Portrait of a Love

by Joan Wolf

  Her work since the summer had not gone well. Technically, it was brilliant, but the glow, the magic, the vision that had made the Hampton Island paintings so extraordinary were gone. Nothing could destroy the drawing skill or the exquisite brush work, but even if she might fool others, Isabel could not fool herself. Something was lost.

  And all the time, no matter where she was or what she was doing, there was an acute and overwhelming sense of loss. Painting didn’t help. Painting the way she was painting now made it worse.

  I did this to myself, she would think. This was my decision. And Leo’s words when she accused him of the same thing would come back to her: “I know. But strangely enough, that doesn’t seem to make it any better.”

  The Christmas season was upon them. Isabel and Bob bought a tree and Isabel decorated the apartment with vases of holly. Bob’s firm had its Christmas party, which they attended together but after the intellectual sharpness of Washington, Isabel found the New York festivities silly and boring.

  The day after the party was Sunday, a day Bob usually slept late. Isabel got up at eight o’clock, went out to the kitchen, and found him at the breakfast table drinking coffee. He was wearing a sweatsuit.

  “Are you going running?” she asked in surprise.

  “I’ve been. I just got back.”

  “My, you’re energetic.” She belted her robe more firmly around her waist and went to the stove to pour herself a cup of coffee.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

  “Oh?” She sat down across from him. Isabel had not slept well either, but then that was nothing new.

  “Isabel,” Bob said, “we’ve got to talk. About us.”

  She looked at him gravely. “All right.”

  “It’s something I’ve been thinking for a while, ever since you came home in September looking like grim death.” Isabel stared at her coffee cup. “You said then you wouldn’t marry Sinclair because marriage would interfere with your work,” Bob went on. “And I’ve said I needed to live with you because of my work. And we’re both liars, Isabel. We’re both hiding.” His voice was very calm and very clear. Each phrase was spoken deliberately. “We’re both afraid.”

  Isabel pushed her coffee cup away and, putting her elbows on the table, rested her forehead on her hands. Her face masked from his view, she said, “What do you mean?”

  “I know something about you, Isabel. We’ve been friends for many years. And I know how your father’s alcoholism has affected you. You’re afraid, honey. You’re so afraid to trust a man. You’re afraid to trust Sinclair, that’s why you won’t marry him.”

  Honey. Bob never called her honey. Isabel’s breath came painfully.

  “And what are you afraid of, Bob?” she asked.

  “The truth about myself. I’ve hidden the truth from the firm, I’ve hidden it from my family, and most of all, I’ve tried to hide it from myself.” He met her eyes directly. “All these years I’ve said to myself, maybe I’ll change, maybe one day Isabel and I will get married. I’ve hidden behind you, Isabel. For all these years, I’ve hidden behind you.”

  “I see,” she said. Her voice was very gentle.

  “And then, last night, when Mrs. Barrows talked about our getting married, I knew.” The room was very quiet. “I knew then that there was no way I was ever going to marry you or anyone else.”

  There was a painful line between his brows. “Is there someone special?” she asked softly.

  “Yes.”

  Isabel put out her hand. “I love you,” she said. “My parents never gave me a brother, but I found one in you.”

  The line between his brows smoothed out. He reached out and covered her hand with his. “I love you too,” he said.

  Isabel sniffed and he released her. “I need a tissue,” she said, and went to the sink to get one.

  “Your work has been lousy ever since you got back home,” he said to her back.

  Isabel blew her nose. “I know.”

  “Those things you did this summer were the best you’ve ever done.”

  Isabel’s voice was muffled. “I know,” she said again.

  “You have to feel to be an artist, Isabel. You have to be open to life.”

  Isabel turned to look at him. “What should I do?” she asked helplessly.

  “Marry Sinclair.”

  “What if he doesn’t want me anymore?”

  “You’ll never know, will you, unless you ask.”

  Isabel pushed her hair behind her ears. “I’m going to get dressed,” she said. “I need to walk.”

  “Go ahead. And think about what I’ve just said.”

  She did think about it. She walked with hands in pockets and bent head, totally unaware of her surroundings, and she thought. And, without conscious direction, her steps took her to the doors of St. Mark’s Catholic Church. Before she had a chance to change her mind, Isabel went in.

  Mass was in progress and Isabel slipped into a rear pew. The congregation was coming back from Communion and she rose with them for the final prayers. When the church had emptied, she moved forward to the altar.

  There was a crèche scene on the altar steps with Mary and Joseph kneeling on either side of the empty manger, watched over by angels and shepherds. She knew the baby would be put in the manger on Christmas Day.

  “Look, Isabel!” she could hear her mother’s voice saying. “Look! The Baby Jesus is born.”

  Isabel knelt in the front pew and bowed her head. The familiar smell of the church surrounded her. Why do all Catholic churches smell the same? she thought. She hadn’t been inside one in years and yet she would know the smell anywhere.

  You’re afraid to trust Leo, Bob had said. That had perhaps been true in the spring; it wasn’t true anymore. She was no longer afraid that Leo would betray her as her father had. She wasn’t afraid of any failing in Leo at all.

  The church somehow brought her parents very close to her. She remembered how her father would give her a quarter for the collection basket on Sunday. She remembered her mother’s face the day she made her First Communion.

  She looked at the statue of Mary on the altar and thought about her mother. She thought of what her mother had suffered and about what her mother’s death had done to her father.

  It was true that she was afraid, not of Leo, but of loving Leo. All her fine philosophy had been a cover-up for one simple fact: she was petrified of being hurt as her father had been. Loving someone left you so terribly vulnerable. What if Leo should die ...

  You coward, she said to herself. You poor, stupid, ignorant coward. She looked at the scene on the altar. Mary didn’t say no, she thought. When the angel appeared to her, she didn’t hesitate. “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” she had said to Elizabeth. My soul will never magnify anything, Isabel thought. It’s been too busy huddling in a corner.

  The church began to fill up for the next Mass, so Isabel got up and left. She didn’t need public prayer right now. She needed to go home and write a letter to Leo.

  Isabel couldn’t put pen to paper fast enough when she got home, and the letter was posted Monday morning. “If it’s all over, don’t bother to reply,” she had written. “I’ll understand.”

  The Christmas mails were slow, and she had sent the letter to Charleston. He should get it by Thursday, she reckoned. She couldn’t expect a phone call before Thursday ... if a phone call came.

  On Wednesday night she and Bob were sitting in front of the TV watching a Christmas special when the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” Bob said, and left the room. Isabel kept her eyes on the screen even though her thoughts were hundreds of miles away.

  She heard the door open.

  “You must be Bob,” a familiar and well-loved voice said. “I’m Leo Sinclair.”

  Isabel quite literally stopped breathing.

  “Come in, Senator. She’s in the living room.” Bob’s voice came to her through the wild tapping of her heart.

  Then Leo stood in the doorway, big and vibrant
and lightly sprinkled with raindrops. Isabel was on her feet.

  “Leo?” she said. She took one step across the room. He didn’t say anything, he just looked at her. Then she began to run.

  His arms around her felt so strong. She had thought she would never feel them again. She locked her own arms around his neck and looked up into his face.

  “It’s you,” she said. “It’s really you.”

  He said something she didn’t quite hear and then he was kissing her. He kissed her for quite a long time, and when he finally raised his head, they were both shaking.

  “It’s really me,” he said, his voice not quite under control.

  She stared up into his face, drinking in the sight of him as a thirst-driven traveler might stare at an oasis. She touched his cheek and then his hair. It was damp with rain. “Did you get my letter?” she asked wonderingly.

  His hands were still on her waist. “This morning. Ben flew me up.”

  “Ben! He doesn’t have a license.”

  He removed one hand from her waist and slid it into her long black hair. “He just got it,” he murmured.

  “Oh, Leo,” she said shakily. And he kissed her again.

  It was ten minutes more before he finally took his trench coat off. Isabel went to hang it in the bathroom, and when she returned to the living room, he said, fiercely, “Do you know the hell you’ve put me through?”

  “Yes, oh, yes.” He was standing in front of the green velvet sofa. She stayed where she was in the doorway and gazed at him. She couldn’t get enough of looking at him. “I’ve been through it myself,” she said. “Bob says I’ve looked like grim death ever since I came home.”

  “Bob,” said Leo. “Now there is a fellow whose hand I want to shake.”

  Isabel looked into the hall. “Where is he?” she asked, missing him for the first time.

  “I reckon he’s being tactful.” Leo smiled and held out his hand. “Come and sit next to me,” he said softly. “No sense in wastin’ such thoughtfulness.”

  When Bob finally returned a half an hour later, he closed the front door with unnecessary force before he came into the living-room doorway. “Is it safe for me to return?” he asked the couple on the sofa.

  Isabel laughed and got to her feet. “You poor thing. Come on in and be introduced.”

  “We met at the door, briefly,” Bob said, and came into the room. There was a guarded expression in his eyes as he looked at Leo, and Isabel suddenly realized that he was afraid of how Leo was going to react to him.

  Leo grinned and held out his hand. “Very briefly. I had other things on my mind, I’m afraid. How do you do.”

  Bob shook hands composedly. “Do I offer you my congratulations, Senator?”

  “You do. And call me Leo. After all, we’re practically going to be brothers-in-law.”

  Bob’s face relaxed slightly. “I’m so glad, Isabel,” he said, and looked at her.

  She was radiant. “So am I.”

  “I told her she owed it to you,” Leo said amiably. “After all, you’ve housed her for years. We’ll buy a nice big house and you can come for long visits.”

  Bob’s face relaxed completely and he grinned. “You owe that to me,” he said. “You’re taking my cook.”

  “Yep. And I’m taking her right away, too.” He looked at Isabel. “How would you like to come back to Charleston with me and be married?”

  She sighed. “It sounds wonderful.”

  “Well,” said Bob, “I have heard you’re a man of action.”

  Leo chuckled.

  “Where is Ben?” Isabel asked suddenly.

  “We’re staying at the Essex House. He can fly us home tomorrow.”

  “Great,” said Isabel faintly. “Ben,” she explained to Bob, “is Leo’s brother. Leo’s young brother. He just got his flying license.”

  “That’s terrific.”

  “Yes, isn’t it. Oh, well,” Isabel said philosophically, “if we go down, at least we’ll go down together.”

  “He’s very good,” Leo said firmly. “And now, since you have to pack, I’ll be off. I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning. At nine sharp.”

  “His ancestors were generals,” Isabel said excusingly to Bob. “Both revolutionary and Confederate. He just can’t help organizing.”

  Bob ignored her. “I’ll make sure she’s ready,” he said to Leo. “And now, to add to my previously demonstrated tactfulness, I will retire and allow you to say good night alone.”

  “Bob,” Isabel said, “you are a prince.”

  “I know,” he returned modestly, and went off down the hall. Leo turned to Isabel.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said softly.

  “Yes.” She looked up at him out of eyes that were wide and dark and unspeakably beautiful. “I love you so much,” she said.

  “I thought you meant it,” he said. “That stuff about never marrying because of your art. I really thought you meant it.”

  “I thought I did, too,” she replied softly.

  He put his arms around her and held her close. “It made sense, you know.” His cheek was against her hair. “It made such damn good sense.”

  “It might have made sense, but it wasn’t true. You have to be open to life, Bob told me. And he was right. You have to live if you want to create. And without you, I don’t seem to be any good at living.”

  “Well, I’m sure not any good at living without you.” His voice sounded oddly husky.

  Isabel closed her eyes. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

  “So do I, honey. So do I.”

  After a minute she pushed him away. “Well, you can tell you mother to book the church and hire the organist. All your old girlfriends can get out their handkerchiefs.”

  “Are you serious?” he asked. “Could you really stand a big wedding?”

  “Leo, your mother’s heart will be broken if we just stand up in front of the priest with a couple of witnesses.”

  A very slow smile started at the corners of his eyes. “True,” he said.

  “Would Paige like to be my maid of honor?”

  The smile spread to his mouth. “She’d love it.”

  “Well, then ...”

  “One month,” he said. “I’ll give Mama one month. If she can’t organize a wedding in that time, I’m going to drag you off by myself.”

  “She’ll manage,” said Isabel. “After all, she’s a Sinclayeh.”

  “So she is,” he murmured. “And so will you be too, honey.” And he bent to kiss her again.

  Copyright © 1984 by Joan Wolf

  Originally published by New American Library [ISBN 0451130022]

  Electronically published in 2013 by Belgrave House

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228

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  This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.