by Riley Sager
During these meet and greets, I smile as wide as instructed, accept compliments, coyly defer the inevitable questions about what I plan to do next.
Once Randall has exhausted his supply of strangers to introduce, I hang back from the crowd, willing myself not to check each painting for the telltale red sticker signaling it’s been sold. Instead, I nurse a glass of champagne in a corner, the branch of a recently deforested birch tapping against my shoulder as I look around the room for people I actually know. There are many, which makes me grateful, even though it’s strange seeing them together in the same place. High school friends mingling with coworkers from the ad agency, fellow painters standing next to relatives who took the train in from Connecticut.
All of them, save for a single cousin, are men.
That’s not entirely an accident.
I perk up once Marc arrives fashionably late, sporting a proud grin as he surveys the scene. Although he claims to loathe the art world, Marc fits in perfectly. Bearded with adorably mussed hair. A plaid sport coat thrown over his worn Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Red sneakers that make Mr. Christie’s do a disappointed double take. Passing through the crowd, Marc snags a glass of champagne and one of the croquettes, which he pops into his mouth and chews thoughtfully.
“The cheese saves it,” he informs me. “But those watery mushrooms are a major infraction.”
“I haven’t tried one yet,” I say. “Too nervous.”
Marc puts a hand on my shoulder, steadying me. Just like he used to do when we lived together during art school. Every person, especially artists, needs a calming influence. For me, that person is Marc Stewart. My voice of reason. My best friend. My probable husband if not for the fact that we both like men.
I’m drawn to the romantically unattainable. Again, not a coincidence.
“You’re allowed to enjoy this, you know,” he says.
“I know.”
“And you can be proud of yourself. There’s no need to feel guilty. Artists are supposed to be inspired by life experiences. That’s what creativity is all about.”
Marc’s talking about the girls, of course. Buried inside every painting. Other than me, only he knows about their existence. The only thing I haven’t told him is why, fifteen years later, I continue to make them vanish over and over.
That’s one thing he’s better off not knowing.
I never intended to paint this way. In art school, I was drawn to simplicity in both color and form. Andy Warhol’s soup cans. Jasper Johns’s flags. Piet Mondrian’s bold squares and rigid black lines. Then came an assignment to paint a portrait of someone I knew who had died.
I chose the girls.
I painted Vivian first, because she burned brightest in my memory. That blond hair right out of a shampoo ad. Those incongruously dark eyes that looked black in the right light. The pert nose sprayed with freckles brought out by the sun. I put her in a white dress with an elaborate Victorian collar fanning around her swanlike neck and gave her the same enigmatic smile she displayed on her way out of the cabin.
You’re too young for this, Em.
Natalie came next. High forehead. Square chin. Hair pulled tight in a ponytail. Her white dress got a dainty lace collar that downplayed her thick neck and broad shoulders.
Finally, there was Allison, with her wholesome look. Apple cheeks and slender nose. Brows two shades darker than her flaxen hair, so thin and perfect they looked like they had been drawn on with brown pencil. I painted an Elizabethan ruff around her neck, frilly and regal.
Yet there was something wrong with the finished painting. Something that gnawed at me until the night before the project was due, when I awoke at 2:00 a.m. and saw the three of them staring at me from across the room.
Seeing them. That was the problem.
I crept out of bed and approached the canvas. I grabbed a brush, dabbed it in some brown paint, and smeared a line over their eyes. A tree branch, blinding them. More branches followed. Then plants and vines and whole trees, all of them gliding off the brush onto the canvas, as if sprouting there. By dawn, most of the canvas had been besieged by forest. All that remained of Vivian, Natalie, and Allison were shreds of their white dresses, patches of skin, locks of hair.
That became No. 1. The first in my forest series. The only one where even a fraction of the girls is visible. That piece, which got the highest grade in the class after I explained its meaning to my instructor, is absent from the gallery show. It hangs in my loft, not for sale.
Most of the others are here, though, with each painting taking up a full wall of the multichambered gallery. Seeing them together like this, with their gnarled branches and vibrant leaves, makes me realize how obsessive the whole endeavor is. Knowing I’ve spent years painting the same subject unnerves me.
“I am proud,” I tell Marc before taking a sip of champagne.
He downs his glass in one gulp and grabs a fresh one. “Then what’s up? You seem vexed.”
He says it with a reedy British accent, a dead-on impersonation of Vincent Price in that campy horror movie neither of us can remember the name of. All we know is that we were stoned when we watched it on TV one night, and the line made us howl with laughter. We say it to each other far too often.
“It’s just weird. All of this.” I use my champagne flute to gesture at the paintings dominating the walls, the people lined up in front of them, Randall kissing both cheeks of a svelte European couple who just walked through the door. “I never expected any of this.”
I’m not being humble. It’s the truth. If I had expected a gallery show, I would have actually named my work. Instead, I simply numbered them in the order they were painted. No. 1 through No. 33.
Randall, the gallery, this surreal opening reception—all of it is a happy accident. The product of being in the right place at the right time. That right place, incidentally, was Marc’s bistro in the West Village. At the time, I was in my fourth year of being the in-house artist at an ad agency. It was neither enjoyable nor fulfilling, but it paid the rent on a crumbling loft big enough to fit my forest canvases. After an overhead pipe leaked into the bistro, Marc needed something to temporarily mask a wall’s worth of water damage. I loaned him No. 8 because it was the biggest and able to cover the most square footage.
That right time was a week later, when the owner of a small gallery a few blocks away popped into Marc’s place for lunch. He saw the painting, was suitably intrigued, and asked Marc about the artist.
That led to one of my paintings—No. 7—being displayed in the gallery. It sold within a week. The owner asked for more. I gave him three. One of the paintings—lucky No. 13—caught the eye of a young art lover who posted a picture of it on Instagram. That picture was noticed by her employer, a television actress known for setting trends. She bought the painting and hung it in her dining room, showing it off during a dinner party for a small group of friends. One of those friends, an editor at Vogue, told his cousin, the owner of a larger, more prestigious gallery. That cousin is Randall, who currently roams the gallery, coiling his arms around every guest he sees.
What none of them knows—not Randall, not the actress, not even Marc—is that those thirty-three canvases are the only things I’ve painted outside my duties at the ad agency. There are no fresh ideas percolating in this artist’s brain, no inspiration sparking me into productivity. I’ve attempted other things, of course, more from a nagging sense of responsibility than actual desire. But I’m never able to move beyond those initial, halfhearted efforts. I return to the girls every damn time.
I know I can’t keep painting them, losing them in the woods again and again. To that end, I’ve vowed not to paint another. There won’t be a No. 34 or a No. 46 or, God forbid, a No. 112.
That’s why I don’t answer when everyone asks me what I’m working on next. I have no answer to give. My future is quite literally a blank canvas, waiting for m
e to fill it. The only thing I’ve painted in the past six months is my studio, using a roller to convert it from daffodil yellow to robin’s-egg blue.
If there’s anything vexing me, it’s that. I’m a one-hit wonder. A bold lady painter whose life’s work is on these walls.
As a result, I feel helpless when Marc leaves my side to chat up a handsome cater waiter, giving Randall the perfect moment to clutch my wrist and drag me to a slender woman studying No. 30, my largest work to date. Although I can’t see the woman’s face, I know she’s important. Everyone else I’ve met tonight has been guided to me instead of the other way around.
“Here she is, darling,” Randall announces. “The artist herself.”
The woman whirls around, fixing me with a friendly, green-eyed gaze I haven’t seen in fifteen years. It’s a look you easily remember. The kind of gaze that, when aimed at you, makes you feel like the most important person in the world.
“Hello, Emma,” she says.
I freeze, not sure what else to do. I have no idea how she’ll act. Or what she’ll say. Or even why she’s here. I had assumed Francesca Harris-White wanted nothing to do with me.
Yet she smiles warmly before pulling me close until our cheeks touch. A semi-embrace that Randall witnesses with palpable jealousy.
“You already know each other?”
“Yes,” I say, still stunned by her presence.
“It was ages ago. Emma was a mere slip of a girl. And I couldn’t be more proud of the woman she’s become.”
She gives me another look. The look. And although that sense of surprise hasn’t left me, I realize how happy I am to see her. I didn’t think such a thing was possible.
“Thank you, Mrs. Harris-White,” I tell her. “That’s very kind of you to say.”
She mock frowns. “What’s with this ‘Mrs. Harris-White’ nonsense? It’s Franny. Always Franny.”
I remember that, too. Her standing before us in her khaki shorts and blue polo shirt, her bulky hiking boots making her feet look comically large. Call me Franny. I insist upon it. Here in the great outdoors, we’re all equals.
It didn’t last. Afterward, when what happened was in newspapers across the country, it was her full, formal name that was used. Francesca Harris-White. Only daughter of real estate magnate Theodore Harris. Sole grandchild of lumber baron Buchanan Harris. Much-younger widow of tobacco heir Douglas White. Net worth estimated to be almost a billion, most of it old money stretching back to the Gilded Age.
Now she stands before me, seemingly untouched by time, even though she must be in her late seventies. She wears her age well. Her skin is tan and radiant. Her sleeveless blue dress emphasizes her trim figure. Her hair, a shade balanced between blond and gray, has been pulled back in a chignon, showing off a single strand of pearls around her neck.
She turns to the painting again, her gaze scanning its formidable width. It’s one of my darker works—all blacks, deep blues, and mud browns. The canvas dwarfs her, making it look as though she’s actually standing in a forest, the trees about to overtake her.
“It’s really quite marvelous,” she says. “All of them are.”
There’s a catch in her voice. Something tremulous and uncertain, as if she can somehow glimpse the girls in their white dresses beneath the painted thicket.
“I must confess that I came here under false pretenses,” she says, still staring at the painting, seemingly unable to look away. “I’m here for the art, of course. But also for something else. I have what you might call an interesting proposition.”
At last, she turns away from the painting, fixing those green eyes on me. “I’d love to discuss it with you, when you have the time.”
I shoot a glance to Randall, who stands behind Franny at a discreet distance. He mouths the word every artist longs to hear: commission.
The idea prompts me to immediately say, “Of course.” Under any other circumstance, I already would have declined.
“Then join me for lunch tomorrow. Let’s say twelve thirty? At my place? It will give us a chance to catch up.”
I find myself nodding, even though I’m not entirely sure what’s happening. Franny’s unexpected appearance. Her even more unexpected invitation to lunch. The scary-yet-tantalizing prospect of being commissioned to paint something for her. It’s another surreal touch to an already strange evening.
“Of course,” I say again, lacking the wherewithal to utter anything else.
Franny beams. “Wonderful.”
She presses a card into my hand. Navy print on heavy white vellum. Simple but elegant. It bears her name, a phone number, and a Park Avenue address. Before leaving, she pulls me into another half hug. Then she turns to Randall and gestures toward No. 30.
“I’ll take it,” she says.
2
Franny’s building is easy to find. It’s the one that bears her family’s name.
The Harris.
Much like its residents, the Harris is steadfastly inconspicuous. No Dakota-like dormers and gables here. Just understated architecture rising high over Park Avenue. Above the doorway is the Harris family crest carved in marble. It depicts two tall pines crossed together to form an X, surrounded by an ivy laurel. Appropriate, considering the family’s initial fortune came from the culling of such trees.
The inside of the Harris is as somber and hushed as a cathedral. And I’m the sinner tiptoeing inside. An impostor. Someone who doesn’t belong. Yet the doorman smiles and greets me by name, as if I’ve lived here for years.
The warm welcome continues when I’m directed to the elevator. Standing inside is another familiar face from Camp Nightingale.
“Lottie?” I say.
Unlike Franny, she’s changed quite a bit in the past fifteen years. Older, of course. More sophisticated. The shorts and plaid shirt I last saw her wearing have been replaced with a charcoal pantsuit over a crisp white blouse. Her hair, once long and the color of mahogany, is now jet-black and cut into a sleek bob that frames her pale face. But the smile is the same. It has a warm, friendly glow that’s just as vibrant now as it was at Camp Nightingale.
“Emma,” she says, pulling me into a hug. “My God, it’s nice to see you again.”
I hug her back. “You too, Lottie. I wondered if you still worked for Franny.”
“She couldn’t get rid of me if she tried. Not that she’d ever want to.”
Indeed, the two of them were rarely seen apart. Franny the master of the camp, and Lottie the devoted assistant. Together they ruled not with an iron fist but with a velvet glove, their benevolent patience never strained, even when surprised by a latecomer like myself. I can still picture the moment I met Lottie. The unhurried way she emerged from the Lodge after my parents and I arrived hours later than expected. She greeted us with a smile, a wave, and a sincere Welcome to Camp Nightingale.
Now she ushers me into the elevator and presses the top button. As we’re whisked upward, she says, “You and Franny will be lunching in the greenhouse. Just wait until you see it.”
I nod, feigning excitement. Lottie sees right through me. She eyes me from head to toe, taking in my stiff-backed posture, my tapping foot, the uncontrollable wavering of my plastered-on smile.
“Don’t be nervous,” she says. “Franny’s forgiven you a hundred times over.”
I wish I could believe that. Even though Franny was nothing but friendly to me at the gallery, a gnawing doubt persists. I can’t shake the feeling that this is more than just a friendly visit.
The elevator doors open, and I find myself looking at the entrance foyer to Franny’s penthouse. To my surprise, the wall directly facing the elevator already bears the painting she had purchased the night before. No little red sticker or weeks of waiting for Francesca Harris-White. Randall must have been up all night organizing its shipment from the gallery to here.
“It’s a be
autiful piece,” Lottie says of No. 30. “I can see why Franny was taken with it.”
I wonder if Franny would still be taken if she knew the girls were secreted within the painting, hiding there, waiting to be found. I then wonder how the girls themselves would feel about taking up residence in Franny’s penthouse. Allison and Natalie likely wouldn’t care. But Vivian? She’d fucking love it.
“I plan on taking an afternoon off to visit the gallery and see what else you’ve painted,” Lottie says. “I’m so proud of you, Emma. We all are.”
She leads me down a short hallway to the left, past a formal dining room and through a sunken sitting room. “Here we are. The greenhouse.”
The word doesn’t begin to do the room justice. It’s a greenhouse in the same way Grand Central is a train station. Both are so ornate it defies easy description.
Franny’s greenhouse is in reality a two-story conservatory built on what was once the penthouse terrace. Panes of heavy glass rise from floor to vaulted ceiling, some still bearing triangles of snow in their exterior corners. Contained within this fanciful structure is a miniature forest. There are squat pines, flowering cherry trees, and rosebushes aflame with red blooms. Slick moss and tendrils of ivy cover the ground. There’s even a babbling brook, which flows over a creek bed stippled with rocks. In the center of this fairy-tale forest is a redbrick patio. That’s where I find Franny, seated at a wrought-iron table already set for lunch.
“Here she is,” Lottie announces. “And probably famished. Which means I better start serving.”
Franny greets me with another semi-embrace. “How wonderful to see you again, Emma. And dressed so beautifully, too.”
Since I had no idea what to wear, I put on the nicest thing I own—a printed Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress my parents gave me for Christmas. It turns out I shouldn’t have worried about being underdressed. Next to Franny’s outfit of black pants and white button-down, I feel the opposite. Stiff, formal, and agonizingly nervous about why I’ve been summoned here.