“Tucker, you will sit here, by yourself, until Father comes for you. And if you so much as move, you will sit here longer. And if you mess yourself, you will get another spanking. Understand me?”
And then Tom Davis made sure that whatever the rest of his family did that day, they did it in front of Tucker’s watching eyes. C.C. remembers him vividly on that porch, his face hot, baby-fat hands clutching chubby knees, his cherry red mouth set.
Three months later, that same winter on Long Island: it is a Saturday in late December. Tom leaves the farmhouse after lunch, to chop firewood. After dropping her two older kids at their grandparents’ house, Nancy begins canning mint jam. Tucker, now taller, less chubby, has a cold.
“Mama?”
Nancy looks up from the hot, sweet reduction. Her mason jars, lined up like portly glass soldiers, wait to swallow their duty. Tucker, his hair in a tangle, his green flannel pajamas rumpled, stands barefoot at the kitchen door.
“Sweetheart, what are you doing downstairs?” She comes over to him, crouching down, smoothing her skirt under her. She fingers his forehead, which is cool. “Are you feeling better?”
The child nods, sniffling and rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. He reaches out to touch the top of her apron with small, white fingers.
“Well, honey, you don’t have a fever.” She stands up, re-ties her apron in the back, and finds him a tissue in its front pocket. “Here, now blow that nose.”
Glancing up over his tissue he says, “Mama, can I get my books?”
“Of course you can. Where did you leave them?”
“In there,” he points down the hall toward the sitting room.
“That’s fine.” She takes the used tissue and throws it out. “Tuck? Mind you should take your books back to bed. I know you feel better, but your nose is still runny, and you look flushed. All right, sweetheart?”
He nods, his big watching eyes shining, and trots off to get his sack of baby books, left abandoned on the rug behind the chintz loveseat. The sitting room is dead cold, no fire, no light in the December gloom, no people, now even lacking the artificial warmth of Liz Moore’s Wirkorgan, which Tom had moved to his office on the promise of another Moore, a Christmas gift. Tucker grabs his sack to drag along behind him, across the braided rug, over the stone of the hearth where he stops, just at the foot of the massive fireplace. He looks around, then out the window: a red and black wool jacket bright against the thin snow, a muffled chop of the ax. Smiling a fierce little smile, Tuck sneaks over to the metal sconce of fireplace matches, and lifts one out to strike against the granite hearthstone, and again, and again before the match ignites with a hiss and flare.
Dr. Davis, being on that side of the house, sees the smoke first. Nancy, still canning, doesn’t smell it, doesn’t know until a shriek so wild makes her drop a jar.
“What –?” She glances up from broken glass to a mass of smoke rolling fast toward her from the hall.
Without a sound she runs, just as Tom bangs into the kitchen behind her.
“Nancy!” he cries as he too, breasts into the smoke, choking on the acrid bitters of his own house, burning. Coughing, his eyes awash in stinging tears, he moves fast, trying to beat the swift blaze until wham! he trips, down on one knee, almost on top of Nancy, passed out in the hall. Staggering, Tom lifts her up. Limp, she’s hunched over Tucker, wrapped in a blanket. Somehow the doctor hoists his wife in the crook of one arm, clutches his son in the other, and staggers back through the kitchen, out into the snow. Frantic and calm, Tom the physician does what he can for Nancy and Tuck, as the entire side of the house roars, a beast, unleashed. By the time the fire engines and ambulance arrive, that side of the house is gone.
At the hospital, Nancy is put on a respirator and heavy sedation because Tom can see what she must not, yet: Tucker – his burnt, lacerated, swollen flesh, his tender lungs seared. Swaddled in bandages, tiny and inhuman behind the oxygen mask, unconscious, Tuck struggles. Tom Davis sits down on a bare wooden chair beside his son and holds one somehow whole, unaffected hand, a cruel fluke of the fire. He caresses the small fingers, the tiny, perfect fingernails, then gently sets that promising hand down upon the hospital blanket. Reaching over to the metal bedside cabinet, he picks up a bottle and needle, tapping out a double dose of morphine because nothing else can be done, now, and nothing else matters, so he does not weep as he eases the needle in. Leaning over, he kisses a damp forehead and whispers for the last time, “Good night, my son.”
Later, in January, the Davises sold the property of that old, lost Montauk home, that farmhouse where a woman was first named a witch, and where a child caught fire. The new house they built for the family, they build without a hearth.
2. The opening
“She was unlike any other adult I ever knew when I was a kid,” C.C. would say, if asked. “Utterly unlike. She went barefoot in summer, sat cross-legged on the pavestones with you, or ate honey right out of the jar! Other adults would say don’t, watch out, be quiet, be careful. With Liz it was yes, let’s not tell, wait ’til I show you, no, I won’t lie, cross my heart and hope to die. It was a good thing – a fine thing, for a hellion like me. She was different. She didn’t believe that the right shade of lipstick would solve everything. Certainly did not believe in the power of powder or paint, unless it came from a tube and ended up on canvas.”
She was also in a foul humor, after the MoMA opening. As soon as the three women got settled in the limo for the ride back to the Plaza, Liz said, “Where the hell have you two been? How could you leave me like that, fair game for the vultures?”
“Vultures? Please,” said C.C.
“Since when do I enjoy flunkies?”
“They weren’t flunkies,” said Quiola. “You’re admired.”
“My foot. I’m hungry is what I am.”
Quiola thought: by the time I reach Liz’s age, the Creator willing, I hope all the childish petulance I now control by the force of knowing better won’t simply break through the firewall and go on a spree. Coaxed through the excellent dinner MoMA had ordered at the Plaza, Liz subjected everyone in range – from clerk to room service and particularly C.C. – to bitter, non-stop complaint, until she went to bed, by then mollified.
“She will be like that,” C.C. muttered, staring out at the ceaseless street, and the play of evening neon. “Shoot me, if I never get like that.”
“Yes,” said Quiola, pulling her XXL t-shirt on. “I mean, no. No, I don’t want to get like that.” She sat on one of the single beds.
C.C. turned from the window. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“You sound about a million miles away.”
“Oh? Oh. I suppose I am.” She laid her head on the pillow.
“Where? Back in Paris?”
“Oh, no,” said Quiola, brushing off that idea as if swatting an insect. “I know you and Liz love the city but, to be honest, after these last six months, I don’t. I told you. I want to come home – I wish I could go back up to Lutsen.”
“Lutsen? To Lizzie’s Treetops, you mean?”
“Yeah. I know it’s odd, since I’ve only been there once. But I was born by that lake, and on our visit with Liz, I don’t know, I was captivated by the land. I still dream about the river otters we saw, and the horses we rode.”
C.C. laughed. “We were there in May, sweetie, the loveliest month of the year. You’ve never been through black fly season – at least not as you’d remember. Or survived a winter. Trust me, its no paradise. Didn’t your mother say anything about it?”
“Mother left,” said Quiola, her dark eyes going matte. “I know there are good reasons to leave. Weather is one of them.”
“See?”
“But that spring, it was so beautiful. Truly. Don’t you remember?”
“Of course I remember. Daydreaming a Lutsen spring, then?”
“No. Actually, I was thinking about Luke.”
“Oh.” C.C. bit the side of her lip a
nd looked away. “Do you – often?”
“No. Not so often. Not as often as I should – as he would, of me. Do you mind if I turn out the light, now?”
“Quiola?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Good night,” but C.C. did not drift off easily. She lay in her hotel bed, listening to Quiola snore – she sighed and folded her arms under her head as the city murmured and beeped. Her thoughts moved over that night’s celebration. Nobody had wanted, really, to talk to her. They all wanted to talk to History. Eventually, snoring melded with the ambient street noise enough to lull C.C. to sleep. But she felt lousy in the morning, and when Quiola bounced out of bed, all kinetic energy, a few tears came.
A light rap on the door and “C.C.? Quiola? You two up yet?” asked Liz.
“No,” said C.C., violently, wiping her face clean of tears with both hands.
Quiola poked her head out of the bathroom, her short hair a mess and her mouth full of toothpaste. She frowned at C.C. who shrugged. Quiola turned away to spit.
“Give us a few, Liz. I slept badly,” C.C. called through the door.
“Coffee’s here.”
“All right, all right, hold your horses. Damn.”
“What?” said Quiola, still in the bathroom.
“Room service. Liz knows I can’t stand cold coffee.” She peeled herself out of bed like she’d been glued to the sheets.
“Neither can I,” said Quiola, pulling on sweats. “You ready?”
C.C. smiled wanly. “As I’ll ever be.”
The weather, as it turned out, still had not broken – the heat bore a drape of humidity, hanging over the city like a drunkard. Instead of driving around the park, Liz asked to go to the Metropolitan. It took the three of them what seemed an eternity to climb the vast stone stairs, and once inside the cool foyer, Liz had to sit down to recover. People milled about while C.C. and Liz found a wooden bench.
“I used to come here as a kid,” said C.C. “With Mom.”
“I know,” said Liz. “I took you, once.”
“You did? When? I don’t remember –”
“You wouldn’t, you were not even eight. Anyway, Ted had gone to camp, and you were home and bored and Nancy was busy so I whisked you off to the city for the day, and we ended up here. You made a beeline –”
“– for the mummies. I always did,” said C.C.
“And I have always hated this place,” said Liz, serenely. “It’s a tomb.”
“You hate this place? Why did you drag us up here, then?”
“The garden room has a nice lunch.”
“The garden room? The garden room is gone. It no longer exists. They’ve replaced it with a cafeteria.”
“My God, a cafeteria. Blasphemy. Does your mother know?”
“Liz, Mother doesn’t recall much of anything.”
“She barely remembers C.C.,” added Quiola.
Liz shook her head, and sighed. “My poor Nancy, it’s so awful. Things like that shouldn’t happen. She was so generous.”
“She was,” said C.C., stoic. “So. Is there some other place we can go for lunch?”
♦
Liz Moore was utterly unlike any woman Nancy Davis had ever met, either. Women, according to Nancy, were rivals. They worried about everything, fought over husbands, homes, shoes and children. But Liz seemed… “so – free,” is how Nancy put it, when anyone asked her why she’d befriended someone who could wander shoeless into a cocktail party.
April 1934. Even at the height of the Depression, New York City was a busy, bustling place, the opposite of Nancy’s quiet, rhythmic life out on Montauk Point. April Fool’s day in 1934 found her on the LIRR, three months pregnant, uncomfortable and yet happy to be on the train into town. She was to meet Tom at the Algonquin, and they’d take in dinner and a play, stay overnight. Young, pregnant and comparatively well off, Nancy Davis felt her privilege and tried to accept it without guilt, which became harder as the train headed into a city full of thin, hungry people, many of them ragged or filthy. To distract herself, she browsed over the Atlantic Monthly, to linger over three poems by Mrs. Morrow. The poetry both cheered and saddened her, for what mother, or mother to be, could forget the gruesome, unresolved death of the Lindbergh Eaglet?
Poor, brave Betty Morrow! she thought. Poor, brave Anne.
Nancy set the magazine aside as the train came into Penn station. Walking briskly along on moderate high heels up from the steamy, smelly tracks to the equally aromatic streets above, she headed not for the hotel, but to the gallery An American Place. Stieglitz was showing O’Keefe again, and even if Nancy was disgusted by the Stieglitz-O’Keefe May–December romance – so outrageous – she still wanted to see the new work.
Such a bold vision, and a woman’s vision, too, Nancy thought and was not disappointed. But as she wandered from one magnificent, lurid flower to the next, she found herself watching this tall, odd-looking girl with a boy’s haircut, tears running down her dark face. She kept mopping them away on a coat sleeve that had seen better days. The tears were so genuine, the coat so torn, that Nancy said, “Can I help you?” before she could wonder whether the offer was wise.
And Lizzie Moore, at twenty-six not much more a girl than Nancy herself, but looking younger in her outgrown clothes, turned to the stranger and said, “I’m hungry.”
“Then let’s get you something to eat. I’m buying.”
And so they left together just like that, and found a coffee shop where Liz ordered scrambled eggs and Nancy drank coffee to keep her new friend company; she was a painter, this girl-woman, and O’Keefe had made her furious.
“Furious?” said Nancy. “Or jealous?”
“Both.”
“She is startling.”
“She’s pornographic,” Liz shot back. “But what can you expect? All the critics who rave about O’Keefe, they’re all men, aren’t they? And they need Stieglitz, don’t they? They aren’t about to insult his whore in public. They do it when they think he can’t hear them. But I’ve heard them. Some of them, anyhow.”
“Like who?”
Lizzie hesitated. “Like Paul Gaines.”
“Oh, Gaines,” said Nancy, smiling. “Such a strange little man. Anyway, you must come and meet my husband. You, he and Paul together can decide the fate of O’Keefe.”
Lizzie wiped up the last of her eggs with a corner of toast. “Oh, she’ll be around forever. The talent is too great. The question is: what’s left for the rest of us to do?”
“Something else,” said Nancy. “Come meet Tom.”
“All right.”
And so the two women, now no longer strangers, went to the Algonquin. In the hotel lobby they were waylaid by a set of wild sketches: distorted limbs, club-footed dancers with staring eyes, a small, eerie exhibit. Nancy was repelled, but Liz called them joyous monsters, and that’s how Tom found his wife and Liz Moore together, arguing about elephant-footed ballerinas.
It wasn’t until many, many years later, as C.C. was going through household things with her mother, paring down after Dr. Davis’s death, that she re-discovered whose paintings her mother and Liz had seen in the Algonquin lobby: Zelda Fitzgerald’s. Zelda, too, had gone to the O’Keefe exhibit that spring, and had come away thinking O’Keefe’s flowers “lovely and magnificent and heart-breaking,” a counter-point to Lizzie’s succinct judgment of pornography, while Nancy thought them merely rowdy.
And then the years passed, years in which people like the Fitzgeralds, or Stieglitz and O’Keefe or later, even Liz Moore, were presented to Nancy not in the flesh, but in words: in biographies, retrospectives, history. Nancy retreated. All those words about people she’d known, making them over into people she had never met or did not recognize, until, slowly, she forgot them all.
♦
“August in New York,” sang Liz in an uncertain, gravelly tenor. “It feels so enervati–ing.” She smiled.
“That’s autumn,” said Quiola, “which is exciting. Or embracing. Something
cool, at any rate. Here we are –” The cabbie braked. Abandoning the Metropolitan, the three women had caught a cab, which Quiola directed to Prince Street, to a bistro in NoLita. C.C. stepped out first, helping Liz, who complained under her breath about the sagging of car seats making it hard on old bones, while Quiola paid the tab.
The bistro, a long narrow nook of a place with a pebbled outdoor garden in the back, wasn’t busy. The hostess led them to a table that overlooked the garden.
“Does it feel like autumn to you?” said Lizzie as they marched down the narrow aisle of floor between the tables. “No, it feels like August, in April. Disgusting. I’d much rather be sitting out there –” she pointed to the empty garden, “– but we would roast.”
“This place reminds me of the Left Bank – I thought you didn’t like Paris,” said C.C. to Quiola as the host handed around menus.
“Impossible!” said Liz. “Not to like Paris.”
“But true,” said Quiola. “I hate Paris.”
Liz stared, as if Quiola had sprouted horns.
“Okay, so I do love the food. That, I miss. Où est ma boulangerie? That’s what I want to know when I come home.”
“Ici,” said the waitress.
“Of course. Right here. How’ve you been, Carol?”
The girl smiled. “Fine. Can’t wait for the fall. My last semester.”
And so the three chatted to Carol for a moment about college, her plans, the menu. When they were through with the order, C.C. excused herself to the restroom.
As soon as she was out of earshot, Liz bore down. “Quiola. I know C.C.’s lying to me. Don’t lie to me.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Nothing. You tell. Quick. Before that little liar gets back.”
“If C.C. –”
Liz gripped the younger woman’s wrist with one bony hand as if the two women were teenagers, or sisters, with secrets between them. “Don’t. I have a right to know.”
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