Eileen was worried that all of the children would be shaken by a divorce, but there was no avoiding that now, if Paul decided he was gone for good. Their marriage seemed to have ended with a whimper, although Eileen had no idea what lay ahead for all of them.
“I’m sure your father will want to see you all soon,” Eileen said, and Pennie nodded. She had mixed feelings about it. She was angry at him for leaving her mother, and all of them, but he seemed so unhappy in his life that she was sorry for him.
* * *
—
Eileen called Jane to tell her that night too. She wasn’t shocked. She had suspected that he was cheating, and she was more concerned about how Eileen was taking it. She seemed okay, but she would have rough times ahead if they got divorced, even if they were friends in the end. Being left for another woman was a brutal blow. Jane was sure that the girl he was involved with was probably younger than Eileen. And turning forty, and being left by your husband, was every woman’s nightmare. They made a lunch date for the next day. Eileen said she was waiting for Paul to make the next move. She didn’t feel like there was anything she could do, and now at least she knew the truth.
“How are the kids taking it?” Jane asked her.
“Pennie has been terrific. She’s angry at her father, but I think it will be harder on the boys. They’re younger and don’t understand.”
“They’ll come through it. Kids always do. As long as Paul sees enough of them, and they have you and Pennie to reassure them. Most kids have divorced parents these days.” It was true, but Eileen had hoped never to be one of them. She had worked hard for that, but not hard enough, and there had been a flaw in their marriage from the beginning, which in Paul’s mind they had never overcome. Eileen had put past disappointments behind her, but Paul never had.
They agreed on where to meet the next day, and Eileen tried not to, but she wondered what Paul was doing and who he was with, and what she was like. She wanted to know what the competition looked like and how old she was. But even without knowing, she felt defeated. She couldn’t see herself meeting another man she cared about and starting a new life. She wasn’t even sure she had the energy to try. It was all so disappointing and so sad. She lay alone in her bed that night, thinking of what Paul had said. The last thing she wanted to do was get out and date again. She felt now as though the last eighteen years had been wasted, except for the kids, who were worth it all. But she was no longer sure that Paul was. And if he had been cheating on her for a while, she didn’t think she could ever forgive him, and didn’t want him back. She had reached a crossroads in her life. She felt her youth slipping away from her. No matter what Pennie said, she felt suddenly ancient, and as though her life as she knew it was over. The dream she had tried to build with him had come to an end. Their marriage wasn’t sound enough to carry them forever. And she was turning forty, with a husband who no longer wanted her. It felt like the end of the road, with nothing to look forward to up ahead.
Chapter 6
When Gwen Waters woke up the next day, she had only one thing in mind, and one place where she wanted to go. She put on jeans and a heavy sweater, and running shoes so she wouldn’t slip or fall. She ate a light breakfast of coffee and a slice of toast, and then called for an Uber and headed downtown. The car was already waiting when she got downstairs. The address was in a still-battered part of the Bowery that hadn’t been gentrified yet, and she was lost in thought all the way downtown. It took them nearly an hour to get there in Monday morning traffic, but she had nothing else to do that day.
The old warehouse looked weathered when she got there, and there were bags of garbage on the sidewalk, waiting to be picked up. There were a few homeless people wandering down the street, and drunks still asleep in doorways. This wasn’t SoHo or Tribeca, and was less fashionable. There were enormous doors that had been painted dark green in the façade of the building, which always reminded Gwen of Paris.
She rang the bell and waited. She knew it would take her mother time to answer, and if she was wielding her welder’s torch, she wouldn’t hear the doorbell and Gwen would have to call her, but she’d get there sooner or later.
She waited a full five minutes and was about to call, when one of the huge doors swung slowly open. A small disheveled woman in a heavy welder’s apron, holding a torch in her hand, with a mask pushed up on her head, stood there and smiled at Gwen.
“It’s you. I wasn’t expecting you. I’m working on a new horse.”
“I figured you were doing something like that. Hello, Mother, how are you?” She gave her a hug. There was a vague resemblance between the two women, although the older woman wasn’t as tall, and their styles were entirely different. Gwen was impeccably stylish and elegant, even in jeans and a sweater. Her mother looked tousled and Bohemian. Her face was similar to Gwen’s and still beautiful, though heavily lined, and her snow-white hair, which had once been as dark as Gwen’s, was pulled back tightly in a bun so she didn’t set it on fire with the sparks from her torch.
Gwen had given up worrying about her. Her mother did as she pleased. She was careful about her welding, but had a remarkable indifference to all other aspects of safety, and somehow got away with it. There were stacks of wood, and large odd-shaped metal objects in piles around the warehouse, electrical cords, and an obstacle course of debris, tools, and benches in various places around the building, which had been a garment factory at one time. There were also huge, spectacularly graceful horses made of steel, which would eventually be cast in bronze. Occasionally, she did wooden ones, or some with found objects. There was also a giant statue of a naked man, but Gabrielle Waters’s horses were famous, and sold for a fortune.
Gwen’s mother was a sculptress. She had studied at the Beaux-Arts in Paris in her youth. She was a doctor’s daughter and Gwen was her only child. She looked to be about seventy-five years old, despite the lines in her face, and her eyes were a bright electric blue. Her hearing was perfect. She was surprisingly agile. She had had Gwen late in life. Gabrielle was now ninety-two years old.
She had been widowed when Gwen was only a year old. Her husband had been a famous painter, and she had never remarried. She’d had several long-term love affairs in her life, but had never wanted to marry any of her lovers. Her current lover, Federico Banducci, was a famous photographer, eight years younger than Gabrielle. He was eighty-four years old, and still working as hard as she was.
They had met at the Beaux-Arts in Paris when he was twenty and she was twenty-eight, and had only been friends then. They met again fifty years later, at seventy and seventy-eight, and had been together ever since. They had been living together for fourteen years. He’d been studying architecture at the Beaux-Arts, and gave it up for photography. Venetian by birth, of a noble family, he had gone to New York after Paris. There was a palazzo named after his family in Venice.