Lady in the Lake(70)

Men don’t care about love, she grumbled to herself as she walked. Men thought love didn’t matter, it wasn’t news. Maybe they were right. Men deceiving women in love was the oldest story in the world.

And there, on the sunbaked August pavement, Maddie felt a chill unlike any she had known. Her legs shook so hard that she had to find a bus bench to sit down and catch her breath. Thrust eighteen years back in time—what had taken her there? Why was she thinking about this now?

She had been not quite twenty, married to Milton, the honeymoon phase over, money tight, but life pleasant except for the fact that she could not get pregnant. People said it was normal, that she was worrying too much, but Maddie had a specific fear and was terrified to tell her doctor about it. What if she never conceived? If she wasn’t a mother, what would she be? She had put all her money—her life, not even two decades of it—on this bet, on being Milton’s wife and partner. A homemaker, but one could not make a home for only two people. She watched the carriages multiplying around her modest neighborhood. Once the baby was born, she and Milton would leave the apartment for a house, life would finally begin. She had to have a baby, babies.

It was as she grappled with this fear and anxiety that a friend mentioned she had seen what appeared to be a debutante’s portrait, an amazing likeness of Maddie, for sale at a local gallery. Maddie went to see it, and sure enough, there was the portrait Allan Durst Sr. had painted not even three years ago, the summer she was seventeen. It hurt to look at that painting. For one thing, she had to admit to herself that he was a terribly mediocre artist. The brushwork was proficient, nothing more, lacking any spark or wit now that she was not gazing at it through a love-struck haze.

And it hurt to realize that the girl in the painting had ceased to exist when the painting was finished, that she could never be retrieved. The girl that Milton could never have, that no one could have. The prize that Allan Sr. had insisted on having for himself.

Maddie asked the gallery’s owner how the painting had come to be in his possession. She might have implied that the provenance was questionable, that it was clearly a portrait of her that had gone missing from her parents’ home at some point. “If I could just get in touch with the owner, I’m sure we could straighten this out.” She had assumed it would be Allan’s wife, forcing him to purge his studio of his trophies. But it was Allan himself, and the address listed was in New York, on the Upper East Side, as she always suspected.

Two weeks later, she took the bus to New York, telling Milton she was going on a B’nai B’rith trip to see Carousel, that she would be staying over at a midtown hotel, sharing a room with Eleanor Rosengren. Lie on top of lie on top of lie, and the whole edifice would crumble if Milton ever thought to say anything to Eleanor or her husband. But Maddie knew by then that he would not. He was simply not interested in her day-to-day life. He, too, was anxious for a child and took it personally that Maddie could not get pregnant.

Maddie stood outside the address she had for Allan. It was April, yet it was snowing. She had a book with her, as if that would provide an adequate excuse for standing on a snowy New York corner. Eventually, Allan came out, hatless. He looked his age now, which was forty-four. He had always looked his age, actually—it was just that she couldn’t see it when she was seventeen. He was attractive, though. She had not been wrong about that.

She planted herself in his path, ready to exclaim how small the world was. But the moment her eyes met his, she could not pretend. She began to cry, and not in a pretty way. Without a word, he took her by the elbow and led her to his apartment. He fixed her a strong drink, put together a late lunch for her out of things in the icebox, made small talk. She attempted to explain about the painting, tried to recover her pride by claiming she had been contacted by the gallery owner, who was nervous about whether he had the right to sell it. Allan’s patient support of her subterfuge made her feel worse in a way. He said that his wife was in Mexico, because she had decided she could not paint in New York in the cold-weather months. Allan Jr., of course, was at college. Yale.

Of course? Oh, yes, he had gone to Yale, too. He had mentioned it often.

“My son is still a boy,” he mused. “And yet you, the same age, are every inch a woman.” He looked at, but did not comment upon, the gold band on her hand.

“You made me a woman.”

“No, darling, you were a woman before I met you. And I wanted you to enjoy, at least once in your life, what it would be like to use that body as it was meant to be used. A woman such as you should be a king’s mistress. For a summer, I could give you that experience.”

“So you were a king?”

He had laughed at that. “Oh, Maddie, I know I’m a cad. I’m a terrible person. I tried to tell you that all along. You were beautiful, you wanted me, I was helpless. I’m sure it was some Freudian battle with Allan, a desire to displace him, to assert myself as the patriarch. But I won’t apologize for any of it. And you, in your heart of hearts, know you should be thankful. Admit it—whatever you have now, it’s not the same.”

“It’s better,” she said.

“Don’t lie.”

“I’m not.” She wasn’t.

“Look, I’m not saying I have some level of technique in lovemaking that no other man can match. But what we did was sensual, we abandoned ourselves. You can’t have that in a marriage.”