The Fine Art of Truth or Dare (25 page)

“I don't especially care.”

“Frankie—”

“Ah!” He gave me the Hand. “I came looking for you to see if you wanted to walk to history, stayed to save your ass, and now I am leaving.” He did a slick turn on his heel and started to walk away.

I caught up with him and grabbed his wrist with both hands. He let me pull him to a stop, but didn't turn around. “I didn't think you'd understand. You
hate
him. Besides, you made me promise—”

He jerked his hand free and snapped, “No way, Ella. No way I'm letting you turn this around and put it on me. You know me. You
know me
. Not telling has done infinitely more damage than just breaking a half-ass promise. Or even a full-ass one. Like promising to call me back, oh, a half-dozen times or so, and just not.”

I've seen Frankie angry plenty of times. Even once or twice at me, when I'd been having a good pity party or spilled something on his old cashmere. But I'd never seen him like this.

“I can imagine how it looks . . .” I began.

“How it looks?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Knowing you, you don't have a clue. So let me tell you how it looks. It looks like you chose to lie to me, and to Sadie, to completely abandon friendship and honor for . . . what? The privilege of being available for Alex Bainbridge's booty calls?”

“You don't mean that.”

“Don't I? What is it you think you're gonna get from him, Ella? A seat at the Phillite lunch table? A date for the prom? Small children with good teeth and tiny noses?” His mouth twisted. “You might want to rethink those expectations, because from where I'm standing, I don't see him taking you for a walk between classrooms, let alone home to his parents.

“Face it,” he said coldly. “Vere was telling the truth. You're a dirty little secret.”

29

THE COLD

I watched Frankie walk away from me, his frame so stiff that I knew if I threw myself at his back, I would bounce off before I could get my arms around him to hold on. In a long line of good exits, that was one of his best.

I cut history. And PE. And algebra. And really cut, no note this time. Willing teachers are famously forgiving in the week before winter or summer break. Exams were done, half the students were either already off on their skiing trip in the Alps or about to depart. But then, it was just as likely my parents would be getting a phone call from the headmaster's office. I was a Willing Girl willing to take the chance.

I went to the museum, a day earlier than planned, and all by myself.

For the last couple of years, I've always started in the same place. It's a little room, more like a little hallway, off one of the Impressionist galleries. That always bothered me. I mean, even in my most Edward-centric moments, I knew he didn't merit a big room of his own. But to tack his work onto the wrong era, not to mention any conceivable style, always chafed.

The upside is that the Willing Room is usually empty. There are eighteen pictures there: seven canvases and eleven pencil sketches. There are two bronzes, too, a pair of portrait busts on pillars. I took a seat between them, on the one bench that fits in the space. The museum guard standing in the archway between this room and the next was shifting on her feet, probably waiting for a break. I knew no one was going to chase me for cutting school, especially not in a museum (“Hey, you! What do you think you're doing, hanging out in a cultural institution! Just wait till your parents hear about this!”), but I still felt a little twitchy.

More than that, I felt sad and pretty scared.

Truth:
I had done some real damage to my relationship with Frankie, and I had no idea what I was going to do to fix it.

Hiding in the museum seemed like a perfectly good start.

I had Edward's
Collected Works
closed on my lap. I'd pretty much expended its usefulness. All of the museum's paintings but one were in it: a sunrise-over-water scene that even I, a devotee, thought verged on OTT.
Untitled
, the accompanying placard read, 1901, G
IFT OF AN
A
NONYMOUS
D
ONOR
, 1942. Someone hadn't wanted the painting on their wall, maybe, and didn't want their name on the museum's.

I'd never paid much attention to where the collection came from before. This time, I did. The paintings were varied, three purchased by the museum, including the one of the bicycle riders on Boathouse Row that had Her in the foreground. Two, portraits of pretty but bland Willings, were gifts from the family. Pretty arrogant, I'd always thought, donating a picture of yourself to major American museum. Another portrait, the pretty, unhappy Mrs. John Girard Hamilton on her pink sofa, was part of a bigger collection that had come to the museum.

And, of course, there was the one anonymous donation.

All eleven sketches had the same origin; they were, with Sad Sofa Lady, from the estate of Vera H. Erasmus, who, if one went by the acquisition dates, had died in 1997. I could have known her, this woman who was such an Edward fan. The bronzes, titled simply
Mother
and
Child
, had been hers, too. My book suggested they were Mary and Murray, Edward's sister and nephew. He'd been kind. I've seen photographs of Mary and Murray Girvan. They weren't that pretty. Of course, Edward hadn't known that some years later they would do some terrible things with his personal papers.

As for the sketches themselves, they were a varied lot and spanned the last fifteen years of his life. Two were of dogs, three of what looked like a garden (I'd always liked the one of the stone bench), and six were of Her. For the first time, I realized it was the same woman in all of them. I'd never thought about it much on previous visits, just assumed they were different models, some clothed, some dressed, some visibly older and softer. Now I could see the similarities in the curve of her neck, the line of her arm and hip and profile.

Not one was of a face. None had names. None had dates. Only the throwaway word
Study
. It read like a command, even though I knew it just referred to the fact that they were quick sketches of what would be part of a larger work. But now, for the first time, I realized that none of the sketched figures were from Edward's paintings. I knew Edward's paintings—the ones that had been catalogued, anyway. These weren't studies for other works. They were like snapshots, little pieces of his life after Diana. Of whatever his life with Her was.

Truth:
Edward had painted this woman lovingly.

Truth:
He'd never shown her face.

Probability:
She was his dirty little secret.

I checked the notes I'd made. There weren't many. A few dates, a few quick descriptions of the sketches, acquisition info. I had no idea how it was going to help. It seemed that Edward had very deliberately not left any clues to Her identity other than the art itself.

“One unpopular connection was enough for him, ya think?” I asked the bronze Mary above me. “If you Phillites are scary now, I can only imagine what you were like a hundred years ago.”

No shocker, she didn't respond. The guard, however, gave me the hairy eyeball.

A couple stepped through the archway. They were older than me, early twenties, both blond, both wearing nerdy cool black specs and boots and black canvas clothing that reminded me of Sadie's wardrobe—only infinitely better suited to the wearers. They were holding a map of the museum between them, talking softly in an unfamiliar language. I didn't catch much, just a questioning
“Villink?”
and wondered if they were Russian. I didn't think so. The language sounded more Germanic to me, maybe Dutch. They'd clearly never heard of Edward Willing.

They came in to look. I watched them. Most people go through museums like they do Macy's: eyes sweeping the display, stopping only if something really grabs their attention. These two looked at everything. They both clearly liked the bicycle picture. Yup, Dutch, I decided.

He was a few steps ahead when he got to my favorite painting there.
Diana and the Moon.
It was—surprise surprise—of Diana, framed by a big open window, the moon dominating the sky outside. She was perched on the windowsill, dressed in a gauzy wrap that could have been nightclothes or a nod to her goddess namesake. She looked beautiful, of course, and happy, but if you looked for more than a second, you could see that her smile had a teasing curve to it and one of her hands was actually wrapped around the outside frame. I thought she looked like she might swing her legs over the sill and jump, turning into a moth or owl or breath of wind even before she was completely out of the room. I thought she looked, too, like she was daring the viewer to come along. Or at least to try.

The Dutch guy didn't say anything. He just reached out a hand. His girlfriend stepped in, folding herself into the circle of his outstretched arm. They stood like that, in front of the painting, for a full minute. Then he sneezed.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue. He took it and, without letting go of her, did a surprisingly graceful one-handed blow. Then he crumpled the tissue and looked around for a trash can. There wasn't one in sight. She held out her free hand; he passed over the tissue, and she stuck it right back into her pocket. I wanted to be grossed out. Instead, I had the surprising thought that I really really wanted someone who would do that: put my used Kleenex in his pocket. It seemed like a declaration of something pretty big.

Finally, they finished their examination of Diana and moved on. There wasn't much else, just the arrogant Willings and the overblown sunrise. They came over to examine the bronzes.

She saw my book. “Excuse me. You know this artist?”

Intimately
just didn't seem as true anymore. “Pretty well,” I answered.

“He is famous here?”

“Not very.”

“I like him,” she said thoughtfully. “He has . . . oh, the word . . . personism?”

“Personality?” I offered.

“Yes!” she said, delighted. “Personality.” She reached behind her without looking. Her boyfriend immediately twined his fingers with hers. They left, unfolding the map again as they went, she chattering cheerfully. I think she was telling him he had personality. They might as well have had exhibit information plaques on their backs:
“COUPLE.” CONTEMPORARY DUTCH. COURTESY OF THE ESTATE OF LOVE, FOR THE VIEWING PLEASURE (OR NOT) OF ANYONE AND EVERYONE.

Truth:
When Alex and I got together—his house, my house, empty classrooms at school, there was never anyone else around.

Truth:
He was happy to be with me.

Probability:
He just didn't want anyone else to know that.

I wondered what he was doing the following night and why he hadn't told me.

Harrison Kinuye of the YouTube video and doorman was part of the Phillite circle. He was on the lacrosse team. He and Alex were buds. I wondered if Alex was going to the party. Taking me out of the equation, it would have almost been a certainty.

I gathered up my things and moved on. The Impressionist galleries seemed to be full of tourist couples: young and hip and clearly from faraway places I might never see. There were only two people in my Duchamp room, a pair of older women in matching marled wool sweaters, standing shoulder to shoulder in front of
Nude Descending a Staircase.

“Let's go to Paris,” one said dreamily.

The other promptly whipped out a Droid and tapped away. “March.”

“Perfect.”

I could have told them that Duchamp had become an American, a New Yorker, but that would have just been envy talking. I wanted to pick up and run for Paris, too.

I wandered upstairs to the reconstructed tea garden, where I was chased out of any possibility of Zen by a group of schoolkids, each paired with another so they wouldn't get lost. Because that's who's in an art museum midday on a freezing Friday right before Christmas: woolly older women, bored schoolkids, and lovers on holiday. I gave up.

So it wasn't even quite three when I bundled myself into my coat and hit the front steps. Everyone knows the steps. The movie
Rocky
made them famous. There're always a few runners or tourists jogging up, just to say they could.

For a bitterly cold day, the steps seemed crowded. It didn't seem to be by either athletes or tourists, but by people around my age. For the most part, they were coatless, wearing layers of thermal shirts or hoodies, all in heavy knit caps. They were heading up the stairs, milling around the top level in groups of five or six, hunched on the balustrades. I could feel something in the air—not a threat, but a palpable excitement. I quietly moved to the side, where I had a view of both the plaza and the stairs, and waited.

It wasn't long. In the distance, a clock chimed the hour. In front of me, the plaza erupted. Fifty people, mostly male, suddenly had skateboards in their hands. Skateboarding is pretty fiercely forbidden at the museum. I hadn't even noticed the backpacks and duffels and other bags that were now quickly being folded into themselves. With a series of shouts and clatters, the boarders were off.

Some went down the stone ramps that flanked the stairs, going at breakneck speed, jumping between the levels. Unbelievably, a handful tried the steps themselves, flying off each landing to slam into the next. Most did the descent in a combination of boards and running and big leaps. A few fell on the jumps; a few more veered and tumbled, trying to avoid hitting one another and uninvolved stair climbers. A few of the falls looked bad to me. But they were up in a beat, chasing boards or finishing their descent.

I watched one, a girl with dozens of braids flying out from under her helmet, take the last ramp. She looked almost fluid as she lifted off, one hand on her board as she soared. Then she hit the pavement at the bottom with an audible bang, veered sharply to the right, and disappeared from my sight. The back of her hoodie had “
YES
!
” across it in huge yellow appliquéd letters. A big Yes to . . . whatever. Everything, maybe. Stupid, yeah, probably the whole endeavor had been stupid. Dangerous, absolutely. But as far as bravery and joy went, it was pretty amazing.

By the time security got out onto the plaza, the show was over. I knew there were a couple of boarders in the bushes below, nursing what I hoped weren't bad injuries. No one ratted them out. Who would even think of it?

It was still too early to go home. I ended up at Pat's King of Steaks, a usual happy-place, where I bought myself a Coke and a cheesesteak. My cup had pictures of candy canes all over it. Christmas had arrived in Philadelphia pretty much the day after Halloween. There were still three weeks to go, and the cardboard Santa and reindeer taped to the windows looked ready to call it a year already and take off for Boca. In spite of the cold I took a seat at one of the sidewalk tables. It felt like a slab of ice under my butt. I shivered, but stuck it out.

“Hey, Loco Girl!”

Shout out “Hey, Gorgeous!” or “Einstein,” and I don't budge. But this one had me at “Loco.” Go figure. I looked across the sidewalk to see Daniel's face, so much like Frankie's, framed in the window of his Jeep. I felt a sad little tug in my chest.

“You are aware it's only forty degrees out there, aren't you?” he asked. I shrugged. “Meeting someone?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Then get in. Your hands look like wax. It's seriously creepy.”

I looked down at the hand gripping the blindingly cheerful cup. He was right.

He also got out to open the passenger's-side door for me. I was a little charmed, until he pointed at my partially eaten cheesesteak in its wilted paper wrapper. “You are not bringing that thing into my car. It's an abomination.”