The Last Painting of Sara de Vos (2 page)

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A little before seven, Hart Hanover, the building doorman, calls up to tell the de Groots that he's sending up Clay and Celia Thomas, the first of their guests. Marty thanks him and remembers to ask Hart about his mother, a woman quietly dying of cancer out in Queens. “Soldiering on, Mr. de Groot, thanks for asking.” Hart has been the doorman at the corner of East Eightieth and Fifth Avenue since before Marty's father bought the penthouse in the late 1920s. The narrow, fourteen-story building has only six apartments, and each of the residents treats Hart like a kindly uncle fallen on hard times. Marty tells him they'll send down a dinner tray from the caterers and hangs up. He and Rachel take the stairs to the lower floor and wait for the elevator. The managing partner and his wife are always the first to arrive and the first to leave, a couple in their sixties who host summer dinner parties that end while it's still light out.

The elevator doors open and the Thomases step out onto the black marble floor of the foyer. Rachel always insists on taking coats and hats herself and there's something about this ritual, this pretense of domestic humility, that gets Marty worked up. The housekeeper, Hester, is probably up in her room watching television, since Rachel made a show of giving her most of the night off. He stands there watching his wife take his boss's camel hair overcoat—it's too warm for such a coat—and Celia's cashmere shawl. In the first moments after arrival, Marty remembers how uncomfortable Clay always looks when he comes over. Clay is cut from a lineage of pious New England Brahmins like a slab of blue slate; he's from a bloodline of clergy, intellectuals, and taciturn privilege. He seems to silently begrudge Marty's inherited wealth, works his jaws a little like he can taste iron in his mouth every time he comes over. Marty suspects this is the reason he still hasn't been made partner—his triplex with unobstructed views across the Met and Central Park offends his boss's sense of patrician restraint.

Clay thrusts his hands into his tuxedo pants and leans onto the balls of his feet, his face brimming with forced good cheer. He looks to Marty like a man who's been out chopping firewood in a dinner jacket, invigorated by a moment of bracing contact with the elements.

Clay says, “Did you add a new floor to the place, Marty? I swear it gets bigger every time we come over!”

Marty offers up a chuckle but refuses to answer. He shakes Clay's hand—a gesture he would never make at the office—and kisses Celia on the cheek. Behind his guests, he sees Rachel half-engulfed by the shadow of the coat closet, running her hand over the plush of Celia's shawl. She might go into that closet and never return, he thinks.

“He made us trek all the way north along the park,” Celia says.

“Let's get you both a drink upstairs,” Rachel says, guiding them toward the stairwell.

Clay removes his heavy spectacles and rubs the lenses with a handkerchief. In the lamplight of the hallway Marty notices an angry red welt on the bridge of Clay's nose and thinks of a country parson on the brink of a fiery sermon.

Clay says, “If we're financing orphans, I thought we should walk. Plus it's a beautiful night. We'll taxi it back, don't worry, darling. I'm warning you, Marty, I'm famished from that walk. Ready to eat like a Viking.”

“You're in luck,” Marty says. “Rachel's hired every caterer in the state.”

They arrive on 14 and walk down the hallway toward the terrace, passing the closed doors of the bedrooms. Marty gets this quirk from his dead father, a Dutch banker with a strong preference for the separation of public and private space. Marty even keeps his favorite books in the bedroom instead of the library because he considers them a kind of confession. As they pass the kitchen and come upon the great room, Marty can hear the string quartet starting up outside and above the terrace wall he sees the apartment towers across the park lit up like ocean liners, stippling the darkness above the tree crowns. He hears the faintest sigh leaving Celia's mouth and knows it's the sound of envy. He thinks of the Thomases' sober stone house with its narrow windows and the chalky smell of a rectory. Clay clears his throat as they survey the terrace banquet tables piled with hors d'oeuvres, the pyramid of glinting ice and shrimp.

Swallowing, Celia says, “As usual, it looks wonderful, Rachel.”

“All I did was make some telephone calls.”

“Hardly,” Marty says. “It's been like planning the Normandy invasion around here for weeks. Anyway, we thought we'd capitalize on the weather. Feel free to be inside or out.”

“Steer me toward a gimlet and a handful of peanuts,” Clay says.

Marty hears Clay jangling some loose change in his pockets and pictures him standing before an austere bureau or secretary, plinking quarters and dimes into his tuxedo pants. He's certain there's a penknife in one of those trouser pockets. He says, “Sorry, Clay. You might have to settle for brie and shrimp.” He throws one arm out, gesturing to the terrace. The doorbell chimes and Rachel hurries down the hallway before Marty can stop her.

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At two hundred dollars a plate, the Aid Society dinner attracts roughly the same sixty people each year—uptown lawyers, surgeons, CEOs, philanthropist wives, a retired diplomat. It's always black-tie and assigned seating, little place cards in calligraphy on ten round tables. Once a year, Rachel calls a Japanese artist in Chelsea with her guest list. Three days later the place cards arrive in an envelope made of rice paper. Marty keeps a seating chart, a trick he learned from a friend who runs the European art auctions for Sotheby's. He puts the wealthiest guests nearest the silent auction table and instructs the catering staff to replenish their wineglasses every fifteen minutes. This strategy has made a decade of hosting these dinners for the Aid Society the most profitable on record. It yields wildly inflated auction bids on Caribbean cruises, opera tickets, fountain pens, and subscriptions for
Yachting
magazine. Marty once calculated that Lance Corbin, an orthopedic surgeon who didn't even own a boat, was paying $120 for each issue of his maritime monthly.

The dinner tables are laid out with lilies and antique silverware in the great room, overlooking the terrace. Because it's so warm, cocktails, champagne, and dessert can be served outside, but Marty insists that dinner take place inside, where the lighting is better for signing checks, where Dutch and Flemish genre paintings and landscapes suggest, if not orphans, at least an atmosphere of underprivilege—the peasant hauling an animal haunch into a stone cellar in bad weather; the tavern revelers throwing spoons at a cat; the Avercamp of red-cheeked peasants skating on a frozen canal.

When Rachel calls everyone inside to dinner, the string quartet switches from Rossini sonatas to Bach concertos and adagios. As usual, Rachel and Marty sit at separate tables to maximize their interactions with guests, but several times during the meal Marty notices his wife looking absently into her wineglass. Clay Thomas tells his annual stories of being a World War I medic, of playing soccer with the Italians in a field of mud. Marty routinely swaps out guests from this table but always puts himself dutifully on the Clay Thomas roster. Until he makes partner he'll pretend he's hearing these war stories for the first time every year.

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After dinner and the auction, the guests drift back out onto the terrace. A long table has been set up with flutes of champagne, tiers of profiteroles, ramekins of crème brûlée, Belgian chocolates. As in past years, Rachel leaves the important mingling to Marty. She can never find her way into the banter of the men, or the partners' wives, who all send their children to the same schools and colleges, so she's content to find the outliers. The sister of the important socialite or the out-of-town cousin of some charity board member—these are the people she's most comfortable with, the ones who don't ask if she'd ever wanted to start a family. Marty accuses her of hiding in her own home, of having cramped, awkward conversations with total strangers. He tells her that the partners think she's aloof instead of shy and fragile. From the corner of the terrace, from the trailing edge of a conversation about the stray mongrel the Russian scientists found on a Moscow street, Rachel can see the ornate clock on the wall of the great room and realizes the Rent-a-Beats will be here in less than half an hour. She surveys the crowd to calculate how the troupe might go over. She can't decide if she's trying to add levity to the evening or ambush the entire event. If she's misread the situation then she'll meet the bohemians in the foyer, pay them their cash fee, and send them back into the night.

The temperature has dropped ten degrees and many of the guests have reclaimed their coats. Earlier, during cocktails, Marty built a fire in the outdoor brick fireplace, and she'd watched as Clay and the other partners took turns offering counsel, drinks in hand. At one point, Clay put on a pair of asbestos gloves and took up a cast-iron poker to rearrange the logs at the center, telling the younger men that they needed more blue flame and air at the base. Now there's a huddle of them by the replenished fire, lawyers with cigars and loose metaphors talking philosophy, urban decay, client billing. Through the French doors, she watches the caterers ferry the dinner plates toward a clearing station they've set up in the back hallway, the old servants' corridor that flanks the rear bedroom doors. Marty used to call it bedpan alley and claimed he could remember his senile Dutch grandmother—a heavy gin drinker—putting her “thunder pot” out there for the servants to fetch. But there were no servants, just an overworked housekeeper who had decommissioned the corridor years before and who didn't find the bedpans until the smell came through the walls. There must be a dozen caterers back there by now. She has the idea that she should go and check on things, make sure there isn't broken glass or waiters drinking from the bottle, but then she notices Marty conferring with Hester. She'd more or less given Hester the night off, after the flowers were set out, because she wasn't getting any younger, so she wonders whether Marty pulled the poor woman from her bedroom.

Hester walks from the terrace toward the library and then returns wheeling a metal cart, a sheet draped over the top and a tangle of extension cords trailing behind. By this time, Marty is holding Carraway in his arms and looks as if he's about to say a few words to his guests. A few glasses of wine and he turns into his father, ready to speechify at the slightest provocation. When they go badly, these speeches are tone-deaf and sentimental. He's gotten weepy-eyed over less than orphans before, so Rachel fears the worst as guests begin to gather around. A Bach adagio peters out from one corner of the terrace, then abruptly stops.

Marty stares a moment at the faces in the firelight, tenses his bottom lip. “Well, I thought I would say a few words … Thank you to everyone for coming and for supporting such a good cause. As usual, we raised quite a sum tonight.”

He pats Carraway's hindquarters as he holds him in one crooked arm, his free hand holding a cigar.

“As you all know, this week the first living creature was launched into space orbit on a one-way journey…”

Rachel takes up a glass of champagne from a passing tray. She thinks,
Is he really going to segue from space orbit to orphans?

“I'm told that when the dog eats the last of her food rations in a few days, the final meal is laced with poison, or that there's a gas for euthanasia that's released. Apparently, this is how the Russians treat their canine space explorers…”

A tremor works its way into his voice as he trails off. A few of the partners sip their drinks, staring into the embers of the fireplace. Rachel wonders if they're averting their eyes in embarrassment or patriotic reflection.

“Now, I can't help thinking about our little beagle Carraway here and thought we could involve him in this historic moment.”

By now, Hester has brought up a kitchen chair and Marty gently places the dog in a sitting position. He uncovers the cart to reveal his ham radio set from the library, complete with headphones and a chrome-plated microphone.

“As it happens, Sputnik Two is giving out the same signal as the first one, so if I can find the right frequency we should be able to hear the Russkie mongrel orbiting above us. According to some of my ham radio buddies in Chicago, the signal should be within range right about now…”

Marty looks at his watch and moves Carraway's seat closer to the microphone. “I'm going to let Carraway listen to his competition because he could use a little wake-up call. Let's face it—I can barely get him to walk in the park in December.”

This gets a genteel chuckle.

Rachel looks out across her guests. The women are smiling at Carraway as he nuzzles the metal gauze of the microphone. The men are less enthused, side-mouthing comments to each other. Marty brings the contraption to life, flipping buttons and turning a large dial in the middle. A lick of static comes in, then a stray newscast from Canada and a burst of polka, before they finally hear the signal—a bleeping, underwater tone. The pinging is almost painful to listen to, a lunar plink that contains quiet, Soviet menace.

“Do you hear it?” Marty says. “That's them.”

By now the guests have edged closer and Rachel sees the men transfixed, cigars limp at their sides. For a full minute they listen to the signal. Marty plugs in the headphones and places them around Carraway's ears, lowering the volume. The beagle flinches and barks. Marty tells his guests that the microphone is off, that he's not licensed to let the dog make noise on his call sign, that he'd get thrown out of the ham fraternity, but pretty soon guests are encouraging Carraway to give the Russkie dog some hell. “Tell them we're coming after them,” one of the partners calls. Marty pretends to open up the microphone and with all the commotion the dog begins barking and yapping. Finally, Marty gives Carraway a peeled shrimp from a nearby table and lets him scamper back inside and everyone claps and cheers for the little patriot. Marty makes a toast to space exploration and the rising star of America. Rachel turns and over the rim of her glass she sees the Rent-a-Beats coming onto the terrace through the French doors, Hester trailing behind them in exasperation. She imagines Hart Hanover's confusion in the main lobby, the intercom call that Hester intercepted, and now she watches the Beats approach—America's answer to the cosmic aspirations of the Russians. Bearded, braless, barefoot freedom. There's six of them: three men and three women. One of the men—a Marxist poet or vegetarian philosopher—looks genuinely outraged by what he sees out on the rooftop.