The Great Man (14 page)

“Well, I can’t say I’m too shocked or upset by this,” said Abigail. “I don’t much care one way or the other, actually. Oscar painted enough other paintings, seems like he can spare one.”

“Well, don’t tell anybody.”

“Why exactly?” Abigail said, puzzled. “I would think you would want it to get out!”

“I would,” said Maxine, “but Oscar was my little brother, and when it comes right down to it, I can’t.”

The two women looked at each other without blinking for a moment, Maxine with her eyes bulging a little, Abigail quizzical.

“Those biographers can’t find out about it, either,” Maxine went on. “Can you imagine the field day? I don’t want to give either of them the satisfaction.”

Abigail said with her eyebrows knit, “But what about the truth? For the sake of art history?”

“Does it really matter?” Maxine asked. “Who did what, who painted what. That painting is pretty damn good. Me, Oscar, it’s the same genes, same last name. It says Feldman on it.”

“It says Oscar on it.”

“I can’t damage Oscar’s reputation like that.”

Abigail scratched her cheek, squinting, picturing
Helena,
the portrait of a naked, pale thoroughbred of a girl in front of a bare white wall, floating in an incongruously ornate frame in the long gilt-edged museum salon where the holy hush of Art permeated the air like incense. And next to it, its sister painting,
Mercy,
depicting a black woman with a wide red mouth, head thrown back, singing, also naked. Both women’s skin tones were unusual colors for Oscar, azure shadows, touches of electric mauves and greens and hot pinks, even though one woman was clearly black, the other just as clearly white. The two were a matched set, a diptych. Or so she had always thought….

“This is
Helena
we’re talking about here,” she said. “A famous painting, hanging in the Met, and you painted it! What could be the harm to Oscar’s reputation?
Mercy
hangs right next to
Helena,
and Oscar did paint that, am I right?”

“As far as I know,” said Maxine, “but I wouldn’t rule anything out.”

“Well then, I would think everyone would love finding out about that. It would create a lot of attention for you both.”

“Maybe,” said Maxine, “but the point is—” She stopped and took a drag of her cigarette and looked away from Abigail. “I made a promise to Oscar before he died. Not on his deathbed literally, but pretty near it. His death couch, maybe.”

“What exactly did he make you promise?”

“To keep this a secret.”

“Oh,” said Abigail. “Then that explains it.”

“You backed me into a corner,” said Maxine. “I was going to try to come off as noble and altruistic, but your argument just makes too much damn sense for me to keep this up.”

“You know, he wouldn’t know a thing,” said Abigail.

“Abigail! He begged me. Said it was all he wanted from me. He couldn’t stand to think that it might get out, and in fact he was furious when he found out I’d signed it, secretly. Of course, when Lila discovered the mark, I painted over it before she donated it to the Met, so there was no danger of its being discovered by anyone who didn’t already know.”

“He won’t know a thing,” repeated Abigail. “They can remove the paint and see your signature for themselves. Oscar is gone.”

“Good Lord, you’re a terrible person,” said Maxine approvingly. “I had no idea.”

Abigail took another slug of whiskey. “There might be a lot of things about me you don’t know,” she said then, a courageous sidelong glint in her eye.

“Like what?”

“Like, oh, well,” said Abigail. “Give me some more whiskey, Maxine. I’m not sure I can tell you this, but I think it might be good to tell someone before I go, and you’re all I’ve got.”

“Besides Ethan,” said Maxine, pouring a good shot into Abigail’s glass.

They both turned and looked at Ethan, who was fiddling with the tabletop, staring at the ceiling.

“Hello, Ethan,” said Maxine in a loud, overly enunciated voice. She shared Abigail’s private conviction that he understood every word they said, but, unlike Abigail, she treated him as if he were a little retarded.

Ethan fluttered his hands by his ears.

“All right, Abigail,” said Maxine. “You might as well spit it out; we’re not getting any younger sitting here.”

“I am getting younger, actually,” said Abigail. “This whiskey is making me feel about fifteen years old; it’s going right to my head. Whoo!” She giggled.

“All right, no more for you. I need you to be compos mentis when the crones get here.” Maxine took her glass away. “Which they will in about five minutes. That Claire strikes me as someone who shows up five minutes early to catch her opponent off guard.”

“I had an affair, too,” Abigail blurted out. “Not just Oscar.”

Maxine set her whiskey glass down with a snap.

“In the mid-seventies. With Ethan’s doctor. It lasted three years.”

Maxine’s eyes bulged behind her thick glasses. “How exactly did this come about?”

“He stayed the night once when there was a blizzard. We were snowed in and he couldn’t get back to Larchmont because none of the trains were running. Maribelle was in Queens at her boyfriend’s and Oscar was with Teddy, I imagine. We stayed up talking. I don’t know, the snow, the cognac. He was so gentle and literary. He loved poetry. We read Yeats out loud to each other and somehow we ended up in my bed. I was forty-eight; he wasn’t even thirty. I was a middle-aged wife and he was so beautiful. His name was Edward.”

“Edward,” repeated Maxine tonelessly.

“That’s right,” said Abigail, feeling oddly defensive, as if Maxine had mocked the name. “Dr. Edward Young. Everyone else called him Eddie, but I called him Edward. He treated me like gold, brought me flowers. Oscar never brought me a flower in his life. Oscar brought me his laundry.”

“You must have been a mother figure for him,” Maxine said with ruminative obliviousness. “He must have been that son that Ethan wasn’t.”

“No,” said Abigail. “We were really in love, man and woman.”

“Well,” said Maxine.

“Quite passionately, too.”

Maxine blinked. She drank some whiskey.

“Hard to imagine, isn’t it?” Abigail laughed. There was an edge of anger in her laughter.

The buzzer rang. Katerina appeared from the office area and went to the wall and said into the box, “Yes?”

A squawk came from the intercom, and Katerina pressed the button to let Teddy and Lila in.

Abigail suddenly felt sweat well under her arms and her jaw muscles tense and her heart thud. She cast a wild eye toward the door.

“Steady,” said Maxine. “You’re here for backup.”

“I’m here because you asked me to come,” said Abigail. “But just so you know, this is not the easiest thing for me.”

“It’ll do you good,” said Maxine. “Face down the enemy.”

“Maxine,” said Abigail through a thickness in her throat, “I’m doing this as a favor to you. In no way for myself. On the contrary.”

Maxine flapped an impatient hand at her. They waited in silence until they heard Teddy’s knock on the door.

Eight

Katerina opened the door with a motion of her arm like a knife through water. “Hello,” she said. “Come in.” She stepped back and let Teddy and Lila enter. Teddy came in first, of course, striding past Katerina with her head held high like a ballerina’s, her spine, Abigail thought, almost unnaturally straight. Then came Lila, a plump, pretty woman with curly white hair, smiling furtively, timidly at the back of Teddy’s head.

“Have a seat,” said Maxine by way of greeting, not bothering to stand.

Teddy and Abigail looked at each other for an instant of shocked silence. Then Abigail said, “Hello, Claire.”

“Call me Teddy, please,” said Teddy. She took the chair across from Maxine; Lila sat facing Abigail.

Abigail could not stop staring at Teddy. She forced herself to look away, make a joke. “The seconds,” she said, “are in place.”

“Quiet,” said Maxine.

“Seconds,” said Teddy. “Ah! You mean for the duel. This is my friend Lila Scofield. The original owner of
Helena.
”

Teddy seemed collected, unfazed, even though she couldn’t have known Abigail was going to be here. Shouldn’t she, and not Abigail, have been the one who felt uncomfortable here? Abigail felt foolish for allowing herself to be the one who felt at a disadvantage.

“Hello, Lila,” said Abigail, trying to sound as poised as Teddy seemed. “I am pleased to meet you.”

“Hello, Abigail,” said Lila. She looked as if she might faint. So she, anyway, was appropriately nervous about seeing the mistress meet the wife. Abigail felt somehow reassured by this.

“This must be Ethan,” said Teddy, examining him with curiosity.

“We were just having some whiskey,” Abigail told her. Maxine made a noise in the back of her throat, which Abigail interpreted as an injunction to shut the hell up. “Maybe you’d like some,” Abigail went on. “We were drinking it neat, but you’d probably prefer it over ice.”

“Oh,” said Lila, startled and excited. “That would be delicious.”

Abigail got up and set about making a drink for Lila. “Teddy,” she said, finally turning to look directly at her again, “do you want one, too?”

“Well, yes,” said Teddy. “Thank you.”

Abigail and Teddy looked at each other for an instant. There was nothing in Teddy’s expression but uncomplicated amicability. Abigail felt herself relax. What was there to be upset about now? Oscar was dead. It was all over.

“Goddamn it,” said Maxine, “give me another one, then.”

When everyone had her glass of whiskey in front of her, there was a general sense of this meeting’s being called to order, along with an implicit acknowledgment that Maxine, on her home turf, was the chairman of this meeting, and Teddy was a visiting enemy, equal in stature to Maxine. Ethan sat quietly, as expressionless as a judge.

Maxine cleared her throat. “Well, so this is why we’re all here,” she said. “We need to discuss these biographers, what we’re going to tell them. We need a united front. And this united front must be that we won’t tell the truth about the painting
Helena.
”

“I don’t care about
Helena,
” said Teddy. She shifted in her chair, curled one long elegant leg around the other like a cat around a pole. “I have no need to tell anyone anything. Doing so would be to your benefit and no one else’s. I can’t for the life of me imagine why you’ve refrained from trumpeting it to the world.”

“She made a deathbed promise to Oscar,” said Abigail.

“Abigail!” said Maxine sharply.

“Ah,” said Teddy.

“Sorry,” said Abigail, surprised at herself.

“Oscar asked me to keep his secret before he died,” said Maxine. “That’s why I want it kept. If it were up to me, of course I would let the truth be known. I’m not an idiot.”

There was a brief silence and then Lila, her eyes slightly averted from Maxine’s, said, “I have been wanting to say this for many years, Maxine. When I learned that you had painted
Helena,
I was angry. We didn’t speak after that, so I had no chance to tell you that I’d changed my mind. I think the truth ought to come out. I think everyone should know. If it were me, I would really just burn to have it known.” She flushed.

“Lila,” said Teddy, “you need to write your novel.”

“Are you a novelist?” Abigail asked.

“No,” said Lila, “but I always meant to be one.”

“She is one,” said Teddy. “She just hasn’t written anything yet.”

“Gosh, that’s great,” said Abigail. She looked down at her hands on the table. They looked garish and gauche to her, covered in diamonds and veins. “I’m a big reader. I’d be first in line to buy it.”

Maxine looked around at all three of their faces, as if, Abigail thought, she were wondering how Abigail had become allied so easily with the enemy. Where was her allegiance to her sister-in-law? Abigail realized, to her own astonishment, that now their rivalry was out of the way, she was developing something of a little crush on Teddy. Teddy and Lila reminded Abigail of the pretty, fun shiksas she had always yearned to befriend in college. Next to them, Maxine looked like an old warthog.

“I don’t want the truth to come out, Lila,” Maxine said. “I take my promise very seriously. Here I am at the butt end of my life, and having that known will make little difference to me now.”

Abigail sensed, or hoped she sensed, an effort in Lila and Teddy to turn their attention back to the topic at hand.

“Yes,” said Lila, “I respect that.”

“Well, I frankly don’t care one way or another,” said Teddy. “I’m here for another reason.” From her bag she pulled a small package carefully wrapped in white cloth.

Maxine stared at the package, then at Teddy. “The tefillin,” she said.

“You probably didn’t know it,” said Teddy, “but I’ve had them all these years.”

“I thought they got lost in the shuffle when Oscar died,” said Maxine. She stood up and went over to the kitchen counter and leaned on it with her head down. From the back, she looked to Abigail like a fireplug-shaped city bus driver or plumber.

“He left them at my house,” Teddy said. “My old house, twelve years ago, when his studio was flooded from upstairs. He said for safekeeping, but he never bothered to take them. When I moved, I took them along. But ever since he died, I’ve intended to give them back to you.”

“All this time, you had my tefillin?” Maxine said, turning from the counter and returning to her chair. She didn’t touch the package, but she looked at it again, there on the table in front of her.

“Yes,” said Teddy. “Oscar was so clear about not wanting you to have them. I was torn, but finally I decided that this was the right thing to do.”

“What are tefillin?” Lila asked, but everyone ignored her.

“He didn’t want me to have them because I’m a woman,” said Maxine. “They belonged first to our grandfather Avram Feldman, and then to our father, who brought them to America. Our father left them to me, but Oscar never handed them over.”

“He thought they should be passed down from father to son,” said Teddy. “He was sure his father had made a mistake, leaving them to you. Oscar would have given them to Ethan if he had thought that Ethan could understand what they were.” They all looked at Ethan, who appeared unperturbed by this news. “I brought them today to give them to you,” Teddy went on. “I would have done it sooner—”

“Then why didn’t you?” said Maxine. “It’s a little late now.”

“Well, why the hell is this my responsibility?” Teddy snapped. “It’s a long trip across the river, and Lila was generous enough to drive me, but I didn’t owe you a goddamned thing. I brought them today out of nothing but goodwill. These biographers have stirred up a lot of old silt, and I wanted to make things right. I should never have bothered.”

“What are tefillin?” asked Lila again. “I know they have to do with the Judaic tradition, but I’ve never been clear on what they are exactly.”

“‘And you shall bind them as a sign on your arm, and they shall be as frontlets on your head between your eyes,’” Abigail said.

“They’re the things Jewish men use to cut off the circulation in their arms so they don’t think about sex all the time,” Teddy said. She looked nettled by Maxine’s accusations, both implied and actual.

“Tefillin are holy,” said Abigail. “Jews wear them on their weaker hands and on their heads to remember their liberation from Egypt, to think of God, to stop lustful and sinful thoughts, to control and redirect those thoughts to spiritual matters. The making of tefillin is a complicated and mysterious process; the writing on them has to be perfect or the tefillin are invalidated, even if just one letter is too rounded or pointy. You can’t go to the bathroom or pass gas if you’re wearing tefillin. You have to be absolutely clean. These old family tefillin are sacred. If only Ethan could wear them.”

Everyone looked at Ethan. He studied the air in front of his face, calm and mute as a Nepalese mountaintop guru.

“Why couldn’t Ethan have them?” asked Lila.

“Because they’re mine,” said Maxine. “God fucking damn it.”

“That,” said Abigail. “And also he can never wear them because he can’t perfectly control his bodily functions and he can’t think of God, as far as we know.”

“There’s also my grandson, Buster,” said Teddy. “I mean Peter. He’s three. He happens to be another male descendant of Avram Feldman.”

“They’re mine for now,” said Maxine. “When I die, you can squabble over them.”

Teddy and Abigail looked at each other.

“You can meet Peter, if you want,” said Teddy. “He has a little sister, too.”

“Anyway,” said Abigail simultaneously, “it’s good you brought them and good Maxine has them now.” As she spoke, she heard what Teddy was saying, but pretended she hadn’t.

“I can’t accept this,” said Maxine. “Do you know my father left me nothing but those tefillin? And he left Oscar his prayer shawl. But Oscar took both. And my father left all his money to my cousin Fischel. Those bastards, it’s unbelievable.”

“And here you are, keeping Oscar’s secret for him,” said Teddy. “Makes you think twice, doesn’t it?”

Not looking at anyone, Maxine leaned back in her chair and shoved a hand into her breast pocket and brought out her pack of cigarettes. She shook one out, fired it up with a match, then shot a severe look at Teddy.

“How much do you know about Judaism?” she asked coolly, exhaling a diffuse cloud of smoke, inadvertently or not, in Teddy’s direction.

Teddy waved her hand to clear the smoke from her face. “Not much,” she said.

“Well,” said Maxine. “The signature I use on my paintings is the Hebrew for
apikoros,
a Greek word meaning ‘nonpracticing believer.’ We’re considered the worst of all the Jews. I don’t know about all those other
apikoroses
out there, but for my part, I don’t do the
baruchas
and obey the laws because they’re a big pain in the ass and I don’t have time for it. I do think Judaism is a good thing for the most part, except when it tips over into fundamentalism. And I am very disturbed that Oscar kept those tefillin from me.”

“Disturbed enough to tell the truth?” asked Abigail.

“Stop right now with the talk about
Helena
,” said Maxine. “One thing has nothing to do with the other.” She tipped some nonexistent ash from her cigarette into the beige glass ashtray that sat in front of her, which was bristling with butts. “I don’t need to punish him for this. There are things about Oscar the three of you don’t know that I do and which I will take with me to wherever my ashes end up. I’ll just say: I knew my brother was a schmuck before the trouble over the tefillin and I’m choosing to keep my promise to him anyway.”

“What things?” asked Teddy, smoothing the front of her white blouse with one hand, slowly, as if she were caressing or comforting herself.

“Ask his old best friend, Moe Treitler, for one thing; maybe he’ll tell you, but I won’t,” said Maxine. “Katerina,” she called. “Come here.”

“One minute,” came Katerina’s voice from the other end of the loft.

Suddenly restless, wondering what exactly she was doing here, Abigail stood and made her way over to one of the old factory windows and looked out through the enormous, grimy panes of glass, inlaid with what looked like chicken wire. The sky outside was white with heat. She heard Katerina come into the kitchen area and say, “Maxine, that was Michael Rubinstein on the phone, asking when he can come and see what you’re doing.”

“Take these,” said Maxine, handing Katerina the unopened package of tefillin, “and put them in my safe. Tell Michael to come anytime. I have nothing to hide.”

Katerina said something else, but Abigail didn’t hear what because someone spoke right behind her.

“I’m so sorry,” came a soft girlish voice. “I think maybe you’re more upset by all this than you’re letting on. I know I would be.”

Abigail turned. Lila stood there, eyes squinting a little, skin aglow with heat and empathic anxiousness. “No,” said Abigail. “I’m really not.”

“It’s my fault, in a way,” Lila went on as if she hadn’t heard. “I could have just ignored Maxine’s mark. But no, I had to ask Teddy. I never wanted this known; I loved Oscar.”

Abigail said, “I’m not at all upset. And everyone loved Oscar, Lila; he banked on being loved. Nothing wrong with that. But he did come to take it for granted. He had to prove no woman could resist him. I always wondered why he needed that so badly. I knew him from when we were kids, and he was always like that.”

“How hard, to be married to someone like that,” said Lila wistfully.

“Not so hard as you might think,” said Abigail. She glanced over at Ethan. He seemed calm enough. “We were strangely well suited to each other. I wouldn’t have married anyone else.”

She and Lila exchanged a complex look.

“What do you think of these biographers?” asked Lila.

“Henry’s all right. I’m having lunch with the other one tomorrow.”

“Ralph?”

“Have you talked to him yet?”

“Oh, me, no. Why would he want to talk to me? I was just Teddy’s friend, nothing more.”

“Oh, sweetheart, you loved Oscar, too, but trust me, you were better off with your own husband; I can tell just by looking at you.”