“I want you to drink this down, and then I’m going to put you to bed and come back later after you’ve gotten some sleep and then take you out for dinner. No more crying. No more slashing paintings, all right?”
It felt good to have someone tell me what to do. I took the glass from him. Whatever he’d put in it tasted bitter, but I drank it. And then I let him tuck me into bed. Before he had even left the room, I was asleep.
Chapter 6
During the walk to John’s on East Twelfth Street, Clifford said he was forbidding any serious conversation over dinner. “You need to stop thinking for a while, darling.”
And I did. We drank bootleg wine—but he stopped me after two glasses—and ate plates of spaghetti with red sauce and big, fat meatballs, while Clifford told me all the latest gossip, including a salacious story about a seduction scene he’d witnessed between his Hudson Valley hostess’s husband and one of their dinner guests.
The wine, scandalous tales, rumors of outrageous sales, and stories about critics who’d gone too far preoccupied me, and my mood lifted.
Back outside on the sidewalk after dinner, we found it had started to snow. There’s a special kind of quiet on city streets during a snowfall. A lonely but lovely silence, as if everyone has stopped—stopped loving, hating, walking, talking, cleaning, working—just to watch the crystal flakes fly out of the sky and shroud the world in pure, exquisite white.
We walked back in the peaceful cold. Snow fell in my hair and caught in my eyelashes and settled on top of Clifford’s ever-present homburg.
When we reached the studio, my self-appointed parent in absentia announced that he was coming in with me.
“We’ll clean up a little and have some more tea.”
“Brandy? And I don’t need a minder.”
“Tea. And actually, I think you do.”
Once inside, he went to the kitchenette and made us both tea. Handing me a cup, he asked, “Where’s the broom? You’re going to sit and drink your tea, and I’m going to clean up some of this mess.”
I tried to argue, but he wouldn’t have it, so I finally pointed out the broom and dustbin and settled myself back on the couch.
“I think you should come and paint in my studio for the next few days,” Clifford said as he swept. “I’m having models in for a mural. I don’t think it’s wise for you to be alone here, brooding.”
“I won’t brood.”
“No? Then what will you do? Do you have any commissions this week?”
“I don’t.”
“And you said you canceled all the parties you were engaged to attend?”
“Yes. I can’t go back to that. Not when I can’t trust myself to censor the images.”
“Any appointments to see friends?”
“There were, but they were with Tommy.” I took a sip of the tea. The burn felt good after saying my ex-fiancé’s name out loud.
“How about going without him?”
“I don’t want to have to explain anything.”
“You’re not embarrassed, are you?” Clifford looked at me. “That’s not like you.”
“I am—but not about being Jewish. No. And not about us no longer being an item.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m embarrassed that I ever let it get as far as it did with Tommy. That I thought I could actually have a future with someone like him. That I introduced him to all my friends and got chummy with his.”
“When you say ‘someone like him,’ what do you mean, exactly?”
“He’s not very soulful, is he?”
Clifford stopped sweeping and raised his brows. “No, darling. Soulful is not a word anyone has ever uttered about him.”
I laughed. It sounded strange to me after so many days of crying.
“But don’t worry. None of us, the artists who are your real friends, ever thought for a moment that you’d wind up marrying Mr. Moneybags.”
“Clifford!”
“I know, I know. One should never speak ill of the dead . . . and so on. But Delphine, I know his type. I’m a fixture inside their homes. I’ve been painting the social set for years, darling, and they are just not like us. He was an aberration. You were flirting with New York’s blue bloods and trying them on for size. You’d never have made it to the altar with Tommy Prout.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, but I do.” He started sweeping again. “You belong with someone who notices the beauty in what is strange and wonderful in this world. Who sees the magic in you and doesn’t want to tamp it down but rather fan its flames.”
I went to the window and looked out. The snow was heavier. There was already at least an inch, and it looked as if someone had dressed the trees in lace.
“I knew someone like that once,” I whispered against the glass, telling the snow, not Clifford. When Mathieu had kissed me, I hadn’t just felt passion but something deeper. When he held my face in his hands and our lips were pressed together, it seemed as if the world locked into place. As if everything made sense and fit. As if our being together was ordained and sacred. I felt bound to Mathieu in the most profound way. But it was an impossible pairing. The only way to protect him was to leave him.
I tried to hold in my sob but failed.
“What did I say?” Clifford had come up behind me. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t say anything wrong.” I sighed. Then tried to smile. “I’m getting so very tired of crying.”
Chapter 7
My mother was my painting teacher until I turned nineteen, when we both decided I’d do well to get a broader education. I was already too influenced by her, and she wanted me to find my own style as much as I did. Paris and L’école des Beaux-Arts were the obvious solution. L’école was the Notre Dame of schools. Every great painter from Jacques-Louis David to Delacroix, from Fragonard to Matisse and Rouault, and my mother’s mentor Gustave Moreau, had attended. In 1894, my mother had been its first female student. But by the time I began my studies there in 1919, there were quite a few women attending.
Since my great-grandmother, my older sister, and my brother were all in Paris, I had family to live with, which made the whole plan feasible. The City of Lights was far too sophisticated, my parents said, for me to live there on my own. I’d grown up in the south of France, which was calmer and more genteel, and I wasn’t as urbane as most city dwellers, they reminded me. Focusing so much on my art, I hadn’t yet learned the ways of the world.
I enjoyed living with my great-grandmother in our family home in the sixth arrondissement. Maison de la Lune, as it was called, was one of a half dozen four-story mid-eighteenth-century stone houses that shared a common courtyard backing up onto rue du Dragon. Decorated and designed to please her gentlemen friends, her salons and “fantasy bedrooms,” as Grand-mère called them, were the stuff of legend. In the old days, only rich men had been able to afford the many pleasures found inside. But Grand-mère had a soft spot for soldiers, too, and they could enjoy offerings for far less.