DUSTIN GERAHY: You know, as brilliant as Addison was, people also wanted to sabatoge her. “Tall poppy syndrome,” they call it in Australia. Meaning if Addison was the brightest, most beautiful flower standing in the drab field of South Kingstown High School, first we wanted to stare up at her, and then we wanted to cut her down. A lot of kids joked that she didn’t have a real home. That she slept in the art room like a ghoul, sucking on the oil paints for nourishment. I’d joke, too. Addison was beautiful, but she also looked like a girl who’d just woken up from an all-nighter in a broom closet.
EVE LIM: Roy’s drinking was becoming an issue, a small-town scandal. There was a rumor he was having a fling with a local girl, Shona Barrett, whose parents own Shona’s—a sandwich shop over on Greenhill Beach. Lucy would go to Addison’s house and then report that Shona’d been there making eyes at Roy, both of ’em drinking cheap box wine with pop radio blasting, while Charlie was off at sports practice and Maureen was walled up in her bedroom, watching television. No wonder Addison didn’t want to be there.
BILL FIELDBENDER: I was passing through the school’s faculty lounge one evening—I’d been at a policy meeting till late, and I found Addison curled up in an armchair, sketching and eating a bag of Doritos. “Hey, Bill, tonight I’m sleeping here,” she explained, “because my folks had a fight.” Very matter-of-fact. As if sleeping inside her high school was a reasonable option. That was when my brain pulled the fire alarm.
That next morning I emailed the high school summer program at Pratt Institute. I wanted Addison capital O-U-T out of Peacedale. Sadtler money or not, we could rescue her through a summer program. She’d be turning eighteen, and Arlene and I reckoned she could even stay in New York through the next school year. Then she could start laying down a solid groundwork of classical knowledge, as well as focusing her training on form and technique, and make up any additional required classes at the Professional Children’s School—a highly accredited school that is specifically for young people in the arts.
Look, my wife and I are small Rhode Island potatoes, but we’re on good terms with plenty of well-connected people in the New York art scene. We thought they could be her sponsors and her mentors. We saw invitations and opportunities well beyond what anyone here could give her. We didn’t see issues. Not the way we should have. That’s how badly we wanted Addison out of Peacedale. That’s how badly we wanted her to soar.
LUCY LIM: The Fieldbenders were fricking bananas to get Addy out of Peacedale. They pushed it hard. They’d even plan these little “spontaneous” meet-ups with me and The Lenox, because they wanted us to whisper in Addy’s ear about how she needed to go to New York, how New York was the only place that could “handle her genius.” At first, we were all like, “Enough with your crazy!” I mean, Addy was too young to pack up and leave home. She wasn’t even eighteen till summer!
Besides, Addy said her own mom was a big obstacle to the Fieldbender plan. Addy cracked us up, imitating her mom wringing her hands and whimpering, “Oh goodness gracious, oh dear, oh dear. Over my dead body will I let my daughter get eaten by wolves in New York!”
And then, just when we thought the argument was over and the Fieldbenders had dropped it, Addy won that W.W. Sadtler thing, plus her Talking Head painting of Mrs. Hurley won the Maynard Prize. Everything changed. The newspapers were all over it. They did a huge article on her in Parade magazine, and another one in The Narragansett Times, and then it seemed like she didn’t belong anywhere but New York City. So it all got settled pretty quick, zip-zilch-zot.
BILL FIELDBENDER: “Your Future Goes Here” is sponsored by the Maynard Institute. It’s a privately funded program that gives away about five million dollars a year to students by way of grants and prizes. Arlene and I had submitted Addison’s painting of Nancy Hurley, who is South Kingstown’s school principal.
Nancy has been our school principal for almost twenty years, so she’s a well-known face in these halls. Everyone loves Nancy; she’s an institution. What I love most about the painting Addison did of her is that it shows Nancy in a different light. Not the jolly, smiling, lively lady we all recognized. There’s something quiet and unguarded and intimate about it; you feel like you’re kind of creeping up on Nancy while she’s asleep. In a final touch, Addison etched MOM above her head, which is definitely the way many students think about Nancy.
ARLENE FIELDBENDER: Of course it wasn’t lost on any of us that both Bill and Nancy were, in a sense, stand-in parent figures. Addison only painted people she felt emotionally connected to. But Talking Head was interesting, too, because it had the technical chops that the Maynard appreciates. Addison tended to work large. Lots of thick paint applied to giant canvases. She’d started the piece mid-December and worked straight through the holiday break—we even gave her keys so she could come in when the school was locked up.
BILL FIELDBENDER: Arlene and I submitted it ourselves because we knew Addison wouldn’t have bothered with the mundane paperwork details. We’d hoped that she could get some recognition from real institutions. Every single thing Addison was doing deserved recognition—and nobody in her inner circle seemed to care. Well. I cared. My wife cared.
Talking Head by Addison Stone, courtesy of Carine Fratepietro.
MAUREEN STONE: Addison came home one day in late spring and said, “Mom! I won twenty grand from the W.W. Sadtler Foundation and five thousand from the Maynard Institute. No strings attached. So I guess I’ll be going to New York after all.”
Twenty-five thousand dollars! Merciful heaven, I just didn’t know what to say. Roy’s and my jaws dropped. Our fight to stop Addison from running off to New York City just crumbled away—how could we hold up an argument against it?
Of course, Arlene and Bill Fieldbender had to play queen and king of the chessboard. The way they smiled at me and Roy, with daggers in their eyes. “No need to worry. We’ve taken care of everything.”
Over and over. No matter what I said, one or the other would answer, “We already thought about that” and “Everything is paid for” and “One of us will see to that.” They’d found Addison a dorm and a chaperone. They even called Addison’s psychiatrist, Dr. Tuttnauer, and helped her to secure Addison a new psychiatrist, Roland Jones, in the city. The Fieldbenders ladled poison in Dr. Tuttnauer’s ear, I’m sure, about how Addison had to get away from her small-minded family and her smaller-minded town.
When we all sat down together, I could feel their resistance to everything Roy and I said or thought. They believed we couldn’t provide anything for Addison. Their judgment flavored every word out of their mouths. Heaven knows, I never wanted to hold Addison back. But she’d been so sick, and junior year, she’d been doing so much better. I didn’t want her to lose that.
Whatever else these interviews are telling you, about our family, our struggles, and Addison’s desire to be free of us, I promise, it was never, ever as bad as you’ll hear. Blame poverty, blame family—but mostly, blame the mother, right? It’s an old story, isn’t it? I will tell you, though, if my daughter had stayed in Peacedale, she’d be alive today. Because I would have been watching Addison. I was always watching her.
But I couldn’t watch her once she dropped out of sight.
Addison Stone, summer before senior year, courtesy of Lucy Lim.
V.
“THEY NEED TO LET ME COME BACK.”
ADDISON STONE (clip from the interview “Twenty Under Twenty-Five: New York Artists to Watch”): Every artist remembers her first time seeing New York. I’m no different. My boyfriend drove me down from Rhode Island on the I-95 through the Palisades, the Bronx, Harlem. You get an assload of ugly smack in the eye even before you hit midtown. My body was caffeine, malted milk balls, and adrenaline.
First thing I did was dump my bags at my shoebox dorm room at Pratt, and then I headed straight to Carine Fratepietro’s gallery show. Sweaty palms! By then I’d completed three of my Billfold series, the paintings I was doing of Bill Fieldbender, plus the one of Nancy Hu
rley, which had gotten me a lot of attention. My “Mom and Dad” paintings, we called them.
That first day-into-night, I was wearing my Converse All-Stars and drainpipe jeans and a purple T-shirt with paint splattered all over it, but I didn’t have time to change. Also, to be honest, I don’t care about shit like that. Sure, I’ll wear the sparkly gown, especially if it’s a freebie. But I do better if I walk into a room as me. Fashion is art, but I’m not someone who needs costumes or flashiness to signal myself. The work itself has to speak loudest.
Irony was, what I wore that night defined my first brush with the press. Everyone ended up writing about Addison Stone—the “Maynard winner” and the “Chandelier Girl” and “hot young artist”—who showed up to her first opening looking like a junkie. Hand to God, I didn’t care. I looked bad, but I looked good, you know? I came through the door exactly the way I wanted.
CARINE FRATEPIETRO: I was born in Lyon, France, but now I have homes everywhere. Or maybe my home is on airplanes. My life is hectic. I raised my son Zach in this jet-set lifestyle. Italy one day, Miami the next. When all your passion is art, you are always tracking in search of the next new star. I do believe that my son benefitted from a global education, but some days, I wonder if the whole craziness of Zach and Addison was because he was too used to the game of pursuit.
I was an artist long ago, before I learned that my real gift is my eye. I see what others don’t. My private collection was recently valued at two hundred million. I will tell you now, it’s worth more—though it is never good for people to know how much money you have. Addison Stone’s chandelier video was youth and beauty and laughing in the face of death. Her portrait paintings showed immense knowledge, sensitivity, and sensuality. She was too young for such breadth. I did not believe it. But my eye knew not to look away.
That night of her opening, I had a dinner engagement. It was Zach who met her first. Momentous, yes? Suddenly they were together all the time, the magazines, gossip sites … it seemed that all at once, the world revolved around Addison and my son. Zach is a party boy. It’s not good to present yourself to the world as a party girl because of the company you keep. But that sword was double-edged, no? Because my son will never shake his fateful connection with Addison Stone.
ZACH FRATEPIETRO: When my mother can’t be at openings, she likes me to go for her. She’s old-school European, and so she thinks a member of the family should always be present, to act as host. The art world is tiny and powerful, and I have a good eye, too. I’m more serious than the press makes me out to be. My biggest career issue is that the press hates society kids. They think we’re trust puppies. The press started calling me “Zach Frat” and “Zach Brat” all the way back when I was at Collegiate. But I only party as hard as the next guy.
Zach Frat, New York, courtesy of Alexandre Norton.
Alexandre Norton’s family has even more money than mine, and they never give him the shit they give me, because Alex doesn’t strive to be more than a good-time guy. I’m serious about my future. People don’t understand that your last name only gets your foot in the door, which can be a blessing and a curse. Being the “son-of” is a pretty limited narrative. And people want you to fail on that; people judge you harder. People assume you get all the breaks. Addison wasn’t my easy break—I found her all on my own. I was onto Addison before Carine or any of the gallerinas had her on their radars. I’d seen pictures of Addison. She was so hot. Sometimes Russian looking, other times South American, sometimes Asian or French. I never knew a girl who could look so many different ways. With those glittering eyes and that secret smile.
Talking Head went for a joke price. I think Addison sold it to us for six thousand or something? She wasn’t with Max Berger at that point, so my mother bought it outright. Cheap as it was, Addison was still the featured star at the group show my mother was exhibiting through Berger Galleries. They exhibit and sometimes resell our private collection, along with their own pieces.
There were a lot of up-and-comers that night, and I’d handpicked most of the art on the walls. But Addison was my It Girl. She was my discovery.
ARLENE FIELDBENDER: Bill and I set it up. We are both guilty as charged. Can you blame us? It was too easy. We clipped a few photographs of Addison, along with her recent press and a scan of some of her portfolio pieces, and we emailed everything with a note to Zach Fratepietro. We knew her face would catch his attention, and we knew he bought art on behalf of his mother. The ball was rolling so fast and hard with Addison. Getting her into a real New York show was absolutely the next piece of it. I said to Bill, “Zach Fratepietro couldn’t spot talent if it bit him on the balls, but he will respond to a pretty face. And then Carine will be able to see what Addison is.” Zach will always be under his mother’s thumb. At the same time, he’ll always be desperate to prove that he “discovered” the next Big Thing.
Of course they bought the piece immediately, because Addison had priced it too low. We thought she could get twenty times that amount, and we encouraged her to sign with a smart dealer, but Addison could be stubborn. Anyway, she now had plenty of money—all the budget she needed to live in New York City. Clothing allowance, food and living expenses, all of it.
Bill and I hadn’t counted on the fact that Addison would end up turning over most of that money to her family. We had no idea Addison stayed poor as a church mouse all that first New York summer. We only found out about that much later.
ZACH FRATEPIETRO: Friday night of Addison’s first show was insane. I don’t know who leaked it. It was the usual gallery opening scene, but it felt jacked up. Everyone seemed to know that Addison was newsworthy. It was like she had this pre-fame. The gallery was wall-to-wall people: the regular money crowd, plus the celebs and the hangers-on in their velvet blazers and stilettos and fake eyelashes and micro-miniskirts, and then Addison, killing it in her jeans and messy hair and paint splotched down the front of her shirt. She was an original.
It takes one-fifth of a second to fall in love. That’s what popped into my mind the moment I saw her. It happened that quick for me, too. Quicker, even.
ALEXANDRE NORTON: Zach and I are second cousins. Blood is thicker than water, but we’d have been tight even without our blood connection. We started at Collegiate in pre-K. I know that guy better than I know myself. And I knew, that night, I knew bone-deep that this new girl, this Addison, was trouble. I knew my cousin would be throwing it all away for her. I could feel that he would do that, and she wouldn’t be worth it.
And I was right on every count.
LUCY LIM: That night of Addy’s exhibit in New York City, I was up visiting my dad on Lake George as usual. Not sure how, but Lake George had, since the last summer, become even worse than watching-paint-dry boring. The only halfway fun part was Addy’s first night in the city, how she looped me in and made me be part of it. So fun! My phone was going zzzp zzzp zzzp every thirty seconds. Every picture had my eyeballs zinging! The crowd was too beautiful! The art was too strange! I don’t get art. But Addy’s face was glowing, lit up, and you could tell she didn’t want to miss a thing.
Then she Snapchatted me a photo of this guy, Mr. Prep School with the swoopy haircut. He wasn’t model-hot, but he was sort of asshole-hot. He was the guy with the best shoes and the quickest, cruelest put-down. In the picture, he was wearing a buttery-yellow summery silk shirt that looked like it cost more than my dad’s Sunfish. Next up was a double-selfie where they’re both raising wine glasses, and then the next one was the two of them nuzzling, and I was like, Ahhhhh. Okay. She’s feeling this guy.
But I knew Addy. She was Snapchatting because of The Lenox, and she didn’t want any evidence that she was into Haircut while poor, sweet Jonah was waiting for her at her dorm.
She’d told me that she and The Lenox had agreed, since they would be so far apart, that they wouldn’t be against seeing other people. But Addy confessed to me later that she hadn’t counted on meeting someone new that very first night.
Around
midnight, Addy texted: look up Zach Fratepietro! When I did, I found out he was the son of this dragon-lady art gallery diva that I never heard of, and I found all these pictures of him and his pals like Alexandre at clubs and parties and fashion shows. I’d never heard of any of these big-money people or art people, but I was impressed. They were known. They were young and rich and almost famous.
It was only one summer before that Addy had been committed to Glencoe, where I’d visited her in that room with bars on the windows and seen her sitting balled up, her eyes glazed over, telling me she was finished with life. She’d seemed like such a prisoner of the moment. And now here she was in the heart of New York City, at her own gallery opening, becoming a superstar. She’d shot out of her house and literally straight into the arms of New York’s most eligible.
JONAH LENOX: After I’d graduated from South Kingstown, the plan was for me to drive Addison to New York City, maybe hang out a few days, and then head west to Boulder. Once Addison knew she was really leaving, and especially when she got some money in the bank from the Sadtler people, she started detaching. Even though we called it “taking some time off from each other,” I knew she was closing her chapter on me. She started buying me stuff, just small things—a sweatshirt, a cool cell phone skin—and I knew, even though I never said anything to her, that it was because she felt bad for me. She wanted to put a Band-Aid on it, but she knew I was just another person in this world who was more into her than she was into me.
The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone Page 7
