The Masterpiece

by Fiona Davis

  She and Levon made a good team, and as the term came to an end, Mr. Lorette often remarked favorably on the quality of their students’ work. Out in the wilds of Maine, the director had lost some of his officious airs. It helped that Oliver had gone out of his way to chat up the Lorettes, overriding Clara’s naturally abrasive manner.

  Life with Oliver had settled into an easy calm after their discussion about Levon. His recently published poem had been praised by a distinguished critic, and the boost couldn’t have come at a better time. Clara had made sure to read the review out loud at the bonfire that evening, and since then, Oliver had noticeably relaxed, retreated from offering career advice, and enjoyed his own acclaim. She was truly happy for him.

  A few weeks into the term, Levon wrangled several students and teachers into attending Violet’s play. Clara hadn’t seen much of her, as Violet tended to come in very late and sleep in most mornings, but she’d heard Levon and Violet whispering as they climbed the creaky stairs together in the middle of the night. The play, a zany musical, wasn’t Clara’s cup of tea, but Violet’s singing voice was melodic and carried well. After, they feasted on crabmeat and corn, as Levon literally sang the praises of Violet, having caught the musical theater bug himself, apparently.

  Oliver whispered into Clara’s ear. “Let’s go back to the cottage now, shall we?”

  They slipped out and wandered down the moonlit road, Oliver listing more European cities he’d like to visit on their trip, which had already lengthened from three weeks to four. He held open the screen door for Clara. “Come on, let’s hit the sheets before the choir returns.”

  She whacked him on the arm and ran up the stairs, grateful they finally had the whole house to themselves. Later, they lay in her bed, the only sound the crickets chirping outside. Her eyes began to droop.

  “Marry me, Clara.”

  She stayed still for a moment, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. He was looking up at the ceiling, his profile barely visible in the dark room. She touched his nose.

  “What was that?”

  He turned his head, his eyes gleaming. “Let’s get married.”

  “We practically already are.”

  “I want it to be official. We can make the trip to Europe our honeymoon. I don’t want to lose you.”

  She propped herself up on one elbow and studied him. “You’re not going to. Unless your success as a poet goes to your head and you run off with a silly girl like Violet.”

  He didn’t laugh. “I have something to confess.”

  She braced herself. A confession on the heels of a proposal. Who knew what was coming?

  “I paid to have my poem published. Well, to be more specific, I offered to invest in the journal, and they understood what that meant.”

  Dear Oliver. He had tried so hard, and Clara’s successes had most likely made him feel like a failure, simply by comparison. He’d done so much for her; he’d made her life as seamless as possible so she could churn out illustration after illustration, design after design. She was always the focus. Whenever they had a lull in conversation he’d ask her about whatever detail she was struggling with, whether the coy expression of a cover girl or the line of a car door handle.

  And for that, his own career had suffered. She owed it to him to support him in a way that was less selfish. He had dreams of his own. There was no shame in that, or in the way he went about getting his work out in the world.

  She told him so. “Look at the reception you’ve gotten. It was the right thing to do. I’m proud of you.”

  “Then you’ll marry me?”

  Their life together, so far, had been an easy ride, one of shared interests and many joys. Once Oliver reached his full potential as an artist, the small irritations would smooth over naturally. He was good for her, no question, and she would try harder to be a good partner to him.

  She took his face in her hands and smiled. “Yes, Oliver, I will marry you.”

  * * *

  On the last weekend before the end of the summer term, the mood among the students took on an almost feral urgency. Like children in a summer camp, knowing that restrictions would soon be imposed, they became boisterous and edgy. Levon, of course, encouraged the wildness, insisting that the class play leapfrog in the field when they should have been painting, or teaching the students a bawdy song that became the school’s anthem, much to Mr. Lorette’s chagrin.

  Clara and Oliver hadn’t made any kind of announcement about their engagement. Oliver insisted they wait until he tell his parents and buy her a ring before sharing the news. He’d asked if he should send a letter to Clara’s father, formally requesting her hand, and she’d dismissed it as a bad idea. When he’d pushed back, she’d stood her ground.

  Saturday morning, Clara woke early to finish her painting. Other than the milkman’s truck, not a soul passed through. Clara stepped back, surveying her work, and couldn’t have been more pleased. At first glance, the painting seemed like a jumble of shapes and colors, but eventually a woman emerged on the page. The figure wasn’t much different from her first attempt, but the oils made the colors and texture even richer.

  After dabbing her sable brush in black paint, she considered where to place her signature. She had painted the first letter of her name when the door to the cottage slammed, making her jump.

  Oliver shambled over, two cups of coffee in his hand. He offered her one, but she motioned for him to set it on the tree stump, as both hands were occupied.

  “Interesting.”

  “I’m just about to sign it. You’ve come at the final moment.”

  He grimaced. “I wouldn’t do that. If this gets out, your career will be ruined.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was joking. “That’s unnecessarily cruel. Why would you say such a thing?”

  He smiled and kissed her, but his voice remained serious. “I’m sorry. But we have to be honest with each other. You’ll tell me when a poem is a horror, right? Promise me that.”

  He had a point. This was her first foray into expressionism, quite possibly her last. She was too close to it to be able to judge its worth. “Fine. But I’ve already written the first initial.”

  The yellow Lab from next door ambled over, a stick in his mouth. Oliver gently extricated the stick from his jaws before giving it a good throw down the driveway. The dog trotted off into the backyard instead. “You can name it after our contradictory friend here. Clyde.”

  “You want me to sign it ‘Clyde’?”

  The sunlight caught the canvas at an angle, turning the surface into a series of peaks and valleys. Maybe Oliver was right. The painting was ghastly, an attempt to be artistic and modern. She should stick with what she was good at. She finished up the signature, and Oliver offered to carry her easel and supplies back up to her room.

  That evening, they all gathered around a bonfire on the beach. Levon and Violet wandered out of the darkness and sat on a log across the campfire from Oliver and Clara. A frisson of jealously slid up Clara’s spine at the way Levon touched Violet’s hand, leaning into her and whispering some private joke. Violet threw back her pretty head and laughed as Levon studied her throat like a vampire.

  “I’ll be right back.” Clara stood and brushed the sand off her dress, hoping that Oliver wouldn’t follow. He was deep in conversation with one of the other teachers and hardly noticed her leave.

  She wandered along the shore, avoiding driftwood and seaweed, the cold sand on her bare feet a paltry salve to the irritation burning inside her. But no, she told herself, it wasn’t Levon and Violet. Her frustrations were to be expected. She was sad to be leaving this magical place, to be going back to the grind of the city and the machinations of planning a wedding. But perhaps it was time to stop fussing about and focus on what was right with the world. She was to be married, and Clara would be lucky to have Oliver as a husband, someone who tempered her rou
gh edges and told her the truth.

  “Wait.”

  Levon.

  She turned and waited for him to catch up to her. “Where’s your actress?”

  “Where’s your poet?”

  She didn’t reply. Together, they walked in silence for a while. She would miss teaching class with him once they got back to New York. His energy inspired her.

  “You finish The Siren yet?”

  “Today.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  “I don’t know, it’s not very good.” She took a breath. “But I have news: Oliver and I are engaged.”

  “Congratulations.” He looked out into the dark sea.

  “You don’t sound like you mean it.”

  “Of course I mean it.” Levon picked up a rock and threw it out into the water, the sound swallowed up by the breaking waves. “No, I don’t mean it at all. Why bother with marriage? You don’t need a husband.”

  “I love him.”

  “He’ll drag you down.”

  “I disagree. If anything, he’s made me the success I am today.”

  “You’ve made yourself a success. If he hadn’t come along, you would have found another way. Who knows what will come along in a year, in five years?”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Stop playing it safe. You’re coddled, tied down by convention, when you should be leaping into the abyss with me.”

  He stopped in his tracks and grabbed her. His grip was strong, certain. When he leaned down and kissed her, it wasn’t like Oliver’s kisses. This was a claim. She grabbed his head with her hands, threading her fingers through his unruly hair, and pulled him close. He tasted like moonshine and the salty sea.

  They finally parted, panting with ragged breath, as if they’d completed several rounds of boxing.

  “I’m sorry.” Levon leaned over and put his hands on his knees, looking down at the sand.

  Not the reaction she’d expected. She’d disappointed him. Just as she’d disappointed Oliver with the painting. Clara backtracked, trying to save face. “It’s fine. We had to do that sometime. Now it’s done. We know we’re not a good fit.”

  “I suppose so.” He rubbed his chin with his hand, staring at her strangely.

  As she headed back to the campfire, her heart began to calm. She wanted to have some kind of hold on him, that’s all. Who wouldn’t? Such a charismatic, talented man. But complex, unyielding. Uncompromising. She and Oliver had a bond that was calm and civilized. That should be enough.

  She looked up. Oliver stood thirty feet away, up on the seawall. He must have come looking for her.

  Clouds that had been covering the moon parted, revealing his shocked face. He’d seen everything.

  He took off running, back to the campfire. Clara called out and ran after him, but he was fast. By the time she got back to the rest of the group, Oliver was nowhere to be seen.

  And neither was Violet.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  July 1929

  The morning after the campfire, Clara remained up in her bedroom until she heard Levon leave. She sat up in bed, lost in thought. The siren of her painting glared back at her from the top of the desk, where it had been left angled against the wall. Oliver hadn’t come home last night.

  Clyde came to the door and barked a couple of times before giving up. Finally, she dragged herself out of bed and tossed on a navy cotton dress before heading to class, where Levon offered a cursory hello. Her shame was complete: She’d made a fool of herself with Levon and caused terrible pain to Oliver within the span of fifteen seconds. Her head ached from the lack of sleep, but she struggled through, focusing on the students and avoiding Levon entirely.

  Back at the cottage, she found Oliver sitting at the kitchen table, his hair tousled, his eyes blue as the sea. He glowed, still seductive in his anger, a man who had chosen her and taken good care of her right when she needed it most.

  From where Clara stood, Violet’s cloying perfume tickled her nose.

  “I’m sorry, Oliver. It meant nothing. What you saw on the beach.”

  “I’ve been warning you about him for months now, but you couldn’t help yourself, could you? You talk about him all the time; now you’re trying to paint like him. I knew it.” Oliver’s tone cut into her. “You can have him. Good luck to the both of you. You’ll tear each other apart.”

  “I don’t want Levon; I want you.”

  “We’re done. It’s over.”

  “We can talk about this, can’t we? You immediately took off with Violet, after all. Maybe now we’re even.” He lifted his chin to speak, but she cut him off. “I can smell her on you, for God’s sake.”

  “We’ll never be even. You’ll always listen to what Levon says over me, because he has some kind of magnetic hold over you. He’s an immigrant, a peasant, from God knows where, but he sucks you right into his delusions of grandeur. Both of you think that you’re special, above the rest of us. That you can act on impulse and get away with it. Well, now you know I can, too.”

  There was no talking to him, now that his resentment had boiled over into vicious insults.

  She went up to her room, needing a refuge so she didn’t strike back in anger. But something was wrong. Missing. Her painting.

  She searched for it in Oliver’s room, then her own again, before storming back downstairs.

  “My painting—where is it?”

  “You destroyed me, and so I destroyed something you love. It’s only fair.” The coldness in his voice was unrecognizable. As if he’d turned into an entirely different person, one she’d never met before.

  “You destroyed it?” She hadn’t realized how much it meant to her until then. The painting was part of the sea and the Maine winds and the people who had surrounded her this past month. It was the key to a new way of seeing the world, interpreting it. She had been gathering up the courage to show Levon the finished painting, and now he’d never see it. “You’re heartless, you know that? I would never have burned your poems to punish you, no matter what you did.”

  “That only goes to show that I loved you more.”

  “What twisted logic. You make no sense. I care for you too much to ever enact revenge in such a petty way.” She paused, gathering her thoughts, trying to calm her breathing. “It was a stupid mistake, what I did last night. A moment that came and went and was done for. We aren’t interested in each other, not like that.”

  “You could’ve fooled me.”

  “Please, Oliver. I’m sorry. Let’s sit and talk and hash this out. I can’t imagine life without you.”

  For a split second, pain carved through his face, but as her hollow words lingered in the air, he quickly recovered his composure. “You’re saying that to get the painting back, aren’t you? You’re not saying that for me.”

  He knew her so well. She had no reply.

  * * *

  Back in New York, Clara spent the month of August catching up on commissions from the magazines and from Studebaker, a welcome distraction from the Maine debacle. She hadn’t seen Oliver since he’d driven off with Violet, leaving Clara behind to finish up the last week of classes and endure the sympathetic looks and fevered whispers of the students. Once home, it had been a relief to hole up in her studio and work fifteen hours a day. That awful morning in Maine, when he’d looked at her with contempt and fury, haunted her in the dead of night when she couldn’t sleep.

  She missed him, and the loss of The Siren still stung. But she had to let both of them go, for the sake of her sanity. Now her work could take precedence, and the frenzy for her illustrations had only increased over the summer. But each new success was tinged with the sadness of not being able to share it with Oliver. With anyone, really. On the same day that a newspaper interview hailing Clara as the “highest-paid woman artist in the country” was published
, Mr. Oliver Smith and Miss Violet Foster appeared in the wedding announcements. They were to honeymoon in Paris before settling down in Los Angeles. She imagined the newlyweds walking along the Seine, exclaiming over their good fortune.

  Miss Lillie Bliss, the society maven who’d asked for Clara’s advice just five months earlier, opened her modern art exhibit in the Heckscher Building to great fanfare in November, just after the stock market took a dive. Like most of her acquaintances, Clara dismissed the drop as a temporary adjustment. After all, the headlines trumpeted a return to normal quite soon, followed by an orderly, if not promising, end to 1929. The success of the art exhibit created an uproar of its own, convincing critics and buyers that modern art was exciting, something to take a chance on instead of dismiss out of hand. Clara heard that Levon had been invited to participate in the next Museum of Modern Art show, scheduled for the following spring, and that Felix was selling his works off at a great clip. But his success meant that he taught fewer classes that fall, and they rarely crossed paths. Probably better that way. Although she missed his kinetic energy, their encounter on the beach had left her depleted.

  One dreary March day, when the heavens couldn’t decide whether to rain or snow and instead dropped down a mucky combination of both, Mr. Lorette called Clara into his office.

  “How are you doing, Miss Darden?” He spoke like a doctor with a dying patient, all concern and gravitas. He had never broached the subject of Oliver and Violet’s marriage, and she prayed he wouldn’t now.