Great Circle

by Maggie Shipstead

  “Only one photograph,” Jamie says. “Is that…common?”

  “It used to be, coming the other way. My mother was a picture bride. My father was already here. Their families arranged the match. She didn’t mind—her generation didn’t expect anything better. But I’m from here. My father has odd ideas. He doesn’t want to go back himself, but he says it’s important we don’t lose touch with our homeland. His homeland.”

  With a small sigh, her grandmother rouses herself. She pushes her spectacles into place. “Junko,” she says, and asks a question in Japanese that Sally answers, her tone light.

  “She wants to know if you’re making me beautiful,” she tells Jamie.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I’d told you to paint me as I am.”

  “They’re the same,” he says, made reckless by his persistent, mortifying melancholy over Judith. He doesn’t know if he is trying to drive away his sadness or make it worse by groveling before another unattainable woman. Sally does not translate. She settles back into her pose, but now she looks directly at him rather than out the window.

  “What does junko mean?” he asks after a while.

  “It’s my Japanese name,” she says. After a pause, she adds, “I don’t like it. I’d rather just have one name.”

  He returns three more times. She continues to watch him while he paints. He sees—or thinks he sees—different moods sweep through her gaze the same way the leaf shadows blow across the floor. Defiance is what he chooses to paint, defiance but, as a mercy to her parents, none of the anger that comes and goes. He sees curiosity, too, when she looks at him. Judith only ever looked amused or bored. Impossible, perhaps, to spend so many hours looking into a person’s eyes and not imagine an unspoken intimacy.

  I love these because I love thinking about you looking at me, Sarah Fahey had said about his drawings of her. Does Sally like thinking about him looking at her? When he works on the portrait at home between sittings, he feels a tension, a winching together that tightens into urgent desire. He adds a faint warp to the portrait’s background, a suggestion of curvature, of the room pulling away from behind Sally, pushing her closer to the viewer.

  On the last day she sits for him, he slips her a scrap of paper with his address written on it, whispers that he’d like to see her again. She looks at the paper, slides it into her pocket. When she raises her gaze to him again, he sees contempt, and he has a terrible sense of having made a major miscalculation. None of what he’d sensed roiling in her had anything to do with him. He is just some unimportant man trying to insinuate himself into her hour of crisis. He paints falteringly for another half hour, gives it up. He will finish it in his apartment. “I’ve got enough from life,” he tells her.

  Three nights later, in the small hours, there is a knock at his door: quiet but urgent, a light, persistent rapping. He gets out of bed and pads across, wide awake, thinking she’s come after all. He is filled with a vision of how she will look, how she will rush into his arms, how they will escape together.

  Two men are outside the door, white men, neither as tall as Jamie but both built like steamer trunks. They push in before he can recover from his surprise, bundling him across the room by the arms, pushing him to the floor.

  Through his terror, he wonders why he had ever thought Barclay would come personally. He’d always imagined being able to at least try to reason with the man, to appeal to his feelings for Marian, to explain that he needed to let her go.

  One steamer trunk sits on him while the other closes the door, calmly turns on the bath tap.

  “We just want to know where she is,” the one sitting on him says. “That’s all. We’ll leave you be once you tell us.”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “She didn’t tell me. She knew better than that. She knew he’d send you. She was going to Seattle and then on from there to somewhere else. That’s all I know.”

  “You expect us to believe you didn’t come up with a little plan together?” says the man by the tub.

  “We’ll see,” the other man says matter-of-factly. He has a job to do, that’s all. There will be no appealing, no explaining. Jamie understands this as he is hoisted up beside the bathtub, struck in the face before his head and shoulders are plunged into the cold water.

  “I don’t know anything else,” he says when he’s lifted out. Again he’s held under, brought out, struck. “Please,” he says until he can’t summon the breath to speak.

  In the morning, he finds himself still alive, lying curled on the bare pine floor. He hauls himself up, runs a hot bath. The touch of the porcelain is horrible to him, the water full of menace, but the warmth eases his pain. Lying cramped in the tub, in water tinted pink from his blood, he plans what he will do.

  Everything he will take with him fits in one suitcase. Some clothes, his better paints and brushes, sketchbooks. Because he will go from the Ayukawa house to the train station, he carries the suitcase in one hand by its handle and Sally’s portrait clutched carefully by a stretcher bar in the other. The paint is not quite dry.

  The maid’s eyes widen when she opens the door, takes in his swollen face. “No,” she whispers. “Go away!” She makes a shooing gesture.

  He says, “Please tell Sally—Junko—or her grandmother or whoever is home that I’m here, and I’ve brought the painting, and I need to be paid.”

  “No,” the maid says again. “Go away!”

  Jamie’s confusion is intensified by his general state of addledness, his pounding headache, his urgent, determined need to flee the city. Why would the maid send him away when he’s brought the painting? He needs the money he’s owed, no matter how rude he must be to get it. More loudly, he tries to explain again, asks for Sally. He is nearly shouting when a dapper man in a gray suit appears beside the maid. She retreats into the house with a bow.

  Jamie has not met Mr. Ayukawa before. His thick bushy eyebrows are so unlike Sally’s feathery ones, but Jamie recognizes her expression when he draws them together. “I am surprised you would come here,” he says.

  “I’m leaving town,” Jamie says, uneasy, “and I wanted to be paid. For this.”

  He turns the canvas to face Mr. Ayukawa, and the man’s eyebrows fly up. His face is full of the same mournful astonishment as the face in the moon. When he speaks, it’s in a whisper: “Just tell me where she is.”

  Jamie stares. “What?”

  The man stares back. “We found your address in her room. You must know. Where is she?”

  And finally Jamie understands.

  Memories Roadshow

  Fourteen

  A few days after the table read, even though I’d been determined to make Redwood get in touch first, I’d cracked and texted him. Just following up to make a plan for a totally normal, earthbound hangout.

  I’d love that! Let me check my schedule and circle back.

  But I hadn’t heard anything for another week, until he wrote, Hey stranger! My mother is in town and I’d love for you guys to meet. Come over for dinner?

  When I arrived, Carol Feiffer was the one to answer the door. She keeled back for a hug, arms out, fingers extended into stiff prongs. “Here she is!” she cried, her voice redolent with Long Island. At first I thought she was talking about herself. Here I am! Her face was sharp as a hewn arrowhead; her hair was the ideal version of a practical bob. Under austere layers of charcoal linen, she carried herself with regal assurance, like a spiritual guru or a university president.

  “I’ve been dying to meet you,” Carol said, leading me toward the kitchen by the arm. She leaned back, looked me up and down. “I’m not disappointed. You’re every inch the star.”

  I gave a snorty little dismissive chuckle. “I liked your book.”

  She turned to me, glowing. “Thank you, my dear. Thank you so much. I never expected this to come of it. I just wanted to te
ll a story. Leave it to my son to make a”—she waved her hands—“whole big thing. But, you know, Marian is so important to me. I had a terrible marriage, quite honestly, and in the very depths of it I found such comfort in Marian’s book. She got me through the darkest part of my life. She inspired me to seize my freedom. Which is ironic because I never would have known about her if not for the connection to my ex-husband’s family.” She reached to squeeze my arm. “And now you’re going to bring her to so many people. You’ll change lives, Hadley.” She nodded at me earnestly, rapidly, forestalling any skepticism. “You will.”

  I didn’t tell her the only life I’d given much thought to changing was my own. I didn’t tell her about my covetous vision of myself hoisting a golden prize. “I hope so,” I said.

  Redwood was in the kitchen, tending something in a pan. I hadn’t known anyone else would be there, but a girl in a white sleeveless jumpsuit and no jewelry except for a small gold ring in her nostril was leaning against the counter with a glass of rosé. She had curly hair up in a bun, a tiny, beautiful, dark-eyed face. Something about her reminded me of marzipan, the little animals you’re not quite sure are food or figurines.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” Carol said, presenting me, and the girl put her hand on Redwood’s upper arm, like, mine, and in a flash I decided that this—she—was why we hadn’t hooked up, why he’d been AWOL. That dick had told me there wasn’t anyone. No one at all.

  “Hey stranger!” Redwood said, and it rankled just like it had in his text, as though he were subtly chiding me for being out of touch, when he was the one who’d left me hanging. He kissed my cheek and gestured to the white jumpsuit. “This is Leanne.” Leanne waved from where she was, determinedly unfazed by my celebrity, and Redwood pointed out the window. “The Day brothers are here, too, and Mom brought a friend.”

  I turned. So it was a whole convention. Redwood wanting me to meet his mother didn’t make me special. Outside, a wiry older woman with close-cropped silver hair was standing beside the pool, drinking a glass of red wine and, without visible reaction, listening to whatever one of the Day brothers was saying. She wore jeans and slip-on Vans and a big white button-up shirt. The Days were wearing dress shirts and chinos so tightly tailored they looked like superheroes’ unitards.

  “That’s Adelaide Scott,” Carol said in such a way I knew I was supposed to recognize the name.

  “Ah,” I said.

  Leanne, seeing right through me, said, “She’s a famous artist.”

  “A sculptor,” Carol said. “And installations. She actually met Marian Graves once, when she was a child. I brought her because I thought you might be interested in picking her brain. Not that she’s not excellent company in her own right.”

  What was I supposed to take from a child’s memory at least sixty-five years old? What tidbit could this woman give me that I could possibly use? There should be an Antiques Roadshow for memories, and I would sit behind a desk and explain that while your memory might be lovely and have tremendous sentimental value, it was worth nothing to anyone but you.

  People’s thoughts about Marian were all basically the same but usually presented with an air of revelation. Bart Olofsson had stared earnestly into my face and said things like I see her as being very strong, very brave, as though this was some radical theory.

  Absolutely, I’d said.

  Someone who’s so strong, so brave like that—she was compelled to do the flight. Otherwise she would have exploded.

  Totally, I said, even though bravery and strength aren’t reasons but qualities. I don’t think she had a reason, not really. Why does anyone want to do anything? You just do.

  “Adelaide!” Carol called. “Come meet Hadley.”

  The woman and the Days all turned. The Day who’d been talking extended one arm to usher Adelaide in, and I caught a trace of disdainful amusement on her face at being herded. “Hello, Hadley,” she said, shaking my hand after they’d all trooped inside and the Days had cheek-kissed me. She was tall and willowy, had a long, pale, lined face, and wore no wedding band, no makeup except for dark red lipstick. I couldn’t decide if she was beautiful. “I hear you’re an actress.”

  Carol made a show of friendly exasperation. “Hadley’s a movie star, Adelaide.”

  Adelaide’s tone conveyed a shrug. “I’m afraid pop culture is an area I’ve particularly neglected.”

  “But pop culture is so fascinating,” said one of the Days. “You just have to look at it on a deeper level. It’s like contemporary art in that sometimes the actual product isn’t the point as much as the context in which it’s created.”

  Adelaide gazed at him without interest.

  “I agree,” Leanne jumped in. “Like take Hadley’s Archangel movies. As a feminist, I object to their emphasis on traditional gender roles—the man as the protector, you know—but as a consumer I was still sucked into the love story, gobbling down the popcorn. It’s a dog whistle only women can hear.” She took a green olive from a bowl and popped it into her mouth.

  I asked her, “How do you and Redwood know each other?”

  “We’re old friends,” Redwood said.

  “We deflowered each other,” Leanne said, extracting the olive pit from her lips.

  “Leanne!” Carol said, covering her ears.

  “Don’t pretend you didn’t know,” said Leanne.

  A buzz. Redwood went to a panel on the wall. “Hello?”

  “IT’S HUGO,” came a roar through it.

  * * *

  —

  “It was right before she left on the flight,” Adelaide said. “She came to see my mother in Seattle. I would have been five.”

  The eight of us were sitting at the table outside, under the wisteria, eating salmon with some kind of too-sweet sauce of Redwood’s invention. Redwood had set out place cards, which meant I now knew which Day was Kyle and which was Travis.

  “My family collected art,” Adelaide went on. “My mother was an old friend of Jamie Graves. We still own quite a few of his paintings, though most are out on loan.”

  Carol piped up. “That’s how I found Adelaide. I knew of her work, of course, but I didn’t realize there was any connection to the Graves story until I was researching my book and started looking into her family’s collection. I’ve been thinking—wouldn’t it be fabulous if there were a Jamie Graves exhibit to coincide with the release of the film?”

  “At LACMA,” Travis Day said. “Hundred percent yes. Or maybe a more unconventional space, somewhere—”

  “Yes!” Carol interrupted. “LACMA would be fabulous!”

  “Or somewhere more unconventional,” Travis said again. “Like a warehouse or somewhere repurposed.”

  “Do you want me to talk about Marian Graves or no?” Adelaide said.

  Travis looked miffed. Carol clapped a hand over her mouth. “Go ahead,” she said in a muffled voice.

  “Marian came to town in 1949 just to see my mother,” Adelaide said. “They’d never met before, but they had Jamie in common. And also—Carol put this in the book—my grandmother had helped Marian get an abortion when she was leaving her husband, although no one told me that until I was an adult.”

  “That’s why she came?” Hugo said. “To reminisce?”

  “You’d have to ask her,” Adelaide said. “Good luck with that.”

  I took a preparatory breath. I had a sense of fulfilling my duty, asking my prearranged question, like the littlest kid on Passover. “What was Marian like?” I said.

  Scraping the sauce off her fish with a butter knife, Adelaide said, “I couldn’t say, really. I told Carol I wouldn’t be much help to you, as I wasn’t much help to her.”

  “You were a tremendous help,” said Carol.

  Sir Hugo leaned forward and fixed Adelaide with his signature piercing
stare. “But you do remember her.”

  Adelaide seemed immune to the piercing, refused to buy into the drama of her role as eyewitness. She made an inscrutable moue with her red lips, said, “Marian Graves was a very tall, very thin, very blond grown-up I was called in to greet more than sixty years ago. I don’t think she was good with children. I don’t think she said much to me. Honestly I’m not positive I actually remember her at all or if I just remember the memory.” She looked at me. “See? Nothing you can use.”

  “You never know,” said Carol. “It was you who told me about Caleb Bitterroot.” She turned to Hadley. “There’s very little out there about him, but once I realized he’d been in Marian’s life from beginning to end, I saw the outline of a grand romance. I’m very intuitive that way.”

  “What she means is that there’s no proof of any romance at all,” Redwood said, and Carol made a psssh sound and flicked her hand at him.

  “Is it different,” Leanne asked Sir Hugo, “playing a real person versus a fictional character?”

  He swirled his wine. “A bit. With a real person, you need to be cautious of falling back on an impression. Your task is to make the person, fictional or not, seem real.”

  “Same with writing,” said Kyle Day, but no one paid him any attention.

  “It’s not like you can really know that much about anyone, anyway,” I said, annoyed that Leanne had clearly intended the acting question only for Hugo. “No one sees most of what we do. No one knows more than a tiny fraction of what we think. And when we die, it all evaporates.”

  Adelaide looked at me with a new glint of interest, sharp but unreadable.

  “My parents died in a small-plane crash when I was two,” I told her. “I was raised by my uncle.”

  “Ah,” she said. “So you understand something about Marian.”