“Then why didn’t you get rid of them?” Olive said cruelly.
“Because they reminded me of him. They were your father exactly. Dreaming of great things.” She paused, folding her napkin over and over against the worn burgundy velvet of her skirt. When she spoke again, her voice had turned soft. “I loved him so. And it seems to me, when I’m wearing these . . .”
“Yes?”
Mrs. Van Alan whispered, “He’s still here. A little piece of his spirit, anyway, right next to my head, speaking in my ear. A little piece of his beautiful soul.”
Olive sank back into her seat and bowed her head over her half-finished tea. The smell drifted upward, the particular spice of her mother’s favorite Ceylon blend. The tea probably cost more than the coal, but Mrs. Van Alan couldn’t seem to give that up, either. Tea and rubies.
It was the bitterest thing, wasn’t it, to come down in the world. To watch your extravagant dreams disintegrate into the rug of your cold and narrow parlor. Your favorite things disappear, one by one, until there was nothing left of you.
What would Olive’s mother do, if Olive ran off to the sunshine with her lover?
A heavy knock sounded from the hallway, and it seemed to Olive like the final scene of a Mozart opera, when Death pounded like a bass drum upon Giovanni’s sinful door.
Mrs. Van Alan placed her napkin next to her plate and rose from her chair.
“That will be Mr. Jungmann,” she said.
Twenty-one
JULY 1920
Lucy
“Miss Young?”
John Ravenel was waiting for her by the El, standing on the top of the steps, his hat in one hand, unconcerned amid the dust and the grime, the stream of people leaving the train. They eddied around him as he stepped easily forward, taking Lucy’s arm and tucking it comfortably beneath his own.
Lucy pulled away a little. “How—how did you know I would take this train?”
“It’s the nearest to the studio.” John Ravenel smiled down at her as if he hadn’t a care in the world, and, despite herself, Lucy felt her spirits rising in response, all her carefully cutting arguments as to why she shouldn’t be here dissolving.
“The studio?”
“Shoot. I’ve gone and given it away.” John Ravenel’s teeth flashed in a grin. “Never mind. Pretend to be surprised when I open the door, won’t you?”
“I won’t need to pretend.” Lucy held on to her hat as she hurried to keep up with him. “I haven’t the faintest notion of what you’re talking about!”
Apologetically, John Ravenel slowed his steps. “My favorite place in New York. It’s—well, you could call it my refuge. I never showed it to— Let’s just say that I’ve never showed it to anyone before.”
“My.” Lucy couldn’t think what else to say. The block they were traversing, still at a brisk clip, was lined with old brownstones, houses that might have been workers’ homes once. It was a part of the city she knew not at all. “You said studio . . . Do you paint? I can’t quite imagine you in a floppy hat and a great bow of a necktie!”
John Ravenel laughed, a great rumble of a laugh, and the sunshine seemed to brighten on the stoops and windows. “It’s not an official uniform, you know, any more than spectacles are for professors. But, no, I don’t paint.” As they reached number 147, he paused, looking down at Lucy. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate beauty when I see it.”
Lucy could feel the blood rise in her cheeks. From the heat of the day, of course. And the exertion of the walk. Mr. Ravenel was an art dealer. Finding beauty was his business.
Beauty with a price tag.
“Is it hard,” she asked, as Mr. Ravenel set his hand to the knocker, “finding beauty, only to have to give it away again?”
“I don’t give it away; I sell it, hopefully for a profit.” He leaned against the doorframe. “You learn a certain detachment after a while. And there’s the excitement of knowing that there’s always another and another and another. Ah, Luisa! I didn’t know you were in residence.”
A woman had opened the door. At least, Lucy inferred from the curves of chest and hip that she was a woman. Her hair was shingled and she wore trousers. Smoke rose from the cigarette that she held in one hand.
“The work,” she said, gesticulating with a trail of ash, “it struggles to be born.”
“And Mrs. Whitney provides a good free meal,” said Mr. Ravenel, sotto voce. In his normal voice, he said, “Show it to me when you’re done. I might be able to find a home for it.” To Lucy, he added, “Luisa is a sculptor.”
“Does she own this house?” Their hostess, if such she was, was already trailing away, through a door into a room dotted with easels.