Lies and Weddings(94)
Entering the opulent brocade-walled dining room where the feast was being held, Eden was astonished to find herself face-to-face with Gainsborough’s painting The Blue Boy. She’d had no idea that one of the most famous British works of art resided here, and as she sat eating her dinner amid the regal portraits and priceless furnishings, she couldn’t help but feel strangely wistful for Greshamsbury Hall. Would she ever be allowed to roam freely through the grounds again, or enter the house that had always been so much a part of her life?
Suddenly she became aware that Banks, Freddy’s friend seated to her right, was speaking to her. “I’m sorry?” she said, smiling apologetically.
“I said, I’m not sure this Screaming Eagle cab 1995 that everyone’s raving about goes with the turbot.”
“Tastes okay to me, but I’m not an oenophile.”
“Are you okay?”
“Oh! Yes, I’m fine.”
“You were staring off into space. I thought you must be transfixed by the Kehinde.”
“What’s that?”
“The Kehinde Wiley painting, A Portrait of a Young Gentleman.” Banks gestured to the arresting portrait of a young Black man in a psychedelic orange T-shirt in an ornate black gilt frame that was hanging on the wall facing them.
“Ah, yes, rather curious that it’s here amid all these stuffy Victorian portraits, isn’t it?” Eden remarked.
“That’s precisely the point. Kehinde painted it to shake things up. To see this Black kid in streetwear, fused into that William Morris wallpaper pattern and striking the exact same pose as The Blue Boy, it’s having a dialogue across the centuries with an iconic portrait of Victorian privilege. It totally transforms this room, makes everything relevant again. Whoever put it here is fucking brilliant.”
Eden nodded. “You’re right, it does change the energy of this room. How do you know so much about art?”
“I collect a bit,” Banks replied modestly.
“I wish you could be having this conversation with my friend Rufus—he’s an artist and he’d be much better qualified to speak to you.”
“You don’t need to be another artist to appreciate great art. What does the painting say to you?”
Eden stared up at the painting. The man’s defiant stance and insouciant stare reminded her of Luis Felipe, and a wave of guilt swept over her as she recalled running into him in another grand mansion just a couple of hours ago…
He was dressed in a shiny blue tracksuit and festooned with gold chains, and she could smell the freshly sprayed cologne on his skin as he came down the stairs. Staring at her dress, he said with a smirk, “Look who’s here—the girl who cannot be bought. Where are you off to this time?”
“I’m going to Daniela’s engagement party.”
“Who’s that?”
“You met her at dinner.”
“Oh, the Persian princess. Need a ride?”
“It’s in Pasadena.”
“Shit, that’s practically another time zone.”?[*3]
“Where are you off to?”
“A screening.”
“Um…you might want to be with your father tonight.”
“I’ll see him later.”
“You may wish to reconsider, especially if it’s some movie you can always see another time.”
“I’m not going for the movie. I’m going to mingle.”
“Let me be direct with you, Luis Felipe. I think you should stay home. I don’t think your father’s going to make it through the night…”
“Please don’t tell me how to deal with my dad.”
“I just don’t want you to have any regrets—”
“Mind your own fucking business! You have no clue how much my dad’s tormented me my whole life! I don’t need my last memory of him to be fucking tormenting me from his deathbed, okay?” Luis Felipe suddenly shouted, his face flushed as he turned and bolted out the door.
“The painting’s that powerful, huh?” Banks said, startling Eden back to the present.
Eden suddenly felt light-headed. The whole room felt like it was closing in on her. She rose from the table and headed out a side door onto a serene columned portico. She took a few deep breaths in the cool night air, hoping to center herself. Try as she might, her mind kept fixating on what was happening back at Cloudline. She wondered why she felt so saddened by the imminent passing of a man whom she had only met two days ago. She couldn’t shake off the look on his face, the way he wept when he held on to her hand, the plaintive cries in Cantonese that she couldn’t comprehend. There was something so familiar in the sounds of the dialect that her mother used to speak to her as a child. It was a language that seemed so intimate to her, and yet so unfathomably far away. She suddenly recalled the lullaby her mother used to sing to her every night. Her mom would hum the tune over and over again as she fell asleep in her arms. She could remember her voice blending with the hypnotic whirring of the ceiling fan and the scent of her mother’s body; she always smelled faintly of lavender, from the body lotion she would smear on her skin. She felt that familiar ache, the grief that came in waves and never went away completely even after all these decades. Eden had a sense that she should really be at her father’s side right now, though she didn’t wish to be intrusive. She took a photo of the beautiful columns lit up at night and texted it to him, followed by a quick message: Eden Tong: Just checking in.