Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 2

In the morning, dressed in a blue jacket and a plaid skirt, Fanny tried a red scarf around her throat. Wrong, she thought, peering at the mirror. With her olive skin and wavy black hair, the effect was too much the contadina, not enough the artist. She tied on a sober white cravat,  retrieved the silver medallion  from her other skirt,  then  ferreted around in  her trunk,  collecting  the  things  she’d  brought  to  present  to  the  school:  the  letter  of recommendation from Virgil Williams, her friend and teacher at the San Francisco School of Design; the charcoal sketch of the Venus de Milo that had earned her the ?rst-place prize; and a collection of Belle’s best drawings.

“You will need to exchange this downstairs.” Fanny gave some bills to Kate Miller, who was dressed and getting the children organized. “Take them to have baths ?rst, then to a bakery for breakfast. After that, you should go over to the cathedral and walk them all through it.” She handed crayons to Hervey and two drawing pencils to Sam. “Make a nice picture of the church for Mama,” she said.

Out on the slippery cobblestones, Fanny took in the morning foreignness of Antwerp. She let go a relieved sigh when she spotted a wagon ?lled with shiny brass milk cans being drawn by a large harnessed dog. Two army grenadiers wearing high black bear-fur hats passed in  front of her, followed by women  in  winged white headdresses bound for the ?ower market with baskets of roses balaced on their round hips. A few doors down from the hotel, old women lit candles in front of a shrine to the Virgin. The damp air at the Place Verte was heady with the mingled odors of ?owers, horse manure, and bacon wafting from  the  hotel’s  restaurant.  Except  for  the  dogs,  all  of  it—the  ?ower  market,  the preposterous headgear, the religious statues on street corners—surprised her, for she hadn’t read much about Belgium before she’d set off.

Fanny had chosen to come to Antwerp, rather than London or Paris, for reasons she knew to be vague, reasons issuing from her gut rather than from a thorough study of tourist guides or school brochures. Virgil Williams had told her about the Antwerp academy, but there were a number of good art schools in Europe. She’d never met a Belgian, but she’d heard they spoke a kind of Dutch. Her father’s people were Dutch and decent folks, mostly. There was a trove of paintings in churches and museums to be copied in the practice of landscape and ?gure study, though Paris would have served even better. She’d also heard

that it was cheap for Americans to live in Antwerp. That was the sum of it.
“Go  study  art  in  Europe,”  said  her  friend  Dora  Williams,  Virgil’s  wife,  when  Fanny con?ded her situation. “It’s one of the few respectable ways a woman can leave a rotten husband.”

During  one  of  Sam  Osbourne’s  contrite  moments,  after  Fanny  discovered  he  was supporting yet another whore in an apartment in San Francisco, she saw her opening. She extracted a thousand dollars from her husband along with a promise of monthly checks, bought train tickets, and darted for freedom.

Now, with a penciled map from a porter at the hotel, Fanny found her way through a maze  of  narrow,  winding  streets  to  the  old  convent  that  currently  housed  the  Royal Academy of Fine Art. A young man at the gate directed her to a stone building blackened with age. When she approached the carved wooden door, she noticed above it a  frieze depicting a draped male ?gure in the Greek style, holding a chisel above a block of stone. Beside him sat a goddess clutching a handful of sticks—no, they were paintbrushes. She felt goose bumps rise on her arms as she turned the heavy doorknob and stepped inside.
“I do not have an appointment,” she said in English to a man at a desk. “But you may tell the gentleman  in  charge that I  was sent here by  the director of  the San  Francisco art academy.”

de Keyser, his chest pu?ed like a  pigeon’s in his morning coat, examined the items the American woman had spread out on top of his desk. In the pregnant silence, Fanny sat opposite him on a chair so high that her feet barely touched the ground. Behind the director, from ?oor to soaring ceiling, important-looking oil paintings proclaimed the school’s stature. Her eyes took in green landscapes, portraits of powdered aristocrats, stilllife oranges on shadowed cloth. Was the looming wall of art intended to make prospective students feel small? That was precisely the effect it was having on her.
“Why, why were you not born a boy?” the director cried out suddenly, throwing his arms heavenward.  “You could learn more here in one year than in ?ve at your San Francisco school.” The man was saying “it’s a pity” and “on your own … six months of hard work on anatomy, then a year in Paris and another in Rome” when it came fully clear to Fanny that none of her work or Belle’s would ever hang in this room. There wasn’t a prayer that she could talk her way into this school.

Her cheeks went hot. She stood up abruptly to take her leave, gathering her things before he could see the tremble in her hands.

In front of a café across the street, a woman in an apron was sweeping. Fanny pictured what awaited her back at the hotel—Belle’s eager face, Kate Miller and the children asking, “What are we going to do next?” Fanny went into the café to collect her wits. At a table in a corner she lit a cigarette and ordered co?ee, all the while looking up at the tin ceiling to keep tears from spilling. What a fine mess.

The scene she’d glimpsed this morning at the St. Antoine came into her head: women in pastel dresses breakfasting beside pretty pyramids of buns and fruits in the marble-?oored palm court. She closed her eyes and heard her husband’s voice bellowing in her brain. What fool notion made you haul the kids over to Europe on such poor information? How on earth had she imagined she could make it all work?

She reached into her bag and took out a piece of stationery to write a letter.

My dear Mr. Rearden,

We enjoyed a comfortable voyage over on a ship that was only half full. On the second day at sea, who should appear on board but our nanny, Miss Kate! I had told her that I could not afford to take her to Europe, and we all said our goodbyes in New York. But the girl is a loyal soul. She quietly bought her own steerage ticket, and when she showed up on deck, she cried and said she would not cost me much, only meals. And so we are a party of ?ve … Belle had her ?rst proposal on the boat. A wealthy cotton man from Kentucky asked me for her hand. Of course, I told him no. She is far too young. I had similar interest from a New York doctor who declared his devotion every time he saw me. Quite a bother.

The art and pastry of Antwerp are divine, and you will be pleased to hear that the charming old wooden shoe has not disappeared from the streets. Alas, the art academy is just as old-fashioned and not nearly as charming. Can you believe they do not accept women students? The director was distressed to have to refuse us. He o?ered to personally oversee our private instruction. I am thinking on it.

We are having the time of our lives …

Fanny sealed the letter, addressed it to Timothy Rearden, Director, Mercantile Library, and imagined her friend opening it. She pictured him going over to the Bohemian Club after a long day and having a drink with her husband. Rearden had remained friendly with both her and Sam during all their marriage troubles, though Fanny’s relationship with him was much closer. For a while she and Rearden were a tiny bit romantic, holding hands and sharing a kiss during one of her covert visits to his rooms. But they had both backed away from that kind of intimacy. She was still married to Sam Osbourne, in name, anyway. Even

now she and Tim Rearden ?irted some in letters. He was a con?dant, a scold, an adviser, a brainy playmate of some stature among their fashionable friends back in San Francisco. Best of all, he encouraged her writing, which was her ?rst love, far more than painting. And he was a great gossip. He could be counted on to mention to Sam the details of her letter.  Better  that  Rearden,  rather  than  she,  break  the  news  about  her  failure  at  the painting school. Sam would be in full-blown fury when he found out.

The next item of business was clear: Get out of that blessed hotel. What they would do, after that, she hadn’t a notion. Of one thing she was certain: She would not go back to the humiliating role of betrayed wife.

Walking to the hotel, she noticed a ?ne old three-story brick building with a facade that zigzagged in steps up to a peak. At the entrance hung a sign that read BOARDERS in Dutch, English, and French. Above it, etched in stone, was H?TEL DU BIEN ETRE. She consulted her French dictionary. The Hotel of Well-being.

Dear God, let it be.

Fanny reached to turn the doorbell ringer, but her ?ngers missed it by an inch. She was accustomed to such frustrations as a petite woman. While other people might view each other eye to eye, she found herself confronted by vest buttons, tie pins, and bosoms if she didn’t tilt her head back.

She opened the door unannounced and found herself in a front hallway, where she nearly bumped into a white apron stretched across the belly of a bald man who introduced himself as the owner.

“I am wondering if you have rooms for a family of four,” she said. “Five, actually. We have a governess who can sleep in a room with my daughter. You see …” In a spurt, Fanny poured out her predicament—unhappy marriage, surprise nanny on board, rejection by the art school—after which  she appended the fact that she couldn’t pay  the hotel’s asking prices.  The  bald  man’s  expression  shifted  from  confusion  to  alarm  to  sympathy.  Soon enough he was patting her back and showing her to a suite of rooms two doors down from his own family’s quarters.

Elated, she stopped at a shop on the way back to the hotel and spent too much on a box of chocolates. She would surprise them with it after dinner. The children deserved a special

treat. Didn’t they all? It had been a long and wearing journey.
At the St. Antoine, she found Sammy and Hervey cutting capers on

one side of the room, trying to make themselves dizzy. On the other side, Miss Kate sat on a chair, drilling Belle. “Pencil of the barber,” the governess droned.
“Crayon du coiffeur,” Belle replied lazily.

“The academy doesn’t take women,” Fanny announced, dropping her satchel on the bed. “They don’t?” Belle sat up. “What are we going to do?”

“We will go on living. We will have breakfast tomorrow morning, one way or another. We  will  go  to  the  American  embassy  and  get  help  ?nding  a  teacher.  What  is your suggestion? And why are you still in your robe? We have to check out.”
Kate Miller leaned forward in her chair. The young woman’s eyes darted from mother to daughter to mother. Sam and Hervey, who were on the floor, looked up cautiously.
“Don’t blame me, Mama,” Belle said, pulling the dressing gown close around her neck. Fanny saw the concern on their faces and knew she was taking the wrong tack.  “I’m
sorry, Belle. It has been a frustrating morning, but a little bit funny. You should have seen the man who ran the school. He was so pu?ed up.” Fanny thrust out her chest in imitation of Monsieur de Keyser and pranced around the room like a prig. When she came to the part where he bemoaned that she and her daughter were not boys, she tugged at her hair and waved her arms dramatically. The children giggled, even Belle.

“And what did you say to the director?”

“Why, I told him I didn’t care one whit for his stuffy old painting school.” “Oh, well … “ Belle sighed. “It was too good to be true, anyway.” “We’ll have none of that talk. This is your chance, Belle. This is our time.” The girl looked at her warily.

“Virgil Williams says you have a real artistic gift,” Fanny said.

“Virgil says this, Virgil says that. It turns out Virgil isn’t right about everything, is he?” “Go get yourself dressed!” Fanny ordered.  “We will simply hire our own teacher.” She
lifted Hervey o? the rug and settled him on her hip. “Did I mention I’ve found a di?erent hotel? Pack your things lickety-split, my pigeons,” she said gaily. “We have a new home.”