Best Intentions (20 page)

“Now?”

“It was a rough day, Lisa.”

I listen as the door closes behind him.

A
week later, news of my lax parenting has spread uptown.

It is written on my forehead, it is oozing from my pores: I am the mother with the regrettable habit of misplacing her children.

First Claire, caught out by Georgia three long blocks from school.

Now Phoebe's escapade in Union Square.

I'm not quite sure how every woman in Georgia Hartman's living room this morning knows of it but they do, I can smell it. Like a game of telephone, the details have surely grown more baroque and damning with each retelling. No doubt half of them believe Phoebe was rescued from the clutches of a child predator just as she was about to be dragged over the George Washington Bridge. And the other half believes something worse.

I look around the room for help, but the only possible source, Tara, is a no-show. In a manner completely out of proportion to our real relationship, I miss her.

The topic of this morning's benefit meeting is the auction catalogue—but beneath it all I can feel their sideways glances, a stew of maternal censoriousness and condescending sympathy at the hardships I must endure raising two juvenile delinquents.

It is all I can do to keep from screaming, My kids are the normal ones.

But of course we have different definitions of the term.

My normal does not include being captain of an international fencing team in your spare time, having a college adviser at age twelve to help develop extracurricular passions (plain old interests are no longer deemed good enough) or being the youngest congressional aide on record. My kids do not attend Exeter/Yale/Harvard during the summer break for extra classes. They go to camp. A Y camp at that. With positively no educational value. Except that they love it. And yes, my kids wander off sometimes. But in my heart of hearts I believe that children who never stray, who never test boundaries, will develop raging drug habits and a midlife crisis at twenty-two. Of course, I could be totally wrong. Their kids could easily be running the world while mine are nodding out on street corners.

“Lisa?”

I snap out of my internal rebellion to find Georgia staring at me. This proclivity to drift off in the middle of conversations, to get lost in the poorly lit grottoes of my own anxiety and indecision, is a new development. I need to be more vigilant.

“Yes?”

“Did you bring the picture?”

“The picture?”

“Of Ben Erickson's studio?”

I stare at her for a moment before I remember what she is talking about. Georgia, not content merely to list the many impressive offerings in the catalogue, has decided that each should be accompanied by a photograph to “personalize” it, perhaps even making the catalogue itself a collector's item. Not just any stock publicity picture will do. No, Georgia has volunteered (or ordered) her oldest daughter, Vanessa, to do all the photography herself. The fact that this will be incontrovertible proof of Vanessa's “passion for photography” on her college applications is a mere side benefit, one that the women assembled are too polite to mention though each is secretly peeved she didn't think of it herself. (The way I figure it, Vanessa has nothing to worry about. Both Georgia and her husband, as well as one
set of grandparents, all went to Princeton. How hard is it going to be? The word
legacy
was invented for her.) When Georgia first brought up the idea, I hedged, certain that Vanessa would pester Ben for an internship he has no desire to grant or a recommendation he would surely deny. It is bad enough that I am holding him to his promised donation despite his split with Deirdre. I certainly can't unleash Vanessa Hartman on him.

“I'm going to his studio this morning,” I reply.

“I wish you'd reconsider.” Georgia's sugarcoated smile is brittle, cracking in the corners. “Vanessa would be more than happy to do it.”

“I understand, but Ben is very private. He doesn't allow strangers in his studio.”

“So you've said. I didn't realize you two were such good friends.”

“We've known each other for years.”

“Yes, of course. Let's move on, shall we?”

I force myself to pay attention while the meeting progresses to paper stock, print runs and whether it would be possible to have one edition autographed by each of the better-known donors. Samantha, Class of '91, salivating at the connections this could augur, quickly volunteers to have her daughter do that.

It is ten a.m. when we are finally done. A slow, steady autumn rain, chilly and unforgiving, has begun to fall as I head out of the Hartman town house. I told Favata I would be doing department store research on one of our cosmetics companies and would be in by eleven, which doesn't leave me much time with Ben. I get out my four-dollar collapsible umbrella, open it, and curse the fact that I accidentally took the one with two spokes missing.

By the time I get out of the subway and make it to Ben's studio on West Twenty-fifth Street I am totally soaked. The smell of wet wool clings to me as I brush water from my coat and take a deep breath before pushing the buzzer. In all the years we've known each other, I have never been alone with Ben. As I ride up in the industrial elevator, scratched and dusty, my throat is suddenly dry. All of
the conversations, the innuendos, all of the times I have urged Deirdre to leave him feel as if they are staining my skin.

If nothing else, the etiquette of the situation is oblique to me. Do I mention Deirdre, pretend I know nothing of their breakup, offer some form of—what?—sympathy?

Upstairs, a shaggy-haired young man in a black T-shirt and jeans, a single tattoo of thorns wrapped about his muscled forearm, opens the door to the vast studio.

“Are you Lisa?”

“Yes.”

“Hi. I'm Owen. Ben's assistant. Come in. He'll be right with you.”

Owen smiles pleasantly, an off-center toothy grin destined to shatter girls' hearts, and continues to pack up huge battered leather trunks with wires and clamps, lights and lenses. “He doesn't exactly travel light,” he remarks without looking up.

“Where are you going?”

“I'm not. Ben is. India.
Vogue
is doing a story on an ashram outside Delhi and asked Ben to shoot it. Have you been?” he asks as casually as if it is Brooklyn.

“No.”

“Me neither. I offered to go, but he prefers to use local people as assistants. Seems an iffy proposition,” he remarks.

“He's going to have a field day getting all that through customs,” I remark.

“We ship it over ahead of time. All he has to bring is a small carry-on bag.”

Owen closes up one trunk and starts on the next while I step around a cluster of tripods leaning in the corner like folded-up tin men and go into a large open area, which has soaring white walls and a hammered-tin ceiling. At the far end of the room is a bare stage shadowed by a gray paper backdrop, rolls of colored screens, silver umbrellas and wooden stools of varying heights. An enormous African mask hangs on the wall beside it.

“It is supposed to offer protection but it has always seemed rather menacing to me. Then again, maybe instilling fear in others is the best protection there is.”

I turn to see Ben walking toward me.

“You're drenched,” he says as he leans over to kiss me hello. “Let me take your coat.”

He steps behind me and gently lifts the shoulders as I struggle out of the dank, clingy sleeves. When I am finally free, Ben hangs it on an antique brass coat stand in the corner a few feet from his bicycle, an old gray clunker with a bent wire basket hanging from the handlebars. I would have thought he'd have some fancy spider-thin Italian number or a mountain bike with 102 gears—Ben, the connoisseur of people and objects, with his fine discriminating eye and his artist's appreciation for anything well made.

He notices my reaction and shrugs, smiling. “They get stolen every two or three months so I've stopped investing in them,” he remarks, with none of the outrage or frustration others might evince but rather an easygoing acceptance, as if the city's flaws and favors are equally intriguing. Ben's confidence, his innate cool and unapologetic faith in his own taste and judgment, leave me feeling hopelessly conventional.

“You've never been here, have you?” he asks as I take in the studio.

I shake my head. “I can't thank you enough,” I say as he leads me through the three-thousand-square-foot space. “You didn't have to do this.”

“Not at all. I've been bullied enough times by the benefit committee at Jake and Beryl's school to know what it's like.”

I can't imagine Ben being bullied by anything or anyone.

“I'll admit this catalogue thing is a new twist, though,” he adds as we step around a ball of thick black electrical cords. “What exactly do you need?”

“Oh God, I don't know. Anything will be fine.”

Ben laughs, his narrow face creasing. “Let me give you a tip. Pre
tend to know what you want, even if you don't. It makes the person posing far too insecure when there is no evident plan. Someone needs to be in control. It might as well be you.”

“Is that your technique?”

“One of them,” he acknowledges. Beneath his amused demeanor, there is an old-world wiliness, an assumption that anything can be bartered, and an undeniable relish in the process.

“This must be torture for you,” I worry out loud as I pull out the digital camera I've brought, an old model twice the weight of the newer ones.

“Not at all. Amateurs often come up with far more interesting images than the hackneyed ones we professionals perpetrate. Fewer preconceptions, I suppose. Though I have a feeling you've come armed with a few about me.”

I look away nervously.

He steps closer to me, his voice even and gentle. “Lisa, I realize the awkwardness of the situation, okay? But whatever happens between me and Deirdre, it has nothing to do with you. I'd like to think we're friends.”

“Of course,” I reassure him, relieved.

Friends and lovers, attached and unattached, are seemingly fungible delineations to Ben. Still, I can't help but imagine that his reaction might be a bit stronger if he knew of my machinations.

“Come. Tell me where you want me to stand. I'll do anything you want except for one of those hokey things where I'm holding a camera and looking pensive.”

Needless to say, this is precisely what I was going to suggest. I glance around, desperate for some meager inspiration that will not totally embarrass me.

“How about here?” Ben asks, rescuing me from my own discomfort. He moves just to the right of two white couches in a makeshift sitting area. “The light is good and you can get the tripods in the background for all that local color the benefit ladies go for.”

“Perfect.” I hastily raise my camera.

Ben buries his hands in the pockets of his black jeans and turns
so that his face is at a three-quarter angle. His handsomeness is one of hollows and planes, more intriguing because it is not obvious. As I study him through the viewfinder, his deep brown eyes look directly at me, unwavering. Despite his preternatural stillness, there is something tightly coiled in him, an edgy magnetism. It is impossible not to see the temptation, the lure of him.

I click the shutter twice and lower the camera.

“That's it?” he asks. “If I were you I'd take a few more just to be on the safe side. I'm sure the last thing you want is to have to come back here.”

“Am I making it seem that painful?”

“Not at all. I just know how easy it is to make mistakes. Unfortunately, by the time you realize that you don't have what you need it's often too late.” He walks over to the seating area and perches on the arm of the couch. “Let's try this. Move over to the right a few feet. There, that's good.”

I smile. “I thought I was the one who was supposed to have the plan.”

“Sorry. I'm not used to relinquishing control,” he says, laughing just enough to soften the admission.

I take a few more pictures, following his direction. “I've always wondered, do you have an idea in your head of what the finished image will be before you begin?” I ask, kneeling down as he suggests.

“I try not to. My job is to expose what I discover in a person without editorializing.”

“That's hard to do with some of your subjects, isn't it?”

“Not really. It's what makes it interesting.”

I cannot decide if Ben's genuine lack of prejudice is open-minded or betrays the libertine's desire to taste and experience everything if his refusal to pass judgment means there is no right and wrong in his world.

“I seem to recall you can't believe anyone with a shred of sanity would sit for me,” he adds teasingly.

“Did I say that?”

“Close enough.”

“Well, consider it a testament to your talent,” I reply.

“A likely story.”

Finally, I have taken enough pictures to satisfy Ben.

“Owen said you were going to India to shoot an ashram?” I remark as I put away my camera.

“Yes, I'm leaving on Monday. A celebrity ashram, if you can imagine. According to
Vogue,
inner peace is the must-have accessory of the moment, though I believe they are selling it, subliminally at least, as a beauty treatment as much as anything else. When we were discussing the assignment, they made a point of telling me how everyone there had these fabulous complexions and how nice it would be if I could capture that on film along with the more sensual yoga positions.”

I laugh. It is much easier to dislike Ben when I am not in his presence.

“Come, I'll show you out.”

As we walk past the coffee table, my eye is caught by a stack of eight-by-ten black-and-white photos, fanning out across the glass. They look fresh, almost wet.

And they are all of Deirdre.

I turn away self-consciously.

“Do you want to see them?” Ben asks. “I just developed them last night.”