“I just thought you’d like a taste of home,” I said. “You liked my mama’s cooking so much.”
“I did indeed,” Clio said. “It brought to mind the good things about home and pushed the bad things right out.”
The room was so cold my breath was visible, and I left my jacket on as we ate. I brought a blanket from the daybed and draped it around Clio’s shoulders as she nibbled at half of the biscuit.
“Why is it so cold in here, Miss Hartt? Isn’t heat included in your rent?”
“It’s the radiator, I’m sure,” she said. “It’s been sputtering a lot. The superintendent should bleed it. Terrible word for it, really. Like he has to apply leeches!”
“I could call him.”
“He has not been answering his phone.”
“Let me run down and knock on his door then.”
“Oh, let’s enjoy our little meal first,” she said. “The quilt warmed me right up. Help yourself to another biscuit, Miss Bliss.”
Chilled, the biscuits weren’t quite as tasty as they’d been just minutes earlier, but I ate another anyway as I watched her dawdle over her second half.
“Except for my mama’s food, I’ve never seen you eat much,” I remarked mid-bite. “How about in Paris? Did you like French cooking?”
“Well, the pastries were, of course, divine,” she said. “But we didn’t have trust funds, like Natalie and Gertrude, so it was a modest lifestyle and we lived mostly on bread, cheese, wine— inexpensive fare. You know.” Although I imagined the bills added up if they drank as much wine as Montrose implied.
“I’ve never been to Paris,” I admitted. “Or anywhere in Europe. I would love to go.”
“Do go while you’re young and you can get by on very little. Live there if you can.”
“I don’t know what I’d do!” I said. “You wrote for magazines to earn a living. What did Fl— Miss Haynes do?”
Her laugh had a tinge of bitterness to it. “What didn’t Flora do?” she said. “She wrote, of course, but she didn’t like journalism or short stories, and that was where the money was. So she had to get money here and there.” Clio pointed at herself on the word here.
“You supported her?”
“Among others. People were always giving Flora money. She had multiple patrons. She was quite good-looking, you know.” I wasn’t sure what her looks had to do with patronage, but I could guess. Clio made her lover sound like a prostitute, and maybe that was how she thought of her. Her tone suggested her anger still simmered below the surface, even after all these years.
Clio pointed toward the framed sepia of Flora standing on a cobblestone street in Paris looking like she owned the place.
“She was a looker,” I commented. “That’s a handsome photo. But the one on the Deauville beach— hoo-wee!” It slipped out before I realized what I’d said.
Clio had been slumped comfortably in her chair, but the mention of the beach photo made her bolt upright. Her voice hit a shrill pitch that roused Remington out of his sleep, and he stared at us with annoyance.
“The Deauville beach? Where did you see that one? No one has seen that!”
Had she never been curious enough to glance through her own biography, even if only to look at the pictures? If someone ever wrote about me for posterity, I would check every detail.
“Those photos are mine! Flora said she didn’t want them, and I—” She was practically spitting.
“They’re in Sylvia Montrose’s biography of you.”
Her face drained of color. “But . . . Flora was almost . . . she . . . Those photos weren’t meant to be seen by anyone but us. They were private.” She sagged back into her chair again, defeated. I thought about Louise Durand handing the photos over to Montrose, a sort of “fuck you” to Clio and Flora both— for what, it wasn’t clear. Maybe the answer lay in Louise’s brittle comment in the biography, that she never understood the connection between Clio and Flora: “They were a tortured pair,” she had said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess these things just get out somehow when you’re famous.”
“Do you have that book?” she demanded.
“Yes, I have it at home.”
“In Asheville.” The corners of her mouth sagged.
“No, here. Over in Gramercy. I could bring it next time. I would have brought it before if—”
“Bring it tomorrow,” she said, forgetting our loosened schedule. And then, also forgetting that she sometimes didn’t get up until noon: “In the morning.”
• • •
The next day, I dropped in at the office first, in case Bea had left any tasks on my desk that had to be handled immediately. She hadn’t, but only because she was still drawing up the list of things for me to do while she went for a few days to her house in the Catskills. It was unlike her to take an evening off, let alone several weekdays, but Ramona said Bea was trying to patch things up with Unfaithful Husband, whose name, amazingly, was Dick. Apparently, the pregnant paralegal had dumped Dick and returned to her former boyfriend “who seems to be the father after all,” Ramona explained.
“Therese is in charge while I’m gone,” Bea said, ripping the list off her legal pad. “But you can always call me in an emergency. There’s no machine, so keep trying.”
“Don’t worry about a thing,” I assured her. “You just enjoy yourself.”
“Well, I will hardly do that.” The look on her face suggested the “patching up” was more a chore than a pleasant getaway. “I hate the country. Dick’s the one who wanted the place. Why anyone needs to escape the city is beyond me.” Her tone softened. “But he has promised to cook for me, which is lucky since there isn’t a decent restaurant in fifty miles. And he’s made himself a gorgeous gourmet kitchen.”
When she handed me the list, I assumed it was time to go, but she asked me to sit down instead.
“Clio called me early this morning. At home.”
Expecting a rebuke for something, I headed it off: “I know, she wants me to stop in. I’ll be walking over there just as soon as we wrap things up here.”
Clio didn’t seem to have mentioned anything about the Montrose biography to Bea, though. What they did discuss surprised me.
“She said she’s ready to part with her manuscript,” Bea continued. “You must have been wrong about her losing motivation. Anyway, it seems to have just two brand-new stories and a third no one’s ever read, but then you can’t have everything.”
Manuscript? Three stories? It was all news to me.
“She’s gotten it into her head that she’s going to die soon. Do you know why she’d think that?”
“Not unless she’s had another ministroke. But I was just with her yesterday and she didn’t mention feeling bad.” Biscuits. They were not the best food to bring to someone at risk for a stroke. I wondered if she’d eaten more after I left.
“She even asked me to call her lawyer. You know, I’m not sure he’s still alive. He was older than Clio. She said she tore the room apart last night looking for her will and couldn’t find it. Now she wants to draw up a new one and make sure everything’s in order. And she’s very anxious to get the manuscript into my hands.”
The overnight change in Clio puzzled me, and I wondered if my visit— and possibly the Montrose biography— had anything to do with it.
“I’m driving up to Ulster this morning, so I’ll need you to call the lawyer. It’s at the top of the list.”
I glanced down and saw that, indeed, calling Mort Barber at Barber, Barber, Barber & Barber was point number one. The firm’s name made me snicker— why couldn’t they have settled on just one Barber?
“He’s a lovely man . . . or was. If he’s dead or retired or something, talk to his daughter, Miriam. She’s a partner in the firm.” Her name and number were second on the list.
“Get whatever Clio wants to give you and bring it here right away! Do not pass ‘Go,’ do not collect two hundred dollars!”
That was point number t
hree. In parentheses was a notation to make five photocopies of whatever Clio handed me. That would tie up the photocopier for longer than any of the agents would like, but I understood why Bea didn’t want to entrust the manuscript to a copy shop.
“And then start reading it.”
“Me?” She hadn’t bestowed any reading duties on me since Diane Westerly’s manuscript.
“Yes, you. I won’t be able to look at it until next week, and no one here has been working with Clio. So you’re it. Type up a report, like you did with Diane’s.”
Grabbing my bag with the Montrose biography in it, I scurried to Clio’s. Since she’d already spoken to Bea that morning, I didn’t bother to call and remind her I was coming. Yet, at the apartment door, she looked as dumbfounded as when I’d surprised her the day before.
“You asked me to come by,” I reminded her gently.
“Oh, yes,” she said, but her tone sounded unconvincing. I wondered if she was having a brain blip, like the doctor in Asheville said she might, and I debated whether I should even mention the Montrose book.
Then her memory kicked in. “Did you bring it? The horrid book about me and Flora?”
“It’s actually about you and your work,” I pointed out, slipping the volume from my bag. “Although there’s a bit about Miss Haynes.”
“And how long has this been out there?”
“Ma’am?”
“When was it published?” She grabbed it from me and made for her reading chair, pushing Remington gently to the side so she could ease in next to him. He stretched out long against her leg.
“A few years ago. ’78, maybe? It’ll be on the copyright page.”
“I think I remember,” she said, cracking open the spine. “Beatrice said someone wanted to interview me, here, in my home! I said absolutely not!”
I smiled at the contrariness of it. As much as Clio wanted to be revered for her work, she staunchly resisted cooperating with scholars who might bring the desired attention to it— and help sell more copies of The Dismantled.
She flipped through the pages with fury. I knew what she was looking for. The book had a dozen or so photos scattered throughout, many of them the museum-worthy studio portraits that had become iconic. When she arrived at the side-by-side pictures of her and Flora at Deauville Beach, a little moan escaped her lips.
The text of Flora’s last letter to her was on the facing page, and I watched as she read it, moving her magnifying glass the length of the page as her finger traced every word.
“Miss Hartt—”
She stopped me with an upraised hand while she finished reading, her breath now a series of tiny gasps.
“Oh,” she said, setting down her magnifier.
“The book was very well reviewed,” I said, not sure why I felt the need to come to its defense. “It was probably why the critical edition of The Dismantled has done so well in colleges.”
“I sent the envelope back to her,” she said, not looking at me, maybe not even hearing me. “I didn’t bother to open it. I saw the return address— at that woman’s!— and I felt sickened, like the unpleasantness between us had just happened. And I could feel it was heavier than a letter, that it had something inside. Miss Bliss, I am a monster.”
“Please don’t be so hard on yourself! You spoke to Miss Haynes before she died.”
“Only because she called me.” Her voice caught on the final word. “Only because when I picked up the phone she said, ‘Darling, it seems I’m dying.’ Not even the vilest of monsters would hang up on that.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I remained quiet.
“If I’d opened the letter, these photos would be here in this apartment, and the letter would be mine. Flora’s torture wouldn’t be in black and white for all the world to read about. Our most intimate moment wouldn’t be on display! Deauville . . . We were in love! That’s for us, not for anyone else.”
Her sobs sounded like they might strangle her, but as suddenly as she’d begun to cry, she stopped and blew her nose on her handkerchief. My eyes followed her as she got up and moved to the walk-in closet, disappearing inside. She emerged a few minutes later with a vintage travel bag, the kind ladies carried their hats in decades back. And I knew that Clio had been famous for wearing hats— turbans, cloches, derbies, fedoras; they were in the portraits of her. She snapped the bag open and I could see that there were no hats inside. Instead, she drew out an envelope of photographs.
“Those photos were mine!” she said, rifling through the images, which from what I could see by craning my neck were all of Flora or of the two of them together. “I meant to burn them. I did burn a few that were especially . . . intimate. Flora must have sneaked some when I left Tenth Street. And Louise—” she snarled the name of her nemesis, “—she gave them to this woman, this Montrose person, this despicable lesbian looking for gossip.”
“Montrose’s bio says she’s married and has two sons,” I said, a bit haughty. The condescension toward lesbians wore down my patience.
“You’re very naïve if you think lesbians don’t marry men,” she said.
I shrugged, but I was suddenly thinking of Hallie, who claimed she didn’t identify as gay or lesbian. “I’m just me,” she had insisted when I cornered her.
“Where are the photos now?” Clio said. “Where is my letter?”
“The caption says the photos are ‘Courtesy Louise Durand.’ Bea said she died a few years ago, so whoever handled her estate must have them.”
“Nineteen-seventy-nine,” Clio said, and I half-expected her to recite the exact date, too. “Good riddance! The woman was trouble.” She sighed heavily and continued, “Someone is always ruining something for someone else”— the kind of vague, grumpy statement a child might make when she hasn’t gotten her way.
Clio shifted in her seat, and the hat carrier fell with a thunk. I could see then that it was almost empty, except for two items that spilled onto the floor: a pearl necklace with a broken clasp and an antique stuffed monkey with a frayed satin ribbon tied around its neck. The toy’s stuffing poked through various seams, and its tail hung by a few threads.
“Is this one of your childhood toys?” I asked, reaching to replace the monkey.
“Don’t touch that!” she snapped at me without answering the question. “It’s very old and very delicate.”
“I was just— it looks like something the cat would go after,” I said. Remington was, in fact, inching toward it. Clio grabbed the toy, ignoring that it was “very delicate,” and tossed it back into the hat carrier, where it landed face down. Then she picked up the pearls and rolled them over in her hand before extending them toward me.
“You may have these,” she said. Since I didn’t look like a woman with the wardrobe for pearls, I was startled. “You could get the clasp fixed. I’m not sure the pearls themselves have much value, but Flora gave them to me and I wore them in the Man Ray portrait, so maybe you can sell them for their provenance.”
“Oh, Miss Hartt, I would never sell them!”
“Then give them to your lady,” she said.
“We aren’t . . . I’m not sure she’s my . . .”
Clio became impatient. “Oh, I don’t care what you do with them!”
“Are you sure you don’t want to keep them?”
“I’m going to die soon.” Her tone was without a trace of self-pity.
“Don’t say that!”
“Miss Bliss,” she said, “I’m not being morbid, just factual.” She reached over and forced the necklace into my hand. “If you prefer, we can do an exchange— a tit for tat.”
I thought she was going to ask to keep the Montrose book, but I was wrong.
“If you would, I would like to hear you call me ‘Birdie.’”
“Miss Hartt—” My throat tightened: Was I was going to have to say her name on the spot? There were a million reasons the request was difficult for me, and she hit on several of them.
“I know, I am your employer of
sorts, and your mama taught you never to address an older woman by her Christian name. But I would like to hear it just the same. Not now, but on some day when I might not expect it.” Her eyes filmed over, and I couldn’t help but think about the letter from Flora calling her “Birdie.”
“But don’t wait too long,” she added hastily.
“It’s still a struggle for me to call Miss Winston ‘Bea,’” I said. “But she insists.”
“Well, you have gotten past that, so you will get past this, too. I insist. And for your effort, you go home with the pearls of Clio Hartt.” She had tucked the envelope of photos beside her, where Remington had been, and I watched anxiously as she shifted again in the chair and the packet slipped beneath her.
“Your photos—” I said, pointing.
Her eyes followed my hand, and she retrieved the envelope.
“Don’t you think you’ve seen enough of me and Flora?” she growled, waving the envelope. “I should burn these.”
Someday a literary scholar would be looking for photos of Clio Hartt and come up empty-handed, except for the posed portraits and a handful of snaps that had survived in the collections of her friends and colleagues.
“Come to think of it, I should burn other things,” she said. “The library will have what’s important.” She stood up with difficulty and ambled to the fireplace. The mantle was narrow and white, jutting out only a few inches from the wall, and there was a small iron grate in the opening. But the grate was free of ashes and, in all the months I’d been visiting her, I’d never seen a log in it, fresh or burnt. From the beginning, I’d assumed— as was the case in other old apartments, including Barb’s and Ramona’s— that the flue was sealed off and the fireplace had reverted to quaint decoration.
“Oh, no!” I objected. “You’d burn things in there? That doesn’t seem safe, Miss Hartt.”
“Nonsense, I’ve done it before. In fact, it’s been so cold lately, I thought of making a fire just to keep warm, but I don’t have any wood. Maybe you could bring me some. Come look.” She gestured up the chimney, where I spotted a patchwork quilt blackened with soot. Cold air seeped through where it didn’t fit tightly.
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