“Have you TOLD YOUR DAUGHTERS YET?” ASKED HAL. HE and Jessie were seated, as usual, in the Barclay Room of Ponzio’s. A hard-bitten waitress named Margie with a red beehive harido had, without bothering to consult them, brought a chopped Greek salad and a Reuben.
“Eat your sandwich,” said Jessie, avoiding a response to his question.
“If you won’t tell them, I will,” said Hal seriously. “We can’t keep meeting in secret like this. It’s not right.”
“Are you afraid for my reputation, maybe?” asked Jessie. “You didn’t care so much about it back then.”
“Jessie—how many times do I have to tell you that I am not that person? Or if I am, I have no knowledge of it, so you can’t make those kinds of statements.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. It just slipped out.”
“Getting back to the point,” said Hal. “Would you like me to call Carla and Margot and tell them what we have planned?”
“I’d like you to call Margot.”
“Okay,” said Hal. “I’ll call her tonight.”
“And ask her out?”
Hal stiffened slightly; Jessie had hit a nerve. He had wanted to
ask Margot out—the thought hadn’t left his mind since Jessie’s Shabbos dinner. He had even, finally, determined to do so last weekend. But before he had a chance, he actually ran into her by accident.
It was a Thursday evening at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, which was having one of its exhibitions of student work. He had gone to see the painting of a former student. Many of Hal’s former students kept in touch, and his social calendar was crowded with graduation parties, recitals, plays, and sundry other events involving people who had once been members of his seventh-grade class. One former student had even insisted that he attend the premiere of a porn film in which she had landed a role (and where the best that could be said was that the role was small and the porn, soft—though he had duly praised the performance for its “expressiveness”).
On this particular day, he had entered the mausoleum-like Academy of Art, climbed the wide stone steps to the main exhibition floor, and been confronted by the sight of Margot Kaplan standing directly in front of him.
She was wearing a red dress, and her copious dark hair was twisted at the back of her head in a loose chignon. She was, he thought, worthy of taking her place beside the women in the John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase paintings that were scattered throughout the museum.
She was standing by the side of a tall, thin man in an expensive suit whose hair was brushed straight back in the European style. They were examining a canvas, obviously one of the more experimental pieces of student work, in which the edges had been charred as though rescued from a fire.
Margot, always acutely aware of being looked at, had turned to face Hal almost as soon as he reached the top of the stairs. As he approached, a look of surprise and pleasure flitted across her face. She put out her hand. “If it isn’t William Shakespeare,” she said.
“Fancy meeting you in a modern picture gallery. Pierre de Villiers, meet—Hal.”
“Hal Pearson,” said Hal, taking her hand and then, reluctantly, letting it go. He was pleased that she remembered his first name but irritated that she had forgotten his last (or pretended that she had).
Pierre gave Hal a quick glance but did not extend his hand. “You are an artist,” he declared, as though he couldn’t be bothered with the inflection required for a question.
“No,” said Margot, who was examining Hal closely, as though his presence held a certain fascination for her, despite herself. “He’s my niece’s seventh-grade English teacher.”
“Ah!” said Pierre, as if this now rendered Hal completely insignificant, and turned back to the canvas on the wall.
“Pierre’s a friend,” said Margot vaguely, “and a serious art collector. He wanted to see what our young American artists were up to.”
“And what do you think our young American artists are up to?” asked Hal, addressing himself to Pierre’s back since Pierre continued to look at the canvas on the wall.
“Not much,” said Pierre, still not turning around but making a slight wave with his hand. “Very derivative.”
“Pierre collects cutting-edge art,” explained Margot. It wasn’t clear whether she agreed with his assessment about young American artists or was perhaps apologizing for it. “He’s found some wonderful things in Soho.”
“I’m sure he has exquisite taste,” said Hal. He had begun to grow annoyed at the idea that Margot was in any way attached to this appalling person.
She must have sensed his feeling, because her manner grew more brittle. “As a matter of fact, he has,” she declared. “He has one of the most celebrated collections of contemporary art in Paris and lends regularly to the Beaubourg for exhibition.”
“Then it must be a great honor to be part of his collection,” said Hal, giving her a pointed look. It was not in his nature to be ungallant, but something was pushing him in a dangerous direction.
Hal saw her eyes flash in the way they had at dinner, when they had quarreled—about what he couldn’t remember—and he was bracing himself for an acid reply when his student, a waiflike blond named Caroline, who had won a prize for a large canvas that depicted the war in Iraq using motifs from Picasso’s Guernica, ran over and pulled him across the room to meet her painting instructor. “The two people who most influenced my imaginative development,” she said, as she brought them together. “Mr. Pearson taught me to think, and Mr. Steinberg taught me to paint—not that the two things are really different.” Hal tried to pay attention to what Caroline and her instructor were saying about how thinking and painting were the same, but his mind remained fastened on the encounter with Margot. For days afterward, he replayed the scene, considering what he should have said to show himself to advantage in Margot’s eyes.
“All art is derivative,” he might have told Pierre. “Look at Shakespeare. He borrowed from everyone. If you can’t see the energy and potential in a painting like Caroline’s, then you have no right to be looking at these pictures at all.” He wished he had said this, if only to make clear to Margot where he stood—and also, he realized, because he would have liked to fight a duel with Pierre. Given they had no swords, words would have had to suffice.
“So will you ask Margot out?” Jessie repeated the question, since Hal had been daydreaming about skewering Pierre with his words and had not responded the first time.
He now answered with uncharacteristic sharpness: “Your daughter wouldn’t go out with a lowly middle-school teacher, so I’m not going to humiliate myself by asking.”
“I think you sell Margot short,” said Jessie with a touch of maternal indignation. Then she shook her head sadly. “And one thing you weren’t before was a coward.”
“You’re doing it!”
“I’m sorry.”
Hal now assumed a gentler tone, though he spoke firmly: “I will call Margot and Carla and tell them about the trip, if you won’t. So make up your mind.”
Jessie took her fork and picked at her Greek salad for a moment. “They won’t let me go.”
“How can they prevent you? Anish is covering the expenses. They’re not going to hold you against your will or put you into an institution or something, are they?”
“No,” said Jessie slowly. “At least I don’t think so. But they’ll disapprove.”
“So let them.”
“And they’ll bad-mouth you. They’ll say you’re trying to take advantage. Or that you’re crazy too.”
“So what? Maybe I am. If I don’t care, why should you? But you have to tell them.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Jessie, sighing. “I’ll tell them tonight. Margot is coming to dinner.” She gave Hal a knowing look. “You could come too, if you want.”
He shifted in his chair. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. I’ve already been to dinner once. It would look a bit strange to have me again, especially since you haven’t told them.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll tell them tonight,” Jessie sighed.
“Good,” said Hal. “Anish says he’ll have the tickets for us by next week. He’ll be bringing along a colleague who knows the ins and outs of the city going back to the doges, so you’ll have plenty of help in finding your way.”
“I won’t need any help,” said Jessie. “I know that city like the back of my hand.”
“Well, a lot may have changed since the 1590s. Flooding and earthquakes; all sorts of rebuilding and renovation. There’s no telling if your house is still standing.”
Jessie looked at Hal and became quiet for a moment. “You
know,” she finally said, “it’s like I’m preparing to go on the stage for a performance, but it’s one that happened a long time ago. Will always said the best actors always looked forward and never back. That’s why it didn’t upset them if they missed a line; they were thinking about what was coming next.”
“You don’t have to go back, you know,” noted Hal, catching the implicit meaning in what she said. “Sometimes I think maybe you shouldn’t. Feel free to cancel, if you have any doubts at all. Anish can always use the tickets to take some graduate students over. He has plenty of other work he can do in Venice.”
Hal was speaking truthfully. He had grown very fond of Jessie, and he often felt himself siding with her daughters—wanting her to simply give up on the whole harebrained scheme, to try to forget whatever she thought she remembered, and to move forward rather than back in her life.
“But I must go back,” countered Jessie with vehemence. “It’s not just to find my birthday sonnets. It’s more than that—or maybe something entirely different. All I know is that it’s a trip I need to make. You mustn’t try to talk me out of it,” she said, clearly upset at the prospect that he might.
“If it’s what you want, I won’t try to talk you out of it,” said Hal reassuringly.
Jessie sighed and patted his hand. “Such a sweet and loyal boy. Don’t worry, I’ll do what you said and tell the girls tonight.” She paused and gave Hal a look. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t pick up the phone and ask Margot out.”