Chapter Five
“Heavens above, Florence, I don’t know how you talked me into this. She’s likely some swindler who’ll take the shirts off our backs. Lord knows we don’t have anything else to give her.”
“Mrs. Dawson is a lady, Mamma. Fine enough to shop in Mr. Wanamaker’s store, ain’t she? And most respectable-looking.” Plain, in fact, with nothing of the swindler to her appearance.
“Or she was there to prey on those less fortunate,” Mamma retorts, her tone as sour as her mood.
It’s Sunday, our one day off from the store, ordinarily reserved for the washing, the mending, the cooking of whatever we’ve managed to put aside.
And Mamma’s day for hours of uninterrupted sketching and sewing.
But today, instead, I’ve convinced my mother to come with me in search of this artist, Mrs. Dawson, leaving Kit and Titania at home.
I told her what the lady said, a whole dollar just for sitting, but Mamma remains dubious.
We pause our steps before a modest brick building, four stories tall with black shutters.
I reach into my coat pocket to retrieve the calling card, but before I’ve had a chance to verify the address, the door creaks open.
Mrs. Dawson appears in the doorway with a smile, draped in a straw-colored apron and with that same untidy, upswept hair.
She wipes her hands down the front of her apron and extends her grip to greet Mamma.
“You must be Mrs. Talbot. I recognize you from the shop. I’m so happy you’ve come. Both of you, please come in.”
We follow Mrs. Dawson into the quiet front hall of what looks to be apartment housing and up a set of stairs.
At the second story landing, she leads us toward a door.
She opens it without a key, and we follow her, stepping into a space that instantly strikes me as remarkable for two reasons.
The first is that it is very long, much more spacious than Mamma’s and my small room.
The second is that it is so very bright.
Floor-to-ceiling windows run the length of one entire wall, allowing sunshine to stream into a large, rectangular space.
It’s not tidy, but neither is it messy. The room, rather, appears full, a purposeful space where each well-loved item has its use.
In the front of the studio is a kitchen, with a deep soapstone sink and a wooden butcher block stacked with cups, plates, a bowl full of sand-colored eggs, a woven basket heaped with apples, and a few small posies of twine-wrapped herbs.
The border of this kitchen area is a wooden table with six chairs, and just beyond that appears another space, crowded and colorful.
This must be where Mrs. Dawson does her art, for I see several easels and a tall wooden workbench covered in piles of paper, canisters stuffed with pencils and brushes of varying sizes, empty jugs and crockery bowls, sponges, and tubes of every shade.
A haphazard scattering of canvases—some blank, some exploding with color—fills the space.
Three stools are tucked back against the wall, and hooks overhead hold up a row of smocks dappled with varying degrees of stains.
Beyond that, behind a silk screen, I see the very end of a brass bed. Does Mrs. Dawson sleep in here, as well? She must. The space looks very lived in, after all.
“How very…bohemian,” Mamma mutters, looking around the studio with a dour pinch to her features. I take in a breath, noting the smell of coffee and toasted bread and something else, something sharp, tangy.
“It’s the turpentine,” Mrs. Dawson says, offering half a smile.
“Begging pardon?” I ask.
“What you are smelling, it’s turpentine. It comes from a tree and helps to bind the oil in the paint. It always strikes people their first time here. ’Course, I can barely smell it. I could open a window if it’s too much?”
“Oh, no, I’m fine,” I say.
Mrs. Dawson appears a bit formal today, much more reserved than when she sought me out behind Wanamaker’s.
She’s dressed similarly to the other day, though, in a drab beige blouse and long skirt to match, her stained apron on top.
I’m also wearing the same outfit I wore at Wanamaker’s, my most proper attire: starched shirtwaist, full skirt, dark blue wool coat.
Mrs. Dawson offers to take my coat and Mamma’s, walking farther into the apartment and tossing them both onto the foot of the bed.
Then, turning back to us, she says: “I hope you found your way here all right?”
“Oh, it was fine,” Mamma says, her eyes still roving around the room. “Though of course we had to come on foot all the way, as a hansom would have been beyond our means.”
“I appreciate you coming,” Mrs. Dawson says. “And I’m happy to give you the fare for your return home.”
“Much obliged,” Mamma answers.
“Well, since time is precious.” Mrs. Dawson claps her hands together and turns to me. “Evelyn, you said you hadn’t done anything like this before, isn’t that so? Sitting for a portrait?”
“I haven’t.”
“I could show you some of my other work, but I have half a mind, instead, to jump right in. Something about your eyes…your expressions. I’ve got this feeling you’re going to be a natural, and I’d like to go with that, if that’s all right with you?”
I offer a small nod; it’s all the same to me. As long as we leave here today with the dollar she promised.
“I was thinking we could begin with you sitting on this stool, right here beside the window.”
I look at the offered stool. “What…what am I to do?”
Mrs. Dawson narrows her eyes, considers her words for a moment, and then says, “You are to be as natural as you can be. I was thinking pencil sketches today, just to keep it simple. And we will have you stay precisely as you are, that blouse is fine. I’ll work with your face.
It was your expressiveness that caught me.
The most important thing is that I want you to be comfortable. ”
“And me?” Mamma interjects.
“Mrs. Talbot, I’d also like you to be entirely comfortable. Can I offer you coffee?”
“I already had my cup.”
“Then please, be at ease. Wherever you’ll be happiest. This chair? At the table? I’m sorry it’s not fancy. But I’m sure it makes this whole thing…well, less unnatural for Evelyn to have you here with her.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Mamma mutters as she settles down at the wooden table and pulls a skein of maroon yarn from her sack.
Mrs. Dawson turns her gaze back to me. “Evelyn, you’ve never done any work with an artist?”
Mamma answers before I can: “Of course she has not! What do you take me for?”
“I only ask because…well, the command she has. But I suppose sometimes it can’t be taught.
” Mrs. Dawson ignores the sharpness of Mamma’s tone and keeps her gaze steady on me.
“So then the first thing we need is for you to find your light.” Mrs. Dawson leans over her kitchen counter and picks up a red apple.
Then she turns back to me and curves her other hand over the piece of fruit, with just an inch between its red skin and her palm. “See this?”
“The apple?” I ask.
“Yes, but covered in shadow. A simple shape, barely any discernible colors. Not much to look at.” Then she walks toward the window and holds out the apple before it, lifting her hand away, her eyes narrowing as she focuses on the small round piece of fruit.
“Ah. Now I see a whole range of colors. Red, yes. But also yellow, gold, pink, a touch of green. I see here a small divot, a bruise. And the hint of the darkness under the skin right there. It makes my mind think, even without having to touch it, that the fruit is probably soft under that spot, a totally different texture. I imagine how it would feel to touch it. And there must be an entirely different taste, too, beneath that bruise.” Mrs. Dawson is silent a moment, pensive, and then she lowers the fruit, looking back to me.
“It’s amazing what the presence or the absence of light will do for a thing.
Visually, but even more than that. Looking at something in the right light allows us to see things, experience things, imagine things—all in a way we never previously thought possible.
” She’s speaking now as if ruminating on something holy, sacred—not just any old apple.
“Each face has its own unique set of shapes and contours, tones and textures, and the light will fall on it in any number of ways, depending on position and angle. And when something—or in this case, someone—is in the right light, why, she can look as if she’s lit from within. ”
Mrs. Dawson takes two steps toward me, touches my chin with the rough tip of her finger, and gives it the gentlest nudge, so that my face angles toward the window.
“Ah, see. Your cheek is a valley catching the sunrise, just beneath the beautiful mountaintop of your nose.” She smiles at me with an earnest, searching look.
“My girl, you glow like a pearl. Stay like that.” With that, she hurries off, taking up her post behind the nearest easel, grabbing a pencil from the jar.
I turn to watch her, and she tuts. “Please don’t move, Evelyn.
Keep just like we had you, staring toward the window. ”
I do as she says, rearranging myself. “Breathe,” she says, so I do.
“Can you soften your shoulders?” Again, I oblige.
And then she falls quiet, and so do I, perched beside that sunny window.
Mamma sits nearby, and my guess is that she’s looked up from her yarn, but I don’t hear anything from her, other than the rhythmic click-clack of her knitting needles.
Soon the scratch of Mrs. Dawson’s pencil on the paper makes it a wordless duet.