Chapter Nine #2
I shake my head, forcing myself not to recall the small traveling circus that used to come through Tarentum.
The fun that Daddy and I had watching the clowns as they juggled and danced.
“You must go sometime,” Mr. Church says cheerily, and I think I’ve succeeded in masking my melancholy.
“Misters Barnum and Bailey know how to put on quite a show.”
I nod, crossing my arms across my midsection but not yet daring to speak. Nor do I confess to Mr. Church how I used to laugh when Daddy would joke that we’d run away with the circus troupe together.
“But before you visit the circus,” Mr. Church says, looking intently at me, “I’d like you to return here, next Wednesday, and I’ll paint you with this tiger of the deceased variety. Does that sound suitable?”
“Yes, all right.”
“Good,” he says with a wink. “Only, don’t tell Titania. She might not look too kindly on me for owning a pelt of one of her brethren.”
I can’t quite imagine what that sitting will involve. But I trust Mr. Church, and there’s nothing that he would ask of me that I wouldn’t do.
—
The following Wednesday, I report back to Mr. Church’s studio, where he directs me to let my hair fall loose and he hands me a lightweight gown of diaphanous cream satin, into which I slip behind the dressing screen.
As I emerge, with the soft material falling like mist over my neck and shoulders, Mr. Church directs me to settle onto the tiger pelt, which he’s once more unfurled across his floor.
He takes a bit of time arranging my dark hair around my face, and then he nestles a wreath of water lilies like a crown into my dark curls.
“Can you give me just the hint of a smile?” he asks, leaning over me. “Think of…Oh, how about you think of your mother telling you that you may run away with a rogue band of circus performers?”
The words slice through me, innocent as they are intended to be, and the smile I’ve been offering wobbles.
It was Daddy who offered to run away with me and the circus.
I’m sure my eyes betray the searing pain I now feel.
I’m half expecting Mr. Church to chide me for losing my smiling expression.
But, to my shock, he exclaims: “That!” He is staring down at me with a look of wonder. “Exquisite, Evelyn! Keep that!”
My mind is spinning, but I do as I’m told. I keep the thin smile on my face even as my eyes hold fast to the pain that just burned me from the inside. Mr. Church sprints back to his easel and gets straight to work.
And when Mr. Church’s sketch of my face—wreathed in loose hair and water lilies, set off against the backdrop of a tiger pelt—runs in the Ladies’ Home Journal, the editors dub me “the most haunting and rarest of young beauties yet seen in the metropolis, with the face of an angel and the eyes of a sphinx.”
—
After this, now that I’ve worked with artists as eminent as James Carroll Beckwith and Frederick S.
Church, the Sunday American newspaper runs a two-page spread on me, calling me “the captivating new creature of Manhattan’s next century.
” In a rare departure from her usually disinterested behavior, Mamma purchases a copy, and we open it together on the evening it comes out.
My face flushes with heat as I take it all in: my images and illustrations are packed across the spread, images of Beckwith’s work, Church’s work, Violet’s, Leah’s.
One would think I’ve been at it for a decade, rather than a year and a half.
The paper gives me nicknames and labels that make my head feel dizzy, dubbing me “the pristine and precious young Peach of Pittsburgh” and “the haunting young maiden of High Art.”
There are other words, too. The newspaper has printed an interview to accompany the images. I stare at it in surprise—and then confusion. These aren’t my words. I glance up at Mamma. They are hers. “You gave an interview on my behalf?” I ask. “When?”
She closes the paper, suddenly flustered. “While you were working, Florence. Someone had to speak up. I wasn’t going to let them harass you!”
My mind swirls. “Well…can I read it?”
“Oh, if you like.” Mamma stands, as if she’s lost all interest in the article. “But don’t let it spoil your head. Remember, you’re not even fifteen yet, even if the world thinks you’re a woman.”
I reopen the paper, my eyes sweeping the article, my mind racing to keep apace.
“She’s our very own Venus, with a mouth as perfect as Cupid’s rosy bow.
” I feel my heartbeat hasten, and I read on.
“Raphael himself would have queued up for a chance to worship this creature, with her wildly abundant tresses and soft skin as luminous as a pearl.”
Mamma, at the bottom, reacts to their statements: “ ‘She’s always been a beauty,’ the proud Mrs. Talbot admits, beaming with heartfelt maternal adoration.
But Mother Talbot is as doting as she is protective of her rare and precious pearl, whose eyes are dark and liquid, two pools into which one might happily jump, forgetting any desire to ever turn away.
When asked of her daughter’s allure, Mrs. Talbot assures us that it’s young Evelyn’s virtue with which she is more preoccupied.
‘I’ll never allow her to pose in the altogether,’ Mrs. Talbot vows, with a prim shake of her head.
And with that, perhaps not a few hopes have been dashed across America. ”
“Mamma?” I look up at her, my mouth falling open as the words slide out. “Are you speaking here with this reporter…about my nude figure?”
“They kept asking!” Mamma raises her hands. “They kept making it seem like they were asking for the art. If you’d ever be allowed to model like a Greek or Roman goddess.”
I sag back in my chair and close the newspaper, pushing it away.
“I knew what they were doing!” Mamma goes on. “The answer was no, of course. I’d never allow it.”
Which is why what happens next comes as such a shock.