upstairs. Finally, she’d twist open the locks and enter their cluttered, diminutive haven, every scrap of its splintery floors devoted to some indispensable child-rearing apparatus. Their bedroom was the size of a sandbox, the lumpy double bed jammed between the walls. Frances, who was three, slept in the alcove, the foot of her little bed piled with coats, hats and mittens that wouldn’t fit in the closet. The apartment’s only redeeming feature was the view, which reminded her almost exactly of George Bellows’s Winter Afternoon, the heartless blue of the river, the rusty milkweed on its banks, the white snow and banners of shadow, the ordinary mystery of a woman bundled up against the cold in a red coat. The river made her pensive and a little melancholy, and as she gazed through the dirty windows she would try to remember her original self—the girl she’d been before she met George and they’d married to save themselves, his name like a stranger’s dress you slip on and walk around in, before she’d become Mrs. George Clare, like her rapacious, chain-smoking mother-in-law. Before she’d assumed her alias as devoted wife and mother. Before she’d left Cathy Margaret behind—that heron-boned, spider-legged, ponytailed girl, now abandoned for more important tasks, like changing diapers, ironing shirts, cleaning the oven. Not that she was complaining or even unhappy; for all intents and purposes she was content. But she sensed there must be something more to life, some deeper reason for being, some dramatic purpose, if only she could find out what it was.
—
LIKE MANY UNSUSPECTING COUPLES, they’d met in college. She was a sophomore; George was graduating that May. With mannered indifference, they’d pass each other on the sidewalks of Williamstown, she in her bulky Irish sweaters and hand-me-down kilts, he in his ratty tweed blazer, smoking Camels. He lived in the mustard Victorian on Hoxsey Street, with a group of art-history majors who had already cultivated a stuffy, curatorial arrogance that, with just a glance, reduced her to the chubby girl from Grafton with gravel dust in her shoes. Unlike George and his tony friends, Catherine was here on a scholarship; her father managed a quarry just across the border. She lived in the dorms, in a suite with three monastic biology majors. This was 1972, she was nineteen years old, and in those days, the unspoken hierarchy in the Art History Department ensured that the few female students were decidedly underappreciated.
Their first conversation occurred at a lecture on the great sixteenth-century painter Caravaggio. It had rained that morning and she was late, the auditorium a sea of brightly colored rain jackets. An empty seat caught her eye in the middle of a row. Apologizing, making people stand, she shuffled down to it, discovering that it was George in the seat beside her.
You should thank me, he said. I’ve been saving it for you.
It’s the only one left.
I think we both know why you sat here. He smiled like he knew her. George Clare, he said, reaching for her hand.
Catherine—Cathy Sloan.
Catherine. His hand was sweaty. In just a few seconds an intimacy seemed to infect them like some contagious disease. They talked briefly about mutual classes and professors. He had a very slight French accent and said he’d lived in Paris as a young boy. An apartment like Floor Scrapers. Do you know Caillebotte?
She didn’t.
We moved to Connecticut when I was five, and my life hasn’t been the same since. He smiled, making a joke, but she could tell he was serious.
I’ve never been to Paris.
Are you in Hager’s class?
Next semester.
He gestured at the screen, where the artist’s name was spelled out in crimson letters. You know about him, right?
Caravaggio? A little.
One of the most incredible painters in history. He’d hire prostitutes for his models and transform saucy street tarts into rosy-cheeked virgins. There’s a certain poignant justice
—
LIKE MANY UNSUSPECTING COUPLES, they’d met in college. She was a sophomore; George was graduating that May. With mannered indifference, they’d pass each other on the sidewalks of Williamstown, she in her bulky Irish sweaters and hand-me-down kilts, he in his ratty tweed blazer, smoking Camels. He lived in the mustard Victorian on Hoxsey Street, with a group of art-history majors who had already cultivated a stuffy, curatorial arrogance that, with just a glance, reduced her to the chubby girl from Grafton with gravel dust in her shoes. Unlike George and his tony friends, Catherine was here on a scholarship; her father managed a quarry just across the border. She lived in the dorms, in a suite with three monastic biology majors. This was 1972, she was nineteen years old, and in those days, the unspoken hierarchy in the Art History Department ensured that the few female students were decidedly underappreciated.
Their first conversation occurred at a lecture on the great sixteenth-century painter Caravaggio. It had rained that morning and she was late, the auditorium a sea of brightly colored rain jackets. An empty seat caught her eye in the middle of a row. Apologizing, making people stand, she shuffled down to it, discovering that it was George in the seat beside her.
You should thank me, he said. I’ve been saving it for you.
It’s the only one left.
I think we both know why you sat here. He smiled like he knew her. George Clare, he said, reaching for her hand.
Catherine—Cathy Sloan.
Catherine. His hand was sweaty. In just a few seconds an intimacy seemed to infect them like some contagious disease. They talked briefly about mutual classes and professors. He had a very slight French accent and said he’d lived in Paris as a young boy. An apartment like Floor Scrapers. Do you know Caillebotte?
She didn’t.
We moved to Connecticut when I was five, and my life hasn’t been the same since. He smiled, making a joke, but she could tell he was serious.
I’ve never been to Paris.
Are you in Hager’s class?
Next semester.
He gestured at the screen, where the artist’s name was spelled out in crimson letters. You know about him, right?
Caravaggio? A little.
One of the most incredible painters in history. He’d hire prostitutes for his models and transform saucy street tarts into rosy-cheeked virgins. There’s a certain poignant justice
Similar Books
