Drawing Home

by Jamie Brenner

  “Is it true?” Mindy asked.

  Penny stood mute and clueless. Was this a joke? What was she missing?

  “My mom read in the paper that you inherited a major house on Actors Colony Road,” Robin said.

  Henry’s house was in the newspaper? “Um, yeah—it’s true,” Penny said.

  Mindy and Robin looked at each other, then at her.

  “That is amazing,” Mindy said. She touched Penny’s arm again. “And you are so having a party.” She smiled conspiratorially, then added, “Actually, I’m having some people over tonight. You should totally come.”

  “Okay. Sure. Great.”

  Mindy’s phone pinged. She showed her screen to Robin, who giggled. Mindy hunched over and started tapping away furiously.

  “Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you later,” Penny said, brushing past them quickly, dazed by the encounter.

  The house was changing her life and she hadn’t even moved in yet.

  If there was anything Bea loathed, it was people who felt sorry for themselves. But walking up and down Main Street, invisible among the couples and young families, she fought that particular emotion with limited success.

  Abandoned in her hour of need.

  I told you I was leaving for New York today, with or without you.

  How could Kyle just quit? Half a decade of employment and he didn’t give so much as one day’s notice. It was profoundly disappointing that after all the time he’d spent with Bea, he hadn’t learned the first thing about doing things the proper way. This was why she’d never had children—she wouldn’t have been able to stand the disappointment.

  Henry hadn’t wanted children either. He’d never even married. Which made the idea that he would leave his estate to some random girl all the more outrageous.

  Bea wandered in and out of a few art galleries. Every twenty feet she found another storefront filled with paintings.

  She turned off Main and onto a side street, then walked toward the old Bulova watchcase factory that had been converted into luxury apartments. On Washington Street, she spotted yet another small gallery tucked between two furniture stores. The window display featured three bold, vivid portraits. She walked inside and appraised the work, surprisingly impressed with a few pieces done in oil on aluminum.

  A young woman approached her. “Welcome,” she said.

  “Are you the owner?” Bea asked.

  “No, the owner is Carol Amsterdam and she will be here tomorrow. I’m Julia and I’m happy to help you with anything you need.”

  Julia went on to tell Bea that the gallery specialized in contemporary art with a focus on narrative portraiture and magical realism by emerging artists.

  “This artist is a woman?” Bea asked of the oil on aluminum.

  “Yes. I’ll show you her catalog.”

  Bea followed Julia to a back office. Her hip hurt and she pulled out a chair for herself but froze when she noticed a series of framed drawings on the wall—drawings just like the ones in Henry’s library. She leaned in, pulling her glasses out of her handbag.

  The work reminded her of David Hockney’s drawings, not anything Henry had ever done in his career. But Henry’s initials and the date were in the lower right corner, just like in the others.

  “Are these…”

  “Original Henry Wyatts. Remarkable, aren’t they?”

  Bea didn’t bother responding. She moved close to the drawings, recognizing the first as their old building on Spring Street. Another was the scene of a crowded party. One showed a man fishing. But the sketch that took her breath away depicted her, sixty years earlier, sitting next to Henry on a bench in Washington Square Park. The details brought her back to the exact moment—the thirty-cent can of beef ravioli in his hand, the knee-length thrift-store coat she wore. It had been one of their earliest days together, a time when their shared vision for the future was hatched. She’d made her official pitch to be his manager, convincing him that with his talent and her ambition, they could be major players in the art world. He said, and she remembered it like it was yesterday, I trust you, Bea.

  And for the rest of his career, he did. Henry created, Bea managed. Even when he changed direction, even when he knew she didn’t approve his choices, he couldn’t resist calling her out to Long Island to see his work. And yet he had never mentioned these drawings.

  What was going on here?

  A temporary wall surrounded the charred grounds of the former movie theater. It had big red lettering thanking the first responders who’d battled the fire that scarred the “beloved Main Street,” and it had two round windows so people could peer in and view the wreckage. Penny couldn’t resist looking every single time she walked to the historical society or the whaling museum.

  She stared at the burned ground now, seeing it as a perfect reflection of her mood.

  Around her, people started lining up for the jitney. Penny thought it was strange that the company hadn’t moved the pickup location after the fire. Now, instead of standing in front of a nice theater, people had to gather in front of that wall.

  But they didn’t seem to mind. Or notice, really. Penny watched them stand right in front of the burned-out pit and just check their phones, not giving it a second glance. They were just visitors, she guessed. People who lived in town knew exactly what was missing.

  Only one guy peered through the windows, just like she always did. He wore a gray T-shirt and faded jeans and had a suitcase by his feet. Even from her side view, she realized she recognized him. He was hard to miss because he looked like that actor from the movie Jurassic World, Chris Pratt.

  “Hey—you were at the house earlier,” she said. “With the old lady.”

  He looked down at her, surprised. “Yeah. That’s right.”

  She asked him his name.

  “Kyle,” he said, then he turned back to the wall. “What happened here?”

  “A fire. Last December. It sucks.”

  “Well, it looks like they’re going to rebuild.”

  Penny shrugged. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  The guy—Kyle—looked at her again. “That’s pretty cynical for someone your age.”

  And then, before she realized what she was doing, she reached out her hand and leaned on the bus-stop sign. Gross! Immediately, she wiped her fingers on her denim shorts, but that wasn’t going to do the job. “Do you have any Purell?”

  Kyle shook his head. “Sorry.”

  She bent down to rummage through her backpack but knew she wouldn’t find any hand sanitizer. She’d followed Dr. Wang’s instructions not to carry it, and now she regretted her decision. She looked up at Kyle.

  “So, is that old woman your grandmother?” she asked.

  He looked confused. After a beat, he said, “Uh, no. I work for her. Worked for her, actually.” He glanced down the street, checking for the jitney.

  “It’s late a lot,” she said. “So, listen, can you tell her to leave us alone? The house has nothing to do with her. Mr. Wyatt wanted us to have it. My mom isn’t good with change, and your boss saying all that stuff is making it harder for her.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Penny.”

  “Penny, I don’t really know what’s going on with that house. But I do know that Ms. Winstead was very good friends, longtime friends, with the owner. This is nothing against you or your mother. Ms. Winstead has just lost a friend, and as a friend she wants to look after his house and his art.”

  “He was my friend too. I’m upset too.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know exactly why he left me the house. Maybe it’s because I like to draw and he gave me art lessons and he told me it was the happiest he’d been in years. He told me that. Maybe it’s because he was rich and he knew my mom works really hard but we don’t have a lot. I mean, not compared to most of the people around here. I don’t know why he did it, okay? The point is, he did it, and no matter how long that lady hangs around here, she won’t change that.”

 
; The bus pulled up and the waiting crowd moved into an orderly line. Kyle slipped the adjustable handle down in his suitcase.

  “Did you hear what I just said? About Mr. Wyatt?” Penny said.

  He didn’t answer her. But the weird thing was, he didn’t get on the bus either.

  Chapter Eleven

  Can you tell me how the owner acquired these drawings?” Bea asked the gallery assistant.

  The woman looked up from sifting through catalogs. “The Wyatts? The artist gave them to Carol Amsterdam this past fall. Aren’t they spectacular? So stark and emotional.”

  Indeed. “Was the owner of this gallery very friendly with Mr. Wyatt?”

  “Everyone knew Henry.”

  “And did he just give his drawings to everyone?” Bea pressed, irritated.

  The young woman, confused by the shift in tone, paused and then answered, “I don’t really know.”

  How long had he been in this new phase of his career? But the more pressing question was why, after always being so protective of his work—of having Bea act as the steward of everything he created—had he started giving it away?

  Bea was the one who’d convinced Henry to walk away from the downtown scene and aim for something bigger. It was 1961. John F. Kennedy had just been inaugurated. The country had a new heroine in First Lady Jackie. Bea, remembering the Newport frenzy over the Kennedy wedding seven years earlier, felt like it was a sign, confirmation somehow that, like Jackie, she could emerge from Newport and shine in a bigger arena. This was her moment, and she had to make it happen.

  “We need to get you into one of the new galleries on Fifty-Seventh Street,” she told him.

  Henry protested; his friend was putting together a show for him in a space just a few blocks away.

  “You can do better,” she said, generations of entitled Newport breeding coursing through her veins. As much as she loved the romance of the artists’ collectives, she sensed something bigger was around the corner, and if she didn’t become a part of it, she would be left behind.

  The era leading up to this moment had been the time of the Tenth Street galleries, run by the artists themselves. But Bea believed things were starting to change. Those closest to the scene would not or could not see it, but Bea was just outside enough and sharp enough to see that new power players were entering the game.

  How did she know this? The same way Henry knew that the blue and black in the configuration of his painting would work. It was what she was hardwired to do. As much as she was attracted to the art world, she didn’t have one moment of delusion that she herself was an artist. But she felt confident she could succeed on the business end of things. She didn’t know exactly what her job would be or how long it would take to make something happen. She would just put one foot in front of the other until she got there. And she would take Henry Wyatt along with her.

  Bea had her eye on the Green Gallery. Unlike the pop-ups and collectives on Tenth Street, the Green Gallery had financial backing and a wealthy, uptown clientele. Bea, unlike her new friends, was very comfortable around money. She spoke the language. She belonged.

  Bea convinced Richard Bellamy, the gallery director, to visit Henry’s apartment and view his work. After seeing Henry’s paintings, Bellamy didn’t waste time being coy.

  “How soon can you be ready for a show?” he asked the artist.

  Bea didn’t let Henry answer; she walked Richard down the murky building stairs and, on the second-floor landing, told him that if he wanted Henry’s work, he had to pay her part of the gallery’s 50 percent commission.

  “You’re just a kid,” he said dismissively. It was true, and she felt it sometimes—especially in that moment talking to him. He had experience and influence. Who was she to make demands? But she knew that if she let that cow her, she would never get to be the person with experience and influence.

  “We’re all just kids,” she said, glancing pointedly up the stairs. Henry, several years older than her, was an adult, of course. But he looked much younger than his age, and she doubted Richard Bellamy cared about such fine distinctions anyway. “And we don’t trust adults. So if you want Henry to let you be the one to sell his work, you’re going to have to go through me. To be perfectly honest,” she added, and this part was true, “he’s happy to keep his work this side of Fourteenth Street.”

  “If he wants to make real money, I highly doubt that.”

  “He wants to be an artist. I’m the one who cares about money.” Again, the truth. Bellamy appraised her, rubbed his jaw, glanced up the stairs, and said, “When can he be ready?”

  The Green Gallery at 15 West Fifty-Seventh Street hosted the first show of Henry Wyatt’s work on February 21, 1962. After that success, she brought Bellamy three more painters, all “minimalists,” as Bellamy called them. Henry hated being shoved into any category, let alone one that was as “contextually meaningless” as minimalism.

  By this time, Bea had informally moved into Henry’s place on Greenwich Avenue. He holed himself up painting all day and she made the rounds of the studios of their ever-widening circle of friends, prospecting for new talent to add to her roster. Every night there was another party, sometimes two or three. On rooftops in the Lower East Side, in garden apartments in the West Village, in giant lofts in SoHo (one place was so big, the hosts had a roller-skating party). It felt like they owned downtown.

  The one thing that nagged at Bea was how very much it felt like a boys’ club. Most of the artists getting the big sales were men, as were most of the people running the galleries.

  It was the glaring, astonishing talent of artist Anja Borsok, a chain-smoking blonde from Vienna, that inspired Bea to take a leap professionally. Anja, obsessed with Judy Garland, created paint-and-paper collages on canvas with incongruous references to The Wizard of Oz, gangsters, and Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev—sometimes all within the same work. Bea knew Anja could be her second big client.

  Richard refused to visit her studio.

  “It has to be because she’s a woman,” Bea said to Henry, walking fast to keep up with him. They were late for a party in SoHo, another sprawling loft, this one on Prince Street. Bea was falling in love with the cast-iron buildings with their impossibly high ceilings and faded grandeur.

  “So take her somewhere else,” Henry said. “There are other galleries.”

  They turned onto a cobblestone street somewhere near Lafayette. Bea stopped walking and grabbed Henry’s arm. “Why should I have to beg a gallery to take work I know is good, work I know is going to sell? We should open our own gallery. Right down here.”

  A month later, Bea and Henry pooled their money to buy a five-story cast-iron building on Spring Street for sixty thousand dollars. They turned the top floor into Henry’s studio, the third and fourth floors into their living space, the second floor into an office, and the ground floor into the gallery.

  The Winstead-Wyatt Gallery opened its doors in the fall of 1963. The press anointed them art’s new power couple. Everyone, but everyone, assumed they were together. Bea never bothered correcting people.

  As Bea was talking to Julia, the gallery assistant, her phone rang. She looked at the screen. Kyle, the turncoat. Bea had half a mind to send it to voice mail. But curiosity got the better of her.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said when she answered.

  “Hence the phone call,” she said drily.

  “Where can we meet?”

  “The hotel bar. Where else?”

  She hung up the phone, opened the camera app, and snapped photos of the drawings against the protests of the gallery assistant.

  “My dear, I assure you,” Bea said, “it is taking all of my willpower not to simply pull these from the walls.”

  The young daughter of one of the housekeepers waited on the lobby couch for her mother to finish her shift. She was about six years old, and the sight of her made Emma smile. The girl had big eyes and dark hair bunched in pigtails, and she wore the type of simple, pastel sundr
ess Emma used to put Penny in at that age. Like Penny, the girl shifted impatiently and eyed the backgammon board.

  Emma remembered sitting on that same couch herself as a young girl, sometimes for as long as a few hours while her mother ran errands and her father worked at the bar. When he finished, he would give her a lollipop from the stash behind the front desk before taking her by the hand to go home.

  Emma reached down to a knee-level shelf and pulled out the decades-old tin pail she still kept filled with candy.

  “Jasmine,” she called to the girl. “Come pick out a treat. But ask your mom before you eat it.”

  The desk phone rang.

  “The American Hotel, Emma speaking.”

  “Emma, it’s Jack. I’m in the office. Can you come see me for a minute?”

  The back office was a tight space with just a desk, two chairs, and two filing cabinets. The walls were covered with postcards from around the world, yellowed newspaper clippings of articles about the hotel, and sports memorabilia.

  “Take a seat,” Jack said, standing in front of the filing cabinets.

  She perched on the edge of the desk chair, reminding herself to finish e-mailing reservation confirmations to customers when they were done.

  “So, I just wanted to discuss the elephant in the room, so to speak,” Jack said.

  She looked at him, confused. “Okay,” she said nervously.

  “The house,” he prompted.

  The house? “Oh, yes. The house. I guess Chris mentioned it to you?”

  He looked at her strangely. “Emma, it’s in the Sag Harbor Express.”

  She was surprised, but then she realized she shouldn’t be. It was enough of a local-interest story, she supposed. And real estate was always covered in the town papers. After all, that’s how she’d learned about the sale of Richard Gere’s house last summer. Amazing how the topic that used to be fun to gossip about was suddenly not so fun. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. This all just happened so suddenly. I’m still processing it.”