Clara and Mr. Tiffany (20 page)

“Window curtains too!” I observed.

“That’s Dudley’s touch,” Hank said.

It was on the walls that their proclivity was evident: unframed prints of Caravaggio’s
Musicians
, four feminine boys with creamy skin and full lips positioned at close range, their bodies comfortably touching one another; Saint Sebastian bare to the waist and all stuck through with arrows; and Donatello’s girlish
David
with flowers on his hat, standing just the way George often stood, with the back of his hand resting against his hip in a scampish way.

Hank unrolled a large mosaic cartoon to show me Dudley’s entry for the American Academy in Rome prize.

“Was this for the
Triumph of Commerce
contest?”

“Yes. It amounted to no great triumph for us, though. George and I tied for third place, but that means our cartoons will be on exhibit at the Fine Arts Society. Maybe that’ll bring us some attention.”

“So that commerce might follow,” I said with what I hoped was an encouraging look. Dudley was a sensitive fellow. I didn’t want him to be disheartened.

The cutting of the large glass panels went well, without a wayward crack. It was amusing to do this mannish work while two tall men bustled around making a Waldorf salad and cucumber-and-cream-cheese sandwiches and setting the table for lunch. They were so proud to offer
me a meal of their own making. It was topped off with steamed prune pudding served in mismatched teacups.

“Now this
is
a surprise,” I said.

“I learned how to make it from a Quaker woman who ran the house where I boarded as a boy,” Hank said.

Without a prior hint of what was on his mind, Dudley blurted, “We’re worried about George. He’s not himself. He’s looking mighty sickly.”

“We’ve been out to Nutley. He’s had the grippe.” Hank stabbed his spoon into his pudding. “He isn’t painting.”

“Why avoid the subject?” I said. “He thinks his brother is dead.”

They both stopped eating.

“You want him to bounce back and be his impish self, like Donatello’s
David,
” I said. “He’s not going to heal until he’s working. Get him involved in something.”

Dudley ran his hands through his curls. “Tried that already now.”

I shared their anxiety. If Edwin’s disappearance was permanent, and if George never got over it, I was afraid for our friendship, and I would feel responsible for that loss as well as Edwin’s. I needed to see signs of his former frivolity in order to feel our relationship wouldn’t be harmed.

George hadn’t been the only one who wanted my marriage to Edwin to link us. My dream in Nutley nearly a year ago was indisputable. Only now, and only to myself, could I admit it. That didn’t keep my heart from breaking over losing Edwin. It was all too complicated for quick-and-easy peace.

“Don’t expect too much of him right now. It’s barely been four months. It will take time.”

I put on a good show for them, but Dudley’s quick glance at Hank told me they recognized it for what it was—show.

A FEW WEEKS LATER
I convinced George to come with me to see the Havemeyer bequest of Tiffany’s blown glass at the Metropolitan. I asked Alice to come too. Better to have two of us talking if he was sullen.

On the streetcar he perked up, hearing Alice talk about her favorite
paintings. We went right to the gallery of decorative arts. I spotted Tiffany’s work from across the room. Five glass cases were filled with blown forms, some with iridescent detailing in the motifs of feathers, flames, and arabesques. In the glass, streams meandered, clouds drifted, blossoms opened.

George stood transfixed in front of an array of free-form goblets twelve inches tall with slender stems. No two bowl portions were the same shape. One spread wide like a champagne glass. Others cupped in like tulips. Some unfurled in wavy lips like Iceland poppies. One had variegated swirls like graceful sea grass. Some coiled stems were like tendrils of a vine wrapped around nothing but air.

“How do they stand with those impossible stems?” George said. “They’re so brave they chill my spine.”

The expertise of the glassblower to coil the stem to resemble a corkscrew, to stretch it out and set the cup on it and know it would be balanced, was beyond belief.

Of those having iridescent decoration, Alice liked best the matte pastels with pearly arabesques. George was captivated by those suggesting velvety peacock feathers, the fronds delicate and supple, the eyes of the feathers multicolored iridescent highlights.

“The fronds give rhythm to the vase,” he said.

I thought of Tom Manderson, who had given me that dollop of glass. No doubt many of these were made by him, but there were no names other than Louis Comfort Tiffany’s. That didn’t surprise me, but I wondered how that made Tom feel.

“Where can I get peacock feathers?” George asked. “I want to paint them.”

A knot of worry began to loosen. For the hour we spent marveling at Tiffany’s glass, I felt sure that he didn’t think of Edwin once.

“I want to see the mummies,” he said.

“No. I refuse. We can’t get separated. We’ll never find each other.”

“Mummies. Please, Mummy,” he whined.

He folded his arms across his chest, flattened his hands, turned his head sharply to the left, and walked in mincing steps with both feet pointed to the left. Alice and I laughed. People looked askance at us. I
didn’t care. It was wonderful to see a glimmer of his former boyish self. Alice and I checked for each other’s reaction, tempted to indulge him but knowing it would be dangerous.

“No,” she said. “I want to show you my favorite paintings.”

A good ploy. Bless her. On the way to the European galleries he stopped for a long time in front of a Chinese scroll from the Ming Dynasty called
Marsh Scene with Egrets
. The pure white birds were feeding, bathing, grooming their feathers. One was airborne, preparing for a gentle landing among the reeds. Trancelike, George didn’t move, as if stillness were necessary to hear the birds speak, or the artist, reaching through centuries for the sole purpose of offering him a vision of harmony. Knowing something soulful was happening, we waited until he finally stepped away, his eyes slick as wet pond stones.

With Alice pulling on one arm and I on the other, we dragged him through corridors of Greek vases, Roman sculpture, medieval tapestries and altarpieces. Passing an Italian altar with a wooden triptych of angels in flight hanging above it, George asked, “If God died, what would happen to the angels?”

I braced myself against where he might take this, but I answered, “They’d have no deeds to carry out. No messages to deliver.”

“Quite right. They’d be unemployed.”

“They’d become bored,” Alice offered. “They would wither away.”

“No. They would turn into artists,” George said, enormously pleased with himself.

Relief! Joy! He was the Jester again.

A
WHEEL! A WHEEL! MY KINGDOM FOR A WHEEL. AT THE FIRST
buds of spring I had enough left from the sale of the wedding ring Francis had given me to lay down the enormous sum of forty-five dollars for this mobile contraption and five dollars and twenty cents more at Wanamaker’s for my ready-made linen bicycling costume of a fitted jacket and gored skirt, daringly six inches above my ankles. Nobody said I couldn’t.

Encouraged by Bernard shouting “Tallyho!” I wiggled up Irving Place one Saturday while he trotted alongside me, steadying me, the front wheel wagging like a metronome needle gone crazy. I didn’t trust myself to turn the thing while in the saddle, so I had to get off my mechanical stallion, wheel it around, and start again. Mounting the thing was treacherous, but propelling it forward was easier. Bernard let go little by little until I was truly riding by myself.

Dudley and Hank came outdoors to be entertained, and I felt like a little urchin who makes a couple of feeble hops on one leg without falling down, and is filled with admiration at his dexterity, doubly so because there are onlookers. Wouldn’t I ever grow up?

Suddenly, a fat man appeared out of nowhere. Instead of proceeding across the street, he froze in mortal fear, taking up the whole sidewalk like an idiot and waiting for me to pass between him and the mailbox, a space of a mere yard. Such a dainty maneuver demanded more agility than I could command. It was either the squishy fat man or the hard metal U.S. mailbox. Although the former would have been more comfortable for me, I heroically crashed into the federal government, landing on hip and elbow, the back wheel spinning on top of my leg.

“Clara!” Bernard called, rushing to me along with Dudley and Hank.

“Christ a-mighty, she’s down!” Dudley yelled.

Bernard lifted off the bicycle. “Are you all right?”

Dudley helped me up and steadied me. My left leg throbbed in several places, but Mother’s etiquette handbook surely admonished, “Do not lift your skirt to check for injuries after a fall.” My new skirt was torn near the hemline.

The fat man whose life I had saved and who had no business taking up all that space muttered, “A lady’s place is in the home.”

“And a gentleman’s place is to give way to a lady careening toward catastrophe!” I retorted.

If I failed, it would be due to a wobbling wheel, not a wobbling will. To everyone’s astonishment, when my legs had stopped trembling I mounted my wheel again and rode the length of Irving Place once more before retiring my steed to the stable.

My vanity forced me to wait for an opportune time that week when the men were gone in order to practice turning around. Not until I was proficient would they see me ride again. I donned my cycling skirt only to find the tear miraculously mended, hardly visible at all. Puzzled, I set out to practice lighting the wick on my oil lamp and found that it had been neatly trimmed. That I knew to be the work of Bernard, but could Dudley sew?

I rode up to Gramercy Park, and with wavering forward movement, I executed successfully one right turn and four lefts around the little park. I dismounted, turned the bicycle in the opposite direction, and remounted to do four semi-elegant right turns. I worked on that for half an hour, until I had the courage to attempt tight, full turns on Irving Place.

Lillian Palmié, one of the Prussian twins, had a wheel too, the Safety Model, like mine, with the two wheels the same size and a chain to make it go. Although she lived in Brooklyn, she offered to bring her bicycle on the train on Sunday, an unimaginable feat. We pedaled slowly down Fifth Avenue about a dozen blocks to Washington Square, rode under the Washington Arch, and came back. I could trail along behind her easily, but I ran into her if I tried to ride close beside her.

“Doesn’t controlling a machine make you feel you can design your
own destiny?” I called out to her. It was such a thrill to be teetering along with a gang of cyclists that we repeated the route until twilight.

With that, I had gained enough confidence to ride with Bernard. By this time I sported a spring riding hat, a cheap boater with band the same buff color as my riding costume, secured by two hat pins and a ribbon under my chin. It made me feel jaunty. I had become a woman awheel.

In high spirits, Bernard and I set off for Fifth Avenue, which entailed crossing four perilous raised electric and horsecar tracks on Fourth Avenue and two raised cable tracks on Broadway.

“Take them perpendicular, with some speed,” Bernard called back to me.

I had intended to walk across, but now I had to stay mounted. I tightened my grip on the handlebars and dashed out between cable cars. Safe on the other side, I breathed again to assure myself that I was still alive.

“That was quite an initiation,” I called up to him.

“You did fine,” he said, which made me inordinately happy.

Past Madison Square Park we began the upgrade. Torturous. After Thirty-sixth, I coasted on a downgrade past the construction site for the new public library where the beautiful Egyptian reservoir used to be. I had loved promenading on the wide walls with Sunday crowds and was sad to see it go. A hard choice. Water or books. Hmm. One could always have wine instead.

Grand Army Plaza at Fifty-ninth Street was a maelstrom of movement—electric trams and motorcars and wagons and carriages and newsboys whizzing by on rolling skates and people darting out into the roadway. Although Bernard deftly swerved among them, I got off and walked my wheel to Scholars’ Gate, the southeast corner entrance to Central Park, and remounted to run the gauntlet between two rows of posts. A shame he didn’t look back to see how cleverly I executed that!

The fresh fragrance of the flower beds and the little gaslights on the bicycles in the distance flickering like fireflies enchanted me. Mercifully, he’d had enough at Seventy-second Street, so we turned back and rested under the Wisteria Pergola. I thanked him effusively for the exhaustion he caused me.

“You know, bicycling isn’t just a matter of balance,” I said. “It’s a
matter of faith. You can keep upright only by moving forward. You have to have your eyes on the goal, not the ground. I’m going to call that the Bicyclist’s Philosophy of Life.”