Still Life With Bread Crumbs: A Novel Read Free

announcement had landed on the Oriental runner in the hall of Rebecca Winter’s apartment just two months shy of her sixtieth birthday, printed on thick silky paper, like the kind used for diplomas. Rebecca had turned it over in her hands before finally opening it. There was no question: a distinguished list. Painters, sculptors, one architect, one Broadway set designer. And at the bottom, her own name: Rebecca Winter, photographer. The first woman to win the Bradley Prize. The youngest ever. That’s what the
Times
would say in their story.
    To Rebecca, it was now official: she was done. Yesterday’s news. In your heyday, you got attention; in your senescence, prizes. Who said that? Oscar Wilde? Benjamin Franklin? Rebecca had a habit of ascribing her cleverer thoughts to someone else. Just in case there was any confusion about the fact of the matter, she said it aloud, looking at herself in the arched mirror over the red Chinese chest in the foyer: you are officially yesterday’s news.
    She had known it for some time, seen it reflected in the dwindling royalty checks, the infrequent engagements and invitations, the reactions when she introduced herself at parties. The stages in the life of a person who has become publicly knownare easy to recognize, from the shock and amazement—“Rebecca Winter? Really?
The
Rebecca Winter?”—to a faint confusion—“Photography, right? The kitchen stuff? Oh, I love your work!”—to simple incomprehension. Slowly she worked into campus visits a description of her career that would have been unnecessary—unthinkable—twenty years before, when there had been posters, postcards, sold-out shows, honorary degrees, auctions.
    “Everyone’s waiting,” her agent, a woman with the metabolism of a hummingbird and the face of a toucan, had started saying a decade ago. Her name was Tori Grzyjk, so everyone called her TG, except for her competitors, who referred to her as No-Vowel Tori, or NVT. Everyone was afraid of her, but none more so than her own clients, none more so than Rebecca. “Everyone’s waiting to see what you do next.”
    TG was in London the night of the Bradley dinner, “scouting new talent.” Rebecca was old talent, although not as old as most of the talent in the room at the Manhattan Arts Club. She wore her black crepe pants and a black and gold kimono jacket and had her trademark silver bob blown dry professionally. She wore Indian cuff bracelets and enormous onyx earrings. Her date was Dorothea, who had designed the earrings. The Bradley sons looked concerned at cocktails until someone told them that the women were friends, not lovers. “She has turned the impedimenta and minutiae of women’s lives into unforgettable images,” said the elder Bradley son in presenting the prize, struggling with the pronunciation of
impedimenta.
    “That’s it?” Dorothea whispered at the sight of the landscape in the gold frame with the engraved plate at the bottom. The Bradley sons had a stockpile of their father’s paintings, and each year one was given to the prize winner. Rebecca had been awarded an inoffensive painting of a red barn with several blots denoting cows in a distant field, the sort of thing that would have found a happy home in the dining room of a country inn.Dorothea’s eyes widened at the sight of the envelope taped to the back.
    “A lousy thousand bucks?” she said afterward in the cab uptown.
    “It
is
the Bradley,” Rebecca said, tucking the envelope into her bag as her bracelets clanked, trying to maintain her dignity. She couldn’t tell Dorothea that she had never been so glad to see a thousand bucks in her life.
    In her bag, next to the check, was the index card she had seen on her way to the ladies’ room on the Manhattan Arts Club bulletin board. CHARMING COUNTRY COTTAGE FOR RENT , it said in sharp calligraphy. Although her ex-husband had long insisted that
charming
was synonymous with “too small, with bad drains,” Rebecca did the math