The Prize

by Jill Bialosky

  They lay down and began to kiss. He tasted wine on her lips and rubbed his hands along her thighs and she kissed him back. Within minutes they were both feverish. He turned off the light by the nightstand.

  In the dark, she twisted out from underneath him and sat up. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this. Not here. Not now. I keep thinking about Roy. No, I can’t.”

  She leaned against the pillows propped on the bed. Her face looked different. He noticed a ridge above her eye and furrows around her mouth.

  “I said I wanted us to be friends only because it is the right thing to do, to be friends, not because I want to.” He moved a piece of hair that had fallen into her face behind her ear.

  “I know,” she said, resigned.

  “Let’s go downstairs. I need a drink,” he said, tucking in his shirt and slipping into his shoes.

  She straightened her hair with her fingers and smoothed her skirt and put her heels back on and then looked at him. Tears filled her eyes.

  Neither spoke as the elevator descended, the air thick with what was unsaid. He walked her up the staircase to the bar, where he ordered them a drink and they sat on a couch and sipped from their glasses slowly and she began to talk again. He listened to the light and sexy sound of her voice and looked into her softening eyes. She apologized. All of this, new to her. Something like that. Maybe they could take a trip together, figure it out. Maybe he could meet her in Vienna; she had to go back to do some publicity.

  When they finished their drink he walked her out to get a cab and they told each other they’d meet tomorrow at the Armory. Back in his room he couldn’t remember what they had talked about. He lay on the bed where she had been, smelled her in the pillow, and put his face in it—his mind swimming—and eventually in the velvet black behind his eyes, where a whole theatre unfolded, he slept.

  THE NEXT MORNING he did his time at the booth and spotted Julia across an aisle. She had work on display at Watkins’s booth. He saw her dressed fashionably, as if she’d put time into it, and she saw him and for a moment their eyes locked and she smiled upon seeing him, even in her own unease. Instead of smiling back, he glanced over her head as if he were looking for someone else. Seeing her in broad daylight amid all his colleagues and the anonymous passersby, he couldn’t acknowledge her. He saw a break in her face and he turned and walked back into his booth and did not go after her. He didn’t know why he’d refused to acknowledge her. It was like when he was a kid and didn’t want to face his father after his father found out he’d been getting high at Bennett’s house when he was supposed to be at soccer practice. He’d thought if he did not acknowledge his father that somehow his father would not be disappointed in him, or that he could distance himself from it and pretend he didn’t care, when what he cared about most was not disappointing his father. Almost immediately after, he hated himself for it, and a few times during the afternoon he dodged through the cattle call pushing through the aisles and tried to find her to apologize.

  In the afternoon, at the crowded canteen where stylish men and women sat on stools and drank champagne, some dealers and gallerists and others there to see the ebb and flow of new work or to encounter new galleries, grabbing bottled water, parched from the lack of natural air pumping through the large cavernous pier, she came toward him, arms swinging beside her and her eyebrows pointed downward and her mouth twisted in a hardened scowl. He was glad to see her. She pulled him aside to the end of one of the aisles with a nod of her head. Throughout the day he had chided himself for giving in to his passion, for asking her to meet him the night before and for the uncomfortable situation they were both in, for having lost Agnes and his fear of the repercussions and his inability to move past it, and vowed to himself that he had to earn back his integrity. He wondered if he had a right, if anyone had a right, to personal happiness if it meant hurting others in the process.

  “I’ve been looking for you to apologize. Will you forgive me, Julia?”

  “You can’t do that.” Her voice quivered to restrain her emotions. “We have to stop this. It isn’t good for either one of us.”

  She turned, threaded through the aisles, and dissolved into the crowd before he had a chance to explain himself. Once or twice when he took a tour of the booths he spotted her again, deep in conversation with another artist or dealer, and though their eyes met she did not acknowledge him.

  9 NEW YORK

  A PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT WAS released. Savan gave a statement: “Agnes Murray is the master painter of her generation. These new works dare the viewer to look away.” To escape the pandemonium the media attention was spilling into the day-to-day activities at the gallery, Edward took long lunches, going to his club and swimming laps as if he were training for a race. Back at his desk, his eyes blurry and stinging in a chlorine haze, nothing looked exactly right. He could side with the gallery and swallow his pride, or he could maintain his integrity and publicly denounce the new work and Agnes’s behavior. It occurred to him that he did not have to be a passive party in the center of his own theatre.

  Meanwhile, Savan had ordered ostentatious, slick, shiny black Italian furniture for his new office and was in high-octane mode—fantastic, brilliant, a masterpiece—his Bluetooth in his ear, fingers hammering away furiously on his keyboard when Edward walked by. More than a few times he observed May and Savan huddled in council together in her private space. Savan was May’s new confidant. He knew the common sense of attaching himself to those on the rise and befriending his enemies, but he couldn’t quite make himself heed it when it came to Savan. In their weekly meetings Savan brought up new artists he wanted to sign, wooing Fay Reinhart, and River, an up-and-coming video artist, from Gertrude’s shop. The Observer dubbed him “the Poacher.” The more he was denigrated by the press, the higher his standing went.

  May didn’t seem to mind Savan’s lack of modesty; rather, she watched with what seemed like proud fascination. Occasionally Edward objected to an artist Savan wanted to take on, claiming that the work wasn’t up to the gallery’s standards. He thought May would support him. Lionel Wood used dog hair as a medium, and in one of their weekly meetings Edward suggested that he feared the work would alienate a portion of their clientele. May said, excusing the pun, that she was going to give Savan a long leash. The work made a fortune for the gallery. I’ll give him a long leash too, Edward thought to himself. Let him self-destruct on his own.

  At their marketing meetings Savan name-dropped, one time about Ian Pearlman. “Edward knows him. Edward knows everyone that matters,” he obsequiously said through his smile. “He writes about art for the New York Review.”

  “Everyone knows Ian Pearlman, Alex,” Edward chided.

  “He’s writing a long piece on one of my young artists, Milo Sorrento. I sent him images of the work and he flipped over it,” Savan said.

  May beamed. Edward left the meeting. No wonder Savan was successful. He’d befriend a serial killer if he thought it would get him somewhere.

  Savan peeked his head into Edward’s office afterward. “Sorrento’s on the rise. I just landed him a huge commission.”

  “Good for you,” Edward acknowledged. Slick. Mediocre. Smug, he thought to himself.

  And yes, he could admit, he was ever so slightly jealous.

  AFTER HIS LUNCH-HOUR swim he holed up in his office and privately tended to the other artists he represented. He wondered if, once word leaked out that he was no longer working with Agnes, his other artists would leave him, or think less of him, and in his worst moments he imagined a sudden and prolonged exodus that led to him being finished. Remarkably, it seemed as if Agnes wanted to keep it quiet too, and the press hadn’t yet picked up on it. He asked May about it. She said that Agnes didn’t want negative publicity before her show opened. Defeated, his confidence shaken, he wondered if he’d lost his competitive edge, perhaps even his judgment about what qualified as art, or as art that would sell. He wondered once again how Agnes’s new work would be perceived and whether he’d been t
oo critical.

  WEEKS LATER, HE turned away from a contract he was drafting and faced the window in his office. The sun traveled behind the building across from him and covered his desk in a swath of shadow. He thought of Julia again and though he shouldn’t be expecting her to contact him, he checked e-mails throughout the day at the gallery and later at home to see if she’d written. Days passed. A week. At every event or function he went to he looked for her. Another few days passed. He was alone in his office when the receptionist buzzed to say he had a package. He opened the brown wrapping paper. It was his father’s copy of Keats he had given Julia. There was a note inside. I thought you should have this back, it said.

  10 CONNECTICUT

  AFTER A LONG day at the gallery and a tedious dinner with a collector, he arrived home near midnight and labored up the stairs to their bedroom. His feet ached in his heavy shoes. He sank onto the bottom of the bed and loosened his tie and bent down to untie his shoelaces. Holly was absorbed in an obscure journal on animal habitats, reading glasses at the end of her nose, her hair pulled back. Desire threaded through his core. She looked at him with a half smile and continued reading.

  He took it as a sign that maybe he could resume sleeping in their bed. He changed into his pajama bottoms and T-shirt and crawled into his side. He smelled her familiar odor and longed to put his face in her neck. She closed the journal, turned off the bedside lamp, and curled into her side of the bed. “Night, Holly,” he said, and reached over and kissed the top of her head, waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t and he turned into his own corner and though he was uncomfortable, he forced himself to sleep in the bed beside her.

  In the morning the blasting sound of the vacuum cleaner greeted him downstairs. He leashed the dogs for a walk. Tracing his familiar trail through their neighborhood, he stopped by the pond. The swans hungrily ducked their heads into the cold water and a chill went through him. Trudy reached up and yelped and he calmed her down and gave her a treat from his pocket. Simon did the same, both desiring and commanding his attention. He found a soft, dry spot on a bench near the pond to sit and watched the water slipping over the rocks at the very edge. The air was cold down his back.

  He entered the house and unleashed the dogs. Holly was in the dim breakfast nook, her knees drawn up against her. It took him a few moments to recognize the anguished sounds. She was crying. A piece of hair fell into her eyes.

  “It’s Daddy. He’s gone.” She examined him carefully as he entered the room.

  “When?”

  “This morning.” Her eyes filled again.

  “Holly, I’m sorry,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her.

  “I’m just so mad at you,” she said. She pulled away for a moment and then leaned her shoulders back into him. He held her tight and kissed the top of her hair. Over her head he watched the bright light press into the blinds, illuminating the hues on the floor and brightening the walls until it hurt to see. Her tears seeped into his shirt. She clung to him tightly. The funeral was Friday. Her mother had made all the arrangements months ago.

  She slowly lifted her face from his chest and stood up. “Annabel will be home soon.” She wiped her wet face with her sleeve. “I knew it was coming,” she said.

  “I know. You don’t have to explain.”

  He watched her open the refrigerator and take out vegetables to start a salad, and though he wanted to say more he sat on the breakfast nook bench. He sat there for a long time as if he were keeping vigil as she chopped the carrots and then the radishes, not wanting to leave her, and she seemed neither to mind his presence nor to want his help.

  The dogs followed Holly, sensing her grief. They rubbed against her legs and looked up at her with their noses in the air and let out little sounds, not quite cries or whines but something in between. Holly reached down to shush them and they licked her face. “Good dog, good boy,” she whispered, breaking up again and putting her head in Simon’s fur.

  “I’ll finish here,” Edward said. “Go upstairs. Get some rest.” She moved slowly and without apparent consciousness, as if in a dream.

  THE STEREO WAS turned on loudly. Mahler. He followed its sound to the bedroom. All the windows were open. He found Holly cross-legged in the middle of the bed wearing only a long T-shirt and panties. Her lips were blue. She did this occasionally. She’d turn on the music loudly and get into some kind of zone. He closed the windows and wrapped a blanket around her.

  “All these years I blamed Daddy for Lizzie’s death. It just hit me. And now it’s too late to tell him.”

  “I’m sorry, Holly.” He scooted next to her on the bed and cupped his hand around her shoulder. “Your father knew how much you loved him.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know about anything anymore.” She gazed up, teary. “Why, Edward?” Tears flooded her eyes. She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Something’s happened to us.” Her face hardened. She looked into the air rather than at him as she spoke.

  The room darkened in shadow. They both rose and descended the stairs. He followed Holly into the cool and drafty garage. She kneeled on the cement floor in the half dark, near the litter of kittens, with the little runt cupped in her palm.

  “Did you know that the mother cat won’t care for the runt? She knows instinctively if something is wrong and won’t waste her time when she has healthy kittens to attend to.” She pressed her lips into the kitten’s matted head. “Poor, precious thing. Can you imagine?” Holly sighed as they saw through the garage window the lights go on, one after another, in the house next door.

  AT THE FUNERAL, the pews of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral were filled with mourners, others standing in the outer aisles. After the service Edward embraced Holly and his own eyes filled. She broke away, dried her eyes with her handkerchief, and put her arm in her mother’s to greet their guests. At her mother’s apartment afterward he observed her warmly receive her parents’ friends and relatives, all dressed respectfully in black dresses and dark suits. He awkwardly took the coats and carried them into the master bedroom.

  He wandered into the dining room and found the painting of Holly and her twin, Lizzie, on the wall in the dining room above the credenza. Though it had faded, the image of the two girls in their white knee socks, Mary Janes, and matching collared dresses still asserted its poignant authority. Tom Drury arrived with flowers. Holly led him through the back hall into her old bedroom. From the hallway he observed the two of them huddled together in conversation on Holly’s canopy bed. Holly leaned over and Tom held her. His gut clenched watching another man hold his wife.

  11 NEW YORK

  THE OPENING OF Agnes Murray’s show arrived the first Thursday in May. Fortunately someone had persuaded her to change the name to Grand Illusions. Edward’s revenues were still down—lower than ever—and he still hadn’t signed anyone new. He’d curated a show of anatomical drawings by Miles McDermott, an artist he’d signed in his early days at the gallery, and though he liked the work and liked Miles, his heart wasn’t in it. He found less in the art world that he cared about. He feared he’d not only lost his edge, but perhaps worse, the ability to be truly moved. He remembered the first show he curated and the sense of his connection to the motion and beauty of a particular moment in time as expressed through objects and felt by the way in which he helped to conceptualize the show as if he were a conduit for preserving history. He hadn’t felt that way in a while.

  The morning of Agnes’s opening, May peered her head into his office and explained that she thought it would be best for the gallery if he did not attend. He hadn’t been planning on it, but it insulted him that May asked.

  Later that evening, he retreated upstairs to the eerie darkness of his study and turned on a small desk light. Outside the windows were shadows of trees and the faraway roofs of other houses. He nursed a scotch and reluctantly turned on his computer to see the press. Page six of
the Observer reported that the gallery was packed. Every critic, important art figure, and gallery owner attended. When asked in a profile in Vogue about why she became a painter, Agnes said, “I’ve been chosen by painting to work in its service.”

  He found himself avoiding the papers. Avoiding everyone. He entered the gallery every morning and swiftly walked past her paintings mounted on the walls—seeing them up for view, and still not quite buying into their vision, disturbed him. He didn’t like the way the paintings were hung. Agnes and Savan had chosen large frames and lots of wall space, as if to emphasize the sense of drama in the work, but instead they made the work look flat. No one had thought to ask his opinion. Agnes hardly came to the gallery. Once he thought he heard her voice and ducked into the showroom to see, and he saw her quickly turn her head. So as not to make her uncomfortable, he retreated to his office and then regretted it. Why should he be the one hiding? What had he done? Hearing her name, seeing it in print, catching anyone speaking of her brought all the humiliation back.

  The reviews began to trickle in. The New York Times said there was a lack of continuity to the paintings. The New Yorker wondered if Agnes was cashing in on 9/11 and found the work overly determined and grim. There was a long retrospective piece in the New York Review. The reviewer suggested that the work, though powerful, hadn’t quite jelled and was a disappointment. Edward thought he’d feel vindicated, but instead the coverage angered him. Agnes had settled for putting a filter between her hand and the work, when what the canvas needed was conflict and intensity and challenging eye movement. The gallery was going to have a rough go of it.

  No longer exuding his usual bravado, Savan looked tense, and for a few luxurious moments Edward was glad not to have to deal with Agnes. She was probably fit to be tied. And then he wished, somehow, that he was still her dealer. He’d stand by her during the rough times. That is what dealers did if they believed in the artist and the long haul involved in nurturing talent.