Almost True Confessions

by Jane O'Connor

  Today the trip was a breeze. Once or twice Rannie turned to steal a quick look at Nate in back. As a little boy he’d been sweet almost to a fault. Rannie remembered the feel of his sticky, chubby hands cupping her face before he bestowed a kiss, a kiss not even asked for, one given freely and gladly just because he loved her. The divorce had toughened him up, a sad fact but probably not a totally bad thing, steeling Nate for the emotional roller coaster of puberty.

  They reached the outskirts of New Haven by ten after ten. It was too early to call Alice; her daughter’s first class was at noon, so in all likelihood she was still asleep. Calling to mind the address of a good breakfast joint, Rannie followed the lights into New Haven and cut through campus to reach State Street.

  Like clockwork Ben and Nate both woke up just as Rannie turned off the ignition. Hefty servings of French toast, sausage, and hash browns kept conversation to a minimum—mostly Ben and Nate debating the progress of some new song that Spiteful Muse, their band, was practicing. “Admit it. We suck,” Nate said. There was nary a mention of tattoos and nary a single “I told you so” comment from Nate to Rannie about their early arrival. All in all, a pleasant enough start of the day.

  Rannie parked on Hillhouse Avenue by the Admissions Building and watched Nate stride up the steps while Ben, with directions from Rannie, headed off to Old Campus, where nearly all freshmen at Yale were housed and where he planned to hang out with a couple of friends who’d graduated from Chaps last spring. This left Rannie with more than half an hour before meeting Alice in front of the Yale University Art Gallery Museum for her noon art history lecture.

  For Rannie, walking around campus never ceased being odd, and she could never quite decide whether on balance it was happy odd or depressing odd. Four years at Yale had seemed like an eternity while living through them; now on the time line of her life, college counted for such a small blip of time in comparison to marriage, motherhood, career. Yet Yale had been a turning point; sometime during freshman year, Rannie began to realize that Shaker Heights, Ohio, was not going to be the locus of her future.

  Woolsey Hall was on the way to the art museum. Rannie decided to pop in. It epitomized the best of Yale for her. An auditorium with a world-class organ, it had been built in celebration of Yale’s bicentennial in 1901. On the marble walls of the vestibule were carved the names of every fallen soldier who’d gone to Yale, starting with the Revolution and ending with Vietnam, when space ran out. Rannie had stood here for the first time flanked by both her parents during their visit to New Haven for Rannie’s interview. That was twenty-five years ago, she now realized. She remembered her mom and dad slowly turning, silently taking in all the names of dead young men, both awed and moved. The emotional power of Woolsey Hall had eluded her back then, preoccupied as she was with her choice of outfit and whether her class ranking was good enough for Yale. But while a student she found herself returning to this place again and again, most often for concerts but also for no other reason than to feel part of something grand and big, something that was historical and yet also very personal.

  Alice was waiting by the entrance to the museum.

  “You sure you want to sit through this?” Alice said after accepting a hug. “It’s about art restoration.”

  Rannie nodded and followed her daughter to the side entrance of the museum, where, up a flight of stairs, they entered a wood-paneled lecture hall. Copies of the curriculum vitae of guest lecturer F. Anthony Weld were handed out, like playbills, by a TA who stopped Alice to ask if she’d caught some exhibit on Manet. He was happy to take her if she hadn’t.

  Alice was even smaller than Rannie and blond with large, soulful eyes that had worked their magic on boys since middle grade. Her “delicate creature” looks were deceiving, however. Alice was a pretty tough cookie, far more pragmatic and thick skinned than her six-foot-two hulk of a brother.

  “Nate got a tattoo!” Rannie said as they took their seats. She glanced at the curriculum vitae—the guy had a formidable reputation for restoring Old Master paintings. “I’m furious.”

  “Oh, Mother, honestly!” Alice said in a dismissive way that made Rannie worry that both her children had permanent artwork on their bodies. “And by the way, I heard Olivia spent the night. You never let me have boys stay over in high school. Never!”

  Rannie shrugged.

  “I think it’s subconsciously sexist on your part,” Alice went on. “It’s very double standard. Like it’s fine for your son to have sex right in the next room but your daughter . . . oh no!”

  Happily at that moment the auditorium lights began to dim so Alice, who was also taking a course called Feminism Redux, had to shut up.

  The guest lecturer, a guy with longish hair and glasses, was too far away for Rannie to really get a good look at him. He had an urbane air about him and came equipped with plenty of art world anecdotes as well as before-and-after slides of restored paintings to show. “The restorer’s task is simple: it’s to erase the ravages of time while avoiding doing further harm to a piece of art. The work is painstaking, time-consuming, unglamorous. I can recommend it as a career only to those of you who are fanatic about art preservation and who also suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

  Some polite laughter from the crowd. Alice yawned, unamused.

  “I remove, fleck by fleck, mold on portraits left rotting for years in damp cellars. I wash off soot from church frescoes subjected to centuries of candle smoke. Ninety-nine percent of what I do is run a very high-priced cleaning service.”

  He paused a beat longer than the audience’s reaction—a weak smattering of chuckles—called for.

  “However, repainting savagely damaged artwork, paintings that have been torn or burned, is an altogether different proposition, one requiring a peculiar talent for reconstruction and mimicry. It’s no coincidence that some of the most audacious forgers started their careers as art restorers. The restorer’s hand must act as if it belonged to the original artist. I am right-handed and personally would never attempt to repaint artwork by a leftie. My rhythm would be off.

  “In the cleaning business of restoration, there is an arsenal of twenty-first-century weapons at one’s disposal; with repainting, the restorer must forsake modern technology and travel back in time.”

  A slide popped up of a round-cheeked Madonna cuddling a round-bottomed baby. “I became expert at mixing egg tempera paints while restoring the lower left quadrant of this fifteenth-century painting, school of Fra Angelico, damaged in the Florence flood of November 1966. It resides in Ospedale del’Ognissanti,” he said in mellifluous Italian.

  Another slide appeared.

  “I learned to paint with a brush made of just a few ermine hairs in order to repaint a tiny portion of this Flemish School painting, early fifteenth century. It depicts St. Lawrence and is part of the Silas Cummings Collection.”

  Rannie poked Alice and whispered excitedly, “I saw that just the other day. I was in Charlotte Cummings’s mansion . . . you know who she is, right?”

  Alice startled. Her eyes flew open. “Whaa?” she mumbled.

  “St. Lawrence is being roasted alive, and the story goes that he was so eager for martyrdom that he cried out, ‘This side is done. Turn me over!’ My mission was to repaint four of the floor tiles in the painting, each of which was smaller than a square inch and yet each portrayed a scene from the life of Christ. The flight into Egypt is represented here.”

  An enlargement of one floor tile was shown.

  While the lecture continued, Rannie took note of the students in neighboring rows. Although some dutifully tapped away at laptops, many more, like Alice, were slumped in their seats, down for the count. And who knew? Maybe most of those with open laptops were e-mailing or on Facebook. And this was Yale.

  “You fell asleep!” Rannie said, dismayed, as they emerged minutes later into the sunlight, both squinting. “I found him enthralling.”

  Alice shrugged indifference. “Let’s find Nate and get lunch
. I’m starved. Maybe Modern Apizza since you have a car.”

  “Sweetie, we can’t.” Rannie explained about Ben and the Wesleyan interview, which Alice accepted with the proviso that she wasn’t going to walk all the way to Hillhouse just to wave at Nate and watch them drive off. “Tell him to call me later. I really want him to come here,” Alice said, then took off to catch up with friends. “Love ya!” she shouted back at Rannie.

  Nate was sitting on the steps outside the Admissions Building and offered no particulars about the interview other than to say, “It went fine.” As soon as Ben rejoined them, they got in the car; even with a quick stop for Rannie at a gas station restroom off Route 17, the Honda pulled into Middletown less than twenty minutes later.

  Rannie had seen the Wesleyan campus only once before, several years earlier, when Alice, then a junior at Chapel, was checking out colleges over spring break. Rannie had liked Wesleyan’s ambience then; she liked it now.

  Far smaller than Yale and with more green open space, Wesleyan had its own distinct laid-back appeal. The architecture was a mishmash—a sleek glass and granite art center, a few gingerbread Victorians, a scattering of nondescript dorms, some sternly Romanesque brick buildings, and some houses, like the yellow clapboard colonial where Admissions had offices, that would have made charming weekend homes. Yale in all its Neo-Gothic grandeur was either imposing or pretentious, depending on your viewpoint. Wesleyan looked more welcoming, a place where you could quickly feel at home, at least as long as you were of an extremely liberal persuasion. Gone were the chalk messages on the sidewalks that Rannie remembered from visiting with Alice, all of a political/sexual bent. But the kids were still a walking testament to the school’s rep as PCU—Politically Correct University—and as a haven for all gender permutations. “Former Cunt” and “Former Dick” buttons were worn on the parkas of several students.

  Instead of spending quality time with her, Nate chose to wait for Ben inside the Admissions Building.

  “I’ll be back to pick you guys up,” she said. She drove to a diner, drank a sip of coffee that must have been sitting in the pot since breakfast, paid and returned to campus, lucking into a parking spot near Admissions. She tuned the radio to a classic rock station and opened the copy of the Times that she’d brought along, turning right away to the long obituary of Charlotte Cummings. It began on the front page and took up an entire inside page in the first section, accompanied by several photographs. Charlotte as a little girl wearing high-button shoes and an enormous bow in her Goldilocks ringlets. Charlotte at the Stork Club, looking 1940s glamorous in a cocktail dress and mink stole. Charlotte at her centennial bash. In addition to the obituary, there were two full columns of “tombstones,” paid expressions of sympathy from all the many New York institutions that had benefited from Charlotte Cummings’s largesse.

  Only one sentence in the obit didn’t totally conform to what Rannie knew. It was a small point: Silas Cummings’s art collection was described as a “trove of valuable fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Northern European and Italian religious artwork,” including the renowned altarpiece. Bibi had made it sound as if all the paintings of martyred saints were no better than third-rate religious porn. But then “valuable” was such a relative word.

  Rannie leaned back against the headrest, about to zone out for a little while, when she spotted a guy across the street checking a campus map and looking lost. It was Tim Butler. In the flesh.

  A smile, a big unconditionally happy one, spread itself across her face. At the same time she wished she’d washed her hair this morning before racing off to Avis.

  Rannie rolled down the window. “Tim! Over here!”

  He looked up, stowed the map, and crossed over.

  Rannie said, “What are you doing here?” Then she recalled Joan’s remark: “another kid from Chapel” had an interview at Wesleyan today. It never occurred to her that it might be Chris Butler.

  “So Nate’s got an interview too?” Tim bent down closer to the window. “Or are you keeping tabs on me?” He said it teasingly, yet his smile seemed forced.

  “Hey, I called you yesterday, more than once as a matter of fact.” After explaining why she happened to be parked in a rental car in Middletown, Connecticut, Rannie reached over and unlocked the passenger side door. “Hop in.”

  He made a point of checking his watch. “I really should try to connect with Chris.”

  Something was going on here. “Oh, come on.”

  He slid into the passenger seat and tossed the newspaper, still open to the obituary, in the back. “A hundred and two. Nobody should live that long.”

  She was about to ask why he said that; instead she said, “Why didn’t you call?’

  Tim kept his eyes averted. “Yesterday. Jesus, what a day. Out of the blue the health department shows up and—”

  “No, Tim. Really why?”

  He breathed out slowly. “I’m not sure.” Just then “Every Breath You Take” came on the radio. “Still a great song. Reminds me of steaming up car windows as a kid.”

  Without thinking, Rannie leaned over and kissed Tim. He started to kiss her back, but stopped and turned off the radio. He looked outside at the Wesleyan kids walking by before facing Rannie again. “I’m too old for this.”

  Rannie had a horrible feeling that he was talking about much more than making out in a car.

  “Listen to me, Rannie.” Tim sounded too serious.

  Rannie started shaking her head no. “I’m not going to like what you’re going to say. I know it.”

  “The problem is I see you and I want you. We’re in a stupid parked car and all I’m thinking is how fast can I peel your clothes off.”

  “That’s a bad thing?”

  “I’m too old for casual sex. To be honest I never was into it: even as a kid, I always fell hard.”

  “Casual sex? How can you say that? About us!”

  “That’s not what I meant. Fuck! I’m getting this all wrong.” He looked at her. His next words were spoken in a sad and defeated way. “I can’t see you anymore. We’re not right for each other.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “With you, I’m up one minute, down the next. It’s like being a teenager again. You make me crazy happy sometimes. But most of the time you just make me crazy. I hate how mad I get at you.”

  She cut him off. “Tim. Listen to me. I was so happy you stayed over. I want you. I need you. . . . Yesterday morning, Nate on his own said I deserve somebody like you, somebody nice. He’s right.” Rannie stroked his cheek. “I can be infuriating. I get that.”

  “I’m scared for you.”

  Oh, God. Now she wanted to clap her hands over her ears and start babbling nonsense words to drown out what he was saying. “Don’t say that! Please don’t, Tim. It terrifies me.”

  “Look, I’d do anything to protect you. Say the word, you and Nate can move in—”

  “I’m not ready for that.” The words slipped out before she even realized it. “Not yet.”

  “The point is, I am. Rannie, I’m in love with you. No matter what you say right this second, you’re not in love with me.”

  “How do you know that? And even if you’re right, it doesn’t mean I won’t be. It’s only been a couple of months.”

  “You remember me telling you about the time I almost had a slip?”

  Rannie nodded. At age five, Tim’s son had come down with Reye’s syndrome. Thanks to a swift diagnosis by a young ER doctor at Roosevelt Hospital, Chris recovered. But while Chris was undergoing an MRI and the prognosis was still iffy, Tim had gotten as far as ordering a double Scotch at an Eighth Avenue bar before calling an AA friend.

  “The night I stayed over, I woke up and started getting myself nuts, thinking about what I’d do if anything happened to you. It made me want a drink. I got the itch and started wondering if maybe there was beer in the fridge. So I went in the kitchen and phoned my sponsor instead.” Tim started to take her hand, but Rannie yanked it away an
d held both behind her back.

  “I know that move. It’s a breakup move.”

  Tim smiled. “You’re too smart for your own good.”

  Quick! she commanded herself. Capitalize on the smile. “Tim, I’ll be different once I get a regular job. I won’t be crazy. I’ll—I’ll be seminormal.”

  “Maybe so.” He smiled again, and when he spoke, she saw how full of regret the smile was. “I can’t handle this, Rannie. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

  Next thing he had the car door open. He looked at her with such intensity, it was as if he were memorizing her face. “You take care,” he said. “Stay out of trouble. I mean it.”

  Then the car door shut and off he went, his jacket collar turned up again the wind.

  When she was a junior in high school, a pseudopoetic guy who was a senior broke up with her. They were parked in his car right across from her house. Truthfully, she hadn’t liked him all that much except for the fact that he bore a faint resemblance to John Lennon, one that he played up by wearing granny glasses. At least that time, since there was another hour before her curfew, they’d made out to beat the band.

  Chapter 17

  On the drive back to Manhattan, Rannie’s phone buzzed several times.

  “Want me to check who?” Nate offered.

  “No, sweetie. It can wait.” More to the point, remaining ignorant allowed Rannie to indulge in the hope—okay, fantasy—that Tim had immediately regretted dumping her and was now repeatedly calling, desperately calling, to say not only was life without her meaningless but that he had booked a hotel room for the night. Oh, and since this was a fantasy, Rannie decided to go whole hog . . . she and Tim would be staying somewhere très swanky. The Carlyle or, better yet, the Peninsula.

  By five thirty, they had whizzed past the exits on the Saw Mill River Parkway, driven through the Riverdale section of the Bronx with its un-Bronx-like mix of gracious Tudor homes and riverfront high-rises, and now were being funneled into the Henry Hudson Parkway. The George Washington Bridge loomed ahead, twin swags of lights strung across the towers, twinkling against a pigeon-gray sky. It was a gorgeous, glamorous, always-uplifting sight that proclaimed to Rannie, “You’re home. You’re back where you belong.”