The Prize (36 page)

He paced swiftly down the winding stairs of the hall and out the doors. The smell of the cool wind reminded him of his father. He walked through the college green until he found the memorial bench donated in his father's honor by his last class of students. Engraved on a brass plaque on the bench was a quote from Keats's “Ode to a Nightingale”:

       
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

       
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

       
But on the viewless wings of Poesy . . .

He sat on the bench. The sun pressed into him and he closed his eyes.
What if your heart is so big it can't contain itself?
It came to him from memory. It was something his father once said. He opened his eyes to find a small blue bird perched at the far end of the bench. The bird pecked at a crumb and then lifted its wings into the breeze.

Slowly he walked back to his car. He looked out the window as he backed away from the campus. The gothic buildings, robust trees, and blankets of lawn receded. He had idealized the institution until his father was destroyed by it: he had seen it as a place removed from the world, where art and study existed apart from commerce. He thought about the ways in which some people strive to get ahead, throwing others under the bus in the process, and wondered how he had managed to achieve his small stake in the pond.

There was something else he needed to do. He hadn't spoken to Agnes since he left her studio over a year ago that day before Christmas.

He began the long drive into the city. He found a parking spot on Beach Street in Tribeca, and sat in his car in front of the trendy coffeehouse with hard wooden benches and steel industrial tables where he had met Agnes before. It was a few blocks from the building on Hudson Street. In the afternoon, after lunch, there was a lull downtown as if its inhabitants had all vacated the streets to go to their shops, studios, and offices.

From around the corner a couple holding hands strolled together toward the coffee shop. At a distance they looked like two teenagers. As they drew nearer, he saw that the woman was in her mid-twenties, thin and tall with long, graceful arms, straight spine and shoulders, long neck stretched and head held high. She walked with her legs turned out slightly, a ballet dancer, dressed in black leggings and tight, stylish black boots that went over her knee. A long robin's-egg-blue cashmere sweater—it looked expensive, maybe Italian—flapped open as she walked. Her hair was pulled up on top of her head into the shape of a tight little doorknob, and she wore huge black sunglasses like someone famous who did not want to be seen yet nevertheless called attention to herself. Beside her was a man twice or three times her age, hovering over her with a scarf draped around his neck, in black jeans and a sports coat. As the couple moved closer to the car Edward saw the walk he remembered, and the paunch. It was Nate, and the pair, the way they gestured as they walked, were unmistakably in a state of mutual rapture. Edward turned his head to the side so as not to be noticed and let them pass. Amazing how Tribeca could feel like a small town if you frequented it enough. He stayed parked in his car for a few more minutes, pondering what to do, as the two ducked into a dark basement pub.

He felt surprising compassion for Agnes, seeing Nate nearly falling all over a young ballerina who wouldn't have given him the time of day had he not been a famous artist. He wondered whether narcissists like Nate could ever really fall in love. Women were chosen merely to project his own ambitions. Perhaps he had married Agnes to ensure he would never lose his edge as an artist as long as he had her talent to push up against. He imagined Agnes
holed up in her studio uncomfortably fielding calls from the press, alone in the temple she had erected around herself, every action she made guided by Nate, whom she trusted to protect and counsel her. He felt sorry for her. He recognized that whatever was done had already been put in motion and that he was helpless to stop it.

He started up the car and drove away. He had no taste for the theatrics of brutal ambition manifested in the sleekly designed buildings that marked the skyline receding in his rearview mirror.

16 CONNECTICUT

H
E STOPPED AT
the barn on his way home. The sky had darkened and the wind picked up. It was going to pour. Two golden horses with white markings on their fetlocks and their muzzles reared up in the open corral, riled by the approaching storm. They sniffed the dirt, pawing it with their hooves, and then one nuzzled the other's backside and then returned to smelling the ground.

He walked along the gravel driveway between the two big barns toward the stable where the girls had their lessons. Holly was leaning over the rail talking with Tom Drury. Their easy banter always made Edward feel excluded.

He observed Holly in shadow, her hair flowing loose down her back like a teenager's. In the dim light it looked lighter again, blonder. He hadn't noticed before. He admired her long legs and buttocks in her tight riding pants and her square chin and perfect nose. Tom was wearing dark blue jeans and boots. He was taller than Holly, muscular and broad and clean-cut. Holly touched Tom's arm as she leaned to speak and her eyes smiled at him. He saw a flash of something between them. Tom touched her back and rubbed the upper portion of her arm with his hand. He'd long noticed Holly's flirtation with their neighbor Chip, but now he saw it was Tom with whom she was truly intimate—not physically, he
didn't think, or hoped, but emotionally. Maybe Holly confided in Tom about their troubles at home and their marriage as he had to Julia. He watched them and then he couldn't watch anymore and walked away.

He got back in his car and gripped the steering wheel to steady himself. It was over between him and Holly. He was surer about it than anything.

He drove, letting cars zoom past, his mind full of elaborate fantasies of Holly and Tom. He pulled into his driveway many minutes later. The wood shingles on the house had darkened and splintered. The heavy leaves drooped from the boughs of trees. The night began to fall, the sky turning from lavender to indigo when the last of the sun was nearly gone. He looked at it all from a far distance, as if it were no longer his. In the air the moisture began to build.

Under the darkened and peppered clouds he sat down on one of the two Adirondack chairs he and Holly had bought when they first moved into the house, drew his coat around him, and waited. A shiver went down his back. He remembered how sometimes just before dusk he and Holly would take their glasses of wine out to the backyard and sit on the chairs and watch the sun cast a shadow over the lawn as it went down and they could see the lights turn on in their neighbor's houses.

He got up and walked along the garden. The slender irises had sprung up and the green heads of the hostas poked through the ground. At the end of the season what remained would be half-chewed leaves. No matter how much they sprayed the hostas, by late August the deer would eat anything. He recalled their slender, long purple flowers and their rubbery green leaves and the sheen when the sun fell on them. What was the point of all the care and
cultivation? He circled back to the chair, sat down, and waited for Holly. He pictured Tom touching his wife. He rose and walked back through the garden and kicked the gate.

Holly's SUV pulled into the driveway. Annabel sat next to her in the passenger seat. She got out of the car and walked toward him.

“Hi, Daddy.” She took out one of the earbuds from her ears and left it hanging. “Dad, what's wrong? You look sad.”

“I'm not, love.”

“Don't go away from us, Daddy,” she said, and sauntered toward the house. His heart sank.

He waited for Holly. Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail. She must have fixed it that way when she left the barn. Her cheeks were red and wisps of loose hair framed her face. He walked toward her. He smelled the horses and the sandy dust from the barn in her hair and clothes. It was something, he thought, to look at her and not know a single thing that went on in her thoughts all day.

“I'm not used to seeing you home this early.” She reached down and rubbed her inner thigh. “Edward, I wanted to tell you. Tom offered me a position at the barn. I'm going to train the girls. I need more.”

He flinched. “I know you do.”

“When I'm at the barn everything is different. I'm completely engaged. The horses. The girls. Everything else slips away. I suppose all these years I've been jealous.”

“Of what?”

“Of you and your work. How much it fills you. How sometimes you barely need anything else.” She moved her key chain from one hand to the other and it fell to the ground making a clanging, shattering sound.

“That's not true. I've always needed you.”

She bent down for her keys and started walking toward the house.

“Holly, wait.”

She studied him as if for a second seeing in him something she'd forgotten, and for a half a second her face relaxed and she stopped. She looked him up and down the way she did when she caught his eye across a room, or when she saw him coming toward her from a distance, and he felt a pull in his gut. It was still there, that thing between them. A bird chirped and another answered. A squirrel scurried through the garden. Then just as quickly, she moved toward one of her newly planted spruce trees and picked off the dead brown sprigs. He followed her.

“What is it, Edward?”

“Do you think your father would have let you marry me if he knew I'd been married before?”

“Is that what you thought?”

“It wasn't a conscious decision. We were kids.”

She cocked her head, interest piqued, and then turned back to the spruce tree, as if to contemplate further what he'd said.

“Is there something going on? Between you and Tom?”

“Tom?” She laughed wistfully. “Everything in training is about getting the rhythm right. Without rhythm and relaxation a horse and rider can't get their communication in synch. You have to time your movement to the horse's feet at the trot. Tom knows the same language. You know what it's like, when someone speaks your language.”

She turned away from the tree to meet his look.

“Holly,” he started.

“No, Edward. Let's not.” She tossed her bag over her shoulder and walked toward the house.

17 NEW YORK

T
HE AFFAIR WAS
held in two tents in the Botanical Gardens. A floating chalkboard invited guests to jot down what they'd like to do someday.
Get the fuck out of here
, Edward thought, looking at the circus of art enthusiasts wearing designer dresses and fashionable tuxes already gathering in clusters near the cocktail bar, feeling uncomfortable in his. He yanked at his collar. It was the last place he wanted to be. At one time the exoticism of the extremely rich had fascinated him; now it bored him. Weeks before the event, though every person of distinction in the art world would be present, he'd preempted the awkwardness and told May he wouldn't be attending the awards dinner. He couldn't imagine sitting with all of them—May, Savan, Reynolds, the gallery's senior publicist, and a few of their younger associates, all flocked around Agnes and Nate.

When Edward mentioned that he wasn't going, Leonard insisted Edward join him at his table. At first Edward had refused but Leonard wouldn't let it go. “I want you to get to know April. Now is as good a time as any to put the two of you together. You're sitting at our table,” Leonard said. “I'd love to see the look on Agnes's face, seeing you sitting beside the next winner of the Tanning Prize. Wouldn't it be unbelievable if April gets it?”

Edward had allowed his friend's confidence and enthusiasm to persuade him, though all he could think about was Holly. Was she going to leave him? He didn't know.

The cocktail party was elbow to elbow. Edward was thankful that he did not bump into his colleagues from the gallery. He wondered how many people in the art world knew that he was no longer representing Agnes. A few of his friends greeted him—directors, traders, collectors—clapping him on the back and congratulating him, and Edward nodded. “All good for the gallery.” It was the phrase he had chosen to keep anyone from asking or prying any further, and it worked.

Over the top of several heads he made out Savan, dressed to the nines, tapping people on the back as he worked his way through the crowd. For a moment Edward found himself face to face with him and greeted him with a nod. Savan patted him on the back. Edward pushed past.

The centerpieces were beautiful floral arrangements. At each place setting was a meticulously folded napkin. Projections in the front room switched between live video of the red carpet, a 3D “fly-through” video of the new museum, and images of the work of the four finalists. A tall woman in black stockings and black satin short shorts and platform shoes passed by. She looked as if her legs began at her shoulders.

Edward found Leonard's table and the card with his name on it, placed next to April's. On the other side of her sat Leonard, and April's husband, a polite academic, who nodded rather than spoke. Someone said he was a philosopher. April was great company, from a small town in Texas, and, in her own words, feeling like a fish out
of water in New York. She preferred working in Texas, where no one knew her. Edward asked her how she got started.