Lucas swept his hair back and crouched down. When he looked up at her, he looked vulnerable, boyish. “There’s so little of him left. The studio was basically destroyed on 9/11. The rest was scrutinized and handed off to the foundation. Adeline has cataloged every scrap.”
“It’s just paints and brushes.”
“It’s his, though. Can I see?”
Ruthie was unexpectedly touched by this. She thought only artists had a romantic relationship with materials. She flipped open a toolbox and found a box cutter. She cleanly sliced through the tape.
Lucas closed in eagerly as she pulled back the flaps. The smell of paint and solvent hit her. She was swept back into Peter’s studio, cans of brushes, carts covered with paint spills, canvases turned to the wall, a cassette player splotched with paint. Everything had been smeared or stained with paint, even the coffeepot.
She remembered the kitchen chair with the red leatherette seat where he’d sat staring at the canvas on the wall—what had happened to that chair? Left outside on the street for someone to pick up, not knowing that it contained the ass imprint of an artist who had defined his generation. And the stacks of art magazines that in a frenzy Peter had once painted white and bound with cord, creating a massive white sculpture that the assistants often perched on to drink soda or coffee and bitch about him behind his back? Had that been cut up and destroyed? She had never thought about that before, that Peter’s studio had been a hazmat site, most likely.
Lucas pawed through the box eagerly. “These are all his colors.”
“Yeah.” That was the point, the uselessness of the gift and maybe its malice; Ruthie did not paint like Peter.
“And a couple of small canvases,” he said.
She nodded. “They’re works of art in themselves, really. Hiro had the best frame shop in the city, maybe the country. Peter would only let him build his canvases personally. That might be the last of them. Hiro died a year after Peter.”
She picked up the ax and swung it experimentally.
“Holy shit,” Lucas said. “What are you doing?”
She slid through the boxes and marched to the tree. If she could hack at her own life she would, at every limb—job, house, husband. Or hack away at assumptions. That she would never make a fuss. That she would just go away.
She raised the ax. The trunk was barely two inches in diameter. She was no Paul Bunyan, but she could do this.
“Maybe you should calm down,” Lucas said.
She swung at the tree. She felt the shudder of one clean, excellent cut. Again and again she swung until the trunk splintered. She tore it away from the stump, twisting until the living stalk snapped.
“Okay,” Lucas said. “And now we’re going to do what, exactly?”
She staggered with it to the car. She popped the trunk and wrestled it in. She yanked the door and fell into the front seat, scratched and dirty and bleeding. She toppled over the gearshift.
Her nose against the cushion, she breathed out and in. The leather smelled of old coffee, dry leaves, and something else, something elusive but desperate, the scent of years spent coaxing an engine past a hundred thousand miles.
My life is shit, Ruthie thought.
She was pathetic, a faded woman standing at a dinner party, hoping not to make an ass of herself, and making an ass of herself. Since Mike left she’d been living like a tiny gray mouse, compressing her bones to fit into the smallest crack, skulking along the baseboards. Sniffing out the crumbs. Chasing the cheese. Until she’d scurried right into the trap, and been broken. Snap!
Lucas stuck his head in the car. “What’s with the tree?”
“It’s a present.” Maybe she was drunk. She couldn’t tell.
He placed his hand on the door. “Come on, I’ll drive and taxi back. This is much more interesting than the party.”
“I have to deliver the tree.” She clambered like a Great Dane over the gearshift, all snuffle and hindquarters.
Lucas slid into the front seat and pulled out. They drove in silence except for Ruthie’s murmured directions to Helen’s house.
The lovely shingled house sat quiet as a cat. Ruthie saw Helen moving across a window. She directed Lucas to pull over. She lurched out of the car and wrestled the lilac tree out of the trunk.
Helen stepped onto the porch, a welcoming expression on her face that slowly drained into puzzlement. “Ruthie?”
Panting, Ruthie threw the tree on the driveway. “Should I tell you where to stick this?”
Helen’s mouth dropped open. She looked old and stricken.
Ruthie decided not to feel guilty (One can choose this, she was thinking) and slid back into the car.
Lucas laughed. “Badass!”
“Just go.”
They drove with all the windows down, through the swollen summer evening, symphonic with cicada song. Ruthie felt her exhilaration ebb. The sight of Helen’s face had flipped her mood to shame. She rested her head on the door. The wine was sloshing through her and she was starting to feel sick.
“Don’t give up on me now, cowgirl.” He pulled into the driveway. “Want to ask me in for a drink?”
“No. Take the car. You can leave it by the post office. I’ll bike to it tomorrow.”
“Your ex is an idiot. You’re hot.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m serious. Look, every five years, she remakes herself and finds the man to match it. She had an expat period. Moved to London. Hated it. Too hard to crack, even for her. Got dumped by an earl. Decided to become a businesswoman and built up the foundation. Bought a lot of lady coats. Hooked up with the big finance whiz. Now she’s fallen for Orient. Wants a simpler life. A simpler man goes with that, I guess. I overheard her talking to Michael. About buying your house.”
She stared at the dashboard. Adeline wanted the house? Or was it just idle talk? The way some renters promised This was amazing, we’re definitely renting next year and then they never saw them again?
“She tends to get what she wants.” He looked ahead and flexed his fingers on the wheel. “Did he ever give you anything, a drawing, a print?”
“Mike?”
“No, my dad.”
She shook her head. “We did not part friends.”
“That’s a big club you’re in. Did you ever think, for everything you did for him, you deserved something? A drawing, something he’d toss off in a morning, could pay for, I don’t know, a very nice life?”
“No, I never looked at it that way.”
“Wouldn’t it have been wild if you did find something? Something you’d overlooked? What if you’d just unpacked those boxes and found something you’d missed?”
Ruthie shrugged. “I’d already gone through the boxes twenty years ago.”
“I bet you used to do a lot of his work.”
“Well, I was his studio manager.”
“Come on, I’ve talked to his old buddies, I know how much the studio assistants did. Famous artists run factories, right? Nothing new about that. The artist is the thinker, the conceptual idea behind the work that others execute. Look at Jeff Koons, he’s a genius.”
“Sure.” She swung open the door but he kept on talking.
“It’s just funny, it’s like a movie. You’ve got everything you need right there in the shed. The shop that made the canvases—it’s gone. The studio, gone. You’ve got the last of his materials. It’s like a message from the grave, right? My old man and his ego. He wants his immortality and he’s giving you the chance. One last painting. Don’t you think it’s sort of hilarious, how it could work?”
“Not hilarious. Ridiculous.”
“Can you imagine, though? Even a small painting would be worth ten million, fifteen, minimum. I mean, dealing privately. At auction, even more.”
A flowery scent still hung in the air. The car s
melled funereal. She had an urgent need to get out.
“And here’s the funniest part. I’m his son. I work at his foundation. I know the crazy collectors, the ones in Japan and Russia. China. The ones who care that they’d get something unique, something that hasn’t changed hands ten times. The ones who like to buy things under the table.”
“Lucas, you’re joking, right?”
“You should see your face! Of course! But hey, come on, don’t you ever think of committing the perfect crime?”
“No.”
“Well, I do, all the time. It’s just fun to think about.”
Lucas turned. It was evening but the light was still hard and bright. It didn’t matter; his beauty took the glare without revealing a flaw. “Everyone has a number, you know?”
“A number?”
“A number that buys you the life you want. Buys you out of trouble, or buys you love, or a career, or the best doctors, or the best tables in restaurants. Or a house.” Lucas laughed. “My number is very large.”
He was just talking. Spinning his bitter wheel. Peter’s kid. Suddenly the resemblance wasn’t just the color of the eyes.
You lack the killer instinct, fishgirl. That’s why you’ll never make it.
“Anyway, rhetorical questions have answers,” Lucas said. “Do you know what my favorite rhetorical question is?”
He opened her palm and put a tube of paint in it; he’d taken it from the box. Cadmium yellow.
“Why not?”
24
“OH, MAN, I need an espresso,” Lark said. She opened her eyes. “Good morning, you.” She dived into Doe’s neck and snuggled for a moment. Then she flipped over and reached for her phone.
Doe turned over and grabbed hers. Two nights together this week; they were a couple now. They flicked through notifications, texts. Doe had two photos in Hamptons Magazine and one on the gossip website YSK, the one that everyone read. She got $250. It was a good week.
“Oh, God, I’m in seekrit-hamptons again,” Lark said, scrolling through her feed. “I look good, though. Whoa, you are busted!”
Doe’s pulse speeded up. “What?”
Lark showed her the phone. It was a different Hamptons account, Doe’s competition, called hamptoncomesalive! and Doe was standing close to Lucas in the background of a shot. Lucas had his hand on her ass.
Doe shrugged. “We go out sometimes.”
“It’s okay.” Lark hesitated. “It’s just, he’s sort of a dick, don’t you think?” She cocked her head and then lowered her chin and swept back her hair in a way that instantly conjured Lucas. “Hello, Beauty,” she mimicked in Lucas’s careless way.
Doe snorted.
“How about tonight is just us,” Lark said.
Doe joined in, lowering her voice and her chin. “Wait. I like the way that sounds…”
“Just us,” they said together and giggled.
“Yeah, he’s a dick,” Doe said.
“Honestly, this is awful, but I only dated him because he was Peter Clay’s son. I mean, come on, I was an art major, why wouldn’t I be intrigued? Daddy encouraged it, he was with Adeline then. I thought, What’s it like to hang out with the son of a genius? Then he turned out to be such a tool.”
Doe thought of Lucas on Sunday, crying. “Maybe he can’t help it.”
“Look, everybody can help it. That’s what medication is for.” Lark snuggled closer. “Speaking of therapy, you never talk about your parents. What’s the deal?”
“Dad died when I was thirteen, so, issues.” Actually he had been close to a one-night stand. Maybe a two-week stand? So. No issues except for not knowing quite who he was. Shari hadn’t known him long. Or very well, apparently, because he turned out to be married. When she told him she was pregnant, he wrote her a check and advised her never to contact him again. She said he was either Dominican or Brazilian, and didn’t seem to get that this would be a significant thing for Doe to want to know.
Doe had to scramble her thoughts together. “Mom: Miami version of prep.”
“Lilly Pulitzer.”
“Matching shifts, when I was a kid.”
“Do you visit much?”
“Not as much as she’d like me to. She moved to Minnesota.”
“Crazy.”
“Right? Married a guy who owns forests, or something.” Doe occasionally used this lie because nobody was from Minnesota. “Let’s see. She’s on the board of the ballet and walks like a duck. Buys vintage Mary McFadden on eBay.” Odd details were important to create the sense of a real person. Shari flashed into her head, but the details of her mother’s sad bio were off limits. Her father broke her arm when she was twelve. Ron paid for her boob job. Her big thrill is when Victoria’s Secret is 35 percent off.
“Mmm. My mom is in the fashion biz,” Lark said. “They might like each other. She’s awesome. She lives in Paris, though. Daddy hates her. He has a meme for everyone. She humiliated him by leaving him, so he calls her a drug addict just because he found Valium in her purse once. He can be ruthless that way.”
“What’s his meme for you?”
Lark’s gaze moved off in a way that Doe could now track. “Dream daughter slash loser. We had the hugest stupid fight yesterday. He gave me a deadline to apply for jobs. In the summer! He’s insane. I think it’s this political thing, I have to have the right profile or something. He wants to run for president in four years, he says why not run, now anybody can do it. He’s some sort of crazy libertarian, it’s embarrassing. But that means I can’t be a rich-girl slacker. Which I don’t want to be, by the way. I want to architect my life. So we have the same goal. He can be so amazing, I’m lucky, of course. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
“I don’t know if I’m good at anything, actually.” Lark tried to smile.
“You’re good at caring,” Doe said. “About what you do in the world. That’s a start.”
“That’s a really nice thing to say.”
The sun hit the soft pressed sheets and Lark’s hair, and Doe wanted to snap the shutter and print the moment. Whatever this turned out to be, it would never be as good as right now.
Lark checked her phone. “Oh, crap, it’s him. He’s coming out tomorrow, and he wants to have dinner. Like I don’t have a life. It’s not an invitation, it’s a summons. I told him I was having dinner with you last night, and he said to ask you, too. I’m sorry!”
Doe felt pieces shift. This was scary but good. The first step. She’d been invited into the family. It had been more than a month since the party, since the photo of Daniel and Adeline made the New York Post. Daniel had fired the caterers, blaming them for the shot.
She knew how the household ran now. She knew Marisol wasn’t a housekeeper, she was a “household manager.” She knew the garage was called the “vehicle barn.” She knew the chef would make lunch if Lark told him she’d be home, and it was always a salad. She knew there were people around for security, people for laundry, people to drive the cars, and that Lark said it was a reduced staff because things were so relaxed at the beach. She knew that Lark had twenty-seven summer purses. She knew Lark would drop blouses on the floor and they would get picked up and dry-cleaned.
She knew a lot but she didn’t know Daniel. If Lark told Daniel how they met, how Doe had lost her shoes, Daniel might forget about the caterers and wonder.
She never backed out of things, though. Never out of fear.
“Sure,” Doe said.
From: Lucas Clay
To: Doe Callender
Wassup beautiful
From: Doe Callender
To: Lucas Clay
Zzz just waking up
From: Lucas
To: Doe
Sorry about the other day I was an asshole
From: Doe
To:
Lucas
No argument here
From: Lucas
To: Doe
u know I’ll make it up to you I’m good at that…just us. You like the sound of that
From: Doe
To: Lucas
Maybe, my weekend is crazy busy
From: Lucas
To: Doe
Yah mine too
…
Btw do u know Jem fm the farm stand
From: Doe
To: Lucas
sure, Ruthie’s daughter you know that
From: Lucas
To: Doe
how old is she exactly
From: Doe
To: Lucas
15 i think
From: Lucas
To: Doe
looks older
From: Doe
To: Lucas
She’s in high school dude
From: Lucas
To: Doe
My friend Hale was asking guess I’ll tell him no
From: Doe
To: Lucas
wld be wise
it’s a crime you know
From: Lucas
To: Doe
Ya soooooo unfair considering how tasteee
From: Doe
To: Lucas
Gross
From: Lucas
To: Doe
lol
25
RUTHIE WOKE UP the next morning with a headache so thunderous she knew it was payback. She was now the kind of person who disgraced herself at parties. This was humiliating, but there was something pleasurable about being that person, too.
It had the quality of a dream, the lilac tree, Helen’s ghost face in the dusk, Lucas talking about painting a Peter Clay like it was a joke, a big joke, that’s what it had been, she was sure.
She took three aspirin with a tall glass of water. She opened the refrigerator and hung on the door. Then she sank to the floor.
She heard footsteps behind her. “Mom?”
“Are you talking to me again?”
“Oh. I guess so. Why are you on the floor?”
“Just wondering if we have…a drink thing with caffeine.”