A few days later, Robert and I told Mam and Dad.
I held out my left hand, feigning bright assurance. “Guess what?” To which Mam exclaimed, “Oh, you’re engaged!”
But when they learned the truth they took it quite well, just as I had thought they would. I was twenty-four, after all, a year older than Mam had been when she’d married Daddy. And theirs had been a whirlwind courtship, too. Mam hugged Robert—she seemed to be genuinely fond of him. I can’t say the same for my father. In a misguided bout of enthusiasm, I’d shown him some of Robert’s poetry.
The pattern that we’d established before our marriage remained unchanged. Robert would show up sporadically, and we’d go off to a party, or to Gumby’s, or perhaps to a play. Sometimes we tagged along with Frederick and his friends at the Golden Swan.
We never discussed our living arrangements; it seemed unnecessary, I suppose. There was only a little time left before I was to leave for Italy.
It was obvious, anyway, that I couldn’t have Robert sharing my studio in Macdougal Alley. And I could hardly join Robert in the apartment he still shared with Roy.
To be truthful, my focus was not on Robert. At times I just forgot about him, forgot that I had a husband at all. Husband, I would think. What a strange-sounding word.
I was rather single-minded.
Italy.
I folded blouses and skirts with care, slipped stockings into my sky-blue satin case with navy frog fasteners, wrapped glass perfume bottles in cotton rags. As I packed, my eye kept traveling to my left hand, now adorned with the delicate gold ring. Such a pretty little ring.
When finally the day to set sail arrived, Robert came with me to the dock. We were in high spirits. We embraced quickly and laughed. I waved happily from the deck. Robert waved back with the enthusiasm of a crazed man.
The terrible, strange burden of marriage was lifted from us both.
Robert, the wedding—it all did seem a dream as I crossed the sea.
What had I done? We had no money, we had no plans. Still, I found it strangely easy to push these worries aside. For as long as I could make it last, Italy would be my world. Surely Robert and I would work out things when we settled down together in New York. There was plenty of time.
In Turin, I rented an apartment not far from our old place. I was overjoyed to see that all the places were just as I’d remembered: the house on the Via Cassini, the chestnut-lined streets, the vast and exquisite Valentino Park, the Po River, the churches and museums, the wide piazzas.
Months later I moved on to Florence, where I returned again and again to the Pitti Palace, home to the Medici grand dukes. Starstruck, I stood looking at the portraits and busts of the great Lorenzo Medici, the supreme patron of the arts. The force of the man was everywhere.
And everywhere, the Madonnas! Madonna of the Sea, Madonna of the Chair, Madonna of the Steps, the Castle Madonna, Madonna of the Grotto. Soon, I thought, I would paint Madonnas, too.
After Florence, Rome. After Rome, Venice. I fell in love with each city in turn. Mostly, though, I was in love with my freedom. I could do anything. Go anywhere. I could do nothing. Go nowhere. No one knew!
Never had I known such freedom.
? ? ?
When I arrived back in Turin, I had a letter from Mam. She wrote that Peaked Hill Bars was no more. The house had been unsafe to live in for a long time, collapsing little by little. And so it should have been no real surprise to learn that finally, one day, a storm came and the ocean rose up, sweeping Gene’s beloved beach house into the roiling waters. The news gave me a jolt, but I would not miss the place.
Then Robert wrote from Copenhagen, where he’d gone with Roy. They were collaborating on a book of Roy’s poetry. The title was: The Poems of Roy de Coverley, Together with a Lyric by the Editor. The editor being Robert. I thought it was not a very good title. Robert’s letter was mostly about Roy’s book and all the wonderful people they’d met in Copenhagen, but he also had sad news from Harlem. The Depression had claimed Gumby among its victims. He’d been forced to close his studio, sell off many of his rare books, and store all his scrapbooks in a friend’s cellar. Worst of all was the emotional toll—now Gumby was spending his days in the mental ward at Riverside Hospital in the Bronx.
In a postscript, Robert wrote that he was coming to visit me.
Robert . . . in Italy? I had mixed feelings about that. I didn’t like to think of losing my solitude. I was engrossed in a painting, the one I would later always refer to as “my Guggenheim Madonna,” and the work consumed me entirely. Almost since setting foot in Italy, I’d wanted to do a new sort of Madonna, but no setting satisfied me. Woods? Rocks? A church? All too dull, too static. Nothing made me happy. The answer arrived one morning in a package of laundry wrapped in brown paper. When I unloosed the string, the smell of starch hit me hard—instantly I was back in San Remo. I smelled the fresh ocean breezes and the starched laundry blowing on the line. And all at once I had a vision of the open sea and a young woman standing by the water, draped in a scarlet robe. A child stood at her side; he was no small babe, but a young boy, and in his hands he held a golden ship. Madonna of the Sailors. Yes, that was it. I was sure.
My Madonna claimed me. Now I was close to finishing it—I had only to fill in the background, paint the golden fabric that draped, wavelike, around mother and child, and my painting would be done.
Robert and I hadn’t seen each other in fourteen months. When he arrived, it was early October and Turin, predictably, was shrouded in fog. It rained. I’d dreamed of picnics by the river, or hikes in the country, but that sort of thing was impossible.
Anyway, it seemed that all Robert wanted to do was eat and drink. Mostly drink. We traipsed around the city until the early-morning hours. He’d acquired a more sophisticated air, he’d somehow lost the naive boy from Oregon and become citified, a world traveler, throwing in Danish and French phrases whenever he could. He never got out of bed until noon at the earliest. Sometimes he didn’t shave. His hair had grown even longer, and he had a rakish look with his cossack shirts during the day and now poets’ shirts at night, and his gleaming, buckled boots and his flashing grin. He was terribly attractive. I clung to his arm as we roamed over the city. I saw how women looked at him. I saw how everyone looked at him.