The Swan Thieves

Chapter 60 Marlow

Outside the Metropolitan Museum, I walked up a block and into the edge of Central Park. It was glorious there, green and full of blooming flower beds, as I'd hoped it would be. I found a clean bench and took out my cell phone, dialed the number I hadn't called for a couple of weeks. It was Saturday afternoon; where would she be on a Saturday? I actually knew nothing about her current life, except that I was trespassing on it.
She answered after the second ring, and I could hear sounds in the background, a restaurant, some public place. "Hello?" she said, and I remembered the firmness of her voice, the spare look of her long hands.
"Mary," I said. "It's Andrew Marlow."
It took Mary about five hours to reach me in Washington Square; she arrived in time for dinner, which we ate together in the restaurant at my hotel. She was famished after her unplanned bus ride--she had taken the bus rather than the train because it was cheaper, I was sure, although she didn't say that. As she ate, she told me about her comic struggles to obtain the last ticket for that departure. I'd been surprised by her insistence on coming up at all. Her face was flushed with the excitement of having done something spontaneous, her long hair caught back at the sides with little clips; she wore a thin turquoise sweater and heavy ropes of black beads around her throat.
I tried not to mind that the exquisite color in her face was for Robert Oliver, for the relief or possibly even the pleasure of uncovering something about his life that would explain his defection and justify her previous devotion to him. Her eyes were blue this time--I thought of Kate--because of the sweater. Apparently they changed like the ocean; they depended on the sky, the weather. She ate like a polite wolf, using her knife and fork with grace and putting away an enormous plate of chicken and couscous. At her bidding, I described in greater detail Beatrice de Clerval's portrait and the loan that must have removed it just after Robert had seen it.
"Odd that he should have remembered it well enough from one or two viewings to paint her for years afterward, though," I added. My elbows were already on the table, and I'd ordered coffee and dessert for both of us, over her protestations.
"Oh, he didn't." She laid her knife and fork to rest together on the plate.
"Didn't remember? But he painted her so accurately that I recognized her on sight."
"No--he didn't have to remember. He had her portrait in a book."
I put my hands in my lap. "You knew about this."
She didn't flinch. "Yes. I'm sorry. I was planning to tell you, when I got to that part of the story. I've actually written it down for you already. But I didn't know about the painting at the museum. The book didn't say where the painting was; in fact, I assumed it must be in France. And I was going to tell you about it. I brought you the rest of my reminiscences, or whatever you want to call them. It's taken me time to write them all down, and then I sat on it all for a while." There was no apology in her tone. "He had piles of books by his sofa while he was living with me."
"Kate described the same thing--I mean about the piles of books. I don't think she ever saw that portrait in one of them, though, or she would have told me." Then I realized that I'd reported on Kate directly to Mary for the first time. I told myself silently not to do it again.
Mary raised her eyebrows. "I can imagine what Kate lived with. I have imagined it, many times."
"She lived with Robert," I pointed out.
"Yes, exactly." The brightness was gone now, or had slipped behind a cloud, and she fiddled with her wineglass.
"I'll take you tomorrow to see the painting," I added, to cheer her.
"Take me?" She smiled. "Don't you think I know where the Met is?"
"Of course." I had forgotten for a moment that she was young enough to offend. "I mean that we can go look at it together."
"I'd like that. That's what I came for."
"Only for that?" I immediately regretted it; I hadn't meant to sound arch or flirtatious. My conversation with my father came back to me, unbidden: Recently abandoned women can be complicated/And she's not only complicated but independent, unusual, beautiful I Of course.
"You know, I assumed that portrait was what took him to France without me, that it was there and he'd gone to see it again."
I kept my face calm. "He went to France? While he was with you?"
"Yes. He got on a plane and went to another country without telling me. He never explained why he'd kept it a secret." Her face was tight, and she drew her hair back from it with both hands. "I told him I was angry that he'd spent money on a trip alone when he hadn't seemed to have enough to help much with my rent or food, but I was really angrier about the fact that he'd kept it secret from me. That made me realize that he was treating me just as he had treated Kate, being secretive. And it was as if it had never occurred to him to invite me along either. Our biggest fight was about that, although we pretended it was about painting, and when he came back from his trip, we lasted for only a few days and then he moved out."
There were tears gathering in Mary's eyes now, the first I'd seen since the night she'd cried on my sofa. So help me, if I'd been outside Robert's door at that moment, I would have walked in and punched him instead of sitting down in the armchair. She wiped her eyes. Neither of us had drawn breath in a couple of minutes, I think. "Mary, may I ask--did you tell him to leave? Or did he walk out on you?"
"I told him to leave. I was afraid that if I didn't, he might do it on his own, and then I would lose the rest of my self-respect as well."
I had waited a long time to ask these questions. "Did you know that Robert had a package of old letters on him when he attacked that painting? Letters between Beatrice de Clerval and Olivier Vignot, who painted the portrait?"
She sat frozen for a moment, then nodded. "I didn't know they were also from Olivier Vignot."
"You saw the letters?"
"Yes, a little. I'll tell you more later."
I had to leave it there. She was looking directly into my eyes; her face was clear, devoid of hatred. I thought that perhaps what I was seeing, naked in front of me, was what her love for Robert had represented to her. I'd never known anyone as striking as this girl, who stared obliquely at the paint on a museum canvas, ate like a well-bred man, and stroked her hair back like a nymph. The one exception might have been a woman I knew only from old letters and from paintings--Olivier Vignot's and Robert Oliver's. But I could understand why Robert might have loved the living woman in the midst of loving the dead one, to the best of his ability.
I wanted to tell her how sorry I was for the pain her words encompassed, but I didn't know how to say it without sounding patronizing, so I concentrated instead on sitting there, regarding her as gently as I could. Besides, I knew from the way she was finishing her coffee and rummaging for her jacket that our meal was over. But there was a last problem for this evening, and I had to think how to address it. "I've checked at the front desk, and they have extra rooms available. I'd be happy--"
"No, no." She was putting a couple of bills under her plate, sliding out of the booth already. "I have a friend on Twenty-eighth who's expecting me already--I called her earlier. I'll come by, say, nine o'clock tomorrow morning."
"Yes, please do. We can have coffee and go uptown."
"Perfect. And these are for you." She thrust a hand into her bag and gave me a thick envelope--hard and bulky this time, as if it contained a book as well as papers.
She had herself gathered together now, and I hastened to my feet. She was hard to keep up with, this young woman. I would have called her prickly if she hadn't been so graceful, or if she weren't smiling a little now. To my surprise, she put one hand on my arm to steady herself, then reached over to kiss me on the cheek; she was almost my height. Her lips were warm and soft.
When I reached my room, it was still early; I had the evening ahead of me. I'd thought about getting in touch with my one old friend in the city--Alan Glickman, a high-school buddy with whom I'd managed to keep up, mostly thanks to our calling each other a couple of times a year. I enjoyed his keen sense of humor, but I hadn't managed even to phone him ahead, and he was probably already busy. Besides, Mary's package rested on the edge of the bed. Walking out and leaving it here for even a few hours would be like leaving a person behind.
I sat down and opened it and drew out the pile of typed sheets and a thin paperback filled with color reproductions. I lay down across the bed with Mary's pages. The door was locked and the shades were drawn, but I felt the room full of a presence, a longing through which I could have passed my hand.