A Wife of Noble Character (28 page)

Kitty pulled herself up and retrieved the pot of coffee. Her clothes made a soft rustle as she moved, reminding Vivienne of ballerinas in costume, passing one another in the electric hush of a dark theater wing.

“Well, this is all working out for the best,” Kitty said, returning to her seat. “I would never sell them in a million years. I had no intention of selling them. I just wanted to meet you.”

Vivienne's heart nearly stopped. “Me?”

“Don't be nervous,” Kitty said, reaching out. “You sounded lovely and curious and a bit confused on the phone, and I think you reminded me of myself. Old people get selfish like that. A young woman from Houston reading a pleasant little script? You didn't pull off the script, so you made me curious. I never pulled off the script.”

“We flew to Paris to buy the paintings.”

“People always have other reasons for coming to Paris,” Kitty said. “You didn't come to Paris to buy my paintings.”

“I wrote that script.”

“Do you believe it?”

Vivienne turned her eyes to the garden. Ulysses and Eddie were out of sight. “I believed it when I wrote it. Bracken is coming here tomorrow if this meeting goes well.”

“I have plenty for him to see. I have a collection of flags. Some great cowboy prints. I have way too much. He won't miss any paintings.”

“Are you still coming to dinner tonight?”

“Am I still invited?”

Vivienne nodded. “Bracken will probably like old Texas flags better anyway.”

Kitty said, “You know, I was pretty like you. I personally think being born pretty in Texas is a burden you have to climb out from under. Look at you”—she took up a section of Vivienne's hair—“a woman, but still young, right in that place when you don't realize what you know. I was like that. Beaumont is a lot smaller than Houston, so you can imagine. You think you're working for the real estate developer, because that's what you're supposed to do, but you're really working for yourself. I used to need permission to do everything.”

“I am doing this for myself.”

Kitty smiled. “Put your hands here,” she said, placing her hands over her own belly below her navel. “Don't press, just rest your hands here.”

Vivienne followed. Her body felt warm and taut and small.

“Make your plans from here,” Kitty said. “I realized at some point that I could leave Beaumont and survive. But it was only by the grace of God that I figured it out and did what I needed to do. If you're born into a world where you don't belong, you don't have a choice. You have to find a way out. In my case, I could paint.”

“Is that why you decided to collect?”

“These are my paintings,” Kitty said, almost as an aside. “I paint under a false name. It keeps my life simple.”

Vivienne thought she'd misheard. “These are your paintings?”

“Yep.”

Vivienne stood and went to the paintings. “You're Raleigh Wester? I thought you inherited oil money and became a collector.”

Kitty followed after. “When people think you're enigmatic, they invent stories about you. I inherited some money from my grampa, but there wasn't much left. It kept me on my feet in Texas, but I drank a lot of it away, so I was mostly off my feet. I knew I had to get better, so I took what was left and came here and made my way.”

“You painted all these?”

Kitty smiled. “Wisdom is a woman.”

“Why do you keep it a secret?”

“An open secret. I'm fine with people knowing, but I don't broadcast it.” She went close to one of the paintings, a green picture of the lazy Frio River, a fluffy bald cypress in the foreground. “I didn't keep it secret at first, but once people started liking my paintings, I realized I wanted more privacy. In France, artists are still celebrities. People weren't stopping me in the street over watercolor pictures, but it was still too much hoopla in the art circles. Interviews, galas, parties, dresses. I didn't care, and I didn't want them calling me. I remember thinking at first how flattering it was. But then it sucked all the life out of me, and I couldn't paint. You can't be a reactionary and cut off the people who care about what you do, but there are ways of skirting around it peaceably. And the people who knew me before I changed my working name—they respected that.” She paused. “This is a really old one. I painted it when I first got here. I was so homesick.”

“Do you have
Band of Charging Comanches
? I keep a copy of it by my desk.”

“Oh, Cynthia Ann Parker,” Kitty said. “The Comanches called her ‘Naduah,' meaning ‘someone found.' I gave that painting to Anthony's sister a few years back. I don't know even know how it ended up in the catalogs. Some photographer must have come over and taken pictures.”

“Who's Anthony?” Vivienne asked.

Kitty's lips edged up, coaxing two dimples to her cheeks. “Anthony is my husband.” She hurried over to an old wall piano and picked a frame off the top. “This is Anthony.”

Vivienne saw a youngish Kitty, her hair tied up in a bandanna, sitting in a sailboat beside a shaggy-haired man wearing round glasses. Kitty was red-lipped and smiling, holding the rudder; both were wearing shorts and white shirts, Kitty's tied up around her midriff. The picture had that muddy, faded sixties color palette, which seemed to Vivienne the way everything must have looked back then. He was smiling, holding Kitty firmly around the shoulder. They looked giddy and dorky, delighted by the novelty of a boat, and pure.

“I always prayed I'd go before him.”

Vivienne didn't know what to say. What Kitty said frightened her.

Kitty saw her face and said, “There's nothing to be scared about. I'm alone, but I don't feel so alone. We were fortunate. It's scary to be that in love. It's a tightrope, loving yourself and another at the same time. But we did it. I'm still proud of us.” She set the frame back on the piano.

It was too hard to pretend he wasn't in Paris. Even the splendor of the Ritz couldn't diminish the acuity of Preston, out there in the city somewhere. After all the silent self-assurances that she had a million other reasons for coming here, her heart looked straight upon the fact that she ached to see him and that here, in Kitty's sitting room, in his mysterious proximity, she felt so strong and glad and yet hurt afresh. She was still so mad at him.

Kitty went to the window and whistled for Ulysses. In a moment he was galloping upstairs, announcing himself with a series of unruly meows. “Hush,” Kitty said, picking him up and handing him to Vivienne. “He's not the real thing, but he gives the best hugs.”

He had some weight. Vivienne propped him up on her shoulder and squeezed. He smelled like rock dust and felt like a very small, soft water bed.

Kitty was petting his long black back; he had his purr turned up high. He rubbed his cheek against Vivienne's. “This guy used to squirm like all hell whenever I tried to give him love,” Kitty said. “And now look at him.”

 

V

Vivienne took Timmy to see Corot's painting of Orpheus leading Eurydice out of the underworld. It was the second time she'd gone to see it. She remembered her young self as Eurydice, escaping from Orpheus's gaze, but realized she now related most to Orpheus, holding his lute high. Not Eurydice, who seemed shy and dazed, but Orpheus, fighting to look ahead.

Timmy was a great museum companion. In her short time in the far periphery of the “art world,” Vivienne had learned that people had a tendency to be pretentious about art. But Timmy wasn't pretentious about anything, especially art, so when he commented on a picture, he commented with the curious perspective of a child. He made up a story for each painting he liked, invented funny names for the sitters in portraits, and bought postcards of all his favorites at the gift shop. They split the cost of a “Baby's First French” CD set for Waverly and Clay and stopped at a boulangerie on their way back to the hotel. They agreed not to tell anyone they'd stopped for sweets before dinner. Vivienne told Timmy about her new favorite person in the world, Kitty Crawford.

The sun was setting over the Tuileries. Vivienne's eyes followed the garden, the geometry of dark hedges, the bronze statues of coy women hiding among them. They came into the great octagon of the Place de la Concorde, late light pouring across crowds and cars and tour buses, Cleopatra's obelisk cutting a long blade of shadow through the scene.

“This was where they chopped all the rich people's heads off,” Timmy said. He ran his finger across his throat matter-of-factly.

“How do you know that?” Vivienne said.

“I read it,” Timmy said. “In a biography of Ben Franklin.”

“I've never met anyone who loves the founding fathers as much as you.”

Timmy's eyes glazed over a little. His cheeks pinked in the light. Maybe he looked like a young Ben Franklin.

“Let's take a picture,” Vivienne said. She held out her phone, Timmy tipped his head down and sideways so that his face was perpendicular to hers, and they both made big toothy smiles.

They kept walking. The wind hit their faces straight on.

Just as they were crossing out, Vivienne glanced over her shoulder and noticed Karlie, sitting beside Bracken on the lip of the tiered fountain about fifty feet away. She was hugging a furry vest over her chest. Certain they had seen her, Vivienne was raising her arm to wave when Karlie suddenly stood and turned her back to them.

Timmy was musing on the unfortunate fact that Ernest Hemingway and Ben Franklin never had the chance to meet, because they would have made great friends.

Vivienne interrupted him. “Did you see—” But something in the deliberateness of Karlie's body language stopped her. Maybe Karlie didn't want to talk to Timmy? That happened often. Or were they planning a surprise for Waverly? Could they be talking about her?

Before they turned off to the hotel, Vivienne glanced back again. The wind whipped her hair over her eyes. Through its soft screen, she saw Bracken, walking away from the fountain, and Karlie, looking directly at her.

Later, in the room, Vivienne was sitting on a silk ottoman, listening to Karlie and turning a gold bracelet around her wrist.

“The marketing people at Bloomie's are giving me new baking supplies, a cute mixer and everything, if I promote their line of baking products on my blog,” Karlie said. She was leaning in close to the mirror, painting her eyes with wet black liner. She stepped back and blinked at herself. “Isn't that amazing?”

“That's great,” Vivienne said. “But you don't bake.”

“It doesn't matter. It shows that my blog is, like, a vehicle. I'll get more ads now.” She grabbed a tissue and defiantly blotted her lipstick. “I want to look good tonight.”

“Why?” Vivienne scooted back on the ottoman and stretched to touch her toes.

“Because Preston is coming.”

In an effort to conceal her reaction from Karlie, she got up and went into the toilet closet and pretended to go to the bathroom. “Preston?” she called out, realizing it had been a long time since she'd said his name. “I thought you didn't like him. Didn't you tell me to stay away from him at Waverly's wedding?”

“I still think it's fun,” Karlie said. “Tim's been such a drag. And now it's like I have an audience. It's no fun dressing up if you don't have an audience.”

Vivienne folded over and pressed her forehead to her knees. She would get through this, she had to. A few moments later, when she emerged, Karlie told her about running into him, until Vivienne had the impression that they'd all talked for hours over ice cream and tiny espressos.

“What were you doing with Bracken earlier?” Vivienne said. She didn't want to hear about Preston anymore, not from Karlie. “I was walking with Tim, and I saw you sitting by the fountain.”

Karlie was squeezed tight into a red sequined dress, like a fifties-era secretary, her hair wound up into a high bun, which she held atop her head in the way of a villager carrying water. “Why didn't y'all come say hi?”

“I was about to wave,” Vivienne said, “but then you turned around. I thought you saw me.”

“Huh,” she said, and whirled back to the mirror.

Vivienne was beginning to feel self-conscious under Karlie's strange confidence. She went to the mirror and smoothed her hands over her black gown. The neckline plunged, narrowly enough to remain elegant, and the dress held her hips firmly, loosening around her legs so she could move comfortably. It was an old dress, but it still fit like new. Vivienne turned her back to the mirror and adjusted the cross straps over her shoulders.

Karlie watched, expressionless. Then her phone buzzed. A text from Waverly: Everyone was waiting in the lobby. Patting at her bun, she snapped into the mirror, “Ready?”

 

VI

Preston wore a suit and tie—the only suit he owned, the one he wore to Waverly and Clay's wedding, which he hadn't had dry-cleaned since. As he dressed, he caught a whiff of chlorine on the jacket collar.

He was brimming with a sense of alignment; it all made sense, Vivienne being in Paris now. He'd slept fitfully, playing things over. He wanted another chance, but his stomach lurched at the thought of Karlie and Vivienne at the same table. How would he get Vivienne alone?

When he set the time to visit Vivienne the day after the wedding, to pitch Paris to her again, he'd intended to keep it. But as the hour neared, he decided he'd been wrong. He kept thinking of that trio of men and the easy and terrible certainty with which they'd spoken of her and presumed her needs. Maybe they did know her better. They spent more time with her. There was so much he didn't know about Vivienne, an entire dimension of her life, a much larger dimension. She couldn't say yes because she'd promised her life to another, altogether different idea; the fact that she'd even accepted the job from Bracken said it all. Maybe she really did need a man in a bolo tie. And he didn't want to be some random adventure, her experiment in independence. Better to cut it off. So he'd followed his injured ego, and he left for Paris.