Galilee

The one truly great Geary residence in the city is what everyone in the family refers to as “the mansion; a vast, late nineteenth century house on the Upper East Side. The area’s called Carnegie Hill, but it might just as well have been named for the Gearys; Laurence was in residence here twenty years before Andrew Carnegie built his own mansion at 5th and 91st. Many of the houses surrounding the Geary residence have been given over to embassies; they’re simply too large and too expensive for one family. But Cadmus was born and raised in the mansion, and never once contemplated the notion of selling it. For one thing, the sheer volume of possessions the house contains could not be transferred to a more modestly scaled space: the furniture, the carpets, the clocks, the objets d’art; there’s enough to found a sizable museum. And then there are the paintings, which unlike much of the other stuff were collected by Cadmus himself. Big canvases, all of them; and all by American painters. Magnificent works by Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Cole, and Frederick Church, enormous paintings of the American landscape at its most awe inspiring. To some, these works are regressive and rhetorical; the products of limited talents overreaching themselves in pursuit of a sublime vision. But hanging in the mansion, sometimes occupying entire walls, the paintings have an undeniable authority. In some ways they define the house. Yes, it’s dark and heavy in there; sometimes it seems hard to draw breath, the air is so dense, so stale. But that’s not what people remember about the mansion. They remember the paintings, which almost look like windows, letting onto great, untamed wildernesses.

The house is run by a staff of six, who work under Loretta’s ever judgmental eye. However hard they labor, however, the house is always bigger than they can manage. There’s always dust gathering somewhere; they could work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and still not tame the enormity of the place.

So: that’s the New York City residences. Actually, I haven’t told you everything. Garrison has a secret place that even Margie doesn’t know he owns, but I’ll describe that to you when he visits it, along with an explanation as to why he’s obliged to keep its existence to himself. There’s also a house upstate, near Rhinebeck, but that also has a significant place in the narrative ahead, so I’ll delay describing it until then.

The only other residence I want to make mention of here is a long way from New York City, but should be mentioned here, I think, because in my imagination it forms a trinity with the mansion and L’Enfant. That house is a far more humble dwelling than the other two. In fact it’s probably the least impressive of any of the major residences in this story. But it stands a few yards from the blue Pacific, in a grove of palm’ trees, and for the lucky few who’ve spent a night or two beneath its roof, it evokes Edenic memories.

That house we’ll also come to later, and to the secrets it contains, which are sweatier than anything Garrison hides away in his little bolthole, and yet so vast in their significance that they would beggar the skills of the men who painted the wildernesses in the mansion. We are a while away from being there, but I want you to have the image of that paradisiacal spot somewhere in your head, like a bright piece of a jigsaw puzzle which doesn’t seem to fit in the scheme, but must be held on to, contemplated now and again, until its significance becomes apparent, and the picture is understood as it would not have been understood until that piece found its place.

IV (#ulink_99706d6f-9ab6-53c1-b049-dfbfa98d5ff2)

i

I must move on. Or rather back; back to the character with whom I opened this sequence, Rachel Pallenberg. The last two chapters were an attempt to offer some context for the romance between Rachel and Mitchell. And I hope as a consequence you’ll feel a little more sympathy for Mitchell than his subsequent actions might seem to deserve. He was not, at least at the beginning, a cruel or reprehensible man. But he had lived most of his life in the public eye, despite his mother’s best efforts. That kind of scrutiny creates an artificiality in a person’s behavior. Everything becomes a kind of performance.

In the seventeen years since his father’s funeral, Mitchell had learned to play himself perfectly; it was his genius. In all other regards—excepting his looks—he was average, or below average. An uninspired student, a so-so lover, an indifferent conversationalist. But when the subject of the exchange vanished and charm alone held the air, he was wonderful. In the words of Burgess Motel, who’d spent half a day with him for a profile piece in Vanity Fair, “The less substance there was to what he was saying, the more at ease he seemed; and, yes, the more perfect. If this seems to tread perilously close to nonsense, it’s because you have to be there, watching him perform this Zen-like trick of being in nothingness, to believe just how persuasive and sexy it is. Do I sound entranced? I am!” This wasn’t the first time a male writer had swooned girlishly over Mitchell in print, but it was the first time somebody had successfully analyzed the way Mitchell ruled a room. Nobody knew charm like Mitchell, and nobody knew as well as Mitchell that charm was best experienced in a vacuum.

None of this, you may say, reflects well upon Rachel. How could she have fallen for such triviality? Given herself over into the arms of a man who was at his best when he had nothing of consequence to say? It was easy, believe me. She was dazzled, she was flattered, she was seduced, not just by Mitchell but by all he stood for. There had never been a time when the Gearys had not been a part of her idea of America: and now she was being invited to enter their circle; to become a part of their mystique. Who could refuse an offer like that? It was a kind of waking dream, in which she found herself removed from the gray drudgery of her life into a place of color and comfort and plenty. And she was surprised at how well she fitted into this dreamscape. It was almost as though she’d known in her heart that this was the life she’d one day be living, and had unconsciously been preparing for it.

All of which is not to say there weren’t times when her palms got a little clammy. Meeting the whole family for the first time on the occasion of Cadmus’ ninety-fifth birthday party; the first time down a red carpet, at a fund-raiser at the Lincoln Center, just after the engagement had been announced; the first time she was flown somewhere in the family jet, and turned out to be its only passenger. All so strange, and yet so strangely familiar.

For his part Mitchell seemed to read her anxiety level instinctively in any given situation, and act appropriately. If she was uncomfortable, he was right there at her side, showing her by example how to fend off impertinent questions politely and ease the flow of small talk if somebody became tongue-tied. On the other hand if she seemed to be having a good time he left her to her own devices. She rapidly gained a reputation as lively company; at ease with all kinds of people. The chief revelation for Rachel was this: that these power brokers and potentates with whom she was now beginning to rub elbows were hungry for simple conversation. Over and over again she would catch herself thinking: they’re no different from the rest of us. They had dyspepsia and ill-fitting shoes, they bit their nails and worried about their waistlines. There were a few individuals, of course, who decided she was beneath them—generally women of uncertain vintage—but she rarely encountered such snobbery. More often than not she found herself welcomed warmly, often with the observation that she was the one Mitchell had been looking for, and everyone was glad she was finally here.

As to her own story, well she didn’t talk about it much at first. If people asked about her background, she’d keep the answers vague. But as she began to trust her confidence more, she talked more openly about life in Dansky, and about her family. There was a certain percentage of people whose eyes started to glaze over once she mentioned anywhere west of the Hudson, but there were far more who seemed eager for news from a world less sealed, less smothering than their own.

“You will have noticed,” Garrison’s garish and acidic wife Margie—whose tongue was notoriously acidic—remarked, “that you keep seeing the same sour old faces wherever you go. You know why? There’s only twenty important people left in New York, twenty-one now you’re here, and we all go to the same parties and we all serve on the same committees. And we’re all very, very bored with one another.” She happened to make the remark while she and Rachel stood on a balcony looking down at a glittering throng of perhaps a thousand people. “Before you say anything,” Margie went on, “it’s all done with mirrors.”

Inevitably on occasion a remark somebody would make would leave her feeling uncomfortable. Usually such remarks weren’t directed at her, but at Mitchell, in her presence.

“Wherever did you find her?” somebody would say, meaning no conscious offense by the question but making Rachel feel like a purchase, and the questioner fully expected to go back to the same store and pick up one for themselves.

“They’re just amazed at how lucky I am,” Mitchell said, when she pointed out how objectionable she found that kind of observation. “They don’t mean to be rude.”

“I know.”

“We can stop going to so many parties, if you like.”

“No. I want to know all the people you know.”

“Most of them are pretty boring.”

“That’s what Margie said.”

“Are you two getting on well?”

“Oh yes. I love her. She’s so outrageous.”

“She’s a terrible drunk,” Mitchell said curtly. “She’s been okay for the last couple of months, but she’s still unpredictable.”

“Was she always…?”

“An alcoholic?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I can help her,” Rachel said.

He kissed her. “My Good Samaritan.” He kissed her again. “You can try but I don’t hold out much hope. She’s got so many axes to grind. She doesn’t like Loretta at all. And I don’t think she likes me much.”

Now it was Rachel who offered the kiss. “What’s not to like?” she said.

Mitchell grinned. “Damned if I know,” he said.

“You egotist.”

“Me? No. You must be thinking of somebody else. I’m the humble one in the family.”

“I don’t think there’s such a thing—”

“—as a humble Geary?”

“Right.”

“Hm.” Mitchell considered this for a moment. “Grandma Kitty was the nearest, I guess.”

“And you liked her?”

“Yeah,” Mitchell said, the warmth of his affection there in his voice. “She was sweet. A little crazy toward the end, but sweet.”

“And Loretta?”

“She’s not crazy. She’s the sanest one in the family.”

“No, I meant, do you like her?”

Mitchell shrugged. “Loretta’s Loretta. She’s like a force of nature.”

Rachel had met Loretta only two or three times so far: this was not the way the woman seemed at all. Quite the contrary. She’d seemed rather reserved, even demure, an impression supported by the fact that she always dressed in white or silvery gray. The only theatrical touch was the turbanish headgear she favored, and the immaculate precision of her makeup, which emphasized the startling violet of her eyes. She’d been pleasant to Rachel, in a gentle, noncommittal sort of way.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Mitchell said. “You’re thinking: Loretta’s just an old-fashioned lady. And she is. But you try crossing her—”

“What happens?”

“It’s like I said: she’s a force of nature. Especially anything to do with Cadmus. I mean, if anyone in the family says anything against him and she hears about it she tears out their throats. ‘You wouldn’t have two cents to rub together without him,’ she says. And she’s right. We wouldn’t. This family would have gone down without him.”

“So what happens when he dies?”

“He isn’t going to die,” Mitchell said, without a trace of irony in his voice. “He’s going to go on and on and on till one of us drives him out to Long Island. Sorry. That was in bad taste.”