Woman at Her Toilette

Madame, you have painted me from behind, and I want to thank you for it.

I came home from the ball and sat down at the dressing table still in the white gown, the one with the narrow blue trim that slips off the shoulders. I had not yet taken off the earrings or the black velvet ribbon at my throat. I had lifted an arm to undo my hair, and my back was to the room, and that is how you kept me: shoulders bare, the knot of hair half loosened, my face turned so far toward the glass that you can see only the edge of a cheek and an ear. The flowers on the table are white, a heap of them, with one pink bud standing up in a glass. The wallpaper behind me is a blur of lilac and grey.

Every painter I have known wanted my face, or wanted me looking at myself in the mirror so that they could call the picture vanity. You did neither. You painted the mirror, and then you clouded it. Whatever I see in that glass, you let no one else see. There is only a smear of light, a glimpse of the flowers doubled, and at the bottom of the frame your own name, written across the glass where my reflection ought to be.

I have wondered about that. Your signature in my place. Perhaps it was only a convenient spot. Perhaps you were telling them that the woman at the table was also you.

Your brush is very fast. Up close my gown is nothing at all, a scribble of white and blue and the palest violet, strokes laid in every direction like straw thrown on a floor. Step back, and it is silk. You must have worked quickly to keep it that way.

They hung me in the fifth exhibition of your Impressionist friends, in 1880, and I hear that people praised you there. You had been showing at the official Salon since you were a young woman, and you showed with the Impressionists nearly every time they gathered. I am glad. The men liked to say women painters were charming. You were never charming to me. You were exact, and you looked away when I needed you to.

The pins are still in my hair.