The Center of the World (31 page)

Toward late afternoon I wrenched myself out of the painting. I wrapped it in its canvas and placed it carefully in the car. I put the bedstead back in front of the recess in the wall. It was just before midnight when I arrived home. I went in to make sure that Susan hadn’t changed her mind and that I had the house to myself.

I set
The Center of the World
up on the bureau in the bedroom, adjusting the light as best I could. I piled the pillows up on the bed so I could see the painting, like a pasha looking over his harem.

I could sense the rise and fall of her breasts and almost hear the passage of god-touched blood as it coursed through her veins and infused her skin with life and color. If I had thought about it I would have realized that I had never been so happy, but I was too happy to think. Soon I no longer saw her image. She was simply present to me and I was complete.

I called in sick on Monday. I suspected that everyone in the office knew my wife had left me. They would understand if I took a few days off, and they wouldn’t say anything when I came back. It was the sort of thing that happened all the time.

But I
was
sick; incapacitated by wonder and ill with happiness. I had fallen into perfection. My marriage, my children, my job, and all the stuff that I worried about faded away. Everything that mattered was in front of my eyes.

By Wednesday afternoon, however, I found myself gradually awakening to the sense that there was a world beyond
the picture frame that I needed to attend to, just as there was a world outside Helen’s chamber. Out there on the plain was where the work of living went on, where the battle was fought, and, farther off, where the grain was grown. In the distance I could see the small towns that housed the farms and the workshops where the silk that adorned Helen was spun. The gods were there too, although more difficult to see than on the battlefield. They were in the light that fell upon men and women and allowed them to do their work.

On the Thursday after Susan left, I went back to work. I told my colleagues that I’d had the flu. They all nodded sympathetically; no one mentioned Susan. Work seemed better than it had in many months. I felt that what I was doing was useful and interesting, and that if it weren’t for the good work of the foundation, a number of useful projects would remain undone. I did manage to leave every day promptly at five. When I got home I went upstairs to be with the painting. Some nights I forgot to eat dinner. I lost a few more pounds and had one of my suits taken in.

I talked to Susan a few times a week. At first I couldn’t imagine a greater happiness than being alone with the painting, but gradually the absence of her familiar voice over morning coffee and her warm body in the bed beside me began to bother me. Although I still didn’t mention the painting to her and was very much aware of what I wasn’t speaking of, I was more comfortable now. She was doing well too, discovering a life for herself in the city. At first there were only references to colleagues, but then so-and-so, a friend of a friend, would enter
the picture. She was getting connected with a network of fifty-something women, mostly well-off, working, and divorced, who had drinks after work and sometimes went to a movie.

“You sound good,” I said during one of our calls.

“I think it’s not having the commute,” she said. “I read this article the other day, where these economists did an analysis of what makes people unhappy, and having a long commute was way up there on the list. But I miss you. I miss our house. I miss the life we made for ourselves. Are you taking decent care of yourself? You sound better.”

I told her I missed her too. We agreed that we would both take the day off and she would come out to New Jersey on Friday.

 
HOW LONG IT WAS
before I came back into the world I could not tell, although later we determined that I had been in the room for about half an hour before I spoke. Egremont was beside me on the couch; we were both still looking at the painting. He kissed me on my brow. It was an uncharacteristically tender kiss, but I was not surprised.

“I am beyond words,” I said.

“Yes, he has outdone himself. He has outdone the lot of them. Nothing like it.”

“And you,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “I cannot tell you how I felt. The years slipped away. I remembered when I first set eyes on you, when I first set eyes on Wyndham’s mother, when I first set eyes on Priscilla, down by the outbuildings before you were born. Lord, it all came flooding over me at once, and the feelings too. I feared it would not last, and that is why I called you so impatiently. I hope you are not angry.”

“No.” I returned his kiss. “For a moment I feared you had suffered a fit or a fall. And then when I saw it, I stopped thinking altogether. That is the most remarkable thing. It was as if I had ceased to be.”

“Yes. Everything became quite beyond words.”

“I feel the whole world is somehow here before us. Do you see those birds there, on that tree? What extraordinary creatures. I fancy I can almost hear them singing.”

He looked at the place where I had pointed. “No,” he said, “I had not seen them. You are right. They are remarkable. All the colors of the east and yet harmonious. And yes, I can almost hear their song, deaf as I am. But did you see there, down on the battlefield, the fear in the faces of the common soldiers as they flee from that hero in bronze? I feel quite cut up for the poor chaps. They shall be carrion ere long.”

We spent the better part of an hour wrapped in each other’s arms and admiring the painting. The years slipped away—he took me once again—and I opened myself to him as if I was first in love. We laughed and made jokes like two children. It was the sweetest hour of my life.

I felt a pang in my heart as I thought of young Grant waiting in the breakfast room, but then a great rush of envy as I realized that he was going to see the painting for the very first time. We dressed and made ourselves as presentable as we could, but I blushed like a girl as I thought that all the servants would know what we had been about when they saw the state of my hair.

When we returned to the sitting room we sent the servants out of the room. Egremont looked at Turner as sternly as he could.

“You have played me a nasty trick, sir. I had proposed to pay you good money for your labors, but I find that you have cheated me.” A look of alarm began to cross Turner’s complacent face, but Egremont went on regardless. “I had asked you, sir, to put my jewels in your work and you have not done so. Do you expect to be paid the full measure when you have defied me on my only specific request?”

Turner saw the humor in Egremont’s eyes, and his alarm was replaced by delight. Recognizing that Turner had seen through his joke, Egremont clasped him around the shoulders. I offered him a kiss. Egremont called in for tea and a bottle of champagne.

“You have outdone yourself, sir. You have outdone all of them, past and present. There is nothing like it.” We went on in this vein for some time. Turner drank in the praise as a thirsty man drinks water.

“I thought, yes, it would more than do. But had my doubts. Not my usual line, you know. Not like any of the others. I thought perhaps I might be mad. See the thing for one thing when in fact it is another. Enthusiasm can lead one astray—it’s hard to trust it. Sometimes right, but sometimes madness. There is a fine line.”

We both assured him that there was no question that he had succeeded. “Glad it pleases. Would have broken my heart
had it not. Or else I’d have thought you were mad. Either one. But as for those jewels: they are there, you know. On the floor beside the dressing table. I tried to think the thing through. Helen. The greatest beauty in the world. Men give her trinkets all the time. But she is Helen, nothing can increase her beauty. Nothing larger than infinity, you know. So I put them in—to please you, my lord—but not in the usual place.”

Turner drank off his glass of champagne with satisfaction and smiled as Egremont refilled his glass. “Good stuff, this. Thank you, my lord. Those jewels—another joke between us. In Rome I spent many hours in the Gallery Doria where there are a couple of paintings by Caravaggio. One of them the Virgin, the other the Magdalene. Old Caravaggio used the same pretty girl for both. A sly trick, I thought. His Magdalene is sitting on a low stool, wearing a gown of rich brocade with gold stitching. Garb of her trade in Caravaggio’s day, I suppose. But next to her on the floor are all her jewels. Just strewn about, a whole casket full, as a sign of her repentance, you see.

“So I put Helen’s jewels on the floor too. Not as a sign of repentance, however. Helen never repents. The whole world is in flames, and she the cause. Those jewels are very fine, my lord. No family in England has any finer. But dull compared to Helen herself. It would be like her, don’t you think, to just toss aside a kingdom’s worth of jewels. Great cruelty in great beauty. Not in your case, Mrs. S., but in the idea of it, you know.”

We chatted on like this for about an hour, until poor Grant came down. He was speechless in his admiration, although he
managed to say more that was sensible than either Egremont or I had been able to. He knew that the end was coming. It would be my task to tell him so, not a task I relished, but I managed it when the time came. Helen had already given me the strength I needed.

 
ON THE LEFT-HAND SIDE
, near the bottom, I could sometimes make out a sheet of paper. It had blown off Helen’s table, or perhaps she had dropped it there. When I went up close to the canvas it vanished, but when I stepped back it appeared. When I saw it I could not make out the Greek letters, but sometimes I was almost able to understand what she had written. Often this understanding came to me when I was away from the painting, or concentrating on some other part of it. As I was waiting for Susan at the station, I understood that Helen had been writing an appeal to Priam. She told him that she wanted this war to be over. She had seen so much and suffered so much. She could no longer bear the sight of the men out on the plain below, dying and suffering on her account. But then she had heard Paris’s footfall in the corridor, and the sheet of paper lay forgotten on the floor as she prepared for the arrival of her lover.

A wave of fondness washed over me when I saw Susan step off the train. “You look great,” I said.

We planted kisses on each other’s cheeks, but then we kissed each other as if we meant it. I think we were both surprised and pleased by that.

“I like what you’ve done with your hair. I was half afraid you were going to turn into some blond TV-show lawyer. I think I’d let myself forget how pretty you are, gray and all.”

“And you look good, too,” she said. “You look like you’ve lost a few more pounds, but it might be time to have a piece of cake.”

“I’ve been too sad to eat,” I said. She smiled and gave me another kiss. I felt that we were falling into the comfortable old rhythms. It was easy to forget how good all that was.

She only had her briefcase with her, so I saw that she was planning to go back to the city. I was already a little bit sad about that.

I suggested we go to town for coffee. Susan held down a table while I got two large cappuccinos and a piece of cake to share. She had picked a table in the back of the room, as far as possible from the students pecking earnestly at their laptops.

We chatted for a few minutes about Susan’s new life in New York. I liked looking at her, my wife of twenty-four years, but I suddenly felt a spike of nausea as the image of Susan in the hotel room in Cleveland rose up in my mind like bile.

“Tell me,” I said. “Are you having an affair?” I don’t know where I got the courage to ask the question, but I saw the piece of paper that had fallen to the floor of Helen’s chamber as I spoke.

She paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. As she spoke I focused on the bit of carrot cake that hung there.

“Don’t you think you have a lot of nerve asking me that question? In case you’ve forgotten: you were the one kissing Ruth Carpenter. It occurred to me that maybe you wanted me to come out here so you could tell me you’d been seeing somebody.”