“Changed my mind.” I shrugged, trying to shut down this line of questioning. Cinco made me nervous, especially now, bringing up our past.
“You sounded so final. I remember wondering what the deal was with your certainty. Now here you are. Was Jim the one who wanted to come?”
This grated, as if he assumed Jim must have been the one making the decisions in my marriage. After a moment I realized that perhaps it gave me insight into his marriage—perhaps he made all the calls. “No, it took some serious convincing on my part.”
“So why the change?”
“That’s me. I’m a puzzle,” I said, shrugging, again trying to close this subject. I didn’t want to discuss this with Cinco. Not because I was embarrassed by my change of mind, but maybe because I didn’t want to hear from him that he’d been right all along. He knew me well. He’d often told me I couldn’t escape coming back to Cleveland. No matter how much I objected, he would insist he was right. I guessed he was ramping up for a gigantic I-told-you-so.
He paused, not content with my evasions. When the silence got uncomfortable I said, “Because we all come back. You of all people know that. Even Ellie came back.”
He considered this for a moment, started walking, and squeezed my arm a little. “Even me.”
“What do you mean even you? You were always coming back.”
“Is that what you thought then?”
“I mean there was never any question for you—was there?”
He looked me in the eye and then quickly looked out over the lake. “There could have been.”
My arm burned, tucked snugly as it was under his. I wondered what my husband would think of me walking so cozily with Cinco.
“I don’t think you could be happy anywhere besides here,” I said.
“You wouldn’t be happy anywhere but here either.”
“Yes, I remember you saying that,” I said. “I thought it’d be claustrophobic.”
“Oh, it’s definitely that,” he said.
“So why come back?”
He shrugged and took my arm out from under his. We’d arrived at my car.
“Why indeed?” he asked, opening my door and helping me into the car.
• 15 •
The Benefit
The holidays came and went in the usual blur that is Cleveland Christmas. With my pregnancy, Jim and I made a new rule—only one party a night, no doubling up lest I feel exhausted. The week leading up to Christmas was packed with multigenerational parties each night. I dragged myself to all of them, again not wanting to miss a thing. I saw Ellie at only two parties—both given by old families, not the sort of invitations you could turn down, even if you were Ellie. I felt sure she’d been invited to lots more, but she’d declined these invitations.
Jim redeemed himself from the mountain bike incident by giving me earrings for Christmas, and his family sent an ancient silver porringer that had been his grandfather’s, as an early gift for the baby.
At the end of all this celebrating, Cleveland collectively goes into hibernation. No one entertains in January; people barely go out. It’s as if people can’t stand to see one another after so much cheer.
And so I was actually looking forward to the art museum’s annual black-tie benefit in February, though I still didn’t have anything to wear in my current size. Jim assured me daily that I looked beautiful, that my body was amazing. But his constant attention overshot the mark, and I wound up feeling even more self-conscious. Though I agreed with the amazement part, my body felt out of control, like it was running amok, which it was—albeit for a good cause.
The theme of the benefit was 1916, the year the museum was opened. Diana Dorset’s development job put her in charge of the party, and she had decided that a series of tableaux vivants would be the attraction for the evening. Each of a dozen young Clevelanders would be paired with a local designer or artist and play a part in depicting a painting currently hanging in the museum. The participants’ names were listed on the back of the invitation, and among them was Eleanor Hart, who would be posing in a tableau created by Steven, the designer she worked for.
The museum had never done anything like it before, and the idea was so retro it was chic. Diana and the benefit committee of young up-and-comers and old-school movers and shakers went to great lengths to ensure that the tableaux would be tasteful and fast as quicksilver, nothing staid and fixed but a morphing and changing vision.
The night of the party, the glassed-in courtyard was set with chairs, and the doors leading into the 1916 galleries were transformed into a stage with old damask curtains, gold cording, and potted palms. High heels clicked on the marble floors as glasses clinked at the bar, and the room hummed with the slightly intoxicated breath of the guests.
I watched Diana move through the room. Her position in development meant she knew almost everyone. She knew their net worth, their interest in the museum, whether they’d donated in the past. I watched her calculate who needed a big showy hug—marking them as an insider with the museum—and who preferred the less showy, but equally impressive, tête-à-tête before solemnly being turned over to one of her staff to be shown to their seats. Diana knew who liked to be acknowledged in the program and who preferred to have their name on a discreet “Reserved” card on a chair in the front row. She excelled at these small calculations, making people feel comfortable and superficially special. Tonight she was shining, at the height of her power.
I was walking down the rows, looking for a seat, when I saw William Selden. He looked more groomed than usual, and I sat next to him waiting for Jim to catch up with us.
“I’m so excited about this,” I said.
“Have you seen Ellie?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Do you know which painting she’s going to be?”
“I don’t. She was so secretive about it. I barely saw her all week.”
So Ellie and Selden were seeing each other.
“I hope she chooses something gorgeous. One of the Muses or something,” I said. “I’ve always thought someone should paint Ellie.”
Jim settled in next to us, and then the lights went down.
The first scene was the museum’s famous Degas painting of a dancer in four poses. They’d chosen four close friends, all brunettes, to pose in white tulle skirts on chairs. The crowd applauded enthusiastically, a good start.
The next was a Modigliani, Portrait of a Woman, perfectly cast to feature Lulu Melson’s long neck. They’d gotten her clothes just right too; the long pendant between her breasts was an exact replica of the one in the painting. Her gaze was wistful, the blush on her cheek intense.
“Lulu Melson always looks good in black,” a voice behind my shoulder whispered, and I turned to see Steven, the designer, sitting in the row behind me.
“But not as good as Ellie,” I whispered back, and he winked at me and nodded toward the stage.
The next was Dan Dorset and a man I didn’t know bare-chested in loincloths as George Bellows’s Stag at Sharkey’s. Dan Dorset had clearly been working out for this, and though his stomach looked well muscled, his depiction somehow lacked the fearsomeness of the raw and violent original.
They’d chosen the pale and frail Elizabeth Corby for the Van Dyck portrait of a woman and child. Mrs. Corby looked the part with her high blue-veined forehead and watery eyes and lashes, so it was easy to forgive the fact that her blond-haired daughter in blue embroidered velvet did not quite match the original painting. The child blushed adorably but held the pose next to her mother.
Kate van den Akker portrayed the muse of history in a bright yellow silk gown with gargantuan feathered wings on her shoulders. She was wrapped in a purple silk banner and held a stone tablet. The classical dimension of her features made this the most exact representation so far.
Finally it was Ellie’s turn, and when the curtain was drawn to reveal her the audience gasped. She’d chosen a Rubens, though her voluptuous curves weren’t as decadent as the Diana in Diana a
nd Her Nymphs Departing for the Hunt. Ellie was clad in a diaphanous white toga that hinted at her excellent form beneath. Around one shoulder hung a leopard skin, draped to expose one pale perfect breast.
There were immediate whisperings in the room. Some of the older women looked away. The older men stared agape. Diana Dorset stood off to the side in her supervisory capacity with a delighted smirk on her face.
Ellie held a greyhound at the end of a short leash and the dog, sensing the excitement, was trembling, needing to be calmed. Ellie’s hair flowed down her back in loose waves.
She’d never looked more beautiful to me.
I looked to my left to see my husband staring at her in wonder.
When I looked back at Ellie, I saw her beam a wide loving smile out to my right. I, along with everyone else in the room, realized she was smiling directly at Selden. Her smile broke the pose; in the painting, Diana didn’t smile. Then, to my utter shock, she winked—at Selden.
Selden started and then blushed deep magenta. People turned in their seats to stare at him. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, not smiling.
I realized then that Ellie had made a serious miscalculation. For all his bohemian, world-weary, pot-smoking ways, at heart Selden was still a conventional boy from the Midwest. However much he might not mind, might applaud even, a wild display like Ellie’s tonight, the woman he loved should never do such a thing, never be seen as aggressive, especially sexually aggressive. Such conservatism, such modesty, had been bred into him. And when something like that was bred into you, you couldn’t get it all the way out.
The dog jumped on the end of its leash. Ellie reached down to settle it and then rose, striking the pose with an intent look on her face, and I knew that she’d realized her error.
I hardly remembered any of the other tableaux. No one did. There was great applause at the end.
During the cocktail hour I found Ellie and Steven surrounded by admirers. Her chest was covered now, and she wore the leopard skin around both shoulders as a wrap. A newspaper reporter was asking questions. Steven was expounding on the human form in art, Diana the huntress, and Jeff Koons’s porn star ex-wife showing a breast during Italian political rallies. Ellie slipped away and took my arm.
“Incredible,” I said. “You’re the talk of the evening.”
“I didn’t think it would be that big a deal.”
I smirked. “Seriously?” I asked. “Ummm, Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl? You had to know all of Cleveland would talk.”
“About a boob?” She shook her head. “They’re not scandalized by the painting, and it’s been hanging there for years.”
“Yes, but you showed your actual breast.”
“Much more exciting than a painting of one, I guess.” I noted with concern that she took a glass of champagne off a passing tray and gestured with it toward a group of Gus Trenor’s friends in close conversation. “All of them probably watch porn on the Internet. Really, I thought it might cause a little talk, but what is the big deal? Steven wanted me to do it. He told me it’d create a ton of publicity for him.”
She had to know it would cause a scandal, much more than a titter. I suspected she wanted to be the talk of the evening. I wondered why. “Well, Steven was right,” I said as we both turned toward the group swarming the designer. “Good for him. Do you think he’ll be able to do anything with it?”
“I hope so,” she said.
Steven looked sharp in jeans, a white T-shirt, and combat boots with a halo of blond stubble highlighting his jaw and his lip piercings—very much the artist in residence tonight. His outfit was calculated, I’m sure, to stand out among the other men in their black tuxedos.
“The Amazons fought with one breast exposed,” I heard him say. “It’s said the sight of just one female nipple stopped male warriors in their tracks.” All the reporters laughed.
Diana Dorset came up to introduce Ellie to an important board member, the head of a large tire company in town—a florid, fat man with a cane who stared at Ellie’s now-covered chest.
I’d lost Jim, and in looking for him I wandered over to one of my favorite pieces in the museum, the Cocktails and Cigarettes Jazz Bowl. The large black ceramic bowl had been glazed in turquoise with Deco scenes of the city, people dancing, cocktails rising up toward the skyline, smoke curling up from their cigarette holders. It’d won the museum’s May Show back in 1931.
“I’ve always loved that,” a deep voice said, and I turned to see Cinco Van Alstyne standing next to me.
I smiled at him and gestured toward the small plaque next to the piece stating that it had been a gift from his family. “Apparently your great-grandmother did too.”
“My uncle found it a couple years before my grandmother died when they were trying to sort out the farm. It was in a bottom cupboard in the pantry. Someone had filled it with Tupperware and old keys that didn’t fit any locks anymore—amazing it didn’t get chipped. Still beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Nice of them to donate it,” I said, feeling oddly uncomfortable as I remembered when we’d talked, at Julia’s. He’d said the same thing about me.
“The easy way out when everyone wants it,” he said. “Eleanor Roosevelt had one too.”
“Did they ever use them?” I asked, hoping to keep the conversation light.
He shook his head. “Completely nonfunctional.” He smiled at me with an arched eyebrow. “Insert joke about my family here.”
I laughed.
“Crazy to see it here, though,” he said, looking at it, and then more quietly, “Crazy to see you here.”
“I’ve always loved this place.” I gestured around at the galleries. “Love to support it.”
He nodded. “I meant in Cleveland.”
My heart skipped a beat, and I felt my face grow hot.
“I just can’t figure out why after everything, you came back here,” he said, moving closer to me.
I said nothing, looking at the bowl in front of me.
I couldn’t believe he was picking up our conversation from the estate sale again. Our parting years ago had been mutual. What was he trying to start? I thought it best to brush him off.
“I told you why.” I smiled. “I’m nesting, same as you.”
“But like you said, I was always coming back.”
I shrugged.
“You coming back here changed everything, and you know it,” he said quietly in my ear, standing right next to me.
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “And you know it.”
An elderly lady in a sequined jacket admiring the bowl on the other side of the case gave us a quick glance before she politely moved off.
“You’re happy,” I said, thinking of his wife, of the wedding, of the dinner party. “Don’t pretend you’re not.”
He ignored this. “I want to know why.”
“Why not? It’s a good place to wind up. To raise a family.”
“No,” he said, clear gray-blue eyes staring me down. “I want to know why it wasn’t me.”
Did he really want to know, or was he trying to stir up some drama, some excitement in musty old Cleveland? “The condition to being with you was coming back here,” I said. “I didn’t want someone with conditions.”
“But you came anyway.”
“Like that matters. We were never like that. You had conditions. You’d never be with someone who wouldn’t come back here and that, to me, isn’t true love. You have to be willing to give up everything.”
“Everything?” he asked. “What complete bullshit.”
“Everything, no conditions, no strings.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “So if Jim cheated on you, you’d still love him.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I mean you have conditions of your own—fidelity, responsibility. Don’t tell me you love him with no strings. Love is not some unconditional thing.”
“I do love him with no strings,” I said. “Lo
ve should be completely unconditional.”
He snorted, drained the last of his drink, and muttered, “Bullshit,” under his breath.
Jim interrupted us then. Sensing the tension between us, he immediately drew me under his arm. He stuck his other hand out at Cinco, who shook it with maybe more vigor than was needed. Cinco’s cloak of respectability descended as he leaned over to accept a kiss from a stout older woman in heavy gold jewelry who hustled up to him. Then he begged off, claiming to see someone he needed to talk to.
Jim studied me. “You okay?”
I nodded. “What do you think of this piece?” I asked, turning toward the Van Alstynes’ bowl.
He watched Cinco across the room. “So you and Cinco?” he said. “You grew up together?”
I shrugged. “I knew him growing up.”
“Were you ever together?” he asked. I should have known Jim’s intuition would be as strong as ever.
“We dated a little,” I said.
He was staring at me, and so I turned back to the bowl. “Love the idea of that era,” I said. “The flapper, the cropped hair, the women getting the vote and their smokes.”
“The idea is probably better than the reality. Look at the first thing they did with their vote.”
“What?” I said.
“Prohibition.” He smirked. “Sick of getting the snot beaten out of them by drunk husbands, you know. Decided to try and get the law on their side.”
Here was a bit of conditional love. I’ll love you as long as you don’t hit me. I’d never thought of it that way.
I was glad for Jim’s arm around me. My past with Cinco wasn’t something I had brooded over, until now. He hadn’t loved me like that. He’d been looking for someone to come back and deal with the farm—a partner—even if he wouldn’t admit it to himself. I hadn’t wanted someone so convention bound, so decided.
I suppose we would have looked perfect on paper—two good Cleveland backgrounds. A part of me did wonder what it would have been like with him. Could I have gotten him to leave the farm and his preconceived life? Not that it mattered. My head looped around these questions, circling back and forth—all over someone I hadn’t thought of seriously in years.
Gilded Age Page 14
