City of Ash (2 page)

“It reminded me of you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Sublime,” he whispered, his gaze never leaving my face, falling to my lips. “Pure love. I never look at you that I don’t want to lose myself in you.”

How easily I fell. How well he knew what to say, how to win me. When he kissed me that night, I felt the impatience in him, a roughness that frightened and excited me at the same time. I would have lain with him there in the grass if he hadn’t stopped, breathless but not apologizing, instead saying, “Dear God, the things we could do to each other …”

When he asked me to marry him, I did not hesitate. I wanted him too badly. Fortunately, my father liked him. Because Nathan was a good businessman, Papa readily folded him into Stratford Mining, where he became, very quickly, indispensable.

I was blissfully happy. I was in love and in a state of heightened desire that had me reaching for Nathan whenever he was in the room. Society called us lovebirds and twittered nervously around us, and both Nathan and I laughed at it. I felt myself ridiculously lucky—what other woman had a husband who was so fine a lover, who listened so intently to everything she said? Nathan said I had a mind unlike any woman’s; he told me how thoughtful were my opinions, how I’d opened up worlds for him.
It was not unusual for us to stay awake into the wee hours of the morning, making love and talking over some philosophy or another. Oh, there were little annoyances, of course, as there are in every marriage. Nathan had a temper, I learned, and he was easily irritated. There were arguments, mostly over my behavior, I admit. I was spending too much time hobnobbing with disreputable artists, or this writer or that actor was a fool, how did I not see it, or it was unseemly for a married woman to debate philosophy in little cafés into the wee hours of the morning.

I was uneasy at the comments, but I attributed them to his exhaustion—by the time we’d been married three years, he had become my father’s most trusted adviser, and Papa began to talk of the possibility of Nathan entering politics, as it would be of great benefit for Stratford Mining to have a voice in government. Nathan was very busy now. He was often out late. His comments about my behavior became more pointed, sometimes now accompanied by tempers that left no object safe—a vase, a shoe brush, a little bisque statuette. But it wasn’t until Emily Dentridge’s ball that I became worried.

Nathan was working late, and so he meant to meet me there. By the time he arrived, dinner was over, and I was playing cards with Ambrose Rivers—who was Chicago’s most notorious art critic and my dear friend—and Miles Ashby, a painter Papa had lately taken a liking to. I had always enjoyed gambling, and I was winning. Nathan came into the parlor just as Ashby fell to his knees before me, bowing in mock supplication, laying his head in my lap. We were all a little drunk by then, and he made me laugh.

I didn’t see Nathan until he was upon me. He grasped my arm; I didn’t see how angry he was until we were in the carriage, when he turned on me with a furious, “What the hell did you think you were doing? Did you not see how everyone was staring?”

I was taken aback. “I cannot help it that people watch me, Nathan.”

His voice was tight. “Of course you can. You encourage it with your behavior.”

“There was nothing wrong in—”

“Playing cards? Having Ashby swoon over you like a schoolboy?”

“He doesn’t swoon. We’re friends—”

“You will end the friendship tomorrow.”

“I will not! Why should I?”

His gaze was burning. “Because I forbid you to continue to see him.”

I was startled. He had never before been so vehement. “Forbid me? You can’t forbid me.”

“I can and I will,” he snapped. “People are talking, Geneva, and I won’t have it.”

I thought he couldn’t mean it. I thought he was only tired. It turned out that I was required to do nothing in any case; Miles Ashby left for New York City within the week. He’d secured a patron there, he told me, and he was anxious to work on a new commission.

In the months that followed, things only deteriorated between my husband and me. We made love infrequently now, and when we did there were times when he was very rough, when I had the vague sense that he was punishing me.

I admit I was unhappy. I was unused to being ignored and dismissed, and we were both so angry. I missed the man I’d married. I looked for ways to bring him back to me, for ways to help him. I thought that if I could aid him with his languishing political career, he would turn to me again. I would help him the way I’d helped my father. Nathan needed the influence of important people, and so I decided to start a salon, a weekly meeting of artists and intellectuals. Papa was ambivalent about the idea, but not forbidding. Nathan, who I thought would understand my purpose, said, “Stop wasting your time and money on idiotic painters and actors too self-absorbed to see past their own noses. They can do nothing for me.”

He was wrong, and I knew it, so I went ahead with the salon. I was certain he would come to see its value. At first, it seemed he was right. Chicago society was upended and confused. They hated it, though no one would say so overtly; the Stratford name and money were not something to offend. I cultivated the salon carefully, courting my guests assiduously—divine actors and
creamy prima donnas and luscious tenors, poets, and philosophers and artists of all kinds. They moved among vases of orchids and sideboards set with champagne and wine and absinthe. I crowded candles onto every surface, as talk seemed to flow so much more naturally in candlelight that flickered with every breath and movement. Gradually it began to have the influence I’d hoped for. Within a year, my salon became the most talked about in Chicago.

The man I’d begun it for would have nothing to do with it. Nathan refused to attend; he berated it at every opportunity. When I told him I’d done it for him, he said, “Don’t lie to yourself or to me. You did it for yourself, Ginny. You’re the most spoiled woman I’ve ever known. I asked you not to do it. But God forbid you ever do anything I ask. Did you never once think of how it might look?”

“There’s nothing wrong in it.”

“People think you a step above a whore,” he said brutally.

I felt myself pale. “That isn’t true.”

“Isn’t it? You should hear the rumors I hear.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He threw a wineglass across the room so the wine stained the wallpaper. I was afraid, and there was something in his eyes that disturbed me, that reminded me of the rumors about his mother, but I was too angry myself to heed it. He said, “You
will
do as I say,” and I screamed at him that I would do as I wished, whatever anyone else thought of it. Nathan grabbed me then. I thought he might hurt me. For a moment we stood staring at each other, and then it changed, it twisted. Anger into passion. He kissed me, and I bit his lip until it bled. It became the most passionate interlude we’d had in months, and I was afraid of myself, of how I urged him on—this anger was better than nothing, after all.

That night of passion changed nothing; in fact, we grew further apart. Nathan became more and more entangled with my father, who adored him, and more and more distant from me. When I tried to tell Papa how Nathan and I were growing away from each other, he said impatiently, “It’s time you grew up, Ginny. You’ve had your run. Best to settle down now. Nathan knows what’s best.”

The comment stung; my father’s criticism was so rare I had no defense for it. I tried to do as he counseled—to be a loving wife—but Nathan ignored my overtures. For months at a time, he refused to touch me. I was lonely. I missed the passion between us so dreadfully that I sometimes cried myself to sleep, listening to the clank of the scotch decanter in my husband’s adjoining room. I did not know what to do, and Nathan seemed not to care. By our fourth anniversary, the passion that had been between us was gone.

As I lay in bed alone, night after night, I began to suspect that Nathan had used me. For my money, for my father’s influence. He was ambitious, after all, and without means until he’d met me. How quickly he’d changed once we’d taken vows. And our talks about art and philosophy … had he ever once ventured his own opinion, or only agreed with mine? I had been a fool. I had made a terrible mistake. My salons became my solace. I told myself I must learn to be content with this half life. After all, I had chosen it.

Then … then there came Marat.

Jean-Claude Marat. It was a Thursday in January when he first entered my parlor with Ambrose Rivers. I knew who Marat was only because Ambrose had told me the famous French sculptor would be coming. But for that, I never would have recognized him; he was young to have garnered such a reputation for genius. I’d expected a bearded man in middle age. Vivacious, yes; brilliant, of course, but
tested
. The man who came to the salon that night was not that, and it was not just the fact that he could be no older than my own age of twenty-eight. Though snow fell in great drifts outside my door, his dark blond hair was gold streaked, as if he’d been in the sun, and he was, frankly, beautiful. There wasn’t a woman there who didn’t notice him. His smile took me aback—of all the men I’d met, I’d only been so affected by a personality one other time, when I’d first seen Nathan.

Marat reminded me of everything I’d once had, everything I’d lost. He made me realize what a prisoner I’d become, how unhappy I was. Nathan ignored me—even worse, he was contemptuous of everything I believed in. Marat had that combination of
intellect and poetry and passion that had once been my husband, and he was taken with me. I had missed that kind of admiration. I began to feel alive again. He made me see that there were other men, men who accepted me as I was, who
wanted
me as I was.

Jean-Claude Marat was in truth everything that Nathan had pretended to be. When my father asked me whom he should commission to sculpt a bust of himself for the newly built Harriet Stratford Wing of Mercy Hospital—my father’s endowment in my late mother’s name—I didn’t hesitate to give him Claude’s name.

I went to every sitting. I sat quietly and watched as Claude sketched and chatted amiably with Papa. Soon I was bending over his shoulder as he sculpted Papa’s head in clay, his fingers working so quickly I could barely grasp the movements, forming a nose where before there had been only a lump; a bold, quick thumb drag, and suddenly there was an eyebrow. When the sittings were done, Papa would have luncheon served, and often he would be too busy to stay, and so Claude and I lingered over duck or lobster salad and wine and talked.

I was starved for the passion Nathan had kindled and withheld. When Claude said to me one day, half drunk, at my salon, “I would like to sculpt you, my sweet Ginny,” I saw the opportunity I hadn’t realized I’d been waiting for.

A scandal. The one thing Nathan would never tolerate.

I knew it would work. I wanted to end my marriage. Divorce was not a choice; it was nearly impossible to attain, and Nathan would surely fight it. My father would be devastated, my grandmother horrified. Most important, I had no cause to offer any judge. Unhappiness was not an acceptable reason. Women in many marriages were unhappy; should the world set them all free?

Marriage had taken from me what control I had over my own life. My only choice now was to try to control Nathan, and Marat presented me with the one thing I knew my husband could never ignore. To pose for a statue meant for a very public display—the exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago—would be so scandalous Nathan would never forgive it. He would leave me. I would be free. My father would understand in time, as would the rest of society. I had done worse things, after all, and been forgiven.
Someday I would tell my father the truth. He might even admire my cunning, particularly when I told him how cruel Nathan could be.

So I agreed to pose. I met Claude each afternoon in his rooms, sitting for hours while he sketched me. It was to be Andromeda on the rocks awaiting the sea serpent, just at the moment when she saw Perseus for the first time, and I knew it would be brilliant. I must pose from life for it, of course, but Claude and I were friends and nothing more, though I did not miss the way his eyes burned when he looked at me. I even encouraged it, stretching and preening upon the fur rug he’d spread on the floor for me to lie upon. I liked the attention; it felt forever since I’d had it. He called me
ma muse américaine
, and I liked that name. I liked it very much.

The room was scented with absinthe and the metallic earthy tang of clay and the perfume of our bodies in sun and close quarters. He moved from sketching to clay, his fingers covered in slurry, white where it dried at his knuckles, smeared upon his cheek. Clay gave way to marble. I began to take form beneath his hands, a reverse Galatea, Pygmalion turning me from flesh into stone. I began to feel a growing excitement. Soon. Soon it would be displayed, and I would be free.

I knew there was gossip, of course, but I ignored it. Claude and I must spend a great deal of time together, and people noticed. It was part of my plan. I waited for Nathan to notice too, to say something. He did not. And I was so absorbed by my own intentions that I was blind to all else.

I was naive, and so I misjudged everything.

The sculpture
Andromeda Chained to the Rocks
was taken to the Art Institute of Chicago. The opening night, Nathan and I arrived fashionably late, and I was nervous with excitement and anticipation.

The electric lights blared, from somewhere came the sound of a small orchestra, talk, laughter. The first of my set that I came upon was Mrs. Steven Bentham—I smiled at her, and her expression froze; she turned away from me so violently I was startled. I looked at Nathan, whose own expression had gone grim. “Shall we see what you’ve done this time?”

I had never been cut like this before. Not one after another, cut after cut. My closest friend, Anna Lowe, widened her eyes in horror when she saw me and moved swiftly away. I had not expected this, and I faltered, uncertain. Nathan put his hand over mine, his fingers squeezing cruelly tight as he led me steadily into the main gallery. There was a crowd gathered at the center, a scandalized silence around one sculpture. They looked up as we approached. I felt their disapproval and anger as I took in Claude’s masterpiece. Scaled to life, every sinew and muscle delineated, every curve and curl, in the expression desire and longing. I had not expected it to look so much like me, and yet it was me made divine, manacles about the wrists, staked out in chains, the arch of a back, breasts thrust, hair curling about a nipple, a raised knee, the splash of waves upon the rocks. It was a beautiful thing—but no one could see how beautiful it was.