Portrait of a Love

by Joan Wolf

  “Yes,” said Leo very quietly, “it rather sounds as if he has been.”

  Her gravely thin face suddenly broke into its wonderful smile. “I’m glad you said that. Not everyone would understand.”

  “I reckon not.”

  She tilted her head a little to one side and regarded him curiously. “Frankly, I’m rather surprised to find you so tolerant.”

  “Because I’m a big macho football player?”

  His face was expressionless, but Isabel understood, with great surprise, that she had hurt his feelings. Impulsively she put out her hand and covered his. “Leo, I’m sorry. I’m as bad as the people who would condemn Bob.”

  He looked for a minute at their two hands lying on his thigh. Isabel’s narrow palm was about half the size of his. Her gaze followed his and she laughed a little nervously. “My skin is about three shades darker than yours,” she said as she removed her hand.

  “You have beautiful coloring.” His gentle, slow, Southern voice sounded like a caress.

  “You’re the one with the spectacular coloring,” she retorted quickly. “And it’s my job to catch it on canvas. And, if we’re going to start at seven-thirty tomorrow morning, I had better turn in.”

  He smiled at her, slow and charming and utterly seductive. His eyes were even bluer than usual. “All right,” he drawled. “You go on up to bed. I’m going to stay here and watch the news.”

  Isabel realized, with terrified astonishment, that she didn’t want to leave him.

  “Good night,” she said firmly, and walked out of the room, feeling suddenly empty.

  She did not go to sleep right away, but lay awake, consciously thinking about the portrait, about what she was going to work on tomorrow, about anything that might distract her from the upheaval of her emotions.

  After a while she heard Leo come upstairs. His footsteps came along the hall and moved unhesitatingly past her door. He walked lightly for so big a man. He was like a giant cat, she thought, a giant golden cat. She opened her eyes and stared into the dimness of her room. Damn, she thought. Damn, damn, damn. He got to her as no one had in a long time. Not since Philip.

  Philip. She closed her eyes and for the first time in years she tried to visualize his face. It wouldn’t come clear for her. She remembered his curly black hair and blue-gray eyes, but she couldn’t remember his mouth. She couldn’t really remember his face.

  Now, wasn’t that funny? she thought. She couldn’t remember what Philip looked like. She had been so sure his face would be engraved on her soul for the rest of her life.

  He had been teaching an evening art class on the Italian Renaissance at the Metropolitan Museum when Isabel met him. He was thirty years old, very handsome, a painter whose work was exhibited in the best New York galleries. Isabel had listened to him in wide-eyed wonder, thirsty for the knowledge he was imparting, awed by the looks, the intelligence, the talent of the man in front of her. When he had spoken casually to her after the third class, she had been thrilled. After the next class he had invited her out for coffee. It had not taken him very long to get her into bed.

  Isabel thought that he was wonderful and that she was in love with him. She was very young and very alone and very vulnerable. She was overwhelmed by the thought that such a brilliant, handsome, successful, talented man could possibly be interested in her. She did not know that he was married.

  She found it out, brutally, when she went to one of Philip’s exhibitions. She had come into the Fifty-seventh Street gallery dressed in her jeans and sweater, but she hadn’t minded the fact that she had no other clothes to wear. In fact, she was scarcely aware of all the well-dressed people around her. She was even less aware that the attention she attracted was not due to her casual clothes. Isabel was aware only of the paintings and of the man who was standing among a small group of people in the corner of the gallery. She didn’t go over to him but began instead to look at his work.

  Philip was an Abstract Expressionist. Isabel’s classes in high school were mainly drawing classes; everything she knew about nonrepresentational art she had learned from Philip. So, as she looked attentively at the paintings in front of her, the expression on her young face was gravely intent.

  “Isabel.” It was Philip’s voice, and she turned to him, a smile illuminating her darkly serious face.

  “Hello, Philip,” she said simply. It was a minute before she noticed the mink-coated woman standing next to him. Then he introduced her to his wife.

  Even at seventeen, Isabel had learned to guard her expression. She had managed to get through the next half-hour with at least a semblance of poise. When she had finally reached home, she had been too shocked to even cry.

  Philip waited after school for her the next day, and over coffee he was charming, apologetic, regretful, but firm. Maureen was from one of the best New York families, and it was her money that allowed him to paint, her connections that had gotten him his first exhibition. He had no intention of breaking up such a lucrative union, though none of this, of course, interfered at all with his feelings for Isabel.

  Isabel had left the coffee shop, gone home, and refused to see him again. He had telephoned her and waited after school for her, but in the end he had given up and left her alone.

  Isabel had never even kissed a man since.

  Until tonight.

  “Some man sure did a job on you,” Leo had said to her, and Isabel still didn’t understand how he had known that. She did understand that he was the first man since Philip and her father who had been able to make her cry. She also understood that if she wanted to maintain her peace of mind, she had better keep away from him. How the hell was she going to be able to keep away from him when she was living in the same house with him? When she was painting his bloody portrait, for God’s sake?

  It was a question she still had not resolved when she finally fell asleep.

  Chapter Seven

  The following day, Friday, Isabel painted during the morning and had lunch with Leo in the Senate dining room. She spent all of the afternoon at the National Gallery of Art and came home to find her dresses from New York along with a cherry-colored wool suit Bob had “picked up,” he wrote, “in Lord and Taylor’s on sale.” It was size eight and fit her perfectly. Bless Bob, thought Isabel, who had worn her burgundy paisley for lunch with Leo and had thus, in two days, exhausted her repertoire of daytime dresses. The suit would be a welcome addition to her limited wardrobe.

  Leo was home in time to have a drink and watch the six-o’clock news. Isabel curled up comfortably in her corner of the sofa with a ginger ale and thought that this was quite a pleasant ritual they shared. They talked very little and Leo sipped his Scotch slowly. It was his time to relax and unwind, Isabel realized, and she was content to sit quietly beside him on the comfortable sofa.

  When the news was over, he switched the television off and turned to Isabel with a smile. “Well, are you ready to make your first foray into the wilds of social Washington?”

  Isabel wrinkled her nose. “I’m petrified,” she confessed.

  “You needn’t be.” He was quite serious now. “A lot of people think the Stacks are a bunch of stuffed shirts, but it isn’t true. They’re very formal, but also very kind. I think you’ll like them.”

  Isabel got lithely to her feet. “The question,” she said austerely, “is will they like me?”

  “They love beautiful, stuck-up young painters,” he said.

  Isabel stared. “Stuck-up?” she said finally, when she had gotten her breath back.

  “The question,” he said with a fair imitation of the reserved manner she had meticulously maintained with him all day long, “the question is, Are you stuck-up or are you scared?”

  Isabel’s stare turned to a glare. “Leo Sinclair, will you please stop psychoanalyzing me?”

  “Scared, I reckon,” he said.

  “I am trying to maintain a professional relationship with you,” Isabel began calmly and carefully, “but you are going out o
f your way to make it difficult for me.”

  He smiled at her, very blond and blue in the light of the table lamp. “I am,” he admitted.

  “Well, stop it.” She tried to look and sound severe, but the sight of him in the lamplight was doing strange things to her insides.

  “You have one hour to get dressed,” he said softly.

  “Oh.” Isabel hesitated, looked at him once more, and then turned and went up the stairs to her room.

  She put on one of the dresses she and Mrs. Sinclair had bought: a designer dinner dress with an ivory satin, side-draped top and a slim ivory velvet skirt. It had been out of season in Charleston and so she had gotten a good price on it. The neck was high, so she did not need a necklace. She wore long drop earrings and did her hair in a simple, elegant chignon.

  Leo was waiting for her as she came down the stairs, and she caught a glimpse of their reflection in the tall narrow hall mirror. With an artist’s detachment she realized that they made a striking couple, he so tall and strong and blond, she tall but slim and dark. They were opposites, she thought as she drew a shawl around her shoulders and preceded him out the door. There could be no middle ground between the rich aristocratic Southern senator Leo Sinclair and the lower-middle-class young painter from New York that was herself.

  * * * *

  The Stacks house was in a section of Washington that Leo called Kalorama. The homes were much larger than those Isabel had seen in Georgetown.

  “That’s the French embassy there,” Leo said casually as they passed the imposing edifice.

  The house they dined at was scarcely smaller than the embassy. As they entered through the front door, Isabel looked around and thought that the hall of the Stack house was wider than the entire width of Leo’s Georgetown home.

  They surrendered their outer wraps to a butler and proceeded past a huge vase of flowers and up a staircase to an enormous drawing room. This room was empty and Leo put his hand under Isabel’s arm and guided her across a huge amount of thickly carpeted space to another drawing room, where, finally, there was a gathering of people.

  Mr. and Mrs. Stack immediately greeted Leo and looked at Isabel with pleasant, smiling eyes.

  There were a number of people already present, and right after Leo and Isabel came a succession of new arrivals. All the men were impeccably attired in black tie and the women in long dresses. Leo and Isabel were the youngest people there.

  Butlers saw to it that everyone had drinks. Isabel drank ginger ale and conversed pleasantly with a variety of people, including a syndicated political columnist, a Supreme Court Justice, and a lady who ran an exclusive Georgetown boutique. Trays of canapés were circulated by other butlers and uniformed maids. Isabel was starving and crunched away on raw cauliflower and a fluff of hot pastry.

  Promptly at nine o’clock guests started moving toward the dining room. Isabel obediently followed the crowd back across the second empty drawing room and into a large and elegant dining room set with two rectangular tables. Each table seated ten, and Isabel found her own place card was not at Leo’s table. She panicked for a moment when she realized that he was not going to be sitting next to her and that she was going to have to get through this intimidating dinner all by herself. She allowed the man next to her to seat her and she sat gracefully, her head held high on its slim, proud neck.

  The man next to her smiled pleasantly and said, “I’m Stanford Ames, the director of the National Gallery.” This was said not boastfully but simply and kindly. He was merely giving her some necessary background so they could converse.

  “The National Gallery,” said Isabel reverently. “I spent the whole afternoon there today.” Then, recollecting herself, “I’m Isabel MacCarthy.”

  “I know who you are,” the man returned. “Ham told me earlier. So you’re going to paint Leo’s portrait?”

  The soup was delicious and the main course, filet mignon, was superb, but Isabel paid little attention to the food. Leo, from the next table, watched her and smiled to himself a little. He had known she would enjoy Stan Ames. It was why he had asked Hamilton to invite him.

  Halfway through dinner Mr. Ames smiled gently and said to Isabel, “I’m afraid it’s time to talk to the lady on my other side. I’ve enjoyed this very much, Miss MacCarthy. You must let me give you lunch one day next week.”

  “That would be lovely,” said Isabel.

  Stanford Ames turned away and a voice from Isabel’s other side said, “How are you enjoying Washington, Miss MacCarthy?”

  It was so precisely timed that Isabel felt like laughing. At the next table she saw that Leo was now talking to the lady on his other side. Isabel grinned mischievously at the Washington investment banker who was her new conversational partner, “I’m enjoying it very much, Mr. Hawkins,” she said. “Is it our turn to talk now?”

  He smiled back delightedly. “It’s our turn. Now tell me, what are you doing with yourself besides painting Leo’s portrait?”

  Thus the evening ran until they left at eleven-fifteen, when the party broke up.

  “That was an early evening,” Isabel commented as they got into Leo’s car.

  “All Washington dinner parties end early. You arrive at eight and leave shortly after eleven. It’s tradition.”

  “The executives in Bob’s firm are all as old as the people were tonight,” Isabel said innocently, “and their parties don’t break up until after one at least.”

  Leo grinned. It was too dark for her to see his face, but she could hear the smile in his voice.

  “It’s not their venerable years that send people home early in this town, Isabel. It’s a question of status. If you hang around a party until twelve or one o’clock, people will think you don’t have an important report to read before a top-level breakfast meeting at eight o’clock the next morning.”

  Isabel began to laugh. “Oh, my. I never thought of that.” She rested her head against the back of the car seat. “Do you have a top-level breakfast meeting tomorrow?”

  “Nope,” he replied cheerfully. “I have an appointment to get my portrait painted in the morning and an appointment to golf with the artist in the afternoon, and then I’m going dancing with her in the evening.”

  “My goodness. That does sound like a busy day. And I don’t golf.”

  “I’ll give you a lesson. We’ll do nine holes. It’s supposed to be nice and I’d like the fresh air and exercise. This portrait painting is a very sedentary business.”

  “I suppose it must be,” Isabel murmured. “I’m not a very physically active person myself, I’m afraid. The only exercise I usually get is walking.”

  “You’re not into running?”

  “God, no,” Isabel said fervently. “Bob is. He dragged me out a couple of times. I absolutely hated it. Why did you ask?” she added curiously.

  “You have the physique of a runner: light-boned and narrow, and you look to be in top physical condition.”

  Isabel laughed ruefully. “Heredity, not exercise. Both my parents were tall and thin.” They came to a stop at a traffic light and a street lamp shone into the car. Isabel glanced at Leo out of the corner of her eye. She was not the only one who looked to be in excellent condition. Leo’s shoulders might border on being massive, but his waist and hips were slim. Isabel was sure there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him.

  “Do you run?” she asked. Isabel had noticed that Washington appeared to be crowded with joggers, particularly at lunchtime.

  “No. I usually start off the day with a swim. I’ll get back to it once you’ve finished immortalizing me.” His voice sounded perfectly normal. If Isabel hadn’t been watching him, she would have noticed nothing unusual. But the light from the street lamp showed her the faintest tightening of the muscles about his mouth.

  The light changed and the car started forward again. How stupid of me, Isabel thought. Of course he doesn’t run. Pounding along on a hard pavement would be the worst thing possible for his knees. Swimming, on the other hand, wo
uld give him exercise without the wear and tear.

  “Do you go to a club to swim?” she asked after a while.

  “Yes.”

  “You need a house with a pool of your own,” she said with an effort at lightness. “That way, you could jump in whenever it was convenient.”

  “One of these days I’ll buy a bigger house out in McLean or Chevy Chase,” he said easily. “For my present bachelor existence, however, Georgetown suits me fine.”

  “You’ve been a bachelor for a long time,” Isabel said cautiously.

  “I reckon I just never found a girl I wanted to marry.” His slow voice took on an even more pronounced drawl than usual. “I haven’t given up, though.”

  “Oh.” She coughed. “I guess a wife would be a useful addition in Washington.”

  “Definitely.” He sounded amused.

  “She could run dinner parties for you, and so on.”

  “Perhaps I ought to put an advertisement in the paper.” He was amused.

  Isabel smiled into the darkness. “Wanted: one wife,” she improvised. “Must be good hostess and knowledgeable about politics.” She turned her head toward Leo. “Only applicants under thirty-five considered. Will that do?”

  “I might run into trouble on the age requirement,” he said judiciously.

  “Heavens,” said Isabel, “you’re right. It’s just the sort of thing to provoke an American Civil Liberties Union suit. We’d better take it out.”

  “I think so. It wouldn’t do my image as an enlightened Southern Democrat any good if I were sued by the ACLU.”

  Isabel laughed. “Well, you’ll have to hire an agency to deal with the number of applicants,” she went on. “You really can’t have them lining the street in front of your house.”

  “True. I suppose there are a number of women who would like the idea of being a senator’s wife.”

  Isabel hadn’t been thinking of his position. There would be women lining up for Leo Sinclair no matter what his job was. However, she wasn’t about to tell him that. Besides, he didn’t need to be told. He knew all too well the extent of his own attractiveness.