My father always said that beginnings and endings were clichés. They couldn’t help but be, with beginnings being bright and new and even the best of endings being painful in some way. He was right, of course.
Still, a cliché can crush.
Had I known what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have spent my last twenty minutes of ignorant bliss talking about fruit. I would have had a drink and reapplied my lipstick for a little Chanel courage, as my mother calls it. But I was oblivious, so I carried on about produce. “One of the themes clearly defined in this piece is hierarchy. Power and privilege. Though the fruits and vegetables may appear to be strewn chaotically upon the table, in bowls or baskets, even upon the ground, the artist has actually imposed a well-defined order. They are arranged based upon their value and rarity.”
A sea of glazed eyes greeted my observation; the well-suited locals who composed my listening audience were probably more interested in the food and drink outside on the patio than the pictures of food and drink inside the Wallace Aston Museum. The museum, known as the WAM, was a jewel box of art treasures from the private collection of industrialist Wallace Aston and his actress wife, Ashley Simonds Aston, ranging from European masters totwentieth-century abstracts to Asian pieces spanning two thousand years. Unlike some larger museums that used traveling exhibits with mass appeal to draw in visitors, at the WAM, it was the permanent collection that was the star. It was breathtaking to walk the galleries knowing that you were looking at a private collection on the grandest scale. Manet, Cézanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, Goya, Rembrandt, Zurbarán, Rodin, Degas, Frankenthaler, Fragonard, Nevelson, Kandinsky, Noguchi, Ruscha, Brâncuși, Warhol—a greatest hits and then some. All displayed in a compact, well-composed space recently updated and turbocharged with fresh windows and new gardens. I loved it there—a clean, brilliant little burst of genius tucked in between the freeways.
My job was to develop lectures and other public education projects, write articles for the website and monthly magazine, and sometimes accompany the art to another museum as a courier. My work at the museum wasn’t critical to the day-to-day running of the place. I had the words “Special Projects” on my business cards, because that sounded slightly less vague than “Employee-at-Large” or “Volunteered to Do a Few Things and Never Left.” When I was hired nearly ten years prior, the museum was banking on my future contributions, and I was searching for an immediate distraction. It was a mutually beneficial relationship.
Tonight, I’d been assigned a VIP tour from the local hospital, a mix of doctors and administrators looking for some creative inspiration served with wine and cheese. Their fee would go into the children’s education coffers. Usually I could command my audience’s attention, but I appeared to be off my game. My feet hurt and even I had to cringe when I used words like “strewn” in a sentence, but I was nearing the end. Big finish. “You’ll note the root vegetables relegated to the ground, while the prized peas and asparagus are elevated in status by their presence in baskets in the foreground of the painting. Questions?”
A hand went up, a childish gesture from a grown man wearing a checkered bow tie and a smirk. I knew exactly what he’d ask. He didn’t disappoint. “How much is something like this worth?”
I answered like I always did, “A painting like Frans Snyders’s Still Life with Fruits and Vegetables is a masterpiece of the Flemish baroque period. There simply is no price.”
“But if there was a price?” Bow Tie Boy wouldn’t give up. I bet he honed that overconfidence as president of his frat. And was that a slight Southern accent? Unusual here in Pasadena. The group twittered with laughter. I noticed my boss, the charming Caterina de Montefiore, standing off to the side but displaying her omniscience. Caterina was the director of communications, and she had tipped me off that there was a New York Times travel writer hiding among my corporate private tour. Half-Italian, half-Brazilian, and very competitive, Caterina was locked in a PR death match with other Los Angeles–area museums. She wanted the WAM to be the only one mentioned in this roundup of hot places to spend a Friday night in Southern California. She nodded and gave me the look that said in no uncertain terms, “Sex it up, Joanie.”
I pointed to the painting, a riot of overripe fruit and luscious vegetables bursting with color and texture. “Let me ask you the price of a bowl of perfect cherries, deep red and glistening, begging to eaten. Now imagine their worth in the middle of a cold, dark Flemish winter after months of deprivation.” Oh, I had Bow Tie Boy’s attention now. “And what about this gorgeous plate of pears. Have you ever seen such lovely fleshy orbs, perfect in size and shape, bursting with sweetness? Finally, look at the longing in the woman’s eyes. That’s the look of a woman who wants to touch and feel and taste all she sees. This is not a painting of a table full of fruit; it’s a masterpiece of desire. What’s that worth?”
Bow Tie Boy conceded, “Well, I guess you got me there. Hard to put a dollar figure on that.”
Caterina strode over, her steps making an authoritative pounding in the marble front gallery. She was ready to take over the tour, the museum, or a small country in Central Europe, wherever she was needed most. Caterina was always in charge.
I bowed like an idiot because that’s how tired I was. “Thank you for your time and attention. The Blakely in the garden is best viewed right about sunset. Don’t miss that. I’ll hand you off to Caterina de Montefiore, who’ll be happy to answer any questions about the museum or our programs.” Caterina commanded the group into the Degas gallery with the wave of her hand.
Get me out of these shoes and get me home, I thought as I turned on my heels and headed toward my office. I felt a hand on my arm. Bow Tie Boy was offering his card, and up close, he was definitely more of a Bow Tie Man. “Mason Andrews. Thank you for the tour. I’m a doctor and I don’t know much about art, but I’d really like a bowl of cherries right now.”
That made me laugh. It had been a while since any man had made that happen. “That’s what art can do. Make you want . . . experiences. I’m Joan Blakely. And, as you probably figured out, I’m an educator here at the WAM.” It was the easiest way to describe my multifaceted job, especially to an emergency room doctor, as his card indicated.
I shook Mason’s hand, a firm grip coupled with plenty of eye contact. Is now the moment when I tell him I’m married, or do I play this out a little longer because, despite the desperate bow tie, he’s very attractive and, frankly, it’s been a while since I’ve had a bowl of cherries?
“Blakely, as in ‘. . . the Blakely in the garden’ Blakely?”
I nodded. “Yes, Henry Blakely was my father.”
There was a flicker of recognition, then remembrance. “I went to the retrospective at LACMA a few years ago. Okay, I’ll confess, an old girlfriend dragged me there, but I was blown away. The use of light and perspective. The colors. The space. It was amazing. Your father was amazing. You must get tired of hearing that.”
“Never. It’s a great gift to me. Really.”
“He did that big thing in Central Park, right?”
“Yes. It was called Castle Burning. In 1993.”
“My cool friend in high school had a poster from that exhibit,” he said, like it was all coming back to him in that moment, and then, “I’m so sorry about what happened to him.”
“Thank you,” I said, meaning it, then changed my tone. “I guess you do know a little about art.”
“I was about to make a lame joke about a ‘private tour,’ but that would really sound pathetic now. So, I’ll go for it. Is there any chance, Joan Blakely, that I could see you again?” Sincerity, another quality my life had been lacking lately.
For one second, I wanted to say yes. This doctor in his blue suit looked uncomplicated and easily satisfied, not like Casey, who felt a million miles away these days, even when he was in the living room.
“Joan?”
No, now was not the time. “I’m married.”
“Oh. I didn’t see a ring. My apologies.”
“No!” I practically shouted. “Don’t apologize. I’m flattered. My ring is undergoing a few small repairs. But thank you . . . for asking.” I assured him I’d keep his card, in case I had a medical emergency.
“I can’t do anything about the wait time, but I do some nice stitches,” Mason Andrews laughed. “Maybe I will see you around.” He gave a slow nod and turned to rejoin his group, who had finally made it out to the garden and the patio for the wine, cheese, and sunset portion of the tour. I watched him walk off. Men should go back to wearing suits.
On cue, Casey came through the glass front doors of the museum in his photographer’s uniform of blue jeans, black T-shirt, and a leather jacket. Needless to say, Casey didn’t own a bow tie. He was on his way out of town to shoot a hotel in Kyoto for Travel + Leisure. What was he doing here? He rarely stopped by the museum these days.
Casey found me right away and barely said hello before launching into his common refrain lately: “I’m on my way to LAX . . .” And then to my surprise he added, “And I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Now? Here?” Casey usually preferred conversations over a beer on our back patio. But it had been a while since we’d even had one of those.
“Yeah, Joan. It’s time.”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
We stood in my tiny organized office, me leaning against the desk, arms folded across my chest, and Casey staring at the poster from an exhibit on the abstract painting from the sixties featuring Thomas Downing’s Red, one of my favorite pieces in the museum, a grid of thirty-six hand-drawn but crisply rendered circles in red tones, from pink to burgundy, painted on a raw canvas. A study in color and form that was nearly perfect in my eyes. Casey stared at the poster as if his life depended on it, while I focused in on his statement. I can’t do what anymore?
Casey Harper was not a guy who embraced confrontation; it was so much easier to get on a plane or hide behind a lens than to risk mixing it up emotionally. Plus, he’d developed a Teflon-likability that played well with clients, so easygoing and accommodating that you never noticed he always won. Over the years, what I had once considered as an asset, his laid-back style, had begun to annoy me. Tonight’s vagueness was particularly tedious, as he was headed out of town for ten days. I felt enough confrontation for the two of us. “What are you talking about?”
Casey shifted on his feet. For the first time in our marriage, Casey looked scared. “What I mean is, I can’t live like this anymore.”
Now I felt the air sucking from my chest. “Like what?”
Without a word, he took out his phone, tapped it a few times, and held up the photo on the screen for me to see. It was two little boys. Adorable twins in matching striped shirts that looked to be in kindergarten, both smiling at the camera while sitting on their red bikes with training wheels. They looked exactly like Casey but with richer skin tone and wild curls. There could only be one explanation.
“These are my sons. Oliver and Will. They turn five in two weeks. They live in Eagle Rock, and no, I’m not with their mother anymore. But I was, for about six months.” Casey had obviously rehearsed his confession, because there was no stopping him. “And now I see the boys when I can, when it doesn’t interfere with our lives. But it’s time for me to be a real father to them. I’m sorry I lied to you. I have no excuse; I can’t lie anymore.”
I couldn’t breathe. Last summer, after a couple too many drinks on the Fourth of July, I’d floated the idea of having kids like it was foreplay. Casey rejected me on all fronts, both for the sex and the baby making, gently suggesting I try water, aspirin, and sleeping in the guest room. The next morning, I was embarrassed (and hungover) but not disappointed. I thought that’s what we were supposed to do at this point in our marriage, but Casey’s muted reaction made me realize that neither one of us was invested in becoming a parent. We never mentioned it again. Our marriage didn’t look like it was pointing in that direction—at least that’s what I surmised. But now, with Casey standing in front of me with his cell phone twins, I realized my ambivalence was a red flag. And his ambivalence was a white flag. He’d already surrendered to parenthood, and our marriage had been imploding long before this conversation.
I struggled to maintain an even tone. “How could you not tell me that you have children with another woman? Two children, in fact!” As if having one child out of wedlock was understandable but two crossed a line.
He hadn’t rehearsed this part of the conversation. “I thought the reality would go away somehow. That I wouldn’t get attached to them. But that was impossible.”
For the past year, he’d been in demand, a new stage of his career, like he’d finally made it to the top of the heap in the competitive field of architecture photography. Alaska, Rome, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, and everywhere in between. He shot hotels, houses, offices, churches, all kinds of structures for editorial features, advertising, marketing. It was more glamorous than lucrative, but it was what he’d been trying to break into for years. Now he was rarely home. He’d even bought an extra rolling bag to keep packed, so he could simply swap out luggage without doing laundry between shoots. Oh God, was he really even on location?
“How deep is this? Did you even go to all those places to shoot? Or were you hiding out in Eagle Rock with the family?” I spit out.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he actually hung his head. “I didn’t want to hurt you; you’ve already been through so much already with your father. . . .”
“Do not equate this with my father.”
“Fine. What I meant was that you’d been through a lot. In my heart, I knew the longer I let the situation go on, the worse it would get. But in my head, I couldn’t find the words to tell you. I can’t deny them anymore. They’re my sons.”
“I’m your wife.” I saw it all unravel in my head, the decade we’d been together. The friends we had in town. “We’ve been married for almost ten years, and you’ve been lying to me for at least half that time.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Casey’s voice picked up in confidence, maybe even defiance. He was finally free of his double life, and he clearly felt liberated. The asshole. “I can’t lie anymore.”
“Well, good for you. You’re Father of the Fucking Year.” I squeezed my eyes closed to get rid of the image of my Fourth of July declaration and his rejection. How pathetic I must have seemed. “Now what, Casey? Now what? Do we start celebrating holidays with your second family? What’s the name of my sister wife, anyway?”
“I know this is a lot . . .”
“It’s not a lot, Casey, it’s everything. Everything.”
“I don’t expect you to understand tonight.” He was shutting down and shutting me out.
“Who knows? Do our friends know?”
Casey shrugged, and my heart sank.
I had to ask: “All of them? Amy and Dave?”
He nodded. Yes, Amy and Dave knew. Amy and Dave of the weekend-morning bagel tradition and vacations in the desert. Amy and Dave who gave birth last year to my godson, Frederick. Our dear friends knew that my husband had twins, and they showed up every Sunday with extra cream cheese and said nothing. I would deal with that incision later. “What’s her name?”
“Marissa is the mother.”
“Your old assistant? The one who charged your cameras? Oh my God.” Beautiful Marissa Delgado with the dark curly hair, olive skin, and the best eyebrows in LA who traveled with Casey for several years, flying all over the world on assignments for shelter magazines. I recalled he complained about her not being able to schlep as much gear as the guys, but the extra feminist credit he earned by hiring a woman as his first assistant was worth it. Plus, she spoke several languages, including Portuguese and Spanish, and that was a bonus. I believed him when he said she was a little over-the-top but clients loved her. Turns out he must have loved her a little, too.
About five years ago she quit as Casey’s assistant to focus on her own food photography. I’d spotted her credits in magazines and on websites. It never occurred to me that she could have quit for another reason other than bringing images of roasted grapes or blistered tomatoes to the Internet. Did I even know Marissa had kids? I don’t think so. She would show up at various work-related holiday gatherings over the years, barely making eye contact with me, saving all her energy for Casey or the other film and photo people in the room. That happened to me a lot with Casey’s artsy friends, being looked over as a “non-pro,” despite my museum job. I couldn’t hire them, so I wasn’t much use to them. Maybe the real reason she avoided me was because she was avoiding me. She had some nerve showing up at our house. But Casey had more nerve inviting her. “How great that she could find a sitter for your children when she came to the annual holiday open house. What the hell, Casey?”
“I’m sorry. Marissa and I are friends now, just co-parents, nothing more.”
Co-parents? The nausea was gone, and I was starting to shake with rage, furious at his casual tone, as if we had some sort of open marriage agreement and this was a natural by-product of that arrangement. Casey continued, “If you want to do this together, then we can. The five of us can become a blended family. You, me, Will and Oliver, Marissa. She’s fine with that. She thinks the more grown-ups in a child’s life the better.”
I didn’t believe him for a second. A man who wants to create a cohesive blended family doesn’t swing by his wife’s office on a Friday night to drop a bombshell and then head out of town for two weeks. He thought I was an idiot. Or worse, he thought that I was the same lost twenty-two-year-old that he’d married. “That sounds like great parenting advice from the woman who slept with her boss, bore his children, and then lied about it for five years. Yes, the two of you make quite a team. I hope you’re teaching Oliver and Will about your courage.” My volume was escalating. Could they hear me in the sculpture garden? “And now what do I do? Announce to everyone I know that, surprise, I’m stepmother to five-year-old twins fathered by my husband on the side. No big deal. Maybe we can get the New York Times to announce it for us in the Style section. You know how they do those follow-up stories called Ten Years Later? They’d love this. Me, you, your former assistant, the kids, Granny Suzi Clements. One big happy family.”
Casey seemed honestly shocked at my hostility. He started to back away. “Joan, please. I’m flying to Tokyo tonight, then on to Kyoto. I’ll be back a week from Sunday. Think about it. We could let Will and Oliver into our lives in a meaningful way.” He was back to his Dr. Phil script that Dave and Amy had probably written for him. “But if that’s not what you want, if you can’t let the boys into your life, then we’ll need to end our marriage. I’m forty years old, and I need to be a man. Oliver and Will are my priority.”
“Not me. Got it.”
“You have no idea what’s it’s like to look into their eyes.”
There was a large stone figure of Shiva from the eleventh century on a worktable next to my desk. I wanted to hurl it at his head. And so, that was it. We would end here, in the museum, where we started. What do you know? A cliché. “Please go.”
In the cocoon of my office, with a glass of wine poured from the leftovers of last week’s donor reception, I felt the anger fade to numbness, which dissipated to relief. Yes, I was relieved that Casey Harper wouldn’t be the father of my children. He didn’t deserve to be. He was a shadow of the man my father had been, a poor imitation and maybe I’d known that for a while. Honestly, I had. His defense that his deception was an attempt to protect me confirmed his character.
When my mother called me around six in the morning on September 11, 2001, and told me to turn on the TV, I had been sound asleep in my childhood bedroom in Pasadena. She was up in Ojai, at the weekend place, getting it ready for my father’s return from a summer in Maine. He’d been there for months, working on a commission for a wealthy Boston tech executive who wanted a Blakely on the property of his Camden house. I’d been my father’s research assistant on-site, having graduated from Smith that spring.
It was a fantastic summer, indulgent and invigorating. I was involved with my father’s work on a daily basis and was finally gaining some understanding of his process. I dove deep into his notebooks, the beginning of what he hoped would be a full catalog of his work given to a deserving museum, most likely the WAM, right here in his hometown. My mother seemed to finally let go of the idea that I would become a model and accepted that my path would be more traditional, like a curator or gallery owner. Maybe even a writer. And, best of all, I was a hostess at a local restaurant and had a fast and furious summer romance with a local chef who swept me off my feet with seafood crudo and blueberry pie. When Labor Day rolled around, the relationship ended with a friendly high five and a gift of plum jam from the kitchen. It was as perfect as a summer could be.
As fall approached, we all headed back to Southern California on different schedules. I was off to various spots in Europe and Turkey to study the emerging Byzantine art market in Asia on a Watson Fellowship, a topic I’d cooked up to spend some serious time traveling, first in Istanbul and Hong Kong and then six months in Paris on somebody else’s nickel. It was exactly what I’d planned during my junior year abroad with my friend Polly. At nineteen, we thought ourselves clever and sophisticated, gabbing endlessly over wine, bread, and fromage and acting like we’d invented Paris. Somehow, we’d return after graduation, we vowed. We’d share an apartment in Saint-Germain, trendier than our student dorm rooms. I’d conquer the art world and she’d write for Vogue. We cultivated an invincibility over the year that continued to strengthen during my final year at college as my plans fell into place. The world was our oyster. For a minute anyway.
My mother had moved on to the completion of my father’s important commission, the Wallace Aston Museum. In addition, she was putting together her first small show of local artists in Ojai, a new hot spot in the California art scene. My father was set to return that day, after spending the weekend on a spiritual retreat with old friends, an annual tradition on the anniversary of his sobriety.
He’d boarded American Airlines Flight 11 in Boston. On the phone that Tuesday morning, my mother’s voice registered pure terror, and when I saw the pictures of the North Tower, I understood why. “I think your father is on that plane,” she whispered.
And he had been.
I met Casey a year after my father died. He was photographing the posthumous unveiling of my father’s installation Light/Break #47 in the garden at the WAM. I was there as the family representative to flip the switch, so to speak. As with many ceremonies after my father’s death, I stood in while my mother stayed away. She had barely left Ojai since that day. I gave up my Watson Fellowship and Paris to become the de facto family mourner in an endless series of tributes and memorials.
Casey, the cute photographer trying to make a name for himself, was funny and solicitous, one of the few people at the time who made me feel normal, not like a cross between a helpless victim and a national symbol of grief. The courtship was three months. I was twenty-two and he was thirty-one, but I’d aged a decade in a single day, so it felt like we were at the same place in life. We married at Pasadena City Hall like my parents. I thought it was a tribute to them. My mother was suspicious.
After that, we settled into our lives as young marrieds. It was like I skipped the whole postcollegiate period of indecision and signed up for the full adult package: marriage, mortgage, couple friends with kids. Polly made it back to Paris, but the city slipped away for me. I wasn’t the same person who had made all those plans over chilled Beaujolais or won the Watson.
When I was offered a job at the museum, I took it. It was a safe, easy career move that saved me from my grief. Casey focused on building his portfolio. I stepped right into my mother’s shoes, managing his career like she had managed my father’s.
No doubt, I was a lure for Casey’s clientele, the only daughter of icon Henry Blakely and model-muse-manager Suzi Clements. The young, tragic Joan Bright Blakely.
The wine-soaked dinners we’d hosted for magazine editors at our house. The vacations in Santa Fe to drum up business. The constant socializing with his ad agency clients. Events where my parents’ names invariably came up. Your father did lighting for rock shows before his art career, right? Yes. That paid the bills for a lot of years. David Bowie, Elton John, Kiss, Aerosmith, the Stones. Is your mother still modeling for Ralph Lauren? They are old friends, but my mother doesn’t really get out much anymore.And she certainly doesn’t model. What was the name of your father’s studio, where everyone who was anyone hung out? The Motel because it had been an actual motel. Ever supportive, I answered their questions and told delightful anecdotes about my childhood memories of swimming in David Hockney’s pool.
During our brief courtship, Casey had impressed me with his maturity, as if he truly understood his place in the world. Maybe it’s because, up until that point, my romantic life had been limited to relationships involving boys who enjoyed beer, boys who enjoyed other boys but hadn’t come to terms with that reality, like cute Paul, and the one chef in Maine. Casey seemed different, an artist with vision and a philosophy of life, well, at least a philosophy of his life, which is more than what most Amherst boys had. We’d sit on the porch of his run-down bungalow, drinking wine, not beer, and he’d explain that his work was temporal, limited, not art, but commerce. Photography was at its best when it captured a moment, but it failed at capturing a feeling. Leave that to the painters and sculptors and conceptual artists like my father. He’d take the paychecks and the precision of photography. His role was to translate an image, not an interpretation, and he was fine with that. I was undone by his self-awareness. I thought our life together would involve a million such discussions, a vibrant intellectual life as seductive as our sex life.
But it turns out, that was the only theory Casey had: one well-articulated position about photography. Other than that, he had nothing, like he never thought about the big picture at all. If I mentioned literature, he’d shrug it off, claiming that he “saw more clearly through a lens” than a book. Forget politics, economics, and religion. For a guy, he didn’t even have a strong stance on indie music or steroids in sports. Other than an interest in food and a good eye for design, he bowed out of taking a position on anything that might involve conflict in the future. Mr. Neutral.
I guess that’s what my mother meant when she let it slip that Casey lacked passion. ...
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