I just looked at him, unable to speak. I wondered if he had talked the whole thing over with Sophie and she had made him see how wrong it was, or if my mother’s death had freed him to say what he had really felt all along.
He glanced up at me fleetingly, then back down at the remains of his dinner. “I wish things had been different,” he said.
I still couldn’t say a word. I could only think of that poor dead child. Sophie sat looking at us, her eyes brimming, and then she stood up, patted my shoulder, kissed my father’s bald spot, and headed for the kitchen. “I think it’s time for a piece of key lime pie,” she said. “That’ll cheer us all up.”
I realized then that the knot in my chest and the burning sensation behind my eyes were the components of a trembling fury that threatened to spill over. I stood up. “I don’t want any pie,” I managed to say. “I’m going for a walk.” I felt their gaze on me as I stumbled out of the room, and I could picture Sophie’s bewilderment when the door slammed shut behind me.
Outside, the air was fresh and cool. It was early evening, still light, and there were a few last golfers on the course. I went down Sophie’s front walk, taking deep breaths, trying to calm myself; I was shaking, my heart was racing. Skirting the green, I set off through the parking lot to where I knew there was a path that led to a lagoon. I hardly knew where I was walking, I just knew I had to get out of there, away from my father’s pathetic admission and Sophie’s muddled kindness, before I said something terrible, something unforgivable—something that no amount of anger could justify saying to two old people who loved me and meant well.
The fact was that as I made my way across the lot and down the path, I knew that it wasn’t my father’s cringing, belated apology that had made me furious. It was my mother. I knew—I’d known for a long time—that my father, for all his lovable qualities, was a weak and timid man. The time was still vivid to me when I’d called him from the Edna Quinlan Home and asked for his help, and he had refused to oppose my mother’s wishes. He’d actually said that, not seeing the shame in it. As if my mother were a dictator and my father part of her secret police, an automaton without a conscience who was there only to carry out the will of the leader. How sick, I thought, to let anyone have such power over you, but how much sicker was the need to wield that power. I would never know, now, what made my mother tick: She was safe in the land of the dead. She couldn’t tell me anything, even if she wanted to. She was gone, but the hurt she had inflicted had cut deep—deeper than anyone could have imagined. It had left a scar that wouldn’t fade, no matter what I did.
I stood by the water while the sun slowly sank behind the clubhouse. The peaceful scene maddened me: the lily pads with their spiky blooms, a silently gliding family of ducks, a rustic bench flanked by pots of geraniums. Everything nice, everything pretty, and yet nothing, I thought, none of the world’s fatal niceness could make up for my decade of sorrow and rage and emptiness. I thought for the first time in years of that ride back to Maine from Boston after I gave away my daughter, when my mother pointed out to me that it was spring, the world was a beautiful place, and I should be happy. I remembered the green buds on the trees that day, and my mother’s complacent smile. Life goes on, she had said.
I sat down on the bench, put my head in my hands, and wept.
• • •
I tried not to open the wooden box very often—my absurd little Patrick museum. The cat, the clippings, the hazy photograph—they were like a dangerous drug, or a medicine I was getting too dependent on. I tried to ration myself, knowing that when I opened the box, in the midst of the torment, there was also a kind of solace to which I had no right.
But my thoughts were not so controllable. I couldn’t get Patrick out of my mind. At idle moments I would slip into fantasies of being with him, poking through the rusty junk at Uncle Austin’s place, sitting across the table from him at the Broome Street Bar. Most of all, of being with him in our bed. I would feel his young, strong body hard against mine. I would breathe in the delicious, slightly animal, clayey scent of his skin. I would see his face above me—eyes closed, lips parted—as slowly, voluptuously he thrust into me until we were both crazy with the pleasure of it. And his smile when we lay beside each other afterward, his hand on my breast, our legs entwined, our sweat mingled, and a feeling of simple well-being that was more intense than any feeling I had ever known. The feeling that I was where I was meant to be, that this man was my rightful home, my destination, the best part of me.
Sometimes I indulged myself in imagining seeking him out to confess everything to him—just letting the whole story tumble out, beginning with Mark Erling and me by the lake, and ending with the yellowed news clippings I kept with me. I imagined the relief I would find just by saying those words to him, no matter what his reaction was. Even if I lost him. Because I’d lost him anyway. But in my most secret, shameful fantasy, he didn’t condemn me. He absolved me. Somehow, he made it all right. I hid my face against his shoulder, he stroked my hair, and peace, peace returned to us both.
In my saner moments, I knew he would not forgive me. I remembered what he had said about people who gave away their children, and when I caught myself having those foolish fantasies, I wrenched my mind away, guiltily. But I never succeeded in banishing Patrick from my consciousness. And, increasingly, I read about him. While I was in England, he became quietly famous. During those years, as he turned thirty, he progressed from emerging artist to one of the new stalwarts of the New York art scene. The boom years of the eighties were just beginning. Patrick was making money, selling his work to collectors and museums and corporations in New York and in Europe. My little clipping collection grew. Our old friend Santo Peri, now a successful art dealer, was photographed with Patrick at someone’s opening. Patrick taught for a semester at the Rhode Island School of Design, the city of Boston commissioned a piece, he got another big grant. I wondered how all this was affecting him, what he was like, whom he was with. On especially bad days I tortured myself picturing him with other women—better women than I. He was better off without me, and I knew Patrick, my beautiful lover, wouldn’t be alone for long. And that, too, was no more than I deserved.
One day in March I saw a notice in a London art paper about an exhibit at a small gallery near Portobello Road. Four young sculptors, two Americans, two Brits, were showing drawings of their works. “Working Drawings by Rising Artists,” it was called. Patrick Foss was one of the artists.
I took the tube over there on a rainy Saturday afternoon when, it seemed, the rest of London had, quite sensibly, decided to stay home watching TV. The streets were sloppy and cold, the tourists at the street market looked wet and unhappy, and the gallery itself was a tiny, unpromising place squeezed between a bicycle shop and a dentist’s office.
Inside, though, it was the usual pristine white space, with the usual dressy, bored young man behind a desk. “Good afternoon,” he said. “Quite a day, isn’t it?”
I agreed that the weather was frightful. Not surprisingly, no one else was in there. I put my umbrella in the stand. I could see Patrick’s drawings on the wall beside the desk. I didn’t need to see his name in tasteful little black letters. I recognized several of them instantly. They had been stuck up on the wall of our loft with pushpins. One of them—clear to me even at a distance—was the beautiful pen-and-ink drawing of the sculpture he’d been working on when I left him.
“Oh God,” I said involuntarily, and the elegant young man said, “You’re still shivering. Here—would you like me take that wet coat?”
“No, I’m all right.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Thank you,” I added belatedly. I went to the wall and stared at the drawings. There were eight of them. They were overwhelming. I looked at the drawings, and I saw Patrick as clearly as if they had been self-portraits.
“He’s a beautiful draftsman, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” I managed to say. “He is.”
I knew Patri
ck could draw, and most of the drawings were familiar to me, but they seemed unexpectedly lovely in their austere frames against the white wall. The sculptures themselves were massive and disturbing, but the drawings were almost delicate, the line expressive and very simple, the complexities of Patrick’s vision whittled down to pure form. As always when I saw his work, I was stunned by his talent. It was something I had never gotten used to or taken for granted, even when I lived with him.
As if he read my mind, the man at the desk said, “Foss—he’s going to be one of the greats.”
I felt a surge of affection for this man, and I turned to him with a smile. “Yes. He certainly is. His work is wonderful. I knew him,” I said. I couldn’t stop myself. “I knew him in New York.”
“Is that so?”
“We were in school together. We were—we were friends.”
“Really?” He folded his hands under his chin, smiling, expectant. “So you know his work pretty well, then, do you? Well, tell me—”
I interrupted. “Was he here? In London? I mean, did he come over for the opening? Or did he hang the drawings himself? I mean—I wondered—is he still here, do you think? Does he ever come in?”
The gallery man’s smile became a little strained. “He couldn’t make it to the opening, alas. Couldn’t get away—some other commitment, I believe. No, he hasn’t been here. We’ve dealt with him entirely by post.”
“I see.” I turned back to the drawings. “They are lovely, aren’t they? Really lovely. Do you have—?”
“Take one of our postcards.” He picked one up and held it out: four small reproductions, one for each artist. Patrick’s was one of the drawings that was new to me, a study for a work in progress.
“They’re so small.”
“It’s just a little promotional thing,” he said stiffly.
“You don’t have a book, some kind of—?”
“No, I’m afraid not. This is just a very small exhibit. We hope someday to have something more substantial. Why don’t you get on our mailing list?”
“Yes—yes, thank you. I’ll do that.” He handed me a book. My hand was shaking; if they could read my name and address, it would be a miracle. I turned back to the drawings, drinking them in. Patrick. Patrick. How many times had I seen him bent over the drawing board, frowning ferociously, one hand gripping the pen, the other tugging at his hair. I remembered suddenly the drawing of me he’d given to my parents the first time I took him to Maine. Where was it now? It must be somewhere at my father’s. I would call him when I got home, ask what happened to it. I wasn’t sure I deserved to actually possess it, but suddenly I needed to know where it was, and that it was safe.
“Check out Martin Steinberg over there before you go. Now there’s an interesting artist. Another Yank, from California. He’s been working in plate glass and tar. Very intriguing stuff.”
“Yes,” I said. With reluctance, I abandoned the wall of Patrick’s drawings. I retrieved my umbrella from the stand. “Yes, I will, another time,” I said vaguely. I smiled again. I know my eyes were full of tears. He must have thought I was a madwoman. “Yes, thank you. Thank you very much,” I said, and went out into the rain.
• • •
On my next visit to Key Largo, my father’s health was dramatically worse. He hadn’t really been well since my mother died, but his complaints had been vague and minor—fatigue, arthritis, twinges of pain, once a dizzy spell. All this seemed to improve once he started seeing Sophie. “This woman won’t let me get away with feeling sorry for myself,” he said, beaming at her.
“Damn right,” she would say. “Don’t bother me with your ridiculous aches and pains.” In her eyes was the anxiety of a woman who had buried three husbands. “You’re healthy as a horse, Jim.”
But this time, when Dad picked me up at the airport in Miami, he told me he had to have open-heart surgery. He had blacked out when climbing a flight of stairs, and his cardiologist said he needed a triple bypass.
I went with him to talk to the surgeon. Dad wanted to schedule the operation during my Christmas vacation, so I could be there. This was September, just before the fall term was due to begin. The surgeon was dubious about waiting three months. Both of us urged him to have it done sooner. Sophie would be there, and I was pretty sure I could get time off.
But Dad was stubborn. He got Dr. Martinez to admit that the statistics were against his dropping dead if he didn’t have a triple bypass tomorrow, and the operation was scheduled for mid-December.
My father put on a plaid bow tie and took me and Sophie out to dinner that night, and while we waited for our appetizers he broke the news to her. She burst into tears, and my father said, “Oh, Sophie, for pity’s sake”—sounding just like my mother. Then he seemed to catch himself, and he did something that seemed to me amazing. He got out of his chair and went down on one knee—right there in the Colony Lobster House on a crowded Saturday night—and said, “I’m going to come through it all right, honey. The statistics are on my side. And—listen to me, Sophie, stop crying—when I recover I want you to marry me.”
She raised her head. “Do you mean it, Jim?”
“I mean it.” He took her hand and kissed it. “Will you?”
“Will I?” She began to laugh. “Of course I will! Oh Jim!”
They stayed there with their hands clasped, looking into each other’s eyes and laughing. They’d forgotten anyone else was there—the waiter hovering with our shrimp cocktail, the interested people at the next table—and me, sitting there with wet eyes, grinning from ear to ear.
The next day we all went shopping for a ring—a hilarious, extravagant outing. My father was more excited than I could ever remember seeing him. He insisted on buying a huge diamond, flanked with rows of tiny emeralds—“my best one yet,” Sophie pronounced it—and then we went out and drank champagne and ate caviar. Three days later I flew back to England. In early November Sophie called me to say my father had died in his sleep.
I flew to Florida for the funeral, to settle my father’s estate and to weep with Sophie, who kept twisting her diamond on her finger, raising it to her lips, covering it with the fingers of her right hand as if it were a wound that hurt. She took me to dinner at the Colony, requesting the same table where my father had proposed, and we sat looking out at the marina and watching the sunset sky, talking about him.
“I know I could never have been to him what your mother was,” she said. “Jim told me frankly that she was the love of his life, and I came in a distant second.”
“He said that?” I was appalled. My father seemed to have gone straight from kindly, dignified reticence to an alarmingly rude candor.
“I forced it out of him,” she said, and leaned toward me in her confiding way. “I said to him: Jim, tell me honestly. How do I measure up to Molly? She was a fascinating woman, and don’t try to tell me different. She was thin and beautiful and educated and accomplished. I’m fat and older than you and I’ve never done a thing with my life but go shopping and take care of my husbands. And he said, I’ll be honest with you, Sophie. I worshipped Molly. I don’t worship you. But she didn’t always make me feel good, and you do. There was always something a little unattainable about my wife, he said. Well, that’s one thing you can never say about me, I said. And he laughed.” She was smiling. “I know he didn’t love me as much as I loved him, Wynn, but that was okay. I need to know these things. I need to know where I stand. The truth can be painful, but it’s like that Gelusil I take—I have to have it or I feel sick. He was fond of me. We had a lot of good times. And I’m not just talking about bed, although—” She broke off, fumbled for a clean tissue. “Ah God, Wynn, I’m going to miss that man.”
She began to cry again. I sat there in silence while she wept, glad that two lovable people had found happiness together. It seemed unbearably poignant that he had died in the midst of it. I was tempted to say something to Sophie about my mother, that she wasn’t the paragon she seemed, and that Sophie with her un
critical love had perhaps, in the end, made him even happier. But I knew this wasn’t something I should do. I looked at Sophie in her black silk suit, her shoulders shaking, a crumpled tissue held to her lips, her eye makeup running, and I put my arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Oh, Sophie, I’m so sorry he’s gone.” And I realized that somewhere mixed with grief for my father I was sorry for myself, too—for the fact that the possibility of that kind of happiness seemed remote, seemed impossible, and still seemed wrong. My father had begun a new life in his seventies. My life had ended when I was twenty-six.
I returned again to Florida at Christmastime to clean out my father’s house. The house was small, but everything in it was reminiscent of my childhood—those idyllic years of my growing up in Maine. Slightly shabby possessions I had taken for granted or barely noticed when I visited were now unbearably dear to me. But how could I return to my tiny room in London with my old high-backed bed in tow, and my mother’s boxes of prints and negatives, my father’s toy collection, the bookcase he made for me when I was twelve, my old dollhouse? And Patrick’s drawing of me—I found that, too, carefully wrapped in newspaper with some of my old paintings, stored in a box labeled “Wynn—Artwork.” I gave it a quick look and wrapped it up again. On top of everything else, that was too hard; the little drawing was not something I could cope with.
I was going through my mother’s filing cabinets, where she kept the endless business correspondence from her career—my father hadn’t thrown out anything—when I came across an envelope with my name on it in her handwriting.
It was a while before I could open it. I sat looking down at the letters of my name, feeling slightly foolish, like a character in a play. The fateful letter. The dead hand. The revelation that will change everything, move the plot forward, explain all. Then I laughed at myself and opened the envelope. It was probably nothing. A few baby pictures she’d put away. Old spelling tests. A mundane letter begun and never finished.
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