Jackson Pollock canvas.
There, a Roman torso carved from marble, dating to the first century
B.C. The ancient was intermixed with the new in wildly unconventional
but striking arrangements.
Here, a nineteenth-century Kirman panel recording the lives of the
greatest shahs of Persia. Here, a bold Mark Rothko canvas featuringonly
broad bands of color. There, a pair of Lalique crystal-deer consoles,
each holding an exquisite Ming vase. The effect was both breathtaking
and jarring-and altogether more like a museum than a real home.
Although he had known Rachael was married to a wealthy man, and although
he had known that she had become a very wealthy widow as of this
morning, Ben had given no thought to what her wealth might mean to their
relationship. Now her new status impinged upon him like an elbow in his
side, making him uncomfortable.
Rich. Rachael was very damn rich. For the first time, that thought had
meaning for him.
He realized he’d need to sit down and think about it at length, and he
would need to talk with her forthrightly about the influence of so much
money, about the changes for better and worse that it might cause
between them.
However, this was neither the time nor the place to pursue the matter,
and he decided to put it out of his mind for the moment. That was not
easy. A fortune in tens of millions was a powerful magnet relentlessly
drawing the mind regardless of how many other urgent matters required
attention.
“You lived here six years?” he asked disbelievingly as they moved
through the cool sterile rooms, past the precisely arranged displays.
“Yes,” she said, relaxing slightly as they roamed deeper into the house
without encountering a threat of any kind.
“Six long years.”
As they inspected the white vaulted chambers, the place began to seem
less like a house and more like a great mass of ice in which some
primeval catastrophe had embedded scores of gorgeous artifacts from
another, earlier civilization.
He said, “It seems. . . forbidding.”
“Eric didn’t care about having a real home-a cozy, livable home, I mean.
He never was much aware of his surroundings anyway. He lived in the
future, not the present. All he wanted of his house was that it serve
as a monument to his success, and that’s what you see here.”
“I’d expect to see your touch-your sensual styleeverywhere, somewhere,
but it’s nowhere in sight.”
“Eric allowed no changes in decor,” she said.
“And you could live with that?”
“I did, yes.”
“I can’t picture you being happy in such a chilly place.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that bad. Really, it wasn’t. There are many amazingly
beautiful things here. Any one of them can occupy hours of study…
contemplation… and provide great pleasure, even spiritual pleasure.”
He always marveled at how Rachael routinely found the positive aspect of
even difficult circumstances. She wrung every drop of enjoyment and
delight from a situation and did her best to ignore the unpleasant
aspects.
Her present-focused, pleasure-oriented personality was an effective
armor against the vicissitudes of life.
At the rear of the ground floor, in the billiards room that looked out
upon the swimming pool, the largest object on display was an intricately
carved, claw-footed, late-nineteenth-century billiards table that
boasted teak rails inlaid with semiprecious stones.
“Eric never played,” Rachael said. “Never held a cue stick in his
hands. All he cared about was that the table is one of a kind and that
it cost more than thirty thousand dollars. The overhead lights aren’t
positioned to facilitate play, they’re aimed to present the table to ts
best advantage.”
“The more I see of this place, the better I understand him,” Ben said,
“but the less able I am to grasp why you ever married him.”
“I was young, unsure of myself perhaps looking for the father figure
that’d always been missing in my life.
He was so calm. He had such tremendous self-assurance.
In him, I saw a man of power, a man who could carve out a niche for
himself, a ledge on the mountainside where I could find stability,
safety. At the time, I thought that was all I wanted.”