The Hand on the Wall(6)

“You need to be careful. You don’t want the candy to get the better of you.”

“Enough moralizing, Leo. Give me some.”

Leo sighed and reached into the deep pocket of his smock and pulled out a small enameled box in the shape of a shoe. Using his nail, he scooped out a pinch of powder into her open palm.

“That really is all of it until I get a delivery,” he said. “The good stuff comes from Germany, and that takes time.”

She turned her head and sniffed delicately. When she faced him again, her smile was brighter.

“All better,” she said.

“I regret introducing you to this.” Leo dropped the container back into his pocket. “A little now and then is fine. Use it regularly and it will take you over. I’ve seen it happen.”

“It’s something to do,” she said, watching the children. “We can’t do anything else up here now that we appear to run an orphanage.”

“Take it up with your husband.”

“I’d have better luck taking it up with the side of the mountain. Whatever Albert wants . . .”

“Albert buys. It’s a terrible situation, I’m sure. There are a lot of people who wouldn’t mind being in it, to be fair. There is a bit of a national crisis going on.”

“I’m aware,” she snapped. “But we should be back in New York. I could open a kitchen. I could feed a thousand people a day. Instead, we’re doing what? Teaching thirty kids? Half of them are our friends’ children. If their parents want to be rid of them, they could send them to any boarding school.”

“If I could explain your husband, I would,” Leo said. “I’m just the court painter.”

“You’re an ass.”

“Also that. But I’m your ass. Now hold still. Your jawline is exceptionally placed.”

Iris held still for a moment, but then she slumped a bit. The powder had begun to relax her. The perfect line was lost.

“Tell me something,” she said. “And I know your position on this, but . . . Alice is getting bigger now. At some point, it will be good to know . . .”

“You know better than to ask me that,” he replied, dabbing his brush on the palette and swirling a vivid blue into a gray. If Iris was no longer in focus, he could look at some of the stonework along the roof as it melted into the sky. “I gave you something nice. This is no way to repay me.”

“I know that, darling. I know. But . . .”

“If Flora wanted you to know who the father was, don’t you think she would have told you? And I don’t know.”

“But she would tell you.”

“You are testing my friendship,” Leo said. “Don’t ask me to give you things I can’t give.”

“I’m done for the day,” she said, pulling out her silver cigarette case. “I’m going inside for a hot bath.”

She stood, sweeping her coat around her as she strode across the top of the green to the front door. Leo had given her the powder to help alleviate her boredom—small doses, now and again, the same small doses he took. Recently, he had noticed her behavior was changing; she was fickle, impatient, secretive. She was getting more from somewhere, taking it often, and getting anxious when there was none around. She was becoming hooked. Albert had no idea, of course. That was so much of the problem. Albert ran his kingdom and entertained himself, and Iris spiraled, having too little to occupy her agile mind.

Perhaps he could get back to New York. He and Flora and Iris and Alice. It was the only sensible thing to do. Get her back to a place that stimulated her, get her to a good doctor he knew on Fifth Avenue who fixed these kinds of problems.

Albert would balk. He couldn’t stand to be away from Iris and Alice. Even a night was too much. His devotion to his wife and child was admirable. Most men in Albert’s position had dozens of affairs, mistresses in every city. Albert seemed loyal, which meant he probably only had one. Perhaps she was in Burlington.

Leo looked up at the subject in front of him, the brooding house with the curtain of stone rising behind it. The late-February afternoon sun was a white lavender, the bare trees etching themselves on the horizon, looking like the exposed circulatory systems of massive, mysterious creatures. He touched the paint to the canvas and drew back. The three figures in the painting stared at him expectantly. There was something wrong, something incomprehensible about this subject.

There is the mistaken notion that wealth makes people content. It does the opposite, generally. It stirs a hunger in many—and no matter what they eat, they will never be full. A hole opens somewhere. Leo saw it all in a flash in that dying sunset, in the faces of his subjects and the color of the horizon. He examined his palette for a moment, concentrating on the Prussian blue and how he might make a ruinous sky of it.

“Mr. Holmes Nair?”

Two students had approached Leonard while he was staring at the painting, a boy and a girl. The boy was beautiful—his hair genuinely golden, a color poets wrote about but rarely saw. The girl had a smile like a dangerous question. The first thing that struck Leo was how alive they looked. In contrast to the surroundings, they were bright and flushed. They even had traces of sweat at the brow lines and under the eyes. The slight confusion of the clothes. The errant hair.

They had been up to something, and they didn’t mind that it showed.