Men and Angels (9 page)

She’d worked all morning in the library. All the time she worked, she felt like an impostor. She had no business being there, she thought. It was possible that she looked like the others, but it was a lie. She was nothing like them. They were twenty, they were twenty-five or they had written fifteen books and thirty articles, they could sit for hours turning pages, writing things on cards. They never wanted to get up. Their minds—she could almost see their minds hovering above their pages, lively, angular—could settle on the things before them. They weren’t always thinking of their children—they didn’t have children, none of them had children, she was sure of it—they were thinking of the words, the print. They were saying words in their minds like “iconography” and “plastic form.” Of course she said them too, but she was also thinking words of one syllable, home words, the names of foods, toys, children’s games. She was looking at Eakins’
The Clinic of Dr. Agnew
and worrying that she hadn’t taken Sarah to the dentist. She thought she’d have to tell Ben it was impossible. She couldn’t do the job. He had misjudged her, imagining she still was what she once had been.

How could she possibly do it? What she had to do was build a house for a woman she loved. Like a pioneer husband claiming the forest, she must clear through the wilderness. She must create the house entire. She must make sure the structure was sound; but she must also make the details beautiful: the walls must be the right color, the sheets must be perfectly embroidered. Without the house that she would build, the woman she loved, dead forty-five years, unknown to almost everyone, could not be made to live.

Her feelings of insecurity, always high when she worked in a room with other people, were stronger today because she was about to meet Caroline’s daughter-in-law, Jane Watson. Anne’s first encounter with her, by letter, hadn’t been promising. Anne had written, at Ben’s suggestion, to ask if she could have access to Caroline’s letters that were in Jane’s possession. “I hope,” she’d written, “these will help me understand the progress of Caroline Watson’s work.”

“You would do well,” Jane had replied, “to look for the explanation of Caroline Watson’s progress in the history of art rather than her own personal history. Far too much is made of the biographical today, particularly in the case of women. Marriage, childbirth, menstrual cycles, hysterectomies: they have nothing to do with the work. Give no more attention to them in the career of Caroline Watson than you would in the career of Matisse.”

She’d resented Jane’s tone. What was she afraid of? People were hungry for details of the lives of women, and there was an industry that provided them. But she would be writing about the work. Menstrual cycles, hysterectomies—she hadn’t dreamed of including anything like that. Of course she was interested in Caroline’s life, because she loved the painting. Without it, Caroline would have been simply another unhappy woman of a certain period who had made more mistakes than most.

But that wasn’t quite right, she knew; that wasn’t quite all of it. There was that hunger that she felt, that women felt, to know details: where women stood in relation to their families, as daughters, sisters, mothers. It wasn’t just; it wasn’t creditable. Yet one wanted to know, when the women had accomplished something. Whom did they love in relation to their bodies? Whom were they connected to by blood? Like dogs, she thought, like horses. But it wasn’t the fact of the connection that was interesting; it was how they got around it. The truth of the matter was that for a woman to have accomplished something, she had to get out of the way of her own body. This was the trick people wanted to know about. Did she pull it off? As if a life were a trick, making doves fly out of a hat, turning an egg into a flower. Stupidly, like the watchers of soap operas, people who were interested in the achievements of women wanted the grossest facts: Whom did they sleep with? Did they have any babies? Were their fathers kind to them, cruel to them? Did they obey or go against their mothers? Infantile questions, yet one felt one had to know. It gave courage, somehow. One wanted to believe that the price was not impossible for these accomplished women, that there were fathers, husbands, babies, beautifully flourishing beside the beautiful work. For there so rarely were.

As she walked she tried to remember everything that Ben had said about Jane Watson. Like most men trying to describe a woman, he began with her looks. His description—beginning with this saying that she had been, in her day, incomparable—made Anne imagine a beauty that was no longer in vogue. It was more than that, a beauty that had somehow ceased appearing in young women. Was it that they were thinner, wore fewer clothes, cut their hair short or left it hanging? Yet Ben had talked about Jane’s hair as if it had been deliberately and carefully acquired, an original possession, rare,
trouvé.
Chestnut, he had said, and one must think of the silky shell of a chestnut, smooth and polished and resistant to the lips.

She was a large woman, Ben had said, she had a quite exhausting energy. Knowing herself to be beautiful, understanding that she was from the simple fact of her physical existence craved by people, she didn’t worry if people liked her. She was terrifically intelligent, a medievalist. The fourteenth century, you know. Made her career at Bryn Mawr. She didn’t care what she said, so she hurt people’s feelings. But she didn’t notice. She walked through crowds of people, Ben had said, like an admiral walking a deck. People hadn’t interested her much when she was young. Except her mother-in-law. They would come to parties and speak only to each other. Cut from the same cloth you might say, Ben had said.

“And what about Stephen?” Anne had asked.

“Poor old Steve. He was one of those disappearing types. On your own with him he could become invisible. And with his mother and then Jane, he was entirely blotted out.”

“And yet you’re fond of Jane.”

“Immensely.”

“She sounds so daunting.”

“Yes, well, naturally. She’s like a swim in a rough ocean. Nothing more exhilarating. Nothing has ever given me the sense of human possibility like an afternoon with Jane.”

“All the same I’m frightened. I identify with Stephen in this story. I’m afraid I’ll disappear or be blotted out.”

“Nonsense. Jane will love you. You’re devoted to the same dead woman. What could be a stronger bond?”

“What if Caroline were alive?”

Ben smiled. “She wouldn’t let you near her.”

Jane was standing in front of the restaurant when Anne approached her, introducing herself. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” Jane said, smiling formally.

There was nothing of the personal about that smile. It was the well-used instrument of a woman who for years has known her power. And Jane Watson stopped the smile, shut it down really, at the first moment it was imaginably civil to do so. Then she used her hand to shield her eyes so that she needn’t squint as she looked up the street.

“It’s unlike Ben to be late,” Jane said. It was unfortunate, Anne thought, how obvious she made her wish, both their wish, for Ben to come to their rescue.

“Yes, but the traffic’s bad,” Anne said.

“Ben would have walked.”

“Of course,” Anne said, feeling the point Jane meant to make: she knew Ben better, longer. Anne needn’t imagine an equality that wasn’t there.

“Ben has known you a long time, I gather. How clever of him to have pulled you out of the hat for this,” said Jane.

The comparison made Anne uneasy; it was too apt. A rabbit in a hat. She had felt like that: foolish, white, vulnerable, blinking her eyes at the light. And then there was the audience, the strangers, who would applaud or hiss or not notice. What would happen to her? Would she have to go back into the hat? What did the rabbits do between performances? She didn’t have a chance with Jane; she could see it. Jane had decided she was a fool.

“Sorry I’m late,” Ben said, insincerely, walking up to them.

“It’s bad enough you’re making me have a large meal in the middle of the day, and wasting my time in restaurants, which, on the whole, you know I detest. You make it worse by being late,” Jane said crossly.

“Yes, darling, I know, you’ve better things to do with your time. I, on the other hand, can’t imagine anything more perfect than a good meal with my two favorite women in the world.”

“Nonsense,” Jane said, walking into the restaurant before them.

Jane said that they must order lobster. Ben was rolling in money, and besides, it was a tradition for them: they always ordered lobster for their first meal together in America. She ordered for the three of them; she chose the wine. When the waiter approached with their lobsters, she set to with an enthusiasm which, had she not had those light eyes, that straight back, that thick white hair, that perfectly formed head, might almost have shocked. She sucked the legs to get the smallest scraps of meat; she cracked the claws with one swift movement; she ruthlessly bent the back, then poked the tail meat through with a cheerful and expert energy. She accused Ben and Anne of leaving half the good untouched; she took off their plates all they had thought inedible.

The food made her kinder. Pleasantly, she turned to Anne and said, “Now, what do you want to know about Caroline,” dismissing as impossible the waiter’s offer of dessert.

The question came too suddenly: there was no lead-up. There had been the first near-rudeness, then the food, then Jane had gone straight to the matter: it was, after all, why they were there. She had leapt up to the high place that they all, really, had their eye on. But for herself, Anne knew she had wanted a slow, gradual climb. Now there was Jane, at the top of the precipice, challenging, her hands on her hips, planting her flag. Anne felt she didn’t know what to ask, because sitting across from her, still wearing a paper bib with a picture of a lobster printed on it, was a woman whose identity was so complex that it could only baffle her. Jane had known Caroline; she had loved her; she was her daughter-in-law. She and Caroline had built devotion on the usual ground of discord, on the ancient territory of blood feud. It was always odd to reconstruct the relations of the living and the dead; there was something brutal and unreal about it, but with Jane and Caroline the strangeness was more pronounced, for Anne’s own relation to Caroline was singular. It ought to have been the same relation she had to Cassatt and Eakins when she was doing her thesis; she was a kind of servant to the work, she was supposed to reveal things, restore things. But now, like a servant whose value might be inestimable, or whose obsession might render her useless, she had fallen in love with her charge.

What would she have felt if, sitting across from her, had been Mary Cassatt’s niece, Thomas Eakins’ son? What would she have felt if she had just lunched with Vermeer’s daughter? It was hard to understand that, outside of the work one was the servant to, the people who had done the work had ordinary lives, ate meals, carried raincoats. One wanted and did not want to believe it; it was a comfort, of course, to think that beautiful things were created by people like oneself, but it was also a disappointment. And what did the world have the right to know about the eater of the meal, the carrier of the raincoat? She remembered Jane’s letter; she was, clearly, not of the school that felt the world had the right to full revelation. How far could one go with a woman like Jane? What was the intrusion that made the barely open gate shut down on the forward criminal’s impertinent neck? Anne had to meet the challenge. She had planned for this moment; she had prepared what she would do: she would ask a question that had nothing to do with the life.

“I was wondering if Caroline had ever said anything to you about Grünewald. If she, perhaps, had been to Colmar, to see the
Isenheim Altarpiece
.”

Jane looked at Anne as if she held a smoking gun. “What makes you ask about Grünewald?”

Anne met Jane’s eye. She felt she had to meet it, or everything would be lost. And she felt that she had a right to say what she had said; it might be wrong, but it was not ridiculous. It wasn’t a whim, or a feeling. It was an idea. It had solidity even if it was wrong; it needn’t be instantly dissolved by the beam of Jane Watson’s extraordinary personal force.

“I got the idea,” she said, “from looking at a series of paintings Caroline did of the crippled woman selling flowers. They made me think of the altarpiece—I saw it ten years or more ago, but it kept coming to mind. With those paintings she came to a new use of color, a new willingness to distort the figure, a new attention to detail. And I suspected that she was moved by his genius of the depiction of the posture of grief—I felt that perhaps she had drawn on it a great deal, beginning in about 1906, but continuing, really, throughout her career.”

For a moment, Anne thought Jane was about to be angry with her. Her eyes seemed to harden, the high, almost masculine forehead constricted, the beautifully cut nostrils flared and closed, her hand went to her forehead. Anne stiffened, as if she expected a blow.

“That’s right,” Jane said. “What you say is exactly right. And tremendously good of you to see. No one would think of Grünewald as an influence, but yes, it’s exactly right. She made a trip to Germany in 1905, and she never forgot what she saw in Colmar. We went again in 1930, she and I. For years she’d wanted me to see the Grünewalds, she said seeing them was one of the most important events of her life.”

She looked up at Anne; for the first time, she met Anne’s eye.

“We went to Germany in 1930. Disaster about to be was everywhere, an evil breath. Nazi boys were on the street corners. At the same time, our friends were flourishing, in some doomed way that made one fear. There was a dreadful hectic sickish feeling in the air—one simply couldn’t rest. And then we went up to Colmar, to the Grünewalds. We entered the church. Caroline sat down quickly, very heavily. It was the first time I had to see she was an old woman.”

Jane took Anne’s hand. “I believe we are lucky to have you.” She took both Anne’s hands and shook them. It was a strange gesture, an awkward gesture, something one of the children would have done to get attention.