The Mistress(7)

Lorenzo was no longer interested in children by then, not even his own, and he still didn’t want children with Maylis, despite her youth and beauty. He wanted her to himself, and her undivided attention, which she lavished on him. And it came as an unwelcome shock to both of them when Maylis discovered she was pregnant, a dozen years after they’d gotten together. It had never been part of their plan. She was thirty-three years old, he was seventy-two, and more intent on his work than ever. Lorenzo had been angry at her for weeks when they found out, and finally, grudgingly, he agreed to let her go forward with it, but he was anything but pleased at the prospect of a child. And Maylis was worried about it too. She warmed to the idea only slowly as the baby grew within her, and she realized how much it meant to her to have Lorenzo’s child. There was no question of their getting married, since he was still married to his wife, who was still alive. Cousins from the town where he’d been born confirmed it to him every few years, not that he cared.

And as Maylis grew with her pregnancy, Lorenzo painted her constantly, suddenly more in love than ever with her changing body, filled with his child. And Gabriel agreed with him that his paintings of Maylis then were some of his best work. Gabriel thought he had never seen her look more beautiful. Maylis was happy pregnant, and their son was born one night, while Lorenzo dined with his friends at the studio. Maylis had cooked them dinner, and the men drank a great deal of wine. She didn’t say anything but suspected she’d been in labor since before dinner, and she finally retired upstairs and called the doctor, while they drank. And Lorenzo and his cohorts barely noticed when the doctor arrived and joined Maylis in their bedroom to deliver the baby, who came quickly and easily. And two hours after giving birth, Maylis appeared at the top of the stairs, beaming victoriously and holding their son wrapped in a blanket in her arms. Lorenzo came upstairs unsteadily to kiss her, and from the moment he laid eyes on him, he fell in love with the child.

They named him Théophile, for Maylis’s grandfather, Theo as they called him, and he became the joy of his father’s life.

Some of Lorenzo’s most beautiful work was of Maylis holding Theo as a baby, and nursing him. And he produced spectacular paintings of the boy as he grew up. And of all his children, Theo was the only one to inherit his talent. He began scribbling next to his father from the moment he was old enough to hold a pencil in his chubby hands. It lent new excitement to his father’s work, and Lorenzo attempted to teach the boy all he knew. Lorenzo was eighty-three by the time Theo was ten, and it was already obvious by then that one day the boy would be as talented as his father, although his style was very different, even at an early age. The two would draw and paint for hours side by side, as Maylis watched them with delight. Theo was the love of their life.

By then, Gabriel had convinced Lorenzo to buy a decent house in St. Paul de Vence, although he still painted in the studio, and Theo joined him there every day after school. Maylis nearly had to drag them both home at night, and she worried about Lorenzo, who was still in good health, and worked as hard as ever, but he was slowly getting frail. He had a cough that lasted all winter, and he forgot to eat when she left him food at the studio, if she wasn’t there to give it to him, but he was as passionate as ever about his work, and determined to teach Theo everything he knew in whatever time they had on earth together.

Much to Maylis’s surprise, Lorenzo got word that winter that his wife had died, and he insisted on marrying her in the church on the hill, with Gabriel as their witness. He said he wanted to do it for Theo’s sake. So they married when Theo was ten.

It was Gabriel who urged Lorenzo to take another important leap forward in his work after that. He had continued to have no interest in a show at the gallery in Paris, but Gabriel wanted to sell one of his paintings at an important auction, to establish a real price for his work on the open market. Once again Lorenzo fought him tooth and nail, and the only way Gabriel convinced him was to tell him he had to do it for Theo, that the money he made might be important for Theo’s security one day. And as always, when Gabriel pushed him hard enough, Lorenzo reluctantly agreed. It was a decision that ultimately changed all of their lives. The painting was sold by Christie’s, in their May auction of important art, for an absolute fortune, more than Lorenzo had made in a lifetime, or had ever wanted to make. And he insisted that the painting wasn’t even his best work, which was why he had agreed to give it up.

Even Gabriel was stunned at what the painting brought. He had hoped to build Lorenzo’s prices into a more serious range over time. He hadn’t expected to get there in one fell swoop. And what happened after that was out of everyone’s control. In the next eight years, Lorenzo’s paintings, when he agreed to sell them, brought astronomical prices, and were in high demand by collectors and museums. Had he been greedy, he could have amassed a vast fortune. And as it turned out, he made one in spite of himself. His reluctance to sell them, and Maylis’s refusal to sell any of the ones he had given to her, drove the prices up even further. And Lorenzo was a very rich man when he died at ninety-one. Theo was eighteen and in his second year at the Beaux-Arts in Paris by then, which his father had urged him to attend.

Lorenzo’s death came as a devastating shock to all, most of all to Maylis and Theo, but to Gabriel as well, who had loved the man for more than twenty years, handled all aspects of business for him, and considered him a close friend, despite the insults Lorenzo had heaped on him unrelentingly till the end. It was an affectionate style of banter they had engaged in since the beginning and that they both took pleasure in. Gabriel had built his career into what it was, and he handled everything for Maylis and her son when Lorenzo died. Lorenzo had been in remarkably good health to the end, considering his age, and had worked harder than ever in his last year, as though he instinctively knew he was running out of time. He left Maylis and Theo a considerable fortune, both in art and in the investments Gabriel had made for him. Maylis was incredulous when Gabriel told her the value of the estate. It had never dawned on her what he was worth. All she had ever cared about was the man she had loved passionately for thirty years.