I Always Loved You PDF
Preview I Always Loved You
Also by Robin Oliveira My Name Is Mary Sutter VIKING Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China penguin.com A Penguin Random House Company First published by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014 Copyright © 2014 by Robin Oliveira Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. ISBN: 978-1-10160488-5 This is a work of fiction based on real events. Version_1 For Noelle and Miles Contents Also by Robin Oliveira Title Page Copyright Dedication 1926 Prologue 1877 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen 1878 Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six 1879 Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five 1880 Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four 1881–1883 Chapter Forty-Five Chapter Forty-Six Chapter Forty-Seven Chapter Forty-Eight Chapter Forty-Nine The Rest of Time Chapter Fifty Chapter Fifty-One Chapter Fifty-Two Chapter Fifty-Three Acknowledgments Author’s Note 1926 Prologue M ary Cassatt lifted two shallow crates of assorted brushes, pigments, palettes, and scraping knives and set them atop the paint-smeared table shoved under the arched, north-facing windows of her untidy studio. Someone less stubborn than she might have packed up years ago, but she liked to have her tools out and ready, as if at any moment she might turn and begin again, though she had not painted today and would not paint tomorrow and had not painted in some years, the scourge of the continuing betrayal of her eyesight, which she feared had become nearly as bad as his at the end. And then there was the pesky matter of confidence, which she’d discovered, to her disappointment, had not solidified over the years as her younger self had expected but had instead revealed itself to be an emotion that was more ruse than intention. The truth was that there was very little she could control anymore, except this one last thing, which made her feel very old. She turned in a circle, suppressing the unfamiliar swell of panic rising in her throat, an emotion to her so exotic that she wondered how other people—those who yielded daily to weakness or fear—coped. Oh, where was the damn thing? She was certain she’d hidden the box among the blank canvases and tin water cans, where no one, not even a sly model bent on discovery, would have guessed she’d secreted the prize. But she was not as keen as she had once been and now feared that both her eyesight and her memory may have double-crossed her. Had she, in a fit of sentiment, concealed it somewhere upstairs in her bedroom in order to keep it close? She dismissed the thought. She could not imagine herself committing such a romantic act. Daily, light flooded the stone-floored glassed-in studio at the back of the Château de Beaufresne, but now the winter afternoon was fading and her eyes were succumbing to fatigue. Time evaporating. The doctors said she was to prepare herself, meaning, she supposed, that they wanted her to sell her remaining canvases, attend to museum requests, visit relatives one last time— what people imagined had been her life. It mystified her that that was what they all thought was important to her. Of course she valued her work, and she had kept careful track as the prices for her paintings rose—prudence required such attention—but did they suppose that in touching brush to canvas she tallied only coin and admiration? The world blazes along with its critical tongue and shallow impatience, not understanding the moment, the breath, the seeing. She adjusted her thick-lensed glasses. What a necessary bother they were. Such goggles, but it was true that if she were still as careful a housekeeper of her studio as she had been in her youth, she could find what she wanted in an instant. What detritus a life leaves. She would have to call Mathilde to help her if she couldn’t find it. Look for shape, she scolded herself. The thing is not the thing. It is instead form and light. After all, what are faces but hollows and swells, spheres and lines? She had learned that very young. And now? She removed her glasses and wiped her watering eyes. Oh, to see as she once had. Some mornings upon waking, she indulges herself: Today I will paint the lace on the dress, finish the flowers in the background, and then concentrate on the way the sun plays on the girl’s hair. And then she opens her eyes, and a milky scrim obscures even the bedposts. Mary replaced her glasses and willed her blurring eyes to focus on the jumble of brushes and palette knives and dismantled easels. Under this purposeful gaze, their forms sharpened and fell away and became the contour and outline she needed them to be. For half a century, she had shifted sight like this at will, though when she was young, when she was first beginning to paint, the effort had pained her. It is a way of thinking, her instructors had said. It is a way of being in the world. And with that shift, the half-moon shape of the box revealed itself, protruding from under the edge of the tarpaulin. Kneeling, she felt its rounded edge and exhaled. Tucking it under her arm, she shuffled to the far end of the room, where Mathilde had left the tea tray for her on the table by the hearth, along with the magnifying glass she required. Mary sank into the chair and opened the lid. It was the kind of box that harbors forgotten photographs or mismatched buttons, so ordinary that after her death they might have tossed it without checking the contents, but she couldn’t take that chance. And besides, their curiosity had dogged her all her life; she would not let it dog her death. She was not sentimental, though people believed she was, seduced perhaps by the expressions she had rendered in her paintings. But she didn’t know, really, what people thought of her. And she didn’t care. Her work, like his, was all the legacy she cared to bequeath to the world. But she had kept these letters, as he had kept hers, though what they had
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