I laughed again, more softly than before, and glanced at her painting, feeling a little better. Whether or not she believed her remark was true, I could have said then in all sincerity that I loved her. That I needed and appreciated her and wanted desperately, for the rest of my life, to be her friend, to be able to call her on any day that I had the urge to, but I couldn’t string the words together. She might have sensed how I felt; she squeezed my shoulder and smiled and shook her head, glancing toward Laurent, who stood talking to several people I didn’t know near the table where emptied wineglasses were being placed by the caterers until they could be carried into the back. Susan looked at me expectantly, but instead of unloading my romantic insecurities on her I looked again at her paintings, which were, almost paradoxically, both mysterious and very personal. I asked how long had it taken her to complete Central Park West Window. Did she work on several canvases at once? What was her studio space like?
Soon Colin walked through the gallery doors, looking like an anxious, excited boy sneaking downstairs to the grown-ups’ party. I can only guess what Susan thought, seeing me turn toward him with such abrupt focus, my whole body alert in a way it hadn’t been before he came in off the street and looked apprehensively around the noisy room, his brown hair, which needed cutting—it had grown past his ears about half an inch—springing up when he pulled off his gray wool hat.
Before he spotted me in the crowd, I noticed his eyes landing on Sofia—only for a second or two, but long enough for me to know that he had registered her presence. I knew he was there to see me, but I still felt a tremor of jealousy. I wanted unequivocally at that moment for Sofia to disappear from my life and Laurent’s, for her to retreat to some remote island with her perfect paintings and artfully messy bun and glamorous silver adornments, for her to grow fat and uncertain. Yet I knew it wouldn’t matter how far away she went if she retained her place in Laurent’s erotic imagination. What had happened between them, and what continued to happen between them? I could recognize the irony here; I had no right to feel injured when I was playing both sides too.
It was then that André brought Sofia over to where Susan and I stood, his hand at the small of her back as they walked toward us. Colin was lingering in front of Chantal’s paintings, not yet having come over to say hello. Laurent was still with the group by the empty wineglasses. If I had a picture of this scene and had decided to do a detail instead of painting the whole, I would have chosen Laurent’s face: the watchful expression, the dark, fathomless eyes. I saw him looking over at us at one point, pretending to listen to what a man in a burnt-orange sweater was saying, his hands gesturing as he spoke. Laurent might have noticed that Colin was there, but he would not have made a scene, even if he had a right to. We rarely spoke about Colin, and in January, I finished the painting I’d started of him last fall. He now sits with some other canvases, his face against the wall, though I look at him sometimes, trying to decide what to do with him. I knew that Laurent wasn’t thrilled when he first saw that I was painting my ex-boyfriend, but he had not really protested. “The muse,” he’d said, his voice laced with irony. “How wicked she is, Jayne, don’t you think?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, my heartbeat very loud in my ears at that moment. “I guess it’s rude of me to be painting an ex-boyfriend.”
Laurent had looked at me for several seconds before saying, “No, not really, but I hope that you will choose me as your subject before long too. I would like that.”
I promised him that I would, but so far, I haven’t. I want to paint one of the framed photos of him that he keeps in the apartment, but I haven’t yet been able to decide which one.
About a month after this conversation, on the morning before I flew home to California for Christmas, Laurent asked, strangely, if Colin would be there too. “Of course not,” I said, wary. “He doesn’t live in L.A.”
“He doesn’t have to,” Laurent said. That was all he said, and I didn’t press him to say more. If he’d wanted to pursue it, I thought, he would have. But from then on, I was more on guard, more aware that he probably knew I was keeping something from him, and that my sneakiness, my selfishness, whatever he thought it was, surprised him more than he’d expected.
“I like your paintings,” Sofia said. Her French accent was a little more pronounced than Laurent’s when he spoke English. “The one of the couple standing near the ice cream cart is my favorite, I think. The way you expose the man to us, I can see that he is worried he will lose her.”
“You really see that?” I asked. “I thought I’d made sure he looked happy.”
She shook her head. “It is a very thin happiness that he has.”
“I noticed that too,” said Susan. “I can almost hear ‘Moon River’ playing in the background.”
“The song from Breakfast at Tiffany’s?” asked Sofia.
“Yes, exactly,” said Susan. She glanced from Sofia to me and smiled. I couldn’t remember how the song went; I smiled back at her but said nothing.
“Someone once told me that I look like Audrey Hepburn,” said Sofia. “But he said that to other women too. He was such a terrible flirt.”
Susan studied her for a few seconds. “I can see a resemblance.”
“You are kind to say that, but I don’t see it,” said Sofia.
“Sofia is as beautiful as Audrey Hepburn was,” said André, leering at her before he turned to me, as if challenging me to disagree. God, I disliked him. For a second, I worried that I would say this aloud.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sofia scoffed. She didn’t blush, nor did she seem to be acting coy, which I must admit impressed me. I think she must have seen through André too, through his paper-thin flattery, his mercurial moods, straight through to his insecurities and unflattering competitiveness with other men.
“Jayne here looks like Catherine Deneuve, don’t you agree?” he asked, laughing in a loud burst.
Sofia glanced at him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “She looks more like Audrey Tautou than Deneuve.”
“One of my friends said that once,” I said. “But really, who cares?” I said, trying not to raise my voice. I really did want to yell Why are we talking about this?
“Do you mind holding my glass for a minute?” I asked, turning to Susan. I needed to use the bathroom but didn’t want to announce it to everyone. “It was nice to meet you, Sofia,” I said, ignoring André, who was now leering at me. “Thank you for coming tonight.”
“I was looking forward to it,” Sofia said, her voice warm. “See you again soon, I hope.”
I paused, taking in her eyebrows raised in inquiry, her right hand at her throat, fingering her gleaming necklace. I had no idea what she was talking about. “Of course,” I said. “See you again.”
When I returned from the back office, I walked straight to where Colin was now standing in front of Sarah with Cat-Eye Glasses and put my hand on his sleeve. His arm was so solid under his coat, and I wanted to throw my own arms around him but hesitated, imagining both André’s and Laurent’s eyes on us. Sofia had completed her tour of the show and stood now with Laurent, her coat on. Colin turned and enveloped me in his long, hard-muscled arms. I pressed my cheek to his shoulder for a few seconds, breathing in the cold night air he’d carried in with him, the smell of damp wool. “Your paintings are stunning,” he said. “They really are, Jayne.” In the next second, his mouth very close to my ear, he whispered, “I’ve missed you so much. When are you coming home to New York?” We hadn’t seen each other since before Christmas. More than three months. I had missed him, but we were in touch often; we e-mailed and texted, and I spoke to him on Skype sometimes when Laurent wasn’t home.
“I’m not sure,” I said softly, stepping away. “I missed you too.” I paused. “I’m so glad you like my paintings. That means a lot.”
He searched my face. “Jayne, if you move back, you could think about moving in with me.”
I took another step back. “What?” I said. I could s
ense two women a few feet to my left turning to look at us, but I kept my eyes on Colin.
“If you wanted to,” he said.
“Thank you,” I murmured, unable to think of anything else to say. I wondered if he’d been drinking, but I couldn’t smell any alcohol on him.
“I mean it,” he said. “I wanted to wait until we were alone to ask you, but I was so happy to see you that I couldn’t keep it to myself.”
I looked up at his earnest, clean-shaven face. I could hear people talking and laughing all around us. I was afraid to look for Laurent. By now he must have noticed that I was standing with Colin. “Yes, let’s talk about it when we’re alone,” I said.
“I’m sorry to put you on the spot here,” he said, contrite. “Tonight of all nights.”
“It’s okay. I’m really flattered.” I made myself glance around the room for a second, but I didn’t see Laurent or André. The gallery was crowded now; fifty or sixty people, maybe more, were standing around, talking in noisy, animated groups.
“Let’s talk tomorrow,” he said. “If you can?”
“Yes, I should be able to.”
“Okay,” he said. He was pale, and his face looked thinner, his cheeks less full, than the last time I’d seen him. “You know where I’m staying. Same place as always.” His eyes were on the floor as he spoke, and when he raised them again, instead of looking at me, he focused on the wall where my paintings were mounted.
I had the feeling then—as if I had woken in the night, certain that something I’d long feared had come true—that Laurent knew about us, and had for a while. It wasn’t fear or guilt that I felt, though. It was probably something closer to relief.
“I knew you were good,” said Colin. “I saw the paintings you kept in your apartment in New York, but these are—these look like they should be in a museum.”
I managed not to scoff at him. “It’s so sweet of you to say that, but I still have a lot to learn,” I said. I was pretty sure that I could paint a human body with the suggestion of a real person awake inside it, but I wasn’t in any danger of having a curator from MoMA come looking for me.
“I mean it, Jayne.” He reached for my hand, his palm a little damp. “Your paintings are beautiful. Congratulations.”
We were still standing in front of Joanie and Owls and Starlings when Laurent came over to introduce himself. He stood looking at us for an uncomfortable moment, neither Colin nor I knowing what to say, before he offered his hand to Colin and said, “I’m Laurent Moller, one of the owners of this gallery. You are Jayne’s friend from New York, yes?”
“Yes,” said Colin, shaking Laurent’s hand. “One of her friends. My name’s Colin Fuller.”
“I thought so,” said Laurent, with a cryptic note of finality—no, of assessment. He was taking the measure of this interloper, just as I had done a moment before with Sofia. “How long have you known Jayne?” he asked.
“About three years,” said Colin.
“Ah, not so very long then,” said Laurent.
Colin glanced at me, his expression hard to read. “Well, no, I guess not. But longer than you’ve known her, I would say.”
Laurent laughed. It was an odd, forced sound, like someone ripping cardboard. “Sometimes I feel as if I have known Jayne for all my life,” he said.
“That would be difficult, wouldn’t it? Considering you’re more than twenty years older than she is,” said Colin.
I could feel my stomach clench with apprehension. They were looking at each other harshly, a faint smile on Laurent’s face, his eyes cold; Colin’s face was burning. “I need a glass of wine,” I said, willing my voice to stay level.
“How do you like Jayne’s paintings?” Laurent asked, his harsh gaze still on Colin.
“They’re terrific,” he said.
“Yes, they are terrific,” Laurent repeated. He glanced at me and blinked deliberately, as if having decided something—to save his displeasure with me for later, I think—before he looked toward the back office. The caterers were using it that evening as their makeshift kitchen, the four of them circulating in and out, shoving open the heavy door with their white-shirted shoulders. “I think it is time for champagne,” said Laurent. He turned toward Colin. “Good to meet you, Mr. Fuller. At last.”
I said nothing, but Laurent wasn’t looking at me anyway.
“And you,” said Colin. Neither he nor Laurent smiled.
It was not until the next morning that Laurent said, his gaze flat, almost incensed, that before he had come over to introduce himself, he had noticed Colin and me talking at the gallery about something that had looked serious to him, and he wondered what it was. Had Colin had a death in the family? Had he lost his job? Was he ill?
“No, nothing like that,” I said, wondering if he was mocking me. If he was, I would surprise him by telling the truth. “He was trying to get me to come back to New York.”
“Why would he do that?” asked Laurent, watching me closely. “Because he wants to take you from me?”
“Yes, I guess he does,” I said.
“Do you want that too?” he asked.
“No.”
He said nothing for several seconds. When he finally spoke, his expression was meditative. “Are you sure that you want to stay here, Jayne?”
“Yes,” I said. “I am.” I didn’t ask if he wanted me to stay.
In Vie Bohème on that cold March night, my favorite teacher, my boyfriend, my lover, my boyfriend’s lover, his resentful business partner, his daughter, his daughter’s husband, and her own lover were all in attendance. It is a wonder we all remained somewhat civil to each other, that there were no histrionics. I wondered about Anne-Claire, why she hadn’t come to stir the pot too. As it turned out, she was in New York, visiting a man she had started seeing a few months earlier—another psychologist, an American she had been introduced to by Martin’s father.
6.
The vernissage of Intérieurs intimes might have been a fraught event, but the show was a commercial success. All but one of the paintings I had shown sold within the week, along with most of Susan’s and Chantal’s paintings. (Who were these buyers, I wondered—men with inherited money, or ones who had made their fortunes on the stock market? Old dowagers with young lovers who had convinced them to buy our emotional paintings of haunted-looking rooms and people in the grip of melancholy or the torpor that sometimes follows sex?)
The afterglow from the opening remained for several days, but then normal life, with its questions and lack of satisfying answers, returned. Laurent got up at eight each morning and later went to the gallery. He ran his errands, visited artists’ studios and who knew who else—women friends mostly, I felt sure—on the afternoons when he took long breaks. When he later returned home or to the gallery, he was often humming under his breath, something I began to think of as a tell. I could never detect any lingering scent of another woman’s perfume, but I suspect he would have taken a shower after he’d finished rolling around with whoever she was. He was a seasoned philanderer, a belief that I had become increasingly more susceptible to as my months living in his apartment and sleeping in his bed passed. But when I weighed the costs of challenging him, of constantly fighting and accusing him of bad behavior, they seemed too heavy. I was painting the best work of my life so far. I was living in Paris rent-free—and I had my own secrets to hide. There was also the fact that I cared a lot about Laurent, that although I didn’t know if I really did love him, I often loved being with him. It was my conviction too that he was turning me into a less fearful, less insecure person—because what did it matter, in the barest analysis, what he did when he wasn’t with me, if he acted no differently from one day to the next when he was?
My jealousy did rear up out of its dark, hot cave and make my life unpleasant sometimes, especially in the early evening when I was alone and often wondering where he was. Is it a mark of sophistication or maturity if you have learned to stifle the impulsive, explosive feelings that come with bei
ng betrayed? Because that is what I believe I was learning to do. And I had to think Laurent had also learned to do it, long ago, when he and Anne-Claire were both, from what I gather, seeing other people and their marriage was falling apart. The wish to be all things to our intimates into perpetuity—friend, confidant, lover, therapist—is there something fanciful and unrealistic about this? Perhaps we should have more than one friend, more than one person, to fill all those roles.
Learning to be more sophisticated, if that’s what it is, learning to channel your energies into pursuits more productive than jealous speculation, takes time. On some days I sensed something in Jeanne-Lucie’s manner toward me, a hint of pity, a habit of looking too long and intently at my face, her mind, I was convinced, cycling through a litany of reasons to tell me or not tell me what she knew of her father’s secrets. I remember a day not long after Colin’s October visit, the first time since the previous year that I had been in his bed, when she asked me if her father ever failed to come home at night. I was unbalanced by the question and said no with too much vehemence, and then laughed to try to cover up my distress. “Why wouldn’t he?” I asked. “Does he have another apartment in Paris with some other girl he takes care of? Does he think he’s François Mitterand?”
She smiled and laughed softly. “You know about Mitterand, with his two families?”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “What a lot of hassle and work, frankly.”
“You are so funny. The French do not think that way so much. It is pleasure he was after, comfort too. I doubt he thought of it as work. He was in love with both women, I’m sure.”
“Very nice for him,” I said. “Not so nice for the women.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But I suppose they got used to it. He was a great man, and they were happy that he wanted to be with them.”
“I’d rather have a less great man all to myself.”
Paris, He Said Page 26
