Luck (35 page)

Sophie shivers—all the things
family
can be.

On some later day they can settle in, just like old friends, to deconstruct the evening, and Beth and her father, and families, and Max, and even this portrait of Phil—conducting what Hendrik calls, perhaps because of his profession, an
autopsy
of the night. Sophie couldn’t do what Nora does, she wouldn’t want to be Nora, and she sure couldn’t have that painting hanging anywhere near her—ashes! Teeth! Beth isn’t the only unenviable one. Sophie thinks it would be terrible, worse, to be Nora, saddled with such capacities, but there it is, and for one unlikely reason and another they seem to have turned shared flesh into something else, so Sophie’s objections are really neither here nor there, are they? Hendrik puts one arm around her, one around Nora. “Would you mind if we left, too? It’s getting late and Sophie’s been on her feet quite a while.”

It’s true Sophie does look excessively flushed even against the flames of her dress and her hair. “She has a touch of high
blood pressure we’re keeping an eye on,” he explains to Max. “But we’ll be back tomorrow for a better look-round. And you know I’m interested in those portraits of Sophie, right? Should I write you a cheque now?”

“No need, but if you are sure, I will mark them as sold. It can be useful to boost people’s sense of demand with a reminder of diminished supply.”

“I’m pleased you’ll have them,” Nora says. “I like knowing they’ve found a good home.”

Sophie has been looking forward to the hotel suite, its Jacuzzi and room service and movies in bed, but now, abruptly swamped, she longs to climb into that long, black car of theirs and drive straight home through the night. To where she and Hendrik belong, where they could get right back to the business of creating their own shifting pictures, which do not hang on walls but are real and include a whole world: the eyes and bony hands of Martha Nkume and the flat, hard knowledge of heartlessness, yes; but dreams of good hearts as well.

She could drift and dream all the way home; except Hendrik would be disappointed, he has been looking forward to this get-away, excited by his own plans, and Sophie is happy enough not to be entirely free, so of course they’ll go to the hotel. “Yes,” she tells Nora and Max, “I’m sorry, but I am tired. It’s the crowd. I’m not used to so many people. I’ll be fine once I can put my feet up.”

“Will we see you again?” Hendrik asks Nora. “Will you be here when we come back tomorrow?”

“Could be. There’s a newspaper interview that’s being done here. I’m really glad you came tonight, though. And it was … interesting to see Beth, although I still don’t quite understand what you meant by wanting things to come full
circle, Max.” As he used to know and maybe still does, circles are only tidy in theory. Outside geometry, they don’t necessarily close.

“An old man’s foolishness, I expect,” he says. “It was only for me, to make things come to a better end than they began. I had not anticipated Beth as she is. I thought she would be remote and lovely, like porcelain, as I remembered her. But that is all right, too. I am glad you came, Sophie and Hendrik, the picture would have been incomplete and wrong without you. Thank you.”

“It’s been a pleasure,” Hendrik says.

“We wouldn’t have missed it,” says Sophie. “Do you expect to see Beth again, now that she’s asked you?”

“Perhaps,” says Max. “I feel for her, but more for her father. I have so much more than he. So far.”

“Well,” says Sophie, “you don’t have Beth. Hard to say if she’s a blessing or not. Will you see her, Nora?”

“I’d go to keep Max company, I guess. Probably not for myself, although I do feel bad now for abandoning her, even if she abandoned us first. But really, you know,” and Nora laughs, “I’m far too selfish to go around visiting random sick people. It’s not really in my nature.”

“Good,” Hendrik speaks up unexpectedly. “Don’t, either of you.” Why not? Hendrik isn’t usually a man who butts into other people’s lives with advice.

“Anyway,” Sophie says finally, “aside from Beth, are you happy with how tonight’s gone, Nora?”

“Oh,
happy
—you know, that never seems real or possible to me. Kind of like Beth, actually, those speeches beauty queens like to make about wanting to make the world
happy
, as if that made any sense. But a happy person wouldn’t do all this,” and Nora waves her arms to indicate everything on the
walls, “so I’m not unhappy about not being happy, if you see what I mean. But as I told Beth, I might be just about content at the moment. I know that sounds small, but honestly, it’s really fairly immense.”

She has followed all this way, this whole long distance: from Philip in flesh to Philip in bone, paint and ash. That’s about as loyal as anybody can get, well beyond any
Till death do us part.
Nora expects Philip would like that; or he’d laugh.

“Then good,” Sophie says. So it is.

“You be well,” Nora tells her. “You take care.”

“You, too. See you soon. Maybe tomorrow.”

Max was wrong about Philip’s voice going on and on in Nora’s head, giving advice or solace, but if Nora doesn’t actually hear him, she can picture him saying now, “Bye, Sophie. Good girl. Way to go.” At the front door Sophie and Hendrik wave, unlike Beth, wearing the smiles of people leaving something not unpleasant but still a relief to escape. Then they’re gone, back to their little two-person world, still a small astonishment to Nora, who could not begin to be someone like Sophie.

But then, she doesn’t have to be someone like Sophie, does she? “If I pay you your percentage, Max, is it okay with you if I make one of those portraits of Sophie a gift to them?”

“Yes, of course. You do realize, though, that would be a substantial gift. They are not inexpensive.”

“I know. That’s all right.” For the time being Nora is comfortably off, if not flush. Philip, of all people, turned out to have a healthy life insurance policy—who knew? Also, the house sold for a surprisingly high price that covered the cost of her much smaller new home, thanks to the tentacles of the city spreading in the direction of town—the upside of urban sprawl. And this show seems to be doing all right, and there’ll
be postcards and prints, Max’s usual endeavours. Surely she can afford to be generous with one lavish nude. Not all three, her future’s not as certain as that, and not at all as certain as Sophie’s and Hendrik’s, who are sitting on something better than gold, since there’s no bottom to mining the dead.

She can call the portrait a baby gift. “Look,” she can point out to the child later on. “Look, that’s your big naked mummy up there.”

That would naturally require Nora to visit Sophie and Hendrik in that godawful town, which she supposes she’ll do. She could always turn the town into something else: rocky landscapes, gingerbread houses, little flames flickering orange here and there, stick figures and tiny torches.

Oh, for heaven’s sake, let it go. There was a moment on her last day in the old house when she stood in the bedroom doorway looking into a room empty of furniture, of Philip, of herself, of touch and turmoil and pleasure and laughter and rage, not to mention empty of death, when she almost, almost, believed herself unable to leave it behind after all. But once out on the porch she also remembered rude words on the fence, shit on the doorstep, placards and cameras, anger and injury, and decided nostalgia must be for a time, which cannot be replaced, and not for a setting, which can be.

She drove off, unlike Lot’s wife not only not looking back but untempted.

If Philip were here he might turn now to his multiple portrait, head cocked, hands on hips, and say, “You know you’re the only one keen on it, don’t you?” Yes, that’s fairly obvious. “But you know, I like not going to waste. I like the colours and textures and odd bits and pieces. It’s busier than I’d have chosen, but I like you remembering me this way. And I especially like not being sold. I’d draw the line there.”

Something like that.

Max, having gone off to fix little red-dot
sold
stickers to not only the Sophie portraits but several of the other works in the two larger galleries, including the acrylic lollipop and the tobogganing kiddies, returns to say, “More people are beginning to leave, Nora. Will you come to the front door with me?” Because, of course, it’s proper to shake hands and embrace and kiss cheeks and say “Glad you could come,” and “Pleased you enjoyed it,” and “Thank you,” and “Goodnight.” Nora is, naturally, glad that people have come, and pleased they’ve enjoyed and in some instances bought. “We have done well,” Max whispers.

She should be safe financially for quite a while, then. As to other kinds of safety—well, apparently there’s no counting on those. Apparently grit, the determined ability to navigate and survive any unexpected day that crops up, is a more necessary quality than she would previously have imagined. Even Beth looks as if she’s learned something about that. It’s a courage that’s different from stubbornness, anyway. Look at Max, he is bendable—he’s had to be—but more than that, he is brave.

It’ll be a while before she has a new round of ideas, much less enough work in hand for a show. It’s entirely possible this is her last opening party with him. “How about you, Max, have you had a good night?”

“I have indeed. Your work is very fine, and the night has gone well, and although you perhaps think it foolish, and perhaps you are right, your little group all attended.” Maybe what pleases him most is still having the power to make something he wants come to pass. Nora hasn’t looked at him this way before: that absent other methods, he finds his own ways to make circles and other shapes that satisfy him.

Only a dozen or so people remain. The night’s catching up. “Would it be awful if I left now, too, Max?”

“Not at all. Best for you not to be last on the scene, and I can always tell people you became overwhelmed.”

“Overwhelmed by what, grief?” When Max nods, she slaps his arm. “You old devil.”

Although she is nearly overwhelmed, not by grief, exactly, but by a kind of awe. From here in the doorway she can look back past what remains of the crowd, through the wide-open doors of the smaller gallery, and see Philip, triple Philips, looking back. A person has one life and then, as in fire, flood or war, is thrust willing or not, ready or not, into another. Like Sophie’s refugees, in hiding, on the run, searching for places to be safe, although often enough suffering and dying instead; while survivors barter and scrounge, they make things where nothing existed before.

Nora, too. She is lucky so far.

This is a different kind of luck from Philip’s good and bad fortune, slipping quietly out of life in the night.

She slips quietly into the night herself, arm upraised for a taxi. Years ago she stepped out this same door on to this street, although in daylight, and in a mood for celebration. In a diner just down the block she ran into a woman she once knew in high school. Tonight she’ll go home, hang this one-shouldered, slashed-to-the-navel black number back in the closet, and lie alone in her enormous Philip-built bed where, on an August night a year ago, in another place, they fell asleep together and she woke up alone.

She won’t knock again in her life on a door that’s opened by a grinning, lithe, naked man.

She takes the next taxi that stops, gives the driver the address she’s still getting used to, and waves to Max, who
waves back although he is already turning away, his attention moving on as attention does when people are alive and attending to the next thing, which is always something right up until the very moment it’s not. Which makes the exhilarating, terrifying, luxurious, thrilling, glad-to-be-alive, diving-into-darkness question, as Nora leans back while the taxi makes its way through the city’s wide streets of neon and light, what it always is. Again, and again, and again, it has to be,
Now what?

J
OAN
B
ARFOOT
is the award-winning author of nine previous novels, including
Critical Injuries
, which was longlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize. Her work has been compared internationally with that of Anne Tyler, Carol Shields, Margaret Drabble, Fay Weldon and Margaret Atwood.
Luck
was a Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist. Barfoot lives in London, Ontario.