Chapter 27 Simultaneous Circumstances #2
paintings and three sketches, returning from a day trip to Philadelphia, her second visit there in as many years.
Two years before, having received no interest or encouragement from the New York galleries, Charlotte had decided to try her
luck in Philly, with only marginally better results.
Most gallery owners had dismissed her work with barely a glance.
But Mr. Nikolai Fedorov—a tall, elderly man with a Russian accent and an economy of words, who owned a small gallery occupying two floors of a brick building in a less-than-fashionable neighborhood—gave her portfolio serious consideration.
He took his time, flipped back and forth, murmuring and squinting, lowering his head to get a closer look.
Charlotte had watched his face, practically holding her breath, trying to interpret his expressions and decipher his murmurs.
She couldn’t. But taking so long to examine her work had to mean something, didn’t it? If he hated it, wouldn’t he have closed
the portfolio by now, told her she was wasting her time and his, as so many others had before?
Finally, he looked up, squinting again, this time at Charlotte. His silence and the feeling that she was being sized up made
her heart pound. When she couldn’t bear it anymore, Charlotte reached into her purse, pulled out a cigarette, and asked the
question.
“Well?”
Mr. Fedorov frowned and raised his index finger, moved it back and forth. Charlotte slid the cigarette back into the pack,
then snapped her purse closed and sat up straighter, waiting.
“I think . . .” The old man worked his lips. “I think not yet. I think you are not ready.”
Charlotte’s heart plummeted, but briefly. “Not yet” wasn’t what she had hoped to hear, but it wasn’t the same as “no,” was
it? And since “no” was all she’d heard up to this point . . .
“But you think I could be ready? Someday?”
“Maybe someday. Also, maybe never. I cannot tell for certain. But I think . . .” Mr. Fedorov frowned more deeply, drawing
together the shaggy white caterpillars of his eyebrows. “I think perhaps you are not serious—”
Charlotte interrupted him, contradicted him. The old man lifted his hand.
“I think you are afraid to be serious. Perhaps this will change. But today?” He closed her portfolio, resting his gnarled hand on the brown leather. “No. Not yet.”
He stood up and walked away.
Charlotte followed him, arguing and entreating. It did no good. He raised his finger once again, as if to say he would hear
no more, then walked through a door and closed it.
Charlotte shed a few furious tears, took a taxi to the train station, downed three martinis and some Miltown during the trip
to New York, woke up with a blinding headache the next morning, and tried never to think of that painful day ever again.
On the whole, she’d been successful in this. But when Margaret accused her of the same thing, of not being serious, she remembered
the old man with the accent. Mr. Fedorov was a total stranger. Yet he’d seemed to have a strange insight into her. And Margaret?
Well, Margaret was as annoying as all get-out, especially when she got all white-bread, golly-gee-whiz Girl Scout. How had
she picked such a Pollyanna as a friend? But Charlotte knew Margaret was her friend, and that friends sometimes know us better than we know ourselves.
After leaving the bar in Georgetown on the night of their argument, Charlotte found her car and checked into the Madison,
not the Occidental, lest she run into Lawrence. In the morning, she drove back to Concordia and got to work—serious work.
Howie was at summer school, and the younger kids were still at camp. And so, day after day, she did nothing but paint.
Occasionally she was interrupted. Margaret called once, nibbling around the edges of their argument, obviously hoping to clear
the air. There was no need.
If things turned out the way Charlotte hoped, she might well end up thanking Margaret for kicking the hornet’s nest. Charlotte would explain it later, at the next Bettys meeting.
Right now she needed to maintain her focus.
The fact that Howard was sleeping at the house three or four nights a week didn’t help.
Charlotte didn’t understand the sudden change; maybe he was between girlfriends?
She didn’t ask. She couldn’t waste energy on scenes and dramas.
Instead, she fed him dinner—out of necessity and with Margaret’s help, she had learned to make spaghetti and a passable meat
loaf—mixed his evening Manhattan, and pretended to listen when he talked. When he walked up behind her and unzipped her dress
one night, then unhooked her bra, she let him.
Lying on her back in the darkened room, waiting for him to finish, she appraised her own anger and degradation—observing herself
as she might a model, memorizing the pose, the line, the cutting edge of hatred hewn from raw humiliation. If she could bear
it, she could use it. And using it would mean she was in control, not him.
She worked as much and as hard as she could. But thoughtfully and steadily, not frantically. She eschewed coffee entirely,
then limited her liquor consumption. She cut her Miltown dosage by a quarter, then a half, and stretched herself in ways she
never had before. Clear-eyed, she examined hidden thoughts and unvarnished emotions, and did her best to transform her discoveries
into something original and eloquent—into art.
When her first attempts didn’t satisfy, she started again. And again. And again. Until she was satisfied, until she knew she had tapped the best that was in her. Was it enough?
When she entered the gallery, Mr. Fedorov turned toward her.
“Ah, you are back,” he said, as if Charlotte had been gone two minutes instead of two years. Seeing the portfolio tucked under
her arm, he wiggled his fingers, beckoning.
“Come. Now we will see.”
It was the same as last time, yet not.
Fedorov took his time as before, murmured and squinted and nodded to himself.
But this time he included Charlotte in the conversation too, brought her attention to the things she had done well, as well as the ways she had missed the mark.
It was enlightening, but in ways she never would have expected.
When, at last, Fedorov lifted his gaze from the paintings to her eyes, placing his two heavy hands on her shoulders, Charlotte already knew what he would say.
“Now, you are serious,” he said, nodding his leonine head slowly, almost deferentially. “Be proud. You have worked hard, with
great honesty, great passion.”
“But not great talent,” Charlotte said.
He smiled sadly. When he spoke his voice was tender, almost fatherly.
“No.”
The pronouncement sank in—short, frank, and final. Charlotte was caught up in a swirl of emotions—disappointment, frustration,
loss, resignation, and an odd, surprising sense of relief, like a patient finally receiving the diagnosis of an ailment she’d
suspected all along.
There it was, at last.
At least she knew now. And at least she was able to separate those emotions, confront them one by one, feel them without feeling
destroyed by them or giving in to the urge to run away from them or from herself. This was a new skill for her, acquired over
these last weeks as she’d undertaken the hard work of looking inward. It wasn’t easy, but it could be learned. And if she
kept at it, she’d get even better at it.
Talent was different. You could hone it, but you couldn’t learn it. Either you had it or you didn’t. To be great, you needed
a lot of it. Charlotte had some but not enough.
Now she knew. But deep down, hadn’t she always?
Fedorov gripped her shoulders once more with his strong hands.
“Come!” he said. “I will make tea and show you the gallery. Then we will talk.”
The tea was fragrant with cloves and sweetened with honey, served in an elegant glass teacup.
Each cup was nestled into a sterling silver holder, emblazoned with a double-headed eagle clutching a scepter and orb in its talons.
Charlotte cupped the brew in both hands as they traversed the gallery, pausing before each of the paintings.
She had never heard of any of the three artists on exhibit, but the work was remarkable. Fedorov’s eye was unquestionable.
“Thank you.” He bowed his head briefly. “Like you, I had passion for painting. But not talent. But,” he said, raising a finger,
“I see talent in others, sometimes more than they see in themselves. That is my gift. Because I love art, I am sharing this
gift. I am helping these artists.”
He turned his eyes to a painting, nodding slowly, speaking more to himself than to her.
“It is a good life.”
Fedorov’s English was imperfect, but he had no trouble making himself understood, at least to Charlotte. Strange to find she
had so much in common with an elderly Russian émigré who was very probably descended from royalty and had somehow ended up
in Philadelphia, but there it was.
They talked for over an hour. If not for her train, Charlotte would have stayed longer.
She was still thinking about him as she drove back to Concordia, recalling the intensity of his gaze, the clarity of his vision,
the certainty that, though possessed of only modest personal talent, he brought something meaningful and needed to the world
of art. There was much to mull over, but one sentence kept playing over and over in her mind.
“It is a good life.”
What would it feel like to say that and mean it? To have a purpose and know you had lived to fulfill it? Was this something that could be learned? Something she could learn?
Charlotte opened the garage and was relieved to find it empty.
She’d told Howard the book club was meeting tonight and led him to believe she was hosting, knowing he’d be less inclined
to come home if the house was full of women. It looked like her ruse had worked.
Entering the house, she called his name to make sure he was gone, grateful for the silence and the chance to kick off her heels.
She would change into a cotton blouse, black cigarette slacks, and ballet flats before going to Bitsy’s, maybe take a cool bath if she had time. But first she wanted to check the mail.
Though Charlotte hadn’t been enthusiastic about Oxford, she was starting to understand Denise’s choice.
In these last weeks, Charlotte had devoted nearly all her mental energy into husbanding her own creativity. But the leftover
space—small gaps with more volume than one might guess at first glance, like a full pail of pebbles with room for half again
as much water in the crannies and crevices—was reserved for thoughts of Denise, and Virginia Woolf.
Insomnia had driven Charlotte to pick up A Room of One’s Own. It was a compact book, perhaps a hundred pages. But like that pail of pebbles, there was more inside than met the eye. In
speeches delivered in 1928, Woolf reflected upon the thin literary contributions of female authors up to that point, saying
it would ever be thus until women writers laid hold of two advantages their most talented male counterparts had long enjoyed:
money and privacy.
Charlotte knew Woolf was right. She also knew that Denise had the kind of talent she could only dream of, and was determined
to see she had the opportunity to develop it. As Mr. Fedorov said, supporting the talents of others was a gift too, a calling
that mustn’t be ignored.
Howard was less generous toward Denise than the other children, but Charlotte made sure she got her fair share. If Howard
got control of the company after her father died, that might get trickier. But for now, money wasn’t an issue. Denise had
plenty.
She also needed privacy, that “room of one’s own” with space to be her own person and think her own thoughts, think bigger thoughts, the kind that lesser mortals could never conjure.
Though young, Denise was aware of her gifts.
Fostering them meant removing herself from distraction, walking off the stage and into the wings to become an interpreter of the drama rather than a participant or—if you were born a Gustafson—a combatant.
One thing was sure: having been raised by Charlotte, with cameo appearances by Howard and the Machiavellian grandparents, Denise would never lack for material.
Charlotte smiled at this last thought, committed the sentence to memory for inclusion in her next letter to Denise. They were
corresponding regularly now. Strangely, it was easier to communicate by letter. Their exchanges were more open and less fraught
than before. Being separated from her child by an ocean was hard, but it was for the best. Denise needed distance and privacy,
at least for now.
But that wasn’t all she needed.
Charlotte was acutely aware of her maternal failings, deeds done and left undone, words she should and shouldn’t have said.
She couldn’t change the past, but she could give her daughter what she had been denied: freedom, acceptance, and encouragement.
If a talented woman had all that plus that room of her own, who knew what she might accomplish?
Charlotte padded toward the front door in her bare feet. A pile of envelopes that had been stuffed through the mail slot by
the postman was lying on the blue oriental foyer rug. The largest of them, made of rigid cardboard and big enough to hold
photographs, displayed international stamps and an Oxford return address. Charlotte smiled when she picked it up, pleased
that Denise was making good use of her camera.
She slit the envelope with her fingernail and pulled out a large, glossy photograph, expecting an image of the Vatican, the
Eiffel Tower, or a Venetian canal.
Instead, she saw a backdrop of familiar shrubs, a woman she remembered, a head arched back in an expression that could have
been pain or ecstasy, a high-raised hem, bare thighs, an unzipped fly, an exploring hand . . .
And an ice-clear image of her husband’s leering face.