The Swan Thieves Part 10

He did laugh. "To Manhattan? Are you kidding?"

130.

Cher oncle et ami: Please don't think that because I haven't written I have forgotten you! Your notes are very sweet and bring us all joy, and I treasure the ones you sent to me--yes, I am quite well. Yves will be in Provence for two weeks, which means many preparations in the household. The Ministry is sending him to create a plan for the post office they will give over to him next year. Papa is quite anxious about Yves's departure and says we must find a way to get the government to excuse those with blind fathers from traveling jar away. He tells us that Yves is his walking stick and I am his eyes. Perhaps you will a.s.sume this is some sort of burden, but please do not think so for an instant -- never has any young woman had a kinder father-in-law than I, as I well know. I fear he will languish without Yves, even for this relatively short time, and I do not dare go to see my sister while Yves is gone. Perhaps you will come cheer us some evening -- in fact, Papa will insist, I'm sure! In the meantime, thank you also for the brushes you sent me in your package. They are the finest I have seen, and Yves is pleased to think I'll have something new to work with while he's away. My portrait of little Anne is done, and so are two garden scenes showing the approach of winter, but I can't seem to begin anything new. Your brushes will be my inspiration. The modern natural style of landscape pleases me immensely, perhaps more than it does you, and I try to capture it, although of course one can't do much at this season.

In the meantime, warmest greetings from your affectionate Beatrice de Clerval 131.

CHAPTER 21 Marlow.

Kate had set her coffee cup, with its ring of glazed blackberries, on a table at her elbow. She made a little gesture, as if asking me to let her stop talking. I nodded and sat back at once; I wondered if there were tears gathering in her eyes. "Let's take a break," she said, although it seemed to me we were already taking one. I hoped she'd be willing to continue at all. "Would you like to see Robert's studio?"

"Did he work much at home?" I tried not to accept too eagerly. "Well, at home and at school," she told me. "Mainly at school, of course."

Upstairs, the central hall doubled as a small library, with a faded carpet and windows that looked over that spreading lawn. More novels, collections of short stories, encyclopedias. At one end there was a table equipped with drawing materials, pencils standing in a jar, a large open pad--someone's sketch of windows, apparently. Was this finally a glimpse of Robert? But Kate saw me looking. "My work spot," she said shortly.

"You must be a great reader," I hazarded.

"Yes. Robert always thought I spent too much time reading, in fact. And a lot of these books belonged to my parents."

So they were her books, not his. I noted entrances to various rooms, some with their doors shut, some open to views of carefully made beds. In one of these--at last--I saw the children's toys, scattered joyfully on the floor. Kate opened a closed door and let me in.

The aroma of mineral spirits lingered here still, as well as the 132.

smell of oils--I wondered how such a careful housekeeper as she seemed to be (even neater than my mother) could possibly have tolerated that smell in the upstairs of the house. Perhaps, as I did, she actually found it pleasing. We entered without speaking; I had at once a funereal feeling about this room. The artist who had worked here only a short time before was not dead, but now he lay in a bed far away, staring at the ceiling of a psychiatric center. Kate went to the big windows and folded back a series of wooden shutters, and the sunlight for which Robert Oliver must have chosen this room came sweeping in. It fell on the walls, on canvases stacked backward in one corner, a long table, cans full of brushes. And it fell on a handsome adjustable easel with a painting still on it, nearly finished, a painting that electrified my senses.

In addition, the walls were littered with images of paintings-- mainly postcards from museums and from every era of Western art. I saw dozens of works I knew and many I didn't. Every inch of s.p.a.ce leapt with faces, meadows, dresses, mountains, swans, haystacks, fruit, s.h.i.+ps, dogs, hands, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, geese, vases, houses, dead pheasants, Madonnas, windows, hats, trees, horses, roads, saints, windmills, soldiers, children. The Impressionists dominated; I could easily pick out ma.s.ses of Renoir, Degas, Monet, Morisot, Sisley, and p.i.s.sarro, although there were other images that were clearly Impressionist but new to me.

The room itself looked as if its occupant had left it on impulse: a heap of paint-hardened brushes--good brushes, wasted--and a stained rag rested on the table. He had not even finished cleaning up, my patient who showered and shaved daily in the heart of an inst.i.tution. His former wife stood in the middle of the room, the sun touching her sand-dune hair. She glowed with sunlight, with young beauty beginning to ebb, and--I thought--with anger.

Keeping one eye on her, I stepped up to the easel. Robert's familiar subject gazed out of it, the woman with the dark curls, the red lips, and the brilliant eyes. She wore a gown that might have been an old-fas.h.i.+oned nightdress or robe, a garment ruffled 133.

and pale blue and barely held in place by her white hand. It was a vivid, romantic portrait, highly sensual--saved from sentimentality, in fact, by a frank eroticism, one curve of the woman's breast pressed roundly under her forearm as she reached up to gather her robe together. To my surprise, the hand that gripped the gown also held a paintbrush, its tip smeared with cobalt as if she herself had been caught in midstroke, working on some canvas of her own. The background seemed to be a sunny window, a window with stone framing and diamond-shaped gla.s.s panes, filled in the distance with slate-blue water and ocean clouds. The rest of the background--the room where the woman stood--was unfinished, trailing away into bare canvas in the top right corner.

That face was familiar enough to me, and the wonderfully curling, living dark hair, but two aspects of this portrait were different from the images Robert was constantly painting in his room at Goldengrove. One was the style of the work, the brushwork, the heightened realism; he had abandoned his occasionally rough handling, his modern version of Impressionism, for this painting. It was highly realistic, in places nearly photographic--the texture of her skin, for example, had the smoothness of the late medieval period, the attention to fine surfaces. It reminded me, in fact, of the Pre-Raphaelites and their detailed portraits of women; it had that mythical quality, too, with the loose robe, the woman's broad-shouldered height and splendor. A few fine black curls had escaped to brush her cheek and neck. I wondered if he'd actually painted it from a photograph; but was he a painter who would use photographs at all?

The other thing that startled me--no, shocked me, really--was the subject's expression. In most of the sketches of her at the hospital, Robert's woman was serious, even somber, at least thoughtful--sometimes, as I've mentioned, angry. Here, on a canvas that apparently sat most of the time in shuttered darkness, she was laughing. I had never seen her laugh before. Despite her dishabille, it was not a wanton laugh but a joyful, intelligent mirth, a witty 134.

love of life, a natural movement of her lovely mouth, a glimpse of teeth, eyes sparkling. She was utterly, almost terribly, alive on the canvas; she seemed about to move. To see her was to want to reach out and touch her living skin--yes, to long to bring her close and hear her laugh in your ear. The sunlight fell across her in streams. I'll admit it: I desired her. It was a masterpiece, one of the most splendidly conceived and executed contemporary portraits I'd ever seen in the flesh. Unfinished as she was, she had taken--I knew at a glance--weeks or months of work. Months.

When I turned back to Kate, I couldn't help reading her disdain. "You like her, too, I see," she said, and I heard coldness in her tone. She seemed small and worn, even pinched, next to the lady on the canvas. "Do you think my ex-husband is gifted?"

"Without question," I said. I felt myself lowering my voice, as if he might be just behind us, listening--I remembered the contempt I'd so often seen on his face when I spoke to him about his drawings and paintings. This once-married couple might be divided now by their difficult history, but they both knew how to look bitterly disdainful, that was certain. I wondered if they'd sometimes faced each other with that expression. Kate stood staring at the brighter-than-life woman on the easel, who gazed radiantly past us. I had the sudden sense that the portrait was searching for Robert Oliver, her creator, that she, too, saw him standing behind us. I almost turned around to check. It was unnerving, and I wasn't entirely sorry when Kate closed the shutters and the lady was laughing in dusk again. We went out and Kate shut the door. When would I have the courage to ask her the ident.i.ty of the woman in the portrait? Who had been its model? I had missed the moment; I was afraid that if I asked this, she would stop talking with me altogether.

"You've left his studio as it was," I observed as casually as I could.

"Yes, I have," she admitted. "I keep meaning to do something about it, but I guess I'm never quite sure what to do. I don't want 135.

to just put everything in storage or throw it all away. When Robert settles down somewhere, I might pack up these things and send them all to him so he can start a new studio. If he ever settles down anywhere." She avoided my gaze. "The children ought to have separate bedrooms soon. Or maybe I'll finally make a studio for myself. I never had one. I always just took my easel outside, but that meant working in good weather, and then we had the kids--" She broke off. "Sometimes Robert offered me a corner of his studio, or said he could work at school and give me this room, but I didn't want a corner. And I certainly didn't want him at school even more of the time."

Something in her tone made me feel I shouldn't ask why not. So I stayed silent, following her down the stairs. Her back in the golden s.h.i.+rt was small and straight, her body firmly controlled, as if she dared me to feel any longing or even curiosity, as if she would turn that ladylike hostility on me in an instant if I let my eyes travel over her. I glanced out the window instead, at a beech tree that threw rosy light into the staircase. She led me to the living room and sat down on her sofa with a purposeful look. I understood that she wanted to get on with our task, and I sat down opposite her and tried to collect myself.

136.

Mon cher oncle: We did have a bit of social life last night, and I regretted you could not come to enjoy it with us; in addition to the usual friends, Yves brought home with him Gilbert Thomas, a painter of excellent family who they say is talented-- although he was refused at the Salon last year and took it hard. M. Thomas must be about ten years older than I--perhaps in his late thirties. He is charming and intelligent, but there is something angry in him at moments that I do not quite like, especially when he speaks of other painters. He was gracious about asking to see my work, and I believe Yves had the idea that he, like you, might help me. He seemed genuinely struck by my portrait of little Marguerite, the new maid I told you about, who has such white skin and gold hair, and I confess it was flattering to hear it praised. He said he thought I could do great things, given my talent, and complimented my rendering of the figure. I did find him kind then, if a little sure of himself (I won't quite say pompous, so that you will not scold me later for sn.o.bbery). He and his brother intend to establish a large new sales gallery, and I daresay he would like to show your work there. He promised Yves to come back one day and bring his brother along, and you must come, too, if that is the case.

There was also a delightful man in the party, a M. Dupre, another artist, one who works for the ill.u.s.trated papers. He has been in the country of Bulgaria, where they have recently had a revolution. I heard him tell Yves that he knew of your work. He brought us some of his prints, which are very detailed and show all kinds of skirmishes and battles, with cavalry, magnificent uniforms-- and sometimes quieter scenes with villagers in their native costumes. He says it is a mountainous country, rather unsafe at the moment for journalists 137.

but full of dramatic views. He is doing a series he calls "Les Balkans Ill.u.s.tres." In fact, he has married a Bulgarian girl with the lovely name of Yanka Georgieva and brought her to Paris to learn French --she was unwell and could not attend this evening, but he wrote down her name for me. I found myself wis.h.i.+ng I could go to such places and see them for myself. In fact, we are pretty dull with Yves working so much these days, and I was glad to have a dinner party under my own roof. I do hope you will join us the next time.

I must go now, but I will look forward to whatever lines you can send your devoted Beatrice de Clerval 138.

CHAPTER 22 Kate.

Our new place was a big green cottage provided by the college. After cla.s.ses started, Robert was gone more than ever, and now he was painting in our attic at night as well. I didn't like to go up there because of the fumes, so I stayed away. I was going through a stage of constantly worrying about the baby, maybe because I'd begun to feel it squirm and kick--"Feeling life," one of the faculty wives told me. Whenever it wasn't moving I was sure it was sick, or more likely dead. I didn't buy bananas at the grocery store anymore when I chugged over there in our new very old car, because I'd read that they had some kind of horrible chemical on them that could cause birth defects. Instead, I went into Greenhill now and then with a big empty basket, filling it with organic fruit and yogurt we couldn't quite afford. How were we going to send a child to college if we couldn't even pay for safe grapes?

It was all a conundrum to me. I had lost hope again that I would be anything but a terrible, awful mother, bored and impatient and popping Valium. I wished we'd never succeeded in conceiving--I wished it n.o.bly, for the sake of the poor baby who was just going to have to make the best of me, and the best of its miserable fate with an artist father--G.o.d, maybe his sperm had mutated from all the paint fumes he'd breathed. I hadn't thought of that before. I got into our bed with a book and cried. I needed Robert, and when we had supper together I told him all my fears and he hugged and kissed me and insisted that there was nothing to worry about, but after dinner he had a meeting at the Art Department because they were about to hire a new specialist in 139.

mountain crafts. I never seemed to have enough of him, and he didn't seem to mind that enough either.

In actuality, Robert went up to his attic room more and more when he wasn't in cla.s.s, which was probably why I didn't know for a long time about the sleeping. One morning I noticed that he hadn't come down to breakfast, and I knew he must have been painting all night, as he sometimes liked to, and then gone to bed as the sun rose--it wasn't unusual for me to wake to find his side of the bed empty on those occasions, because he'd put an old sofa up in his attic soon after we moved in. He appeared sometime around noon on this particular day, his hair standing straight up on the right side. We had lunch together, and he went to his afternoon cla.s.ses.

I think I remember that day mainly because only a few mornings later I got a call from the Art Department. They were phoning for Robert to know if he was all right, because his students had reported that he'd missed teaching their morning studio twice in a row. I tried to remember his schedule these last days but couldn't--I was in a haze of fatigue myself, my belly so large now that I could hardly bend forward to make our bed. I said that I would ask him when I saw him but that I thought he wasn't home.

The truth was that I'd slept late myself and a.s.sumed he'd left before I woke, although now I began to doubt this. I went to the foot of the short flight of stairs that led to Robert's attic and opened the door. The stairs looked like Mount Everest to me, but I hitched my dress up a little and began to climb. It occurred to me that this might bring on labor, but if it did--so what? I was in the safe zone already, or rather the baby was--the nurse-midwife had told me cheerfully the week before that I could have the baby "anytime I wanted to." I was torn between longing to see our son or daughter's face, and the desire to postpone the inevitable day 140.

when my baby would look me in the eye and know that I had no idea what I was doing.

There wasn't a door at the top of the stairs, and I could see the whole attic as I clambered up the last step. Two lightbulbs hung from the ceiling, and they'd both been left on. A bleak midday came in through the skylight. Robert slept on the sofa, one of his arms hanging to the floor, the hand twisted inside out, graceful and Baroque. His face was buried in the cus.h.i.+ons. I checked my watch--it was 11 :35. Well, he'd probably worked until dawn. His easel stood with its back to me, and the smell of paint was still strong. I wanted to gag, as if I'd been flung back into the uneasy stomach of my first trimester, and I turned away instead and lumbered down the stairs. I left him a note on the kitchen counter telling him to call the department, ate some lunch, and went out on a walk with my friend Bridgette. She was pregnant, too, with her second, although not as huge yet as I was, and we'd promised each other we'd walk at least two miles a day.

When I got home, the evidence of Robert's lunch was on the table and the note was gone. He called me to say he'd need to stay late to meet with students and might show up for the college meal. I went down to have dinner in the dining hall, but he never joined me there. I heard the stairs to the attic creak in my dreams, and again the next night and again the next. Sometimes I rolled over in bed and found him a hand-span away from me. Sometimes I woke in the late morning and he was gone. I waited for the baby and for him, although I was more worried about the baby. Eventually I began to worry that I might go into labor at a time when I wouldn't be able to find Robert. I prayed that he'd be in the attic painting or sleeping whenever the pain began, so that I'd be able to get myself to the foot of the stairs and shriek for him.

One afternoon after I came in from my walk, which had felt like twenty miles, the department called again. They were sorry to ask, but had I seen Robert? I said I would find him. As I counted back, it seemed to me that he hadn't slept in days, at least not in 141.

our bed, and that he'd barely been home. I'd sometimes heard the creak of the stairs at night and had a.s.sumed he was painting up a storm, perhaps trying to finish extra work before the baby came. I made my way up again, and in the attic I found him stretched out on his back, breathing slowly and deeply, even snoring a little. It was four in the afternoon, and I wasn't sure he had gotten up that day. Didn't he know he had cla.s.ses to teach, a wife and mammoth belly to support? I felt a flash of anger and hauled myself toward the sofa to shake him awake, then stopped. The easel was turned toward the big skylight, and I'd just gotten a glimpse of it and of the sketches that littered the floor.

I recognized her immediately, as if we were meeting on the street after having fallen out of touch for a while. She was smiling at me, her mouth turned down a little, her eyes s.h.i.+ning, an expression I knew from the sketch I'd pulled out of Robert's pocket in the rest area months before. It was a portrait to the waist, clothed. I could see now how lovely her body was, too -- slender, strong, full, the shoulders a little broader than you'd expect, the neck sinuous. Up close, I saw there was an indistinctness to the painting, a roughness to the surface, although the forms were real and solid--Impressionism, or something on the verge of it. She wore a ruffled beige dress with crimson stripes curving down the front to emphasize her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, an outfit from another era, a studio costume, and her hair was piled up with a red ribbon around it-- my favorite alizarin crimson--I knew exactly the tube he'd used for those details. The sketches on the floor were studies for this painting, and I understood on the instant that it was one of Robert's best ever. It was elegant but also full of suppressed action. I'd seldom seen a human expression caught so brilliantly--she was about to move, to laugh softly, to lower her eyes under my gaze.

I turned to the couch in a fury, although whether I was angry about the woman in the painting, or Robert's extreme talent, or his sleeping through calls from the job on which we would depend for future yogurt and diapers, I couldn't have told you at that 142.

moment. I shook him. As I did it, I remembered that he'd told me never to shake him awake--it frightened him, he'd said, because he'd once heard a true story about someone who'd lost his mind when startled out of sleep. I didn't care, this time. I shook him roughly, hating his big shoulder, his oblivion, the world in which he slept and dreamed and painted--and admired other women, those with slender waistlines. Why had I married such a slovenly, selfish person? It occurred to me for the first time that this was all my fault, my having such poor judgment. Robert stirred and mumbled. "What?"

"What do you mean, what?" I said. "It's four in the afternoon. You missed your morning cla.s.ses. Again."

I was gratified to see him look stricken. "Oh s.h.i.+t," he said, sitting up with apparent effort. "What time did you say it is?"

"Four," I repeated crisply. "Are you planning to keep your job, or shall we raise this baby in abject poverty? Up to you."

"Oh, stop it." He slowly peeled the old blankets off his body, as if they weighed fifty pounds each. "There's no need to be righteous."

"I'm not being righteous," I said. "But the Art Department may be, once you call them back."

He glared at me, rubbing his head and hair, but said nothing, and I felt a lump begin to rise in my throat. I might be alone, as things turned out--or perhaps I was already alone. He got up and put on his shoes and started down the stairs, while I followed cautiously, afraid of slipping, off-balance, miserable. I wanted to stay as close to him as possible, to kiss the back of his curly head, to hold on to his shoulder so I wouldn't sway and fall, to berate him and scratch his back with my fingernails. For a moment I even felt a flash of long-subsumed physical desire, an awareness of the swelling of my own b.r.e.a.s.t.s and middle. But he was well ahead of me, and now I could hear him hurrying down to the kitchen. When I arrived, he was on the phone. "Thanks, thanks," he was saying. "Yeah, I guess it's just a little virus. I'm sure I'll be over it by tomorrow. Thanks, I will." He hung up.

143.

"You told them you had the flu?" I had meant to go over to him, put my arms around his neck, apologize for being short-tempered, make him some soup, start over. After all, he worked hard, he painted hard--of course he was tired. Instead, my voice came out flat and nasty.

"It's none of your business what I told them, if you're going to talk to me like that," he said, and opened the refrigerator.

"Did you stay up painting?"

"Of course I stayed up painting." To my further disgust, he pulled out a jar of pickles and a beer. "I'm a painter, remember?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Now I was folding my arms in spite of myself. I had an entire ledge to rest them on.

"Mean? It means what it means."

"Does it mean painting the same woman all the time?"

I had hoped he would turn to me and scowl, tell me coldly that he had no idea what I was talking about, that he painted whatever he was painting, whatever he felt the need to paint. To my growing horror, he looked away instead, his face frozen, and began to open his beer without speaking. He seemed to have forgotten the pickles. It was hardly the first time we'd quarreled in our nearly six years together, or even in the past week, but it was the first time he'd ever looked away.

I couldn't imagine anything worse than his expression of guilt, his avoiding my eyes, but a moment later the worse thing happened--he glanced up without seeming to see me, his gaze fixed itself on some point just over my shoulder, and his face softened. I had the awful, creeping feeling that someone had soundlessly appeared in the doorway behind me--the hair actually began to rise on my neck. I struggled not to turn around while he stared, his face blind and gentle. Suddenly I was afraid to know more. If he had fallen in love with someone else, I would find out soon enough. I wanted only to lie down, to hold my baby close and rest myself.

I left the kitchen. If he lost his job through his own irresponsibility, I would go back to Ann Arbor and live with my mother. My 144.

baby would be a girl, and we three generations of women would simply hunker down and take care of one another until she could grow up and find a better life. I went to our bedroom and lay down on the bed, which squeaked under my weight, and pulled the comforter over me. Tears of weakness seeped out of my eyes and ran down my cheeks. I wiped them away with my sleeve.

After a few minutes I heard Robert approaching, and I closed my eyes. He sat down on the side of the bed, making it sag further. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to be mean. I've just been really wiped out from the term and from working at night."

"Why don't you slow down, then?" I asked. "I never see you anymore. Anyway, it seems as if you're sleeping most of the time, not working." I stole a glance at him. His face seemed normal again. I thought I had been mistaken about the strange look.

"Not at night," he said. "I can't sleep at night. I just get on a roll, a big roll, and I feel as if I need to use every bit of it. I'm thinking about doing a new series, something with a lot of portraits, and I just feel as if I can't sleep until I get some of it done. Then I get really tired and I have to sleep it off. I guess I was up for three nights."

"You could slow down," I repeated. "You'll have to slow down when the baby comes anyway." Which could be any minute, I added to myself, although I was too superst.i.tious to say it aloud.

He stroked my hair. "Yes," he said, but it sounded absent-minded and I felt he'd already drifted again. Some of my mother-friends at the sandbox had told me that husbands occasionally "flipped out" before the baby arrived--they laughed about it as if it were nothing serious. "But when they see that baby --," they would add, and everyone would nod. Clearly the first glimpse of a baby fixed everything. Perhaps that would fix Robert, too. He would become a morning person, paint at reasonable times, hold down his job automatically, and go to sleep when I did. We would take walks with the stroller and put the baby to bed together in the evenings. I would become a painter again myself, and we could 145.

work out some s.h.i.+fts, take turns caring for the baby and painting. Maybe we could keep the baby in our room for a while after all, and use the second bedroom as my studio.

I thought about how to describe this to Robert, how to ask for it, but I was too tired to search for the words. Besides, if he didn't do those things with and for me of his own free will, what kind of a father was he going to be? It worried me already that he never seemed to have any idea how much or little money we had--usually how little--or when the bills needed to be paid. I had always paid them myself, licking the stamps and putting them on straight in the upper corner of the envelope with a sense of satisfaction, even if I knew that when they were deposited at the other end our account would plunge nearly into the red. Robert squeezed my shoulder. "I'm going to finish my painting," he said. "I think I can finish it by tomorrow if I get going again."

"Is she a student?" I made myself ask it, fiercely, afraid I would be unable to ask later.

He didn't seem startled. In fact, he didn't even seem to register the question--there was no guilt. "Who?"

"The woman in the painting upstairs." Again, I made myself form the words, sorry already. I hoped he wouldn't answer.

"Oh, I'm not using a model," he said. "I'm just trying to imagine her." It was strange--I didn't believe him, but I didn't think he was lying either. I knew with a feeling of dread that I would be scanning all the young faces on campus from now on, all the curly dark heads. But this made no sense. He had already been sketching her before we left New York, or at least just as we were leaving. I was certain it was the same face.

"It's the dress that's so hard to get right," he added after a moment. He was frowning, scratching the front of his hair, rubbing his nose--normal, perplexed, absorbed. G.o.d, I thought. I am a paranoid fool. This man is an artist, a true artist, with his own vision. He does what he wants, what occurs to him, and the result has been brilliant. It doesn't mean he's sleeping with a student, or 146.

with a model in New York. He hasn't even been back there since we moved. It doesn't mean he isn't going to be a good father.

He got up, bent from his height to kiss me, paused at the door. "Oh, I forgot to tell you. The department elected me to do the faculty solo show next year. We take turns, you know, but I didn't think they'd let me go so soon. The museum in town is getting involved. I'll get a raise at the same time."

I sat up. "That's wonderful--you didn't tell me."

"Well, I found out yesterday. Or maybe it was the day before. I want to have this painting done for it, for sure, maybe the whole series." He was gone and I was left smiling, pulling the comforter over me for half an hour. Perhaps, like Robert, I had earned a nap.

But the next time I went to the attic to hunt for him, I found he had sc.r.a.ped the canvas down to its bones, preparatory to cleaning it for a new image--maybe the red-striped dress had not really worked in the end. I almost felt I had imagined that face a second time, that expression full of rueful love for him.

147.

Mon cher oncle et ami: How good of you to come yesterday just as the rain was beginning to Jail, which always promises a dreary evening. It was lovely to see you and hear your tales. And today it's raining again! I wish I could paint rain--how would one actually do that? M. Monet has managed it, no doubt. And my cousin Mathilde, who loves all things j.a.panese, has a series of prints in her drawing room that French artists can only dream of emulating--but perhaps rain is more uplifting in j.a.pan than in Paris. How I would love to know that all nature was open to my brush, as it seems to be to Monet's, even if people are unkind about him and his colleagues and their experiments. Mathilde's friend Berthe Morisot exhibits with them, as you may know, and she is already well known (too much exposed, perhaps, in public exhibitions; that must take courage). I wish it would snow again -- the beautiful part of winter is all too slow in arriving this year.

Fortunately, there is your note this morning. It was dear of you to write to me as well as to Papa. I don't deserve your kind words about my progress, but my porch studio does help; I while away the hours there when Papa sleeps. We also learned by this morning's post that Yves will be delayed out of town at least two weeks, a blow for us all but especially for Papa. It must he better to have no children, like us, than only one, as my father-in-law has, when that one is so dear and yet constantly called away from home. I feel for Papa, but we sit by the fire and hold hands and read our Villon aloud. His hand is so frail now that it might serve as a study in old age by Leonardo or some ancient Roman sculptor. How wonderful that your big canvas progresses and that your articles will find an even wider sphere--I must insist on my right to be as proud as any blood relative. Please accept the congratulations of your doting niece -- Beatrice 148.

CHAPTER 23 Kate.

Ingrid was born on February 22 at the birth clinic in Greenhill. Nothing ever dims that moment for me, when I realized she was alive and well--exquisite, in fact--or the later moment when I found her hand wrapped in a knot around my finger. And I had not been killed by my ride through flame. Robert stood touching her, the tip of his own finger nearly as big as her nose. I was crying, too, it turned out, and when I looked at Robert I felt a love for him so radiant that I had to avert my eyes from his face, which shone like a gilded ring. I hadn't understood before what it meant to be in love--I couldn't choose which of these two people, the very small or the towering, I loved more. Why had I never noticed Robert's divinity, reproduced now in the tiny head that lay on my skin, the hazel eyes gazing around with such disbelief?

We named her for my long-dead grandmother from Philadelphia. Ingrid was a reasonably good sleeper, and our pattern continued after that first night. Robert and Ingrid slept, and I lay watching them, or reading, or walked around the house, or cleaned the bathroom, or slept with them. Robert seemed too tired to stay up painting--the baby woke us three times every night, which was nothing, I a.s.sured him, and he found that exhausting. I offered to let him nurse her, and he laughed sleepily and said that he would if he could, but he thought his milk wouldn't taste good even if he could produce any. "Too many toxins," he said. "All that paint."

I felt a twinge of annoyance that could have been jealousy-- did I hear self-congratulation in his tone? There wasn't any paint in my bloodstream, only healthy foods and the postnatal vitamins 149.

I still felt we couldn't afford but didn't want to deny the baby. That feeling I'd had of love, almost wors.h.i.+p, for Robert in the delivery room had slipped away from day to day, fading with the soreness in my stomach and leg muscles, and I'd watched it go, conscious of the loss. It was like the visible end of a teenage crush but far sadder, and it left a gap because now I knew what I'd been capable of feeling, not at fifteen but at past thirty, and it was gone, gone. But I watched Robert holding the baby in the crook of his arm, rather expertly now, and eating with his other hand, and I loved them both--Ingrid was just beginning to turn her head to look up at him, and her eyes were full of the surprise I had always felt myself at the sight of this monumental man with his angular face and heavy, curling hair.

I didn't ask much of Robert at home. He was teaching the early-summer session to bring in some extra money, and I was grateful. After a while, he began to paint late in the attic again, and sometimes he stayed overnight at the school studio. He didn't seem to sleep during the day anymore, at least not that I knew of, despite our night wakefulness with Ingrid. He showed me a small canvas or two, still lifes with sticks and rocks he'd been setting for the students and trying himself, and I smiled and refrained from remarking that to me they seemed dead. Nature morte --they reminded me of the French term. A few years before I might have argued with him about them, goaded him a little, debated with him because he liked that kind of attention, told him he lacked only a limp pheasant to complete his canvases. Now, I saw our bread and b.u.t.ter in them rather than just the wood and stones, and I held my tongue. Ingrid needed baby food, preferably organic carrots and spinach, and eventually she might want to go to Barnard, and my only pair of pajamas had worn through the knee the week before.

One morning in June after Robert had left for his cla.s.s, I decided to go into town to do some unnecessary errands, mainly to break 150.