The Swan Thieves
Chapter 31 Kate

Robert was sleepy on lithium. One day he ran into another car on his way to the museum in town--at low speed, fortunately. After that, Dr. Q put him on a different drug, combining it with something for anxiety. Robert explained these things to me when I asked for details, which I did as often as I could without irritating him.
By mid-December the new drug seemed to work well enough to allow him to paint and to get to his classes on time, and he seemed more like the old energetic Robert. He worked in the campus studio during that period, staying there late at night several times a week. When I visited once with Ingrid, I found him deep in a portrait--the lady of my nightmares. She sat in an armchair, her hands crossed in her lap. It was one of the brilliant paintings that later got him his big show in Chicago -- a reasonably cheerful image this time--she was dressed in yellow, smiling as if to herself, as if remembering something pleasant and private, her eyes soft, a spray of flowers on the table beside her. I was so relieved to see him working, and in happy colors, that I almost stopped wondering who she was.
That made the shock greater when I went by a couple of days later to bring Robert some cookies that Ingrid and I had managed to make together, and found him working on the same picture but from a live model. She looked like a student, and she sat in a folding chair, not in the midst of overstuffed damask. For a moment my heart froze. She was young and pretty, and Robert was chatting with her, as if to keep her still while he repainted the angle of the head and shoulder. But she was nothing like the lady of his attic. She had short blond hair and light eyes and wore a college soccer jersey. Only her beautiful body and the square cut of her jaw provided her any sisterhood with the curly-headed woman I'd first seen in a sketch from his pocket. Furthermore, Robert seemed unabashed by my appearance, greeting Ingrid and me with kisses and introducing the girl as one of the regular studio models, a student job. The girl herself seemed a good deal more entranced with Ingrid and the fact that exams were almost over than with Robert. He was clearly just using her for the pose, and I knew as little as before.
I remember only a couple of moments from Robert's departure for New York State in early January. He held Ingrid for a long time, and I realized that she was so tall now that she could wrap her legs partway around his waist--the child with Robert's own long body, his crisp dark hair. The other moment I remember is going back in the house after his car disappeared down the drive into the woods--it must have been after, unless I refused to stand on the porch in the cold air for even a second longer to watch him go. I remember going inside to finish cleaning up our breakfast and asking myself in crisp, clear words, although silently, Is this a separation? But there was no answer in my own head or in the warm kitchen, with its smells of applesauce and toast. Everything seemed normal, if bleak. There was even a breath of relief in the house. I had managed before, and I would keep managing.
Robert's notes were usually scrawled on a postcard and addressed to Ingrid as much as to me, and his phone calls, too, came in an uneven rhythm, although frequently enough. The winter in upstate New York was fierce, but the snow was wonderful, Impressionist. He painted outside once and almost got frostbite. The college president had welcomed him. His room was in faculty guest quarters and had a good view of woods and the quad.
His students were mostly ungifted, if interesting. The studio space was too small, but he was painting. He'd gone to bed at four that morning.
Then a little space, a short silence, and the notes would begin again. I liked his postcards better than his calls, which were full of unspoken tension between us, a chasm even harder to cross when we couldn't see each other's face. I tried not to call him any more often than he called me. Once, he sent a sketch for Ingrid, as if he knew she could understand this language best. I taped it to the wall of the nursery. It showed Gothic buildings and heaps of snow, bare trees. If Ingrid cried in the night, I brought her into bed with me, and we woke the next morning in a tangled pile. In late February, Robert flew home for his winter break and Ingrid's birthday. He slept a great deal, and we made love but didn't talk about anything difficult. He would have a break in early April as well, he said, but he'd decided to spend it painting up north. I didn't protest. If he returned in the summer with more work done, he might be easier to live with.
"When Robert was gone again, my mother came for a stretch and sent me to the campus pool to swim every day. I'd lost much of my baby weight that year, and the rest came off as I plowed through the water, remembering how it had felt, such a short time ago, to be young and optimistic. On that visit, I first saw the trembling of my mother's hands and the little burst capillaries in her cheeks, the slight swelling of her ankles. She hadn't slowed in her helping me--when she was there, the dishes were always clean and drying in the rack, Ingrid's endless cotton suits washed and folded, and Ingrid read to as much as she could wish for.
But something had begun to slip in Mom's physical confidence, and after she went back to Michigan she started telling me she was afraid to walk on the ice. She would step out the front door to go to the grocery store, or to the dentist, or to volunteer at the library, and she would see the ice--and then she would go back inside and eventually call me. One day she told me she hadn't been out of the house in nearly a week. I didn't want to wait, alone, with the question that woke me in the early mornings now, and when I asked Robert, he said yes, without hesitation, that Mom should come to live with us.
I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. I think I had forgotten his quick generosity, his use of yes instead of no, his habit of giving jackets to friends or even strangers. It made love quicken in me as I stood there waiting for him, far away from that cold New York State campus. I thanked him from my heart, told him about the azaleas beginning to bloom, the green leaves everywhere. He said he'd be home quickly, and we both seemed to be smiling over the phone.
When I called Mom, she didn't protest as I'd thought she would--instead she said she would think about it, but that if she came, she would want to help us buy a bigger house. I had never known she had that much money, but she did, and someone had offered to buy her house in Ann Arbor the year before, as well. She would think about it. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea. How was Ingrid's cold?