Clara and Mr. Tiffany (47 page)

ON MONDAY I WENT
to the company library and studied lotus blossoms in a book of flowers. Such an elegant, simple shape. Each outer petal of a bud was like a heart turned upside down. If Mr. Tiffany loved the lotus, maybe a lotus lamp might give him a moment’s reprieve from grief.

The book gave bits of cultural history. In Buddhist tradition, the lotus represented purity floating above the muddy waters of unbridled desire, and a Confucian scholar wrote, “Although growing from the
mud, the lotus is unstained.” It was the perfect flower to invoke at this time.

I remembered that in the pond in Central Park, lotus buds were plump and round and stood upright on tall stalks, all head on one delicate leg, although some heads were so heavy that the stalks arched over and the buds nearly touched the water. I drew some buds pulling their stems down into an arc. There wasn’t anything unique about buds in flat leaded glass. Instead, their roundness made me want them to be three-dimensional. Blown forms! Why not?

I hurried down to the showrooms, where I found pond lily, one of the classic and popular blown lamps. Up from a bronze socle of lily pads, twelve bronze tubes rose close together and then arched out and down in all directions so that the blown bud on the end of each tube hung upside down. The shapes were more like narrow trumpet vine blossoms than water lilies. All the better. My bud shape would be new. It was only the concept that I had wanted to verify.

But how should I position the buds in relation to a leaded-glass shade? Was I designing myself into a conundrum? Whatever I would create, I wouldn’t go to Mr. Thomas. I wanted no limits. Mr. Tiffany’s profligacy gave me permission to be extravagant. I would go to him.

A
N ENORMOUS CHRISTMAS TREE DECORATED WITH BLOWN-GLASS
ornaments was the centerpiece of the reception room of Mr. Tiffany’s Seventy-second Street mansion. After attending half a dozen Tiffany Balls there, I was perfectly comfortable. Only Alice, Agnes, the three Misses, Minnie, Beatrix, and Mary seemed equally at ease. Olga walked around the Persian carpets, not daring to step on them. It seemed painful to her to be in a place of such ostentatious wealth and alien style. Her troubled expression revealed some anguish tumbling in her mind. She looked around the room in near panic until she saw the magical butterfly and Japanese lantern window. Then, comfortable with something she could relate to, she was rapt, as still as stone.

Olga was proof that Tiffany Studios was more than an art industry. It was a great social laboratory where a waif formerly curling feathers at a dollar and a half a week could speak to the son of the King of Diamonds. The poorest of my Tiffany Girls had the same delight in color that I had, the same yearning for recognition in the small world of our studio, the same hope for love that shone in their eyes this gala evening.

Alice came toward me with a tea plate of petits fours.

“No sign of the pasha,” I said.

“You’d think he would at least make an appearance for five minutes.”

Nellie, Theresa, and Mary were especially disappointed not to be greeted by him. They wanted him to see them in their best frocks, and I wanted them to have the experience of interacting with him in this social setting. I waited twenty more minutes.

“I think I know where he is,” I said to Alice. “I’m going up.”

I went through the doorway into the small vestibule; climbed the narrow,
crooked stairs; and pushed open the carved double doors. A fire in one of the cave-like openings in the cedar-trunk chimney cast an apron of light over the floor. The rest was eerie darkness. Mr. Tiffany was slumped in a low chair that was draped with an animal skin, watching the huge logs burn. He raised his glass, took a long draft, and noticed me approaching, apparently without surprise.

“Excuse me. I thought you might like a report of how everyone is enjoying the evening.”

“I don’t give a sailor’s damn whether they are or not.”

His intended crassness lost its effect because he couldn’t get out the
s
’s in
sailor’s
without lisping.

“Don’t stand there like a servant girl wringing your hands. Yes, I’m plowed, and I’m going to get more plowed, so don’t act shocked. Sit down and have a drink with me. I need some company.”

“There’s plenty of company downstairs.”

“Puh! I’m in mourning. I don’t go to parties.”

He held up a cut crystal decanter to look through it to the light of the fire before he poured. “Is your friend Alice downstairs?”

“Yes. We came together. We live in the same boardinghouse.”

“How cozy.” Sarcasm colored his tone. “She’s a pretty kitten. She’s doing some fine work in Corona.”

“Your daughters aren’t downstairs. I thought they might serve as hostesses.”

“I asked them to. They don’t mind me anymore. They hate me now.”

“I’m sure they don’t.”

“Don’t placate me, Clara,” he said without turning to look at me. “You don’t know a thing about what goes on here.”

“Perhaps I do. I know you, and I can imagine them.”

“Has Belknap been giving you an earful? The two of you are getting pretty chummy. He’s queer, you know.”

“You see what you look for. That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“No, it wouldn’t. You’re prissy in your own way too.”

“Louis, pull yourself together. Just because you’re miserable and drunk doesn’t give you the right to slash everyone who’s loyal to you and who cares that you’re suffering. I know what it is to lose a spouse. You survive by remembering the good times. You don’t wallow in regrets.”

“I’ll wallow in them if I damn well please. God knows I have enough of them.”

He still wouldn’t look at me. He just pounded his fist against his chin and watched the flames.

“Take a look on that table,” he said.

On it was a check for three hundred thousand dollars, made out to the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.

“That’s generous of you.”

“Remorse money. She was on the board there.”

“Does it make you feel any better?”

He stared at the flames until a log shifted and sent out sparks. “Not a damn bit.”

Slowly he lifted his chin, and tears threatened to spill.

“I was too absorbed. I didn’t pay enough attention to her health, or her wishes.”

“Berating yourself won’t help you.”

“It was the same with May, my first wife. I was dead set on going to Algeria to paint exotica in the colors of Delacroix. Nothing was going to stop me, even when the baby died. So we went, but it was too soon after the birth. That was the beginning of the end for her.”

What comfort could I offer? Syrupy sympathy laid on an open wound like dollops of honey would be counterproductive. He had dug himself a pit of misery so deep that easy clichés couldn’t pull him out.

“You’re an extraordinary man, Louis. I know that out of the hellfires of regret, you can kindle something worthy of your best nature.”

“I am. Laurelton Hall.”

“I didn’t mean something material.”

“You know what they call a fellow like me? An egoist.”

He took a drink that dribbled out of the corner of his mouth and wiped it with the back of his hand.

“It’s one of those academic psychology words that my daughter Julia called me. Different than an egotist, though I may be that too. It’s a person who can’t
see
beyond his own interests. A fellow who isn’t even aware of anything but himself. The opposite of egoism is altruism. I exemplified one. Lou the other. Egoism killed altruism.”

“Therefore the check,” I said.

“Therefore the bloody check.”

“It’s still material.” And it wasn’t earned by him.

He emptied his glass in two gulps.

“The twins are coming in here any minute. We have an appointment at ten o’clock. If they miss it by so much as the first chime, they have to wait until the next night at ten o’clock. I’m training them in punctuality.”

“Sometimes that’s hard for young girls. How old are they?”

“Almost seventeen.”

“How many nights have they had to wait?”

“Three. I know what it’s about. We’ve been through it a dozen times.”

“And they’ve seen you in this state for three nights running?”

“I usually wait until after they’ve gone to bed, but they know.”

He glanced at the enormous grandfather clock standing like a sentinel under the loggia. In the quietness between crackles of the fire, it ticked like a solemn, inexorable metronome.

“Only two more minutes.”

“Then I’ll leave now.”

“Stay!” he ordered, as though I were a pet dog. “This won’t take long.” A low snort issued from his throat. “I might be more polite with someone else here.”

He had sharp perceptions of his faults, but he seemed woefully content with them.

We heard steps on the stairs. He hardly turned from the fire when he introduced the twins as Julia and Comfort. They were beautiful, younger renditions of their elegant mother, impeccably groomed, one in peacock blue, the other in emerald green. Canny choices.

“Why aren’t you downstairs with the guests?” he asked, indifference flattening his voice.

“It’s dreadful and awkward. They ogle everything, even us.”

“All they can say is how grateful they are for being invited and how great Mr. Tiffany is.”

“Maybe you ought to listen.”

“We brought you our applications to Bryn Mawr. They’re all filled out,” Julia said evenly.

“We need your signature,” Comfort said, as though it were something small.

“And a check for each of us.”

“Who told you that you could apply?”

“Our teachers.”

“I’m the head of this household. Not your teachers.”

An angry lisp on the last word.

“Please, Papa.”

“Monday at five o’clock is the deadline,” Julia wailed.

It seemed a continuation of earlier battles. Since he didn’t hold out his hand for the applications, Comfort put hers on his lap. Julia quickly followed. He looked down at the papers without touching them.

“You still have microbiology listed as your field of study?”

“Yes, Papa. I’m committed to it,” Julia said.

“Foolishness! No daughter of mine will become a doctor, wiggling her fingers up people’s asses,” he said savagely and brushed the applications onto the floor.

Shock crackled right through me.

“Please, Papa. Mama thought girls should have educations as well as boys.”

“I am not your mama.”

Comfort picked them up, straightened the pages with trembling hands, and set them on the table next to him, right on top of the check to the infirmary.

“Yours says what?”

“Literature and art,” Comfort said.

“You don’t need a college degree to become an artist. I never had a college degree. You can do your watercolors and write your little stories like you’ve always done right here under this roof.”

“And they all turn out the same because I don’t know any more. I’ve reached the limit of what I can do on my own.”

“I don’t believe in limits. Mrs. Driscoll here will tell you that.”

“Then don’t limit us!” Julia shot back.

What could he possibly be thinking? That with university educations, they would surpass him intellectually? What a reversal of the Tiffany Imperative. He hadn’t achieved that goal of outdoing his father,
and now he was ensuring that his girls wouldn’t outdo him. What sickening perversity. But they were strong girls.
Although growing from the mud, the lotus is unstained
. I could only hope.

“We don’t understand you,” Comfort said.

“There’s nothing to understand. I give you everything you could want. You want a beach. I build a beach. Tennis court. Bowling alley. You want a sailboat. I give you a yacht. You want a Thoroughbred. I give you a stable full of them. I give you a beautiful house where you can have gala parties.”

“We don’t want your house,” Julia said. “We never did. It’s cold. We wanted to stay at the Briars.”

“Mama wanted to stay at the Briars. Who wants to live in a museum? You never listened. You didn’t care,” Comfort wailed.

“You still don’t care about anybody but yourself.”

“Don’t you dare say that in front of a guest. Or to my face!”

He grabbed the papers and flung them into the fire.