Girl in the Moonlight Read Online Free

funding the rebellion. Roger and Kitty’s father, a self-made millionaire, had, in the time-honored fashion, fought his way from a tenement apartment on Eldridge Street to a town house off Park Avenue. Like many rich men who had been born poor, he spoiled his children, determined to give them everything that had been denied him. Servants, cars, piano lessons, and private schools. Trips abroad in the years before and after World War II. The Queen Mary . Claridge’s, the Ritz. During the war it was Palm Beach, Yellowstone, and the Super Chief to Los Angeles. Roger, the only son, had gone to Harvard, where he met my father. Generous trust funds allowed Roger and Kitty to live as they liked and to marry whom they liked.
    Roger, a ladies’ man, married several times but never had a family of his own. Kitty married the painter Ugo Bonet. There was a younger sister, Dot, who never married.
    Ugo was Spanish—or, to be more precise, Catalan. He and Kitty met at a party in Greenwich Village in the 1950s, when the Village was the center of the art world. Much more I learned later, when I no longer had to snoop. When it was all offered to me.
    I didn’t know Ugo then, of course, but I was told that, when he was young, he was very handsome. His children, who all greatly resembled him, adored him. He was effortlessly masculine in the way of Latin men. Tall and dark, coarse black hair. Rugged hands like a fisherman’s. Cesca had the same hands; strong, capable. He was older than Kitty. After the war, he had lived in Paris. It was said that Peggy Guggenheim had fallen in love with him, offering to pay his way to New York. When Kitty met him, he had no money, which had never been a concern for him. He had always been able to find a woman who could give him a place to stay, something to eat. For a few days or a few months. It didn’t matter to him.
    When Kitty became pregnant, she insisted he marry her. His response was to disappear, only to be found several weeks later in Brooklyn by detectives hired by Kitty’s father. They presented him with an ultimatum and he accepted the less unpleasant option. There were advantages to having a rich wife, after all. They were married in City Hall and then went to India on honeymoon. Several months after they returned, laden with Benares brass, Mughal miniatures, and rugs from the Kashmir, Cesca was born. She once said to me that the reason she found it so hard to settle down was that her mother traveled so much while she was pregnant with her.
    Kitty’s father bought them a town house on Perry Street and installed a studio for Ugo on the top floor. The other three children followed in rapid succession. But Ugo was not a man to be tied down. A brief trip he took home to Spain extended into nearly a year, the money Kitty kept sending him for his returnpassage inevitably being used to prolong his stay. When he returned, his children barely knew him. The first thing he did was paint them. The painting still hangs over their mantel. I have seen it many times. Kitty, a resentful Madonna with the twins in her arms, surrounded by the other two children, beautiful as angels.
    His wanderings became a pattern. Ugo would disappear and reappear without warning, leaving an unfinished canvas on the easel. A cigarette burning by the sink where he washed his brushes. The phone would ring, and people—gallery owners, surprised women—would complain that they had an appointment with him, and he never showed. Europe, South America, New Mexico. Kitty knew it would do no good to hide his passport. Deny him money. He would find a way. Once, he worked his way to Morocco on a tramp steamer.
    She endured his absences, daubed at the paintings she tried to make, opened her home to artists and writers, critics and choreographers. There were parties, lectures, buffet suppers. The rooms blue with smoke. Sometimes the sweet smell of marijuana. It was a time when everyone drank to excess. Bins full of empty bottles were hauled