“What are you doing?” hissed Justine, who had reappeared.
“Helping Peter clean out his fridge.”
“No. Stop. Come with me. You need to meet people.”
“Let me just wash these—”
“No.” Justine took the containers and threw them into the sink.
“I need another drink then.”
Once Mary Ellen had resupplied herself with gin, she and Justine carefully wound their way back up to the living room. The crowd had swelled, making it even more difficult to maneuver. “Richard!” Justine called, leading Mary Ellen toward a tall man who seemed to be draining a beer bottle in a single swallow. “Richard, I want you to meet someone. Mary Ellen is a photographer.”
Richard lowered the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Hi. What kind of work?” he asked.
“Um,” Mary Ellen said, looking at Justine.
“Representative abstraction,” Justine said. “Very Siskind-esque.”
“Ah,” Richard said, nodding. “Did you know there’s a really good Siskind in that group show at Strike Collective?”
“I’ve been meaning to go,” said Justine. “Doesn’t Alexandra have a piece there?”
“Yes, that big collage she was working on for so long. It’s good—a real takedown of all that faux Arte Povera stuff that’s been going around.”
“Oh, I know—did you see that Dominetti show—”
“In Barcelona? Shameless.”
Mary Ellen did her best to follow the conversation, making mental notes of names to Google later. She wondered what it was like, being an art person, understanding the references encoded into every piece of work, having well-informed opinions about what was good and what was bad. Since starting Justine’s class, she’d come to realize how shaky her own frame of reference was. Whether she “liked” something, whether she found it pretty or skillful or pleasing in some way, turned out to be completely beside the point.
Richard was poking Justine’s shoulder. “By the way, I heard something juicy about you,” he said.
“Oh God. What?”
“Lina Burns saw you at Blick. Buying paint.”
“Not true.”
“Come on,” Richard growled. “Oils, for Chrissake. What’s going on?”
“Lina Burns doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about,” Justine said, crossing her arms.
“Well, I hope it’s true. I asked what colors you bought, but she couldn’t tell.”
“That’s because Lina is color-blind.”
“Don’t be mean.”
“I’m not painting, and if I were, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“So you are painting.”
“Hey, is that Erica?” Justine waved at a woman across the room and rushed off, leaving Mary Ellen and Richard alone together.
“So.” Mary Ellen swirled the melting ice in her cup. “How do you know Justine?”
“I taught with her at Tyler,” Richard said, holding his bottle up to the light. “Before she was let go. I’m going to get another beer. Do you want one?”
“I’m okay, thanks.”
Having lost sight of Justine, and needing to look purposeful, Mary Ellen moved toward the stairs. As she picked her way up the spiral to the second floor, her mind coiled around the conversation she’d just heard. Was Justine a secret painter? What sort of art? Hadn’t she said that artists and teachers never intersect? Could someone like Justine—someone who knew so much—ever be satisfied with her own work? Did she really get fired from Tyler?
Mary Ellen found a table of drinks in Peter’s study on the second floor. The gin was making her thoughts loose and uncoordinated, but she was actually enjoying the exotic whirl of uncertainty, and she celebrated by pouring heavily this time. She turned around and found herself standing at the edge of a small clump of people. She shifted slightly to the left in order to position herself in front of an opening, and like magic, they parted, enlarging their circle, smiling and asking what she thought about GMOs.
It was starting to feel kind of good—being at a party, meeting new people, standing in a room with red walls and a handsome oak desk, with terrariums on the windowsill and books stacked both upright and sideways on the jumbled shelves. Justine was like her fairy godmother; she’d pulled her from the ashes of middle age and brought her to the ball.
Not that she and Matt never went to parties—of course they did. But usually they were out on the Main Line, where so many of their friends had decamped after having their kids and making their money. Outdoor sofas and crab canapés. Wine that sparkled and conversation that didn’t. They would drive home feeling groggy and satisfied, the way you do after Thanksgiving dinner. That was nice, they’d say. Harry seemed happy; has he lost weight? Amy sure is obsessed with mulch. I wonder where Caroline was; did someone say she’s in Sedona? Maybe we should go to Sedona.
Now Mary Ellen was chatting with someone she’d never met before about hydrofracking. A girl in braids was organizing a march on Harrisburg; the crowd was going to lie down and play dead on Commonwealth Avenue. Mary Ellen promised to join them, knowing full well it was happening on a day she had to go to Cleveland for focus groups. But tonight anything seemed possible—even being in two places, or being two people, at once.
She decided to see what was on the third floor. She excused herself and refilled her glass, then wound upward, her hand on the wall, uncomfortably aware of the way the steps were vanishing down the center of the spiral behind her. The stairs delivered her to Peter’s bedroom, where three people were lying on his bed smoking, and others were leaning against the floridly papered walls. Up here, everybody seemed limp, slumped, in need of support. A purple satin dressing gown hung from a black iron hook. The windows were slathered in velvet.
Mary Ellen sat for a moment on the end of the bed, careful not to touch the bare feet of the people lying behind her. She felt hungry, but the food was all the way down in the basement, underground, as far as possible from this lush aerie.
