The Fine Art of Truth or Dare

by Melissa Jensen

  “Okay, then.” She was back, stalking toward me on endless legs and tall boots. Up close, I could see she was probably my mom’s age, only she didn’t henna out the gray in her hair, and she had lines around her mouth and between her eyebrows that looked deep enough to stand a toothpick in. She looked like she might have been beautiful once, before she got angry. “I’m Dr. Rothaus. This, unfortunately, is my domain.”

  She twisted a key in the lock of Room 312 and opened the door with a flourish.

  It looked like a storage room at Willing. Light filtered through a single small, high window. On one wall, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf sagged a little under the weight of hundreds of books. A pair of old-fashioned file-and-document storage drawers sat in the middle of the floor. In one corner, a leather sofa vied for space with an overstuffed ottoman and a black lacquered table.

  It got stranger. What looked very much like a fireplace poker leaned against a mahogany desk with a broken corner. A heavy-looking bronze clock took up a quarter of the surface. It was made up of a trio of fat, smug-looking nymphs and was ticking away with a slightly annoying click-hiss-click. I wondered if Dr. Rothaus came in every day to wind it up. I wondered if she touched anything else. Everything was covered in a fine film of dust.

  “I . . . I . . .” I was pretty speechless.

  “Expected something else, mayhaps?” Dr. Rothaus said scornfully. Then, “God, students. This isn’t Rembrandt here.”

  I took in the black fireplace screen and andirons, the fat footstool with carved cat feet, the dusty rug beneath. It was a little Addams Family, actually. I wasn’t sure exactly what I had expected. Light, maybe. At least more of it. Tidy shelves and cardboard file boxes. Books arranged in colorful rows. Framed pictures lining the walls: antique explorer’s maps from Italy, Cézanne watercolors Edward had brought back from France, his own paintings of Diana. The only thing on the wall, besides the shelves, was a big red fire extinguisher.

  Dr. Rothaus must have read the direction of my gaze—or thoughts. Wouldn’t have surprised me. “The bequest was for the contents of Edward Willing’s library,” she said tersely, “and did not include the paintings. Those went . . . elsewhere.” Her already disapproving expression became even more pinched with the word. Like elsewhere was Hell, or Overseas, or MoMA.

  “I can’t even begin to imagine what you thought you might find here. But that’s your problem, not mine. You have access to those drawers.” She pointed to one set. “Do not remove anything that is in a protective cover from the protective cover. I suppose you may look at the books, but be sure to put them back where you find them. It’s now four ten. I leave at six thirty. You will have finished by six. Where are your gloves?”

  Head spinning a little, I looked down at my hands. They seemed smaller than usual, and even in the dim light I could see that I hadn’t managed to scrub all the charcoal from the side of my index finger. “It’s not cold out—”

  “Archival gloves. For handling the objects. Don’t tell me . . .” She blew out an exasperated breath. “I’ll find you some. It’s your responsibility to replace them.”

  “Right,” I managed. “Thank you.” I wandered into the room and started to put my bag down on the desk. A quiet hiss from Dr. Rothaus had me hurriedly stowing it on the floor.

  “You may sit there.” She gestured to a much smaller desk with an attached chair, one that looked like it belonged to some Dickensian charitable school.

  “Was that Edward’s?” I asked, trying to imagine him there. Even in posed, formal photographs, he always looked relaxed, loose.

  “That is from a fire sale at St. Ignatius. I bought it. People need to sit somewhere in here.”

  Not on the sofa, clearly, or the large leather desk chair. There was something a little malevolent about the old school desk. I figured I would be working on the floor.

  “I will be back with your gloves. Don’t touch anything until you have them on.”

  I gazed around, a little hopelessly. Where to start? The files? The topmost row of books . . . ?

  Dr. Rothaus was back way too quickly. I thought of witches. She thrust a pair of white cotton gloves at me, then demanded, “Just what is it you’re looking for?”

  Everything I’d crammed about artist retrospectives zipped through my mind: enduring themes, aesthetic revival, licensing revenue. I’d written a line; Frankie had honed it. I was going to say, if asked that question, “I’m looking for the crux, the quintessence of American Post-Impressionist art as seen through the eyes of one of its preeminent painters.”

  Instead, I said, “I’m looking for the true Edward Willing.”

  She stood for a minute, arms crossed, scowling at me. Then she shrugged. “Fine.”

  She wedged the door open as she left. I noticed that she left her office door open, too. So she could keep an eye on me, no doubt, in case I decided to grab the andirons and make a run for it.

  I stood for a minute, taking it all in. Not what I’d expected at all. And Edward hadn’t been any help: “Heavens, how should I know what’s there? Whatever was left after my collective vulture of a family descended, I assume . . .”

  The first thing I did was to sit down on the sofa. The old leather creaked loudly enough to make me flinch. But it was worth risking the return of Dr. Rothaus to sit where Edward had sat. Only, it didn’t feel very significant. Just cold and little slippery.

  I ran my fingers over the nail-studded arm. There is a famous painting of Diana stretched out on a sofa, but that one was blue damask silk. I could think of one other sofa painting, Mrs. John Girard Hamilton, a pretty but not-particularly-happy-looking young society wife in a pink velvet dress. Edward liked the outdoors. Even his portraits were usually set outside. The truth was that I just couldn’t picture him in this room.

  I slipped on the archival gloves. They were soft and smelled like newspaper. Then I got up and headed for the file cabinets. They seemed the most likely place to find something I could use in my paper. They seemed the only likely place I was going to find anything useful. Kneeling in front of the bigger of the cabinets, I slid the top drawer out slowly. Inside I could see files, separated by thin wooden dividers, labeled by year. I ran my finger over the top: 1885, 1886, 1887.

  The last file in the drawer was 1890. It was the year Edward painted Across the Delaware (acquired in 1961 by Jacqueline Kennedy and now hanging in the White House foyer), the year he married Diana (April), and the year he nearly made her a widow on their extended honeymoon (May) when he overestimated the water temperature at the cliffs in Brontallo, Switzerland, and had to be pulled, nearly unconscious and hypothermic, from the water by a pair of passing Norwegian tourists in a rowboat.

  I slipped a page from among the collection. It was written on yellowed onionskin paper, a series of faded lines. Heart thumping, I brought it close to my face and began to read.

  Dear Mr. Willing,

  Thank you for you letter of 3 December. I am very pleased to inform you that we have managed to locate seven of the ten items you requested. Available as follows:

  6 bottles 1877 Mouton Rothschild

  12 bottles 1893 Margaux

  7 bottles 1895 Yquem . . .

  It went on. It was a lot of wine. Which meant pretty much nothing to me. I put it at the front of the file and chose another paper.

  Dear Mr. Willing, Enclosed please find an invoice for the month of November . . .

  Twelve yards of Indian muslin . . .

  Dear Mr. Willing, I write most humbly to describe to you the charitable efforts we envision for the following year . . .

  . . . I am at your disposal, sir, any day this month. And while I am thinking on the matter, I would certainly not say no should you generously offer to sponsor me membership to your club . . .

  From what I could see, most of the file was shopping lists, tradesman’s bills, notes from charities and schools and local arrivistes, all wanting something from Edward—usually money or time. None were particularly interesting, although
I got a kick out of a note from the Philadelphia Zoo suggesting that since the tiger was not entirely reliable around humans, perhaps Mr. Willing would consider a leopard for his painting instead. It had been a pet until the demise (natural) of its owner and would, if not firmly admonished, climb into a person’s lap, purring, and drool copiously.

  I pulled a sheet of scrap paper (the Stars spent a lot of time sending all-school e-mails about recycling) out of my bag and made a note on the blank side: “Leopard in The Lady in DeNile?” It wasn’t my favorite, Cleopatra Awaiting the Return of Anthony. It was a little OTT, loaded with gold and snake imagery and, of course, the leopard. Diana hadn’t liked the painting, either, apparently; she was the one who’d given it the Lady in DeNile nickname. I wondered if the leopard had drooled on her.

  None of the papers were personal, but they were Edward’s and some were special, if you knew about his life. There was a bill from the Hotel Ritz in Paris in April 1890, and one from Cartier two months later for a pair of Tahitian pearl drop earrings. Diana was wearing them in my favorite photograph of the two of them: happy and visibly tanned, even in black and white, holding lobsters on a beach in Maine. “I insisted we let them go,” Diana wrote in a letter to her niece. “Edward had a snit. He wanted a lobster dinner, but I could not countenance eating a fellow model.”

  I added “lobsters, earrings, Beach at Trouville, 1898?” to my sheet.

  There was a receipt for silk stockings from London (June) and another for “cycling trousers” in New York (July). I vowed to tell Frankie that Edward had paid seventy-five dollars for three custom linen suits and six dollars for a pair of straw boater hats. It was just the sort of thing he would appreciate.

  One sheet with a sketch on it made me catch my breath before I realized it wasn’t Edward’s work. It was a tailor’s design, a picture of a big coat that looked like an upright bear. I hoped Edward hadn’t bought one. I put the paper at the back of the file.

  I was disappointed, but not terribly surprised, to find more of the same in my quick scan of the drawer below. Another time, I might read carefully, but even if I did, I had a feeling I would be more charmed than informed. I looked at the ugly clock. It was a quarter to six.

  “Okay, Edward, where are you?” I asked quietly. I didn’t particularly want Dr. Rothaus to hear me chatting with empty air. I’d always made a point of talking to Edward only when I could look him in the face. Otherwise, it seemed a little too nutso, even to me.

  I got up and headed for the bookshelf. “You wanna know something,” was Dad’s refrain while we were growing up, “get a book.” Of course, he predates Google, but it stuck with me.

  I pulled down a blue, leather-bound book the size of a tombstone. Remembering Dr. Rothaus’s command, I noted its exact location. Not that I was likely to forget where it went anyway, but there didn’t seem to be much of an order to things. I was holding Geography of Southeastern Pennsylvania: A Government Survey, which had been stacked on top of Teutonic Mythology, on top of Experimental Researches Concerning the Philosophy of Permanent Colours.

  I opened Geography. It was full of big maps of small sections of the state. I put it back and scanned the nearby shelves. “We will be discussing your taste in reading materials later, Mr. Willing,” I muttered.

  It was a pretty dull collection. The A.B.C. Guide to the Making of Autotype Prints in Permanent Pigments. Art Work of Utah. Mosses and Liverworts: An Introduction to Their Study, with Hints as to Their Collection and Preservation. I couldn’t even work up a tingle in holding An Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy; with Observations on the Mistakes of Some Travellers, with Regard to That Country. I figured people had been making goombah jokes even in 1768.

  Edward had held these books, I reminded myself. He’d opened them, learned from them. Maybe fallen asleep while reading them. I took down The Hand: Its Mechanism and Vital Endowments, cupping it between mine, but it was cold and had sharp corners.

  Then I found a little pocket of poetry and fiction. Jane Eyre. Treasure Island. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. I haven’t read that one, but I’ve read Summer, about sex and longing and growing up. It was published in 1917, the year after Edward died. In the one letter from Edith to him that has made it into print, she talks about it. At least she’s probably talking about that book. I tried to remember the letter. “I am consumed by this fierce compulsion to tell a true fiction,” she’d written. Or was it “an honest fiction”?

  I flipped carefully through The House of Mirth. There weren’t any letters tucked inside, but on page 89, I found a note in the margin. “How true,” it read. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it probably referred to the line “The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else.”

  My search changed. Now I gently fanned hundreds of pages and I found notes. Most were single words: “Check,” “Rubbish,” “Hah!,” but sometimes there was more. I discovered “Read to Diana, pref. in bed” inked next to an Ezra Pound poem called “Fish and Shadow.” There was a mention of a woman and bed, but the important part apparently was in French: “Qu’ieu sui avinen, Ieu lo sai.” I didn’t understand a word of the French. Or the poem, for that matter. The notation was pretty obvious.

  I could feel myself blushing a little as I put the book back, but not before I’d copied the line on my note sheet. Then I went back and stood in the middle of the room. There was something there for me. There had to be.

  “Let me guess—” I spun to find Dr. Rothaus standing in the doorway. “You’re having a large disappointment,” she drawled, “with a side of rare pissed-offedness.”

  I thought about lying outright. But as it was medium dis-appointment with a side of self-pity, I just shrugged. “It’s not what I expected, but that doesn’t mean I’m not finding interesting things.”

  She leaned one sharp shoulder against the doorframe. “How well do you think you know Willing?”

  I figured “I chat with him in my bedroom on a regular basis” wasn’t the right answer. “Fairly well. He’s my favorite artist.”

  “Mmm. Cute, wasn’t he?”

  “Gorgeous!” I took the line, hook and sinker.

  Dr. Rothaus rolled her eyes. “God, devotees.” She sighed. “Let me give you some advice for your future, Willing Girl. If you idolize someone, stay away from where they live. You’re never going to see what you want to see. Whatever good they produce is usually somewhere else, and there’s always a poo stain on the toilet. Now go home. It’s closing time.”

  I scooped up my bag. She stepped back to let me out of the room. I got a few feet down the hall, then stopped. “Thank you,” I said.

  “For what?” she asked sharply. “The advice?”

  “For letting me in,” I told her. “Being here was . . . an honor.”

  She snorted, and pulled the door shut with a snap.

  • • •

  “She had a point, you know,” Edward commented a few hours later. “Unnecessarily crude, perhaps, but apt. Our public personas frequently do not match our private ones. You, of all people, should know that.”

  “This isn’t about me,” I said grumpily. “This is about needing to find more information about the private you. Something I don’t already know.”

  “I have terribly ugly feet.”

  “Not what I had in mind. And probably untrue anyway.”

  Edward glanced down at the empty space below his rib cage. “Probably. So, what did you have in mind?”

  “A letter, maybe. From Diana. Something that connected your love to your work.”

  “I rather thought I did that through my paintings.”

  “You did. I mean, that’s what attracted me to you in the first place. Well, no, that was your smile, probably, but the paintings helped. It’s just that I need to know more about your muse.”

  “Ah, darling Ella, the artist’s muse is Ego. Nothing more.”

  “You don’t mean that. You married Diana because she made you feel like no one else in
the universe ever did or could.”

  He nodded. “She was extraordinary.”

  “But not everyone saw that. Your family went nuts. Half of your friends stopped inviting you over, at least for a while.”

  “Their loss. She was a woman who comes along once in a lifetime.”

  “And . . .” I was on a roll. “Your sales increased dramatically after your marriage.”

  “Ah, now that wouldn’t stand up in a thesis, and you know it. My sales increased after my 1902 show at the academy, and more after I died. It wasn’t the love story, perhaps, so much as the end of it.”

  Of course I suspected as much, but hated saying it out loud.

  He didn’t. “You’ve read my letters, Bella Ella. According to you, the museum shop is now selling the sixth edition of the appallingly illustrated version my niece put together. It’s a simple truth: people like you better if you’ve suffered a little. Vincent van Gogh wouldn’t have half so many calendars and coffee mugs had he been quieter about his demons.”

  I’m inclined to agree, although I think van Gogh was a pretty amazing painter. I never mention that to Edward, especially since van Gogh’s Portrait of Doctor Gachet sold for eighty-two million dollars, and the Sheridan-Brown got Edward’s Portrait of Doctor Tapper for forty-two thousand.

  “You’d think that philosophy might have put the kibosh on some of the Freddy Krueger stuff,” I mused, tilting my jaw until I felt the pull of the scar.

  “And well it might, if you ever let on that it hurt.”

  I’m inclined to agree with that, too, but there’s a limit. “So I should start going strapless.”

  “Don’t be snotty. You don’t have to show your pain literally. You insist you are an artist, Ella. Be an artist. Use your joys—and your traumas. Tell me, how much did Vincent’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear sell for?” When I kept my mouth shut, he shrugged. “Fine. I am simply suggesting that you could be just a tad less self-protective. Show some scar.”