The Swan Thieves

The Swan Thieves Page 22

Our new place was a big green cottage provided by the college. After classes 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 nobly, 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--God, 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 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 class, 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 classes.

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 assumed 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 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 cushions. 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 our bed, and that he'd barely been home. I'd sometimes heard the creak of the stairs at night and had assumed 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 classes 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 shining, 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 breasts, 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 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 classes. Again."

I was gratified to see him look stricken. "Oh shit," 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 breasts 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.

"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 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 superstitious 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 work out some shifts, 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. God, 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 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 scraped 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.

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 Japanese, has a series of prints in her drawing room that French artists can only dream of emulating--but perhaps rain is more uplifting in Japan 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