Kate Christensen - The Great Man

Maxine stared slack-jawed at her hands, which were twisted together on the table.

“You are a tough nut to crack,” said Jane. “You mean to say you had no idea that’s what happened?”

“I saw it somewhat differently,” said Maxine. “It seemed to me we were both unwilling to show our cards. We were both too proud and insecure at once. No one seemed to be willing to fall headlong.”

“I fell headlong!” Jane said, half laughing, half angry. “Never before or since did I give or have I given of myself so completely. I felt you couldn’t handle my intensity. I felt you were put off by it. Whenever we would start to get close, you would back off, shut the door, say you had a lot of work to do. I mean, hell, it only lasted a few months. But it devastated me. It’s amazing how very brief affairs can go so deep, cut to the bone, so it takes years to get over what lasted only hours.”

Maxine felt weak, ashen, befuddled. “I didn’t know,” she said. “Truly, Jane. I had no idea. I would have loved to be with you for a long time, to be with you still. I feel awful. I mean this. I was very sorry to see you go.”

“‘Very sorry to see me go,’” said Jane. “Sounds like you didn’t suffer too much.”

“I can’t very well take a lie-detector test about this,” said Maxine. “But Jane, I never knew how you felt about me; I had not the slightest idea. This whole conversation has me feeling as if you and I were in two different affairs. I wanted to fall in love with you but felt somehow blocked. I don’t know why.”

Maxine and Jane looked at each other.

“I thought you were such a coward,” said Jane.

“I thought you were remote,” said Maxine. “I wanted to know you better, but I had no idea how to get there.”

Their mutual gaze deepened a little.

“I’m glad you’ve found love,” said Maxine.

“Well, thanks,” said Jane. “I wish you had found it, too.”

“I’m horrified that you felt the way you did and I never knew it.”

“I never really saw what I had to offer you,” Jane replied. “You were so interesting and famous and all that. I was this boring academic type.”

“What?” Maxine said.

“You were so exciting. You had such strong opinions about everything. I loved being with you. It made me feel bohemian and unconventional, corny as it sounds, instead of a kid from a trailer park masquerading as an academic, which is what I am. You were the kind of woman I had hoped to meet all my life.”

“Why the hell couldn’t you show me you felt like that?”

“I did show you,” said Jane.

“Hell no,” said Maxine. “You did not. This is not all my fucking fault. I was not the villain here. If you had felt so passionately about me, don’t you think I should have had an inkling of that? I am not stupid. And I had no frigging idea.”

“Well then, I don’t know what the problem was,” said Jane.

“You should have told me,” said Maxine. “The problem was that you didn’t tell me.”

Jane was silent, twisting her glass by the stem, biting her lower lip.

“You were too proud and insecure to tell me,” Maxine went on. “Just like I was too proud and insecure to admit I was falling for a woman so much younger than me. We both screwed up, Jane.”

“All right,” said Jane. “We both screwed up.”

“Well, I’m glad that now you have the worldly, rich, white-water-kayaking, humanitarian Syl Beely to shower you with feelings and open his heart to you. I’m sorry to sound so bitter.”

Jane reached across the table and put her cool, dry hand over Maxine’s hot, hard one. “Maxine,” she said, “I wish things had been different.”

Maxine felt herself stiffen at the unexpected touch, so dearly welcome, so deeply threatening. As she had when Katerina had taken her hand, she willed her own to lie inert, for fear of scaring Jane’s hand away.

“And you should know,” Jane went on, “that you were loved. I loved you.”

Maxine, with an effort that rivaled all the great efforts of her life, forced herself to turn her own hand so it was holding Jane’s as Jane’s was holding hers. She looked into Jane’s sharp, plain, intelligent face. “Time for dinner?” she said.

“I love how it’s always time for dinner once a day,” Jane said, “no matter what human tragedies are going on; even in places where sometimes there is no dinner, as Syl would point out, there’s still that time in the evening when you hunker down with your fellow humans and try to keep warm.”

Maxine managed to hold back, all at once, a sharp comment about the bromides of politically correct Syl, an affection-deflecting remark about how this hand-holding was too little, too late, and a self-deprecating joke about her own dinners, which were almost always solitary, totally devoid of warm fellow humans. Instead, she briefly tightened her hand around Jane’s — she hoped not too awkwardly — and smiled — she hoped warmly — then got up to assemble the sandwiches.

When Abigail saw the story about Helena in the Times the next day, she reached for her phone and immediately called Maxine. “They quote you here,” she said right away to Maxine when she answered, not bothering with pleasantries. “You told the whole story. Why did you do that?”

“Because they were going to run the story with or without my side of it.”

“Well, Lila Scofield told them ‘No comment,’” said Abigail. She was sitting with Ethan in the breakfast nook, feeding him two soft-boiled eggs with a piece of buttered wheat toast torn up and soaked in the soft yolks. “She didn’t say a word!”

“They uncovered my signature,” said Maxine. “Jane Fleming is the one who told them. The model. My old girlfriend. I hadn’t reckoned with her.”

“I bet you’ve been getting calls all day.”

“Everyone seems quite excited, the people at the Met not least of all.”

“What a headline,” said Abigail, looking at the first page of the “Arts and Leisure” section. “‘After More Than Thirty Years, Truth Revealed: Met Masterpiece Painted by Artist’s Sister.’ All the feminists will be having a party, assuming there are any left anymore.”

“There must still be three or four hairy-legged trolls around here somewhere,” Maxine said through a mouthful of something. She swallowed. “Sorry, I’m in the middle of a tuna fish sandwich.”

Abigail cleared her throat. “You broke your promise to Oscar!”

“The story was out,” said Maxine.

“You didn’t have to add to it.”

“Well, I know that, but since they were going to write it anyway, I figured they might as well get it right the first time around. I didn’t want them to screw it up and then I’d have to be setting the story straight for months. It’s a big story, and I figured it ought to come out right the first time, and I’m the only one who could tell it.”

“Okay,” said Abigail, slightly mollified. “Anyway, you must be very glad it’s finally out.”

“Honestly,” said Maxine, “how could I not be. I got a call from Michael Rubinstein, my dealer, and he’s talking about having a retrospective as soon as we can get one together. He’s hoping the Met will lend Helena to his gallery.”

“Oh,” said Abigail. “That’s marvelous.”

“Isn’t it,” said Maxine. “Meanwhile, Jane Fleming came for dinner last night. She’s pitching an interview with me to Art in America. And here’s the real twist in the story. I just got a call from an editor at Artforum. They want to do a piece, as they call it, on me and my nemesis, Paula Jabar, a woman I cannot personally or professionally tolerate. They want me to paint a nude portrait of her in the style of Helena and Mercy while she interviews me. But how can I say no to that ?” Maxine laughed, a rich chuckle Abigail hadn’t heard from her before.