The Fifth Avenue Artists Society (34 page)

               
Dear Miss Loftin,

               
I so appreciated the opportunity to read your book,
The Web
.

I paused at the first line, never so relieved by another rejection. Turning my eyes back to the page, I figured I would go ahead and read it. Right now none of it mattered.

               
I know that it has taken me quite a long while to get to your book—it is embarrassing to think that I have had it since August—but I would like to arrange a meeting at your convenience to discuss a possible partnership.

I blinked at the words and read it again.

               
Your storytelling is remarkable both in your novel and in your work on Mrs. Emilie Helm in
The Century
. I began reading
The Web
last week and was immersed in the characters from the first sentence—in their deep, unrealized desires—but was most impressed by the theme. You see, I find it speaks to a rare but beautiful truth: that how, out of incomparable loss, some of the most
brilliant art emerges. As I know you are aware from your mention of it in your cover letter, my father was quite intimately acquainted with Washington Irving. He was an interesting sort of man who once told my father that the ills he had undergone in this life had been dealt to him drop by drop and he had tasted all of their bitterness. He lost the love of his life, his fianc
ée, Matilda Hoffmann, at the young age of seventeen to consumption. It was always my father's belief that it was his grief that drove his determination to prevail. Though he never married or got over losing Matilda, he poured his undying love and loyalty to her into his writing. I am telling you all of this because—and I hope you won't find it too forward of me to say—I believe
you have done the same. This story is too honest to suggest that it was created from pure imagination. I also hesitate to mention, for fear that I will grieve you by doing so, that I have heard of your brother's disappearance and alleged involvement in the death of Miss Blaine. Please know, Miss Loftin, that though we have never met, I have kept your family in my prayers. My hope is that through all of this you have been able to canvas your pain in the solace of your words as I often do, as Mr. Washington Irving often did, while facing adversity beyond our control. I look forward to receiving your reply.

Most Sincerely,
                                    

George H. Putnam, President
               

G. P. Putnam's Sons
                            

My hands shook as I finished the letter and ran my fingers over the writing.
George Putnam
wanted my book. My greatest dream had just been realized and yet all I could think about were
Putnam's last words—his encouragement to canvas my pain by writing. It reminded me of Franklin, of his smile as he'd lugged the easel into the study encouraging me to paint, to write. I closed my eyes, hearing the creaks and groans of the winter wind shaking our quiet house. Franklin had known how desperately I'd wanted this moment. So had John. They'd been my greatest supporters. Even though I had the support of one of the most respected publishers in the world, I still couldn't believe how much I'd lost.

Picking myself up from the floor, I stumbled up the stairs, barely able to hold myself up. I ran my hand along the wall, turned into my room, and collapsed on the bed. Staring into the dark, my eyes caught the spine of the thin notebook on my dresser. A few months ago, it had held the first chapter of a manuscript about the Society, but after Lydia's death, I'd torn every page out save the first. I smiled remembering the one scrawled sentence I'd kept:
“My brother was notoriously attracted to adventure, which is why, as I stood at the edge of the grand drawing room filled to the brim with eccentric artist-types and smoke as thick as the clouds, I was nervous.”
I reached for my pencil on the side table and stood to grab the notebook. I'd do what Putnam said. I'd channel Irving and write through the pain. I'd done it before and knew Frank would want me to do it again—and so would John and Frederick Harvey—because they knew it would save me. Once again, Franklin's last whispered word rang in my head and I lit a new taper candle and flipped to a clean page. In the pages of a book, a person could become immortal.

F
ranklin's disappearance no longer startled me, but remembering that he was gone—that he'd been gone for so many years—still made me ache. I looked down at my notebook, at the aging hand holding it, and then out at the vacant field across the street. Instead of the green, sprawling expanse, I saw his face—smiling as he glanced at my window and ran up the porch, street dust clouding round his boots. Alevia had been playing in the drawing room. I could still hear the effortless sound of her fingers on the piano and smell the sharp piney scent of turpentine radiating from the oil paints. His name echoed in my mind though I hadn't spoken it in forty-one years. None of us had. I'd forfeited my desire to talk about him in order to salvage my relationships with the family I had left, the family that refused to acknowledge that he'd ever existed. Eventually, even Mae had asked that I stop mentioning Frank. She'd said that it wasn't because she didn't think of him or love him, but she thought his memory was best left in the past so that all of us could heal.

“Hello, Gin.” My eyes lifted from the notebook to Charlie who'd materialized from the French doors behind me. He pushed his cropped gray hair from his face and sat down in the wicker chair next to me. “Nice day for an art show,” he said, looking out at the field. I nodded and waved at the gardener starting to mow the far end of it, reveling in the earthy summer smell of cut grass.

“Is everything set downtown?” I asked.

“As set as it can be. You know artists, they'll be tweaking their work till the last minute. Speaking of,” he said. Stepping inside, he returned momentarily clutching a small canvas. “Do you know whose this is? It was in the stack with the others, but no one's identified it.” He turned it around and I gasped.

“Mine,” I said, feeling my hand turn to stone around the pencil. I stared at my painting of the Hoppers' drawing room, the evidence of the one and only time I'd taken Frank's advice to paint the image I was trying to write. I could taste the cigar smoke on my tongue and hear the orchestra playing Tchaikovsky's
1812
in the corner over the chatter and laughter. I hadn't seen it in over forty years and had no idea how it had ended up here, one hundred miles from our home in the Bronx.

“Really? It's yours?” Charlie asked. The crinkled skin around his green eyes deepened as his eyebrows rose. “It's not half bad.”

“Where'd you find it?” I swallowed hard. It was June 17, Franklin's birthday, and it was rather coincidental that it had turned up today of all days. Doubting my random premonition had anything to do with why it'd suddenly materialized, I looked around the porch and down the hill to the field anyway, as though the brother I hadn't seen in four decades would miraculously appear.

“I suppose it was in the cedar chest you gave me years back. It must have been in the bottom. Some people dropped their paintings off early and I stored them in there for safe keeping.” He
shrugged. “I don't know why I hadn't noticed it before, but then again, I don't think I've opened the chest since it ended up in my house. What's it of?”

“The Hoppers' drawing room, of course.” I narrowed my eyes at him as though he'd lost his mind, before realizing he'd only seen it once. “I'm sorry. I forgot you weren't really there.”

“You've never really forgiven me for those years, have you?” Charlie asked. He sat next to me, looped his arm across my shoulders, and reached for my hand. Goose bumps prickled my skin. Charlie had never embraced me like this—the way Frank and I had embraced since birth. I glanced down the hill at the field again, sure I'd felt Frank strongly enough that he was near, but he wasn't.

“Of course I have,” I said, pushing Frank from my mind. “You've been the most important person in my life for sixty-three of my sixty-six years. Sometimes I forget that you weren't there for a time.” Rachel had died of pneumonia in December of 1893, a tragedy that had left Charlie with an immense sense of guilt and heartache.

“I would say it's more like sixty-five of sixty-six. I was only really gone for a year, you know. Even if it wasn't right, I couldn't stay away after . . .” He let the final words of the sentence drift away in the summer breeze. He was right. He'd frequented Mott Haven much more often than he had his own house in the year between Frank's disappearance and Rachel's death. In those days, he'd always made the excuse that he kept calling on account of his art, that he created his best work in my presence, in his mother's library, though every few months he'd plead for my hand. As difficult as it had been at times, I'd remained true to my word, refusing to allow our relationship to progress further than friendship. Instead, I'd poured all of myself into my writing. I pulled Charlie
down beside me and leaned into his chest, lacing my fingers around the back of his neck.

“I know,” I said. “And you'll never understand how much that meant to me.” He grinned and leaned away to snatch my lemonade glass from the table beside us. He took a long drink of Mother's famous recipe, reducing it to two small ice cubes. I sighed, suddenly thirsty, and he looked at me and laughed.

“Don't worry. I'll get you more.” He stood to do so, but paused in the doorway, staring at the painting propped against it. “Now that I know it's yours, it's obvious that it is the Hoppers' drawing room,” he said. “I vaguely remember it, but the colors and the feeling are just the way you described it in the book.” He disappeared into the house and I stared at my painting, unable to tear my eyes from it.

I hadn't seen or heard from John since the night of Lydia's death, though from time to time his final words to me still rang in my head.
“G
od, Virginia, how you break my heart.”
I closed my eyes and saw him standing in front of me, eyes full of want, and prayed, as I had every time I'd thought of him since, that wherever he was, his heart was finally full. I'd never stopped looking for him and Frank and never would. Over the years, I'd come to believe, as Charlie had from the beginning, that they were both out there somewhere, even though the rest of my family preferred to assume they were dead. Even now, the thought of my family's bitterness, their hatred, upset me. If they ever regretted their treatment of Franklin or of his memory, they'd never let on, but their reactions changed the way I saw them. As much as I tried to convince myself to love my sisters and Mother the way I had before, in my heart, I didn't. I would never understand how they'd so easily forgotten Frank.

After
The Web
's marginal sales and dismal reviews that spring, I knew I needed to get out of the city. One night, I'd woken in my
room sweating. I'd dreamed about John and Franklin and felt as though I'd die if I spent one more night in the old Bronx home. The next morning, I wrote a resignation to the
Bronx Review
and booked travel to all the places Frank's brochures had described. I'd been saving as much as I could and had just enough to buy a third-class ticket to France. Everywhere I went, I looked for Frank. I went from there to Scotland, where in a small inn outside Edinburgh, Charlie found me. After Rachel's death, he'd come to Mott Haven, intercepted my latest letter, and boarded a ship. I remember asking him months later, as we fished in the archipelago in Karlstad, if he thought wherever Franklin was—if he was still alive—if he'd been able to forget about the horror of what had happened. Charlie had looked at me, eyes meeting mine straight on. “No,” he'd said. “Have you?” I knew then, two years later, more clearly than ever before, that I couldn't escape my memories. They'd always be a part of me, no matter where I was.

We'd returned to the Bronx a few months later and I started writing seriously again, much to the relief of George Putnam, who'd immediately published in
The Century
three short stories on my travels, illustrated by Charlie. Over the years, we'd found a home for our work in the magazine, publishing several pieces per year until its last print run in 1930. Tom, however, had never had anything published again—in
The Century
or otherwise—and seemed to give up writing after Lydia's death. I'd also finished what I'd started of
The Society
a year after my return to the Bronx and realized, as I wrote the last chapters, how much it had meant to me and how much I missed it. Charlie had begun drawing again, illustrating and etching for books and magazines, and one night, as we sat working in his mother's library, I proposed the idea of creating an artists' colony. We'd heard of many during our travels in Europe, towns full of small vacation cottages where writers,
artists, and musicians came together to live and create. As strongly as Charlie and I supported each other's art, he knew he needed the company of other illustrators for his art to keep progressing, just as I needed other writers.

“Here you go.” Charlie's voice startled me from my memories. He set the glass of lemonade on the table next to me and sat down, eyeing the painting. “I think there are about three hundred pieces in the show tonight,” he said. “Three hundred,” he reiterated. “Sometimes I'm still stunned that you and I have created something this large. When we bought the land what did we think? Ten houses tops?” I took a sip and nodded. A friend of Charlie's had shown us a ninety-acre plot on the outskirts of sleepy Lime Rock, Connecticut, fifteen years back. At the time, it was all we could afford, but it was also our dream, a place to share the art we knew we'd never stop creating. It was close enough to Manhattan, we thought, to attract some of the artists there, but over the years our small colony had grown to a small town.

“It shows how crowded the city's becoming. It seems like everyone is dying to get out . . . at least in the summertime,” I said.

“Everyone but our families.” Charlie rolled his eyes. Alevia and Bessie still lived in the Bronx house with Mother, who was as spry as ever at the very old age of eighty-nine. Mrs. Aldridge, who had been battling some chronic illness for the last decade, lived next door and refused to move in with my family even though she and Mother had reconciled years before. Alevia was still playing for society events and had just retired from the Philharmonic, which had finally accepted her in 1902, and Bessie was making hats and vying for eligible widowers. Neither of them had married, though it wasn't for lack of offers. Alevia never took male attention seriously. Bessie had caught the eye of a handsome neighbor, Mr. Calvert, a few years after Tom had stopped speaking to her, three months
after her final attempt to call on him at the Blaines'. Mr. Calvert was a supply manager at Estey Pianos who lived a block over in Mott Haven. Although it had been clear that she was mad for him from the start, Bess thought his post well below her and rejected his proposal, only to carry on what she thought was a secret affair with him for the next thirteen years, an affair we all knew about after Alevia followed her back and forth to his house a few days in a row. Their relationship ended when he moved back home to New Jersey to care for his aging mother and Bess had absorbed herself into her work, insisting that his absence didn't bother her in the slightest.

“Mae and Henry got out, though,” I said. They'd finally moved to the country permanently—to Greenwich, Connecticut—with their two girls and two boys around the turn of the century. “The others are just content there, I suppose.”

“We were happy there, too, for a while,” Charlie said. His eyes drifted out over the field, occupied from time to time by people crossing back and forth from the colony to the village. “I remember that there was a span of a year—I was about twenty, I think—when I couldn't wait to come home from work because I knew you'd be in my library reading
A History of New York
.” I leaned back to glance through the window at the tattered spine of Irving's book on my shelf.

“I still have it memorized.” I cleared my throat ceremoniously and conjured up my favorite part. “‘
Upon this, my wife ventured to ask him, what he did with so many books and papers? He told her that he was seeking for immortality; which made her think, more than ever, that the poor old gentleman's head was a little cracked
.'” That quote always made me think of Franklin. Eventually, he had been immortalized in the pages of my book. As much as George Putnam had pushed me to do so at the time of its completion, I hadn't let him publish
The Society
. It was finished too soon after the Blaines
finally realized they would never find Frank or the Hoppers and dropped the charges—four years after Lydia's death. Even though I'd changed some things, I knew that Tom and the others would recognize it, and at the time, I hadn't wanted to risk the backlash. As years passed, I started to think that I would never want to publish it, but after I heard of Tom's passing three years ago, I thought it was time. George Putnam was in his final years, retired, and in poor health, so I approached Frederick Harvey. Nearly eighty-seven, he'd refused to retire, and jumped at the chance to publish it as one of the last books of his career. To my surprise,
The Society
came out to sensational reviews and excellent sales last November, placing it at the top of the second
New York Times
bestseller list. I published it under a pen name, James Laughlin, and one of my greatest joys had been hearing whispers in the bookstores where I browsed, speculating that the book wasn't entirely fiction, and wondering who the author actually was.

“I'm glad to know that you haven't lost your memory yet,” Charlie said.

“You know I could quote the entire book if I wanted to.” I slung my arm to swat him, but he caught it, fingers circling around my wrist.

“Come here,” he said, under his breath. “I need to ask you something.”