“You know better than to ask me that,” he replied, dabbing his brush on the palette and swirling a vivid blue into a gray. If Iris was no longer in focus, he could look at some of the stonework along the roof as it melted into the sky. “I gave you something nice. This is no way to repay me.”
“I know that, darling. I know. But . . .”
“If Flora wanted you to know who the father was, don’t you think she would have told you? And I don’t know.”
“But she would tell you.”
“You are testing my friendship,” Leo said. “Don’t ask me to give you things I can’t give.”
“I’m done for the day,” she said, pulling out her silver cigarette case. “I’m going inside for a hot bath.”
She stood, sweeping her coat around her as she strode across the top of the green to the front door. Leo had given her the powder to help alleviate her boredom—small doses, now and again, the same small doses he took. Recently, he had noticed her behavior was changing; she was fickle, impatient, secretive. She was getting more from somewhere, taking it often, and getting anxious when there was none around. She was becoming hooked. Albert had no idea, of course. That was so much of the problem. Albert ran his kingdom and entertained himself, and Iris spiraled, having too little to occupy her agile mind.
Perhaps he could get back to New York. He and Flora and Iris and Alice. It was the only sensible thing to do. Get her back to a place that stimulated her, get her to a good doctor he knew on Fifth Avenue who fixed these kinds of problems.
Albert would balk. He couldn’t stand to be away from Iris and Alice. Even a night was too much. His devotion to his wife and child was admirable. Most men in Albert’s position had dozens of affairs, mistresses in every city. Albert seemed loyal, which meant he probably only had one. Perhaps she was in Burlington.
Leo looked up at the subject in front of him, the brooding house with the curtain of stone rising behind it. The late-February afternoon sun was a white lavender, the bare trees etching themselves on the horizon, looking like the exposed circulatory systems of massive, mysterious creatures. He touched the paint to the canvas and drew back. The three figures in the painting stared at him expectantly. There was something wrong, something incomprehensible about this subject.
There is the mistaken notion that wealth makes people content. It does the opposite, generally. It stirs a hunger in many—and no matter what they eat, they will never be full. A hole opens somewhere. Leo saw it all in a flash in that dying sunset, in the faces of his subjects and the color of the horizon. He examined his palette for a moment, concentrating on the Prussian blue and how he might make a ruinous sky of it.
“Mr. Holmes Nair?”
Two students had approached Leonard while he was staring at the painting, a boy and a girl. The boy was beautiful—his hair genuinely golden, a color poets wrote about but rarely saw. The girl had a smile like a dangerous question. The first thing that struck Leo was how alive they looked. In contrast to the surroundings, they were bright and flushed. They even had traces of sweat at the brow lines and under the eyes. The slight confusion of the clothes. The errant hair.
They had been up to something, and they didn’t mind that it showed.
“You’re Leonard Holmes Nair, aren’t you?” the boy said.
“I am,” Leo said.
“I saw your Orpheus One show in New York last year. I liked it very much, even more than Hercules.”
The boy had taste.
“You are interested in art?” Leo said.
“I am a poet.”
Leo approved of poets, generally, but it was very important not to let them get started on the subject of their work if you wanted to continue enjoying poetry.
“Would you mind very much if I took your photograph?” the boy asked.
“I suppose not,” Leo said, sighing.
As the boy raised his camera, Leo regarded his companion. The boy was pretty; the girl was interesting. Her eyes were fiercely intelligent. She had a notebook closely clutched to her chest in a way that suggested that whatever was in it was precious and probably against some rules. His painter’s eye and his deviant soul told him the girl was the one to watch of this pair. If there were students like those two at Ellingham Academy, perhaps the experiment was not a total waste.
“Are you also a poet?” Leo asked the girl politely.
“Absolutely not,” she replied. “I like some poems. I like Dorothy Parker.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I’m a friend of Dorothy’s.”
The boy was fiddling with the camera. It was one thing waiting for Cecil Beaton or Man Ray to find the right angle, but quite another to wait for this boy, however good his taste. The girl seemed to sense this and lose patience as well.
“Take it, Eddie,” she said.
The boy immediately took the photo.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Leo said, intending to be as rude as he wished, “but I am losing the light.”
“Come on, Eddie, we better get back,” the girl said, smiling at Leo. “Thank you very much, Mr. Nair.”
The two continued on their way, the boy going one direction, and the girl another. Leo’s gaze followed the girl for a moment as she hurried toward the small building called Minerva House. He made a mental note to tell Dorothy about her, which he promptly misplaced on a cluttered side table in his mind. He rubbed between his eyes with his oilcloth. He had lost his vision of the house and its secrets. The moment was gone.
“Now is the cocktail hour,” he said. “That’s quite enough for today.”
2
“I WANT TO TALK ABOUT HOW I’M DOING,” STEVIE LIED.
Stevie sat in front of the massive desk that took up a large part of this room, one of the loveliest in the Great House. Originally, it had been Iris Ellingham’s dressing room. The dove-gray silk still hung on the walls. It matched the color of the sky. But instead of a bed and dressing tables, the room was now stuffed with bookcases, floor to ceiling.
She was trying not to look directly at the person behind the desk, the one in the Iron Man T-shirt and fitted sports coat, the one with the stylish glasses and flop of blond-gray hair. So she focused instead on the picture between the windows, the framed print on the wall. She knew it well. It was the illustrated map of Ellingham Academy. It was printed in all the admission materials. You could buy a poster of it. It was one of those things that was always around and you never thought about. It wasn’t super accurate—it was more of an artistic rendering. The buildings were massive, for a start, and highly embellished. She had heard that it had been done by a former student, someone who went on to illustrate children’s books. This was the illusion of Ellingham Academy—the gentle picture painted for the world.
“I’m really glad you came up to talk to me,” Charles said.
Stevie believed this. After all, everything about Charles suggested that he wanted to be fun and relatable, from the signs on his office door that read, QUESTION EVERYTHING; I REJECT YOUR REALITY AND SUBSTITUTE MY OWN, and the big, homemade one in the middle that read, CHALLENGE ME. There were also the Funko Pop! figurines that cluttered Iris Ellingham’s windowsills, next to pictures of what Stevie assumed were Charles’s rowing teams at Cambridge and Harvard. Because, no matter how bouncy and earnest Charles was, he was highly qualified. Every faculty member at Ellingham was. They came, dripping degrees and accolades and experience, to teach on the mountain.