“I did know that,” Rose said. It was an oft-told story about Soutine and she had wondered if it was true. She loved that Harry was taken with it.
“The smell and flies got so bad that the police were called,” Harry continued. “And apparently Soutine said, ‘What does sanitation matter when compared to the sanctity of art?’” He chortled, and off he went again.
Thomas stayed by Rose’s side, a hand on the small of her back, walking where she led them. She pointed out the portraits; she told him that Madame Castaing reminded her of her mother. “She’s beautiful,” he said. He cast a sideways glance at his wife. “Like you.”
She shook her head at him, gave him a grateful smile. The waistband of her dress felt tighter. She could take this one out, but soon she wouldn’t be able to wear her regular clothes.
They paused in front of a Soutine self-portrait, his ears and nose exaggeratedly large, his misshapen body adorned in a garish yellow-green jacket. “Now, that is positively monstrous,” Thomas said. “Why in the world would someone depict himself that way?”
“He was not a happy man,” Rose said.
“That’s one way of putting it. But look: there aren’t any hands in the portrait. He cut off his own hands. Why would he do that?”
“Apparently hands are hard to paint,” Rose said. “And it’s probably harder to paint them when you’re using them to paint.”
“Maybe,” Thomas said. “But I think it’s awful. He needs his hands, and now they’re gone.”
That wasn’t the way Rose thought of it. But standing next to her husband, seeing it through his eyes, she did not disagree.
Four days later, as she was teaching sixth period, the cramps started. It’s nothing, she told herself. They continued through the day and intensified on the drive home. But by the time she managed to get up the stairs and inside her apartment, the bleeding had begun. She fought her way to the toilet, doubled over, sweating, terrified. She held on in desperation as her insides knotted up, the pain ballooning. Nothing was anchored, nothing safe. Eventually she forced herself to stand: dark purplish swirls of blood, clots that Rose couldn’t bear to look at, filled the bowl. She grabbed towels, staggered to her bedroom—the phone was in the kitchen, miles away—and there Thomas found her two hours later, curled up, soiled towels beneath her.
“It’s over,” she said to him. “Thomas.” She said his name again as she wept. Mutti, this had happened to Mutti too.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “It can’t be.” But when they got to Dr. Cohen’s that night (he had returned to the office to see them, a kindness she would never forget), he shook his head, confirmed what Rose already knew.
The hospital set in Studio 43 in CBS’s Television City was smaller and more makeshift than Rose had envisioned. Harry had landed the part of a newly arrived, mysterious foreign doctor: “No one quite trusts him, but few can resist his charms,” he had told them.
“Now that sounds like a stretch,” Rose had said. But when she called Gerhard and Isobel, she boasted of how much the producers loved him; three weeks in, the role had already been expanded.
Thomas and Rose watched him stride onto the set—the ceiling a forest of lights and girders and beams and cameras—in his white doctor’s coat, then turn his face toward the makeup girl, who sponged on some lurid-looking cream.
“I hope that looks better on camera than it does in person,” Rose couldn’t help but say.
“Let us hope,” Thomas whispered back. And then: “Harry George is an inane name.”
Rose shrugged. “The producers didn’t like Zimmer,” she said. She agreed with Thomas, but it was hard for her to get worked up over the name change. It was hard to get worked up over much these days. The last month she had felt so tired, too tired to object.
“He might actually become something,” Thomas whispered.
“I believe he already has.”
He smiled, sidled up closer. In her heels, they were about the same height. “You are looking particularly lovely today, Mrs. Downes.”
She was wearing one of her favorite dresses today. It was a simple cotton A-line in periwinkle with pearl buttons that flashed against the blue. It fit her well again. Most of her clothes did, a fact that unnerved her, made her slow as she was buttoning up in the morning. “Why, thank you,” she said. Her eyes remained on her nephew. He truly was handsome, and though he looked nothing like Gerhard, she saw something familiar in the shape of his mouth, his prominent brow—Papi, she thought now.
She heard Thomas’s voice, close to her ear. “I want to try again.”
Try again? she nearly asked, but she knew. She couldn’t bring herself to answer.
The pregnancy had been a fluke. Rose’s gaze remained on her nephew. “It’s too late,” she said, her voice catching on something nubby in her throat.
“It’s not. It happened once. It can happen again. We just need to try.” He wove an arm around her waist. “Hard work, I know, but please say you’ll try.”
She rested her hand on top of his. It had happened. And if for a moment she could scrape away the terror and doubt, ignore the constant churn of sadness, she could admit this, if only to herself: she had been happy.
Here was Thomas asking; she wanted simply to feel his hand on her, steadying her.
“Yes,” she said even if she didn’t quite believe it. She turned to him, allowed herself the tiniest of smiles. “Yes, I’ll try.”
It happened again and fast, not three months later. It wasn’t like the time before. Rose knew right away. It felt like a thrum, this pregnancy, quieter, but more insistent. By the time Dr. Cohen confirmed it with a due date of September 15 (three days after Mutti’s birthday, Rose thought but did not say), her stomach already felt swollen, her body readying for action. She was less queasy this time, and that made her nervous; she was vigilant about tracking every twitch and wave of nausea. One night, long after they both had gone to sleep, Rose woke up with a start, convinced that she had felt blood. In the bathroom, she checked and checked. “Everything is fine,” Thomas murmured when he found her there, his words blurry with sleep.
“You don’t know that,” she said with equal parts fury and despair.