What India had thought was, Oh, come on.
The story sounded worn out and typical; India had hoped for more. But most of PAFA’s students-aspiring artists in their late teens and early twenties-held an overly romanticized vision of themselves. They liked to talk about their pain, their inspiration. They didn’t realize yet that their currency would be hard work and ambition.
Lula had been a little moony at that first coffee, but she was a fiercely talented painter. She was always in the studio, always experimenting with different canvases and paints and techniques. She brought gesso back into fashion, then gouache. She did studies of color and texture, underpainting and overpainting. She studied her history-Matisse, Modigliani, O’Keeffe, Pollock, Rothko. She loved Rothko; she single-handedly started a Rothko renaissance. Suddenly, references to Rothko’s paintings were appearing in everyone’s work, and the faculty were shaking their heads. It was because of Tallulah. She set trends.
Lula never slept; that was the rumor. Her insomnia had been inherited from her Iranian father, who had also never slept. Lula mentioned her insomnia to India when they met again for coffee at the White Dog. India admitted to Lula that she didn’t sleep either, though her insomnia was situational and not inherited. It had been caused by her husband’s suicide.
India spent her insomniac hours drinking chamomile tea and paging through fashion magazines. She listened to John Coltrane; she watched Love Story on TNT. Lula went to Tattooed Mom and 105 Social; she drank champagne bought for her by men with expense accounts; she did recreational drugs. At dawn, she went home, washed her hair, ate a hard-boiled egg, and was in her studio by 7 A.M.
During that second year, Lula discovered the female nude. She spent long hours in Cast Hall, sketching the plaster forms of the human body; she would spend an hour on an ear, an entire day on a hand. She wanted to be technically perfect. The most famous of PAFA’s instructors, Thomas Eakins, had encouraged his students to dissect dead bodies. In this tradition, Lula hounded someone at UPenn’s medical school, and she spent a week sketching cadavers. News of this over-the-top effort in the name of authenticity traveled through the halls of the school; Lula quickly became the It Girl with the untouchable talent, the sick work ethic. India and the other professors knew that a burnished reputation in only her second year could be a good thing or a bad thing. But the work spoke for itself: One entire wall of Lula’s studio was dedicated to a study done in pink, of a woman dancing. The woman was six feet tall and had her arms extended over her head; Lula had rendered her sixteen times in succession, so that to look at the wall from left to right was to sense the woman twirling.
At the end of the year, Lula won the cash award for the Most Promising Student. This was the subject of much controversy and conversation because she was the only student who hadn’t completed a single canvas. Her entire oeuvre, at that point, was studies. But the studies showed brilliance, and as India-who held the most influential vote where this award was concerned-pointed out, not one of the other students’ finished canvases held the promise of Tallulah’s studies.
In Lula’s third year, the coffees at the White Dog turned into dinners at places like Susanna Foo and Morimoto. People whispered that this was unethical (there wasn’t a single whisper that didn’t make it, eventually, to India’s ear). But there was nothing unethical about the dinners. Lula and India were friends, with a shared taste for exotic food and exquisite wine. Always, they split the bill.
And then, one night, India offered to entertain Lula at home. She would cook. Lula borrowed somebody’s car and drove out to India’s heavily wooded suburb. Lula, the city mouse, seemed intimidated by the Main Line. It was so old and storied. So Waspy. Nothing like the city, she said. She could work the city. But covered bridges and massive estates, country clubs with gates, and hundred-year-old trees-these put her out.
Just look at this house, Lula said.
She was referring to the fact that it was built from stones that had been dredged out of the Delaware River in the eighteenth century. The foyer had a vaulted ceiling and a brick floor. It seemed imposing to Lula, who lived in an apartment that was modern and minimalist.
India invited Lula into the kitchen, a massive, magnificent room with marble countertops, an acre of butcher block, gleaming copper cookware, walnut cabinets whose fixtures had been smoothed with use. When the boys were still at home, and when Bill was working, India’s only job had been to keep things happy and humming. She had cooked large, elaborate meals, doubling and tripling recipes to meet the boys’ appetites. She told Tallulah this. She said, “And now, I hardly ever use it. So I’m glad you’re here.”
Lula kissed India flush on the mouth, which took India by surprise but didn’t alarm her. Lula had brought her a pink gerbera daisy in a pot wrapped in pink foil, a very un-Lula-like present, but Lula said, “The suburbs, I just wasn’t sure.” She had also brought two skinny joints in a sandwich bag. “One for now,” she said. “One for later, in case you can’t sleep.”
India poured wine; they lit up the first joint. It had been a while since India had smoked dope, and she had certainly never smoked with a student. But she was lulled by the safety of her own kitchen, and the dope was good. India got very high; any qualms she had floated to the ceiling with the smoke. She stirred the pasta sauce on the stove. Lula asked if she might have a peek at the rest of the house. India felt a stab of some old, forgotten jealousy. This was, after all, Bill Bishop’s house, and out back was Bill’s studio. Lula would want to see it; that was, quite possibly, the reason she’d agreed to come at all.
“You can look around,” India said. “But I am not giving a tour. I don’t mean to be rude, but I find pointing out all of Bill’s objets tiresome.”
“Yes,” Lula said. “I’ll bet.”
She poked around anyway. She opened the back door, activating the motion-detector lights, and slipped across the back lawn to Bill’s studio, which was locked. Lula hurried back into the house, and India decided not to say anything.
They had a lovely dinner: A salad of greens, figs, toasted pine nuts, and herbed goat cheese, tossed with India’s famous vinaigrette. Fettuccine with truffle butter, cream, and pecorino cheese. Homemade bread.
“Homemade bread?” Lula said. She was stuffing her face with food, the way India had never seen her do in public. It was the pot, maybe. Or she felt at ease here. Or she was simply hungry: Like all workaholic insomniacs, Lula barely ate. She lived on coffee and cigarettes and nibbled at sad, shriveled pieces of cheese naan. Now, Lula slathered the homemade bread with butter. India was delighted.