As Lorenzo got older, he got more cantankerous, and argued often with his friends, particularly if he thought they were selling out to the commercial world, and sacrificing their talent for money. He was just as happy giving away his work as selling it.
He was hostile and suspicious when a young art dealer came to meet him from Paris. He came to St. Paul de Vence several times before Lorenzo would agree to see him. Gabriel Ferrand had seen some of Lorenzo’s work, and recognized genius when he saw it. He begged Lorenzo to let him represent him at his gallery in Paris, and Lorenzo refused. Some of his friends tried to convince him otherwise, since Ferrand had an excellent reputation, but Lorenzo said he had no interest in being represented by some “money-hungry crook of an art dealer in Paris.” It took Gabriel three years to convince Lorenzo to let him show one of his paintings in Paris, which Gabriel sold immediately for a very respectable amount of money, though Lorenzo insisted it meant nothing to him.
It was Maylis who finally reasoned with Lorenzo to let Gabriel represent him, which proved increasingly lucrative while Lorenzo continued to call him a crook, much to Gabriel’s amusement. He had come to love the inordinately difficult genius he had discovered. Most of Gabriel’s communication with Lorenzo went through Maylis, and they became fast friends, conspiring with each other for Lorenzo’s benefit. By the time Maylis had been with him for ten years, and Lorenzo turned seventy, he had a very decent amount of money in the bank, which he claimed he didn’t want to know about. He insisted that he had no desire to “prostitute” his art, or be corrupted by Gabriel’s “venal intentions,” and he let Maylis and Gabriel handle his money. He wasn’t rich by any means, but he was no longer dirt poor. Nothing changed in their life, so as not to upset Lorenzo, and Maylis continued working as a waitress several times a week, and posing for him. He had declined to have a show of his work at Gabriel’s gallery in Paris, so Gabriel sold his work individually, as soon as buyers saw it. And at times, Lorenzo wouldn’t send him anything at all. It always depended on his mood, and he enjoyed his love/hate relationship with the young gallerist from Paris, whose only interest was in helping him achieve the recognition he deserved for his enormous talent. Maylis did her best to smooth the rocky road between them, without upsetting Lorenzo unduly. Most of the time, Lorenzo gave his paintings to Maylis, who had a huge collection of his work by then, but refused to sell any of the paintings he had given her, out of sentiment. Between the two of them, Gabriel had a hard time selling much of Lorenzo’s work, but he remained faithful to the cause, convinced that Lorenzo would be an artist of enormous stature one day, and he came to St. Paul de Vence to see them often, mostly for the pleasure of admiring Lorenzo’s new work, and of talking to Maylis, whom he adored. He thought she was the most remarkable woman he had ever met.
Gabriel had a wife and daughter in Paris, but he lost his wife to cancer after he had known Lorenzo for five years. After that he brought his little girl, Marie-Claude, with him to St. Paul de Vence occasionally, and Maylis would play with her while the two men talked. She felt sorry for her with no mother. She was a sweet, sunny child, and Gabriel obviously loved her deeply and appeared to be a good father. He took her everywhere with him, to visit artists in their studios and when he traveled, and she was a bright little girl.
Lorenzo was no longer interested in children by then, not even his own, and he still didn’t want children with Maylis, despite her youth and beauty. He wanted her to himself, and her undivided attention, which she lavished on him. And it came as an unwelcome shock to both of them when Maylis discovered she was pregnant, a dozen years after they’d gotten together. It had never been part of their plan. She was thirty-three years old, he was seventy-two, and more intent on his work than ever. Lorenzo had been angry at her for weeks when they found out, and finally, grudgingly, he agreed to let her go forward with it, but he was anything but pleased at the prospect of a child. And Maylis was worried about it too. She warmed to the idea only slowly as the baby grew within her, and she realized how much it meant to her to have Lorenzo’s child. There was no question of their getting married, since he was still married to his wife, who was still alive. Cousins from the town where he’d been born confirmed it to him every few years, not that he cared.
And as Maylis grew with her pregnancy, Lorenzo painted her constantly, suddenly more in love than ever with her changing body, filled with his child. And Gabriel agreed with him that his paintings of Maylis then were some of his best work. Gabriel thought he had never seen her look more beautiful. Maylis was happy pregnant, and their son was born one night, while Lorenzo dined with his friends at the studio. Maylis had cooked them dinner, and the men drank a great deal of wine. She didn’t say anything but suspected she’d been in labor since before dinner, and she finally retired upstairs and called the doctor, while they drank. And Lorenzo and his cohorts barely noticed when the doctor arrived and joined Maylis in their bedroom to deliver the baby, who came quickly and easily. And two hours after giving birth, Maylis appeared at the top of the stairs, beaming victoriously and holding their son wrapped in a blanket in her arms. Lorenzo came upstairs unsteadily to kiss her, and from the moment he laid eyes on him, he fell in love with the child.
They named him Théophile, for Maylis’s grandfather, Theo as they called him, and he became the joy of his father’s life.
Some of Lorenzo’s most beautiful work was of Maylis holding Theo as a baby, and nursing him. And he produced spectacular paintings of the boy as he grew up. And of all his children, Theo was the only one to inherit his talent. He began scribbling next to his father from the moment he was old enough to hold a pencil in his chubby hands. It lent new excitement to his father’s work, and Lorenzo attempted to teach the boy all he knew. Lorenzo was eighty-three by the time Theo was ten, and it was already obvious by then that one day the boy would be as talented as his father, although his style was very different, even at an early age. The two would draw and paint for hours side by side, as Maylis watched them with delight. Theo was the love of their life.