Bridal Chair (28 page)

“I understand,” she said. “You are waiting until there is no possibility for termination. How brave you are, braver than I was.”

She remembered her mother’s barely audible question.
“How many monthlies have you missed, Idotchka?”
She had been too naive then to understand the implications of the question.

“You won’t tell Marc, will you?” Virginia asked.

“Of course not. You yourself must tell him. As for me, I have another difficult matter to discuss with him today.”

“Thank you,” Virginia said.

Ida watched as she left the room, noting that she walked balanced lightly on her heels, her arms crossed over her abdomen. She had already assumed the rocking gait and the instinctive protective gesture of a pregnant woman.

She thrust the pile of unanswered letters aside and reached for the ledger, opening it to the last entries of debits and credits, and pondered the figures. She added up one column then another, finally taking up a clean sheet of paper onto which she copied the figures. They did not surprise her. She wondered if they would surprise her father.

As she cleared her desk, she wondered idly how her relationship with Virginia’s child might be defined. Would the unborn child be her half sibling or her stepsibling? Neither, of course, she realized. Her father and Virginia were not married, and they could not marry until Virginia and John McNeil divorced. Even then, there would be no marriage unless Virginia converted to Judaism. Marc Chagall might sleep with a gentile woman, he might impregnate her, but he would never marry her. And would Virginia agree to convert? The unanswered questions dizzied her. She turned again to the ledgers on her desk.

She left the apartment that day without seeing either Virginia or her father.

“
Au
revoir
, Papa.
Au
revoir
, Virginia,” she called from the doorway.

“Good night, Ida.” Virginia’s voice was muffled. Marc was silent.

Over the next several days, she studied the figures she had copied from the ledger sheet. She did not doubt their accuracy, but she doubted her ability to confront her father with them.

“But I must,” she told herself sternly.

“You must not be afraid,” Michel, always and forever her confidante, told her gently when she told him what she planned to do. “You are doing what is right.”

He offered to go with her, but she shook her head. “No,” she said. “This is something I must do alone.”

She took a cab and arrived at the Riverside Drive apartment just as twilight dimmed the light in the studio. Her father did not work in such half darkness. She knew that he would have turned his easel to the wall and rinsed his brushes in turpentine, as fastidious in his studio as he was careless in his home.

Marc sat in the dining room, sipping vodka and turning the pages of a Yiddish newspaper. The scent of frying garlic and onions drifted in from the kitchen where Virginia was preparing dinner, valiantly striving to replicate the taste of Bella’s pirogen.

“Quite the domestic scene,
Papochka
,” Ida said. “I’ve brought you some pot cheese and sour cream from the dairy on Ludlow Street.”

“You can give it to Virginitchka,” he said, pointing to the kitchen.

“Virginitchka indeed. So now she is your Russian sweetheart. When will she become your Jewish wife?” Ida teased.

“It has not been discussed,” he replied angrily and she knew that Virginia had not yet told him of her pregnancy.

“But there is something you and I must discuss,” she said and sat down opposite him. “As you know, Michel and I have parted and he will be returning to France. I can no longer count on him for support.”

“As though he ever offered you support. He was always weak, weak as a youth, weak as a man,” he said dismissively. “What does he earn? Can his income even compare to mine? You lose nothing with the end of this marriage.”

He had always considered Michel a mere appendage to their lives, a husband when propriety demanded that Ida have a husband and then a transient figure easily ignored, easily forgotten.

“And yet it is a marriage that you insisted on,” she retorted. “And as it turned out, he is not weak at all. Because of him, because of his parents, I escaped from France. Because of him, your paintings, your precious paintings, were rescued. And it is not true that he did not support me. When he began working, he always gave me an allowance. He will, of course, no longer do so. When we are divorced, he will be under no financial obligation to me. But I will need money to live on, money with which to plan my own future.”

“You have your commissions. And if you need more money, just ask me for it,” Marc said.

Her color rose. Her eyes were dangerously bright. “Commissions do not guarantee a steady income. I need security, a nest egg, money that I can invest. I am a grown woman, not a child. I don’t want to run to my papa because I need a new dress, new shoes, carfare. I want my independence, money that is rightfully mine. I want my share of my mother’s estate,” she replied. “The paintings that rightfully belong to me.”

He stared at her as though she spoke in a language that was foreign to him. His cheeks were mottled with anger, his blue eyes slivers of ice.

“How dare you? What right do you have to my paintings, my money? What inheritance are you talking about? The only painting that belongs to you is
The
Bridal
Chair
and I wish to God I had never painted it.” His voice grew louder and louder as his anger gathered momentum and exploded in a new paroxysm of fury. “Every kopek that has ever been earned for the support of this family was earned by me, by my work, my art. The chutzpah of you to make such a demand.”

“My mother would have wanted me to have a portion of that which would have been hers. And I too have earned money. I too have brought kopeks into the household. Kopeks and francs, sterling and dollars. Have I not acted as your representative? Have I not arranged for sales and contracts?” she countered, her anger matching his own. “Who managed to get your paintings out of Europe? Who arranged for sales, exhibitions?”

She pulled the ledger sheet out of her purse and placed it between them. Dates, names, figures. A record of every transaction she had handled. He swept his arm across the table, knocking over the containers of food she had brought. He seized the lined paper with its neat authoritative columns, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it across the room. The white cheese and the thick sour cream puddled on the table, formed hillocks on the polished wood floor.

“You see what you have made me do?” he shouted and rose, lifting his chair and brandishing it threateningly over her head.

Virginia ran into the room. Appalled, she wrested the chair from him. “Marc, Ida, what is happening here? What are you saying? Ida, what is happening? Marc, you must calm yourself,” she pleaded.

Virginia trembled. Explosions of rage were alien to her. Her parents had not argued. They had simply withdrawn from each other into a cold English silence. Her husband had sublimated his rage and disappointment into depression. They were different, this Jewish father and daughter, Marc and Ida, who shouted out their deepest feelings, who wept and shook their fists at each other. She gripped the chair that he had raised so threateningly, the weapon of his rage and disappointment, and stared at Ida’s clenched fist raised high as though to defend herself or perhaps to strike him in turn. Their fierce and dramatic declamations in Russian, that passionate incomprehensible language, bewildered her. She slammed the chair down, at a remove from Marc.

They looked at her, shamed by the fear they saw in her eyes, shamed because she turned away from them and went into the kitchen to gather rags with which she slowly and methodically mopped up the white curds of cheese, the tear-shaped drops of sour cream, the snow-colored detritus of their fearful exchange. Exhausted, Marc sat down and Ida turned to go.

“It is not right that we spoke in this way,” he said to her, shifting to Yiddish.

“No. It is not right. But I will have my money,
Papochka
. I will have what I have earned,” she replied, also in Yiddish.

The tenderness of that language of the heart did not diminish her determination.

And yet she turned, knelt beside him, and kissed him on both cheeks. He in turn curled tendrils of her bright hair about his paint-encrusted fingers.

“
Meine
tochter
, my daughter,” he murmured.

“
Mein
vater
, my father,” she replied.

Their anger would not, could not, deplete their love.

Virginia stared at them, as confused by their swift reconciliation as she had been by their violent acrimony. She would never understand them, the man she loved and his passionate, unpredictable daughter.

The first snow fell in November. A light windswept scattering of delicate flakes danced against the huge windows of the studio. Marc stared out at them, recalling the snows of his Vitebsk childhood that had turned the small village into a shimmering wonderland. Virginia sidled up to him and held out his striped jacket. She helped him pull his arms through the sleeves and adjusted the collar as though he were a small boy.

“It is cold in here. I don’t want you to get sick,” she said softly.

“You are a good mother to me, Virginitchka,” he said.

“As I will be a good mother to our child,” she replied.

Her words, so quietly uttered, fell like a stone upon his heart.

“What child? What are you saying?”

He stepped away from her, his eyes ablaze with anger, his body rigid. He put his hands to his ears as though to block out her words.

“I am pregnant, Marc.” Her cheeks burned, her hands trembled, but her voice was calm. “We are going to have a child.”

“Are you mad?”

He spat out the question and she cringed, her face pale, her eyes wide with fear. He stared at her and saw the new gentle rise of her abdomen, watched as she placed her hands protectively across it, the maternal gesture instinctive and undeniable. He bit his lips.

“You can’t be certain.”

“I am certain. I’ve seen a doctor. There have been tests.”

“Think carefully. We are not married. I am not a young man. The situation is impossible. You are not a child. There is an alternative. You know what must be done.”

His mind raced back to that long-ago morning in Paris, when Ida, young, naive Ida, dressed in virginal white, had revealed her own pregnancy. There had been a solution then. There was the same solution now.
Avortement.
Abortion. Of course America was not France, but with enough money, there was always a way to arrange things.

She turned away.

“It is too late for an alternative, too late for an abortion. And I would never consider terminating this pregnancy, even if it were not too late. This is our child, conceived in love. And I will have our baby. I will not change my mind.” Her voice was soft but firm, her gaze unflinching.

He had not thought her capable of such determination, such stubborn resolve. He struggled against his own anger. When he spoke, it was with a cold calm.

“It is not too late. There are ways. I can contact doctors, surgeons.”

“I don’t care about your doctors, your surgeons. I know what I must do. It is my decision.”

Once again, her hands moved across her abdomen; the soothing gesture ignited his fury.

“Very well then. If you will not listen to reason, I will not be responsible,” he shouted. “You will bear this child alone and raise it alone. It will not be our child. I will not support it. It will be your child, yours alone.”

He went to the window, his hands balled into fists, and waited, willing her to acquiescence, but she remained silent, although he heard the quiet sound of her weeping. He did not turn. He did not want to see her tears.

Virginia walked across the room. He saw her shadow, saw her bend to pick up his handkerchief that had fallen to the floor. She placed it on his worktable beside the carafe of water she carried in each morning because she knew that he grew thirsty as he worked. She was caring and obedient, his Virginia; surely she would care enough to obey him now. Still at the window, he waited for her submission, his attention riveted to a sudden swirl of whiteness as a wild wind tossed the falling flakes. He did not turn even as he heard her leave the studio and close the door quietly behind her. It occurred to him that Ida would have slammed it shut, that Bella would have stormed out. But passionate rage was alien to gentle, well-bred Virginia. He took a sip of water. His eyes burned; he plucked his handkerchief from the table and saw that she had folded it carefully into a neat square.

Unable to work, still hypnotized by the storm that threatened to become a blizzard, he remained at the window and saw her leave the building. She walked down Riverside Drive, erect as always, a faded shawl draped over her shoulders because her tweed winter coat was worn thin and she had not allowed him to buy her a new one. She carried her pathetic cardboard valise, tied with the same rope that had held it closed when she had carried it into his apartment.

Where
is
she
going?
he wondered forlornly. How cruel she was. Didn’t she care that she was leaving him alone on this lonely wintry day?

He turned to his easel, his brush held high, but he could not paint. He sank down on his worn sofa, touched the Calder mobile, and allowed the swaying metal pieces to rock him to sleep.

He awakened when he heard the front door open some hours later.

Ah, she is back
, he thought with satisfaction. She had understood his objections; she had come to her senses and returned just as he had known she would.

“Virginitchka, my foolish girl,” he called.

He would forgive her; he would appease her. He would buy her a new winter coat, perhaps even a new valise.

He hurried to the vestibule, but it was Ida, cocooned in a white fur jacket, who stood there, clutching a brown bag of groceries, her face wind-ruddied, snowflakes clinging in crystal buds to her flame-colored hair.

“It’s me, Papa, not Virginia. She has gone away. She came to see me. She was worried that you would not have enough food. She asked me to make sure you were all right,” Ida said, shedding her coat.

“Gone away? Where has she gone?” he asked despairingly. “She has no money. She has nothing.”

“I gave her some money. She wanted to go to the mountains, to the country. She said she needed quiet, time to think, to plan.” Ida went into the kitchen, carrying the bag of food.

Marc followed her. “Did she tell you that she was pregnant?” he asked.

“I knew,” Ida replied. She removed the vegetables from the bag and formed them into a bright pyramid, emerald green cabbage, scarlet peppers, golden onions. He slashed his hand across her careful arrangement, thrusting the vegetables to the floor.

“What kind of an ungrateful daughter are you? How could you have betrayed your own father?” he shouted. “You should have made her understand. You should have told her how foolish she is being. How can she have this child? What will people think when they learn that I conceived a child with a gentile woman, even before the year of mourning for Bella was over? Everyone will know that I have broken Jewish law.”

Ida picked up the vegetables and calmly rearranged them as she answered him.

“When did you begin to worry about observing Jewish law,
Papochka
? No one expects it of you. Do you go to the synagogue? Do you observe the Sabbath? Does a religious Jew paint crucifixions? Your friends all know that Virginia McNeil is living with you, sleeping with you. When they learn of her pregnancy, they will know that Marc Chagall is human, and that a child, his child, will be born to his gentile lover,” Ida replied. “And be assured, Virginia will have this child, with or without your support. She is not a frightened eighteen-year-old. She is not your daughter. You have no dominion over her. She is a strong woman. She defied her parents and married her husband. She defied her husband and had Jean. She defied him yet again and came to live with you. She will defy you, and her child will be born. She will manage. As she has managed until now. She may be poor, she may be fragile, but she is a survivor. She will survive and so will the baby that she carries. Your child,
Papochka
, Marc Chagall’s child, blood of his blood, bone of his bone.”

Marc put his hands to his ears and stamped out of the kitchen into the shelter of his studio. He was dizzied by Ida’s reaction, by the truth of her words, furious that she had known of Virginia’s pregnancy. Her defense of Virginia was a betrayal. Was this her revenge because he had insisted, all those years ago, that her own pregnancy had to end? He had been right then, as he was right now. He and Bella had rescued her from shame, had restored her to respectability. She was still young, divorced, but not saddled with a child. She was free to forge a new life. How ungrateful she was, this daughter on whom he had lavished such love and largesse. She had wrested what she called her share of his money from him; she conspired with Virginia against him. Was this the daughter he had raised with such love, such tenderness?

He willed her to leave, but he trembled at the thought that he would be alone in the vast apartment as the storm shrouded the city in whiteness. He pitied himself, a man no longer young, snowbound and abandoned by the two strong young women upon whom he depended and loved. They had formed an alliance against him. Grief and anger throttled him as he stood again at the window. The snow had ceased, but the panes were frozen. He waited for Ida to leave, listening for the sound of the door closing behind her, but instead the scent of sautéed garlic and onion drifted into the studio. Ida was cooking.

“I don’t want your food,” he called petulantly, although because the door was closed, he knew that she could not hear him.

She knocked, told him that dinner was ready, sat opposite him at the kitchen table, and ladled out the ratatouille she had prepared following Bella’s recipe, a food he had always loved. She sliced a pumpernickel loaf and handed him the heel of the bread. He and Bella had laughingly called it “the kiss,” because it began the loaf and ended the loaf. He did not smile as he took it from Ida, nor did he thank her.

“Pierre Matisse wants to organize a retrospective,” she said calmly as he began to eat. “The Museum of Modern Art is eager to be the venue, and then Pierre hopes to transfer the entire exhibition to the Art Institute of Chicago.”

She switched roles expertly, morphing from his passionate daughter into his calculating representative. She had said all that she would say about Virginia. There was business to discuss and she was newly confident, having so recently triumphed over him in the matter of her mother’s estate.

“I suppose you will be collecting commissions on sales from such a retrospective,” he replied drily. He too was skilled at switching emotional gears.

“As is my right. You will recall that I rescued many of those paintings or they might have been looted by the Nazis. I think I have earned such commissions.”

“We will speak of this another time,” he countered. “Now I am concerned only about Virginia. She is alone on this cold night.”

Ida did not reply. She understood that what concerned him was the chill of his own loneliness, the silence that he would confront the next morning and perhaps on all the mornings to come. She poured him a cup of tea, cleared the table, and shrugged into her coat.

“Virginia will be fine,” she assured him. “You will hear from her, I am sure.”

“Perhaps I will talk to her about converting to Judaism,” he said hesitantly.

She laughed.

“Why? Can you see Virginia McNeil in shul? Can you see her waiting her turn in the kosher butcher shop? Can you see her at Uncle Isaac’s seder table?”

He shook his head wearily.

“I cannot marry a gentile woman,” he said. “If we are to marry, she must become a Jew.”

“And she cannot marry you at all. Have you forgotten that she has a husband?”

“But I want her back,” he murmured. “I need her.”

“And she needs you. Now more than ever. Haven’t you already lived together and conceived a child without marriage? Nothing has changed. Wait. She will return.”

She held the sugar bowl out to him and he took a cube, placed it on his tongue, and sipped from his glass of tea. The warmth and sweetness comforted him as she had known it would. She smiled wryly at the thought that at this moment, she was both mother and nurse to her father.

“You are right,” he agreed. “She will be back.”

* * *

Virginia did come back. Two weeks later, she entered the apartment. Her hair hung lankly about her shoulders, the bangs that fringed her forehead were uneven, her face was pale, and, because she had lost weight, the protuberance of her pregnancy beneath a loose gray shift was obvious. She stood hesitantly in the doorway, but Marc sprang up from his chair and took her cold hands into his own and rubbed them gently.

“You are back,” he said. “My Virginia. I knew you would not desert me.”

“Of course I would not desert you.” She echoed his words. “And I cannot desert our child. I am full of love for your son. I am blessed to be his mother.”

She had rehearsed the speech, framed it and reframed it during the long, rainy days she had spent in a shabby boardinghouse in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, but now the words sounded childish, stilted to her own ears.

He smiled and patted her head, an affectionate acquiescent father. He could afford such gentleness because he knew that he held all the power; the ultimate decision would be his.

“You already know that this unborn child is a boy?” he teased. “Foolish child, foolish girl.”

“To me, he is my son. I am certain that I carry a boy. I even know his name. I will call him David.”

“David,” he repeated, and his face crumbled.

David was the name of his beloved younger brother who had died in the Crimea. Marc remembered his mother telling him that when a Jew dies and remains without a namesake, his soul cannot rest. He had dismissed the idea as superstition born of shtetl ignorance, and yet there were nights when his sleep was haunted by memories of his brother. In that nocturnal restlessness, he heard again his mother’s whispered words.
A
premonition
perhaps
, he thought as he looked at Virginia, so certain that her child would be a son, so committed to calling him David. He smiled. How could he deny his brother the possibility of serenity in the hereafter?

“David.” He repeated the name aloud and placed his hand on the swell of Virginia’s abdomen. He thought of a painting he had completed years earlier in which an infant lay curled within the exposed womb of a reclining woman. It occurred to him that he had, presciently, painted his own future.