The Prize

by Jill Bialosky

  In the car on the way home, Holly was tipsy. “Did you see how much weight Irene lost? I bet she’s having an affair. She has that rabid look on her face. If Mark finds out, he’ll throw her out.”

  “Aren’t you being a little harsh?”

  “You’d throw me out, wouldn’t you? If I were cheating on you.”

  “You’d probably throw me out,” Edward said.

  “Did you hear that Sally left Tom?”

  “No, since when? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to betray Tom’s confidence but now it’s out in the open.”

  “Why do you suppose Sally left him?” He took his eye off the road and looked at her.

  “Because Tom lost interest. Isn’t that how it usually works? Sally—do you find her attractive?”

  “Sally’s not bad.”

  “Tom said that he doesn’t know if Sally ever really loved him.” She scooted closer and rested her face against his arm. “I never liked Sally.” He smelled the evening’s wine on her breath; her words were slow and languid. “She was always critical of Tom.” She curled next to him. “I think we need to spend more time together.”

  They pulled into the drive. Sometimes returning from a party he wandered the downstairs of the house or took the dogs for a long walk through their quiet streets to settle his thoughts. But before he could get the leash on the dogs, Holly led him up the stairs by his hand. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d wanted him. The years after Annabel, when they were trying to have another baby, he had to perform on demand when Holly was ovulating. Since then sex had become freighted. All these years later and they hadn’t quite figured out how to get their rhythm and spontaneity back. Maybe she sensed something.

  She went into the bathroom. He undressed and lay on their bed reviewing the night in his mind. Throughout the evening he had observed his neighbors’ lives, comparing them to his own rather than enjoying himself. Phil, two houses down, was in mergers and acquisitions. There was always some new possession he made you aware of, a Mercedes or an antique rug. His recent purchase, an estate in East Hampton. Chip Lawson boasted about his twin boys who were both on the hockey team at Harvard, and though he liked the boys he wasn’t interested in hearing a play-by-play of a hockey game. And Tom Drury was getting divorced? Tom ran three different horse farms in Connecticut. He and Holly were close. He’d known Lizzie too, and for that reason Tom knew Holly in a way he never would and every now and then Edward found himself jealous of their closeness. He had always thought Tom and Sally looked happy. Thinking about his neighbors, he realized that though he wanted to connect with them, he felt separate and distant. They had little in common. He was more like his father, who rarely socialized outside his field and groused when his mother had wanted him to go out with her friends.

  Holly came out of the bathroom, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, in a black satin nightshirt that brushed her thighs. She folded into her side of the bed and turned to him. Her hand reached between his legs and she touched him and he thickened against her. “You’re sure you’re not too tired,” he asked, guarded from the nights he’d gotten aroused and she’d rolled into her pillow longing for sleep. The moonlight through the fold in the curtains shadowed her face, her skin warm and slightly damp. “No,” she whispered in his ear. He moved closer to her and slid her nightshirt up to reach her skin and slipped down her panties. He felt her come loose in his arms as she moved upward to meet him. He was aroused by her overnight smell, her slightly sour breath mixed with the faint odor of the evening’s perfume. She fondled the back of his neck with her fingers, like she always did, and moved her mouth to kiss him and soon her skin began to perspire, her body warm like fever. After, they lay on their backs next to each other for a long time in silence. He sensed Holly was thinking the same thing he was—their love-making, though pleasurable, had become routine and familiar, and though it should have brought them closer, he felt far away from her. It seemed it ought to be simple to get back what they once had, and yet, it wasn’t.

  He kissed her forehead and tried to coast into sleep, telling himself that it was what happened in most marriages. Holly turned into her pillow and before long he heard the recognizable sound of her slow sleep breathing. His thoughts drifted to Julia. Since Berlin his thoughts kept turning to her. He climbed out of bed to take the dogs out.

  13 NEW YORK

  JULIA’S STUDIO WAS in Soho, one of the last of the rent-controlled holdouts, and his gallery was in Chelsea. She only had an hour or so for lunch, and had an afternoon meeting near Grand Central, so he’d come up with the idea of meeting at the oyster bar in the terminal, which was centrally located (he mentioned he might afterward pop into Christie’s, where there was a print auction going on) and quick and, Edward surmised, not the sort of place where one made love to a woman. Men and women mostly dressed in business attire sat on stools eating oysters or clam chowder. The waitresses clashed dirty plates down in bins one after the other in an orchestra of angry sound. It smelled slightly rancid, like urine covered over with a strong cleaning product. The smell of the shellfish reminded him of the summer they’d rented a house on the Cape for a week and grilled lobster on the deck and even the next morning the smell was still on his fingers.

  He looked out for her toss of hair streaked with locks of blond. She arrived in the midst of some mild state of confusion, looking as she did at Hamburg airport that day when she thought she had lost her passport. “I got on the wrong train. I thought I was late.”

  He smiled. “You’re not late.”

  They greeted each other briskly and then he stopped a moment to admire her.

  “You’re looking well,” he said. It had been months since he’d last seen her in Berlin, and face to face he was struck again by her radiance. She had just gotten back from Japan with her husband, who had business there. He asked her about it.

  “I love Tokyo. The Japanese have a minimalist, poetic culture. What are you having?” she asked when the waitress arrived, holding out her pad and impatiently tapping her pencil on the counter, to take their order. The menu was as dense as the phone book. “I’ll have the shrimp salad. No, I’ll have the crab cakes. Should I have the salad or the crab cakes?”

  He smiled.

  “I’ll take the crab cakes,” she said. When the waitress left she turned to him. “I feel like we’re back in Berlin. Our waitress looked German, didn’t she?”

  They laughed.

  “Did you see Flammarion’s show at Gagosian? Some people find his work derivative and overhyped. Derivative or not, that last painting made me cry.” Her cheeks reddened. She was more comfortable talking about other artists’ work than her own, which made Edward like her more. She was so unlike Agnes. She looked up at him, suddenly embarrassed by her burst of passion. “Why don’t you stop me?”

  “I like hearing you talk.”

  “Are you going to the London Art Fair?” She sipped her glass of seltzer, lime, no ice, from a straw.

  He was so absorbed by how pretty she was and by the hint of cleavage from her V-neck sweater when she leaned over that he couldn’t concentrate on her words and didn’t immediately realize she had stopped talking and was waiting for a response.

  “London? Are you going? Watkins is taking my Dancers.” They were Giacometti-like figures in unusual, uncomfortable poses. Her sculptures were shown by Watkins and Rogers, one of the hipper but lesser-known galleries in Chelsea. “Seriously, is your gallery showing anyone in London this year?”

  “Yes, I’m taking Tony Henderson’s paintings.”

  “So you’re going, then?” She glanced up at him and stroked the side of her jaw.

  “Of course. Unless May shuts us down before then.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “The last two quarters we’ve been down.”

  “Hasn’t everyone?”

  “Everyone except for Savan. He said his revenues were up sixty percent.”

  “He is the art world macher, i
sn’t he? Or at least he thinks he is.”

  “I suppose he is.”

  “But you’re more talented,” Julia said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you don’t boast. People boast only when they need to prove something.”

  “The irony is that it works for him.”

  “Do you think so? I’m not so sure.”

  “Well, no one could say that about you. You’re extremely modest.” His arm brushed hers when he reached to take a sip of water.

  “I’m my own worst critic,” she declared and shook her head.

  “You shouldn’t be.”

  She stopped picking at her lunch and touched his sleeve. “You’re sweet to say that. When we were in Tokyo I went to Zojoji, a temple where the Japanese worship babies that are a result of miscarriage or don’t survive childbirth. Remember, in Berlin? When you wondered what was wrong? Roy and I lost a baby a few years ago. She was born still,” Julia said. “She wasn’t, though. She was alive inside me. She was my baby.” She took a sip of water. “It was her birthday. Roy and I always make a point of acknowledging it.” She looked at him and then looked down.

  “I’m sorry. How are you doing now?”

  “My work helps. I’ve started something new. It’s still in the drawing stage. But the idea compels me. It’s not the work,” she said, glancing up at him. “It’s the future that scares me. Since we lost the baby, it’s hard to talk to Roy. It’s like we’re on eggshells with each other.”

  He looked at her silently.

  “Have I said too much?” she asked, breaking his thought.

  “I was just thinking how brave you are.” Holly’s modus operandi was to delve into a project like painting the shed or taking on more hours at the refuge when she was upset or on edge. His mother never talked about herself. His father had been secretive and cryptic. After his breakdown he spent afternoons sitting in his study lighting one cigarette from the dying embers of another. The medications he took made his hands shake. His mother sometimes turned out the light, so that he had often found his father sitting by himself in darkness. After he got sick, his mother reverted to talking to her professor husband as if he were a little boy. Finish your milk, Harry. Oh, that old sweater of yours needs to be thrown in the trash. He retreated to his bedroom or over to Bennett’s house to get high in their basement. At thirteen he began counting steps. And then the tiles on the bathroom wall when he was taking a shower. The methodical organization of a painting soothed him. He wasn’t used to talking openly about things most people never talked about.

  “Enough about me. You look tense,” Julia said.

  “Do I?” He took a bite of his lobster roll. “It’s been months since I’ve found anyone, well, worth signing. Or anyone we can afford. The larger galleries are able to offer better terms. And Agnes Murray has me on edge.”

  He rarely talked to Holly about his work. After Holly quit the gallery, they’d lost that as a mutual interest. Holly had become more involved in their life in Connecticut and he found that when he came home from the gallery, his artists and his work were the last thing he wanted to talk about. Being with Julia, he saw how separate he and Holly had become. He rotated his stool just slightly so that his knees brushed hers.

  “It will pick up,” she said. “And besides, like you said, you represent Agnes Murray.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “I know her work. She’s incredible. And brave.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “To have married Nate Fisher. I knew him before he was famous. Now he’s part of the establishment, the old guard. And Agnes represents the new guard. Soon she’ll supplant him. It will be interesting to see how he weathers it.”

  “So you know Nate?” Edward asked.

  “Well, I can’t say I really know him. I once dated one of his students. Frederick Jackson.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “You know him?”

  “Only his work,” Edward said.

  “It was ages ago,” Julia said, and reddened, as if having dated him embarrassed her.

  The mention of Frederick piqued his interest. Frederick was naturally good-looking, the kind of man whose easy banter made other men jealous.

  “Will you have dinner with me in London?” he surprised himself by asking.

  “Friday night is the gala. Saturday, then?”

  “Saturday,” he said.

  “So have you been reading the odes?” she asked suddenly. “I’ve been wondering about those lovers. You know, in ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.’ I mean, if eternity is all it’s cracked up to be.” She wiped her lips with her napkin.

  “I think Keats is saying that the promise of eternity offers comfort. The lovers have been immortalized through art.”

  “Is that ‘sweet comfort’?” She dropped her napkin and in picking it up brushed against him. He smelled the perfume off her sweater and remembered Berlin again. Her scent was dark and heady, some combination of lavender and musk.

  “The lovers are frozen in time. They’ll never experience suffering,” he added.

  “But it is only through suffering that we grow. I have to think that way.” Her eyes filled and she gave him a tired smile.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. She moved him, not because she lacked pity for herself but because she had confided in him.

  The waitress, in a blue uniform that looked like it was made for a cafeteria worker, approached and interrupted the flow of their conversation. She poured coffee into their empty cups, spilling it over into the saucer. He drank his black and Julia asked for skim milk, not cream. He liked knowing this small detail.

  After the waitress cleared their plates, she took a small tube of lotion from her purse and rubbed it on her hands. It was green and smelled like avocado. “Do you want some? My hands are dry from washing them all the time in the studio,” she said, holding out the tube.

  “No. I don’t want any,” he said, wanting suddenly everything.

  Julia turned her stool slightly to look at him. “I knew the minute I saw you that we’d be able to find the thread with each other again.” She was referring to their last conversation, when they’d said good-bye at the hotel in Berlin.

  “How did you know?”

  “Because you said so. You said you were offering me friendship. At the hotel. You said you wanted to be friends.”

  “And?” He was interested in what she meant.

  “No one declares friendship as if it were love.”

  He was silent for a moment. “I don’t understand exactly what you mean. What you said about friendship.”

  “Yes you do.” She took a sip from her water glass and then looked at her watch. “I have to go.” She put her credit card down over the check. And then she stopped and looked at him with new emotion.

  He wondered whether she was flirting with him.

  “No, let me.” His credit card was already in his hand but, distracted by her, he had neglected to assert it. He put it on the check and gave back her card. He had forgotten that stimulating conversation could be a pastime.

  “Only if you let me pay next time.”

  After the waitress returned with his credit card and he signed the receipt, they stood up and grabbed their coats. She struggled to put on hers and dropped her scarf. While her back was turned he picked it up and momentarily held on to it before reluctantly handing it back to her.

  Silently they walked out of the oyster bar back into the subterranean terminal, she to go one way, to the subway train downtown, and he up the ramp and out into the shock of daylight. Before they turned to go their separate ways she tugged on his coat sleeve and kissed his cheek. “It’s good to see you,” she said. Something had changed in her. He noticed it. She’d dropped her guard and her former reluctance had opened into trust.

  HE WALKED SLOWLY, filled with her. After the first unsettling weeks since they parted in Berlin sometimes words or sentences she’d said came to his mind. He had been content
to think that he’d made a new friend and that they’d see each other when she returned from Tokyo. But seeing her again, the excitement he’d felt in her company in Berlin came back to him. He thought about the proposal he had made, to have dinner together in London. There was some unspoken idea that once you were married you no longer derived pleasure or excitement from the look of an attractive or interesting woman. He supposed he had shut himself off to other women during the early years of his marriage. Occasionally he formed a harmless crush on a colleague or an artist but he knew better than to have an affair with a colleague. He saw what it had done to others. With Julia it felt different, less harmful.

  His BlackBerry rang. He took it out of his breast pocket.

  “Dude,” Jimmy said. “Going to London?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be there.”

  “You okay? You sound strange.”

  “I had lunch with Julia.”

  “Rosenthal? Good for you.”

  “She’ll be in London. I asked her to dinner. And now I wonder whether I should have.”

  “If it’s real then you can’t walk away. How often does it come around?”

  “It’s not like we’re kids, Jimmy.”

  “Like I said. How often does it come around?”

  “You should know.”

  “Hey, man, Lucinda is the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

  “Then why . . .”

  “Because I love my wife.”

  “That doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

  “Yeah, well, whoever said I ever made sense,” Jimmy said before he hung up.

  He thought about what Jimmy had said and shook his head. He was nothing like Jimmy. Instead of going straight back to the gallery, he decided to take a walk up Fifth Avenue, enjoy the shops, and maybe stop at Christie’s for the afternoon session. He lingered by the show windows at Saks. The handsome mannequins dressed in sleek Armani and Louis Vuitton seduced him inside the store. He walked through the narrow and overly lit aisles admiring the artistry with which a perfect object was designed and the fabric chosen to accentuate it. The exacting design of a watch thrilled him. The feel of a soft cashmere scarf put him in a mood of extraordinary calm. Some men liked to work out, or watch sports, or build stuff. He liked to look at beautiful objects.