Someone to Hold

“Do you think there is?” he asked. “It is only a painting, after all, and probably not even a good one, if Cox-Phillips was right about my father’s talent.”

“Do you want me open the package with you?” she asked.

He did not immediately answer but continued to frown at her. “I cannot ask it of you,” he said.

But he had not said no. He wanted her—no, he needed to have her with him. She was a bit shaken by the rush of . . . joy she felt. When had anyone ever needed her?

“You did not ask,” she said. “I offered.”

“Then yes,” he said. But he smiled suddenly. “What if I then discover that I need to be alone?”

“Then I will come back here.” She shrugged. “I need the exercise anyway.”

“After all the dancing?” He was still smiling.

“I will fetch my bonnet and shawl,” she said, and left the room.

He had not told Anastasia about his discovery of his identity. He had not told her about the portrait of his mother. He had not asked her to go with him to give him the courage to look at it. Not that he had asked her, Camille, exactly, but she knew he wanted her to be with him. Oh, she wished, wished, wished she did not hate Anastasia. In her head she did not, but her heart would not seem to soften. She must make a determined effort to be civil tomorrow evening and during the coming week. But she already was civil. She must go beyond civility, then. She must initiate some conversation with Anastasia, show some interest in her, find some common ground they might share—the school, perhaps, and the pupils they had both taught. She would learn to like the woman if it was the last thing she ever did. Perhaps in time she would even be able to call her sister without always having to add the word half in order to set the proper distance between them.

They did not talk during the walk to Grove Street or while he unlocked the door of the house and she started on her way upstairs ahead of him. Unlike the other two times she had been here, though, a door on the first floor opened abruptly as she rounded the newel post to continue upward, and a man’s head appeared around the door.

“Is that you, Joel?” he asked. “I wonder if you— Oh, pardon me.” And his head disappeared back inside and the door clicked shut before either Camille or Joel could say a word.

“Marvin Silver, my neighbor,” Joel said. “I am so sorry, Camille. I did not expect he would be home yet. I would not have had that happen to you for worlds, especially when you are doing me such a favor.”

“It does not matter,” she said. “And I offered to come, if you will remember.” She waited for him to unlock the door to his rooms and then hung up her bonnet and went into the living room.

“I will have a word with him,” he said. “He will not tell anyone.”

“It does not matter, Joel,” she said again. “I am sick and tired of the rigid rules of propriety that have always governed my behavior. What have they ever done for me?”

“Well,” he said, “if you can be so brave and decisive, then so can I. It is in the studio. It. You see? I cannot even name it. I fervently wish Cox-Phillips had not even thought of it yesterday.”

“Bring it out here, then,” she said, “and I will look at it with you. Or I will turn my back and look out through the window while you do so alone, if you would prefer.”

“No,” he said. “In there.”

She raised her eyebrows. Into the studio? Was it not his holy of holies? The one place he took no one?

He turned to her outside the closed door and extended a hand for hers. “Come in with me. Please,” he said.

Fourteen

Joel took Camille’s hand in his and took her into his studio. It was an incredibly difficult thing to do. He had never before invited anyone into his work space, even when it was just his crowded bedchamber.

His almost-completed portrait of Mrs. Wasserman was on the easel, the eighteen charcoal sketches he had done of her strewn on the table beside it. It was an odd moment for him to realize what had been nagging at him for days, the missing detail that would allow him to complete the portrait and sign his name to it, satisfied that it was the best he could possibly do. Although she was always carefully, elaborately coiffed, there was invariably one slender lock of hair that escaped the rest and curled across her forehead just beyond the outer edge of her left eyebrow. It was surely in every one of the sketches, but it was absent from the portrait. She did not look quite herself without it. And such a very small omission made all the difference.

But this was not why he had come in here and brought Camille with him. He took Mrs. Wasserman’s portrait off the easel and set it on the table beside the sketches. Then he strode over to the corner of the room behind the door and picked up the clothbound package he had propped against the wall there yesterday and stood it on the easel instead.

“Come and see,” he said as he removed the cloth carefully and dropped it to the floor. She came to stand silently beside him.

His first reaction—perhaps it was a defensive one—was purely critical. She had been formally posed on a gilt-backed, gilt-armed chair, one elbow resting on a small cloth-covered table beside her, her hand dangling gracefully over her lap, holding a closed ivory fan. Her other hand rested on the back of a tiny dog in her lap, its eyes all but invisible beneath its long hair. She was half smiling at the beholder with a carefully contrived expression. There was a certain stiffness about it and about her pose generally, and Joel knew that she had been painted from life, and that she had sat still, probably for hours at a time, while the artist painted her. She was pretty, dainty, graceful—and totally unreal. Looking at her, one saw only the prettiness, the daintiness, the grace, the perfection of hair and complexion and dress and expression, and nothing of the person herself. The eyes looked outward but did nothing to draw the beholder inward. There was no hint of character, of mood, of vitality, of individuality. One could see this young woman, even admire her beauty and the care with which she and her props and surroundings had been arranged and painted. But one could not know her.