Woman in Red (25 page)

“I haven’t given it much thought,” he answered truthfully. “I may decide to keep it.”

Her eyes widened in consternation. “Won’t your wife . . . I mean, she’d have to wonder . . . ”

“She might,” he agreed, “if I were to show it to her, which I have no intention of doing.”

Silence rose up to fill the room, eddying with all the implications of his words. William saw the troubled look on Eleanor’s face, and for a panicked moment he thought she might decide to call the whole thing off.

But the silence held and the moment passed.

“What do you look for in a subject?” she asked, after a bit.

He paused to consider it, absently scratching his chin. “I’m not sure I can explain it. It’s different with each one. Like, for instance . . . Have you seen the portrait I did of Mister Humphrey that’s hanging in his store?” Wizened old Humphrey, who had to be at least ninety years old, owned the stationery shop downtown where William bought a lot of his supplies. “What made me decide to paint him were his hands. They’re all twisted and knobby, but beautiful in their own way, like tree roots pushing up out of the ground.”

“And what do you see in me?” Her green eyes looked directly into his, and a silent communication passed between them. William felt the tiny hairs on the back of his arms and neck stand up.

“I see a lady in waiting.”

She arched a brow. “Because of Joe, you mean?”

“Well, no, not exactly.” He searched for the right words. “It’s just . . . there’s so much out there you haven’t seen. A whole world. And here you are . . . ”
Trapped with a man you don’t love.
“Living out in the middle of nowhere.” He held up a hand before she could voice the protest forming on her lips. “I don’t mean that you’re not here out of your own free will, but I’ll bet you can count on one hand the number of times you’ve been off the island.”

He could see from the way her face was reddening that he’d hit a nerve, but she only laughed and said, “You’re wrong. I’d need both hands.” She held them up, fingers splayed apart, the tiny diamond in her wedding ring winking in the pale light filtering through the window. “Still, it doesn’t mean I’m not adventurous. Just poor.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you,” he was quick to reply. “All I’m saying is that you’re different from most of the people around here. You have a curiosity about the world. I never would have suggested to Mister Humphrey, for instance, that he ought to get out more. He’s perfectly happy right where he is.”

She stiffened a bit. “And I’m not?”

“I’m not the one to answer that,” he said gently.

“I have a child to think of. I can’t just waltz off whenever I feel like it.” Frowning, she said, “Anyway, how did we get on this subject? I thought you wanted to paint me, not dissect me.”

“Point taken,” he said with a smile, bending once more to his work.

When William was finally satisfied with what he’d drawn, he set up his easel and unpacked his paints, unrolling the
felt cloth smelling of linseed oil in which his brushes were wrapped. Before long he was so absorbed in his work he scarcely noticed the minutes slipping by. It wasn’t until Eleanor stirred and stretched that he glanced at his watch and saw that more than an hour had passed. He called a break, and Eleanor went into the kitchen to fetch them something to drink. William, alone in the room with nothing to occupy him, became aware of the sounds drifting in from outside: the rusty caw of a crow; a hammer banging in the yard; the more distant drone of an airplane.

Not bad
, he thought, contemplating the progress he’d made so far. He’d captured something in her expression, a combination of youthfulness and womanly experience. And her eyes . . . they seemed to be gazing out at those far flung places she dreamed of visiting one day. He decided he would title it simply
Woman in Red
. The image would speak for itself.

Over the next few days they fell into a routine, William coming over every morning after Lucy had been packed off to school. Now, when he dreamed, it was of Eleanor in the red dress. Barefoot. And after a while what was in his mind’s eye became blurred with what he saw in reality, like watercolors running together, lending a vibrancy to her image that he couldn’t have created on his own. He became obsessed with the portrait, working in a kind of fever, as if guided by some unseen force.

The irony wasn’t lost on him, either. What was perhaps his best work might never see the light of day. Yet surprisingly the thought didn’t trouble him. He wasn’t doing this for money or fame; he was doing it out of love.

It was well into the morning of the fourth day that he realized the bulk of his work was done. The details he could
take care of back in his studio. He felt a strange sense of loss as he put down his brush and said, “Want to come have a look?”

He hadn’t allowed her to see it before this, not wanting to grow self-conscious. Now she peered over his shoulder, asking with a kind of wonder, “Is that really how you see me?”

He tilted his head to look up at her. “You don’t think it looks like you?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s just . . . it reminds me of someone I used to know.”

“Who?”

“Me, when I was young.” A wistful smile played at her lips, as she stood there studying the canvas, her hand resting absently on his shoulder.

Something made him reach up and touch her face. “You’re still young.”

Color rode up on her cheekbones and her eyes shone with what might have been tears. Slowly, she shook her head, saying, “It’s been a long time since I felt that way.”

Something made him ask, “There was someone before Joe, wasn’t there?”

She nodded, her gaze fixed on a point just past his ear. “I thought I loved him at the time. Now I realize it was just infatuation. I didn’t know any better, you see. The proverbial minister’s daughter.” She gave an ironic laugh. “And he . . . well, he turned out to be the proverbial rake.” She paused before continuing on. “If it had been just a broken heart, it would have been all right. Broken hearts mend. But there was a . . . complication.”

At once, he guessed what she was getting at. “You were pregnant.”

“Yes,” she said in a small voice.

Eleanor did something then that took him completely by surprise. She slowly sank to her knees and placed her head in his lap, almost as though in supplication. For a moment William scarcely dared to breathe, as if with some shy woodland creature he feared he would startle into bolting. A hush fell over the room, in which the ticking of the clock over the mantel seemed unnaturally loud. One by one, he removed the pins from her hair, freeing it to tumble down her neck and shoulders. It slipped through his fingers like heavy silk, parting to reveal the soft indentation at the nape of her neck, with its little tuft fine as a baby’s. He might have been making love to her for how alive he felt, how keenly in the moment.

Her voice floated up from the cradle of his lap. “You asked me once why I married Joe. I wish I could say it was because I loved him, because I do now . . . in my own way. He’s a good man. He married me when no one else would have. And Lucy . . . she’s his heart. The way he dotes on her, you’d never know she wasn’t his.” Eleanor lifted her head to look up at him, her eyes searching his for any hint of the judgment she’d so liberally heaped on herself. “Promise you won’t tell anyone. You’re the only one who knows besides Joe and my parents. I haven’t even told Lucy. She worships Joe. If she found out . . .” Eleanor grew pale at the thought.

“I promise.” William smoothed back the hair that lay in a delicate web over her cheek, holding her chin cupped as he looked into her eyes. “There’s just one thing I want you to promise me in return.”

“What?” she asked, with obvious trepidation.

“That you’ll stop thinking of yourself as a scarlet woman. You did nothing wrong. As for me, I could never think less of you, no matter what.”

“Thank you.” The look of gratitude she wore was almost more than he could bear. He was only saying what any decent human being would say. Why should that make him a saint?

The moment stretched on, moving from mere silence into a realm where nothing else seemed to exist. They were on a plane far removed from this shabby little room, poised as still as the image on the canvas before them, a tableaux in real life: William with his hand cradling her chin as Eleanor kneeled before him, seeming to rise like some beautiful flower from the silken puddle of her dress spilling across the floor at his feet.

Then in some distant part of his brain William became aware of the sound of a car approaching along the drive. Eleanor quickly rose to her feet, patting her hair and smoothing her skirt as she hurried over to the window to peer out at the shiny, dark Buick pulling to a stop in front of the house.

A man in uniform wearing a somber look got out, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, letting out a muffled cry. “No,” she pleaded in a voice barely above a whisper. “No, please.”

She froze at the knock on the door, and William could see that she was trembling. She appeared to age a dozen years in the time it took her to trudge across the living room and down the hall.

From where William stood, just out of the line of sight of the man poised in the doorway, he could see only a burly khaki shoulder and the crisp brim of a military cap. He heard a deep voice intone with regret, “Missus Styles? I’m afraid I have some bad news . . . ”

When Alice was little her favorite thing in the world had been helping her grandmother in the kitchen: Nana, cupping her hand over Alice’s smaller one, guiding it as she cut floury circles of dough with the biscuit cutter, or teaching Alice the proper way to frost a cake, applying a thin layer first to catch the crumbs. So it seemed appropriate that Alice christen her newly refurbished restaurant the Pantry, in honor of her grandmother’s, which had been so well-stocked the family used to joke that she could have survived off it the rest of her days without another trip to the store. Besides, none of it would have been possible without Nana’s money. Her grandmother, she thought, would have been pleased to see it so well spent.

The only cloud over the occasion of the grand opening was the thought of what lay ahead for Jeremy. At the arraignment, the judge hadn’t cut him any slack. Despite Colin’s efforts to have the case remanded to juvenile court, Jeremy was to be tried as an adult, on the full count of rape. It was almost more than Alice could contemplate much less
cope with, but she was doing her best. And if there was a silver lining to the cloud, it was that her son no longer avoided her like the plague. He couldn’t afford to. Small comfort, but at this point she’d take what she could get.

The night of the party Jeremy came in, accompanied by his dad, a half hour or so after everyone else had arrived. He approached her cautiously, submitting limply to a hug.

“Sorry we’re late,” Randy apologized. “I didn’t get in until just a little while ago.”

“You’re here now, that’s all that matters.” She gave her ex-husband a peck on the cheek. His hair was still damp from the shower and he smelled of Brut, the scent of which evoked memories of when they used to date in high school.

“Nice turnout,” he said, glancing about the crowded room.

“Amazing, isn’t it? It seems I still have a few friends left.” Alice spoke lightly, but she’d been deeply touched by the show of support, proof that not everyone was against her. In fact, over the past weeks, friends and acquaintances from the past had been quietly making their allegiance known. Like Patsy Rowland, who’d been on the cheerleading squad with her in high school. It was Patsy who’d donated the tables and chairs for the restaurant, from the hotel she and her husband used to own.

“More than a few, I’d say.” Randy seemed genuinely pleased for her. “From the looks of it, you shouldn’t have too much trouble drumming up business,” he said. “I like what you’ve done with the place, too. Very cozy.”

Alice, seeing it through his eyes, was struck with new appreciation for all she’d accomplished, in a relatively short amount of time with very little money. The old walls that had been gray with grime were painted now in soft peach and apple-green
hues, and the windows hung with the gingham curtains her mother had stitched. An antique butter churn stood by the front door, alongside a crate of apples from Denise’s trees. The old pine floorboards had been stripped and refinished and she’d had wainscoting put in. Above it were shelves that displayed homemade preserves and pickles, along with various items scavenged from the flea market: souvenir plates, an old pewter coffee service, a splatter-ware pitcher and matching bowl, vintage bottles and tins from companies long defunct. “Thanks. I wish I could take all the credit, but I couldn’t have done it without Denise’s help,” she said.

He smiled. “I remember when you two used to sit out in the hot sun all day selling lemonade.”

A reminder of just how long they’d known each other.