by Kitty Zeldis
Ever since he’d rented the space, he’d thrown himself into its transformation and had succeeded in creating an inviting environment, illuminated by an elaborate blown-glass chandelier from Venice. He painted the walls a glossy vermillion and on them he hung the work he’d been steadily collecting for the last decade: nineteenth-century American landscapes, a brilliantly colored predella panel he’d bought in Florence right after the war, meticulous French architectural drawings, and hazy pastels. His prized possession was a cutout by Henri Matisse that showed Icarus falling from the sky, body pierced by bloody red patches. It was not for sale.
Eleanor put the olives, black and glistening, into a cut-glass bowl, and arranged the coin-shaped slices of sausage, still more treyfe, on the thick cutting board where she’d placed a loaf of Italian peasant bread. She looked up to see that Tom had been watching her. “I like your dress,” he said. The black crepe with its georgette pleats was new, purchased just this week. “Very chic.”
“Thank you.” Then she noticed he had changed, and was now wearing the summer-weight wool suit he’d had made in London. “You’re looking pretty swanky yourself.”
“You like it?” He looked down at himself. “I could wear it more often,” he said. “In fact, there’s one special occasion I’d like to wear it for very soon.”
Now why had he gone and raised another sore point between them? The arrival of the wine offered a welcome distraction and she stepped out from behind the table to direct the deliverymen. By the time she’d returned, Tom was off, attention directed elsewhere. Soon, the guests started arriving, and as Tom had predicted, there was quite a crowd. Most of the faces were unfamiliar to Eleanor but she did recognize a few people. So, apparently, did Tom. At one point, he pulled her over to indicate a woman in a hat with a cluster of cherries pinned to one side.
“That’s Liesel Schalk. She’s an art critic. She’s new in town, but she’s written a few things for the Times.”
“Do you think she’ll write about the gallery?”
“I’m going to chat her up in the hope she’ll do just that.”
Eleanor watched Tom for a moment before she began to circulate. And then, across the room, she saw Patricia Bellamy and she froze. Eleanor thought she looked thinner and older, yet the wistful, slightly haunted look on her face gave her beauty a depth it had not had before. It pained Eleanor to see it, but she turned away before Patricia noticed her, and found herself face-to-face with Adriana Giacchino.
“Oh, here you are!” said Adriana. “I’ve been looking for you. I want you to meet Drake.” She turned to the man—gray shaggy hair, gray shaggy beard, loose artist-style smock—and made the introduction.
“Adri talks about you all the time,” Drake said. “She calls you her little protégée even though I tell her she’s not old enough to have a protégée.”
“Just because I haven’t reached your advanced age doesn’t mean I’m not old enough for a protégée,” said Adriana. “It’s hardly fair. You have them by the dozens. Don’t I deserve one too?”
“I’m delighted to be your protégée,” Eleanor said. “Honored in fact.” She knew that Drake was quite a bit older than Adriana, divorced, and the father of two grown sons. Adriana was thirty-three; she claimed to have no interest in getting married. “Do you want children?” Eleanor had asked her a few weeks before. They had become close enough for the question not to seem rude.
“Some days I do, some days I don’t.” Adriana lit a cigarette, one of the many she smoked throughout the day. “I’m waiting until I want them all the time.”
What if it’s too late and you get too old? Eleanor did not say. Yes, they had grown close. But not that close.
“So nice to finally meet you,” said Drake. “And to put the name to a face. A very pretty face, I might add.” He kissed her hand.
Oh, he was quite the ladies’ man. Eleanor could see just what Adriana liked about him; what woman didn’t want to be charmed?
The gallery had grown even more crowded, and people had started to spill out into the street, the warmth of the evening an invitation, the pink-tinged sky an enticement. The wine ran out, and so did the food. Liesel Schalk promised a brief write-up for the next day. Tom sold three paintings, including the Jackson Pollock. Pollock’s work—erratic drips and splotches of paint flung all over the canvas—did not impress Eleanor at all. Yet Tom was convinced that he was poised to become a very important and influential artist.
The last guest didn’t leave until almost nine, sent off into the June evening with waves and airily blown kisses. Tom was jubilant and broke into a spontaneous dance, twirling Eleanor around the gallery. “Now will you marry me?” he asked. “Finally? We can go to city hall tomorrow. Or if you want the white dress, the veil, and the orange blossoms, we can do that. Only say that you will, Eleanor.” His face was close to hers and his lips parted. In another second he’d be kissing her, and if she kissed him back that would signal she was saying yes—
Eleanor stopped dancing but remained in his embrace. “No,” she said, looking into his impossibly dear face. “No, Tom, I won’t.” It had been such a lovely evening but now he’d gone and spoiled it.
He dropped his arms from her waist. “Damn it, why not?”
“There are so many reasons. Your sister for one. My mother for another.”
“We’ll talk to them. They’ll come around.”
“Maybe,” said Eleanor. “Maybe not. My mother said she would meet you, so that’s a start. But Patricia—she’ll never accept me. And there’s something else too.” She fell silent.
“Aren’t you going to tell me?” he demanded.
“I don’t know if you’ll understand. But—it’s you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know if I can count on you.”
“Of course you can—I love you. You know I do.”
“You may love me. But can I trust you? You disappear when you’re scared or uncomfortable. That’s not a good trait in a husband.”
“If you marry me, I’ll never leave you.”
“You say that now,” she said. “What happens when we have a fight or there’s trouble?”
“You won’t believe whatever I say, so why should I even try?” said Tom, his voice ragged. “If you don’t trust me, loving me is useless.” He dug into his pocket and fished out a set of keys, which he handed to her. “I’m leaving. Stay as long as you like. Just lock up before you go. Tomorrow morning you can drop the keys through the mail slot, on your way to work.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“Tom, I—”
But he reached the door quickly and then was gone. Eleanor surveyed the empty gallery. The crumb-littered table was covered with partially filled glasses in which soggy cigarette butts floated. Crumpled napkins, olive pits, and waxy rinds of cheese completed the tableau. Listlessly, she began gathering the bottles, taking the glasses to the sink in the back room.
Back at Vassar, she had sensed herself on the periphery of new and unfamiliar territory, unsure if she could—or even wanted—to enter. Now Tom was offering her a passport. But even if she became Mrs. Thomas Harrison, it would change nothing. The name would be a cloak, not her true skin. She would never be one of them; she’d be dressing up, pretending. And that might end up feeling worse than simple exclusion.
The job of cleaning was too daunting; she gave up and switched off the lights before locking the door behind her. Then she began to walk, making her way along streets that were by now familiar. Last year at this time she never would have dreamed that the Village would have become her neighborhood. Her decision to leave her teaching job had led to the Bellamys, and the Bellamys led her to where she was now—unmarried, unfettered, a free agent in the world.
Even though there were many people out, Eleanor felt lonely. Alone. Soon she found herself in front of Tom’s building and she looked up at his window. Dark.
The thought of losing him was shattering. She could fix it though. Make it right. Tomorrow she’d tell him that she was being silly, of course she’d marry him—but something in her kept resisting because she didn’t want her acceptance of his proposal to feel like a capitulation, as if they’d struggled and he’d won. No, that wasn’t how she wanted it to happen, or how she wanted to feel.
Finally she turned down her own street. Marriage came with a particular template, one that seemed less desirable the more she examined it. Maybe there was a different way to be married, one that didn’t rely so heavily on the conventions she saw around her. But if there was, she suspected she’d have to invent it.
As she approached her building, Eleanor could see a tiny, red pulse in the distance—someone holding a lit cigarette. Maybe it was Tom. She felt relieved—she hadn’t wanted to leave it like that. She quickened her pace and when she grew closer, the figure revealed itself to be not Tom at all, but Patricia.
“What are you doing here?” Eleanor said, not caring if she sounded rude.
“I was looking for you.” Patricia put the cigarette out under the heel of her shoe.
“I thought you never wanted to talk to me again.” She still felt the wounds Patricia had inflicted on the day of Wynn’s funeral.
“I didn’t.” Patricia fingered a fold in her dress. “But I’m here now, aren’t I? Here to tell you I’m sorry and I hope you can forgive me.”
“Sorry? You?”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Is there a reason I should?”
“No,” Patricia said. “No reason at all. I’d just hoped . . . But maybe I shouldn’t have come.”
Eleanor surprised herself by saying: “You’re already here. We might as well talk.”
“I’d like that.”
“Why don’t you come upstairs? We’ll be more comfortable.” Eleanor immediately regretted the offer. But she wouldn’t take it back now.
“Tom tells me your apartment is very nice.”
“He did?” What else had he told her?
“Yes. And he also told me that you turned him down—again,” Patricia said. “I saw him right before I came here. He seemed—crushed.”
“Oh.” Eleanor didn’t like him discussing their relationship with his sister.
“He gave me something to give you.” She reached into her purse and handed Eleanor a small white box and a sealed envelope. “But maybe you want to open it upstairs.”
Eleanor unlocked the front door, wishing again she had not extended the invitation. The stairs were steep and worn, but Patricia followed her up without comment. Once they were inside, Eleanor tried to see the place she loved through the other woman’s eyes. A white voile curtain hung at the open window. Three pink peonies nodded in a cobalt vase on the table, and when she turned on the floor lamp near the armchair, the light radiated softly.
“It’s lovely in here.” Patricia surveyed the Ansel Adams photograph, the flowers, a needlepoint pillow Irina had made and given Eleanor as a housewarming gift.
“Thank you,” said Eleanor. She hadn’t realized that she wanted Patricia’s approval until it had been bestowed. “Can I make you a gin and tonic?”
“That would be nice.” Patricia sat down.
Eleanor got the glasses and poured, spilling a little tonic on the table. She took a sip of her drink and then another. “So why did you come?”
“I already told you: I wanted to apologize,” Patricia said. “I blamed you for things that weren’t your fault—they only seemed that way at the time.”
“And now?” Eleanor held on to the apology. She knew it wasn’t easy for Patricia to offer, and like Patricia’s praise, it mattered to her to have it.
Patricia gave her a cool, appraising look. “Sometimes I still do. Other times—not so much. Or not at all.”
Eleanor took another long swallow; she needed the fortification. “I understand.” Why had she even said that? But she pushed past her regret to consider Patricia’s new circumstances. They couldn’t have been—comfortable. “How are you managing?” she asked.
“It’s been difficult. But maybe not in the way you might think.”
“How then?”
“I was so angry at him at first. Wynn. But I felt so guilty too.”
“Guilty?”
“That last morning—we’d had a terrible quarrel and I told him I was filing for divorce.”
“You did?”
“Yes. No one knows that. Not Tom, not Margaux. Especially not Margaux, though she suspects something of the sort. I’m not sure if he believed me, but then he went off to Argyle and got on that boat with a bottle or a flask. The coroner told me he was . . . inebriated . . . when he died.”
“I feel guilty too,” Eleanor admitted. “In that last phone call, when I said I would tell Margaux about him . . . that really upset him.”
“I’m sure it did. He really loved her you know.”
“And she loved him. She always will.” Eleanor couldn’t really stretch herself to understand, but it was true whether she understood it or not. “I don’t know if I even meant it. But that call . . . I wanted to make sure he never contacted me again. And now he never will.”
“I hope, I mean, I can’t stop you I suppose, but I do wish—”
“That I won’t tell Margaux?” Eleanor finished the sentence. “No, I won’t. Even though she’s asked.”
“So you’ve been in touch with her?”
“Yes. She’s been writing me and she’s going to keep on writing me. And I write back—I’m not going to ignore her. You brought me into her life and you can’t control what happens from there. Not anymore.”
“No, I can’t.” Patricia studied the gin and tonic remaining in her glass.
“Does that bother you?” asked Eleanor.
“I suppose it does. But not as much as it might. Things are different between us now. Sometimes I feel that she’s the mother, and I’m the child.”
“She’s grown up a lot lately. She’s had to.”
“Did she tell you we’re going to be moving soon?”
“No,” Eleanor said. “Where?”
“I’ve found a place on Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street. I want to be downtown. It’s closer to Tom.”
That was so close; they would almost be neighbors. Though they had lived only blocks apart uptown, Eleanor reflected. Eleanor saw that Patricia’s glass was empty and she refilled it as well as her own, no spilling this time.
“I have something else for you.” Patricia reached into her bag to pull out a red leather case that she nudged across the table.
“Where did you get this?” Eleanor was a little shaken to see the case again—she’d missed it some time ago but had no idea what had become of it.
“In the cottage. You must have left it behind.”
“Did you read what was in it?”
“I know I shouldn’t have. But yes. Enough anyway.”
“Enough for what?”
“To know that you and I—we have a bond. It began with Margaux, but it’s more than that now.”
“Is that what you think?”
“I do,” said Patricia. “Do you?”
“I’d like to think that too . . . But I’m not sure.” Eleanor wasn’t going to lie to her—not here, not now.
“You know, I was wrong to ask you to hide what Wynn did to you that night. That’s when it all changed. And I realize now that whatever happened, it happened to both of us.”
“I’m not following you,” said Eleanor.
“What he did was an attack on me too—my trust, and my faith. I had to regard him differently after that.”
“I’ve never thought of it that way,” Eleanor said.
Patricia reached into her bag again, this time for a cigarette. “When I first found out what he’d done, I tried to put it in a category of behavior that I knew and understood. To believe that he wasn’t really so—reprehensible. So I had to lay the blame somewhere else and I laid it on you. Reading
your letters made me see it differently though. You must have been afraid of him. Along with disgusted, really and truly afraid. But you stayed anyway. For Margaux.”
“For Margaux,” Eleanor repeated.
“So tell me about you,” Patricia said. “I hear there’s a new job, and of course this apartment—” She gestured with her left hand, now ringless.
“I’m doing well,” Eleanor said. “Things are falling into place.” She glanced down at the box and note that were still on the table. Alongside those things was a flat object covered in lavender paper; was it also from Tom?
Patricia’s gaze had followed hers. “That’s from me,” she said. “You can open it first if you like.”
Eleanor loosened the paper and found inside a volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets—a gift both thoughtful and beautiful—but why? “It’s lovely,” she said. Then she turned to what Tom had sent. Inside the box was a small silver pin in the shape of a deer. The deer was running, its front legs extended in one direction, its hind legs in the other, its neck straining forward, toward an unseen destination. No more than an inch long, it was a precious little thing. Eleanor put it back in the box and set it aside while she opened the note. Written on a torn-off sheet of paper and in a hasty scrawl, it read:
I’m sorry I stormed off but a fellow does take a beating, asking again and again and hearing no every damn time. As for the pin, I bought it a while ago and planned to give it to you tonight, after the opening. It’s not a ring, and it’s not made of diamonds, so I figured you wouldn’t read too much into it. You’re the deer, Eleanor. The deer in flight. And me? I’m the guy who’s hoping to coax you back. To make you mine. I guess now is not the right time though. Will it ever be? I’m willing to wait. But not forever.
Leaving my heart in your hands,
Tom
She put the note down and lifted her eyes to the woman seated across from her. One man had put a wedge between them. The other a bridge. But the choice about which path to choose—that was theirs alone.