Gilded Age (17 page)

The ladies came over to us, curious to see what Cinco was interested in buying.

“I think I should take you to get something to eat,” he said, turning to me then.

“You two go off now and discuss things,” they clucked in approval. Cinco, doer of duties and keeper of familial flames,
would
be protective of pregnant ladies, likely old women and small dogs too.

“What? Are neither of you buying a thing? Cinco, go buy that pair of huge candelabras in the front hall,” one of them said to him with a friendly push on the arm. “Your farm is about the only place besides this house where they’ll fit.”

He and I smiled and said good-bye and went out past the card table where a large cash box was already overflowing with money and a lady wrapped newly acquired treasures in tissue paper.

“You can thank me for my chivalry now,” he said, wrapping a tartan scarf around his neck.

“You saved me?” I asked, barely able to button my grandmother’s car-coat-length mink. It was well preserved, having spent summers in cold storage. I’d never have bought myself a fur and was slightly mortified to be wearing it. But as Gran had said many times, it was the warmest coat in the world.

“They’re more vicious than they look,” he said, his respectability cloak slipping off him now.

I scowled. “Please.”

“Don’t cross them when they’re in a pack,” he said mock-seriously.

I laughed as we kept walking down the long drive.

“Nothing for you?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Some days I can’t think straight enough to buy anything.”

We walked in silence for a minute as I pulled my gloves out of my pocket and slipped them on. The sun was melting the frost, but I could still see my breath. “Life on the farm?” I asked.

“Is good.”

“Does Corrine like it?”

“The farm?”

“Yes.”

“I think so. It was a very big adjustment for her. She grew up in Manhattan, you know.”

“Surprising she’d want to leave it.”

“She didn’t really want to.”

“So you forced her?”

He screwed up one eye like I’d hit him on the head. “No, I just … she knew what she was getting into when she married me. She knew the farm was part of the deal.”

“You guys had a deal?”

“You know what I mean.”

Thing was, I knew exactly what he’d meant. I think I’d known it even when we were children. I saw it reflected with approval in the eyes of Betsy Dorset and her friends. They knew that the driving passion in his life, the thing he was going to love more than himself, wasn’t going to be a wife. It was going to be a house. This stability unconsciously attracted them.

I couldn’t think if Jim and I had ever had a deal between us and decided we probably hadn’t. But I nodded at Cinco now to be polite.

“I don’t mean it was explicit,” he said, backpedaling when I’d stayed silent too long. “But she knew the farm existed. Knew I’d want to live there one day if we got the chance.”

“What if she didn’t want to?”

“Then we wouldn’t have.” He turned his face to me. “Luckily my wife’s crazy about me.”

I laughed. “Oh really?”

“Does everything I say. I know you feel the same way about Jim. The obey part of the vows you took.” He was joking.

“I took that vow out.” I laughed. “As did everyone else I know. But it’s true I give him everything he wants.” I said it in a silly, flirty tone.

This stopped him up short. “Yes, well …” His eyes flicked down to my belly and then he started walking again. “Do you remember,” he asked, “when I came to see you in New York?”

“Which time?” I asked.

“The time when you were hanging out with Ellie a lot.”

“In the beginning, when I first moved there?”

“Yes.” We crunched down the gravel path to the road. “Do you remember that night I took you out to that dive bar around the corner from where she lived?” he said.

“The one with the excellent jukebox? Why doesn’t Cleveland have a place like that? You’d think it would do really well. Maybe we should open one.” I linked an arm under his. “With crappy beer, a dartboard, and a tremendously awful open-mike night …”

“Cleveland has plenty of places like that,” he scoffed.

“I’ve never been to one.”

“Then they must not exist,” he said in mock-seriousness. “It doesn’t surprise me that you don’t get out. Look at the crowd you run with.”

“Ummm, that would be the
same
crowd you run with,” I said. “Besides, mother-to-be getting tanked at the pool hall is just a little too …”

“Ghetto?”

“That word again, it kills me—especially coming from someone like you.”

“Like me what?”

“Like living on his manor-estate-thing and calling things ghetto.”

“Point taken.” He squeezed my arm closer to him, and I had a flashback of this same move with his wife at the Mingott wedding. “But I was talking about New York. You remember that night?” he said.

I did, but I didn’t know what he was driving at. “Sure, my squandered youth.”

He smiled. “Do you remember what you said to me?”

“About?”

“Home.”

I looked at him blankly.

“You said you’d never come back here.” He stopped us and turned to face me. I couldn’t read if I saw regret in his eyes, concern, or mere curiosity.

“Changed my mind.” I shrugged, trying to shut down this line of questioning. Cinco made me nervous, especially now, bringing up our past.

“You sounded so final. I remember wondering what the deal was with your certainty. Now here you are. Was Jim the one who wanted to come?”

This grated, as if he assumed Jim must have been the one making the decisions in my marriage. After a moment I realized that perhaps it gave me insight into his marriage—perhaps he made all the calls. “No, it took some serious convincing on my part.”

“So why the change?”

“That’s me. I’m a puzzle,” I said, shrugging, again trying to close this subject. I didn’t want to discuss this with Cinco. Not because I was embarrassed by my change of mind, but maybe because I didn’t want to hear from him that he’d been right all along. He knew me well. He’d often told me I couldn’t escape coming back to Cleveland. No matter how much I objected, he would insist he was right. I guessed he was ramping up for a gigantic I-told-you-so.

He paused, not content with my evasions. When the silence got uncomfortable I said, “Because we all come back. You of all people know that. Even Ellie came back.”

He considered this for a moment, started walking, and squeezed my arm a little. “Even me.”

“What do you mean even you? You were always coming back.”

“Is that what you thought then?”

“I mean there was never any question for you—was there?”

He looked me in the eye and then quickly looked out over the lake. “There could have been.”

My arm burned, tucked snugly as it was under his. I wondered what my husband would think of me walking so cozily with Cinco.

“I don’t think you could be happy anywhere besides here,” I said.

“You wouldn’t be happy anywhere but here either.”

“Yes, I remember you saying that,” I said. “I thought it’d be claustrophobic.”

“Oh, it’s definitely that,” he said.

“So why come back?”

He shrugged and took my arm out from under his. We’d arrived at my car.

“Why indeed?” he asked, opening my door and helping me into the car.

The Benefit

T
he holidays came and went in the usual blur that is Cleveland Christmas. With my pregnancy, Jim and I made a new rule—only one party a night, no doubling up lest I feel exhausted. The week leading up to Christmas was packed with multigenerational parties each night. I dragged myself to all of them, again not wanting to miss a thing. I saw Ellie at only two parties—both given by old families, not the sort of invitations you could turn down, even if you were Ellie. I felt sure she’d been invited to lots more, but she’d declined these invitations.

Jim redeemed himself from the mountain bike incident by giving me earrings for Christmas, and his family sent an ancient silver porringer that had been his grandfather’s, as an early gift for the baby.

At the end of all this celebrating, Cleveland collectively goes into hibernation. No one entertains in January; people barely go out. It’s as if people can’t stand to see one another after so much cheer.

And so I was actually looking forward to the art museum’s annual black-tie benefit in February, though I still didn’t have anything to wear in my current size. Jim assured me daily that I looked beautiful,
that my body was amazing. But his constant attention overshot the mark, and I wound up feeling even more self-conscious. Though I agreed with the amazement part, my body felt out of control, like it was running amok, which it was—albeit for a good cause.

The theme of the benefit was 1916, the year the museum was opened. Diana Dorset’s development job put her in charge of the party, and she had decided that a series of
tableaux vivants
would be the attraction for the evening. Each of a dozen young Clevelanders would be paired with a local designer or artist and play a part in depicting a painting currently hanging in the museum. The participants’ names were listed on the back of the invitation, and among them was Eleanor Hart, who would be posing in a tableau created by Steven, the designer she worked for.

The museum had never done anything like it before, and the idea was so retro it was chic. Diana and the benefit committee of young up-and-comers and old-school movers and shakers went to great lengths to ensure that the tableaux would be tasteful and fast as quicksilver, nothing staid and fixed but a morphing and changing vision.

The night of the party, the glassed-in courtyard was set with chairs, and the doors leading into the 1916 galleries were transformed into a stage with old damask curtains, gold cording, and potted palms. High heels clicked on the marble floors as glasses clinked at the bar, and the room hummed with the slightly intoxicated breath of the guests.

I watched Diana move through the room. Her position in development meant she knew almost everyone. She knew their net worth, their interest in the museum, whether they’d donated in the past. I watched her calculate who needed a big showy hug—marking them as an insider with the museum—and who preferred the less showy, but equally impressive, tête-à-tête before solemnly being turned over to one of her staff to be shown to their seats. Diana knew who liked to be acknowledged in the program and who preferred to have their name on a discreet “Reserved” card on a chair in the front row. She excelled at these small calculations, making people feel comfortable and superficially special. Tonight she was shining, at the height of her power.

I was walking down the rows, looking for a seat, when I saw William Selden. He looked more groomed than usual, and I sat next to him waiting for Jim to catch up with us.

“I’m so excited about this,” I said.

“Have you seen Ellie?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Do you know which painting she’s going to be?”

“I don’t. She was so secretive about it. I barely saw her all week.”

So Ellie and Selden were seeing each other.

“I hope she chooses something gorgeous. One of the Muses or something,” I said. “I’ve always thought someone should paint Ellie.”

Jim settled in next to us, and then the lights went down.

The first scene was the museum’s famous Degas painting of a dancer in four poses. They’d chosen four close friends, all brunettes, to pose in white tulle skirts on chairs. The crowd applauded enthusiastically, a good start.

The next was a Modigliani,
Portrait of a Woman,
perfectly cast to feature Lulu Melson’s long neck. They’d gotten her clothes just right too; the long pendant between her breasts was an exact replica of the one in the painting. Her gaze was wistful, the blush on her cheek intense.

“Lulu Melson always looks good in black,” a voice behind my shoulder whispered, and I turned to see Steven, the designer, sitting in the row behind me.

“But not as good as Ellie,” I whispered back, and he winked at me and nodded toward the stage.

The next was Dan Dorset and a man I didn’t know bare-chested in loincloths as George Bellows’s
Stag at Sharkey’s
. Dan Dorset had clearly been working out for this, and though his stomach looked well muscled, his depiction somehow lacked the fearsomeness of the raw and violent original.

They’d chosen the pale and frail Elizabeth Corby for the Van Dyck portrait of a woman and child. Mrs. Corby looked the part with her high blue-veined forehead and watery eyes and lashes, so it was easy to forgive the fact that her blond-haired daughter in blue embroidered
velvet did not quite match the original painting. The child blushed adorably but held the pose next to her mother.

Kate van den Akker portrayed the muse of history in a bright yellow silk gown with gargantuan feathered wings on her shoulders. She was wrapped in a purple silk banner and held a stone tablet. The classical dimension of her features made this the most exact representation so far.

Finally it was Ellie’s turn, and when the curtain was drawn to reveal her the audience gasped. She’d chosen a Rubens, though her voluptuous curves weren’t as decadent as the Diana in
Diana and Her Nymphs Departing for the Hunt
. Ellie was clad in a diaphanous white toga that hinted at her excellent form beneath. Around one shoulder hung a leopard skin, draped to expose one pale perfect breast.

There were immediate whisperings in the room. Some of the older women looked away. The older men stared agape. Diana Dorset stood off to the side in her supervisory capacity with a delighted smirk on her face.

Ellie held a greyhound at the end of a short leash and the dog, sensing the excitement, was trembling, needing to be calmed. Ellie’s hair flowed down her back in loose waves.

She’d never looked more beautiful to me.

I looked to my left to see my husband staring at her in wonder.

When I looked back at Ellie, I saw her beam a wide loving smile out to my right. I, along with everyone else in the room, realized she was smiling directly at Selden. Her smile broke the pose; in the painting, Diana didn’t smile. Then, to my utter shock, she winked—at Selden.