The Marriage of Sticks (8 page)

“The auction house?”

“Yes. Adcock wanted them to handle the auction. James worked for Bartholomew’s. They thought
very
highly of him, so they sent him to Kansas City to verify if the paintings were real.”

The other man shook his head. “And in his great enthusiasm, Mr. Stillman cut a deal with the wily Mr. Adcock, only it turned out the paintings were fakes.”

“It was an honest mistake!”

“It was a stupid mistake and you know it, Hugh. You never would have done it that way. Stillman was famous for going off half-cocked. Half-cocked Ad-cocked. I never thought of that. Very fitting.”

“Then explain how he found the Messerschmidt head that had been lost for a hundred years.”

“Beginner’s luck. I need another drink.” The man signaled a waiter. While he was giving his order I grabbed my chance.

“Did you know him well?”

“James? Yes, very well.”

“Can we—Um, excuse me, would you mind if we switched seats? I’d really like to ask Hugh some questions.”

The gallery owner picked up his plate. As we were changing, he asked, “Were you also a Stillman fan?”

“He was my boyfriend in high school.”

“Really? I didn’t know he
had
a past.”

I felt the hair on the back of my neck go up. “He was a good man.”

“I wouldn’t know. I never cared to spend time with him.”

When I sat down I was so angry I couldn’t speak. Hugh patted me on the knee. “Don’t mind Dennis. He needs Saint Ubald.”

“Who’s that?”

“Patron saint against rabies. Tell me about you and James.”

We talked through the rest of dinner and dessert. I didn’t eat a thing.

Hugh Oakley was an art expert. He traveled the world telling people what they owned, or should buy. Listening to him talk, I quickly understood why he looked so young. His enthusiasm for what he did was infectious. His stories about unearthing rare or marvelous things were the tales of a boy with a treasure map and a heart full of hope. He loved his work. I loved hearing him talk about it.

Years before, he had given several lectures at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, and that’s where he met James. Hugh described James as a young man who was lost but convinced there was something significant waiting for him. Something that would arrive one day out of the blue and lead him home.

“After my last lecture he came up, looking so bewildered that I was concerned. I asked if he was all right. The only thing he could say was, ‘I want to know about this. I
have
to know more about this.’ I’d felt that same excitement at Columbia when I heard Federico Zeri speak. Do you know his book
Behind the Image
? You must read it. Let me write the title down.” He slipped a hand into his pocket and brought out a Connolly leather notebook and a silver mechanical pencil. He wrote down the title and author’s name in distinctive block lettering. It was not till later that I learned it was the typeface known as Bremen. Another of Hugh Oakley’s many hobbies was meticulously copying in various faces poems and stories he liked and then, like a monk from the Middle Ages, illuminating them in paints he made from scratch.

I was so absorbed in what he was saying that it took a while to realize I was hogging him from the rest of the party. I worried what his wife would think. Looking around, I was relieved to see her deep in conversation with Dagmar Breece.

Somehow we’d gotten off the subject of James. I needed to know as much as Hugh was willing to tell.

“What exactly
did
happen to James?”

“The idiot heart.”

“What do you mean?”

“ ‘Hope gleams in the idiot heart.’ It’s a line from a Mayakovski poem. His girlfriend had those words—the idiot heart—tattooed on the inside of her wrist like a bracelet. Can you imagine? But it’s the
age
of tattoos, isn’t it?

“Her name was Kiera Stewart. She was a graduate student at Temple. Beautiful Scottish girl from Aberdeen. James was nuts over her, but you only had to meet her once to see she was an ocean of bad news. Women like that give you wonderful for the first few months, but then start taking it back bit by bit as the relationship goes on. After a while you’re wondering if that great stuff ever really existed at all. But you’re so hooked on them by then and the tidbits of delicious they parse out, it’s like being addicted to drugs.

“The tragedy was, James was just coming into his own around the time they met. He’d found what he wanted to do with his life. And he was so good at it that the right people were already watching to see what he’d do next.

“The good is always the enemy of the great. From the beginning, he had the rare ability to discern between them. The trouble was, in our business insight often comes slowly and through meticulous detective work. James constantly wanted to achieve right now, this second.” Hugh shook his head. “He once said he had a lot to prove but didn’t know to whom.

“So everything happened at once. Not many people can handle that. His star was rising, he’d met a wild woman who sent him spinning, and then his bosses sent him to look at the Adcock paintings. James thought he was invincible. For a while it looked like he was.

“Then it all crashed. He made a big mistake. Adcock’s husband turned out to be a clever crook, but not clever enough. The deal blew up in James’s face. That was bad enough, but then Kiera got wind of what happened. Over the phone she told him their relationship was finished. Over the
phone.
Classy, huh? A platinum bitch. He got in his car in the middle of the night, drove down to Philadelphia to see her but never made it. That’s the story, Miranda. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more. He was a great favorite of mine.”

“You haven’t
touched
your desserts!”

Startled, I felt a firm hand on my shoulder and looked up to see Dagmar glaring at us.

“I’m sorry. We were talking—”

“No excuses! That is a yogurt trilogy, which I had to torture a man into making. So eat!”

She stood there until we picked up our spoons and started shoveling it in. Tasted like yogurt to me. Everyone else was finished and leaving the table. Charlotte Oakley came by.

“What are you two talking about? You look like you’re sharing atomic secrets.” She was smiling and her voice was only friendly. A beautiful nice woman. Anyway, why should she be worried? She won any contest in the room. Whenever I’d looked at her, I’d noticed at least two men staring at her each time. Who wouldn’t?

“Charlotte, the most amazing thing! James Stillman was Miranda’s boyfriend when they were in high school.”

“Really? I loved James. He reminded me of Hugh when he was young.”

That
was it! I’d not been able to put a finger on why I liked Hugh Oakley so much. The instant she said it, I realized a great part of my attraction to her husband was that he seemed to have the same kind of roaring spirit and curiosity as James.

“I hadn’t seen him since high school. Then I went to our class reunion and heard he was dead.”

She frowned. “A bad place to hear something like that. James was the Prodigal Son always sneaking back in through the dog door. The original Bad Boy, and always a pleasure! Any time we spent time together he absolutely melted my underwear. I would have eloped with him any time. But that
girlfriend,
Kiera! She went from zero to bitch in two seconds.”

“What happened to her?”

“Wait a minute, I have a picture of them.”

“You do?” Hugh sounded as surprised as I did.

“Sure. The time we all went to Block Island?” Charlotte carried a small purse but had a large wallet wedged into it. She took it out and rummaged through. “Here you go.”

She passed me a photo and although I took it, I couldn’t look immediately.

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s hard—the life I never lived is right here. On this piece of paper.”

“Nah. Do it, Miranda. Then you won’t be haunted.”

I took a deep breath and looked. James, Charlotte, and Kiera were smiling at the camera. He had short hair, which was a shock, because when we were together he wore it down to his shoulders. He looked older. There were wrinkles, and the gaunt face he’d had in high school had filled out some, but there was that same smile with the white, white teeth. Long artistic hands.

My eyes filled. “I can’t stand it.”

“He was great. You would have loved him.”

“I
did.
” I looked at Charlotte and tried to smile.

BABE RUTH’S SMALL HEAD

I
N THE MONTH THAT
followed I didn’t think much about the Oakleys. Business picked up, and I met a man who went from Promising! to Forget It! in just four dates. Do(u)g Auerbach came to town and we devoured each other for the weekend he was there. Twice I had tea with Frances Hatch. After the second time, she said there was a brain behind my face and she liked me. That made me feel very good. I said I liked her too. She responded playfully “But do you want to love, or
be
loved?” For a long time the question fluttered around my mind like birds that fly into a building but can’t get out again.

Doug said that while in Germany he had watched a TV documentary about people who had sexual fetishes for amputees. The show was very calm and informative and without any attitude. They showed snippets from amputee porno films, magazines, social clubs, and even comic books.

“I’m a hip guy. You know, try not to judge others, be as open as possible. But I saw this show and my mouth dropped open. I kept wondering, do I live on the same
planet
as these people?”

Frances liked to talk about sex, so I told her about it.

“What’s the matter with you, Miranda?”

“What do you mean?”

“You sound so prissy. Wouldn’t you go to bed with a man without a leg or an arm if you loved him?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What about a woman?”

“I can’t imagine loving a woman that way.”

“A child?”

“Frances, you’re just trying to provoke me.”

“How old is a child to you? How old would they have to be before you would sleep with them?”

“I don’t know, seventeen?”

“Ha! A lot of men made love to me before I was seventeen and that was eighty years ago.”

“Yes, but you’ve led a pretty unique life compared to most people.”

“So what? Know when
I
think a person is old enough to make love? When they become interesting.” She held a cane in her hand and knocked it on the floor.

“I don’t think you should run for president on that platform, Frances. They might burn you at the stake.”

“I know. I’m too old. My heart doesn’t live here anymore. That’s why memories are good: you wake up every morning and put them on like hand cream. That way, the days can’t dry you out.

“Listen, Miranda, I have a favor to ask. Do you know the painter Lolly Adcock?”

Hugh Oakley’s face came instantly to mind. “Funny you ask. Someone was talking about her just the other day.”

“A
miserable
woman, but quite a good painter. I have a small watercolor by her I want to sell. Would you be willing to look into the best way for me to do it?”

I told her about James Stillman and me, about his dealings with the Adcock estate, and what happened to him afterwards.

“Too bad you two didn’t meet when you were older; you’d probably be happily married with a house full of kids. But that happens: we keep meeting people or having experiences at the wrong time. The greatest love of my life was a man named Shumda, but I didn’t know that till I was ten years smarter. When we were together, I was just a kid auditioning different men for mad love affairs. I was looking for heat, not light.

“You know how we look back and say, ‘Gee, I was dumb when I was seventeen.’ What if you look at it the other way—seventeen-year-old Miranda looks forward at you now. What would
she
have to say about what you’ve become?”

“What would seventeen-year-old me think of me now?” I laughed.

“Exactly. She’d probably be furious you
didn’t
marry this James and save him.”

Hugh had given me his business card at the party. I called and we made an appointment to meet. Frances gave me the Adcock painting to show him. I was surprised she was willing to trust me with something so valuable.

“You can only steal it. But if you do, then you won’t be able to come back and visit. I’d rather know me than rob me.”

The day before our meeting, Hugh called to say he had to go to Dublin immediately. We could cancel the meeting, or he could arrange for one of his assistants to see me. I said the assistant would be fine. If necessary, we could meet after he returned. When I put the phone down I was disappointed, but nothing more.

An hour before the appointment, I had a confrontation with the man I had been dating. He came into the shop all excited about a new video camera he’d just bought.

Within fifteen minutes he was insulting me. He said I was cold and calculating. I’d squeezed him empty like a tube of toothpaste, then dropped him in the trash. I let him go on until all he had left was splutter.

“I have an appointment now. I have to go.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

“Haven’t you said it all?” I stood up.

I don’t know what my face said at that moment. My heart and stomach were calm. More than anything, I was glad it had come to this. Now I wouldn’t have to diplomatically sashay around him anymore. I’d have guessed my expression was nothing but empty. Who knows? Whatever was there, his eyes widened and he slapped me across the face.

Staggering backward, I banged into a metal filing cabinet. The edge of it stabbed me in the small of the back. Crying out, I fell to my knees. I saw his feet coming toward me. I curled my body inward, sure he was going to beat me.

He started laughing. “Look at you! That’s where you belong, on your fucking
knees.
Let me get a picture of this. I want to remember it.”

I heard a whirring sound and, fearfully looking up, saw the camera up to his eye, pointing at me.