The Center of the World (14 page)

I raised my glass as well. She touched hers to mine. “You are young and handsome. Your youth will pass and your beauty will fade, just as mine has done. You will, however, have your wits and your small income to see you through those dark days. I, on the other hand, will have only the ruin of my beauty. Perhaps I will become one of those horrible creatures of paint and horsehair. I will frighten small children when I walk by.”

“Mrs. Spencer,” I said, “you will grow older, to be sure, but your beauty will merely become beauty of another sort. Your charm will not desert you.”

She smiled at my weak gallantry. “It is most good of you to say so. And most contemptible of me to place you in a position where decency requires that you pay me a compliment. But you will forgive me, for you are most kind.” She emptied her glass and we both took a few more bites in silence.

“But you are not kind to Mr. Turner,” she said with a smile.

“I admire him above all other painters,” I said. “His conversation, too, is droll and ingenious.”

“You said he was not handsome.”

“He is not,” I repeated.

“True,” she said. “But there are worse fates.” We had finished our meal. Mrs. Spencer rose from her chair and leaned against one of the pillars. I stood by her side and together we admired the view. “You must give me your arm as we walk home. I have had too much wine. We will go now, if you don’t mind. The servants will be here in less than an hour. You must amuse me and make sure that I do not turn my ankle. Come.”

 
SHE WAS SITTING UP
in bed, reading, when he came in. There was a shawl thrown over her nightgown. Her hair was down. She had added a few logs to the fire, and the room was warm and inviting. Twenty years ago, Rhinebeck had married her for her looks and her family connections. Time, the children, and the life he had given her had taken their toll. She was tired around the eyes and thicker around the waist, but still attractive enough to turn heads when she got herself up in an evening gown. When he thought about the last young woman who had been in that bed, he felt a moment of regret. He tried to recall her name—was it Julie or Jenny?

She peered over her reading glasses. He had noticed the gray in her hair before, but somehow, in the firelight, there seemed more of it. Perhaps there
was
more of it. It had been a month since they had seen each other.

“You look very well. I’m glad to see you,” he said.

“And it’s good to see you as well. Birch Lodge is much more beautiful than I had imagined. From your descriptions, I expected something very rough, like a Viking fortress. But everything is charming and oddly delicate. Your Snuggery is the most marvelous room. This is a lovely room as well—the birch bark wall coverings look wonderful in the firelight. I am only sad that you intend to keep all this from me.”

“Men require some place where they can be alone with other men. We have had this discussion before, but perhaps we can revisit it. Where did you find your new friend?”

“Do you like her?”

“I asked where you found her.”

“At the Cranleys’. There was a tea. Ladies interested in the arts, you know. She said she had always wanted to meet me, so I invited her over. More tea. She has written a monograph on Constable—she has something to do with one of the galleries. She is very agreeable, and I wanted company. I believe she is rather hard up. She only protests a bit at my offers to pay, but she doesn’t seem too greedy. Not like Miss Danvers. I like her very much. Do you?”

“Is there a Mr. Overstreet?”

“He exists, but they are separated. She doesn’t like to speak of him, but she hints at drink and gambling debts.”

“You must tell me which gallery. I know all those people; I will make inquiries.”

“So you don’t like her?”

“She is certainly attractive. But she was making love to me during dinner. I am not so vain these days as to think that my
personal charms are enough to make a woman lose her sense of propriety.”

“You are still a handsome man. But that is just her way. She’s always trying to be agreeable. Sometimes, perhaps, she tries too hard.”

“Perhaps she could try a bit harder to keep her buttons fastened.”

Rhinebeck had changed into his pajamas and was sitting on the side of the bed. They paused to listen to a loon’s cry echo across the water.

“So tell me. The boys. Are they well?”

“I received a letter from Tom last week. He’s enjoyed Yellowstone and California. Hollywood in particular. Some of his Triangle Club friends provided him with introductions, I’m afraid mostly to so-called actresses. I hope he’s careful. His father’s name is not unknown. I wouldn’t want them to take advantage of him.”

“I would worry more about his taking advantage of them. He’s a cool customer. Perhaps too cool. He will make his way in the world. And Herman? How is he?”

“He wasn’t happy in Canada. He said the place we sent him to was beastly. No hot water. Endless marches through the wilderness. Sleeping in the cold and rain.”

“But good for him. Toughen him up.”

“Oh, don’t sound like a typical masculine fool. It’s too stupid.”

Rhinebeck acknowledged the wisdom of her remarks by kissing her gently on the forehead. “But you must admit he needs it.”

“I do not. He isn’t like other boys. He is half a poet.”

“He is a kitten that has just seen a bulldog. He always appears to be frightened of something.”

“Don’t you think it might be you?”

Rhinebeck looked at his wife. She went on. “You’re always so gruff with him. Always disappointed. Whereas Tom can do no wrong in your eyes, Herman is conscious that everything he does displeases you.”

“I wish he would be more forthright. I admit that I lose my patience with the boy. But if he would only look me in the eye and not sneak about so, it would be much easier.”

“If you didn’t glare at him as soon as he walks into the room, he might not cower so. You know that your glance can bring some of the most powerful men in America to their knees; you must understand what it can do to a fifteen-year-old boy.”

Rhinebeck was silent for a moment. “I’ll try to do better,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll bring him up here. I will keep my pretty Renoir locked up so as not to give him any ideas. How did you like her?”

“You should think better of me, Cornelius. Come to bed.”

Rhinebeck got under the covers. She reached over and touched him. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been together. I’m not such an old lady yet that I will be offended by a pink young thing, even if she reveals the hair between her legs.”

He responded to her familiar but unexpected touch and returned her kisses. She sat up and pulled off her nightdress. Orange firelight flickered on the walls. She smiled at him as her face emerged from the white cotton. The gray of her hair almost
glistened in the firelight. Her breasts were full and pendulous, there was a fold of flesh around her stomach, but he felt the same heat and urgency that he had felt for her younger body, a body he could not even remember.

She kissed him again and pushed the covers back before touching him once more and turning over on her stomach. She raised her hips into the air.

“Come,” she said.

Rhinebeck pulled off his pajamas and positioned himself behind her. He saw her raised and parted thighs glow golden in the firelight, a gift from the gods. He looked at the smooth skin of her back and her rump. The place where their bodies joined disappeared in the darkness. He felt that he was seeing certain things for the first time. There was a beauty in the animal foolishness of the whole business—the pumping in, the pumping out—that he had never quite recognized before. His wife, the mother of his children, was as beautiful as Helen. He would bring her back to Birch Lodge the next time he came; he would show her the Turner. Together they would decide who would inherit it.

As he drifted off to sleep he wondered why none of the other thighs he had parted, nor any of the other kisses he had received, had ever been so profoundly connected to the heart of things.

 
WITHIN HALF AN HOUR
of our arrival at the Millers’ party, I’d had too much wine. It was a pretty good setup—there was wine out on the patio and wine inside in the dining room. I walked back and forth between the two stations and figured that, worst case, someone might notice that I’d filled up a second time. There was no excuse for it really, but as soon as we got there Susan attached herself to some friends for what I assumed would be some girl talk. I had been doing pretty well with the drinking, but I needed a serious cushion to get through the afternoon. It was Labor Day and I hadn’t seen the painting since mid-July; the blessing was starting to wear off. It was the kind of Princeton crowd that we hung out with: lower-level university administrators, folks from the foundation, local lawyers, spouses. There were a few faculty members, but none of the heavy hitters—they had better invitations. But there were enough of those young tenure-track types on the make to remind me of what I had wanted when I was younger. Hence the wine.

Usually we go up to the mountains for the last week of the summer, but I had told Susan I had a lot to do at the office. That wasn’t true, of course—I never really have a lot to do—but I still couldn’t tell her about the painting.

Although things had been a bit better between us since my birthday, the time we spent together felt hollow. There were long silences in which we neither asked the questions that needed to be asked nor gave the answers that needed to be given. She felt, naturally enough, that I was holding back and hiding something, while I felt I was always being interrogated and backed into a corner. The party seemed like an acceptable way to kill the afternoon, which is a stupid goal when you are a human being doomed to die, but it was all I could muster at the time.

Halfway through my fifth glass of wine, I realized that if I didn’t get something into my stomach I would be in serious trouble. Looking back, I think it was at about this time that I started thinking and acting like someone who was drunk. I don’t think I ever got to the stage where people would look at me and say, “Henry is acting the way his father used to act,” but the fact is that I did some things I wouldn’t have done if I’d been sober.

I made my way over to the food and loaded up a plate. A cluster of people were standing around the shrimp bowl listening to Clive Richmond go on and on.

Richmond was in the art history department and had only been there for two years, but he seemed like one of those guys who were almost guaranteed to get tenure, unless there was
some unpleasantness involving attractive undergraduates or somebody’s wife. He had already published a couple of books, he dressed well, he was handsome, and he had enough of an English accent to make us Princeton people swoon.

He was holding forth on the relationship between the art markets in New York and London and the value of art in postmodern America. “Money,” he said, “is the signifier par excellence; money is that by which we value things and find them beautiful. If a man sees a woman walking down the street and knows that the designer dress she’s wearing cost five or six thousand dollars, she will be—not just seem—more beautiful than if she had been wearing one of those Princeton outfits they sell at Talbots. Similarly with paintings. Just the other day, for example, at Sotheby’s, a Cézanne landscape went for about sixteen million—two million more than the estimate. I heard someone say that the sale showed that the wounds of September 11 were starting to heal. Imagine that! We all knew that nothing was beautiful on September 12. We could look into our hearts and we knew. But now we look at the size of a pile of money and we can tell that beauty has returned. That’s the only way we have of assigning value, but, oddly, the values we assign are true.” He paused to take a sip of his wine. “Or at least as true as any others.”

“But okay,” I said. I wasn’t really a part of the conversation and should have kept my mouth shut. I had the sensation of hearing my own voice as if it came from the other side of the room. “There is this Cézanne. We can all agree that it’s a beautiful thing. But why do you say it has become more
beautiful? Why not just say that whoever had the big checkbook was feeling a little bit more optimistic about the way the market was tending? Or maybe he felt just a little safer and didn’t have the same need to put his money into lead underwear futures or wherever it is you put your money when you’re feeling nervous. His feelings didn’t change the way the painting looked.”