While they made small talk, Jeff couldn’t help but imagine the young Alison Collins Baker, the artist, the one who thought marrying Francis Arsenault might help her career, or at least wouldn’t destroy it. He searched her eyes for a hint of sadness, a sign that the young and ambitious artist was in there, hidden behind a curtain, waiting for her cue. But the impression he got, even with the knowledge of her having given up on her dream, was that the Alison Baker before him was a happy and fulfilled woman.
She walked him around the house, making sure he knew it was a rental, showing him a few of the things she’d done with it, pointing out rugs and chairs and pillows. A mirror or two, a pop of color in several of the rooms. She was very much looking forward to decorating the Mandeville house, and she promised to show him the renderings. Chloe seemed less enthusiastic about this, trying to slow her mother down, embarrassed that she seemed to be trying to impress Jeff.
Only after they’d returned to the kitchen and stood around the island refilling their wineglasses did Jeff realize something odd. There was no art on the walls. He mentioned it, and Alison said that they had been living that way a long time. In the early days, they’d had art all over the place, but Francis kept selling it off the walls. She’d fall in love with a piece one day, and the next day it would be in the hands of a collector. After a while, they decided together to keep the art out of the house. Leave the work at the office, she said. As true in that business as in any other.
Jeff asked about her work.
She said that she’d been doing so well lately that she had a seven-month waiting list.
He clarified that he meant her art.
She gave Chloe a quick look.
“Honestly,” she said, “this is my art.”
She described several jobs they were finishing up, as well as one she was particularly excited about, for a television producer in the Palisades.
“I can’t say who, but you’d know his name,” she said.
He didn’t know anybody’s name.
“Basically gave us free rein,” she said. “Out with the old and so on.”
He had to wonder whether Chloe’s view of her mother as an artiste manqué said more about Chloe than the woman who had raised her.
Francis arrived a half hour late. Preoccupied with putting his bags away, he didn’t pay Jeff any notice at first. He apologized for being late but said that he had decided to hit the gym after work. His hair was wet, and when he looked to Jeff, cued by Alison, who reminded him that Jeff was joining them for dinner, he locked his eyes on him, and in the instant before smiling and putting out his hand, wore a look of incomprehension that, coupled with the wet hair, shook Jeff to the core.
Jeff felt like he had to defer to Francis’s apology, to accept it politely on behalf of everyone else, even as Alison and Chloe seemed annoyed.
“The gym,” Jeff said. “Gotta stay fit.” And then, caution to the wind: “You a swimmer?”
Another flash from Francis. A millisecond long. A spike of fear as from a trapped animal.
“Squash,” Francis said. “I showered afterward. At the gym.”
At the gym, he said. It was unnecessary to utter those three words. Anyone would have assumed that he would have showered at the gym. Jeff wondered whether Francis had not been at the gym at all, but in the hotel, with his mistress.
“Doctor said you shouldn’t push it,” Chloe said.
Francis looked to Alison, who got the message immediately. This was not something to be discussed outside the family.
“Chloe,” Alison said. “Pour your father a glass of wine.”
Francis shook Jeff’s hand firmly, welcomed him into his humble home, as he called it, and smiled openly. He, too, mentioned that it was a rental. There was no hint of the backhanded compliments or veiled threats he’d thrown Jeff’s way at the office. This was a more open Francis, a man who seemed pleased with his daughter’s choice of boyfriend. The unspoken rule hewed to what Alison had said about the paintings on the wall: work stayed at work.
When they sat down to eat, a fancy bottle of red wine was opened, to go with the tenderloin Alison had prepared. Francis behaved like a king in his little castle, with Alison and Chloe making sure he had what he needed at any given moment. While the food was being plated, Francis and Jeff had a moment together at the table. Francis asked Jeff to remind him where he worked before he came to FAFA. Jeff mentioned the startup, and Francis shook his head.
“Nothing in the art world?”
“Nada,” Jeff said.
Francis looked at him, squinting his eyes slightly.
“Did you go to many openings?” he asked.
Jeff, worried that he was being quizzed on his experience, fibbed a little.
“When I could, yes,” he said.
“Ahh,” Francis said. “That’s it, then.”
“What?”
“Your face, it’s familiar to me. I noticed it when I called you into my office. It’s been bothering me since. I had the feeling that I’d seen you before, but I couldn’t quite place you.”
“You must see lots of people,” Jeff said.
“I never forget a painting,” Francis said. “And I never forget a face.”
During dinner, Jeff was asked for his opinion a few times, in the vein of parents sniffing out the new boyfriend, but for the most part he observed the conversation going on between the Arsenaults.
The dynamic at the table consisted of Francis making ill-informed comments about various things Chloe was doing, or he thought she was doing, in a manner that seemed controlling and overprotective. Alison then chimed in with the reality of the situation, countering Francis’s view while also acknowledging the validity of his underlying concerns. Chloe then complained about not being treated like the adult she was. Jeff could have drawn diagrams of their interactions, connecting channels of power, concern, control, money, freedom, and love. They seemed like, to him, who had never been part of one, a normal family.
Occasionally Francis shot him a look of commiseration, but Jeff also caught Francis looking at him out of the corner of his eye, examining him with what might have been an evaluating gaze. Was he envious of Jeff’s youth? Thinking about how his life might have gone differently if he were able to backtrack to a point in his early twenties? Or was he still trying to place his face, chasing down the source of that feeling of familiarity?
For his part, Jeff examined Francis too, and not only to assess who he was but also to look for signs of what Chloe had invoked. Doctor said you shouldn’t push it. Was he in ill health? Was the doctor warning him that what had happened in the ocean could happen again? He knew he couldn’t ask about Francis’s health, not after Alison’s obvious redirection away from the subject, but he could see no sign that the man was anything but hale and hearty.
Francis ate steak and drank wine with gusto. His cheeks were pink, his posture ramrod straight. Despite a long day and a trip to the gym or an assignation in a hotel, he showed no signs of flagging. He was known for his energy, Jeff had heard around the gallery, and he was almost competitive in the way he refilled their wineglasses, as if he and Jeff were engaged in a drinking contest. It felt strange to see Francis, as he drank more, consider Jeff a competitor in anything at all, especially considering their relative positions at FAFA.
At one point Francis knocked over a nearly empty glass of wine, leaving a red splotch on the tablecloth. Alison sprang into action with salt and a paper towel, dabbing up what she could. Francis cursed under his breath, and she assured him that it would come out, then asked him if he wanted her to refill the glass. She approached the spilled wine with no annoyance, no subservience, no fear, but only a soothing calmness. She kissed him on the forehead and looked at him with years-earned fondness. Jeff couldn’t help but imagine that face’s obverse, what Alison would have looked like mourning Francis’s loss.