“But you … you saw them. Where? When was that?”
Sally calculated. “I was in eighth grade, so I guess … 1995? I followed him to an art show, and I saw them together. And I mean together. And … well, this is embarrassing. I’m not trying to put myself in the narrative here, but I think it’s relevant to say that I had kind of an instant crush on her, too. She was very beautiful. It was kind of a shock to me as a closeted little middle schooler,” she said, after a moment. “Well, there you go. There goes that perfect dad you never got to know. You can thank me now.”
“Do you think Mom knew?” I asked her.
Sally shrugged. “I was hardly going to be the one to tell her, and she was hardly going to confide in me. And obviously our father’s love affair was never a topic of open conversation, chez Oppenheimer. Can you imagine? But eventually, I think she knew. I think she found out, and I think … well, if I’m being completely honest, and I think that’s what you’re asking me to be, I’ve always wondered if maybe her finding out made her desperate enough to do something she probably shouldn’t have done. Like bring a baby into that kind of a mess. Of course, now, I’m glad she did it. Because it’s you,” Sally finished, lamely.
I just looked at her. “I’m not sure I’m understanding,” I said, but even as I said it I did begin to understand. I understood it just fine. How distant from We might as well that decision had been, really.
I looked down at the ruin of my plate. I couldn’t remember eating it all. I couldn’t remember being hungry.
“I was an unpleasant little teenager,” my sister said. “I just thought about myself. But now I think about Mom, and what that must have been like for her. Three adolescents dying to leave and a husband who’d already checked out? Gruesome. But I was too angry at him to think about her. I was angry at him till the day he died. In fact, I told him…”
Her throat caught. She spread her hand out on the table: white fingers, dark brown wood.
“What?” I said.
“The night before he died, I told him I knew. I said I’d known for years. I was very not nice about it, either. I said he was a terrible father. And that’s the last thing I ever said to him. How lovely is that?”
“Sally. You didn’t know it was the last thing you’d ever say to him.”
“No. But I’ve known every day since. It’s been a bit of an issue for me, in therapy. Years with one of Ithaca’s finest!” She smiled.
“Well. Okay. I’m glad you have that.”
We sat together in silence. I got up to take my plate to the sink.
“I named you,” Sally said. “Did anyone ever tell you that? She wanted a P name, for her father, because he’d died the winter of that year. I suggested the name Phoebe. I was thinking: Phoebe, phoenix. Maybe I was more hopeful than I remember being. Maybe I thought: Okay! This baby could be like a phoenix, rising out of the wreckage of our very fucked-up family. That didn’t happen, but it wasn’t your fault. You were our sister, and we all treated you like you were nothing to us. We just packed up and left you there, in all of that crazy. I feel terrible about it. I’ve felt terrible for years.”
She certainly looked as if she felt terrible. She was hunched forward, hands around her bottle, avoiding my eyes. “Well, you can stop,” I said. “I’d probably have done the same if I’d…” I searched for the words. “Been born in the first round.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Then Sally shook her head. “Well, good. That was another of my therapy goals. Forgiveness for abandoning you.”
“Fine. Now you can stop going, I guess.”
“Better not. I’ve still got a long list of shit to get through.”
The cat came trotting down the stairs and into the kitchen. Outside, now, it was fully dark.
“Did you ever wonder where he was going that day?”
I looked at her. I wasn’t at all sure I was ready, not for this.
“I was told,” I said carefully, “a business trip. To Los Angeles.”
“Okay.”
“But … what are you saying?”
“I’m saying … I think he might have been on his way to Stella. It’s just an idea I’ve always had, that she was out there and he was going to her, and it meant he was finally leaving. Not me and the boys, we were already gone. But Mom. And, I guess, you.” She looked at me. “I can hate him for you, if you want. You got so little of him, it doesn’t seem fair. I had enough, and some good things to remember. Let me hate him for you.”
I nodded, but not because I agreed, necessarily. I just had no words left.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
A Bit of Liberation
In which Sally Oppenheimer admits to having done a highly crappy thing
Jack Neubauer and his father, on an accelerated schedule and likely already en route to Hamilton, were not at my 11:00 A.M. information session at the Welcome Center, nor on the tour that followed, a New Yorker–worthy speed-walk through the endless campus. I wasn’t prepared for how much colder it was up here, only a few hours north of the city, but my sister had given me a parka to wear. I kept my hands deep in its pockets as I chased after the guide, a chirpy, backward-walking rugby player named Celeste, trying to imagine the various members of my family as students here and attempting, unsuccessfully, to “see myself” at Cornell. When Celeste bade us all farewell at Ho Plaza, I headed north on Central Avenue to the Johnson Museum, where Sally had arranged to meet me, and where, against all odds, a small selection of our grandparents’ art collection was on display.
“This really is a nice coincidence,” Sally said, when she puffed in a few minutes later. “They’ve only been up a couple of times since I’ve been living here. Once there was a big exhibit of the whole collection, and occasionally individual paintings get included here or there if they fit with other shows. Religious art, Venetian painters, depictions of the afterlife, that kind of thing. You’ve never seen any of this stuff, have you?”
No, I hadn’t. It’s a truth universally acknowledged (at least within our family) that I have zero feelings about art, despite Lewyn’s occasional efforts to enlighten and entice me. I followed Sally up the stairs, not exactly unhappy to be here but still braced for a less than pleasurable activity. The paintings were part of a large exhibition called, quite simply, “Gifted to Cornell,” a hodgepodge of everything from primitive objects to a shiny blue Koons balloon dog, big as a garden shed. The only common denominator was that they’d been donated by grateful alumni (or perhaps, like Hermann and Selda Oppenheimer, in anticipation of future alumni). Sally found the relevant canvases in an alcove off one of the larger rooms, with a dedicatory plaque of its own:
From the Oppenheimer collection, gifted to Cornell in 1970 by Selda and Hermann Oppenheimer with additional gifts in 1999 by Solomon Oppenheimer ’75 (P: Lewyn Oppenheimer ’04, P: Sally Oppenheimer ’04)
The collection comprised thirty-one paintings by Old Masters from northern Europe, fourteenth through nineteenth centuries. Artists included Joos van Cleve, Hans Burgkmair, Lucas van Leyden, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hans Baldung Grien.
“I guess they don’t care that Lewyn didn’t graduate from Cornell,” Sally observed. She was inclining toward a painting whose label read: Bartholomeus van der Helst, Boy with a Spoon, 1643. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, from a development perspective.”
“No,” I said. “I guess not. Is your class still considered 2004?”
Mom and I had driven up in 2012 to watch Sally get her degree.
“Apparently so. I can’t say I’m all that involved with either class.”
We spent a couple of minutes looking at the four paintings. As usual, when faced with art—presented, usually, by Lewyn, but also on class trips to museums—I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking at. These paintings were “good,” obviously, or they wouldn’t be in a museum; beyond that I was clueless.
“It’s very … dark,” I said, in conclusion.