Bright, Precious Days

47

GOING OUT OF BUSINESS signs on Madison — not the fake, permanent signs on the electronics stores on Fifth Avenue, catnip to tourists. These were real, right here in the retail heart of the plutocracy, Madison in the 70s, the high street of the haute monde, where the acquisitive wives of the titans of finance could find four-figure pairs of shoes, five-figure purses and six-figure watches. Luke knew as well as anyone how badly things stood in the markets, but still, this came as a bit of a surprise; he’d somehow expected the Upper East Side to remain as he remembered it from the fat days of his first marriage, years that were prosperous, if not entirely blissful. It made him melancholy, this feeling that his city was gone.

In between meetings, he’d decided to take in the Georgia O’Keeffe show at the Whitney, that great granite bunker of modernism plunked down in the midst of the stately brick apartment towers, where he found himself standing behind a woman with strawberry blond hair who immediately attracted his interest. When she turned her head to take in the canvas from another angle, he was astonished to see that it was Corrine, standing there just a few feet away from him.

He felt paralyzed, uncertain whether to greet her or try to slip away unnoticed.

“Oh my God, Luke. What are you doing here?” she asked, blushing as she walked over, smiling and finally kissing him to cover her confusion. Drawing back, cocking her head to examine him more closely, she said, “I didn’t know you were a Georgia O’Keeffe fan.”

“Who isn’t?” he said.

“You look great,” she said after an awkward pause.

“So do you,” he said, though in fact she looked a little older than he remembered, her eyes webbed with tiny lines.

“Are you still in SoHo?”

“I’m still renting the loft, but I’ve been in Europe and Africa the last few months.”

All at once, they seemed to have run out of things to say. She lifted the corners of her mouth in an exaggerated smile before turning back to the painting in front of them, surging waves of gorgeous pink and yellow and turquoise. “It’s amazing that she was painting pure abstractions so early,” she said. “I mean Kandinsky was still painting figuratively when she did this. Have you seen the Kandinsky show at the Guggenheim?”

He shook his head.

“You should; it’s great. Although even with these abstract O’Keeffes, there’s a way in which they suggest the figurative. Of course, maybe that’s just us, our tendency to seek the familiar, to find meaning, pattern. This one’s kind of intrauterine.” She laughed nervously. “I’m sorry, am I babbling? I’m babbling.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s…great. I always loved listening to you hold forth on subjects that inspire you.” As soon as he said this, he wondered if it was true. Listening to her extemporize, he initially felt a fond rush of nostalgia, which was almost immediately tempered by a rising irritation. While these free-associative flights of erudition had once been unequivocally charming, he now found himself losing patience — the eccentricities cherished in a lover transformed into character flaws in those we’re no longer sleeping with.

He was studying her, Luke realized, with the critical eye of a scorned lover, of a man presently dating a woman twenty-three years his junior. She was still beautiful, in his eyes, though; he was surprised to feel the stirring of the old desire, a visceral response to her proximity, despite the visible arc of her decline. He could imagine the changes to come, the inevitable sagging and shriveling, as if he were fast-forwarding through time. But he was aging, as well — perhaps he also looked older to her. He was sixty. They were both getting older, and they would continue to do so, separately, shrinking and wrinkling, as would their store of collective memories — becoming less and less real to each other all the while. Though for months he’d been crushed by her rejection and at times almost hated her, he had to admit that what had seemed unbearable at first had become tolerable, until finally he’d convinced himself it was for the best.

“How’s the foundation?” she asked.

“Limping along. Donations cratered last year, but we’re hanging on. How about yours?”

“Same. More hungry people, fewer benefactors. Contributions down thirty percent. We’ve laid people off. It’s scary. Surely the economy’s got to recover, right? I mean, it won’t be like this forever, will it?”

“It’ll come back, sooner or later,” he said. “It always does. How’s Russell?” He needed only to utter the name of his former rival to prove it held no power over him.

“He’s fine,” she said. “We’re fine.”

This declaration sounded halfhearted and even rueful, though Luke supposed she wouldn’t have been eager to sound too goddamn happy. He waited.

“We moved,” she said. “To Harlem.”

His face must have betrayed his concern, his supposition that the move was indicative of severe economic distress.

“No, it’s great, actually. We have a nice house, an Italianate brownstone with amazing architectural details. Well, actually it’s kind of a wreck, but we’re fixing it up slowly. It’ll be great when we finish sometime in the next century or two. We’re renting out the bottom floor to defray the mortgage. But it’s really so much better than our old loft. I mean, it’s so great to have so much space, and the neighborhood is really cool. You’d be surprised. You should—” She stopped short, laughed mirthlessly.

“Come for a visit?”

“Well, I nearly said that, but obviously, I don’t think…” She sighed theatrically. “This is awkward on so many levels, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Yes, it is.”

She shook her head sadly.

He was at a loss for parting words. For months after she left his loft that night, he’d yearned to talk to her, to woo her back, or at least to hear her explain her abrupt change of heart. Not used to being thwarted in his desires, he’d been hurt and confused and angry, and he’d felt he deserved an explanation. But now, more than a year later, he realized the futility of that wounded compulsion. The heart didn’t have explanations, any more than the painting hanging in front of them did; it had impulses, tides and currents.

“How’s Ashley?”

“She’s good. Applying to grad schools.” He would not tell her about the relapse, the rehab, the nightmare of having to negotiate the crisis with his ex-wife. They were no longer on those terms.

“Your kids are well?” he asked.

“Except for the fact that they’re teenagers.”

He remembered her once saying that asking after someone’s kids was the highest form of social banality. He still found himself recalling these things she’d said, still thought fondly of her, and missed her for many, various reasons, though he understood that now he would miss her a little less intensely and supposed that was a good thing.

“Do you want to grab a coffee or something?” she asked.

“I’d love to, but I’ve got a meeting downtown.” In truth, there was time before the meeting, but the prospect of sitting down with her and exchanging small talk depressed him.

Their parting cheek-grazing kiss was a pale imitation of earlier kisses.

“Take care, Luke.”

“You, too.”

Neither one of them seemed to know what to do next; they were in the middle of the gallery, where, under normal circumstances, they would have continued a leisurely perusal of the paintings; before he could decide what to do, she waved, smiling ruefully, and bolted from the room, leaving him with a feeling that he’d failed to be as gracious as he might have been, a sense that would nag at him in the years to come when he thought about Corrine.

That night, at dinner, he was short-tempered with his girlfriend, bringing tears to her eyes; he broke up with her a few days later.