“Sex.”
“Sex isn’t about love?”
“It can be. But it can also just be sex. It’s a physical activity. Like playing tennis, or going swimming.”
Daphne let out a long peal of laughter that surprised me with its nasty edge. “He is so full of shit. I know what he wants and-”
“Time out,” I interrupted. “I don’t want either of you to assume what the other wants. Just answer for yourself. Daphne, tell me about the Scarlet Society. How long ago did you join?”
“Years ago. A friend of mine was a member and she told me about it.”
“How often did you go?”
“About once or twice a month. Usually with her.”
“What did you enjoy about it?”
“I don’t see why this shit is important to-”
“Because it has to do with your marriage. The society is what you say is getting in the way of you and Nicky having a good marriage. I need to find out more about that.”
She thought for a minute, and in the quiet of the room I heard the steady drone of machinery along with the beat of a hammer, hitting its mark every five to ten seconds.
“What did you ask me?”
Was she buying time or had she really forgotten what I’d asked?
“I asked you what you enjoyed about being a member of the Scarlet Society.”
“It was like painting in another artist’s hand. I do very realistic paintings. It was as if suddenly I could paint like an abstract expressionist. I wasn’t myself there. Or at least not the self I’d always known.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“It was exciting…also confusing. For the first time in my life, I was in an environment where no one knew who I was, who my parents were, what kind of life I had. We don’t talk about ourselves. You know that, right?”
I nodded.
“There was a real sense of freedom. Until then, I’d only known a world where there are right ways of behaving. And wrong ways. Everything about the Scarlet Society was the wrong way of behaving. It was the best damn thing that ever happened to my art.”
I hadn’t expected that. “What do you mean-the best thing that happened to your art?”
“My father was a Supreme Court judge. My mother was a member of the Junior League and the DAR. I am one of three sisters. By the time I was twenty-five, they were both married with kids. And they’re younger than me. My painting was an indulgence that my parents thought I’d outgrow. It was fine that I studied art-as long as I did it at Radcliffe. It was all right that I painted as long as my studio was in the apartment they’d bought for me on Park Avenue. The society was something that would have freaked them out. They would never have approved.”
“And you only did what they approved of?”
“It never occurred to me to cross them. You just didn’t do that.”
“When you were very young, how did they handle it when you did something that angered them?”
Her answer came fast, delivered in a low voice that was almost a whisper. “They stopped talking to you. Completely. Depending on your crime, for hours or for days. You were treated like you were invisible. Until you apologized. Until you repented.”
“Did you feel guilty about what went on at the society?”
“No. I wasn’t me there. I didn’t even use my real first name. It was totally separate from the rest of my life.”
“Some people might find that difficult. To balance two such different lives.”
“Really?”
There was something very naive about that question, which alerted me to watch out for other instances of an ability to distance herself from reality.
“For some people it might be.”
“Well, it wasn’t for me. And it was good for my art. That was the best part.” She clasped her hands tightly together.
“How so?”
She smiled and her face was transformed from a serious, troubled visage to a child’s face, full of wonder. “It would be easier to show you.” She stood.
I wasn’t sure we should interrupt the session at that point, but her enthusiasm was important.
“Is that okay with you?” I asked Nicky.
“Hell, yes, it’s fine. I told you I wanted you to see Daphne’s work.”
I followed Daphne as she led me around the sunroom, showing me four still lifes of flowers and fruit that she said she had done in her early twenties. They were bright and bold and very well done. A combination of Matisse’s colors and Cézanne’s blocking but without either’s originality or verve. So unremarkable that I hadn’t even noticed them while we were sitting and talking.
“This was the kind of work I was doing after college. Competent. Uninspired. I couldn’t get the attention of any serious downtown gallery. A safe, old-fashioned Madison Avenue gallery took me on.” She laughed. “But that turned out to be because my parents had guaranteed the sales for each of my shows.”
“When did you find that out?”
“A few years ago. My mother died and I inherited this house. All of the paintings that I thought had sold to clients from all of my shows were still in their shipping crates in one of the rooms in the basement.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“It was such a kind thing for them to do. I felt grateful.”
“No anger?”
“I suppose it might have made me angry if I hadn’t broken out by the time I found them. I don’t need any help selling my work now. There’s a waiting list for my paintings.”
There was a tone in her voice-this wasn’t self-confidence; it was bragging. Was this her usual way of talking about her work, or was it for my benefit?
“Take a last look around, Dr. Snow.” She waited a few seconds. “Now, let me show you how I evolved as an artist.”
Daphne led the way out of the room. We walked back through the living room and foyer. In front of us was a large and curving grand staircase. Daphne walked toward and around it.
Behind the stairs was a hallway with a glass-paned ceiling. We walked through a breezeway into a large artist’s studio in what seemed to be a separate building.
The walls were painted a stark white. Large skylights flooded the room with natural light. Here, the smells of turpentine and oil paints, which I had only been slightly aware of in the sunroom, were more intense.
In the middle of the room was an easel. The painting on it was facing away from us. Daphne sauntered over to it and turned the easel around.
The canvas was more than four feet wide and at least as tall. The colors were deep and luminous. The paint was thick and heavy. I was looking into a cavelike room. The light source was beyond the edge of the canvas but it lit up the painting, warming the skin tones of the naked man who lounged on a velvet couch, sporting an erection. Strangely, he had been feminized in a way that suggested submission rather than homosexuality. It was subtly done-I certainly didn’t know how she’d done it.
I forced myself to look away from the erotic painting and back to its creator. She was smiling, her eyes shone and her lips were parted. The pleasure she experienced watching me encounter her work was palpable and sexual.
I looked back at the painting.
That the woman standing next to me, of the pearl and the horse-country set, had created the painting would have been hard to believe if not for that edge to her words and the glare in her eyes. She was a fine painter, but what gripped me and kept me staring at the painting was its very real sexuality-as provocative as the video of the society that I’d watched ten days earlier.
You see an expression on a man’s face like the one Daphne had captured only in the privacy of your own bedroom. You try to memorize it because you know it isn’t one you will see often. Many people never get to see anything exactly like it, ever.
That she had painted it said much about Daphne. It was past voyeurism to paint this portrait of this man. It was almost sacrilege to portray the inner depth to his want.
Actors making love in movies do a good job of expressing passion, and if you get caught up in the story on the screen you don’t notice the subtle false notes. They aren’t important.