The Prize (20 page)

18 CONNECTICUT

H
E FOUND HER
in the game room, smaller than in his memory, playing cards with a group of other residents before dinner.

“Edward,” she said, happy to see him. “You didn't tell me you were coming.” She turned her cheek for his kiss and introduced him to the others at the table. “The snow's supposed to get worse. Was it snowing when you drove in, darling?”

“Not too bad yet.” It was the first snowfall of the season.

Rising unsteadily, and more slowly, she reached for her cane. He hadn't noticed it before. He held her arm and led her to the sitting room, which smelled of decaying fruit. On the sofa an elderly man slept sitting up with his mouth open. A woman in a wheelchair stared into the fireplace. This is what the end looks like, he thought. They found two empty overstuffed chairs in a corner of the room. The afternoon light slowly faded from the window.

“Get us some tea, darling.” She pointed to a narrow table near the entrance to the room where tea was set out for the residents.

She was small and neatly groomed, dressed in a plaid wool skirt, blouse, and cashmere sweater, a Kleenex tucked into her sleeve. He leaned over to hand her a cup of tea. A musty smell rose off her sweater. Sipping her tea, she ran her eyes along him as she had when he was a boy, remarking if his hair was too long, or a
pimple was on his chin. She never missed a beat. When he was a boy she was happiest, his father was happy too—Sundays in the park, walking to school, his father on one side of him, his mother on the other, each holding one of his hands, their long car rides to the city to see a concert or go to a museum.

“How are you?” He unbuttoned his jacket, reluctant to take it off.

“I'm fine, darling. And you? You look tired.” She brushed her hand across his temple. “You're not giving Holly any trouble?”

He raised his eyebrows playfully. “Maybe a little.”

“And my granddaughter?”

“Growing up. Almost sixteen.”

She smiled and smoothed her skirt over her lap. “I'm knitting her a sweater for Christmas.” He glanced at his mother's hands. Blue cordlike veins, blotches of age spots. The flesh had fallen off her bones. They'd have to eventually cut off her wedding band, he thought morbidly; it was trapped beneath an arthritic knuckle the size of a garlic bulb.

“Your father didn't get to see you become a man, and look at you now. You look so handsome, darling. And your work is going so well.” She spoke to him as if he were still her little boy. Her eyes shifted to the wall above him and then filled with tears.

“Always in that dusty study like some nocturnal creature.” She shook her head. “I used to wonder what he'd be like if he spent more time with us.”

Edward remembered coming home to his mother in the kitchen preparing supper or doing laundry, one day indistinguishable from the next.

“Dad was an intellectual. He needed solitude to write his books.”

“Of course he did. But success, brilliance, they're a completely abstract thing. You don't have to make excuses for him. You always defended him. I suppose a boy does with his father. He was looking for things that didn't exist. He was happier when I could get him to forget it all.”

“Was he?”

“He wasn't teaching the Romantic period—he lived it. Or wanted to. I don't know which was worse.”

Outside the window more clouds had muscled through. A rash of heat swept over him. He didn't know why the tight black box where he'd stored his parents' marriage was opening and why it suddenly seemed important to have this conversation with his mother. But it did. How and why they met and married made no sense to him. No one could predict how a marriage would wear into an unknown future. That was what made it interesting, he supposed.

“I wish you were happier. You made each other miserable.”

She picked a piece of lint off his jacket. “Who are you to judge us, darling? Your father was sensitive. He felt everything too much and couldn't filter it out fast enough. It's what made him a brilliant man, I suppose.”

“He didn't make you happy.”

“I didn't make him happy? Is that what you mean?”

He flinched. “That isn't what I meant.”

“They don't give out prizes for the woman who organizes the home, makes the bed, cleans out the closets.” He remembered how
his mother laid out his father's clothes in the morning, packed his lunch. Edward shrank from her eyes and looked out the window. More clouds.

“No, they don't, Mom.” He looked at her tenderly.

“When you live here, there's plenty of time to think.” She touched her pearl earring and twisted it. “He was lost in himself. It was hard to get used to. But you can get used to anything.” She took a sip of tea. The china teacup trembled in her hands. “He was his own worst enemy. I suppose all of us are.”

The smell of evening dinner rose from the kitchen. He looked at his watch. Quarter to six. He'd have to leave soon. Other residents shuffled toward the dining room.

“Walk me to dinner, darling. When you live here it's like a prison. The staff needs to get home early. And stop being judgmental. It won't get you anywhere. The snow's supposed to get worse. The roads will be slick. You'll drive slowly, won't you?”

He nodded and buttoned his coat.

“You'll come again soon?” She grasped his arm. Her eyes were suddenly black with fear.

“Soon.” He kissed her cheek. “I'm sorry—in there.” He nodded toward the drawing room. “He'd have been nowhere without you.”

“The love of my life,” she said, touching his cheek.

O
UTSIDE, FREE OF
the emotions binding him, his movements came more easily. He took in the cold air and let out a long breath. Everything was quiet and still. He turned back and saw his own shallow footsteps. The snow blanketed the shrubs. He turned back to look again. The roof and branches of the trees surrounding the retirement house were almost completely covered in snow. It clung
to the railings, forming a lace of ice, and settled into the empty windowboxes clinging, holding on. Wind shattered the icicles along the gutters and they fell silently to the snowy ground.

In the car, snow came at the windshield. He drove slowly, barely able to see, the snowflakes coming at his eyes in a whiteout. The roads were slick and wet, with few drivers. His wheels spun on an ice patch and the car careened toward the curb. He turned the wheel into the slide and slowly came to a stop. He put the car in park and for a moment laid his head on the steering wheel, shut inside the silent temple of his car. He had a beautiful family. His mother was safe and well cared for. Why did he feel like all of it was going to unravel? He lifted his head. The ice on the windshield formed a long vein and then slowly began to blister and crack. He put his hands on the wheel, put the car in drive, and slowly accelerated again. He coasted past the pond near the roundabout to his house. The pond was frozen over except for a patch where a swan stretched its neck and shivered. He stopped the car and looked at the swan, trembling, unable to shake the fear of death he saw in his mother's eyes.

19 NEW YORK

E
XCEPT FOR LAST-MINUTE
shoppers the city was beginning to empty out. It was the week before Christmas. The morning air was colder than it had been in months. Above the buildings, the sky was gray and all the sounds of the stirring city seemed to rise toward it. Edward took a cab from the gallery to Tribeca, to the loft building where Agnes and Nate lived and worked. Once out of the cab, he looked at the intimidating building, at its huge windows and steel frame, and was reminded, as he always was when he came to see her, of their staggering wealth. He walked briskly to the sidewalk gate and took a breath before climbing the steps to the front door, which was decorated with a pine and berry wreath.

He had spoken to Ryan Reynolds earlier that morning and Reynolds had put him on edge. He said Edward should be clear about expressing exactly how he felt about the work. “We have to be tough on her. This show is too important.”

They'd never worked together before. Reynolds's artists typically showed at the powerhouse galleries. Over the years he had forged a coterie of close-knit relationships among dealers and artists to leverage his power. The first time they met, Reynolds had greeted him from a booth at the Regency wearing an Italian suit and a crisp white shirt, his dark hair slicked back with gel, and though Edward was dressed in one of his favorite suits, he'd immediately felt inferior.
Reynolds spoke in a soft whisper so that Edward had to lean in to hear and often wasn't sure exactly what was being said. Reynolds said barely anything at all, so that it was Edward's job to keep the conversation going. It was a passive-aggressive move by Reynolds to make sure he was the one in control. Edward had been careful not to give too much of himself away. He, too, knew something about leveraging power, but even so he was glad when the lunch was over.

H
E ADJUSTED HIS
tie before buzzing Agnes's bell. She welcomed him, planting a quick peck on each cheek, and they exchanged pleasantries. She was dressed in a long white blouse she wore with black leggings. Her hair was in loose braids pinned on top of her head Heidi-style that, on her, looked avant-garde. Nate came in to say hello carrying a coffee mug. It looked like he'd just woken up—jeans, untucked shirt, and bare feet.

“Are you ready for your mind to be blown?” He winked and shook Edward's hand. “Everything good at the gallery?”

Edward nodded. “All good.”

Agnes excused herself to give the nanny instructions upstairs.

“I'm glad you're finally doing this. These last few weeks have been killer.” Nate shook his head. “My wife. With her there's no boundary between church and state. She'd throw me out the window for it, but she'd throw herself out first. Go easy on her, will you? I'm out the door in a few minutes. I've got a meeting uptown.”

“Good to see you, Nate.”

He entered the studio cautiously. The space was white-walled and soundproofed except for the whir of ventilation. A modern daybed was pushed against one wall and against another was a
long white picnic table with a matching white Macbook adorning it. On the windowsill there was a row of carefully arranged red poinsettias in flowerpots to mark the holiday.

He sat on the painted white bench. The meticulously choreographed room reminded him of Agnes and Nate's wedding. Everything was perfect, from the white roses on the tables to the lanterns in the garden. Nearly every important person in the art world had attended. At the wedding reception guests were passing out business cards. Agnes was barely visible. She emerged from the main house holding Nate's hand to do a quick obligatory tour around the tables. She was tense and very thin, her skin stretched taut over her frail arms. She held Nate's hand a little too tightly and breezed through the tables as if she were annoyed she had to share him with her guests.

Agnes appeared out of breath. “You're finally here,” she said. “Do you have plans for the holidays?”

He explained that they were staying at home but she didn't seem to have heard him. He didn't bother to ask about her plans. She had once told him that she didn't believe in vacations, that she didn't like to be away from her work, and he imagined she felt the same about holidays.

“Shall we?” she said, inviting him further into the studio.

“How are the twins? And Nate?”

“The girls are good. Nate, I don't know. He's putting a lot of pressure on me. He's over his head financially. He always overextends. I think it's the thing that presses against him. I suppose one can't make great art without it.”

“Well, you would know.”

“You'll have to tell me if I have.”

“Have what?”

“Made great work.”

T
HE PAINTINGS EVOKED
an ominous mood. They were less realistic than her previous work, more abstract and brushier.

She quietly followed behind him as he toured the space. Her studio was immaculately clean, as if she had purposefully hidden away the debris of the painstaking hours of creativity: encrusted paint; abandoned canvases; ghostly dustcovers; stretcher bars and turp-covered rags. He remembered her modest studio in Bushwick where he'd first met her years ago, before she married Nate, and noted the contrast.

One painting was called
Aftermath
. The large canvas taking up almost half a wall was washed in hues of gray and white and found materials were layered into it. Underneath layers of paint was a faint shadow of the towers.

“I'm after a sort of internal tug-of-war of elements. I want the work to lead the viewer through a place of non-thinking. Looking only at the thing before you.”

In another, she'd taken earth, ash, cement, pieces of glass, newspaper, fabric, and painted over them, so that it looked as if debris from the fallen buildings had been painted into the canvas. She carried the image through a sequence of permutations using a variety of techniques to “reveal the many starts and stops and dead ends,” she explained.