Part 4 (2/2)

Possibly, she thinks, this is just another portrait George would characterize as disengaged. The direct gaze there, but the response it will elicit not It really looks like he's staring at me It really looks like he's staring at me but but Where has he gone? Where has he gone?

Alzheimer's, maybe. Some other form of dementia, perhaps. The wife has said nothing, though Clara suspects she knows. Or perhaps, she herself suspects and doesn't want to know. It explains the protectiveness, and also this late-in-the-day desire to capture him in oils.

He himself has spoken very little, silence remaining his dominant mode, and what he has said has had a fragmentary, illogical quality to it. The early comment about his wife, a couple of sentences about a case on which he worked when he practiced law G.o.d knows when.

Behind her easel, Clara is distinctly clinical in her response to him, her sympathies taking a distant second to her interest in capturing the image of someone so caught up in a process. To convey that sense of transition and not merely try to characterize the man seems to her to be an infinitely compelling task. She has had other subjects whose bodies and faces seemed defined by sadness, but this is something else. This has become, for her, a portrait of time itself. The past, represented in the ident.i.ty he is losing. The present, there in the glimpses still of someone trying to remain. And the future, well, the future is all too evident in the man.

The desire to talk with George about this particular portrait has grown strong, strong enough to be painful. In these last two weeks, it has become the focus of her missing him. His absence is woven throughout her life. It is there, of course, in her bed, where they made love, and talked for hours on end. In her living room, as well. On certain streets where they would walk together. In the restaurants they frequented, to which she doubts she will return. But the pain of losing him, finally, this time, not in some way that can itself be fixed by time, has coalesced around her longing to talk to him about this.

John Parker's gaze s.h.i.+fts again, but Clara says nothing. She has had enough of it herself for today, enough of that unmoored stare of his.

[image]

WHEN IT BEGAN AGAIN, it was as though no time had pa.s.sed. And yet, in some ways, those twenty-plus years had changed everything. He would leave Janet now, he said. He didn't like the thought of hurting her, but he would do it. He would marry Clara. Maybe too little, too late, he said. He would, though. He was serious. it was as though no time had pa.s.sed. And yet, in some ways, those twenty-plus years had changed everything. He would leave Janet now, he said. He didn't like the thought of hurting her, but he would do it. He would marry Clara. Maybe too little, too late, he said. He would, though. He was serious.

But Clara said no. She listened, noted his sheepish demeanor as he spoke; a marriage proposal, after all these years, the articulation of her own fantasies from the past. And then she said no. She had no interest in getting married. She preferred to live alone. She had come to value her independence. She now needed more solitude than a marriage would allow. The whole discussion took less than ten minutes. How funny it was. The very thing that had broken her heart, now no longer wanted. A trick of time.

It was time too that made them able to justify all of it, to themselves. Time and death. Life so short, eternity so long. That and the decision that what Janet didn't know, et cetera, et cetera. He had looked at Millie's coffin, that April day. He couldn't do it. Couldn't face eternity without this. Without her.

He was late getting there. But he wasn't too late. They could have something still.

[image]

HAROLD HAS CHOSEN a restaurant Clara doesn't know, somewhere dark and clubby, up near Market Street. He's a regular, it seems. The waiters call him Mr. Feinberg and suggest foods they claim to be certain he would like if he would only try something new. a restaurant Clara doesn't know, somewhere dark and clubby, up near Market Street. He's a regular, it seems. The waiters call him Mr. Feinberg and suggest foods they claim to be certain he would like if he would only try something new.

She watches his banter with them, and she tries to imagine herself as his wife. It would be forty years. Forty years this very month. She tries to imagine that they are married and they have gone out to dinner, in this place where he is a regular. This is the life they had planned, after all. They took vows, swearing to live this life. So, they'll meet for this dinner and talk about their day apart. And then they'll leave and head together to their home, where they'll switch on the lights, read their mail, share a nightcap, perhaps, brush their teeth. Then they'll undress. They'll climb into bed. Their bed. Maybe they will make love, and if so, they will see each other forgivingly, as she and George did. Eyebrows and all.

Harold orders steak and the waiter smiles, teasing that someday they'll get him to change his predictable ways. Someday. She orders lamb. They'll both have Caesar salads, an afterthought. Each of them already has a hefty scotch on the rocks, not an afterthought at all.

”Health,” Harold says, lifting his gla.s.s.

”Health,” she responds, and they clink. It sounds a little bleak, she thinks. The bar has surely been lowered, if health is now the most for which one can ask.

”This last one was the worst,” he says, and she has no idea what he means. She raises her own brows in a question. ”George,” he says, then takes another sip. ”Jesus, I'm seventy-four years old. I should be used to people dying. But I'll miss him, that's all. And it was so f.u.c.king sudden. Now you see 'em, now you don't. h.e.l.l of a game we're in.”

Clara looks down at her drink, and at her hand wrapped around it. There's a speck of light blue paint on the knuckle of her index finger, a trace of John Parker's tie. The ice cubes, hollow cylinders, are melting quickly, the whiskey near them at the top lighter in color than that below. ”I had no idea that you and George were in touch,” she says, as she shakes the gla.s.s gently, so the amber of the liquid evens out.

”George and I? Oh, yes. For some years now. We were close, I'd say. I suppose that after enough time, all that ancient business, well...”

She had kept the Coopermans in the divorce, but apparently something else happened after that. ”And Janet?” she asks, looking up. ”Are you and she also close?”

He shakes his head. ”No. No. No, indeed. Janet would never have a thing to do with me. I attained permanent pariah status, there. Loyalty to you, I suppose. I was never welcomed back. Didn't even go to the funeral. Didn't think she'd want me there. You?”

”No,” she says. ”I didn't go. She and I haven't spoken in years.”

The waiter has appeared with their salads. It takes some time for him to leave, as Harold decides on a gla.s.s of wine, and Clara declines one.

It's ridiculous for her to feel anger at George, she knows, to feel betrayed. But she does. How could he have rekindled a friends.h.i.+p with Harold, after what Harold had done to her? She wants to ask him-to ask George. How could he have said nothing to her? She wants to dial him up and have him explain this, have a fight about it, if it comes to that.

”They make a good Caesar here,” Harold says. Lifting her fork, Clara forces herself to take a bite. ”The thing about George,” he says, ”the thing I'll really miss, is that clarity of his. You remember? That way he had of just seeing a thing for what it was.” He's chewing as he speaks, wipes a bit of dressing off his lip with the back of his hand. ”Maybe I'm just a grouchy old man, but it seems to me there's even more bulls.h.i.+t around than there used to be. But not with George. Clear thinker. Straight shooter. It always surprised me, because in general I think of psychoa.n.a.lysts as slippery characters. But not George.”

It is unbearable.

”Harold,” she says, putting down her fork. ”There are things you don't know.” He is looking directly at her. ”Things about George.” she says. ”He and I were...”

We were lovers. Twenty-six years ago, after I threw you out. And then, again, for the past five years. He was, he is, the love of my life. He was, he is, the only possible reason a woman of my cynical nature would ever think to use a phrase like that woman of my cynical nature would ever think to use a phrase like that.

”He was a good man, Clara. Wasn't he?” Harold lifts his winegla.s.s. ”To George Cooperman.”

”We were lovers.”

And so. It is done. She sees that Harold's face has stilled. He is as still as a portrait, as though she has painted him with this news. Seconds pa.s.s.

”When?” he finally asks.

When? It is always about time, she thinks. Why does it matter when?

Because sometimes it does. ”After you and I separated.”

”You and George?” he asks. ”Right after? Back then?”

”Back then. Briefly. And then again. For the past five years.”

His face is mobile now, but in small, twitchy ways, the mouth twisting and s.h.i.+fting, the eyes looking down, then off to somewhere else, closed for a moment, open wide, looking at her, not looking at her. He is struggling to absorb what she has said.

It's revenge, in part. She knows that. He revealed his renewed friends.h.i.+p with George, and she has rendered that disclosure piddling. But she has also given him a gift. He's off the hook now. She is no better than he. George too. Look at what they both did to Janet. Just another pair of sinners. Harold can stop feeling inferior. After how many years? She has finally given him that.

”I don't know what to say, Clara. I should ask questions. Or I shouldn't. I don't know what to say. You and George?”

”Yes, me and... yes. But please, no questions.” What other memories of her own might be revealed as illusions? Might be taken from her as casually as Harold has just taken from her a part of George she thought she held? As effortlessly as she has just rewritten decades of Harold's own life for him? At this table, with this man-her husband once, father of her children, her future at one time-she feels her own history sliding away from her.

”Clara, I don't know what to say.”

”We don't have to talk, right now, you know,” she says. ”We can just eat our food. It's entirely possible that we've both already said enough.”

He looks at her for a moment, as though he might be ready for a fight, but then he nods.

[image]

A MONTH IN, MONTH IN, and she's on to the real canvas now. An art student has primed it for her, and Clara's done a little preliminary work on her own, using only the sketch, but now John Parker is sitting there, and he's staring at her. She's told him he doesn't have to, she's only blocking things out, just broad strokes. But still he stares, and for the first time in all these weeks, she finds herself unnerved. The other times, she had insisted he look at her, but this time he seems to be looking for himself. Clara is her eyes, she is what she observes. She doesn't like being looked at. Before, his eyes had seemed sightless; today she feels exposed. and she's on to the real canvas now. An art student has primed it for her, and Clara's done a little preliminary work on her own, using only the sketch, but now John Parker is sitting there, and he's staring at her. She's told him he doesn't have to, she's only blocking things out, just broad strokes. But still he stares, and for the first time in all these weeks, she finds herself unnerved. The other times, she had insisted he look at her, but this time he seems to be looking for himself. Clara is her eyes, she is what she observes. She doesn't like being looked at. Before, his eyes had seemed sightless; today she feels exposed.

She avoids his gaze, stepping all the way behind her canvas. She works a bit on the area below his jaw. George used to say she had a therapist's instinct for invisibility. ”I am often whoever my patients need me to be,” he said. ”Which is rarely me.”

”I'm not even that,” she replied. ”I'm not even in the room.”

She is absorbed in the canvas, actual brushstrokes, the movement of paint, when she's startled by a sound and looks over. John Parker is sobbing. His head is down, his body heaving. He is consumed by sobs.

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