“He’s not in jail,” I said.
“Give it the holidays and then move on. That’s my suggestion,” Bentley said.
“Evan, you’re so practical. Sometimes too practical for an artist. Can’t you see that Jane is passionate about this?” Melody asked.
“Passion is something best kept locked up,” Bentley said. He had put his passion in a cage when he left the bottle behind. Sometimes I missed the old Bentley, the one who sneaked into a room off the kitchen during a literary lunch at the Ritz and took a torch to an ice sculpture of Jane Austen’s head. And although his writing had matured and the reviewers liked it, the verve, the humor of that first book, his first great success, never came again.
“I think he’s fallen for Charlie’s sister Lindsay,” I said. Until I had said it out loud like that, I had kept myself from believing it. I wanted someone, anyone, to come rushing in and say, “No, that’s not true.”
“Who? Jack Reilly?”
“Max Wellman.”
“That’s that, then,” Bentley said. “Give it up. Sometimes you have to give things up, Jane.”
He looked at me with pity, as if I were now, only at this late stage, having to learn the hard lessons of life.
“Come and see my new sculpture,” Melody said.
She took me into her workroom. She pulled a wet rag off a lump of clay to reveal the bust of a man.
“It’s very bad, isn’t it?” she asked.
“It captures him,” I said, though I wasn’t sure who it was. I hoped that the bust was supposed to be either Bentley or some other recognizable figure.
“You think?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
If it was Bentley and if she had, indeed, captured him, I wondered what the implications of that were. Do we all try to capture the people we love, either in clay, with words, or even just in our imaginations?
We returned to the kitchen. Bentley had made a fire in the brick fireplace and we sat in front of it with our legs stretched out. Melody and I drank snifters of brandy and Bentley held his perpetual coffee cup.
It began to snow, so rather than go back to Winnie’s, I decided to stay in the Bentleys’ guest room. Melody gave me one of Bentley’s oversize T-shirts to sleep in. I felt a bit like a fraud now, knowing that I was a part of a history he remembered so differently than I did. Down the hall the two of them were in bed, chatting the way I imagined couples did before they went to sleep.
I stood by the window and looked out. The flakes got bigger and bigger under the street lamps. I watched for a long time until the street was covered with fresh snow.
Chapter 18
Max invited us to his sister’s house—my house—for hot cider and skating on the Frog Pond at the Boston Common.
“Has your sister done her tree already?” Lindsay asked. The girls were home from Wheaton and we were having drinks at the Maples’.
“She doesn’t have one,” Max said.
“No tree?”
“They’re Jewish,” I said. Max smiled at me. My stomach did a little flip when he looked at me like that. I was dismayed to find that the more I saw Max, the more I wanted to see him. Even when he was right there, I walked around with a vague longing for him.
Max had changed. There was more of the actor about him. But as long as I could remember what it was like to have him twist toward me in bed, I couldn’t pull myself away. I don’t think it was hope, exactly, that kept me there; it was more like obsessive fascination—maybe it was hope.
This, if anything, explains why I didn’t leave. I had thought, very briefly, about going to Palm Beach, but quickly dismissed it. I even started looking for apartments in Boston, but Winnie said she couldn’t do without me. Even though I knew that no one was indispensable, Winnie’s marriage was on shaky ground and I felt that the presence of someone else kept it from sliding downhill.
“I know they’re Jewish,” Heather said. She was sitting on the arm of Max’s chair. Those girls couldn’t get enough of his physical proximity. They were always snuggling up to him like stuffed animals. “But why don’t they have a tree? Don’t you even have a Hanukkah bush?” she asked.
Max patted her leg in the accepting way of a man who has become successful and is now ready to round out his world by marrying a silly girl. He couldn’t see past their inexhaustible delight in him, past the family embrace. I think some romantic love works that way: you fall not only for the person, but also for a vision of yourself in their world.
The day came for the skating party and I wasn’t thrilled about being a guest in my own home. Still, there was enough curiosity in me to make me join the group. We all piled into Charlie’s car and headed toward the city.
When we walked into the front hallway of the house, I got ready for a jolt to my solar plexus, but it didn’t come. The hall was unchanged except for Max’s sister, Emma, who came forward to greet us. After we took off our coats and banged any excess snow from our boots, Emma put her arm around me and leaned in.
“Jane, I want you to feel just as at home here as you would if we weren’t here.”
That was impossible, but to say so would have been neither gracious nor polite. I tried for an authentic smile and thanked her. Emma had draped our staid sofas with exotic throws and pillows. The look was American Pedigree Meets Casablanca.
Though I had only been out of the house for a little less than a month, it looked more faded than I remembered. Maybe I was seeing it through fresh eyes. It had always had the shabbiness of old money. Did the worn damasks, chintzes, and satins look different to me now because their shabbiness would soon spring, not from old money, but from no money at all?
My college friend Isabelle had been shattered when her parents had sold the family home. It was as if they were selling off a childhood that could never be recaptured. She was thirty-two when it happened, but she still felt as if something was irrevocably lost. I had expected to feel that way, and was surprised to find that my prevailing feeling was relief.
Emma looked at me warily. How much had Max told her about us?
Max’s sister, having married Joseph Goldman, was now Emma Goldman.
“What could I do?” she said. “I loved the guy. His name is Goldman, so I took it. I suppose I didn’t have to, but I’m traditional about some things.”
“I don’t get it,” Heather said. “What’s wrong with the name Emma Goldman?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Emma said, looking at Max.
“She was a famous anarchist,” I said.
“A what?” Lindsay asked.
“An anarchist,” I said. “It’s someone who believes that government and law should be abolished.”
“Good thing we have Jane to translate for us. We’d never be able to cope,” Lindsay said.
“Anyway, it would never work,” Heather said.
“What wouldn’t?” Emma asked.
“You can’t get rid of government.” Heather said this with great authority. “It’s the silliest idea I ever heard.”
Joe Goldman joined us. His entrance interrupted the conversation, a very good thing under the circumstances. I didn’t know what a producer was supposed to look like, but it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that Joe Goldman was typical of the species. His walk was brisk, his smile welcoming. If there was something anywhere to be produced, he looked fully capable of producing it. We followed him into the living room, where he had contrived the perfect winter scene: a glowing fire, cookies warm from the oven, caramel apples. The cider, both
