Saturday Night Widows (16 page)

I wanted our group to find the same solace I had found in art during my own low patches, when my life was so stripped of interest and significance that I hungered for the ideal rather than
the real, the abstract rather then the actual, when I wanted to see the world filtered through someone else’s interpretation, trusting it more than my own. Art—and I’m using the term broadly here, music or painting, theater or movies, high or low—allowed me to experience emotions I didn’t get to feel in my real life anymore: a good chuckle, the warmth of close connections. I no longer lived in a place where I had a man to love, but I could listen to “
O soave fanciulla
” from
La Bohème
or “I Got You Babe” from Sonny and Cher and visit that place, if only for a few minutes.

Art helped me find order and meaning at a time when I couldn’t find them elsewhere. Like religion, I thought, art offered a connection to a world where stuff that happens makes sense. A few weeks after Bernie died, I had seen a reproduction in the newspaper of a painting by the California conceptual artist Ed Ruscha. It depicted an orange vortex on a gray background, and in the center were the words
I WAS GASPING FOR CONTACT
. Too done in to visit the Whitney Museum to see the painting for myself, I tore the image from the paper, referring to it again and again. At that moment, the painting spoke to me more than the daily details of my life, details like canceling Bernie’s credit cards, pretending to work. Gasping.

So I was primed for a meaningful evening at the museum until ten days before the date, when I realized that I hadn’t heard back yet from anyone there. I called the manager of tours. “We’re having a little trouble,” she said, “putting together your tour on, let me see … death and dying.”

Zing. “Stop right there,” I said. “Death and dying! No! No! I wanted loss and recovery, emphasis on recovery.”

I asked to speak to someone directly in charge of choosing the art we’d be seeing. Minutes later, she was on the phone.

“I’ve been mulling over your topic,” she said with abrupt
authority before I had a chance to speak, “and I think recovery is not something you can show very well in a painting. A painting may bring a sense of recovery to someone who is viewing it, but that is in the eye of the beholder.”

I could see her point: people’s reactions to art might vary. “What are the sorts of pieces you would show us on death and dying?” I wondered.

Roman sarcophagi, she said. Egyptian funerary objects. A sculpture of the antihero in Dante, Ugolino. “He is imprisoned with his children and they are begging him to eat them to save his own life, and he is biting his fingernails and going through questions about what to do.”

I knew how he felt at this point.

“And Christian iconography of, you know, crucifixion, resurrection. We have a sculpture by an American called
The Angel of Death
. A painting by Homer of a guy on a boat called
The Gulf Stream
. He’s on a raft, really, in the ocean with sharks circling him. We have the statue
The Burghers of Calais
, where they’re in chains, about to be put to death. David’s painting of the death of Socrates. It’s pretty monochromatic.”

I was crushed. Graphic depictions of people going to a horrible demise—“this is the opposite of what we’d want to see,” I said. Out of more than two million works in the Metropolitan Museum, she couldn’t come up with subject matter that might be more comforting or inspiring?

“This is not really something an art historian can lead without knowing your group,” the manager said. “I think you need more of a psychological counselor than an art historian, to be totally honest.”

Up to now, I’d been willing to cut her some slack. But did she
really think that the death of a loved one was such an unheard-of occurrence that only a mental health professional could address the subject? Was she patronizing us because we were widows?

“Let me explain,” I said. “These women are past the initial stage of grief, and they are remaking their lives.”

“Mm-hmm,” said the voice on the other end.

“This takes strength. It takes optimism. It even takes humor. So what I have in mind is something much more … uplifting.”

“I don’t know how much these widows know about art and appreciate it,” she said. “You might be better off with just a highlights tour. I talked to a few colleagues and they were baffled by this project also.”

“What about images like the phoenix rising from the ashes, or images of strong or beautiful women?”

“There again, our major strong women are more like Salomé with the head of John the Baptist. Or Judith slaying Holofernes.”

Women beheading men. Did she think we’d killed our husbands? “Nasty strong women,” I said.

“Yeah, exactly,” she said. “Look, maybe you just want a tour of women in art and women artists. I mean, that’s pretty attenuated.”

Attenuated—I know what that means
, I wanted to say. I know what
obtuse
means, too. My zinger needle was banging in the red zone. “It doesn’t sound like this is going to come together at the Met,” I sighed. I signed off in despair.

Now I was in trouble. A little over a week until our gathering, and unless I was prepared to brush off my pointillist memories of Art History 101 and guide this jaunt myself, we had nothing prepared. I quickly Googled “private art tours” and came up with a company that employed art history students.

“I ran your idea past some of our guides,” said the head of the company, only four days before the date. “Katie is very young, but she was moved by your request. She proposed some works that you might enjoy.”

“Such as?” I braced for the worst.

“Well, one of them is a beautiful series of Chinese watercolors of lotus blossoms. She chose them because they bloom even in the mud.”

“Stop right there,” I said. “She’s hired.”

chapter
ELEVEN

i
t took a goddess to stop the show after those lotus blossoms. A gilded statue of Diana glowed high on a plinth made of stone in an interior courtyard flooded with late-day sunlight. Katie held us at a distance, heightening the drama, the better to take in Diana’s golden form. All certitude, she balanced on a single toe, her slender arms aiming a bow and arrow. Her body was strong, not ripped as if she’d been to the gym, but purposeful—a delicate, feminine strength. We felt the tension in her bow, shaped like a pair of lips.

“It’s hard to see her up close, because she’s placed so high,” said Katie. The statue, cast in 1928, was a replica of the scandalous nude weather vane by Augustus Saint-Gaudens that perched atop the old Madison Square Garden. “She is the goddess of the hunt, athletic and strong. The myth is that she assisted in the birth of her twin brother, Apollo. So she is associated with the idea of women helping other women.”

Tara and Dawn cut each other knowing glances, while the rest of us nodded approvingly.

“She is also associated with anyplace where three roads meet, helping travelers find direction. So the idea of Diana on a weather vane is beautiful and special.”

“She’s got a normal body, which is kind of nice.” Lesley craned her neck toward the goddess. “She’s in good shape.”

“All that running around and cavorting with her nymphs,” Katie said.

We laughed, appreciating more than the humor. It was uncanny—Katie had a precocious ability to know what would speak to us, to understand that we might have been widowed, but that our interests were defined by life rather than death, that we were at a crossroads, seeking whatever guidance Diana might provide. Katie’s first two choices were so spot-on that even money said we would follow her anywhere.

Denise, to my relief, had joined us again, and I noticed she was more cheerful this time, her expression less strained. I was grateful that she was giving us another chance. Art seemed to grant her a more comfortable distance from her troubles than food had, and she had changed out of her perpetual yoga getup into a belted black dress with a loose swinging skirt. I was glad that Tara had returned, too. She and Dawn trailed behind, deep in conversation about whatever was on Dawn’s mind. She talked up a storm, something about a man in her life, and Tara nodded thoughtfully, interjecting measured bits of advice. I was happy to see them forming a bond.

Katie, divining that romance was on our minds, brought us to a voluptuous Titian nude of Venus, goddess of love, painted in 1565. Recumbent before a lush landscape, languidly receiving a crown of flowers from a cherubic Cupid, Venus directed her gaze outside
the frame, contemplating, what?—her own fabulousness, it seemed. She didn’t engage the viewer. Like Dawn, she didn’t need to work to attract admiration. Venus would never deign to wink at someone on Match.com.

Being women past the age of puberty, we couldn’t help evaluating the state of Venus’s pearly flesh.

“She’s got perky boobs,” Lesley said.

“If only we lived in an era when big hips were considered ideal,” I lamented. “Think how easy it would be.”

Having shown us a strong woman and a beautiful woman, Katie introduced us to an accomplished one, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, a painter admitted to the French Academy in the eighteenth century, when membership for women was limited to four. In a self-portrait, she captured herself in the act of painting, gripping a palette and brush while sporting a shiny silk dress in aquamarine, the color of Lesley’s silk blouse, that set off creamy skin, pillowy décolletage, and a killer stare. Adélaïde’s dainty embellished shoe looked like one I’d seen at Miu Miu, and her audacious hat could blindside the paparazzi at a royal wedding.

“She’s saying it’s okay to be feminine and frilly and still be creative,” noted Lesley. She sized up the dress the way Holly Golightly sized up the baubles at Tiffany’s.

“Absolutely,” Katie agreed. “She maintained all her feminine charms while having a prominent and important career. She’s based the composition on a fashion plate.”

I would have thought that Dawn, a businesswoman and a fashion plate in her own right, would have felt an affinity for Adélaïde, but when I looked around, Dawn lagged several yards behind. She had waylaid Tara in front of a sculpture, gesturing toward it
with flamboyant flourishes. We scuttled over to form a crescent around her.

“Why are you blushing?” Lesley asked. It didn’t take a keen eye to see how deeply Dawn was affected.

She actually fanned her fevered face. “This kind of thing always happens to me.” She gestured toward the life-sized statue. “I have a replica of this sitting on the mantel in my bedroom. Andries gave
this
to me, too.”

The sculpture was blushworthy all right. Blatantly erotic,
Cupid and Psyche
, sculpted by Antonio Canova around 1800, depicted love of the most rapturous sort. Cupid, portrayed as a winged adult, whooshed into his lover’s yielding arms, cradling her face. Talk about sexual heat, all soft surfaces and entwined limbs. But I couldn’t help noticing the tender look on Cupid’s face. He treasured her. Any woman on the receiving end of that look would never have to doubt. His love was certain.
Their
love was certain.

“Dawn, I didn’t know Andries was a god,” I said.

“He sure looked like one,” she said, her face still on fire. “I was looking at pictures the other day. He was so freakin’ gorgeous. Where do you go from there? I can’t imagine a man coming along and filling even a quarter …”

Her voice trailed off. Tara scootched in next to her, and Dawn dropped her head onto Tara’s shoulder with mock melodrama. When she picked it up again, her eyes had taken on the appraising hardness of Adélaïde’s.

“I don’t know what to do about this guy I’m seeing now,” she said. He was Adam, the widower she had told us about the last time we gathered. They’d begun to date regularly, but just that morning, she had felt him backing off. He had even put forward the one strategy
guaranteed to throw ice water on any budding relationship. “ ‘Friends with benefits,’ he said. Ugh. No. That is
not
my thing.”

That was what she’d been confiding to Tara.

“It
is
nice to know that you are desirable to other people,” Lesley offered.

“To have a little physical contact, maybe until the next level comes along—maybe that’s not so bad,” Dawn said with a wistful look at Cupid. “But in the past I was always with people I really cared about and who cared about me. Even if it didn’t always work in the end, it didn’t feel empty.”

“How long have you been seeing each other, six weeks?” Lesley said. “Maybe he’s just being cautious.”

Dawn looked doubtful. “Nine years after his wife died, he still has all her stuff. It’s everywhere.” She glanced back at the idealized lovers in the sculpture. “I believe I had a great thing. I want a great thing again.”

I followed her gaze. As Dawn might say, it seemed so freakin’ unfair that after basking in the warm assurance of her marriage, she had been tossed out into the chilly reality of guys who didn’t look at her the way Cupid looked at Psyche, the way the gorgeous Andries had looked at the gorgeous Dawn. The statue hadn’t quite been a zinger for Dawn. It didn’t bring her to tears or feel like a defeat, but it was making her think, casting her current choices into the context of her marriage.