Conversation with Mary Cassatt

CONVERSATION WITH MARY CASSAIT / Molly Bendali Where have you been? Here, touching up the shawl pinpoints of light through a straw hat frying oysters a bit of housekeeping. I'll see you again at Bachvillers under a better sky. The face has no animation but that I believe he does on purpose, he does not talk to his sitters. What do you say to your sitters? Perhaps a few jokes about the English—they are such screws—I don't know how they manage it. Mother is well as yet, she talks of going south but I don't know if she wUl get off or not. The doctors don't wish her to go to Nice or anywhere on the seashore on account of her heart. . And all that's behind them and the boat is blue lake water. I could almost leave it as if that were all there were lemon wedge sugar bowl the apple green Where is your father? I think he, for an instant, recognized Jeannie and the baby— slight convulsions at the end. I know this one, he rides on the back of Isabella, her tail a swirling wave of chestnut. We've had such a dry summer here. 54 · The Missouri Review What do the children say? The children are not awfully disgusted. It's just ennui like when the heat is unbearable. Of course I tell them, don't pout too much. The little girl in the blue armchair was refused and M. Degas even helped. So you think my model unworthy of her clothes? She in her moiré and moonlight jet, her untidy nails, her copper hair. I must take some of your nuts to Renoir who suffers at times greatly, senile gangrene in the foot. What do you want? I cannot understand a personal god. Almost all my pictures with children have the mother holding them, would you could hear them talk, their philosophy would astonish you. Bit by bit this woman surrenders where the next color begins her pinkish orange robe, the child's buttocks in the crook of her arm, one hand holding the other wrist. Where are you going? Couldn't we (my brother and our friends) breathe better in the field shattered with poppies, a few cornflowers . . .? Molly Bendali THE MISSOURI REVIEW · 55 ...