The English American (17 page)

B
ACK IN
N
EW
Y
ORK
,
Billie starts training me in earnest. In addition to writing press releases and promoting Art Buddies, my job is to help out wherever else I’m needed.

I spend a morning helping Tom explain to his oldest client why a tuba solo inspired by Stravinski’s
Rite of Spring
might be a hard sell to colleges.

I spend an afternoon listening to Marvin encouraging a Christian poet to consider paragraphing when he takes dictation from God.

And Billie calls all her friends and tells them how wonderful I am when I answer the phone by mistake and manage to talk a failed sculptor out of suicide by promising to exhibit his clay ears at Billie’s next workshop.

Billie fills every spare minute giving me advice. “The way you stay organized? Get a headset! That way, when you’re on the phone talking to the boring people, like the tax man or whoever, you can get the chores done at the same time, see?”

I’m particularly impressed by the way she solves the “it must be around here somewhere” problem. She simply buys more of each thing. For example, she has ten pairs of glasses—two for each room—so she doesn’t have to waste time looking for things.

By the end of January, Billie has handed a lot of her workload over to me and has begun research for her book. The working title is
Are They Nuts? Identifying Mental Problems in the People Around You.

“Half the people around me are mentally ill in one way or another,” she says to someone on the telephone. “Tom’s obsessive-compulsive. My brother’s a pathological liar. You know about Malice and poor Lee. As for Marcie, why she’s practically psychotic!” She sounds delighted.

And then the CD with the photographs of Nick’s paintings arrives. The moment I see them I can sense their power. They are erotic and angry and, above all, alive.

The pictures are of a man and a woman, somewhere a long way from America. The man is part Indian, tall, handsome, elegant, and looks like Nick. It’s hard to tell where the woman is from. In one painting she looks like she could be from the Middle East, in another she could be from India, in another she could be English. It’s the same woman each time though. She is achingly beautiful and dressed in a light purple sari covered with little round mirrors. There are flecks of red in her hair.

In one painting, the man and the woman are making love in a street full of strangers. There’s violence in the air—and boys, girls, men, women doing ordinary things, pushing carts, walking down dusty roads, biking, eating. In the background they’re running from an American tank that’s on fire. But with all the activity in the painting, it’s the man and the woman you can’t take your eyes off.

I’m still staring at the paintings when Billie comes into the room. She looks at them one by one, with intense concentration. There are fourteen in all.

“He’s wonderful,” Billie says, finally.

“Really?” My heart soars.

“Yes, honey. And the paintings are sexy and shocking and topical, so they’ll sell.”

Most of the time Billie has so much on her mind when she’s talking to you, you know she’s thinking about something else at the same time. On this occasion, though, her focus is entirely on me.

“Are you in love with this man?” she says.

“I think so.” Saying it aloud brings relief. “I feel linked to him somehow. It’s hard to explain. I can’t stop thinking about him. He feels a part of me. I…I understand him. And he me.”

Billie looks at the paintings again. Then up at me.

“Honey,” she says, “I’ve yet to meet an artist with this kind of talent who isn’t entirely wrapped up in themselves,” she says. “I’m sure all the encouragement you’ve given him has meant a lot to him. But what does he give you?”

I look at her, astonished.

“Everything!”

The phone rings, the moment is over, and Billie goes to pick it up. When she comes back in, Billie’s focus has transferred to her poppy red lipstick, which she puts on at her makeup table. Once her lipstick is on, she swivels her stool around to face me.

“You’re beautiful,” she says, gently. “Like my mother. Only you don’t think you are.”

This is true. Walking next to Mum and Charlotte all my life, I’ve felt like a human Tigger—tall, ungainly, bouncy, and a bit of a pain. Certainly not beautiful.

“You could have any man you want,” Billie says, “if you used your power. But you don’t believe you have any, so you don’t. And that makes you so vulnerable, honey.”

Then she takes off her glasses and, on her way out of the room, says, “But he is a wonderful painter, and I know someone who can help him. I’ll call Edelman.”

“Who’s Edelman?” I say, following Billie as she moves at top speed down the corridor toward the kitchen.

“He owns four of the top galleries in New York,” she says. “If Edelman likes him, Nick will be made.”

I rush to the computer to e-mail Nick. He e-mails me back right away.

B
Y THE START
of my second month at Billie’s I’ve settled into a kind of routine. My weekdays are spent working for Billie and e-mailing back and forth with Nick. On Saturday nights I visit The Gold Room, where Jack invariably coaxes me on stage. It happens so frequently, before I know it, I’m putting together an act.

Meanwhile, back in Peaseminster, life goes on much as before.

Even though Earl is gone, Billie spends every other week in Georgia writing her book and keeping watch on Malice. When she’s there, she calls me in the early morning. It amuses her greatly to open with, “This is your mother speaking.”

Whenever she calls herself my mother, my heart hurts, because it feels like she’s just shot Mum.

“Why don’t you call yourself Billie?” I say, lightly. “Rather than ‘Mother.’ I’ll only get confused.”

“But I am your mother.”

“Yes—I know you are—of course you are, but, well, I’m used to calling Mum Mother, that’s all…I guess—well, I guess, well, it just doesn’t feel right. It’s hard to explain, but…”

“Honey, did I ever tell you your great-grandmother shot a man?”

Bam. She’s done it again. Gone off on a tangent the moment I try to tell her something she doesn’t want to hear. As usual, the tangent’s so interesting I forget what it is I’ve been trying to tell her.

“She did, you know. Your great-grandmother shot a man. In the leg. The sheriff let her off. As she said, ‘If he had been a friend, he’d have walked right in. But he rang the doorbell, so I shot him.’”

After only two months of my working for her, Billie’s business has doubled, thanks, in part, to the interview I managed to get her in
Art Today
. But it’s been over a month since Billie sent the CD of Nick’s paintings to Dwight Edelman and we’ve heard nothing. When I ask her when we’re likely to hear she keeps saying, “Honey, these things take
time
!”

I let out a whoop. “He’s coming!” Carol and I have just finished putting Billie’s press release together and we’re down in the office.

“Who’s coming?” Carol says, laughing.

“Nick’s coming! On Wednesday! He’s coming! I just wish we had heard from Edelman!”

I run up the mud-covered hill to Billie’s mailbox to see if there’s any news from Edelman. There are a few patches of snow under the trunks of the still leafless trees, but spring doesn’t feel all that far away.

Billie’s mailbox is stuffed with the usual catalogs wrapped in plastic. I pull the catalogs out and rifle through them. Still nothing from Edelman. I head back into the office and Carol hands me a letter, dated two weeks before.

“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” Carol says. “I thought you knew.”

Carol looks as if she is debating whether or not to say something more.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

Carol walks out into the corridor and makes sure that Billie is still upstairs in the kitchen, on the phone. She shuts the door.

“Pippa, I know how you feel about Nick and…”

“And what?”

She’s looking at me directly now.

“Dwight Edelman is one of the busiest art agents in the world,” she says. “He doesn’t represent unknowns.”

“Does Billie know that?”

Carol doesn’t say anything.

“Does she even
know
him?” I say, already feeling Nick’s heartbreak.

“Billie met Dwight Edelman once, fifteen years ago, in AA.”

“But she gave the impression she knew him well! And…and she told me she thinks Nick’s wonderful!”

“She tells all the artists they’re wonderful. And she gives the impression they’re the only wonderful ones. That’s how she keeps her clients. You know how insecure artists can be. Pay an artist a compliment and he’s yours for life.”

There’s a bitterness in Carol’s tone. Either I haven’t heard it, or I haven’t noticed it before.

“But Nick’s not a client.”

“No. But she’ll do what she has to do to keep you.”

I stare at Carol for a second. She’s not smiling. My mind is spinning, my mouth has gone dry, and I feel sick.

“Is none of it true? Any of it?” I say.

Carol doesn’t speak.

When I get angry, which doesn’t happen very often, I’m filled with a sudden burst of extra energy that, on this occasion, propels me up the stairs to the kitchen, where Billie is now cooking scrambled eggs.

“Billie, why didn’t you tell me about the letter from Edelman?” She doesn’t even look up.

“What letter from Edelman?”

“This one,” I say, holding out Nick’s rejection letter.

“Oh
that
,” Billie says, glancing at the letter quickly before breaking eggs into a pan. Half of one of the egg whites ends up on the stove.

I suddenly see myself in the kitchen at home, doing the same thing. I hear Mum’s irritated “Oh
dar
ling” and, for the first time, understand that it’s not so much the spills themselves that are annoying, it’s the fact that Billie never cleans up after herself. Which means that if I don’t want to get salmonella, I’ll have to do it.

“I’m a busy woman, honey. I don’t remember exactly when the letter came.”

“But Nick’s been waiting to hear about this for weeks!”

“Well I
know
that!” Billie says, turning to me. “But I don’t have any control over Edelman. All I can do is show him the work. The rest is up to him.”

“But you said you’d help him!”

“Honey, I’ve been out of the mainstream art business for twenty-five years!” She sounds indignant. As if she never said she could help Nick and I am being unreasonable for suggesting she could.

Billie slaps the now-scrambled eggs onto a piece of burned toast and starts eating.

“But—you’re Billie Parnell! You discovered Marfil! And you love Nick’s work. Why don’t
you
represent Nick?”

“I’m fifty years old. I don’t schlep anymore. I’d rather do laundry. Besides, if Dwight doesn’t like him—well, Dwight
is
the art world these days.”

“But he’s so talented,” I say.

“Honey, so are a lot of people. I mean look at Cole. He’s prodigiously talented, and he can’t get an exhibition either.”

Surely Billie can’t think Cole’s bad Andy Warhol knockoffs are in Nick’s league. There’s nothing original about Cole.

Nick has been painting like a madman, despite his fear of rejection, because I’ve given him hope. And now his hope is gone. I feel like a murderer.

“Anyway, as I’ve been trying to tell you, Nick just called,” Billie says.

“What?”

“I’d have told you sooner if you’d let me speak, but you tore in here in such a fury, I didn’t get a chance! Besides, I was sort of enjoying watching you. I’ve never seen you this angry before. You were
magnificent
!” She’s filled with pride, for God’s sake.

“Billie!”

“Nick’s meeting’s been brought forward to tomorrow. He wants you to meet him at the same time, same place. I told him that of course you’d be there.”

“Tomorrow!” I say. Then, “Nick’s coming all this way because he thinks Dwight Edelman is going to represent him.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s the only reason he’s coming, honey,” Billie says. Then, turning to me, smiling, cute, knowing, she says, “It’ll all work out as it’s meant to. You’ll see.”

Then she puts the pan in the sink “to soak” and picks up the phone.

That night I toss and turn with the kind of ghastly embarrassment that keeps you up all night and, just as you’re falling off to sleep, makes you cringe and groan so loudly, you wake yourself up again.