The Whore's Child by Richard Russo Read Free Book Online Page A

into the bottle as if, there at the bottom, the names of others who knew about the paintings might be printed. “That’s what you should prepare yourself for, Martin. I’ve never pursued fame, but it appears I’ve become famous anyway, at least in certain circles. When I die, Laura’s going to become a very famous lady. Everybody loves a secret. In fact”—at this he smiled and put the bottle down, turning to look at Martin—“you might want to option the movie rights.”
    “Did you know she was dying?”
    “She told me when she was first diagnosed, yes. I painted her that summer, like always.”
    Martin massaged his temples, the tips of his fingers cool from holding the beer bottle.
    “She insisted. And of course I wanted to. I couldn’t not paint her. I would have, right to the end, had that been possible.”
    “Why?”
    “Why paint her disease, you mean?”
    No, that wasn’t what he’d meant, not exactly, though he was ashamed to articulate further. “Why paint her at all, Robert? That’s what I’ve been wondering. She wasn’t what you’d call a beautiful woman.”
    Trevor didn’t hesitate at all. “No, Martin, she wasn’t what
you’d
call a beautiful woman. She was one of the most beautiful women
I’ve
ever laid eyes on.”
    Yes, Martin thought. That was obvious from the moment he’d opened the crate. And his next question was the reason he’d come so far. “Why?” he heard himself ask. “What was it about her?”
    “I thought you didn’t want to talk about aesthetics, Martin,” the painter replied.
    That night, Martin and Beth ate by candlelight in the inn’s small dining room. The candles were a matter of necessity. The storm had blown up out of nowhere, or so it seemed to Martin. The sun had disappeared behind that first cloud when he’d arrived at Trevor’s studio; by the time he’d left, an hour later, the sky was rumbling with dark, low thunderheads from horizon to horizon. The painter, predicting that the island would lose power, had insisted that Martin take a flashlight with him. “Just leave it in the room,” he’d instructed. “I run into Dennis and Pat all the time. They can return it whenever.” When Martin smiled at this and shook his head, Trevor read his thought and nodded in agreement. “Island life, Martin. Island life.”
    He had walked with Martin as far as the gate, an effort that clearly cost him. “What’s wrong with your leg, Robert?” Martin asked as he lifted the latch to let himself out.
    “It’s my hip, actually. It needs replacing, they tell me. I’m thinking about it.”
    Martin remembered the battered table Trevor used for his paints, the broken leg he continued to prop under it. Unless he was very much mistaken, Trevor wasn’t the sort of man who put much faith in “replacement.”
    “You didn’t come to visit her,” Martin remarked—one last-ditch attempt at censure—after the gate swung shut between them.
    “No.”
    “You could have,” he said. “You could have shown up with Joyce, claimed to be an old friend. I wouldn’t have known.”
    “I thought about it,” Trevor admitted. “But I had it on excellent authority that I wasn’t needed. You rose to the occasion, is what I heard.”
    In the distance, a low rumble of thunder.
    “That’s what our friend Joyce can’t quite forgive you for, by the way,” he continued. “Your devotion during those last months enraged her. Up to that point, she’d always felt perfectly justified in despising you.”
    “You mean I rose to the occasion of her death, but not her life?”
    “Something like that,” Trevor nodded. “But look at it this way. You got a damn good painting out of that woman’s need to punish you.”
    “I don’t know what to do with it, though,” Martin said. “I had to rent one of those self-storage units out in the valley.”
    “Air-conditioned, I hope.”
    Martin smiled. “It’s the only thing in there.”
    “I’d love to have it back, if you don’t