Smiling Through (1932) by Edward Mason Eggleston *

My husband’s model, Jean, waves me inside. Her room is exquisite. It fits her perfectly. Perhaps she is as nervous as I. Jean adjusts her wrap, and I cannot help but admire its white fur trim. Her large, half-closed eyes are unsymmetrical. When examined closely, the faces of beautiful women often reveal a slight imperfection. A quality which some find more intoxicating than unblemished loveliness. I wonder how much my husband pays for her services in his grand atelier. Some women are attracted to men of means, even those whose reputations are less than sterling.

Jean glides to the round window and perches on its sill. At ease in her pink gown, she resembles that movie goddess, another Jean with blonde ringlets. The outdoors look like a painted set, put there to complement her looks. Dark palm trees sway under bright diamonds that illuminate the night sky. Does she know my husband could not survive without my allowance? Although he says one day he will be famous, he has yet to sell a single painting. I want to hate this woman. I am certain she is sleeping with my Roland and have come to have it out with her.

Jean slides a cigarette from a tiny silk purse and offers it to me. I am unable to take my eyes off her pink satin heels, resting below the round window, shaped like the moon. She rises and bends over me, slipping the cigarette between my unpainted lips. I inhale her strong dusky scent. In another moment I will swoon. How soft is the milky hand that steadies mine. Jean lights my cigarette with a guttural moan. And something inside me also catches fire.

* Publisher’s Note:

Smiling Through (1932), a painting by Edward Mason Eggleston (1882–1941), was published by Usher Rae Colson as a calendar print. Image above was downloaded from Wikimedia Commons on 24 November 2024.

As described by Wikipedia, Eggleston was an American painter who specialized in calendar portraits of women, fashionable and fantastic, as well as commercial illustrations for magazine covers, travel posters, and advertisements.

For 76 additional examples of his work, see Eggleston’s gallery at Wikimedia Commons.

Roberta Beary

(they/she) is the longtime haibun editor for Modern Haiku and co-author of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023), as well as the author of four award-winning poetry collections. Individual writing awards include Bridport Prize for Poetry, Touchstone Award for Haibun, and Kusamakura Grand Prize for Haiku. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Rattle, Atticus Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and other publications. Beary identifies as gender-fluid and calls Washington, DC (USA) and County Mayo, Ireland home.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Haibun: A Writer’s Guide, by Roberta Beary, Lew Watts, and Rich Youmans, reviewed by Ce Rosenow in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 24, 20 August 2024)

⚡ Guests Kat Lehmann and Roberta Beary on “Experimental Haibun”: Episode 72 of The Poetry Space podcast by Katie Dozier and Timothy Green (2 August 2024)

⚡ New Book: Haibun: A Writer’s Guide by Roberta Beary, Lew Watts and Rich Youmans, an interview in Flash Frontier (July 2023)

⚡ Dealing With Rejection, an essay by Beary in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 12, March 2022)

⚡ Featured Guest: Roberta Beary on Rattlecast 133 hosted by Tim Green, editor of Rattle poetry journal (YouTube, 28 February 2022)

⚡ Tiny Love Stories in The New York Times (8 January 2019); scroll five stories down the page for Roberta Beary’s “Now It’s All Fresh Fish” and her photograph of lobster traps in Clew Bay, Ireland.

⚡ The art of brevity, an interview by Ciara Moynihan in Mayo News (22 January 2019)