Luck (23 page)

“Really? I didn’t have anything after dinner, did you?”

“Strangely enough, no, not a bite. Could it possibly have been Beth? I thought I heard footsteps heading downstairs in the night.”

“Well, I don’t suppose it matters, except it’s strange if she’s suddenly taken to eating. I wonder where she is, she’s usually long up by now.”

Sophie shrugged. “Sleeping it off maybe.”

Neither of them has been especially interested in checking Beth’s whereabouts. The point is only that Sophie has had to open a tin of salmon to make sandwiches for their before-funeral lunch. Hendrik is providing food for the reception, or whatever it’s called, afterwards. Hearing Max’s car, Sophie has hurried to the front door as well, and watches from the
porch as Max rocks Nora, then draws back to hold her at arm’s length.

“My dear,” he says. “Such a shock. You’re very pale, have you eaten? Whatever happens you must eat, it’s the first rule of life.” It’s his first rule anyway. Like Sophie, he appears to view food, and a fully fleshed body, as a barrier against sorrow and trouble. If Nora and Philip had made it to the city for their lunch with him, it would have been a very good meal.

In that parallel universe, unimaginably remote now in both distance and time.

If Nora looks pale, Max looks old. He
is
old. He is, in fact, almost exactly the age, seventy-six, that Nora’s Uncle Albert would have been had that aneurysm not blown up in his head. Max must wonder what, precisely, is waiting for him. He must be fairly constantly alert to fatal outcomes; as Philip ought to have been, as obviously everyone ought to be. Arthritis is only one of Max’s several ailments, most serious the skin cancer which he may, or may not, have fought off a few years ago. It is altogether surprising and even unfair that Philip is dead and Max is not.

What a nasty thought. “I’m so glad you’re here, Max.”

At first meeting, back when Nora was young, Max struck her as wary and dubious and forbidding. It seemed to her he only accepted her and her work at Lily’s behest, not from his own judgment, and it’s true that Lily’s was the more obviously benevolent voice. “I like very much,” she told Nora, “how
unyielding
your work is. Bold in technique and powerful in content, and with no sentiment to fall back on to make it too easy.” Some artists she and Max represented found Lily the tough and demanding one, Max a pussycat. So there was that variability, too.

Max, though, turns out to be not only dealer but loyal supporter, defender, protector. Nora likes how he gnaws at her about determination and possibilities; beauty as well. “I can sell, that’s not the issue,” he tells her as he no doubt tells others. “The issue is to do what you see, and then to see further. Never let up. We won’t worry about whether or not I can sell it, we’ll just keep in mind,” and he smiles, although it isn’t a joke, “whether I’ll choose to.” The Uproar Series, as they call it between them, made him uneasy, and not entirely for the obvious reasons. “They are probably your most skilful work so far, Nora, and they are extraordinarily beautiful, so perhaps it is too much to ask that they also be pure.” Pure? What did he mean? “I see in them some of your anger, but perhaps this gives them more power, we shall see over time.”

She suspected he would be in less doubt if she’d never told him about Uncle Albert. Even Max is not immune to reading too much into histories.

He’s not immune to windfalls either, and recently sold the entire series, in a single great whacking deal, to a small organization of wealthy rogue Anglicans. “I’m not sure I like that,” Nora said. “I realized they wouldn’t be hanging in the town hall, but I’m not happy if they’re being used for purposes that might not be mine.”

“My dear,” said Max in a tone rather chillier than today’s
my dear
, “that is hardly relevant, is it? Of course they have their own purposes, but who is touched, who interprets and uses your work—all I can say is that if you wish to be safe, then hide what you do in a cupboard under the stairs. But I know you do not want to do that.” She supposed not. Well, she was sure—what would be the point of work nobody saw and didn’t care about one way or another?

Max’s explanation for what happened here was not unlike Philip’s. “Wherever people place their hope is a place they will bleed. So for revenge, or from pain, they try to make you bleed also. It is only what happens. It is human. Mad sometimes, but human.”

Sometimes love—or beauty, which may be much the same thing in Max’s lexicon—can arise out of anger. Sometimes rage is recovery from love, and vice versa. In some complicated, confused way, in Nora’s mind today this has something to do with Philip as well.

Max, unlike some in his world, uses words like
beauty
and even
love
easily. Beauty, he says, is not a gauche, hopeless notion, although he adds the obvious proviso that “beauty is large, and should not be confused with a taste for landscapes, or pictures of horses and flowers.” He has learned to appreciate, for instance, Nora’s use of various materials and stitcheries, possibly guided by Lily, who caught on right away.

Lily died a decade ago, one hard, baffled year after a stroke, and Max is old. What does Nora want from him now?

She wants to be pulled and pushed right up and over this mountain of sorrow, that’s what. She wants what she hoped for from their lost lunch: “New visions,” as Max put it when they were making the date, although ordinarily he avoids words like
visions.
And she wants assurance and guidance and comfort from a veteran of radical shiftings who with Lily uprooted himself and moved from country to country to country before finally settling in this one, and who lost Lily, his companion on all their journeys, and who must therefore know a great deal about change after change and loss after loss.

Is it fair to want so much? She has known him as long as she knew Philip, and look what happened to him. “You’re
right,” she says as they reach the porch and Max lifts his free hand to rest on Sophie’s shoulder, “we should eat. It’s too bad you’ve missed the casseroles and desserts that came to the door yesterday, but there’s not much left of those. You can imagine how surprised I was at food being dropped off. It seems there are a few kind people here after all.”

“Of course there are. You know that.”

Max, who is Jewish insofar as he is anything, was unsurprised by the ferocity of attacks on Nora and her work. He suffered some collateral damage himself—a broken window, some spray-painted anti-Semitic slurs on his gallery door. “You are right to worry,” he told her. “One never knows.” But at the same time, again like Philip, he urged a moderate outlook. “Don’t forget all those who defend what you’re doing.”

Yes. But not enough, and not loudly enough.

“I wish,” Sophie says, “a few more friendly types would turn up so I didn’t have to make sandwiches. Would you like something to drink, Max?”

“Please. A Chardonnay if you have it, even though it is not yet noon. And in return, Sophie, I make quite a good mayonnaise, if you would like that for the salmon.” He hasn’t exactly cut back or trimmed down or sacrificed any major desires, never mind age, cancer, arthritis, big belly. He is wearing his funeral suit, vest and all, despite the heat outside, but now carefully removes the jacket and unbuttons the vest. “Ah, that’s better,” he says.

Nora and Sophie haven’t showered yet, nor are they dressed for the occasion ahead. There’s still a little time to sit at the kitchen table, though, the three of them and their wine. “To Philip,” and Max raises his glass. “To Philip,” Nora and Sophie reply, surprised by tears springing up unexpectedly at so simple a gesture.

“I was trying on the way here to remember the first time I met him. Would it have been at that first show you had with Lily and me, Nora?” Yes, it would. By then she and Philip were a pair, although Lynn was an unhappy figure still being moved out of the picture. “I think he was enjoying himself. I seem to recall some amusement as well as impatience.” That’s putting it kindly. Philip was merrily rude to several people who, for all he knew, were important to Nora’s career.

“Pompous,” he whispered loudly, leaning down to her ear. “Assholes,” he added.

“He could be pretty brisk with anybody who was trying to sound important about things he thought were stupid,” Nora says. “There was one guy that night with his nose practically on a canvas, going on and on about individual brushstrokes. Not my work, somebody else’s. And there was Philip bent over his shoulder saying he’d have to remember all this horseshit about pure verticality next time he was staining a sideboard.”

“Why?” asks Sophie, who doesn’t like the sound of an unnecessary meanness that didn’t even take the trouble to rise to the level of cruelty; although Nora makes it sound like a cherished memory.

“Why did he say that? At the time, I thought he was just being mischievous. Now I think he still felt out of his element in those days, and that was his way of holding his own. He got more confident and adept later on.”

“Although,” Max says, “he was always snobbish about being a craftsman, wasn’t he?”

“Oh, God, yes. I remember once, a couple of particularly obnoxious people drove up here to order some piece of furniture, and it was clear they knew nothing about him, just heard he was the new big thing, and arrived obviously expecting to deal with a hick out in the boonies. Philip came
into the house and asked me to go hold the fort with them for a few minutes, and when he went out again he was duded up in overalls and an old flannel shirt, talking in an aw shucks sort of way—really, all he was missing was a straw between his teeth. I don’t think they even noticed, since that’s what they were expecting, but he was totally enjoying himself. He let them swan around for quite a while before he told them he wouldn’t dream of letting any honest piece of his end up with a pair of superficial provincials like them. I’m not sure they were embarrassed the way he meant them to be, but they sure were indignant. And bewildered. He enjoyed that, too. What did you think of him once you got to know him, Max?”

“He amused me. I saw him being mischievous, but in a serious way. And, of course, as long as he caused you no harm—I mean in the sense of sabotaging your work and success—I was quite prepared to enjoy him.”

“And did you?”

“More and more. He did fine work and took it seriously. He developed, I think, a good sense of perspectives and balances, and only mocked what he took to be false.”

“A little too many perspectives and balances sometimes.”

“And so?” Max shrugs. “He knew you were responsible for yourself. And agreement of temperament is not necessary, only balance of temperament. As with me and Lily, you see. I recall him saying on TV that you did not make suggestions about the shape and design of his work because you respected his knowledge and eye, and he could not imagine making recommendations about your work because he had an equal respect for yours.”

“That wasn’t exactly the same as saying I was doing the right thing, though, was it?”

“But you had that assurance yourself. I would not suggest he disagreed with you, but I would say Lily and I had many disagreements over the years, but what was important was that we respected each other’s separate judgments and skills.”

“That’s why you took me on, isn’t it? Because Lily pushed.”

Max waves his hand slightly. “Probably. At the time. Not because I disliked your work, but because Lily understood it best and first. That’s what I mean: we looked to each other, and so did you and Philip, although in different ways.” He glances at his watch, and at Sophie. “But now perhaps we could make those sandwiches you were speaking of. Nora, you might start getting ready.” For the funeral. In less than two hours. He sounds the way Nora imagines a father would sound: keeping track of time, getting them organized.

“Okay. I won’t be long. Then your turn, Sophie.”

Left on her own with Max, Sophie is tense. He is Nora’s ally, not hers—as if it’s a war, or a game? But it’s not, it’s only a series of duties to perform and endure. She will make lunch. Then get ready. Then comes the funeral. It’ll be nice to see Hendrik Anderson’s calm, solid face. That and Phil’s hands should hold her together if by any chance she starts falling apart.

Max is poking around in the refrigerator, finding eggs for his mayonnaise. “The young woman, Beth,” he says, now reaching for a bowl in the cupboard overhead, “she is here?”

“Yes. Mind you, I haven’t seen her yet today, but somebody did a good job of going through the fridge overnight. Although ordinarily she hardly eats anything. Usually she’s just kind of around, being useless.”

“You dislike her?”

“Not especially, I just think she’s not very bright. Well, look what she does—she lives off her body, and what use is
that?” Oh, Sophie, Sophie. She shakes her head at her own unkindnesses.

Max shakes his, too, but he’s smiling. “You are speaking to the wrong person about that, since I have also lived somewhat off her body. As has Nora. So I would have to say it does have its purposes, although perhaps more for others than for herself, and so yes, I suppose that is a little bit sad.”

They are side by side at the counter, Sophie buttering bread, Max stirring his mayonnaise into the salmon. “I imagine,” he says, “it has been a strange couple of days here. Not least for you, Sophie. Philip’s death makes a great difference, doesn’t it? It feels quiet, and there are spaces where there should not be.”

Be careful. “Yes, everything’s off balance. Like somebody jumped off a see-saw and sent us all flying.”

Max nods. “Everything goes flying, very true. Have you thought what you will do? When everything comes down, how you will land?”

“Not yet. I don’t think there’s been time for anyone to think ahead, and I’ve had a lot to do. Making the calls, taking the calls, dealing with the funeral home.”

“You did all that?”

“I guess it’s my job. But Nora’s ideas. I mean, not having any visitation, just a service in double-quick time and straight to cremation.” Sophie shivers. “The funeral home guy thought it was awfully fast too. Unceremonious. So it looks like, I don’t know, wiping Phil off a blackboard. Just erasing him.” She hears her voice rising. “And Max, it
does
feel that way. I don’t know why Nora is in such a rush.”