Perfect Lies (22 page)

“Boucher and Fragonard mostly,” Hannah had told her with a slightly bored air. “Mid-eighteenth-century French paintings. Not totally my cup of tea, but a friend of mine is a curator there and she’ll let us tour the collection after hours on our own. It’s bliss to see this sort of thing without all the crowds.”

She met Hannah, as arranged, at the Eighty-third Street service entrance. With her was a tall, willow-thin woman in her late forties, sallow and oval-faced, her long black hair in a thick braid to her waist. Hannah introduced her to Meg as Frederica Gomez, “an old, old dear, dear friend” but when Meg held out her hand to shake Frederica’s, the curator seemed not to notice and led them without a further word down a long marble hallway. The exhibit was on the second floor, and even before Frederica nodded them into the stately high-ceilinged rooms, Meg could feel the giddy pleasure of the billowing, heaven-washed canvasses: the cerulean blues and salmon pinks, the carousing nymphs and satyrs, and the multitudes of chubby, forever-laughing putti.

“You’ve about an hour,” Meg heard Frederica mutter to Hannah.

“Thank you, darling,” Hannah replied, and the two women gave each other air kisses, European-style, one blown to each side of the cheek.

“I do adore her, but…” Hannah said when Frederica was barely out of earshot. She took Meg’s elbow and led her to an enormous canvas that acted as the introductory centerpiece to the show. “She is so very intense. Incredibly knowledgeable, though. And totally connected. She knows simply everybody.”

Meg couldn’t help but wonder who “everybody” consisted of and whether she herself was included among Hannah’s chosen ones, but she refrained from questioning Hannah’s snobbishness. There was no point in antagonizing someone she wanted to understand. They wandered slowly from room to room, examining the seductive landscapes of Boucher, Fragonard’s dramatic views, the intimate scenes of Chardin. From time to time Hannah would comment knowingly on a painting or artist.

“They say that Chardin began to paint these domestic pictures,” she told Meg when they stopped in front of a portrait of two women sewing, “because he was annoyed when someone said painting a still life was easy. Thank God for the idiot who made that pronouncement. I adore Chardin’s interiors.”

Meg kept trying to find a way to introduce Ethan into the conversation. But as they entered the final gallery and stopped in front of a large, richly colored Fragonard, Hannah did it for her.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about Ethan lately,” Hannah said, as they took in the canvas before them. It was a bedroom scene. A red velvet canopy unfurled from somewhere above and outside the painting, its deep color and soft fabric taking up almost the entire left side of the canvas. White sheets and pillows, slightly mussed, shone darkly beneath the lush fall of velvet. The right half of the painting depicted a man and a woman, their eighteenth-century dress in dishabille. The man had his left arm around the woman’s waist. She was arching back from him, her blond, powdered head seeming to draw away from his body and yet, if you looked closely you could see beneath the folds of her satiny gown that her legs were spread and her hips just starting to curve toward his tautly muscled thighs. This half of the canvas was brightly lit, a semicircle of intense white heat, accentuating the movement of the man’s right hand just as it found the tip of the bolt on the bedroom door. The woman’s hand, reaching blindly beneath his, was stretching to find the lock as well, but it was difficult to tell if her gesture was one of protest or complicity. It was a passionate, complexly textured painting, infused with ambiguity. How easy it is to misread other people’s signals, Meg reflected.

“I imagine we all have been thinking about him,” she said.

“I was recalling our conversation at the funeral,” Hannah went on. “That dreadful noisy basement. You were surprised, Meg. That Ethan would confide in me about your affair.”

“No, I was surprised that you’d thought there had even
been
an affair,” Meg corrected her.

“It struck me later that you didn’t know about Ethan and me,” Hannah continued, “that you didn’t realize we had been lovers, too.”

Meg turned and stared at the older woman, her expression obviously revealing her surprise. In her mind, she had for some reason confined Ethan’s affairs to Red River.

“Please, don’t look so aghast.” Hannah laughed nervously. “Knowing the kind of man he was I can’t imagine why you’d be surprised, unless it was my age. And that, frankly, I’d find insulting.”

“I’m sorry,” Meg said, trying to pull herself together. “But I didn’t know. And you’re right—it should have occurred to me.”

“I’m relieved to have it out, one way or the other,” Hannah told her. “Though I suppose a small part of me had hoped that Ethan had told you—that he’d talked to you about me … about us.” Meg could not help but hear the hurt and regret in Hannah’s usual plummy and unemotional voice.

They had a dinner at a northern Italian restaurant on upper Madison that was so new it didn’t yet have a sign. Hannah assured Meg that the food was delicious and that they’d better enjoy it now because the
Times
was scheduled to review the place glowingly the following week. Over a glass of wine before they ordered, Hannah told Meg about how she and Ethan had first met.

“He’d come by to drop off slides of his work,” Hannah said, smiling thinly. “Just a cold call. He was looking for representation and I generally never see anybody like him—I mean anyone with absolutely no connections. My secretary was at lunch and I was at the reception area. He pretended he thought I was the secretary and went on and on about how he heard how wonderful Hannah Judson was, what an eye she had, a sixth sense about talent. Of course he knew that I knew what he was up to … but, Lord, he was so charming. I looked at his work just to appease him. I was quite surprised to see how good it really was.”

“And you could tell? Just from a slide?”

“Well, of course, in the beginning it was a little confusing. Ethan himself is … was so vital … and disarming. I’ll admit that in the beginning, I cared a great deal more about him than his work. That first month? When we were talking about mounting the show, what to include, how to display the pieces? I began to see how closely he was tied to his art, how to a very large degree he
was
his work. It’s what gave him fierceness, his passion. And I began to see what
he
saw in the pieces—the compressed energy, the risk, the masculinity.”

“And if he’d been less … appealing? Would you have given him a one-man show like that?”

“Oh, probably not. But the line between talent and personality has always been rather blurred, don’t you think? One feeds on the other, fires the other. I mean, think of Picasso or Hemingway? Surely their looks, their sex appeal have played a part—an important one—in keeping their cult status alive. A strong, brooding photograph of an artist sells just as much as a glowing review. People want to see, to feel an artist’s creativity—his pain, his loves, you know. People, buyers, want to have that—whatever it is that drives the process—sometimes as much as the art itself. And Ethan? He was a walking embodiment of an artist. He had my clientele just eating out of the palm of his hand.”

“A regular poster boy for creativity.”

“That’s a bit cynical. I’m just saying the two things—talent, personality—are simptico.”

The meal, as Hannah had promised, was delicious.

“Did Ethan know all this?” Meg asked after they had finished. They had both ordered espressos, and Meg waited until after the two little white cups arrived before adding, “I mean—how you really felt?”

Hannah produced her strange, carrying laugh. “And how
did
I really feel? I’ve told you a few things, because you’ve asked. But it’s just a rough sketch, Meg, hardly the full truth. I took Ethan as a lover because he seemed so wild—so fresh—only to find he was also a truly talented man. So what does that say about us? We were adults. On a certain level I think we both knew exactly what we were doing—and what we could do for each other. But, no, I don’t think he ever realized that it was more for me than that. He was such a passionate man.” Hannah toyed with her spoon. Under the restaurant’s flattering light Hannah looked younger and more vulnerable.

“Didn’t it bother you to learn about his other women?” Meg asked. “Weren’t you jealous when you heard about his feelings for me?”

“Sad, perhaps. But I understood what Ethan was like from the beginning. And why should I hold him to a standard different from the one I set for myself? I believe in life in its fullest, most unrestrictive way. I look at nature as my guide—the animals, the seasons, the cycles of dormancy and renewal. I say, jump in, take what you can, give back what you will—take pleasure in it all. I like that part in the beginning of Genesis when God ends each ‘Let there be'… with ‘and he saw that it was good.’ It
is
good, Meg. And it’s meant to be enjoyed.”

“That’s how you interpret what Ethan was doing? Simply taking pleasure in life?”

“Exactly. He did what every man really wants to do. He just had the nerve and the energy to do it. That’s why I loved Ethan so. He had such drive! He was a romantic, in the truest sense of the word—thoroughly emotional, larger-than-life, a lord of nature.”

“Think of all the people he hurt,” Meg said. “The women whose lives he ruined. The marriages he wrecked.”

“So, what were they—lambs to the slaughter? Is that how you see it? A hoard of innocent, dumb girls, without any say in the matter, without any power, going under Ethan’s ax? Please! Don’t be so naive. These women—whose lives you say Ethan ruined—as far as I’m concerned, they were asking for it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Ethan was the single most exciting thing that happened to each and every one of them.”

The waitress came by with their check, and Meg picked it up. “I can’t say I shared your enthusiasm for Ethan’s charms.”

“Of course, you didn’t,” Hannah replied. “But then you never knew what it meant to love him, did you?”

“W
hen did all this happen?” Meg asked Abe, as he showed her into a handsome wood-paneled conference room. The requisite shelves of legal tomes took up one long wall. A Rothko-like lithograph of richly hued rectangles hung on the far wall at the head of the long bird’s-eye maple table. The lighting was recessed and subtle. This room, the new reception area, and the row of offices leading down the hall from Abe’s corner suite had all been added and renovated since Meg’s last visit. Though she spoke to Abe on the phone about business matters at least once a week, it had been easily a year since she stopped by his offices in Rockefeller Center.

It was nearly six o’clock on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, but it seemed to Meg that most of Abe’s staff was still working. Phones were ringing. The whine of a fax machine and the rhythmic swishing of a copier could be heard down the hall.

“I’m sure I told you we were remodeling,” Abe said, pulling out a buttery soft leather-covered chair for Meg next to him at the table. He closed the glass door on the noise from outside.

“And expanding? And adding staff? I saw the names of at least two new partners on your masthead.”

“Well, yes.” Abe sighed, dropping a legal folder in front of him as he sat down at the head of the table. “It’s been one of the few beneficial side-effects of divorce. You get to devote all your energies to work. And, happily for me, we are living in highly litigious times. So it’s now Sabin, Reinhardt, Tuchman, and Herrington, and we’re all making money hand over fist.”

“You don’t sound particularly happy about it,” Meg replied, trying to interpret Abe’s tone. He was often hard to read—his cynicism kept people off balance and slightly at a distance. He hadn’t always been so inscrutable. When both Meg and Abe were starting out in their different businesses, Abe has been far more open and affable. The day she’d first moved into the offices on Fortieth Street he’d sent her a huge bouquet of garishly colored helium balloons each carrying the preprinted message CONGRATULATIONS! It had been a long time, Meg guessed, since he’d done anything so spontaneous and whimsical. Sometimes when he smiled or laughed Meg could still see the boyish optimist she recalled from those years, but more often now, Meg saw only a serious, somewhat troubled man.

“Happy?” Abe tipped back in his chair, his hands folded behind his head. “In college, I remember we used to have these long philosophical discussions about happiness. Aristotle versus Plato. You know the sort of thing—what is the ultimate end of mankind? That’s what happiness seems to me now—a concept, an argument, an
abstraction.
So what’s real? I suppose I’m able to feel proud of all this, Meg,” Abe said, nodding at the beautifully appointed room. “It gives me a sense of accomplishment. I’m moving forward. Moving on.”

“From Becca?” Meg asked, without thinking.

“Now, about Jarvis.” Abe sat forward abruptly.

“Oh, Abe, I’m sorry.”

“You’re on the clock here, and my rates have gone up. I hate to waste your money on personal chitchat.”

The papers that Abe had prepared on the Jarvis lawsuit were incomprehensible to Meg, written in a legalese that made her want to nod off in the middle of each sentence. But she read through the twenty or so pages of complaint nevertheless and scanned the evidence sheets, mostly the approved schedules and consequent invoices that Jarvis hadn’t paid. The conference room phone rang several times while Meg was reading, and she listened with half an ear while Abe fielded the calls.

“No, no, Jacob. This is
just
the moment to keep a cool head. They’re hoping you’re going to run scared. Just sit tight and don’t sign a damned thing until we have a face-to-face with them next week.”

A few moments later the phone rang again.

“It’s for you, Meg.”

“I’m so sorry to track you down like this,” Lark said. “But Oliver told me you were at Abe’s, and I didn’t know exactly when you were coming up this weekend. Will you be here in time for dinner tomorrow?”

“Sure. I already told you I plan to be there by mid-morning,” Meg glanced over at Abe, frowning. “That’s all you wanted to know? When I’d get up to Red River tomorrow?”