Free Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin

Monday. An opening Tuesday. You Wednesday. Dinner with my old painting teacher Thursday, and Friday I may go to the architects’ for the weekend.” Gus and Violet were restoring a house in the Berkshires and Lincoln did not mind helping out. “I’d come back Sunday morning. Can you invent another seminar?”
    â€œProbably,” said Polly. “But sometimes I just want to put my elbows on the table and say: Here’s the deal. I’m having a love affair and I must go to it. This love affair doesn’t mean I don’t love all of you, but there you are. This sandwich is for my sweetie-pie, not for a bunch of reading technicians. He’s a very lovely fellow from a good family and so you have absolutely nothing to worry about.”
    â€œThat would cause something of a commotion,” Lincoln said.
    â€œNo, it wouldn’t,” said Polly. “They’d all smile and say: Polly! Our Polly! Having a love affair? How ridiculous!” The lamp caught her face just right. She looked as innocent and sweet as honey, and lonesome. It cut Lincoln up to see her. It seemed awful to him to be surrounded by so much family and be so lonely: surely it was better to be really all alone. He gathered her into his arms. She had a wonderful heft, his Polly, and a sort of spring to her flesh. She came back at you, instead of melting away, although she sometimes melted, too.
    â€œAll right,” she said, standing up. “If I don’t go now, I’ll never go, and think how affrighted you’d be. Give me my coat and get me out of here.”
    They walked arm in arm down Lincoln’s street, hailed a taxi, and kissed good-bye. Although they knew they could easily see each other on Monday, their Sunday farewell was always painful. Polly always turned to watch Lincoln walking away as the taxi drove off.
    On the way home Polly imagined Lincoln savoring his solitude. He often told Polly that she had rescued him, that she was his sign of spring. She had seen his white paintings—layer upon layer of despairing white. These pictures would never be shown, but he kept them as a reminder of what the other side of his solitude was all about. During the year that Lincoln had spent almost entirely alone, his brother thought he was having a nervous breakdown. He saw almost no one, and almost never went out except to shop for groceries and art supplies. When he discovered he could not paint in color, he painted in white. He was amazed, he had told Polly, at its variety and texture. He had done landscapes, still lifes, and a self-portrait, all in white. These paintings were extraordinary, Polly thought, bleak, intense, and full of power. She felt they ought to be seen, but they were too potent a reminder to Lincoln of what he felt Polly had saved him from. Her warm hand had pulled him back into life. These small doses, these blissful visits, were nourishing.
    Polly knew that when she left the studio Lincoln smoothed the bed, washed the dishes, lit more lamps, and sat down at his drawing table. After she was gone, he told her, he sketched her from memory, although he often sketched her while she was there, too. He had a large folder in which he kept his pictures of her. He worked in colored pencil and when she was not around he did cartoons for an oil portrait. When Polly saw these drawings she was stunned. In drawing after drawing she stood in a doorway wearing her gray skirt and sweater. The room before her was full of life: a bowl of poppies, a pot of lilies, a lamb, a fox, a house cat, a cage of doves. In another the room was full of babies in baskets. The tribute they paid to her made her feel shy and fraudulent.
    Lincoln smoked while he worked—Polly loved to watch him. He smoked crooked little cheroots that made his clothes smell spicy. The thought of that smell sent a shiver through her. It was on his skin as well, especially on his neck. She often thought that she was in thrall to that