Cat's eye

“So you don’t feel it’s sort of demeaning to be propped up by a man?” she says.

“Women prop up men all the time,” I say. “What’s wrong with a little reverse propping?”

What I have to say is not altogether what she wants to hear. She’d prefer stories of outrage, although she’d be unlikely to tell them about herself, she’s too young. Still, people my age are supposed to have stories of outrage; at least insult, at least put-down. Male art teachers pinching your bum, calling you baby, asking you why there are no great female painters, that sort of thing. She would like me to be furious, and quaint.

“Did you have any female mentors?” she asks.

“Female what?”

“Like, teachers, or other woman painters you admired.”

“Shouldn’t that be mentresses?” I say nastily. “There weren’t any. My teacher was a man.”

“Who was that?” she says.

“Josef Hrbik. He was very kind to me,” I add quickly. He’d fit the bill for her, but she won’t hear that from me. “He taught me to draw naked women.”

That startles her. “Well, what about, you know, feminism?” she says. “A lot of people call you a feminist painter.”

“What indeed,” I say. “I hate party lines, I hate ghettos. Anyway, I’m too old to have invented it and you’re too young to understand it, so what’s the point of discussing it at all?”

“So it’s not a meaningful classification for you?” she says.

“I like it that women like my work. Why shouldn’t I?”

“Do men like your work?” she asks slyly. She’s been going through the back files, she’s seen some of those witch-and-succubus pieces.

“Which men?” I say. “Not everyone likes my work. It’s not because I’m a woman. If they don’t like a man’s work it’s not because he’s a man. They just don’t like it.” I am on dubious ground, and this enrages me. My voice is calm; the coffee seethes within me.

She frowns, diddles with the tape recorder. “Why do you paint all those women then?”

“What should I paint, men?” I say. “I’m a painter. Painters paint women. Rubens painted women, Renoir painted women, Picasso painted women. Everyone paints women. Is there something wrong with painting women?”

“But not like that,” she says.

“Like what?” I say. “Anyway, why should my women be the same as everyone else’s women?” I catch myself picking at my fingers, and stop. In a minute my teeth will be chattering like those of cornered mice. Her voice is getting farther and farther away, I can hardly hear her. But I see her, very clearly: the ribbing on the neck of her sweater, the fine hairs of her cheek, the shine of a button. What I hear is what she isn’t saying. Your clothes are stupid. Your art is crap. Sit up straight and don’t answer back.

“Why do you paint?” she says, and I can hear her again as clear as anything. I hear her exasperation, with me and my refusals.

“Why does anyone do anything?” I say.

Chapter 17

T he light fades earlier; on the way home from school we walk through the smoke from burning leaves. It rains, and we have to play inside. We sit on the floor of Grace’s room, being quiet because of Mrs. Smeath’s bad heart, and cut out rolling pins and frying pans and paste them around our paper ladies. But Cordelia makes short work of this game. She knows, instantly it seems, why Grace’s house has so many Eaton’s Catalogues in it. It’s because the Smeaths get their clothes that way, the whole family—order them out of the Eaton’s Catalogue. There in the Girls’ Clothing section are the plaid dresses, the skirts with straps, the winter coats worn by Grace and her sisters, three colors of them, in lumpy, serviceable wool, with hoods: Kelly Green, Royal Blue, Maroon. Cordelia manages to convey that she herself would never wear a coat ordered from the Eaton’s Catalogue. She doesn’t say this out loud though. Like the rest of us, she wants to stay on the good side of Grace. She bypasses the cookware, flips through the pages. She turns to the brassieres, to the elaborately laced and gusseted corsets—foundation garments, they’re called—and draws mustaches on the models, whose flesh looks as if it’s been painted over with a thin coat of beige plaster. She pencils hair in, under their arms, and on their chests between the breasts. She reads out the descriptions, snorting with stifled laughter: “”Delightfully trimmed in dainty lace, with extra support for the mature figure.“ That means big bazooms. Look at this— cup sizes! Like teacups!”

Breasts fascinate Cordelia, and fill her with scorn. Both of her older sisters have them by now. Perdie and Mirrie sit in their room with its twin beds and sprigged-muslin flounces, filing their nails, laughing softly; or they heat brown wax in little pots in the kitchen and take it upstairs to spread on their legs. They look into their mirrors, making sad faces—“I look like Haggis McBaggis! It’s the curse!” Their wastebaskets smell of decaying flowers.