The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone

by Adele Griffin

  We packed the Chevy with all her stuff—her paints and easel, her canvases, a mini-microwave, her millions of art books, her winter coats and boots. We said goodbye to everyone. Her mom and her dad and Charlie and Lucy and Lucy’s mom all waved from the front door, but once Addison got in the car, she literally never looked back.

  “Hey, turn around and wave to your mom,” I said.

  She just shook her head no. I knew she felt horrible to be leaving her mom, who had her faults, but who didn’t have much else happening in her life, especially once Addison was gone. Not that Addison should have been held accountable for that. But still. Hard.

  The closer we got to the city, the more Addison started in on this rant. It was like she had to say goodbye by rejecting everything. Nothing was good in Peacedale. It sucked, the people sucked, the art sucked. She saw herself as having just barely escaped. The Fieldbenders were like her fairy godparents, and I was the nice guy driving the magical pumpkin.

  “Can you believe we’re both out, Jonah? I’d have died to stay behind in Rhode Island once you’d left.”

  “Aw, stand down, Addison. You’d have been okay. You’d have made it work. You’ve got Lucy, Bill and Arlene, and Charlie. You’ve got your head on straight.”

  “That’s not true,” she answered. “I don’t have my head on straight. My head’s been on crooked for a long time now.”

  Well, I didn’t want to get into it with her. Her crooked head was made up.

  Once we got to the city, I decided not to tag along to the art opening. I was dead tired and wanted to sleep. The plan was that Addison’d come back, wake me up, and we’d roll out to a late dinner. She texted only once from the show that she was running late, and when she finally stumbled in at 2 A.M., I could feel my heart rip a little. I knew she’d had a great time, and that she probably hadn’t even wanted to come back at all. Even her skin smelled different.

  She climbed into bed, cold and sweaty, complaining about bed spins. Addison wasn’t a girl who drank ever. Not with the meds she was on. She mumbled that they just kept feeding her cocktails. That every time she put one down, they’d stick another one in her hand, and even one sip from six glasses could lead to a pretty stiff drink.

  “I stayed out too late, and you know I’m an amateur. I’m so sorry, Jonah.”

  She kept on apologizing, even half asleep, which should have been a sign, but I didn’t want to see it. So I was like, “Cool, let’s sleep in tomorrow. Pop some popcorn, hang out, talk, maybe take the subway to the Met later on.”

  We curled up together and crashed, and the next morning, I went on a Starbucks run, and when I come back, who’s sitting in the room right on the edge of the same bed where we’d just been sleeping, but this guy. He’s pressed and ready in his tassel shoes and knife-cut pants and a signet ring. “Hey there, I’m Zach!” With his shit-eating toothpaste grin.

  I think Addison was genuinely surprised that he had tracked her down. It was painful for me, but I tried to be cool with it. Still. It was—bang. No matter how many slurred apologies. The bottom line was I’d been fired and replaced.

  After Zach left, we hung out, ate the popcorn, talked, just like we’d planned, but the day was empty. Before I left, Addison gave me this sketch—The Lenox. Her last gift.

  The Lenox by Addison Stone, courtesy of Jonah Lenox.

  “I get it that you don’t belong to me,” I said to her. “Not that you ever did. But I’m already missing you from my life.”

  “I know,” she answered. That was her answer. Not “I’ll miss you, too.” Not “Maybe it’s not over.” Just “I know.” Addison never liked to bullshit anyone.

  The other day on the beach, I was thinking how we all get old, but Addison stays young and perfect forever. Lucy Lim likes to remind me about all the art that Addison left in the world. Like it’s a calling card to remember her by. Lucy’s a glass-half-full kind of girl. But I can’t help seeing a no-Addison world as half empty. She’ll always touch the deepest places of my memory, the places you turn over just to feel that bruise and know that it’s gone, she’s gone, and none of it’s ever coming back.

  ERICKSON MCAVENA: Addison Stone was my one true friend in the big bad city, and I was hers. Her boys came and went, but I stayed, along with her beloved Lucy “Lulu” Lim. I’ll tell you something: in some ways, I reckon I knew Addison better than Lucy did. I knew bright, shiny, photo-ready, outer-shell Addison, but I also knew soft, fierce, inside-core Addison. And that all added up to a complicated girl.

  We met that very first week we got to the city. We were both living on the seventh floor of windowless, mushroom-carpeted Esther Lloyd-Jones Hall, which is part of Pratt’s student housing. “Where charm goes to die,” my boyfriend, Teddy, joked. Addison had landed at Pratt—and, bigger picture, in New York—with a splash, but I hadn’t cottoned onto any of that. I had my own shit; I’d just left home—I guess the technical term is “run away”—to live with Teddy.

  So I was holed up illegally in the dorm. My parents had cut off my credit card, and I was far from the comforts of Kentucky. The McAvenas are a “name” in Kentucky—if you ever ate a McAvena ham, bless your stars, you’ve generously contributed to the local dynasty. I myself haven’t touched pork since I was eight. As a gay Democrat vegetarian anti-NRA activist, I’m in opposition to just about every dirty little secret that the McAvena name stands for, no matter the benefits.

  And the McAvena name couldn’t buy me a two-egg special in New York City. I wasn’t supposed to start classes at NYU until that fall. I was in limbo. Look, I ended up patching up all my drama with my folks by September. But that summer, it was drama central.

  I was a hothead, squeezed into that hamster-cage dorm room with Teddy, who was equally tense, convinced he was gonna be kicked out of Pratt for illegally housing me. I’d met Teddy the year before at Episcopal, which is a boarding school down in Virginny. Two Southern gay boys meet-cute in photography lab, a pair of Mapplethorpe wannabes. My decision to go to NYU was partway to be close to Teddy. But now we were too close, sharing 300 square feet.

  So here I was, raging to my friends on the phone all day. Raging at Teddy all night. One morning comes a knock on the door. I open it to find this slinky girl with licorice eyes and black hair in two shiny braids. She gives me a once-over and says, “Hey, loud, spoiled Southern boy pissed with the world, here’s a cuppa coffee. Now show me what you’re working on. Teddy says when you’re not bitching at everyone, you take good pictures.”

  Addison and Erickson, courtesy of Ted Furlong.

  LUCY LIM: Erickson McAvena was Addy’s lifeline. She was just starting to date Zach, but Addy unfortunately always expected the worst of Zach. I think because her dad was a womanizer, and she knew Zach was, too. So even while Addy was crushing on Zach, she kept him at a distance. He was up on this pedestal, but it was also a pedestal of suspicion.

  “Zach’s a playboy,” she’d tell me. “He’s way over-serviced. He’s got a personal tailor in Hong Kong who flies into New York and makes him a dozen new shirts each season. He speaks five languages, Lulu! That’s just way too many shirts and languages!” In the beginning, Addy loved being seen with Zach, and with his wingman, Alexandre, and basking in the stir they all caused. I think Zach took equal delight as a co-star in the Zach-and-Addy show. They both fed off it.

  Erickson was a big personality, too, but he was calm and strong in the center. I love that guy; we’ll always be in touch, we’ll always share a bond. The week she met him, Addy wrote me this email, which I printed and saved.

  From: Addison Stone

  Date: Jul 23 at 12:07 PM Subject: hi / more

  To: Lucy Lim

  Thing is, LL, I can be alone while being with Erickson.

  We are togetherness in solitude.

  On our long walks through the parks.

  Or in a tapas bar. In a bookstore,

  I am happy in his unfazed Southern company.

  The sw
eet and sleepy St. Bernard eyes.

  The tender stories about his screwed-up parents—who sound just like mine.

  How he escaped them—just like me.

  But always kept his sunshine—just like I want to.

  Scarred but not damaged.

  Erickson cooks me his Kentucky home recipes in the crummy Pratt kitchen.

  Pecan muffins, succotash, sweet potato pie.

  And his pictures. Images that should be sad. Poor old men on the subway and crazy pigeon ladies.

  Erickson finds the true, deep kind. The sweetness and the real.

  He can’t replace you, Lulu.

  But he’s got your way of making me lean into peace whenever I see red.

  Please Help, a photograph by Erickson McAvena.

  LUCY LIM: She never got as close to anyone else in the city. Lincoln, off and on. Marie-Claire, sometimes. But Lincoln had a lot of emotional barricades mixed up with his passion, and Marie-Claire could be selfish. Erickson was all heart, all for her, always.

  MARIE-CLAIRE BROYARD: I’m a New York born-and-bred daughter of, yes, that Broyard family. At this time, I’m not in school. You could say I’m between schools. I was at USC for a semester. Alas, I wasn’t meant for California. So I’m still living in New York. Enjoying my exalted place in the cosmos, I suppose. But enough about me when here’s what you want to hear: my fabulous Addison Stone story.

  Now this was Addison’s first summer in town, but of course being that it was sweltering July, we were all in Southampton. And one night, we were at my friend Kiki Strawbridge’s dinner party. Addison was just that second starting to date my friend Zach, and he was thrilled to be introducing her to our clique. Usually when one of the boys dates outside our group, it’s just some ditzy fashion-model-slash-actress.

  But Addison was becoming a star in her own right. There was a rumor she was being repped by Berger Gallery, and that Jürgen Teller was in discussions for her to do an ad, and that she was going to be one of the poster images for Beats headphones—which turned out to be a rumor—but still!

  We were ready to despise her. And I was doing my part as Queen Bee. The very first thing I ever asked her was, “Oh, Addison, where in the world did you get your bag?” It was this chintzy Canal Street knockoff. And then I asked her where her family skied. Oh, and a hundred other snotty questions. I can really bring out the claws when I want. I was pummeling her. I wanted to chip away her façade until she gave me some reaction we could all make fun of—maybe some swearing, or generally losing her cool and going all white trash on us.

  Instead, Addison said, in a perfect imitation of my voice, “Back when I was living at Glencoe, which was a divine mental health facility outside Boston, with such fabulous food, Marie-Claire, it almost makes you forget you’re trying to kill yourself every minute, one of our wellness exercises was to ‘savor a pleasurable experience.’ And so, darling, I am truly going to savor this.” And she picked up her vichyssoise and poured it like a baptism right over my head.

  For the first three seconds, nobody moved. Dead silent. Me, too. Yet I felt committed to remaining in place. Letting her savor it! Just as she’d said! Then I started laughing. It really was so funny. Oh, and of course after that, we became furiously good friends. She was just too naughty and refreshing. Same kind of naughty as me.

  Later, after we’d gotten close, I learned more about her illness. She let me in on that, I think, because I’m pretty frank about my own mother, who just spent her tenth anniversary at McLean. My poor mother, she’s schizoaffective, diagnosed when she was nineteen, and she’s been to hell and back with it. Mother’s breaks with reality are still terrifying for everyone. Once, when I was a girl, she set her own hands on fire. I didn’t see it happen; she was in Gstaad. But still, it happened. I see the welts and scars on her palms every time I visit, and I imagine her putting her fingers in the roaring fireplace and holding them there, watching the flames lick her skin, but too trapped in her disease to snatch them out.

  Addison felt very easy speaking to me about her own schizophrenia once I told her about Mother. That same fall, after we became friends, Addison and I once drove up to McLean together, very hush-hush, to have my annual birthday lunch. It had been a lovely day, if rather strange and bittersweet. Mother was terribly foggy. I knew Addison didn’t like that, since Addison was always paranoid that the Z made her foggy, too.

  But it was so sweet and good of her to go with me. I loved Addison because she took me for who I am, with all my family skeletons. My mother, the schizo. My Uncle Artie, the felon. The time I was kicked out of school for cheating. The time I was kicked out for good, when they found weed in my electronic cigarettes. Addison had plenty of heart, and plenty of room in it for other people’s shadows.

  Addison and Marie-Claire, September, New York City, courtesy of Zachary Fratepietro.

  BILL FIELDBENDER: Arlene and I started visiting New York a bit more that summer, just to peek in on her. We’d gotten her there, so we felt some personal responsibility for her general well-being. But we could tell she didn’t need us. Right from the get-go, Addison understood the city. It was like it’d been predestined, inked into her karma. You’d have thought she’d grown up in New York. She was as blasé as a Spence girl. She seemed utterly focused, too, attending art classes, and she’d learned the subway map cold. She even took us over to Williamsburg and Long Island City to catch some exhibits.

  We were very concerned that she’d be preyed on by dealers and agents. We warned her to please talk that decision through with us, whenever she decided to seek representation. But we also knew that we couldn’t prevent what she did next. Week by week, Addison was shaping herself into her own person.

  ZACH FRATEPIETRO: It’s outrageous that people would think I was capable of harming Addison Stone. I loved her more than anyone else. But our breakup was bad, and our revenge was some dirty tricks. I’m glad I can remember the good times before it all collapsed between us, when Addison was new in the city, fresh and wide-eyed and in love with me.

  I was her first real taste of New York, don’t forget. The first person to show her the reservoir in Central Park, the MoMA, the top of the Empire State Building. We ate at all the best places: Bemelmans, The Spotted Pig, Cafe Luxembourg, Raoul’s, Il Mulino, The Lion. We walked the High Line, biked over the Brooklyn Bridge, told each other secrets in Strawberry Fields. And there was the public aspect, too, the people I introduced her to—Kiki Smith, Julian Schnabel, Terry Richardson, John Currin and Rachel Feinstein, Cindy Sherman. I was with Addison for some of her major moments. That’s what I hold onto. The good stuff.

  Zach and Addison attend a dinner party in New York, courtesy of Alistair Chung.

  MAXWELL BERGER: Everyone knows Berger Gallery. I’ve been dealing high-end art since before you were born. I’m based in New York City, and we got satellite offices in Asia and the UK and Paris and Brazil. So I don’t give my private line to anyone. In a business like mine, who wants some artist wunderkind calling me up at 3 A.M. to see if I can lend him a thousand bucks to score some grade-A blow, just so he can be awake for the next four nights and days to finish a canvas? Who needs that? Not me. Whoever’s got my number, well, I usually ignore them, too.

  Zach Frat left me six messages before I called him back. He wanted me to meet this new girl.

  I finally call back, I say, “Bring her by the Soho House.” I like the Soho House, I like the roof-deck pool and the lobster roll and the girls in their skimpy bikinis. Hey, I don’t apologize for that. If I can’t get to my place in Sagaponauk, I’m there. Art kids know me there, but they keep a respectful distance. They should. They know how many careers I’ve made—and broken. And I don’t do callbacks. But Zach Frat, he’s Carine’s kid, and Carine, she’s a powerhouse.

  Next thing I’m out by the pool, I feel the shadow. I open my eyes, and this girl is standing over me. Blocking my sun, or I’d have thought she was a ghost. Beautiful but not my type. Call me old-fashioned, but I like some meat on a gir
l.

  “I’m Addison,” she says. “My art was in your show a few weeks ago. You should know the rest of your gallery was crap.”

  That’s what she said to me. This skinny-ass human candlestick girl. To me, Max Berger. Un-fucking-believable. But she was right. Every other piece, you couldn’t sell it in the Dairy Queen today. But I could feel my neck get hot. We both knew she was right on the money.

  Let me say this about Addison Stone. She didn’t just make art. She was art. Same as Picasso, Glenn Gould, Gertrude Stein. You couldn’t untangle her from it. I decided then and there to get her into my talent stable. A small-town girl like that, you want to dazzle her hard and sell it fast. I made a date, wooed her at Per Se with some of my people. I threw Zach some extra business so that he’d talk me up. I pitched that snot-nosed teenager as hard as I ever pitched. But the day she said she’d sign with me, I gave her my warning.

  “No stunt art, Addison,” I told her. “No swinging from the lights, you got it? You are too rare a talent, and I care about you. From now on, stay focused, working, and strategized. I will be there for you, but you need to grow up and learn quick how to weed out the bullshit and the bad advice. I got no sympathy for kids who can’t handle the money or the fame. I got no time for drunks, users, and party people. And I got no sympathy for you flushing your own career down the toilet.”

  She didn’t want to hear that. She wanted to be a free agent and do whatever the fuck she liked. They all do. Luckily, money talks. We struck an agreement, and we’d gone to contract by the end of the month.

  CARINE FRATEPIETRO: In the late ’90s, Max had been imprisoned on a tax fraud scandal. But his nose had been clean for years. And people are flawed, yes? Was every person we introduced to Addison a sparkling moral character? No. This is a business. Like any business, there are good people and bad people and people in the gray middle. Max Berger is gray, no doubt. But he’s also very influential, and once he catches whiff of a talent, he makes a lot of noise. He was the megaphone that Addison Stone needed.