One's Company

by Ashley Hutson

Sometimes, when studying a piece of art from the apartment—say, F. X. Leyendecker’s The Flapper print that appeared in nearly every single episode in the series—I gazed at its image for long minutes, trying to figure out what, exactly, appealed to the roommate who might have chosen it, in this case probably serious Janet Wood. Was it the contrast between the joyful, brightly colored image and the sad story of the artist—a gay man in the early 1900s who, overshadowed by his brother, a much more famous and accomplished artist at the time, committed suicide by morphine at age forty-eight? Was it the composition? Was it the general theme? Did she love butterflies, or the metaphor of a butterfly? Did she have a random experience as a child watching an exotic swallowtail flit across her path one summer day, and did the ghost of its beauty subconsciously guide her down the aisle of the secondhand store and toward The Flapper? The artwork itself was a pun. A 1920s flapper dressed in a gauzy costume floated in front of an anise swallowtail butterfly that was huge, almost looming, and her outstretched arms mimicked the widespread wings of the butterfly. And “Life” was merely a coincidence—the illustration was used as the cover of a Life magazine in February 1922. But the word LIFE emblazoned above the image had a suggestive effect. Was this life? A bright explosion of youth and beauty? A pun? A joke? I decided that Janet, sensible but unsentimental character that she was, probably j...