Under the Wide and Starry Sky (4 page)

She and the children were surviving cheaply, as most of the artists were, yet they hardly noticed it at first. For very little, she could buy cooked vegetables and slices of meat that required only heating. Her mother had always been fond of the saying “You can't get blood from a turnip.”
Well
,
there's one point on which you and I don't agree, Ma.
Fanny had always possessed a knack for making something out of nothing. When the spirit moved her, she threw together onions, chicken backs and carrots into a pot and invited a group of students from the atelier to a jolly dinner.

Later, when she tried to recall the early weeks in Paris, she wouldn't be able to remember one moment of pleasure from that time. For by December, Hervey had fallen desperately, deliriously ill.

It had begun with chills and swollen lumps in his neck. Then red patches appeared on his skin.

“Scrofulous tuberculosis,” Dr. Johnston said.

“Scrofulous?”

“He'll develop ulcerations. He will bleed. It's possible it is in his lungs as well. He may recover, or he may not.” Johnston, whose kindly face sagged with sadness, looked directly at her. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said. But she didn't. Not then.

“Give him seven grains of quinine mixed with water to make a teaspoon. And spread this on him.” The doctor put a jar of salve into her hands.

“It burns my eyes,” Sammy cried, running out of the room when Fanny applied the claylike stuff all over Hervey. Belle had already made haste out the door on a pretext of getting a newspaper.

“I won't lie,” Fanny said. “It is not the best smell on earth, but it's no bother if it makes you well. Isn't that right, Hervey?”

The boy nodded, covering his eyes with a washcloth.

“We have to do what the doctor tells us.” Fanny bustled around the room. “You're going to be in bed for a while, sweetheart. It's no fun being sick at Christmas, but we have each other. That's the main thing.”

There wouldn't be any Christmas at all, but it wasn't yet time to tell the children. Sam had written recently that he had no money to send them that month. With Hervey's illness, medicine came first and other needs after. The food she and Belle and Sammy ate was the simplest possible: black bread, smoked herring, soups.

At seven, Sammy suffered most from the lack of money. He was a sturdy boy, but he'd developed a wan look as he'd grown older: pale hair and eyelashes, light skin beneath freckles. In Paris, his pallor had grown even more pronounced.

Once, when Fanny went out to get medicine, Sammy accompanied her. Emerging from the chemist's, she found the boy, nose pressed against the window of the patisserie next door, eyeing the glazed fruit tarts. He was hungry for something besides stew and bread, and it grieved her that there was nothing she could do about it. Each morning he ate only a roll and milk before he walked out the door in his little uniform to attend his private school. At least he got lunch there and had a happy place to be during the day. Thankfully, the tuition was paid up through May. They were all growing thin, including Hervey, who had lost his appetite. Fanny gathered together a few pieces of jewelry and pawned them, then bought expensive foods to encourage the child to eat, but to no avail. When Hervey left untouched some grapes—plump violet greenhouse grapes that Sammy eyed for two days—Fanny quietly put them on the older boy's bedside table.

The winter days passed slowly. Her admirer, the surgeon, had departed a month earlier for Italy, and she wished she had not restricted herself so much to only his company. Without him, she had no male protector in Paris.

On his last visit to their apartment before his departure, he had looked at Hervey lying on the sofa, looked at her and the children growing thinner, grimaced at the shabby furnishings, and blurted out, “What will become of all of you when I leave?” It was not insincere, his concern. But it wasn't enough to keep him there. She couldn't blame him for fleeing troubles that he didn't want as his own.

Fanny fought off melancholy with sewing projects during the gray winter hours—patching stockings, making a costume for Belle. Mr. Julian announced that he would give a fancy dress party for the ladies at the New Year, and everyone was encouraged to come. There would be piano music, and the students already knew the refreshments: brioche, wine, and fruit. Fanny's stomach growled to think of it. She pieced together a colorful dress for Belle out of two old ones, and a headdress from the leftover material. Fanny wanted the girl to feel as festive as the others. She would stay home, but it would be a chance for Belle to escape the dreariness of evenings in the apartment.

Every few minutes, Fanny looked up from her sewing to observe Hervey. He was so thin now. Once his cheeks had been fat'd and he'd had the sunniest disposition. She had carried him in a sling when he was tiny, when his head was smooth as an egg, and they fit together as if they were one piece. How vividly she remembered the day he was born! The midwife had held him up by the feet, and Fanny had fallen instantly in love with that little upside-down petal-pink face. He was her final vote of confidence in her marriage and the last good thing she took from it. How, in the face of such beauty and hope, could Sam have taken on yet another woman? Fanny knew then that Hervey was her last child, and she would keep him for herself. She would never say it aloud, but of the three, he was her best beloved.

During those lonely Paris hours, she sang every song she could think of to Hervey, and helped him hold a crayon in his hand to draw the lions, always in cages, that he preferred as his subject matter. When the boy slept, she kept herself awake by composing lengthy letters, cajoling her friends to write.
Do
send me some gossip,
she wrote to Rearden.
You know I love to hear about our literary friends. But no bad news. I could not bear it right now. Above all, don't tell Sam that Hervey is sick, I beg of you.

Day to day, she debated whether to alert Sam. The strange reality was that she could not discern how serious Hervey's illness was. In the past week the boy had been delirious with a fever, but then yesterday he had recovered. He'd sat up, smiling, and played with Sammy and seemed nearly well enough to go out for a walk in the park.

Rearden sent a letter scolding her for the reckless trip; he had put down on paper the words Sam was surely thinking. But her old friend—old sparring partner, more like it—included money to buy Christmas presents, and for that Fanny could forgive Rearden his cruel remarks. When the envelope arrived, she was sitting in a chair with the remainder of their cash in her lap, trying to imagine how they would make it to the end of the month. The surprise funds briefly brightened the miserable household. Fanny bought toys for the boys and filled the kitchen cupboard.

Through the bitter cold of January, she kept two fires going in the parlor during the day to keep Hervey warm as he lay on the sofa. At night, she and Miss Kate took turns staying awake beside him. His sores had begun to bleed and had to be dressed constantly. His frail little body had to be shifted to take the pressure off new sores.

When Belle and Sammy returned home from their classes, they kept vigil by Hervey's side. One day Belle brought a newspaper and sketchily translated an article about a wealthy California woman who had taken over a whole floor at the fancy Hôtel Splendide. A picture showed a woman in a white dress and feathered hat, surrounded by her entourage.

Fanny studied the faces in the paper. “I know this woman,” she said. “I knew her when she didn't have a nickel. In Austin, Nevada.”

Belle perked up. “Truly?”

“Tell about the camp!” shouted Sammy, who never seemed to tire of the old stories.

“It was winter,” Fanny began. “Belle and I hadn't been in camp with your father all that long. We heard there was going to be a party in the next settlement, a few miles away. I had brought a trunk full of dresses with me, only to find that they were far too fine to wear in Austin, Nevada. The camp was just a gulley of falling-down shacks, and the few women living there had to wash their things in the brown river water. No plumbing. No furniture. Nothing but a makeshift bed and a couple of pots in your father's cabin when I got there. But I did get to wear one of those nice dresses the night we went to that party. Somebody had made a sled out of a packing box with some runners on it. There wasn't a mirror to be found in the whole gulley. When the other women came to get me, one of the girls held up a lantern and a metal pie pan so I could see to fix my hair.” Fanny touched her finger to the newspaper. “This woman in the article—she was the one who held up the tin pan.”

“Oh.” Belle sighed, struck by the fairy-tale ending. “And now she's rich.”

“At least somebody got rich,” Fanny mused. “I bundled you up in a blanket that night, and we piled onto the sled with the other ladies and sang all the way to the next camp.”

“Did I dance?” Belle asked.

“Like a dervish. I'll never forget you swirling around that room. You were too little to need a partner. Oh, and I remember that was the night I met that preacher, Reverend Warwick. He had two gold front teeth. I said to him, ‘I didn't know there was a minister in these parts,' and he said, ‘You musta heard of me by my nickname. It's Smilin' Jesus.”

Sammy knew that part of the story already, but he laughed heartily, as they all did. How desperately they needed to laugh.

Fanny remembered the night in Nevada as if it had just happened. At that party, she had danced until dawn, with a different partner for every tune. Some of the women, she learned, were from the whorehouse in the next camp. Later, Fanny wondered if Sam's philandering had already begun by the time she and Belle arrived in Austin.

“Will you call on her at the Splendide?” Belle asked.

Fanny knew that her daughter was wondering if she might work herself into the rich woman's good graces. “No, I won't,” she replied. She studied the photo of the woman she had known. How strange to think they had been together in that hardscrabble mining town, each of them part of a couple bent on striking it rich. How could she have dreamed then that she would someday end up in Paris, camped nearby and yet a world apart, in a suite of cheap rooms with her three children and without her husband?

She realized then how much she really did miss Sam and how afraid she was for Hervey.

By mid-March, Fanny was frantic; Hervey's condition had deteriorated badly. Three different times she hired a carriage to go out into the countryside to find a farm where she could get fresh oxblood to replenish the iron Hervey was losing through bleeding, then hurried back to the flat so he could drink it while it was warm. For several days she searched the apothecaries of Paris, looking for the ground-up bark of some tropical tree that supposedly could cure tuberculosis. None of the treatments—not the doctors', not her own—could turn the tide for her beautiful child.

Some nights during her vigils, she had to fight to keep her eyes open, she was so exhausted. Alone and scared, she made promises.
Please,
she prayed.
Please
. Strange events began to occur in the dim light. Staring at the fireplace mantel, she saw vases and pitchers about to topple off the edge. Time and again, she jumped up to catch them only to find that nothing was there. During the day, she felt as if her feet were not touching the pavement. Instead, she floated just above it, weightless. She did not mention the weird sensations to Belle or Kate.

One night while she was keeping watch over Hervey, the boy woke and asked for water. When he reached out to take the cup, she saw light streaming from his fingers. She wired Sam the next morning:
Come immediately, regardless of expense.

Every few hours, Hervey began bleeding in a new place. “Blood. Get the things, please, but wait until I'm ready.” Fanny fetched the washbowl, bandages, and probe to clean each new opening in her boy's delicate skin. He would squeeze his hands together, shut his eyes and say, “Now, Mama.”

The pain of treatment was so shocking to his body that he became violently sick after. Others in the household could not bear to stay in the room. Sometimes he went into convulsions, his bones snapping in and out of joint, making the sound of a cracking whip. It seemed his skeleton and organs were disintegrating. The rush of blood tore one eardrum and perforated the other.

Fanny lay with him in her arms, murmuring words of comfort through his hours of agony. She prayed that if there were indeed a merciful God, He would strike the boy unconscious so he would feel the pain no more. But the child never lost his mind. Through it all, he never complained or cried out, not even when his bones, near the end, cut through his skin and lay bare.

When Sam arrived the second week of April, his knees buckled at the sight of his son. Fanny had tried to prepare him ahead of time, but at first Sam could not bear to look upon the child. It was Hervey who patted his father's head to comfort him.

Fanny watched in dumb wonder as her shy boy became precocious in dying. He said goodbye to Belle. He kissed the hand of Miss Kate, who had shown herself to be a storybook heroine in her devotion to him. He gave his toys to Sammy.

At the end, Hervey said, “Lie down beside me, Mama.” And then he was gone.

Fanny's breath came slowly. But for an intermittent shiver, she sat perfectly still. At the request of the other students, she had returned to Mr. Julian's studio to pose for the morning head study. It was four weeks since Hervey's death.

“So sad,” the Russian girl remarked as she studied Fanny's face, running her forefinger along the contour of her cheek. The other students gathered around. “Can you bear to sit?” they asked.

She could have said no. But these women had comforted her like sisters during her boy's illness. Anyway, it hardly mattered where she was. Here, at least, they understood her stupefaction. If they wanted to draw despair, it did not trouble her to face them.

For two days she bore witness to her son. Sitting for the artists, she did not see them. She saw only the gentle, heroic Hervey. How could any of them begin to understand what she had witnessed: a four-year-old boy with more courage in his tiny, wasted body than she had ever seen in an adult.

It haunted her that his was not a proper burial place, but there wasn't enough money to pay for a headstone, let alone a decent site. Fanny, Sam, and the two children had walked through the streets to the Saint-Germain cemetery behind the little white casket. There, amid headstones and statues of weeping angels, they clung to one another as her baby was lowered into a small unmarked rectangle of French earth. As they were leaving, the cemetery superintendent approached, followed by a dolorous nun who translated for him. “Your lease will expire in five years,” the nun explained. “If you can't keep up the grave permanently, the remains will be moved into a common grave with others.” The word “pauper” was not uttered, but Fanny assumed that was what the official meant by “others.” He pointed approvingly at a child's grave surrounded by a small iron fence. Lying flat on the ground, the stone was etched with the outline of a cradle and one word:
Regrete.
The superintendent led them to a nearby grave where the figure of a sleeping woman, her arms crossed over her breast, topped a grave. “
Le gisant
,” the man said. He turned to another marker. “
Un obélisque
.” The nun translated in a monotone. “The reclining statue. An obelisk, perhaps. These are some of the possibilities you will want to consider for your son's grave marker.” Looking at the superintendant's pitiless expression, Fanny wanted to spit in the man's face.

“He died peacefully,” Sam said repeatedly when they returned to the apartment.

“He did not! What do you know?” she shouted at him. She wanted to pummel him, though her husband had been only kind to her since his arrival. What use was there in recrimination? The man was suffering badly. But the loss did not bring them closer; they grieved at opposite ends of the apartment.

In the days that followed, she suffered searing headaches, collapsed from dizziness, lost her memory. She found she couldn't spell when she tried to write notes on the black-bordered stationery Belle brought home. After nights of wakefulness, when slumber finally came, she dreamed Hervey was uncomfortable, lying so long on his back in the coffin; he needed to be turned.

“You kept getting out of bed, trying to turn over your mattress all night,” Belle told her in the morning.

Sam feared she was going mad; he said as much. “You don't seem to know I'm even here,” he told her.

He was right. His voice was the buzz of a fly in the next room.

“You must go away someplace warm and rest,” a doctor told her. “Your nerves have experienced a terrible shock. Sammy is pale. Too thin. He could fall sick, as Hervey did.” The last sentence snapped her into awareness. She got up out of bed.

“I know of a quiet place not far away,” Margaret Wright told Fanny. “An inn at Grez, on the Loing River. It's close to Barbizon but away from all the bustle, and cheap. It's near the Fontainebleau Forest. I'm going there sometime this summer.”

The future, such as it was, assumed a shape. They would leave these heartbreaking rooms and take in the country air for a while. Miss Kate would not accompany them; she had turned up an old aunt in Paris who offered her a room.

In May, Sam delivered his family to the inn. Before he returned to America, Fanny argued for more time in Europe. “I want Sammy to be a gentleman. He has a chance at that if he attends school here.”

“One year,” Sam said. “That's all I can manage or tolerate.”