An Inconvenient Wife (17 page)

“I know that.”

“How am I to deflect gossip, then, if I’m to see him constantly and not let anyone know why I do so?”

“Introduce him as a friend,” William said calmly. “Let Victor find ways to deflect their suspicions. He’s promised to do so.
Don’t act as if you’re ashamed to be seen with him.”

“You’re angry that I went there with him,” I said.

“Not angry,” he corrected. “Surprised. It was hardly a clever thing to do. And you said nothing of it to me.”

“There was no reason to,” I said. I fingered the gold-embroidered edge of the tablecloth. “It was only another appointment.”

“In a restaurant.”

“It was his suggestion.”

William was silent. I looked up at him again.

“What else has he suggested to you?” he asked.

I had to work to meet his gaze. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Well, the usual things. To control my fits. To be at peace.”

He nodded and picked up his glass of port, taking a deep sip before he said, “As long as it helps you, we’ll continue on as
we’ve been. But try to remember your place, Lucy, when you’re in public.”

“Of course, William,” I said, so relieved I had to turn away to conceal my smile.

After William left for the ’Change the next morning, I breakfasted and dressed and gave instructions to Moira and the menu
to the cook. Then I pulled the box from beneath my bed and took out the sketchbook and the pencils. As I held them, it seemed
as if a spell had been cast upon me, for the feel of them in my hands was luxurious—almost sinful. It had been so long since
such paper had touched my fingertips, since the point of a charcoal pencil had marked my skin. It was true that I felt guilty;
if William or Papa knew of this, they would see it as a manifestation of my illness. They would take it away. And yet I felt
as if I held myself, as if this empty sketchbook held my soul in a way my own mind and heart did not; as if I were nothing
without this emptiness to hold on to, to fill.

I wrapped myself in warmth: a cloak, a hat, warm boots. I put on gloves, though I meant to take them off the moment I was
outside.

I paused at the parlor door and told Moira, “I’ll be in the garden.” I’d startled her as she cursorily passed the feather
duster over a table laden with tiny boxes—including the little cloisonné I’d bought yesterday—and she flushed as if I’d caught
her in a lie, as she certainly should have, for the lackluster way she was cleaning. But just then I didn’t care.

“In the garden?” she sputtered. “But ma’am, it’s quite cold.”

I didn’t bother to answer her; I could hardly keep myself from running as I passed through the house and out the door into
the back garden.

The garden was narrow but deep and beautiful in the summer. I loved to sit there, surrounded by leaves and flowers. I did
not visit it often at other times, and never in the winter. The grape was a dead-looking brown, vines tangled about the rounded
white trellises bordering the garden. The small cherry tree was little more than graying branches rising from a thin, icy
layer of snow that was mostly melted but for in the hollows and the lee. The seat of the stone bench was covered with ice,
and the border beds were filled with brown vines and crumpled leaves that had once been flowers. I remembered them as a profusion
of color without knowing their names or even the shapes of their petals, despite the fact that as a girl, I had spent two
months one summer pressing flowers and naming them in painstaking copperplate on waxed pages.

Just outside the door, I gripped the sketchbook, finding the bleakness of the garden more lovely than I could have imagined.
I had not done this in so very long that I was uncertain how to start. Once it had seemed that my mind nearly swelled with
ideas of what to draw—to look at a landscape was to pick out the one thing I wanted to show. But today it seemed there were
too many choices, and I’d lost the habit of critical faculty. Should I draw the tree, or the grapevine on the trellis, or
the way the clouded sun cast shadows on the weakening snow, or the dead flowers, or the shape of the border, the bench, the
crushed stone beneath it? I could not decide; I sat on the bench and felt the cold of it seep through my cloak and my gown
and my petticoats, and finally it was the cherry tree that caught me: the way its limbs set out from all directions, the way
it struggled from the snow. I took off my gloves and opened the sketchbook to its first pristine white page, and I took the
pencil between my fingers and began to draw.

To say I lost myself would be an understatement. I was drawn in by the first line, and though my fingers were stiff with disuse,
and I retraced my steps a hundred times, trying to regain the ease with which I’d once done this, I was captivated by the
pursuit. More than captivated: giddy, unfettered. There was a cold wind, but where I sat, I was protected, and though the
cherry tree bowed this way and that, I was unmoved. I did not feel the cold, not in my bare fingers nor from the ice on the
bench, now melting into my clothing. I lost track of time until I heard a faint call, and then a louder, more insistent “Mrs.
Carelton?”—a name that suddenly wasn’t mine. I was a girl again, I was Lucy Van Berckel, I had no idea who Mrs. Carelton was—perhaps
a friend of my mother’s—and then I came to myself with a start to see Moira standing in the back doorway, hugging herself
against the cold and saying, “Pardon me, ma’am, but Cook asks if you wanted tea?”

The one thing I did not do was think of the house slowly emerging on Fifth Avenue. William was immersed in every detail. He
went almost daily to the work site to see how things were progressing, and one morning he told me in exasperation that he
was worried—where was the enthusiasm I had shown that day he’d taken me to McKim’s office? Why had I not yet visited Goupil’s?

It was clear that he expected me to relish this new occupation—what woman wouldn’t love the opportunity to completely furnish
and decorate a new home?—and I knew he was right. I hated that I could not manage excitement over the task. Millicent asked
me at nearly every supper when I planned to start. So, in the hope that her enthusiasm would bolster mine, I asked her to
accompany me to Goupil’s one afternoon. I convinced myself I would enjoy it.

She arrived promptly at one o’clock. “I knew you were feeling better when you told me how anxious you were to begin,” she
said, smiling a bit too brightly when I met her in the entry.

“Yes,” I said, putting on my gloves and cloak. “I’m quite looking forward to it.”

She was visibly relieved. I realized with a start what a toll my friendship must take on her. I had never thought of it in
those terms before. Impulsively, I squeezed her arm. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me, Millie, truly.”

She looked surprised and a little embarrassed. “Why, Lucy, please don’t speak of it. I
am
your friend.”

“Yes, you are,” I said.

We went to her waiting carriage. The sky was overcast and heavy, but it had warmed since yesterday so that the snow was melting
and slushy on the edges of the walk, and the talk was of rain. There was a gray, foggy look about the streets, veiling the
carriage windows so it was hard to see anything beyond muted colors and hazy shapes. The city felt closed in.

Jean-Baptiste Goupil was no longer the most fashionable importer in New York City, but my father had used him, as had many
of the old Knickerbocker families I had grown up with, so I knew him well. His studios were small compared to some of the
others, quite crowded with paintings and sculpture. The heavy curtains were closed against the sunlight, the room lit dimly
by sputtering gas, and the ceilings were high and hung with paintings to the rafters. The smells of dust and canvas and oils
were heavy as we came inside, the air close.

“Mrs. Carelton!” Jean-Claude, one of Goupil’s assistants, came hurrying over to greet us. He wore a brown suit that almost
exactly matched the brown of his hair—like a wren, I thought, with the same kind of fluttering, nervous movements. He took
my cloak and Millicent’s, handing them off to some faceless clerk while he ushered us deeper into the darkness. “Oh, Jean-Baptiste
will be distraught to have missed you, but he is gone to see to a shipment today.”

He called for some tea and led us to a table surrounded by three chairs and a settee. While Millicent and I settled ourselves,
he hurried off for his notebook.

“Such an impressive display,” Millicent murmured.

“Yes. Papa has always admired his taste.”

A woman came with tea. Jean-Claude was back in moments, smiling beneath his thin mustache as he took a seat beside us, pulling
at his absurd little tie. “You must tell your father, Mrs. Carelton, that we have just received the most glorious bronzes.
Jean-Baptiste has set one aside just for him. He believes it will be perfect for your father’s parlor.”

I could not think of a single spot in the parlor for another thing. I sighed, knowing already that Papa would buy whatever
it was Goupil had set aside for him, as he always did.

“Now,” Jean-Claude said, settling back, “I understand you are building a new home, Mrs. Carelton. I do hope we can be of service
to you.”

“I would not trust such a job to anyone else,” I said. “My husband wants old masters. He particularly likes landscapes.”

Jean-Claude scribbled in his notebook. “We shall look for some French portraits as well. I think Mr. Carelton will be suitably
impressed, and they are increasing in value every day.”

“Yes, of course.”

“You must have some Chinese porcelains, Lucy,” Millicent put in. She leaned forward eagerly. “And a few sculptures in the
entrance hall. I’ve always loved alabaster.”

“Yes, but just now it is the Pompeiian bronzes that are de rigueur.” Jean-Claude scribbled again.

“Then the bronze,” Millicent said. “But perhaps one or two marble pieces would not be out of place?”

“I think that would be delightful,” Jean-Claude said.

“And tapestries. They must be Gobelins. Last year Julia Breckenwood bought counterfeits.”

“I can assure you that would
never
happen here,” Jean-Claude said.

“Nevertheless, it’s worth mentioning,” Millicent said. “One never knows. What do you think, Lucy?”

“Do you mind if I walk around a bit?” I asked Jean-Claude. “To look at some things myself?”

“Indeed not,” he said. “Please do. There are some exquisite paintings just over there”—he waved to a far wall—“that I know
you would find perfect.”

“Thank you.” I rose.

I ignored Millicent’s surprise and left them there. I walked farther into glowing semidarkness, past brown landscapes and
mythical scenes, a Venus rising from the sea, a Cupid sending his arrow into a rounded, dimpled Venetian exquisite. Although
these were all paintings my friends would buy to hang in their already crowded dining rooms, I was impatient with them. I
wanted something else, though I could not imagine what.

Beyond me was a curtain that obviously concealed a small room. I was curious. I could not remember ever being in there before.
I pulled aside the heavy velvet and plunged into an alcove lighted by a single sconce. It was a tiny room, every inch covered
with paintings hanging on golden cords. The gaslight cast everything in a murky glow; the images were like a kaleidoscope—too
many of them, all jangling together, and I turned again to leave, overwhelmed.

Then I saw the painting.

It hung beside the curtains, and the velvet of the drapes half covered it, but what I saw was arresting. A woman’s nude back,
glowing white in the darkness like a ghost. She was not a woman, or at least not yet one. She was stone from the thighs down,
but above that her flesh was pale and slightly tinted, obviously alive, and she was bending toward something. A strong, dark
arm gripped her waist, and fingers cupped a breast. Despite myself, I was drawn to it. I pushed aside the draperies to see
more, and I realized the arm belonged to a man: the sculptor, who was holding on to the woman with a desperate and hungry
passion. She was bending to kiss him, an alabaster statue brought alive by the arrow of Cupid’s bow. Pygmalion and Galatea.

I touched the canvas, tracing down her calf to her foot, still encased in marble, and it seemed I felt the chill cold of the
stone. I longed to pull her foot free, to finish the job Cupid had started. I felt how she strained; I felt her restlessness.

“Mrs. Carelton? Mrs. Carelton?”

I snatched back my hand. The curtains parted, and Jean-Claude was there, an anxious Millicent close behind him.

“Oh,” he said, smiling. “I see you have found Jean-Baptiste’s special room.”

“His special room?”

“I am surprised you haven’t seen it before,” Jean-Claude said. “This is where Jean-Baptiste keeps the things he has brought
over for certain clients. Items he has chosen specially. Your father has been in this room many times.” He glanced at the
picture. “Ah,
Pygmalion and Galatea
. A fine work. It’s a Gérôme. He’s a student of David, I believe. This is reserved for Robert Carr. He asked specifically
for a mythical scene for his guest room.”

“I see.” The news brought a keen disappointment.

“If you like it, perhaps we can find something similar for you,” Jean-Claude went on. “This is the original. We could have
it copied or perhaps find—”

“No,” I said forcefully. “I don’t want it copied. I want this one. I’ll pay double what Robert Carr commissioned for it.”

Jean-Claude looked dismayed. “Mrs. Carelton, I’m afraid I—”

“Has Mr. Carr even seen it?” I asked.

Reluctantly, Jean-Claude said, “I don’t believe so, but—”

“Find him another mythical scene,” I said.

Millicent broke in. “But Lucy, I thought you said William wanted landscapes.”

I hesitated. William had indeed wanted landscapes, but surely he would not mind this one choice. I would put it in the sitting
room he planned for me if he truly hated it.

“Yes, he does,” I said slowly. “But I simply must have this Gérôme.”

I saw the faint worry puckering Millie’s brow, but I could not help myself. As I talked Jean-Claude into selling it to me,
I felt the oddest sense of power, of strength—the same sense I’d had yesterday in the garden. As if there were some force
directing my actions, something that was wholly myself, a freedom. . . .