Katherine Keenum (34 page)

Near the door to one room, atop a high ladder, a man was literally varnishing his large landscape. At the foot of the ladder, a tarpaulin lay heaped in stiff, angular folds like the drapery in a sixteenth-century Madonna’s skirt. With her eyes on the varnisher, Jeanette failed to see that behind the folds, someone sat huddled against the wall. Amy saw him.

“Charlie Post, whatever are you doing down there?” she demanded, her hands on her hips.

“Don’t tell me, don’t tell me, don’t tell me,” came Mr. Post’s muffled voice, as he talked into his knees.

“Don’t tell you what—to get up?”

“Where it hangs, woman, where it hangs!”

“He means where his picture hangs, don’t you, Mr. Post,” said Jeanette.

“You,” said Post, opening one eye to peer up at her, balefully, “the discerning girl.” He shut his eyes tight again and hugged his knees closer. “Go away.”

“Oh, no, Post, not before you explain yourself,” said Amy. “Are you telling me you have a picture in the next room—
P
, well, that makes sense—and you haven’t been in yet to see it?”

“I don’t dare!” shouted Charlie.

“Oh, yes, you do, and you’d better get it over with quick while you have friends with you to sing hosannahs or damn the judges as need be,” said Amy. She began to haul him up by one arm. “Jeanette, grab the other arm.”

“Mr. Post, please get up,” said Jeanette, embarrassed, as she tugged halfheartedly. “You are making a spectacle of us.”

“
Contra
. ’S you making spectacle of me.”

Jeanette let go of a limp arm.

“No, no, don’t leave me!” Charlie Post pulled free of Amy, too, and used his hands to push up off the floor. “Don’t.”

“Post, you are drunk.”

“Of course, I’m drunk, you harridan. I’m terrified.”

“Well, that’s no good. Come on,” ordered Amy.

“Spartan mother,” muttered Mr. Post. “Rather see me dead on my shield than otherwise. All right, lead me.” He held his arms out ahead of him and closed his eyes.

His painting was easy to find. It was huge, a long double square, five feet by ten, and monochromatic in effect, all slate blues and grays. The faint light of a pale sickle moon shone on the crests of endless, shallow waves. They gleamed. High overhead they gleamed; for as Charlie Post had feared, his painting had been hung up in the uppermost tier, skied just under the ceiling. Jeanette and Amy exchanged a worried look.

“Do you see it?”

“Of course, we see it, Post. Open your eyes.”

He gave a cry of anguish. “Ruined, ruined, skied! The bastards.”

“I don’t know, Mr. Post,” said Jeanette, with her eyes still on it. “I think the judges made a terrible mistake hanging it where it’s hard to study closely; but it’s very beautiful, and it’s the only skied picture we’ve seen all day that dominates the room it’s in.”

Charlie Post dropped to the floor and began kissing the tips of her boots. “
Beata, beata
, your slave for life, slave for life.”

“Post, stop that!” commanded Amy, in her most outraged voice.

Mr. Post took the hem of Jeanette’s skirt to wipe his eyes. Hastily, she pulled it free.

“
Char
-lie,” bawled Amy.

He wobbled up to one knee and looked up at her sideways, then staggered to his feet. He looked up once more at his painting, shuddered, covered his eyes with a hand, and staggered back through the crowd with the other hand outstretched. “Must get past, past, past, Post. Pass. Pass out. Piss.”

Jeanette stood staring at the ground with her hands over her mouth. She held herself in, very still, to keep from shaking.

“That made me feel so ashamed, for him and for me both,” she whispered. “You know something, Amy? This whole system is horrible if it can do that to a man!”

“Well, it is, in a way, and Charlie Post would hardly be the first man it has broken. On the other hand,
Post
—well, I ask you! And, remember, it is the system we have. Are you all right?”

Jeanette exhaled a long breath. “Yes, I’m all right. Sorry to have acted stupid. So we really have to compete in this?”

“We certainly do. It’s the only way to be taken seriously. Don’t go all wet and lady amateurish on me, Jeanette.”

“As if I would!” Nevertheless, thought Jeanette, as she looked with a sudden distaste at the jumbled walls, there must be a better way.

*   *   *

Early the next week, on a stroll up the newer-than-new, opulent Avenue de l’Opéra after a morning in his new laboratory, Edward paused before a poster outside an apartment building:
4
^me
Exposition de Peinture
, it proclaimed,
Du 10 Avril au 11 Mai 1879
. None of the artists listed meant anything to him, but on a whim, he went in. A lift took him to the first floor, where a franc at an apartment door gave entry into a suite of rooms that had been made over into a gallery—made over at considerable expense, with freshly painted walls and handsome fittings.

Despite the elegance, the few other visitors in the gallery ridiculed the displays. Drawings, pastels, and etchings mixed in with the oil paintings? As for the pictures, what topics—! Edward could see their point. A purplish view of snow on the rooftops out a back window in Paris was hardly the classical ideal of landscape—nor was a man in short sleeves standing on a triangle of purple shore at one end of a canvas, using a paddle to prod a canoe on green and purple water at the other. And if art was meant to elevate the mind, then it seemed an odd choice to depict a sharp-dealing broker whispering into the ear of another in front of the Bourse, or men in evening attire ogling ballet girls, or the compromising pleasures of the cafés.

And then Edward entered the largest room, the last. His mouth fell open as he slowly walked to the middle of the chamber. It was like walking bodily into summer. Even a painting of a snowy road was warmed by touches of orange-gold. His smile widened, and inwardly he laughed: silent, joyous laughter.

“Have you ever heard of a painter named Claude Monet?” he asked Cornelia the next day, when he called on her deliberately to find out.

“My dear, you’ve been to the Impressionists’ show!” she replied. “Tell me all about it. M. Monet is a friend of Carolus’s. I haven’t bought anything of his yet. Not quite to my taste, and certainly not to Marius’s. But look at you, Edward! You are the most undemonstrative man I know, and there’s not a trace of caution in your face right now—you look downright enthusiastic!”

“I think anything from his brush would make me happy, Cornelia. I’m glad I went.”

“Then go again and buy something.”

Edward gave her a half smile. He would have liked to, but for a man who a year ago was cutting prints out of magazines, it was too big a leap. If he had a place of his own, maybe. But he did want to see the show again.

And he wanted to see it with Miss Palmer.

*   *   *

Edward invited Jeanette and Effie for the following Saturday afternoon. When they arrived, Jeanette saw a familiar name among the painters listed on the poster. “Oh! Mary Cassatt!” she said. She recognized none of the others (unless maybe M. Degas was the one whose bilious witticisms circulated). “Miss Cassatt is an American. The girls say she’s very nice, very much the fine lady but not at all patronizing—she’s had some of them over for chocolate. Funny that she’d show with independents this year; she’s been in the Salon. What did you think of her work?”

“My opinion doesn’t count. I want your honest reaction.”

“No, you don’t. You’re setting a trap.” Jeanette dimpled up at him as they went into the foyer.

Edward merely shrugged slightly with humor in his eyes.

Inside the exhibition, Jeanette was as taken aback as most visitors at the way works of different sorts were presented with equal regard. A group of etchings was one thing; together they had a sort of weight. But a single pastel sketch, quickly dashed in parallel jabs and contrasting colors—was it an insult to the public or one’s fellow contributors to submit so casual a piece? Her first real shock came in the second room: a painting by M. Degas of a foreshortened aerialist seen at an angle from below, hanging by her teeth from a rope, her knees drawn up.

“I can’t take my eyes off it; it makes me dizzy,” said Jeanette.

“So did Mlle. La La,” said Edward.

“Why, that’s right!” said Effie. “At the circus. I remember! Where we sat up so high. Well, now, I wish Adeline and Harold could see this. We’ve got relatives coming in a couple of weeks,” she explained to Edward. “Harold knows pictures, and Adeline loves a show.”

Jeanette stopped in front of a little picture with a red, red background in which a woman in a delectable blue dress and white hat was eyed by three dissolute men in top hats. “The new Peregrine Partout would fit right in!” she said, vengefully. “Oh, but you know, the old Peregrine Partout,
my
Peregrine Partout could have gone to the café in that picture, too. In fact, this whole exhibition would have been perfect for him.”

“Do you miss the column?” asked Edward.

“In an odd way, yes. It gave me a new angle for looking at Paris, trying to see what Peregrine might pick out. I guess I go on doing that, only I don’t really enjoy thinking of him now, not in Robbie Dolson’s voice anyway.”

“I don’t suppose any of you have heard from him or Miss Dolson.”

“No, and I can’t help wishing Emily would turn up in spite of everything. You must have been the last one to see her, Dr. Murer—
did
she know what Robbie was doing?”

“I don’t think so, Miss Palmer. She might have been looking the other way on purpose, but—” This was Edward’s chance to tell one of Miss Dolson’s friends about her laudanum use. Coward, he told himself when he couldn’t bring himself to do so. “She seemed to me to be . . . half asleep,” he managed at last.

“Might have been squiffy,” said Cousin Effie.

“Oh, Cousin Effie, Emily doesn’t drink!”

“You never know who’s a secret tippler, and with the troubles that girl had . . .”

As Effie spoke, they passed into a small room containing only works by Mary Cassatt, and all thought of Emily was driven from Jeanette’s mind.

*   *   *

“Now I understand why she’s willing to show with independents!” said Jeanette. “A whole room to herself!” But what did it mean for Miss Cassatt to exhibit a mere pencil sketch? Why did she use unblended blue in the flesh across a woman’s bare shoulders? And why frame canvases in vermilion or green as if the paintings extended out into the room?

A rapid stream of unspoken thoughts played across Jeanette’s face as Edward watched.

“That grumpy little girl sprawled on the aqua-blue chair—well, she’s vivid, but all that other aqua furniture climbing to the ceiling,” she finally said aloud, “it’s hideous!”

“The poor tyke was tired of sitting still,” said Effie.

Jeanette was about to snap that Miss Cassatt had
posed
the child in that sprawling slump, but she was saved from a display of ill humor by Edward’s pronouncing solemnly, “Aniline dye.”

She looked at him inquiringly.

“Aqua upholstery,” he said, “aniline dye.”

“Synthetic paint,” she agreed, her eyes dancing. She knew she was being teased, and relaxed. “Still, I couldn’t bear to have that many blotches of that particular blue on my furniture or my walls, could you? And look at the way the sofas and chairs climb up the room as if the floor were tilted up behind. I love to draw rooms and I know they don’t look like that.”

“Do you think the picture was meant to pass for an illusion?”

Jeanette paused. “I guess I have to admit I don’t see what Miss Cassatt is up to, but she’s a very strong painter, and she does know what she’s doing.”

“You care because it is your métier.” As they approached the last room, Jeanette could sense Edward’s apprehension. So this was the test, and there was indeed a trap. She could guess that he liked the pictures they were about to see; otherwise, he wouldn’t care whether she hooted or clapped. She only hoped she did like them, for the one thing she could not lie about was—he had called it her métier. She unconsciously took his arm and squeezed it, looking up into his face. He returned the gaze with a half smile. There was no need to speak. He ushered her and Miss Pendergrast ahead of him through the door.

It was a big gallery, hung with some fifty or sixty paintings. According to the catalogue, about half were by M. Monet and half by one Camille Pissarro. They were light, bright; they seemed to float. Edward’s heart rose again. Jeanette was astonished at the dominance of palettes keyed so high, at colors so pure.

“Why it was just like that, all fluttery and exciting,” exclaimed Effie, heading straight for a blond canvas full of red, white, and blue. It was listed in the catalogue as
La rue Montorgueil, fête du 30 juin 1878
. “Were you still in Paris that day, Dr. Murer?”

“No.”

“Well, you missed a treat. Everyone out in the streets, bands playing, confetti and flags. We all linked arms and sang the
Marseillaise
like revolutionaries. It was something.”

“Vive Lafayette.”

Effie whinnied through her nose at his joke. Jeanette, who took less interest in politics than she supposed she should, ignored them both, keeping her focus on what had brought them here. This was the room and these were the paintings. The more she looked, the less sure she was that she knew what to make of them. She was so absorbed that she did not see someone they knew coming toward them until Effie spoke:
“Ah, bun jewer, M. Grandcoor.”

“
Bonjour, mademoiselle, mademoiselle, monsieur.
I am glad to see you here. One must keep up with the times. Do you like what you see?”

“When I come into this room, I feel like the sun has come out,” said Edward, “but I am not sure Miss Palmer approves.”

“I don’t quite know what to make of them. I don’t see the drawing I expect, nor the modeling,” said Jeanette, slowly, in a puzzled voice. “It’s all so flat without tonal gradations for volume. And I wonder, isn’t there just too much detail left out? When I think about how the rest of us toil away at getting details right . . .” Her voice trailed off.