The Masterpiece

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

July 1929

The morning after the campfire, Clara remained up in her bedroom until she heard Levon leave. She sat up in bed, lost in thought. The siren of her painting glared back at her from the top of the desk, where it had been left angled against the wall. Oliver hadn’t come home last night.

Clyde came to the door and barked a couple of times before giving up. Finally, she dragged herself out of bed and tossed on a navy cotton dress before heading to class, where Levon offered a cursory hello. Her shame was complete: She’d made a fool of herself with Levon and caused terrible pain to Oliver within the span of fifteen seconds. Her head ached from the lack of sleep, but she struggled through, focusing on the students and avoiding Levon entirely.

Back at the cottage, she found Oliver sitting at the kitchen table, his hair tousled, his eyes blue as the sea. He glowed, still seductive in his anger, a man who had chosen her and taken good care of her right when she needed it most.

From where Clara stood, Violet’s cloying perfume tickled her nose.

“I’m sorry, Oliver. It meant nothing. What you saw on the beach.”

“I’ve been warning you about him for months now, but you couldn’t help yourself, could you? You talk about him all the time; now you’re trying to paint like him. I knew it.” Oliver’s tone cut into her. “You can have him. Good luck to the both of you. You’ll tear each other apart.”

“I don’t want Levon; I want you.”

“We’re done. It’s over.”

“We can talk about this, can’t we? You immediately took off with Violet, after all. Maybe now we’re even.” He lifted his chin to speak, but she cut him off. “I can smell her on you, for God’s sake.”

“We’ll never be even. You’ll always listen to what Levon says over me, because he has some kind of magnetic hold over you. He’s an immigrant, a peasant, from God knows where, but he sucks you right into his delusions of grandeur. Both of you think that you’re special, above the rest of us. That you can act on impulse and get away with it. Well, now you know I can, too.”

There was no talking to him, now that his resentment had boiled over into vicious insults.

She went up to her room, needing a refuge so she didn’t strike back in anger. But something was wrong. Missing. Her painting.

She searched for it in Oliver’s room, then her own again, before storming back downstairs.

“My painting—where is it?”

“You destroyed me, and so I destroyed something you love. It’s only fair.” The coldness in his voice was unrecognizable. As if he’d turned into an entirely different person, one she’d never met before.

“You destroyed it?” She hadn’t realized how much it meant to her until then. The painting was part of the sea and the Maine winds and the people who had surrounded her this past month. It was the key to a new way of seeing the world, interpreting it. She had been gathering up the courage to show Levon the finished painting, and now he’d never see it. “You’re heartless, you know that? I would never have burned your poems to punish you, no matter what you did.”

“That only goes to show that I loved you more.”

“What twisted logic. You make no sense. I care for you too much to ever enact revenge in such a petty way.” She paused, gathering her thoughts, trying to calm her breathing. “It was a stupid mistake, what I did last night. A moment that came and went and was done for. We aren’t interested in each other, not like that.”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“Please, Oliver. I’m sorry. Let’s sit and talk and hash this out. I can’t imagine life without you.”

For a split second, pain carved through his face, but as her hollow words lingered in the air, he quickly recovered his composure. “You’re saying that to get the painting back, aren’t you? You’re not saying that for me.”

He knew her so well. She had no reply.

Back in New York, Clara spent the month of August catching up on commissions from the magazines and from Studebaker, a welcome distraction from the Maine debacle. She hadn’t seen Oliver since he’d driven off with Violet, leaving Clara behind to finish up the last week of classes and endure the sympathetic looks and fevered whispers of the students. Once home, it had been a relief to hole up in her studio and work fifteen hours a day. That awful morning in Maine, when he’d looked at her with contempt and fury, haunted her in the dead of night when she couldn’t sleep.

She missed him, and the loss of The Siren still stung. But she had to let both of them go, for the sake of her sanity. Now her work could take precedence, and the frenzy for her illustrations had only increased over the summer. But each new success was tinged with the sadness of not being able to share it with Oliver. With anyone, really. On the same day that a newspaper interview hailing Clara as the “highest-paid woman artist in the country” was published, Mr. Oliver Smith and Miss Violet Foster appeared in the wedding announcements. They were to honeymoon in Paris before settling down in Los Angeles. She imagined the newlyweds walking along the Seine, exclaiming over their good fortune.

Miss Lillie Bliss, the society maven who’d asked for Clara’s advice just five months earlier, opened her modern art exhibit in the Heckscher Building to great fanfare in November, just after the stock market took a dive. Like most of her acquaintances, Clara dismissed the drop as a temporary adjustment. After all, the headlines trumpeted a return to normal quite soon, followed by an orderly, if not promising, end to 1929. The success of the art exhibit created an uproar of its own, convincing critics and buyers that modern art was exciting, something to take a chance on instead of dismiss out of hand. Clara heard that Levon had been invited to participate in the next Museum of Modern Art show, scheduled for the following spring, and that Felix was selling his works off at a great clip. But his success meant that he taught fewer classes that fall, and they rarely crossed paths. Probably better that way. Although she missed his kinetic energy, their encounter on the beach had left her depleted.

One dreary March day, when the heavens couldn’t decide whether to rain or snow and instead dropped down a mucky combination of both, Mr. Lorette called Clara into his office.

“How are you doing, Miss Darden?” He spoke like a doctor with a dying patient, all concern and gravitas. He had never broached the subject of Oliver and Violet’s marriage, and she prayed he wouldn’t now.

“I’m doing quite well, thank you.” Her illustration class, which began the term with a full herd of thirty, had dwindled down to five, like her first term in reverse. But this time the troubles were financial—fewer students could afford the tuition—and had nothing to do with her gender. “The students who’ve remained are quite enthusiastic and talented, I’m happy to report.”

By the summer, she hoped, the city would be recovered and hum again like it had in the fall. In the meantime, her contract with Vogue hadn’t been renewed. Which was to be expected, even without the stock market crash. Most illustrators went in and out of fashion, the editors rotating the cover artists so that their readers didn’t get bored with one particular look. While all agreed her designs were smashing, one didn’t need to see the signature at the bottom of the page to know that it was a Clara Darden. Her distinctive style meant that her tenure was shorter than most.

On to bigger and better things.

Mr. Lorette fiddled with the papers on his desk before holding up some forms. “Three more students dropped out of the illustration course today. I’m sorry, but we’ll lose money if we keep you on. It’s only for this semester, until the economy rights itself. I hope you understand.”

“Of course.” Only one semester. She’d have more time to branch out, pursue alternate avenues of income. But she’d miss mingling with the other teachers and students. Only then did she grasp how much she counted on the place to alleviate her loneliness. “Will you be all right? The school, I mean.”

He chewed on his bottom lip. “I can’t say. Let’s hope we pull out of this quickly. There’s a chance we’d have to shut down for the coming term, then reinstate the program next fall. That would be the worst-case scenario.”

“You’d shut down the entire school?” She hadn’t expected anything that drastic. Her heart drummed with anxiety.

Mr. Lorette leaned back in his chair. “Art means nothing when someone is out of work. We’re a luxury.”

“Maybe it’s times like these when art is most crucial.”

He smiled. “That’s exactly what Levon said. Let’s hope you’re both right, in any event.”

“What will you and Mrs. Lorette do?”

“We’ll head to Europe, escape from the dreariness of all this. Don’t you worry about us.” Another teacher appeared at the door, looking pale. The next victim.

That evening, she met Mr. Bianchi over dinner to discuss the new line for Studebaker. She’d drawn a dozen sketches on a pad and brought it with her, determined to excite him with the possibilities and prove her value.

Inside Barbetta, on Forty-Sixth Street, the ceiling dripped with crystal chandeliers. The cool salmon-colored walls offered a protective cocoon for the diners who could still afford it. Somewhere to forget the dreary outside world and indulge.

“The best-paid woman artist.” Mr. Bianchi gave a tight-lipped smile as they sat down.

“Well, now, I doubt it’s actually true. I’m not exactly sure how they did their research. It’s not like there’s a list of women artists and their earnings published anywhere. You know newspapers, all that hyperbole.”

“Of course. You’re right about that.”

During the first course, she waited for him to bring up the new line, but he danced around the subject, speaking of their competitors, the need to address the current mood of the country in their advertising. She offered up several ideas, but none seemed to take.

By the time they were drinking coffee—he’d waved away the dessert menu—a hard stone had lodged in her stomach.

He sighed. “I’m afraid I have bad news.”

Not twice in one day. She braced herself.

“We can’t afford to keep you on, Miss Darden. You can imagine, the kind of pressure we’re under.”

If she lost this job, she’d have nothing. No covers, no classes, no cars. Her voice shook. “I understand that things have changed. But you’ve seen, I can adapt.”

“I’m sure you can. But it’s all about public perception. We featured you in the ads: Interiors designed by Clara Darden. Who’s now the highest-paid woman artist. It’s not good for business. We can’t afford to seem wasteful, not when four million people are out of work. We’ll alienate whatever customers are left.”

“You don’t have to pay me as much. I can do more for you. I have additional time now, you see.”

“We’ve decided to keep everything in-house.”

“May I ask who’ll be taking over?”

“Benjamin Mortimer—you remember him?”

She nodded. He was an engineer by trade, with no creative abilities whatsoever.

Mr. Bianchi called for the check. “In any event, he has a family to feed. It’s either let you go or fire him, and I can’t do that to a man with responsibilities.” He put a meaty hand over hers. “You don’t want me to put a man out of work, now, do you?”

She pulled her hand away and resisted the impulse to wipe it on her napkin. “I don’t mean to be rude or contradict what you’re saying, but the company’s obviously still doing well, right?” She gestured around the room. “If you can afford a fancy dinner at Barbetta, things can’t be so bad, can they?”

“You may know about art and design, but you don’t know about running a company. It’s all about appearances. We need to appear both successful and frugal. Not an easy task.” He pulled out some bills and left them on the table. He rose. “But it’s just for the time being. By the fall, all the worry will be over and we won’t be able to keep up with the demand. I assure you. Trust me, will you, Miss Darden?”

As if she had a choice.

By October 1930, Clara had stopped going by the magazine editors’ offices with mock illustrations in hand, keeping her tone as light as possible to prevent her desperation from seeping through. There was no point. They weren’t going to hire her, and the walk to and from the offices only made her hungry.

She was one of the lucky ones, able to scrape by on her savings, as long as she was thrifty. When she remembered the silly trinkets she and Oliver had bought on a whim, spending hundreds of dollars at a time, she felt sick. They’d enjoyed an expensive lifestyle, and very little of that remained.

Her apartment, now empty besides a few boxes and her two suitcases, was no longer possible on her tight budget. In the living room, her maid, Angela, folded up the curtains.

“Miss Darden, what would you like done with these?”

“Please take them. You can make clothes out of them, if you like.”

The curtains had a metallic sheen that at the time epitomized all things art deco. Now they seemed outlandish, useless. What was she thinking?

“Never mind, I have no idea what I’m saying.” Clara couldn’t help but laugh, and Angela joined in.

“I’m sure I’ll find a use for them, Miss Darden. Unless you’d like to take them with you? To decorate your new place?”

Clara shoved at one of the boxes with her foot. “No, it’ll be fine.” She wandered through the rooms for the last time. Without Oliver to insist Clara go out of her studio, she’d succumbed to a hermit-like existence. Which was fine when she had hours of work on her plate, but not so much now that her days were empty.

The letter she’d sent to her parents in Arizona had been returned, marked NO FORWARDING ADDRESS. Clara hadn’t kept up contact, and she added that to her many regrets. Not that she’d go running to them for comfort; that wasn’t her aim. But she’d wanted to know that they were all right, to confirm they all retained a connection, however tenuous.

Levon had also fallen out of touch. His April show had been a success, but since then, the city had folded in on itself, retreated from art, from music. No doubt he was suffering financially as much as Clara was, if not more so. The Grand Central School of Art had indeed been forced to shut its doors until the situation improved. The once-dazzling art scene of New York was like a golden sarcophagus locked away in a dark tomb.

What if, as rumors suggested, the current economic disaster was permanent? The daily breadline just down the street at St. Vincent’s Hospital had doubled in length from last summer; newspaper accounts put it at five hundred people and growing as the weather worsened.

Angela broke into her morbid thoughts. “May I ask where you’re going, Miss Darden?”

“Don’t worry about me; I’ll be fine.” Clara took Angela’s hands in hers. “Off you go, and thank you.”

“Best of luck, Miss Darden.”

“You, too.”

She took a last look into each room, remembering the silly times they’d had, when what to wear for Oliver’s dinner parties had been the most important decision of the day. She hoped he was well and his family’s fortune safe.

Her two suitcases sat in the foyer. One was filled with her art supplies, her livelihood. The other contained her clothes, what remained after she’d taken dresses to the consignment shop in the summer. To keep her hopes up for a return to better times, she’d held on to the dress Oliver had bought her for the May Ball. Maybe one day she’d wear it again, appreciate it anew.

The October air sliced into her lungs as she covered the eight blocks to her new home on East Seventeenth Street, the unimaginatively named Hotel 17. A man leaning on crutches scooted out of the way as she walked up the front steps. Inside, she handed over a month’s rent to a grizzled woman behind the front desk and took the elevator up to room 35.

She busied herself setting up her meager possessions, which took only five minutes. At least the hotel had good bones. The dark moldings were handsome, and with some polish she’d be able to make them gleam again. The room had once been larger, but now a shoddily constructed partition divided it in half. She tried not to think too much about the occupant on the other side.

There was nothing to be done about the sink, as no amount of soap would scrub away the rusty stains encircling the drain. Sure, the place was a dump, but it was cheaper than a boardinghouse. She’d manage. She always had.

A burst of sunlight came through the lone window beside the bed. For a moment, she considered asking for another room, one with northern exposure. But the feeble warmth changed her mind.

For now, she lifted her face, closed her eyes, and basked in the light.