“I don’t have children, so I’m still looking for that compelling reason. Unfortunately, smoking and painting are tied together in my thinking. Paint a little, smoke a little, paint a little. The truth is, I’m afraid to give it up. Maybe the art wouldn’t come without it.”
Jo settled back so that she was out of the sun. “You’re famous, Ben tells me.”
“Famous? I sell well, but ‘famous’ is something else entirely. I enjoy what I do, and that’s what’s important for me.” She sent out a cloud of smoke, and waved it away from Jo. “I was so pleased to see you last night. You and Ben. It reminded me of that wonderful summer.”
“That was a long time ago. A lot has changed.”
“Some things. Ben still loves you. He always has.”
“Twenty years ago he left me, Rae. Without a word of explanation.”
“I know.” She looked up at the blue sky, squinting through her dark glasses. “When I left for school at the end of that summer, I prayed Ben would marry you. I’d talked to him about it. I know he hadn’t told you about Miriam, and he made me promise not to say anything. He was so torn between love and duty. For a little while I thought he would choose love. But Lou’s a formidable obstacle for us all, and in the end, fate seemed to be on his side. In September, our mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She went quickly.”
“He never said a word to me.”
“How could he? Her dying wish was for him to marry Miriam, and he couldn’t say no. If it’s any consolation, he was miserable his whole marriage.”
“What was she like?”
“Miriam? A horrible JAP. I’m Jewish, so I can say that. She was spoiled, self-centered, vain. What was important to her was the big house, the country club, the glittery life. She didn’t love Ben any more than he loved her, but the life she had seemed to give her everything she wanted. Ben walked through that marriage with his eyes and his mouth closed. And his heart. God, it was painful to see.”
“How did he endure it?”
“By doing what the Jacoby men have always done. Poured himself into the business, made money to support his family, found his pleasure in other women.” She looked deeply into Jo’s eyes. “When I saw how Ben looked at you last night, I thought about how everything might have been different.”
In the silence that followed, she took a long drag off her cigarette.
“I brought you something,” she said, brightening.
She lifted the canister, unscrewed a cap at one end, and pulled out a rolled canvas, which she gave to Jo.
“Open it,” she said.
Jo spread the canvas and recognized the painting immediately. It was her, Jo, in the white dress, in Grant Park, twenty years ago.
“Ben asked me to do it for him before I left for school that fall. He wanted to give it to you as a gift. Then he ended things and gave it back to me and told me to get rid of it. He couldn’t bear to look at it. I’ve kept it all these years. I’d love for you to have it.”
“It’s beautiful, Rae, but I can’t.”
“Please. It was always meant for you. It would give me great pleasure knowing that you finally have it.” She put a hand on Jo’s arm. “And honestly, if you decide you can’t keep it, you have my blessing to sell it. Believe me, you could get enough for that canvas to send Jenny to Northwestern for a year. Take it, Jo, please. For me.”
She didn’t feel comfortable accepting, but she also felt that to decline, particularly in the face of Rae’s strong insistence, was not right, either.
“All right. Thank you.” She rolled it again and slipped it back into the canister. “So you’ve become the artist you always wanted to be.”
“No thanks to my father.” Rae laughed. “He disinherited me.”
“Because you became an artist?”
“That and because I didn’t marry the man he’d chosen for me.” She dropped her cigarette and crushed it on the pavement. “My parents’ marriage was arranged and was a dismal affair. Ben married the woman my parents chose for him, and I saw how miserable he was. I decided, come hell or high water, I was going to marry for love. And I did. George Bly, a wonderful man. It was George who urged me to follow my heart and to paint. He’s an artist, too. Stained glass. My father cut me off financially and cut me out of his will. Big deal. George and I do fine financially. The important thing is that we love what we do and we love each other. Believe me, that’s not typical for the Jacobys.”
“What about Eddie and his wife? How was that marriage?”
Rae shook her head sadly. “That may have been the greatest travesty of all. You knew Eddie well?”
“Well enough to wonder about the woman who would agree to marry him. Ben told me she’s Argentine.”
“Yes. From one of the best families. She’s beautiful, well educated, cultured, and broke. When the Argentine economy collapsed, her family lost everything. Once again, Jews became the target of old hatred and prejudice. Many of those who were able to emigrated-to Israel, Spain, the States.
“My father and Gabriella’s father had been financial associates for years. The situation in Argentina developed about the same time Eddie hit marriageable age. No woman who knew him would marry him. My father understood that. He’d seen Gabriella and knew the plight of her family, and he arranged to marry the poor girl to Eddie. It got her out of Argentina, and Lou promised to help the rest of the family emigrate. Her parents chose to go to Israel. Her brother came here.”
“I was impressed with her last night.”
“She is impressive. She proved to be a dutiful wife, good mother, doting daughter-in-law. Lou absolutely adores her.”
Jo detected a note of bitterness in that last statement. “Is that a problem?”
Rae pulled another cigarette from her silver case and lit up. “In his business dealings, my father’s a powerful and perceptive man. In his personal life, he’s clueless. He has no idea about real love. He mistakes subservience for affection. My mother didn’t put up with his tyranny, and he ignored her. Ben tried to break free of his control, and Lou has never completely forgiven him. I defied him, and he all but banished me. See, my father’s great weakness is this. He’ll deny it with a vengeance but he needs desperately to feel loved, and feeling loved means two things to him. That you need him and that you obey him. Eddie’s mother, Gwen, understood this perfectly. She played to it flawlessly. Dad loved her and gave her whatever she wanted. Eddie grew up doing the same thing, the little toady, and became the apple of Lou’s eye. Gabriella’s no slouch. She understood immediately which way the wind blows.” She shot out a puff of smoke. “If I sound bitter it’s only because, despite everything, I still love my father. And I pity his blindness and I miss his affection. So maybe, in the end, I’m just as screwed up as all the other Jacobys.” She looked away as a tear crawled down her cheek from behind one of her dark lenses. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“That’s okay,” Jo said.
“You”-Rae laughed gently-“you would have made a great sister-in-law. Tell me about your life now. Everything.”
They talked for an hour, then Jo looked at her watch and said it was time to meet Rose and the children. She stood up, slung the canister strap over her shoulder, and gave Rae a parting hug. As she walked away, heading toward the primate house, Jo couldn’t help thinking that there were a lot of cages in the world, and not all of them had bars.
37
No one knew the true age of Henry Meloux. He was already old when Cork was a boy. Meloux was one of the Midewiwin, a Mide, a member of the Grand Medicine Society. He lived on a rocky, isolated finger of land called Crow Point that jutted into Iron Lake at the northern edge of the reservation.
Cork parked the Pathfinder on the gravel at the side of the county road, locked up, and followed a trail that began at a double-trunk birch and led deep into the woods. For a while, the way lay through national forest land,
