Katherine Keenum (44 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Christmas 1879

T
hrough all her December unhappiness, Jeanette worked as much as the shortening days allowed. She was nagged by a fear that it was monstrously cold of her to forget Edward for hours at a time, as increasingly she could; perhaps she didn’t really love him, or not enough. At the same time, too much of what came from her hand was dogged and uninspired; she frittered away effort on trivial distractions and marginal scrawls—it was bad enough to take those walks, worse to end a day’s work with chaff. To stave off dread that she was not really an artist, she never missed class. She laid out still lifes in her own studio and dedicated two hours a day faithfully to Carolus’s outside assignments. At night, she modeled in clay. She obtained the necessary permissions to work in oils at the Louvre, where she began by copying a Dutch interior of receding doorways: one unpeopled room opening into the next. In spite of the prohibition, she wrote Edward a short, decorated Christmas letter and enclosed it with a note requesting Dr. Aubanel to give it to him:
He needs to know he is remembered.

*   *   *

As the month drew to its end, Jeanette and Effie prepared for their second Christmas in Paris. It helped to have a child to focus on; for Angelica, who had long since lost her innocence, still had a five-year-old’s capacity for wonder. On December twenty-third, in hopes of dispelling her own loneliness, Jeanette tagged along when Effie took Angelica to a marionette show in the park. On the way home, they bought an orange from a vendor who pricked out A*N*G*E*L*I*C*A on the rind in blue ink. When he held it out to her, the little girl hesitated in disbelief, then clutched it gleefully to her chest. She shook her head emphatically,
non
, when Effie offered to carry the fruit in a string bag. “Very well, then, carry it in yours,” said Effie, magically pulling a miniature blue
filet
out of Angelica’s pocket. Hanky Bunny was never a bigger success.

When they dropped Angelica off at the Rue Madame, Amy reported that Sonja and La Grecque were planning to take the child to Christmas Eve midnight mass.

“I told them it was a ridiculous plan. It’s bad enough that the little blighter will be up for the
réveillon
; she at least ought to have a nap beforehand.”

“Are you going to services?” asked Jeanette.

“Probably not.”

“Oh, but you must!” said Effie. “Your father would expect you to.”

“My reverend father expects me to trek across the river Seine, be it ever so frosty or dismal a night, to observe the Nativity of our Lord in the chapel of the British Embassy. We all delude ourselves.”

Effie tsked. “We’ll come with you. I’m sure Isobel and Miss Reade will join us.”

Accordingly, on Christmas Eve, when Jeanette and Effie stopped by the Rue Madame to leave a glassy amber sheet of caramelized sugar for Angelica to shatter at the
réveillon
, they picked up Amy and went on to the Rue d’Assas. After the Anglican service, all five women returned from the embassy chapel to Amy and Sonja’s studio, where other artists from the building had already swelled the company to more than twenty people and loaded the table with oysters, cooked eel, wine, and sweets. Angelica, looking pretty in a new pinafore, was shy of Mabel Reade but otherwise dodged her way among the grown-ups, shrieking with laughter and stealing food, completely at her ease. By now, she knew—and was certainly known by—everyone in the building. When the candy sheet was brought out, her destructive greed made quick work of breaking it into pieces to suck.

In contrast to her daughter, La Grecque hung watchfully on the edges, setting out dishes and speaking to no one. To all appearances, she ate nothing, although, touchingly, she had added to the table an Italian nut-and-citrus-filled
panpepato
, made on her orders by Agostino of Les Deux Hélènes. In the midst of all the eating, drinking, and merriment, Angelica fell fast asleep on the floor. After almost stumbling over her, Jeanette scooped her up and carried her to the kitchen. There she found La Grecque and Sonja quarreling in Italian. Andrea’s stance expressed scornful defiance with all her dramatic skill.

“
Excusez-moi!
” said Jeanette.

The antagonists swung around to face her.

“
Qu’est-ce que voulez-vous?
” growled Sonja. What do you want?

“Angelica—”

La Grecque shoved past Sonja to receive the child but not before she closed her fist with a finger raised at Sonja’s face and spat. Sonja grabbed for her wrist.

“Leave her alone, Sonja! It’s Christmas!” squealed Jeanette, unconsciously squeezing Angelica tighter.

The child lifted her head and asked, in sleepy French, “
Qu’est-ce qui se passe?
” What’s happening?

Andrea wailed. “
Mia piccola figlia francese.
” Angelica reached over to be taken, and Jeanette thankfully shifted the child’s weight into her mother’s arms. La Grecque stalked toward the back room, thrusting out a hip at Sonja as she passed.

“Sonja and Andrea are having some kind of fight,” Jeanette told Amy, back in the studio.

“They would be. The question is always whether to interfere. How soon does it look like murder being done?”

“Any minute now.”

Amy sighed. “I’d better go see about it. Perhaps you would start the departures?”

Jeanette rounded up Effie and the Reades to leave, calling out
Bon soir
and
Joyeux Noël
loudly to other guests as a hint. On the way home, Jeanette gave an account of the murky scene in the kitchen.

Effie shook her head. “And on Christmas morning.”

“That’s what I said.”

For the rest of the way, Jeanette mused on Amy, generous and unhappy. On Sonja—gifted, arrogant, sometimes brutal. On La Grecque’s corrosive, wrecked beauty. On Emily, fugitive and fey. On Edward; oh, most of all on Edward. You wanted to help, to be friends, to love; but so often, there was nothing you could do but ache.

On Christmas Day, Jeanette and Effie went to the morning service at their own American Protestant Chapel and afterward to the Reade sisters’ apartment for dinner and an afternoon musicale. In the evening, they assisted at a McAll Mission supper. Sonja was due to spend the day at an aristocratic Polish house, Amy with Louise Steadman and English friends. At some point, Andrea Antonielli left, taking Angelica with her. They disappeared so completely that not even La Belle Hélène could track them down.

What seemed strangest to Jeanette was Sonja’s indifference.

“I always said it would end in tears,” said Amy. “I didn’t expect them to be mine, particularly not over the loss of the demon child.”

*   *   *

In L’Estaque, Christmas was quiet. Two residents wound up their treatment and left; day patients were few in the dead of winter. By then, any fear Edward had of being trapped among lunatics or neurasthenics was gone. Of those who stayed over the holiday, M. Valabrègue was the strangest; yet except for his retreat into silence, there was nothing overtly odd in his conduct or manner. His eyes took on a spaniel-like devotion when anyone was kind to him, but he never made a nuisance of himself. An opera singer lately paralyzed by stage fright chose to remain in hospital to avoid public appearances. The alcoholic younger son of a noble house continued to resist his proud family, who disdained to admit that he needed treatment. They all received a few remembrances and visits. When Jeanette’s letter came from Paris, Dr. Aubanel, who knew who she was, hesitated. Holidays were times of tension; the effect of a hurtful letter would be magnified. He took the gamble and gave it to Edward, along with the earlier one he was still holding. A few days later, Jeanette received one line:
Bless you, my darling. Edward.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Turning Corners

J
anuary 1880. Early in the new year, Jeanette’s quarterly allowance came with a letter from Judge Palmer reminding her that one last bank draft in April must cover her return passage in June. It brought her up hard against being wrenched half a world away from classes, galleries, and Carolus’s teaching, from a city where art was taken seriously, worst of all from Edward.

“Well, we’ve always known we were going back, but, oh my,” said Cousin Effie.

“If only I had a way to support myself,” said Jeanette at the Rue Madame, where Amy was hard at work on her Salon painting. “The trouble is, all I can think of is piecework, which takes up time and is hard to get.”

“Pays pittance, too, don’t I know,” said Amy. “Humiliating and tiresome, but your best bet is to think of a way to persuade the family to give you more time.”

“Any ideas?”

“You could submit something to the Salon. An international success would surely impress them at home.”

“Amy, this will be
your
first submission. I’m not ready!”

“No, you’re not. Then again, the jury has been greatly enlarged this year; it may be more receptive to new artists. Put forward the best thing you’ve ever done, and who knows, you might even make a sale or win a commission.”

“The best thing I’ve done is not for sale.”

Amy glanced around. “No, it wouldn’t be.” After a pause, she said, “What about your
Lady of Shalott
? Nice literary scene, and you used the Cluny well. Very convincing loom and decor.”

“It was no better than any other half-baked costume piece. I never finished it.”

“Well, there’s still time for that, as I am living proof. So would Sonja be if she were here.”

“Where
is
Sonja?”

“Out examining scrap lumber. She says she is going to build her own frame for
Poland Resurgent
.”

Caught off guard, Jeanette laughed hard for the first time since Christmas. “Julian always says a woman must make a splash!”

“Not what he had in mind, carpentry, but speaks with the voice of experience, that man,” said Amy. “Splash or no splash, why shouldn’t you submit? If you’re otherwise headed back to America, there’s no harm in rejection except to your pride.” She sighed. “If the Salon doesn’t accept this
Breton Harvest
, I may just trundle back home myself.”

“You, leave Paris, Amy?”

“Most of us do in the end.”

“Not you! You know everybody here; you’re so much a part of—”

“—the toilers and moilers, the hangers-on and drones? Sorry, Palmer, no; I won’t play the perpetual aspirant. If I have to settle for painting potboilers to sell in London, I’ll do it closer to home. It’s no fun, I can tell you, being snubbed by the big boys at Julian’s and now pitied by younger women all full of dewy-eyed optimism.”

“No one pities you, Amy.”

“Obviously, not you—you’re too full of weepy-eyed despair over a man.” Amy’s voice lost its edge of light irony: “I’ll be thirty this year.”

“I’ve never heard you so despondent.”

“Ah, well, doubts do begin to creep in, don’t they? I have a friend in Glasgow who claims it’s congenial. There are shows for female artists.”

“But we want to be rated as artists, not lady artists.”

“You may. Sonja does. At this point, I just want to work and be paid for it. I might take on illustration assignments; I might open a school. Anyway, Glasgow would put me closer to my father, poor old dear.”

“What if the jury accepts your picture?”

“Oh, in that case, dear old, capable Papa is on his own. First I shall scramble out onto the cupola of the Pantheon and shout the good news to a waiting world. Next I’ll swan my way to La Poupée, for a wallow in sisterly dissipation. And finally, I’ll settle all the scratched feelings with Sonja somehow and renew the lease.”

*   *   *

The more Jeanette thought about the Salon, the more compelling the idea became. The next week, when she heard that Carolus would be coming to another studio in her building to counsel an advanced pupil on his submissions, she seized a chance to ask whether he could possibly stop at hers also. She explained her dilemma and promised she would not take up too much of his time. He was more than willing, he said, beaming at his own beneficence.

On the following Saturday, he swept into her studio in a splendid Inverness cloak. He was animated; he was charming; his eye roved up and down her person for an instant, and for an instant lingered. Jeanette reacted with the coquettish devotion that everyone in the class knew he required, too flushed with excitement to be annoyed. He bowed to Effie with an airy salute, neither implying nor ruling out his remembering who she was. Almost at once his eye shifted to the canvas placed on the easel. “
Après vous, mademoiselle
,” he said, gesturing.

Jeanette had chosen to show him first her most successful painting of an invalid, worked up from studies of La Grecque. Her picture was admirably composed, he told her, the tones properly subdued, the touch of the sheets against the woman’s flesh delicate. His friend Monet, he said sadly, just last year had painted his wife in the moment after death, a chilling subject, a disturbing picture, potent. He congratulated her, but no. This rendition was too morbid for a young lady’s introduction to the public. Jeanette’s heart sank. Without his support as a juror, it would inevitably be rejected. Before she could gather herself, to ask him to look at her
Lady of Shalott
, he had walked over to the wall where Edward’s portrait hung. This, he said, was painted with real insight.

“I thought that you would say it was overworked!”

“So it is; but in a portrait of such feeling, flaws can be forgiven. I believe that I recognize the man. I never forget faces.
Ah, mais oui
, he was also at the garden party to celebrate the unveiling of my portrait of Mme. Renick. He was—with you.” Jeanette wondered whether he was going to recommend submitting it, and if so, whether Edward would wish it, whether she would. Carolus spared her the decision. “If you master the technique to express such intuition, one day you may conquer New York. And now, permit me to excuse myself.”

Beside the doorway, he paused to look at two small oil interiors that Effie had hung there: One depicted the Renicks’ hall and stairway, the other the salon with his portrait of Cornelia above the piano. He glanced back, his eyes twinkling. “These also show feeling.
Ah, oui
, I saw the costume piece about which you intended to ask me. You have a taste for interiors,
mademoiselle
, but that one will not do. Submit this.” The knob of his cane pointed to the hallway.

Elated and astonished at his approval, Jeanette asked, “Not its companion, too?”

“Even I do not compliment myself with so little subtlety in public,
ma fille
; but I think I can carry the day for this one. I should be pleased to have its painter listed as my student. And there is a career to be made, you know, in painting the houses of the rich.”

“Oh, lud,” said Amy when Jeanette told her. “Add gentry in eighteenth-century costume and you can sell ’em to decorators for a few francs per yard. Well, congratulations, Palmer. We’ll take our submissions over together when the time comes.”

*   *   *

A few days after Carolus’s visit, Jeanette finally received a letter from Edward, no more than a few paragraphs, but a real letter. Every day, he looked at the watercolor she had sent down before Christmas, he wrote. Would she send him a self-portrait?
Not a photograph; something from your hand—it will have more life.
He begged her to respond.
Tell me about your days.
He did not tell her much about his own, how hard they had become as he was weaned from the drug; but the unevenness of his script betrayed a troubled mind. Jeanette rifled through studies of herself made when she was working on
The Lady of Shalott.
When she found one that would do, she touched it up with pen and wash, made herself pretty (surely he would want it that way), and posted it the next morning with a promise of letters to come. That evening, she wrote him about Carolus’s visit and her plans to submit a painting of the Renicks’ hallway to the Salon. The next day, she wrote about Sonja’s attempts to build a frame
(Amy was clever and bought a fine one cheap at auction last fall, then bought a canvas to fit it)
. She received no replies. As the days went by, she was less and less sure how to reach him. What she needed to say, and Edward needed to hear, was that she loved him no matter what.
I miss you
, she wrote,
I miss you
.

*   *   *

In mid February, Cornelia obtained permission from Dr. Aubanel to visit Edward at the sanatorium. Edward had made no attempt to reach the Renicks, reluctant to come face to face with anyone he knew; but Dr. Aubanel told him that sooner or later he must begin reentering society.

When the Renicks arrived on a Sunday afternoon, Cornelia set about to charm Dr. Aubanel in the sitting room until Edward joined them. When he came, her eyes greeted him with the candor of the Nellie he had known in childhood, making him glad she had come; but Cornelia’s heart ached. For a man who had spent time outdoors every day, Edward was wan; he had gained no weight; he was, in fact, in the throes of his first weeks with no opium at all.

While Marius spoke with Dr. Aubanel, Cornelia asked, “Do you hear from Jeanette Palmer?”

“More often than she hears from me, I’m afraid.”

“That may do for the time being.”

“I have no right—”

“As the mother of a daughter, I must agree, darling; but as a friend to you both, I say bosh.”

The day was sunny; a light wind blew as it often did so near the sea, a buffeting breeze, not the hard, bitter mistral. Before he left them, Dr. Aubanel suggested to Edward that he conduct his friends up to see the thermal spring. Edward and Cornelia arranged themselves to put their respective canes on the outside. Marius trailed behind, assessing the grounds by criteria of his own. From behind a grille between columns, the water of the pool steamed gently in the cool air. “No drowning allowed in off hours,” explained Edward.

Cornelia squeezed his arm slightly and, without knowing it, echoed Jeanette. “Is it a good place, Edward?”

In answer, Edward turned her around to see the late-afternoon sun burnishing the landscape below them. The Mediterranean glowed. “If I’ve got any chance, it’s here.”

On the drive home, Cornelia said, “Marius, I need a new project, and I think that Edward Murer may be it.”

“Murer is Dr. Aubanel’s project, my dear; the garden is yours. But we’ll visit again.”

Cornelia never contradicted Marius; it was easier simply to do what she wanted.

*   *   *

Dr. Aubanel always greeted his patients by asking them what they were feeling, not how. Stripped of the meaningless conventions of polite conversation, the patients almost always answered truthfully. Edward, who thought of himself as an introspective man, discovered that he had more moods, body parts, and senses than he had ever realized.

During the period when his laudanum dosage was being systematically reduced, his physical condition required careful monitoring. Dr. Aubanel had him come to the office for the half hour before his scheduled immersion in the spring and again as the last patient of the day. Additionally, during the worst of it, before he set off for his office in town each morning, he had Edward step into the examining room for a quick check of his eyes, throat, pulse, and breathing. At the time, Edward accepted the order with passive indifference; midway through the ordeal, he resented it; finally, as he put it to Cornelia, it seemed good for both him and the doctor to have physical evidence that he was still alive.

Edward’s knowledge of botanicals pointed to the herb garden as a place where he should work. Physically, there had not been much to do in December except fork in rotted manure, which he did, then dug more into the artichoke bed. He had never gardened as an adult except to help Sophie with an occasional chore during the year he had spent with her and Theodore after the war. Now he forked and turned soil repeatedly to make it friable and fill time, pressing his forehead to his hands on top of the pitchfork when his nerves were too jittery. In January, when apricot and peach trees were being pruned, he bundled up the trimmings and cleared them out of the orchard; in February, it was the grapevines terraced up near the limestone escarpment at the back of the property and the climbing roses near the house. By the middle of February, work was seriously under way on an addition to the herb garden; he helped construct a stone wall as well as draw up a plant list. He was not such a fool as to think a peasant’s backbreaking drudgery enlarged either mind or soul; he never vowed to take to the simple life as some patients did, in a flush of grateful enthusiasm; but gradually he came to value time devoted to manual labor. Tasks gave him measures for passing the hours and quarter hours until his next dose or, after the laudanum was withdrawn, his next bath in the thermal spring.

The spring, a few degrees warmer than body temperature, welled up through vents in the bottom of the pool. Currents constantly curled around the body as bathers sat on a ledge immersed to the neck or trod water in the middle. “While you are in the spring,” ordered Dr. Aubanel, “you will not crave the drug.” Either he had hypnotic powers or a virtue in the water made it true.