to the Exposition. They had moved to the Avenue Trudaine in the beginning of March, and though the change was arguably better for her—she could now walk to her studio instead of riding the ponderous omnibus—the cost in time had once again been punitive. The Avenue Trudaine, leafy and less showy than the Rue Beaujon, was not even quiet. The students of the nearby Collège Rollin frolicked on their way to and from classes, creating a ruckus several times a day, setting even the calm Lydia's nerves on edge.

In the rain Mary looked up at the apartment building, readying herself for the five flights of stairs and the look of
I told you so
in her father's eyes when she relayed the news. Now her father could say that her opposition to the inconvenience of the move had been unfounded. What had it cost her, he would say, when there wasn't even going to be an exhibition? And Abigail Alcott had married. There had been a letter today from England announcing her news and a move to the outskirts of Paris. It was hard not to compare her situation with her friend's: Abigail had achieved everything she wanted, while Mary had achieved nothing. She had trusted the renegades and now the renegades had failed her.

The nearby Place d'Anvers, peaceful and deserted, beckoned, but she opened the door and went in to face her father.

July 12, 1878

My dearest Mary,

I believe I've been unkind. No, worse than that. I've been an imbecile. No doubt you've been thinking of me in those apt terms. When you did not answer my previous two letters, I knew that I had offended you in the most indecent way. Of course you were disappointed. It was blind of me not to understand this. You possess that American optimism that believes anything is accomplishable, while we poor French succumb too often to our laziness, though I do hope you realize what great hurdles would have been in our future had we dared to climb the battlements, considering Manet's earlier, dreadful defeat. We have used up all our store of rebellion in opposing the Salon, and have none to spare, which undoubtedly makes us cowards, but I promise you that I will work hard for another independent show as soon as the exposition is over. I owe you that much after inviting you to exhibit with us and then marooning you in a welter of time. Can you forgive this irritable man? May I still call you friend, my dear, dear mademoiselle?

E. D.

“It is a very graceful note,” Lydia said. She was curled on the window seat before the open sash. Degas's letter, read and reread, was now folded in the open pages of the book on her lap. The slight summer breeze was ruffling the maple trees that rose from the abyss of the Avenue Trudaine, its gas lamps spilling circles of evening light onto strolling passersby. Upon moving into the flat, Lydia had seized the window seat as her own and no one ever challenged her. “You must admit that, Mary.”

Mary looked up from the new writing table, delivered yesterday by a carter whom she'd had to bribe to deliver the desk before his profitable day of ferrying visitors to the Tourville gate of the fair. In the height of the summer, prices for hotel rooms and vegetables had doubled, fiacres had become even more scarce, sidewalks were unnavigable, and the unending trumpet and drum of daily life seethed at a volume not unlike, people said, the invading rockets and bombardments of the Prussians. Italians, Spaniards, Orientals, African princes, and bewildered Americans roamed Paris with an eye toward experience, stumbling exhausted from the surfeit of the exposition into the attractions of a city already exhausted by the visitors' poor French and worse manners.

None of this had benefited any of the impressionists. Tonight, Mary was writing a letter. An art dealer in Philadelphia had been recommended to her, a Mr. Hermann Teubner. He was a restorer of old works, well known in the city, and open to receiving as many of her paintings as she wished to send him, under consignment for twenty percent commission, as befitting the recommendation of his dear friend, Lady Mitchell, to whom he was indebted for the connection, etc., etc. He directed Mary to send the unframed works as soon as possible, though he did require that someone she trusted meet the shipment at the dock in Philadelphia, as his days were taken up with a great deal of work. Lady Mitchell had mentioned that Miss Cassatt had a brother who might be a good intermediary? He was hers most sincerely.

Mary was listing the inventory she was going to send, nearly everything she had, save her most recent work of the past year: fifteen pictures to be properly packaged and entrusted to the shipping company. She was specific in naming the prices for her work; Mr. Teubner was to charge neither more nor less, and to communicate with her about potential sales. The negotiation was as bourgeois a transaction as existed; her father would be proud and Edgar would be horrified, but she had no other choice.

“Monsieur Degas apologized, Mary,” Lydia said. “You are too hard on people.”

“He was awful to me,” Mary said. “He was mocking and unkind.”

“You could remind him that the picture of the blue chairs was rejected. Would that be retaliation enough?” Lydia said.

“He has no respect for other people's opinions.”

“He has written you a lovely note, one you ought to acknowledge if you are not to die an old woman, miserable and mean.”

“I am not going to die an old woman miserable and mean, because you will be at my side to save me from myself,” Mary said.

“You'll write to him? Because if you don't, I shall write for you and will apologize endlessly, saying how sorry you are that you couldn't see his point of view and that you were only thinking of fame and glory and that you have been beside yourself with worry that you have lost his dear friendship and that it means more to you than a missed exhibition and that it was only pride—”

“You're feeling better to tease me so.”

“I am. I feel wonderful.”

“I'm glad. But you don't understand, Lyddy.”

“Friends hurt one another, you know, from time to time. They can't all be as kind to you as your devoted sister.”

Mary picked up her pen, then put it down.

“Why did only Monsieur Degas disappoint you?” Lydia said. “Everybody else agreed with him, even your beloved Monsieur Pissarro, and yet it is only Edgar with whom you are angry.”

“He was vicious. You weren't there.”

“No one cares for you as much as he does.”

“You suggest romance because you want me to have one, but there isn't one. At least not now.”

“You questioned his courage and veracity. He was hurt.”

“I only spoke my mind.”

“As did he. Write the man a nice note and drop your silly pride, for your sake as well as his, or I shall send him flowers and say that they are from you, with love.”

“You'll do no such thing. And besides, he hates flowers.”

“Likely I won't, but I do feel well this evening, and I see that that lovely little flower shop on the corner is still open, and I am in need of some exercise, and—”

“You will not betray me.”

“Betrayal is your favorite word. I was only teasing. You are too touchy, my dear sister; it will cause you infinite trouble if you do not rein in your pride.”

“I'll write.”

“Today?”

“Today.”

“Good.”

“But he was unkind.”

“Of course he was, but that is not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“The point is that you're both stubborn.”

“That's not true.”

“Of course it is,” Lydia said, returning to her book.

B
ut she didn't write to him. A month passed. Two. She composed a hundred letters in her mind, failing each time to arrive at the perfect tone to communicate the depth of her hurt, so she sent none of them.

Instead, she worked.

She rose early in the morning to the dawn light stippling her bedroom wall. While the rest of the family slept, she made her ablutions, the dog prancing at her feet. Anna served her coffee and a roll for breakfast and packed her a midday meal of sandwiches while they whispered about the day's shopping and housekeeping before Mary scooped up her dog and escaped down the spiral stairwell.

She loved the brisk walk to her studio through a wakening Paris that was full of the limpid beauty the city seemed to conjure from the dew. In this corner of the city, far from the Champ de Mars, the uproar of the exhibition was muted, so that the usual morning pleasures of Paris—the brush of the street sweepers tidying the sidewalks, the bakers unfurling their striped awnings, the clop-clop of the milk wagon on its deliveries—still soothed.

At her studio, her steps echoed on the dull tile. The dog alighted to sleep on the blue chair, the housekeeping and the other demands of family life fell away, and Mary was left with only the anticipation of work.

Lately she had developed a ritual of not looking at the canvas she was working on until she had donned her apron and set out her brushes and turpentine and poppy seed oil, squeezing out the paints onto the walnut surface of her palette before she readied herself to face the unfinished work. Always, in the moment before, an unbidden terror arose: Was the painting as good as she thought it was? She disciplined herself not to answer, for her opinion of her work, rooted as it was in emotion, was unreliable in the vulnerable gulf of time between what she wanted the canvas to be and what it currently was. Self-pity did not help, and she found that if she denied herself that indulgence and instead simply began, keeping her brush moving, the bristles and wooden handle soon became an extension of her unconscious, where the truth about a work really lived. Technique—studied, practiced, perfected—birthed freedom, and her years of apprenticeship now began to cohere in a tornado of work. The muse, so stingy the years before, visited and revisited like an enamored lover, as new canvases—watercolors, oils, pastels—began to line the floors of her studio to dry and cure.

At the end of each day, she dropped her brushes into a tin can and ferried them to the
portier
's closet in the hallway, where she washed them with turpentine in a spattered sink. It was now that she had to shutter her ears to the suddenly voluble critic, who awakened as she emerged from her reverie. The persuasive voice harped alternately that she was posing, or that her work was hackneyed and flat, or that she lacked the soul of an artist and was therefore incapable of imparting truth, or that she would never hear again from the art dealer in Philadelphia, who had probably stolen all her canvases anyway, or that she ought to give up, or the worst, that Degas would think nothing of her work. The voice blathered on and on, taking advantage of her fatigue as she rinsed and re-rinsed her brushes and rubbed from her chapped hands the ocher and rose splatters of paint that decorated her wrists and knuckles. She had no idea where she would ever show her work now that she had broken with Degas.

Back in the studio, she fell on the sandwiches and fruit that Anna had packed for her, looking out the window to the busy boulevard, where the late afternoon bustle washed away the perverse workings of her doubting mind. The effort of spurning the ugly voice exhausted her, and only when she was certain it had quieted did she turn to study the canvas before she locked the door and started for home.

In this way, the summer of the Exposition Universelle passed: the cold, rainy July and the disconsolate oven of the brutal August, when wealthy Parisians traveled to Dieppe or Provence while her family spent the summer seeking relief in the shade of the Bois de Boulogne, hiring fiacres to transport them from the city to the cooler environs of the park.

•   •   •

One afternoon at the end of August, Degas came toward her on the sidewalk of the Rue Frochot. His linen suit was wrinkled, his top hat was moist at its wide satin band, but his gait was as certain and sure-footed as always. In the bright afternoon he wore his lavender glasses. The reflection on the glasses made it impossible to read his eyes. She thought for a moment that he might pass her by.

“Mademoiselle Cassatt,” Degas said, stopping at the last moment.

“How are you?” she said.

“Quite well, thank you.”

He was never well. He always had a complaint. “You have not gone away for the summer,” she said.

“I will vacation in October.”

“So there is no possibility of an exhibition this autumn?”

“None.”

“I see.”

“How is your family?” Degas said.

“We have suffered here.”

“Give them my regards, Lydia especially,” he said, tipping his hat.

He walked past, his shoulders set, his stride resolute.

“You are never this polite unless you do not care for the person you are conversing with,” she said, turning.

He stopped. “You do not seem to care for the truth, or for my apologies.”

“You must admit you were wrong. We could have dropped sugar cubes and people would have followed them to our exhibition.”

Degas shrugged.

“You are indifferent?”

“You are the one who did not answer my letters. I am not so in need of friends that I force myself on someone who doesn't care for me.”

“I was hurt.”

“I believe I said I was an imbecile.”

“You
were
an imbecile.”

The cobbles had absorbed the sun's heat during the day, but now the sun dropped behind the gables of the buildings, and the wretched glare diminished. In the reprieve of shade, Degas removed his glasses, and Mary studied his eyes, hoping to find the spark of interest he had always carried for her. They were cool, but not angry. Assessing.

“You're a bulwark when you're angry,” he said.

“And you are glib and unkind.”

He would have to walk away to end it. Her pride would sustain her in this; she would stand here through dinner, through the night, all the way to the morning, if necessary, though there was little satisfaction in it.

“I will not tell you that I am sorry,” she said.

“You owe me no apology. Just an acceptance of mine.”

A sliver of light penetrated a break in the buildings' facade. Degas winced, but did not put on his glasses, concentrating his piercing gaze on her and what she would say next.

“We are adept at wounding one other,” she said. “But can we not? I would rather have you in my life.”

A small smile lifted the corners of his mouth. He said nothing, but took her parasol from her, shut it, and hung it over his forearm, then folded his glasses into his coat pocket. He reached for her hands and wrapped them in his. Like hers, his were reddened and roughened by the scourge of turpentine, shaped by the dexterous manipulation of brush and palette knife, tinted by pastels and oils fast nestled into crevices. Mirrors, their hands.

“I don't want to have to spend my life defending my aspirations nor my right to speak. Not to you. Not to my father. Not to anyone,” she said.

“I thought I'd lost you,” he said.

“Would you come see what I've done? It's new, and I'm not sure.” Though now, in his presence, she was sure. It was solid work: new, bright, and veracious. “If you come, it won't take more than a moment,” she said, but it would. And he wouldn't mind. He would abandon whatever friends he was on his way to meet now and would come back with her and look at all her paintings and exclaim over them.

“I looked for you,” she said. “Every day. On the street. I never saw you.”

“Except today.”

“Yes. Except today.”