“I love this place,” Corrine said.
“It belongs to my favorite history professor. I’ve been visiting for years. He’s in an assisted-living facility in Williamstown now, about ten miles down the road.”
“I forgot you went to Williams.”
“But I remember your telling me about a weekend you spent there your sophomore year.”
“God, yes. Tod Baker, homecoming weekend, 1977. Did I really tell you about that?”
“You did.”
“And you thought it would be romantic for me to revisit the scene of my humiliation?”
He suddenly looked worried. “As I recall, it sounded idyllic.”
“Well, yes, except for the part where I puked in his lap.”
“You neglected to mention that detail.”
“But otherwise, yes, idyllic.”
—
Luke had packed two coolers of food, and that night, while she sneaked off to the library to call home, he laid out a spread of caviar and foie gras and cheese, along with an array of premade salads. “I don’t actually cook,” he said when she came into the kitchen and found this feast laid out on the table.
“Thank God for that,” she said, kissing him.
Sex with Luke had been thrilling from the beginning, but she’d never felt so adventurous or voracious as she did over the next forty-eight hours. Her ardor was informed by a sense of transience, an awareness not only of the hours ticking away on the hilltop but of the gradually unwinding spring of her own vitality. She would probably never feel this kind of desire again; with Russell she had far too much history to ever again experience the thrill of discovery. She had a fervent desire to do everything with Luke, to have a store of memories to draw on in the cold nights to come.
That night, she lay back on the bed as he started to play with her, and gently guided his hand. She was amazed how quickly she came under the gentle thrum of his finger. As the tremors subsided, she released her grip on his forearm and moved her hand down his body. Finding him thoroughly hard, she was seized with a sudden inspiration. “I want you to put it in my ass.”
This was not a sentence she’d ever uttered before, and she was only slightly less surprised than he was, although he didn’t object or try to debate the point. She reached over to the bedside table for the bottle of Kiehl’s body lotion.
She tried to imagine it from his point of view as he slowly advanced, the deferral of gratification as he paused and gently pressed again, pausing at her sudden intakes of breath.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said.
It must have been difficult for him to go so slowly when his instinct was to thrust ahead. There was a last spasm of painful resistance and then suddenly she yielded and he was inside of her and the pain metamorphosed into something that increasingly resembled pleasure. She hadn’t even been sure that she would enjoy this, her initial desire more symbolic than physical. It had been years, a few times long ago when she and Russell were new, but she wanted to do this with him, to have this intimacy, and now she felt more connected to him than ever and wanted to always remember this feeling.
“I want to remember what you smell like,” she said, lying on his chest afterward.
“I’m right here,” he said. “No remembering required.”
But perversely, she felt the night and the weekend slipping away. She couldn’t help it—she was already thinking ahead to missing him later.
That morning, she woke to the smell of bacon frying, the bed beside her empty. Please God—not another man who wants to feed me breakfast, she thought, although on second thought she realized she was actually hungry. She put on the silk robe she’d packed, peed, brushed her teeth and hair, dabbed on some lip gloss. Seeing his Dopp kit open on the sink, she couldn’t resist glancing at its contents, particularly the prescription bottles: Lipitor, Ambien, Cialis and Adderall. She couldn’t help being slightly disappointed about the Cialis, preferring to imagine that his sexual stamina was a tribute to her, but the Adderall was more surprising. Half the kids in Manhattan were taking it for attention deficit disorder, real or alleged, the other half for weight loss or the sheer speedy buzz of it. Was he taking it to treat himself or to fuel himself? Did it matter? ADD would certainly explain some of his tics, his sometimes manic demeanor.
When she went downstairs to the kitchen, he put down his spatula, embraced and kissed her, his day-old beard rasping her face, then returned to his cooking, humming what sounded like “Rehab.” Was it just her imagination, her new knowledge, or was he way too alert and energetic at this early hour? “I thought you didn’t cook?”
“Only breakfast.”
“Do we have plans today?” she asked, taking a seat at the kitchen table.
“We do. After breakfast we’re getting in the car.”
“To go where?”
“That’s a surprise.”
After polishing off a poached egg on toast, Corrine went upstairs to dress.
They drove down Route 7 to Williamstown, a place she hadn’t laid eyes on in three decades, the campus an attractive architectural mélange of Federal, Gothic, Romanesque and various flavors of modernism.
“Did you love it?” she asked as they turned up the driveway of what appeared to be a white marble Doric temple.
“Mostly,” he said. “Do you know where we are?”
“Not exactly,” she said.
“The Clark Art Institute. I’ve arranged for a private tour.”
A young man was waiting at the main entrance, and he led them inside. She remembered now—she’d spent a hungover morning here, hiding from her date among the Renoirs and Monets. The guide was explaining that the Clarks had been wealthy New York collectors who, fearing that nuclear apocalypse might wipe out Manhattan, had built this museum in the Berkshires to house their collection, thereby greatly disappointing the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Hard to believe that they could have accumulated a collection of this magnitude in a single generation,” Luke said.
“You sound jealous,” Corrine said.
He shrugged.
“Is there anything in particular you’d like to see?” their guide asked.
“Could you show us Interior at Arcachon?” Luke said.
“Oh, certainly. That’s one of my favorites.”
Luke looked at Corrine expectantly.
“The Manet,” she said after a pause, remembering.
“You told me it was your favorite painting,” he said, looking disappointed, as they followed their guide across the marble corridor.
“I can’t believe you remembered that.” More to the point, she couldn’t believe she’d almost forgotten it. She had said that, and it was true, or at least it probably was true when she told him that it was, though she’d forgotten in the interim. Had it really been her favorite painting in the long years between first viewing it as a college student and talking to Luke about art in the days after 9/11? It seemed more likely that the turmoil of that time had, like an earthquake or a volcanic eruption, thrust up buried memories and emotions, that this particular memory had been reawakened in the aftermath. What was most significant to her, at this moment, was the fact that Luke had remembered. This whole trip, she saw, had been organized around the impulse to reunite her with her putative favorite painting.
And here it was: a small gray-brown canvas, an intimate interior, a young man smoking a cigarette while an older woman across the table, his mother, looks up from her writing to take in the view of the sea through the open French windows. At the time, decades ago, she’d been hard-pressed to understand why the painting made such an impression on her, having none of the heroic eroticism of his Olympia, or the tragic grandeur of The Execution of Emperor Maximilian. But the sense of calm—and restfulness—was mesmerizing; the gray of the walls and the sea was the color of afternoon, of contemplation.
“I know it’s just a small domestic scene,” she said, feeling obliged to explain her esteem
for the painting. “But back then it made me incredibly wistful and nostalgic, I think because my own family was in such a state of perpetual conflict.”
“Manet had just returned from the Franco-Prussian War,” the guide said, “and you can feel how deeply he relished this peaceful family vignette. The ease and serenity are palpable.”
“Why don’t you meet us in about ten minutes in front of the Piero della Francesca,” Luke told him.
“I can’t get over your remembering this,” Corrine said as the young man slunk off. “Or that you brought me here. It’s very…I’m impressed. And touched.” She kissed his stubbly cheek.
“It is a lovely Manet,” he said.
“Had you noticed it before? You were probably disappointed when I told you that this little canvas was my favorite painting.”
“I don’t remember noticing it when I was at Williams, but I came up here after you told me that to see it.”
They contemplated it together until he said, “Of course, my favorite Manet would have to be Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe.”
“But of course. Heroic scale, clothed men, nude women—what’s not for an alpha male to love?”
He chose to ignore her taunt. “When I was growing up in Tennessee, I had these godparents, not actual godparents but kind of spiritual godparents, the Cheathams. They were friends of my parents and I used to fantasize that they were my real parents. They were very sophisticated and collected modern art, this in a place where everyone hung hunting prints and family portraits. Joleen Cheatham took me to museums and taught me about art. They had this drawing or maybe a print, a late Picasso called Le Déjeuner sur L’Herbe, which entranced me. I didn’t know at the time it was a riff on Manet’s painting, but I was fascinated by the composition, two nude women among clothed men. I also had a serious crush on Joleen—we’re talking erotic dreams and fantasies, and it all got mixed up together, my feelings for Joleen and art and my early interest in sex. Then later, as a student, when I saw Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, it was like stumbling on the key to the tortured mysteries of my adolescent sexual development.”
“You don’t seem all that tortured to me,” she said.
“I sublimate like hell.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “I owe this Joleen a debt of gratitude.”
—
They strolled through the galleries, browsing, grazing on the treasures—the gemlike Piero, the seascapes by Turner and Homer. Afterward he showed her scenes of former triumphs and failures—the freshman dorm on the quad, where he’d lost his virginity; the stately Federalist classroom building, where he’d defended his thesis on income distribution; the Gothic chapel, where he’d married Sasha. He left her at the library while he went to visit his old professor at the nursing home, and afterward he took her to lunch at a restaurant on a hillside south of town.
Touched by the extravagant gesture of the private tour and the fact that he’d remembered her story about the Manet, she tried to explain to him the insecurity she’d felt at the time, the tension and psychic violence, the shouting matches and ruined holidays. She was in the middle of a story about a Thanksgiving shoving match when he opened his menu and began to peruse it.
“Are you reading the menu?”
He lowered it and looked up, startled by her tone.
“I was just—”
“I was in the middle of telling you about the traumatic events of my childhood and you start reading the goddamn menu?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Was it that boring?”
“No, I promise, I really was listening.”
“Go ahead. Focus on the menu. I wouldn’t want to distract you from planning your meal.”
“I’m sorry. Sometimes I just have difficulty focusing.”
“Is that why you take Adderall?”
“Well, yes, actually.”
“I just happened to see it in your Dopp kit.”
“It must be nice to have X-ray vision.”
“All right, I’m sorry, I looked.”
“No, you’re right. It’s a problem. I’m easily distracted. Sometimes, I have the attention span of a gnat. I’m surprised it took you this long to complain.” He reached over and put his hand on hers. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
—
Snow was falling again as they drove back up the valley to the house.
Their desire and their attempts to sate it reached a kind of crescendo pitch that night; they woke in the middle of the night to try it again, and then once more just before dawn. They rose afterward to watch the sky turn silver and pink across the meadow, which had a fresh layer of snow. After breakfast they strapped on cross-country skis and explored the countryside for an hour, briefly staving off the regret of imminent departure, though Corrine became increasingly melancholy as the sun rose higher in the sky, wondering if this might be the last time she would be alone with Luke like this, realizing that her real life lay elsewhere.
“I hate Sundays,” Luke said as he helped her unbuckle her bindings, as if reading her thoughts.
“Me, too,” she said, brushing the snow from her jeans as he unlaced his boots.
“Why don’t we stay an extra day?”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why don’t we just stay, period?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean let’s be together,” he said, stepping out of his jeans and dumping them in the foyer.
“That’s crazy.”
“Why? What’s crazy is that I let you get away once, and I don’t want to make the same mistake again.”
“I love that you feel that way, but trust me, it will pass.”
“It’s been six years and the feeling hasn’t passed yet.”
“That’s because you didn’t have me. If you had, you would have gotten sick of me years ago.” And yet, even though she believed this, she found herself marveling that he actually wanted her still.
“You know, I’m used to getting what I want,” he said.
“Does that arrogant rich-guy line work on other girls?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I forget you’re not like anyone else.”
“That might work,” she said, stepping out of her jeans.
—
They landed smoothly at Teterboro, Luke emerging from the cockpit after the plane braked to a stop. As they walked across the tarmac to the terminal, she took his hand and held it. Inside, she was trying to steel herself for their parting, when they were accosted by Kip Taylor, sitting in the waiting area, who rose to greet them. “Corrine, Luke, what a…”
He seemed unable to finish the sentence, his surprise spawning confusion.
“Kip, I’ve been meaning to call you,” Luke said. “Got a company you might be interested in.”
Kip nodded skeptically. Corrine, too, was at a loss for words.
Luke said, “Headed someplace glamorous, I hope?”
“A little bonefishing down in the islands,” Kip said.
“Russell still talks about that trip with you last winter,” Corrine said, her voice sounding off-key, even slightly hysterical.
Before she could cobble together some plausible explanation, Kip said, “Give him my best,” then turned away and walked over to the counter, leaving her to wonder if it was only her own guilt that made this sound so much like a reproach.
“Oh my God,” she said as they walked to the front door. “What must he be thinking?”
“He’s going to think what he’s going to think,” Luke said tautologically. “But he has no reason to say anything.”
Even if this were true, she felt the weekend had been tarnished, if not ruined, with this abrupt reminder of her obligations and her place in an intricate web of social and familial and even commercial relations. Whatever had made her think she could just run away?
27
THE CITY GREW TALLER TO THE NORTH, the lowlands of SoHo and Greenwich Village giving way to the towers of midtown. In th
e foreground: Chessie Steyl, the actress, in a shiny purple dress with a plunging neckline, whom Russell was complimenting on her performance, hating himself a little for the inevitable clichés, the obsequiousness of the fan, even as he felt warmed by her proximity, and her acknowledgment of his existence. Their acquaintance, casual though it might be, was based on a few encounters at gatherings like this, a party following the screening of her latest film in the penthouse of the Soho Grand Hotel. Close up, he felt she had as much iconic presence as the Empire State or the Chrysler buildings glittering behind her. Russell occasionally sent her books he thought she would like, and she would inevitably send him a thank-you note, an actual handwritten missive on a monogrammed Crane notecard—she was a product of Greenwich, Connecticut, after all—and sometimes mention these titles in her interviews. Knowing Russell gave her a little shot of lit cred, helped her feel she was smarter than she looked, which, in fact, she was. For his part, he’d been thinking for a while that she might be perfect for the lead in the film adaptation of Jeff’s novel. She looked to him quite a bit like the younger Corrine Calloway. It would be an elegant sublimation of his desire for this sexy young actress to see her play the fictional version of his wife.
“I just got the galleys for Toni Morrison’s new novel,” she said, offering him a cigarette from her pack of American Spirits, which he accepted, although he hadn’t smoked in years. She produced a Zippo from her purse.
“May I?” he said, taking the lighter. He cupped his hand around the flame as she leaned over, offering a thrilling view of her breasts.
“What else should I be reading?”
It was flattering that she seemed to be devoting all of her attention to him, putting her hand on his arm and drawing him into a conspiracy that excluded all of the noisy and populous party in her honor. “Have I sent you Jack Carson’s short stories? No? Really amazing. He’s like a latter-day Raymond Carver, a smart hillbilly Hemingway. Incredibly powerful stuff. And I’m just publishing this memoir by Phillip Kohout—you know, the guy who got captured by the Taliban? He was going to come with me tonight, but he has a stomach thing. I don’t know if you got the invitation, but we’re having a launch party next week.”