CHAPTER 3 #13
“It’s not,” I said.
“Well, still, it’s quite good.” He stopped and looked around, then went to a painting of two rabbits eating the edge of a cabbage leaf.
That one might have been my favorite. There was something both industrious and romantic about it.
After a while, he went and stood in front of the Beatrix Potter in the front hall. “Will you give me the rabbit tour?”
I didn’t ask him how he knew, and I didn’t tell him that no one had asked before. I called to Jonathan, who was still in the kitchen. “He wants to see the rabbits,” I said.
I didn’t think about Candy much anymore.
For years I did. I thought about how Rachel and Sydney still missed her, but I didn’t wonder if Jonathan missed her.
In that moment I saw it cross his face, the loss of her, the pride he felt in this small, lingering accomplishment: she had put together a first-rate collection of rabbits.
“This was the first one she bought,” he said, starting with the cabbage leaf.
“She found it in a junk shop in Anchorage.”
“When were you in Anchorage?” I asked.
“Never,” he said. “One of her friends got a job there after college, fell in love. Candy was in the wedding. I didn’t know her then.
” He led us down the hallway to speak of the rabbit that was not a Dürer.
“It’s good, though, right? It’s French, late 1800s.
She paid some real money for this one.” The most expensive one, of course, was the tiny Beatrix Potter in the heavy frame, a rabbit in a calico dress holding a spoon.
“This broke two of Candy’s rules, the first being no one was allowed to buy a rabbit painting for her, and the second being no rabbit anthropomorphizing.
She didn’t believe in rabbits wearing dresses.
But she forgave me. That’s the kind of collector she was. ”
“She had the most extraordinary eye,” Eddie said, pulling his glasses down the bridge of his nose when he got close.
“She was disciplined, I’ll say that. She never wanted the house to be overrun.
She sold several off over the years because she’d find a new painting she liked better.
The fact that she picked them all out herself turned out to be the real gift.
They make me think of her, of what she liked, which is much better than paintings that remind me of going shopping. ”
We showed him every rabbit in the house, including the one that none of us could stand, a thin dead hare hanging upside down, its back legs bound together with twine, its ears limp.
We kept it in the laundry room. “She was already sick when she bought it,” Jonathan said.
“She hung it in the kitchen back when we lived in Beverly. The girls couldn’t stand it.
They were so young then. I don’t know what Candy was thinking.
I mean, I do know, and the girls knew, too.
They used to take it off the wall and hide it under the couch or in the coat closet.
Finally she gave up. They still hate the painting.
If one of them is home for a while, they stick it between the dryer and the wall. ”
“Still,” Eddie said, “you can see it from Candy’s perspective.”
The way the fur was painted was extraordinary, brown and gray and white, every single hair defined. The hair of the hare. I wanted to touch my fingers to its flank every time I put in a load of wash.
“That’s why I keep it up,” Jonathan said.
There were eight pieces in all, and the last one on the tour was in our bedroom, which made me grateful that we were people who always made the bed. “This is my favorite,” Jonathan said.
By the standards of the others, the rabbit in our bedroom was more abstract: white and leaping, the grass beneath it tipped in blue. It hung on the wall by Jonathan’s closet.
Eddie nodded. “I agree with you,” he said. “This is my favorite.”
“Candy liked to paint,” he said, nodding. “But she never thought anything she did was good enough. She never would have let me put this up when she was alive.”
“Did she paint other rabbits?” Eddie asked.
“Well, sure, some. Candy painted everything.”
Then Eddie went over and sat down on my side of the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I need to sit here for one minute.”
“No,” I said, “it’s perfectly fine. Are you okay? Can I get you anything?”
He shook his head, then changed his mind. “If I could have a glass of water.”
Jonathan was gone in an instant. He was a great believer in the power of a glass of water.
“Stay,” I said quietly, not wanting to sound like Polly.
Eddie closed his eyes. “One minute. I’ll be fine.”
“Does this happen to you?”
“Do I get tired after listening to Polly and Skip talk over one another and two Bloody Marys in the middle of the day along with too much to eat and then going for a boat ride? Yes, I suppose every time I do that, I feel tired.”
Jonathan reappeared with the water. He sat down beside Eddie on the bed. “Here,” he said.
Eddie drank, then opened his eyes. “That fixed it,” he said, but he didn’t stand up.
I was thinking that I didn’t know what to do when Jonathan said, “This is what we’re going to do: We’re going to walk down the hall to the guest room and you’re going to take your shoes off and lie down.
And if you want to leave in an hour, that’s fine.
And if you want to leave tomorrow, that’s fine. ”
He drank some more water. “This is quite a detour to make on the way to the train station.”
“Do you want to stand up?” Jonathan asked.
“I do,” Eddie said. “I will in one more minute.”
“Take your time,” Jonathan said.
Eddie finished the water and handed me the glass.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to listen to your husband.
That’s what I’m going to do.” He looked like he was about to stand when he saw the little horse on the nightstand and changed his mind.
“Look at that,” he said, reaching over to pick it up. “Whistler.”