“And then, of course, it’s Christian’s birthday,” James was saying now to Meghan and Veronica. “That’s the actual reason I had to come home.”
“Oh! You’re surprising him!”
“You’re such a good husband.”
“I don’t know about that,” James said wryly. “Would a good husband force his husband to pose for the likes of that thing over there?”
Catherine’s whole body spun towards the portrait on the side wall. She had seen it earlier, but had not realized it was Christian; he looked nothing like the man from the photographs online. The pose, she realized, was actually very like a pose from an Alice Neel painting: Christian was sitting on a quite formal armchair, a velvet-upholstered thing with burnished wooden arms, and one bare leg was drawn up over the other, ankle almost to knee, and he was looking, seeming bored or resentful, to the side. Though maybe his expression was just neutral, or thoughtful, or distracted; with every passing second, Catherine felt less and less certain about what kind of expression it was, and after all it was a photograph, and not a painting like the Neel, and therefore just a moment, not a considered state, not even necessarily a caught mood. It was just one of the many, the countless moments a married couple spent in one another’s company, noticing one another, or not noticing one another; both things they were free to do, both options they were free to stretch into, to enjoy, and this man, this dark-haired, fine-boned man, with his lips that were still full, and his arms that were strong and muscled from his mornings or evenings at the gym, and his cargo shorts, army green and faded, and the dark hairs on his legs and the silver metal watch on his wrist; this man was — had been — in one of those moments. Over his shoulder, through a window, a flash of green: a field. Blue sky, no clouds in view. Somewhere, Christian had been passing time in a sitting room, a summer afternoon waiting for him to go back out into its warmth.
“That’s Carrigfinn,” James said, leaning closer to her. “I took it when we were visiting there last summer.”
“Oh,” was all Catherine could say, and she stepped closer, and she tried to see the very grass of the field.
“It’s such a great piece,” Veronica said, and Meghan gave a long, low sigh in agreement. “Such a great photo of Christian as well.”
“Christian’s not mad about it,” James said. “I told you that, didn’t I?”
“I think you mentioned — he thinks he looks old, or something?”
“Something like that,” James said, shaking his head. “If he wanted to look good in photographs, he should have married Juergen.”
The women laughed. “Not really an option,” one of them said.
“Ah, now, you wouldn’t know that either,” said James. “Don’t forget Christian is very persuasive.”
Then they were leaving, James having talked Meghan into telling him the name of the collector who was likely to be buying the portrait; as was often the case, there were a number of offers, and it was up to the gallery to decide on the most desirable buyer.
“Oh,” James had said, looking impressed. “OK. He’ll do.”
Meghan widened her eyes. “Right? But I didn’t tell you that.” She poked him in the chest. “I did not tell you that.”
“He’ll give Christian a good home. Possibly better than I do.” He checked his watch. “I need to get into the city to get him a gift.”
Meghan reached for her iPhone. “Do you want me to get you the car?”
“No, no,” James said. “It’s a beautiful day. I think I’ll walk over the thingy, the footbridge.”
Meghan made a face. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, yeah. It’ll be nice by the water. I can take a cab at First Avenue.” He looked at Catherine. “Will you walk me? Or do you have to be somewhere?”
They were looking at the East River, James explained, and the brown high-rise buildings on the other side were East Harlem, and the highway frantic with yellow cabs was the FDR. She was struck by the sounds of these names in his mouth, how thoroughly they seemed to belong to him, how he talked now about needing to get down to the Sixties and then down to Orchard and Hester for a meeting. Catherine had been to New York several times on business, but still the street names and the neighborhoods seemed so exotic to her, seemed somehow unreal; she felt self-conscious using them, and always expected others to be the same.
“Do you live near here?” she said to him. “Or, rather, where do you live? Not in Manhattan, right?”
No, not in Manhattan; she knew that. She knew that from the articles. He lived in Brooklyn, in a house for which he and Christian had paid $1.8 million.
“No, not in Manhattan,” James said, shaking his head as though she had mistaken him for someone else. “In Brooklyn. Fort Greene. Do you know it?”
“No. Sounds nice.” Sounds nice? What was she saying? She was gabbling. With every sentence, she was hissing at herself to stop, to slow down, to let him do the talking, but always already the next sentence had fallen out of her helpless mouth. James must surely have noticed. But he gave no sign of it. He paid, now, for the two iced coffees he had ordered for them from a truck parked at the tent entrance.
“Thanks,” she said, as he handed her the plastic cup. “I meant to say, I like the braces.”
“Oh.” He gave a short laugh, glancing down at himself. “Bejaysus, you’re like old Barney Rodgers of the mountain. That’s what my ol’ fella said when he saw them.”
“Have they been over?”
“Oh, yeah. A few times. For the”—he nodded backwards, as though at something they had just walked past—“wedding, and then a few other times besides that.”
“That’s lovely. Congratulations, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“On everything, really,” she said, feeling a sudden impulse to shove a great many things together into a hole. “I meant to write—”
“I was sorry to hear about you and Lucien,” he said, talking over her. “I’m still in touch with Zoe on Facebook. She mentioned it.”
“Oh, thanks,” Catherine said with a shrug. “It’s for the best, probably.”
“Still, it’s hard,” he said, and he pointed to the path down by the water, to indicate that they should go that way. “I don’t remember Lucien very well, I have to admit.”
“Well, he was with Zoe when you would have known him. It was years later when I met him again in London. He’s with The Guardian.”
“Yeah, I’ve read a few things. He’s good.”
“He’s brilliant.” She nodded. “We’re still friends, you know, it’s just…”
“Yeah,” he said, unevenly, and that hung between them, the brokenness of it, the awkwardness. How had she steered them, so quickly, into that water? Because she had kept talking, she told herself. Because she had obeyed, as always, the temptation to elaborate.
“My mother loved him,” she forged on then, immediately, without any idea of where she was going with this — this anecdote, she realized, this completely unnecessary and not even entirely true anecdote. “The two of them used to sit in the conservatory, when we were over visiting, and watch the tennis.”
“Tennis!”
“On the TV, obviously. As opposed to out in the garden. The Celtic Tiger wasn’t that good to them at home.”