After this sharp little reprimand, Patricia Pinhel cast a baleful eye on the coreopsis and said to her daughter, "Just the dead flowers, please; not the whole plant."
Liz stared in surprise at the pile of stalks that she was methodically stacking on the grass.
Her mother added, "The worst thing you can do, Lizzie, is make the mistake of thinking you're a guest at one of your own affairs. That's like the chef sitting down at the table when the meal gets served."
"Okay, okay, I get it already," Liz said. She went back to deadheading, halfheartedly now, as she mulled over her mother's dismally practical advice.
Patricia Pinhel was a master at lowering expectations. She hated being disappointed, and she hated even more for those she loved to be disappointed, so she solved the problem by simply lowering everyone's expectations. Whether someone was hoping to get into college, qualify for a mortgage, find a parking space on Thames Street, or be the fifth caller in a radio contest, Patricia Pinhel's answer was always the same:
"Don't get your hopes up."
Her response had become something of a family joke, amusing to just about everyone except Liz, who at the moment was less enchanted than ever by it. She gazed across her parents' jam-packed garden at her mother, short and sturdy and patient, who was on her knees next to Susy, showing her granddaughter how to thin her own tiny carrot crop in her own little special square of dirt.
The woman is so warm ... so loving, Liz thought. How can she be so defeatist?
With a mother's instinct, Patricia Pinhel looked up and, over her half-glasses, bestowed a glowing smile on Liz that was anything but defeatist.
It ‘s because gardens rarely disappoint, Liz decided. Her mother would say it was okay to get your hopes up with a garden: if you were good at it, it was good right back to you. Where else would an investment of love and time pay off so predictably? You couldn't count on people that way.
You couldn't count on Jack.
"Lizzie?" said her mother, breaking through her reverie of stinging disappointment. "Don't forget that lamp for Susy' s room. Get it now, before the attic heats up much more."
"Oh, right," said Liz, rising up off her knees. She stretched and looked around admiringly, stalling a little before the trek into the superheated attic.
Her parents' garden had always been pretty, of course. But now that Liz and her two brothers were grown and gone, most of the grass in the backyard and all of the grass in the small front yard had been turned under to make room for flowers and vegetables, berry-bushes for both people and birds, a strawberry patch that was out of control, and half a dozen miniature fruit trees that bore life-size apples and cherries.
The result was a five-thousand-square-foot riot of charm and surprises, with garlic rubbing elbows with roses, and seven-foot tomato plants duking it out with clambering vines of flowering sweet peas. Touches of humor and tiny treasures were tucked everywhere, from the terra-cotta saucer filled with century-old shards of crockery uncovered in all the years of digging, to the tiny intact ceramic frog that Liz, no older than Susy, had uncovered when they were putting in the original perennial border.
It was all there, in whimsical counterpoint to the rigid formality of Mrs. Drake's estate. "Therapy for me," Liz's father liked to say. "I get so damned sick and tired of carving conifers into spirals all day."
Liz went into the house through the kitchen door, hanging her straw hat on a big peg-rack buried under three or four other hats, and passed through the carpeted hall and up the stairs to the second-floor landing. The house, a shingled Victorian, was a bigger version of Liz's own, with three bedrooms instead of two upstairs, and a half bath squeezed between the kitchen and the dining room downstairs: an altogether typical Newport cottage.
The hall window, hung with lace, was open to the afternoon breeze. Liz threw it up the rest of the way, catching the scent of honeysuckle — now forever associated with Jack Eastman's kisses — and then pulled down the attic staircase, steeling herself for the ascent into hell.
It wasn't as bad as she'd feared. The windows at both ends of the attic were open, allowing a fresh cross-current of air to pass through. Still, it was hot enough for Liz to want to retrieve the iron floor lamp and get out. She found it tucked in a corner alongside her banished bed, looking, like the bed, sad and embarrassed to be of so little use to anyone anymore.
Pleased to be giving the lamp a new lease on life, Liz wrestled it free from the surrounding clutter and took a good look at it. It was smaller, less heavy than she remembered from her own childhood; but the Very Special Switch on the base—installed there by her father when he realized that Liz couldn't reach the switch at the bulb—was what made her want the lamp for her own daughter. When Susy was a little bigger, Liz would be back for the bed as well.
She patted the headboard affectionately, then began an awkward stagger back toward the stairs with the lamp in one hand and the shade, with its sepia-painted scenes of Paris, in the other. The electric cord — which had instantly come unwrapped from the shaft — dragged behind her. As cords always do, it found something to hook on: the treadle of her grandmother's old Singer. With a little curse of annoyance, Liz backtracked to the sewing machine to free the cord.
That was when she saw the huddle of prints and paintings wedged between the Singer and an old blond dresser.
And that was when she suddenly remembered one particular painting among them, one she hadn't thought about in twenty years or more.
She remembered it as vividly as if she'd just finished painting it herself, remembered everything about it, from the grand gold-leaf frame, chipped and scratched from a lifetime of being moved from one dusty corner to another, to the heavily applied brushstrokes, so surprisingly messy to an untutored child's eye.
Liz put down the lamp and began hastily shifting the stacked frames, wincing at the sound of breaking glass on an old print of Niagara Falls, until she was able to work loose from the others the ornate gold-leaf frame she sought. She lifted it — filthy, dusty, never once hung — and held it out in front of her. Yes. Without a doubt, a work of Christopher Eastman. She knew the style. Even more: she knew the subject.
It was a portrait of a woman reclining on a scroll-end daybed. There was a suggestion of a sloped roof with a skylight to the left, and a stack of sticks — framing material? — on the right. It might have been the artist's studio. The subject's back was to the viewer, but her face, with its pale complexion, was partly turned and visible. Her hair was waist-length and flowing, a rich, deep red; it hung down her back and over a paisley shawl, which seemed to be the only thing she was wearing. The pose was mildly erotic: the woman's tall, slender body was arranged to stunning advantage. It might have been a bit racy for its time, but that time had long passed.
If her hair were moved just a little to the left, I'd be able to see the dark-green ribbon around her neck, Liz thought. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that the painting was one of the series that Christopher Eastman had done of the great love of his life, the mysterious Ophelia.
So this was the woman who'd so impressed Victoria St. Onge: the lover who'd scandalized Newport society, the servant who'd been dismissed from East Gate, and then — apparently — been forgotten by Christopher Eastman himself. This was the woman who'd been usurped by the imperious blue-eyed, blue-gowned Brunhilde. How utterly tragic that Liz couldn't see more of her face! There was something quintessentially Irish about the delicate profile; in an intriguing way it reminded her of Victoria.
Liz blew away a generation's worth of dust, then walked with the painting over to the south window for better light. It was no use. The artist wanted the viewer to see only a hint of Ophelia's beauty and no more. Maddening!
And eerie. This latest link in the chain that seemed to bind Liz to the fortunes of the Eastman family did not surprise her; she had long since stopped blaming the events on coincidence. As with everything else, there was nothing serendipitous about this discovery. The cord had gotten jammed
in the treadle because the cord had a job to do: prod Liz into remembering the exiled painting. Okay, Liz accepted that. But that didn't make it any less ... eerie.
She wandered back from the bright light of the window into the dusky shadows of the attic center. It seemed to her that he was there, somewhere: the shade of Christopher Eastman, pleased that she had stumbled onto this latest piece of the jigsaw. Liz held her breath and stood absolutely still, waiting for some manifestation of him: for the sound of the chime, or — she desperately wished for it — an actual reappearance.
But there was no sound, and there was no sighting.
So why did she feel such intense ... satisfaction, almost joy, holding the portrait in her hands? Was the painting itself the manifestation? She peered at the reclining woman, murky now in the attic's shadows. The tilt of her head had a sauciness to it, the confidence of a woman loved and in love. There was much intimacy in the portrait, and it had nothing to do with Ophelia's state of dress.
The painting made Christopher Eastman more real than either the chimes or the visions had done so far.
Leaving the iron floor lamp behind, Liz took the painting downstairs and out to the garden. Her father had arrived, direct from the local nursery, with a pair of tired-looking Korean lilacs, balled and burlapped and ready to be squeezed God only knew where.
"Planting time!" cried Susy to Liz from the inside of the wheelbarrow. It was part of the ritual: a ride all around the garden paths before the latest acquisitions were loaded into the well-worn barrow from the station wagon.
While Susy urged her grandpa to giddyap, Liz sidled up to her mother with the painting. "Mom? You remember this?"
Her mother looked surprised. "Is that still around? I thought I got rid of it at a yard sale. I suppose your father dragged it back upstairs. He's convinced that an original oil painting — never mind that it's not signed — is worth something."
"I remember he was going to get it appraised sometime."
"Oh, sure," said her mother with a snort. "Right after he glues the old dining-room chairs together and just as soon as he rewires the toaster. Let's face it, Lizzie," she added with a resigned shake of her head in her husband's direction. "If it can't sprout, it doesn't stand a chance."
"Where did we get this, anyway? I remember it was considered too risque to actually hang on a wall. As far as I can tell, it's never even had hardware attached for hanging," Liz said, turning the frame over for inspection.
Her mother frowned thoughtfully and said, "It must have come with all the stuff after your grandmother died. Your dad's aunt Mary might know more about it. But I wouldn't get your hopes up. She had first pick over her sister's things, after all; I suppose if this had any sentimental value, she'd have kept it."
Liz held the painting at arm's length. "I'll ask her," she said softly. "Can I have it?"
"Take it. Just don't let your father see it."
****
Later that day Liz dragged Susy, kicking and screaming, for a visit to the child's great-great-aunt Mary's house. Like all five-year-olds, Susy had an aversion to spending sunny hours in dark ill-smelling rooms surrounded by dying house plants. Nothing Liz said could convince Susy that eight-legged bugs weren't going to drop in her hair from the spider plants hanging overhead, and that reptiles weren't going to slither out from under the neglected, forlorn leaves of the snake plants alongside.
Besides, Mary O'Neill-O'Reilly was hard of hearing. When Susy spoke in a normal voice, her great-great-aunt Mary demanded that the child SPEAK UP, CONFOUND IT! And when Susy got brave and shouted some pleasantry, the elderly woman silenced her with a warning that little girls should be seen and not heard. Poor Susy, batted this way and that by the contradictory demands of good manners, generally ended up staring at her shoelaces and heaving gently tragic sighs well-timed to the lulls in the conversation.
Well, it couldn't be helped. No one was around for babysitting duty, and Liz was beside herself with curiosity about the painting of the red-haired woman on the daybed. After an early supper with her parents, she bundled her daughter and the painting into the minivan and drove three blocks deeper into the Fifth Ward.
****
Mary O'Neill-O'Reilly had married and survived two different Irishmen, and at the age of eighty had begun dating a third: John O'Shaunessy. When Mr. O'Shaunessy, who'd been a tenant in Aunt Mary's second-floor apartment, got cold feet and backed down from the altar, the family breathed a sigh of relief: they had no wish to add another hyphen on their Christmas cards to Aunt Mary.
But Aunt Mary didn't see it that way. She never was the same after Mr. O'Shaunessy broke off the engagement and moved out. Some said Aunt Mary's heart was broken (which was why she was so cranky and stopped having the grass cut), while others said she was just bitter over the loss of the higher social security payments Mr. O'Shaunessy would've left behind (eventually). Either way, a visit to her was an ordeal.
"Aunt Mary," Liz said in a high, clear voice, "I was just over at my mom's house, and she told me you might remember something about this painting."
She propped it on her knees facing her great-aunt. The elderly woman's response was odd, to say the least.
"Oh. Her. At least she's covered up in that one."
Liz's heart began to beat faster. "You know who this is?" Aunt Mary bobbed her white-haired head toward Susy and said in shrill warning, "Little pitchers!"
The child, who knew the grown-up warning all too well, stood up and said, "I think I have to go to the bathroom, don't I, Mommy."
"And make sure you wash your hands! With soap!" said Aunt Mary. "And don't be throwing the towel on the floor!"
Susy, wincing under the weight of all the exclamation marks, went off dutifully, leaving her mother the privacy she sought. On an impulse, Liz handed the painting over to her reluctant great-aunt. The spare but feisty woman took a pair of wire-rimmed glasses out of the pocket of her smock, hooked them behind her ears, and peered at the work with nearsighted hostility.
"Foolish, foolish woman," Aunty Mary said primly, shaking her head over the portrait that lay in her lap. "She let her beauty go to her head."
"Who is she, Aunt Mary?"
"You don't know?" She handed the painting back to Liz. "Then maybe I shouldn't tell you."
"But that's why I'm here!" said Liz impatiently. "To find out. My mother said you'd tell me everything," she added in a shameless lie.
Aunt Mary frowned and said, "It doesn't surprise me. What would your mother care? It's not her side of the family."
"Family! This woman is family?"
Mary O'Neill-O'Reilly sighed. Liz could see that she was resigning herself to holding the closet door open so that Liz could peek at the skeleton inside.
The old woman unhooked her glasses from behind her ears and returned them to their pocket. Then she folded one blue-veined hand over the other in her lap and took a deep, purposeful breath.
She said crisply on the exhale, "This is a painting of Filly Ryan. She got off the boat from Ireland in 1867, got pregnant without benefit of the sacrament, and — remember, you wanted to know — was alone and two steps from the poorhouse when a Newport shoemaker took her in and, we assume, married her. Well? Are you shocked?"
Liz was more confused than shocked. "A shoemaker? But that must have been my great-great — or great-great-great, I don't even know — grandfather. Anton Pinhel? You're talking about Anton Pinhel?"
"How many shoemakers were there in our family?" snapped Aunt Mary.
Reeling from the information, Liz tapped the painting with her forefinger and said in a daze, "Oh. I thought this was someone completely else. So this is — this is a portrait of Phyllis Pinhel?"
"Phyllis? Who's Phyllis?"
"Filly. Phyllis. That was the shoemaker's wife's name, wasn't—?"
Later, when she thought about it, it seemed impossible to Liz that she could've been so dense. "Filly is for Ophelia?" she asked, her mouth agape. Without waiting for the obvious answer, she added
, "I always thought Filly was short for Phyllis."
"This is what's wrong with these latest generations," said Aunt Mary with a look of disgust. "They don't care a tittle about the family history. They're too lazy to find out and too bored to listen when they're told it. You wait, young lady; when you're fifty, sixty, then you'll want to know about your ancestors. And then it'll be too late. All the facts will be six feet under."
"No, I do care — if only you knew how much," Liz said softly. She was overwhelmed by the revelation that Christopher Eastman had been the lover of her great-great-grandmother. "Ophelia. I—"
"Hush," said Aunt Mary as Susy tiptoed timidly back into their presence. "Yes. Ophelia Ryan, she was. We hope she died Ophelia Pinhel. Well, good-bye."
Aunt Mary always ended her interviews cleanly and quickly; it did not do to linger. Nonetheless, on their way out the door with Susy, Liz ventured to say, "You implied that there was another painting of Ophelia ...?"
"Dreadful. Shocking. I don't know what happened to it. Burned, I expect."
And that was that.
Chapter 15
"Don't cry, Mommy," Susy warned. "I'll bring you back a Mickey Mouse hat."
"You promise?" said Liz, smiling at the bribe. "That would be great."
Her daughter's first real trip without her: Liz tried to act casual about it, but it was a milestone reached, and Liz — and her parents — knew it.
Her father, vigorous and purposeful as always, shifted his carry-on bag from one shoulder to the other and said, "C'mon c'mon c'mon. The overhead storage is going to be filled up. Susy! Let's go! All aboard for Disney World!"
Susy's face lit up as only a child's can at the mention of the Magic Kingdom. She took her grandfather's outstretched hand and, blowing one last kiss to Liz, trotted through the boarding tunnel to the waiting plane.
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