The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [83]
“I did,” he said, shifting his gaze to me. “As I said, I was quite specific about connections to Frank Westrum. I took photos of his other windows to show her, but she had nothing to share.”
“But I wonder if you asked her about Rose.”
Oliver ran one hand through his hair and shook his head. “No, of course not. This was weeks ago. I didn’t even know about Rose. But I really don’t think it would have mattered.”
“Well, I think it could. It’s a stone unturned.”
“Well, by all means look into it, then,” he said curtly, and moved on through the slides. He didn’t believe in Rose, I could tell. That she’d existed, yes, but not that she’d mattered at all to Frank Westrum or these windows.
I watched Oliver, whose hair was thinning, and who, despite his careful and elegant attire, looked tired in the light from the projector. Blake’s dismissal of his passionate interest in the past did make me wonder, for the first time, why Oliver had invested his whole life in preserving the reputation of his famous ancestor. He was so deeply invested in the family history he’d pieced together that he wouldn’t welcome any disruptions to his vision of the world. He’d asked me here to learn something, I felt sure of that, but I wasn’t sure what he wanted to know. Clearly, it didn’t really have to do with Rose.
Oliver turned off the slide machine.
“There’s one more place I want to show you,” he said. “If you have enough time?” When I nodded he said, “Good, I’m glad. This is off the tour, of course. I seldom take anyone to Frank’s studio, but I’d like you two to see it.”
Oliver led us down the stairs and through a narrow hallway that opened onto the back porch, where he handed each of us a compact umbrella. The path to the carriage house was made of pebbles that shifted under our feet as we hurried through the spitting rain. Oliver held his bright blue umbrella high, and the wings of his bow tie, a dark gold, fluttered as he ran. We followed him through wide doors, pausing in the empty open space that smelled of dust and old leaves, the concrete floor cold beneath our soles.
“It’s upstairs,” Oliver said, shaking the rain off his umbrella and waiting for us to do the same. Then we climbed a narrow flight of stairs to the studio. The space was wide open, one large room without walls, flooded with light from the windows and a central cupola. Even on this rainy day it was bright. Several easels stood at one end of the space, and at the other was a kind of sitting area with a cluster of winged chairs around a low table. The center of the room was taken up by a grand workbench with multitudinous narrow drawers. Oliver beckoned us over, and slid some of the drawers open to reveal fragments and panes of brightly colored glass and layers of translucent drafting paper.
“This is where he worked,” Oliver said. “He designed this studio himself, renovating this old carriage house, which didn’t burn in the fire, while the main house was being built. This was in 1920. He was grief-stricken at the loss of Beatrice, and I think he simply couldn’t stand to stay in New York City once she was gone. You can see how organized he was, everything arranged by year. It’s been an invaluable resource as we’ve worked to reconstruct his creative process. Now, here’s what I wanted especially to show you.” Oliver pulled open another of the long, narrow drawers and took out a framed photograph of a woman. She was tall, her hair hidden by a cloche hat with a flower over the left ear. She was standing outside, turning to look back over her shoulder, laughing, carefree and appealing.
“This is Annabeth Westrum, my grandmother,” Oliver said. “It was taken in 1923, in the garden out front, beneath the wisteria trellis, which had just been installed. Here’s another one, a frontal view, taken on the same day. It was her wedding day. She was twenty-six. You see the resemblance, I’m sure, to the women in the windows. I have always felt quite certain that she was the muse, as it were. The model.”
I studied the photos, Annabeth’s long face, her laughing eyes