The Forger's Daughter

by Bradford Morrow

  Things went well. Meg was back in her element. While she used to come home from work talking vintage cookbooks by Julia Child or Marcella Hazan, or works illustrated by Marc Chagall or William Blake, now it was an inscribed copy of an early Ernest Hemingway or Agatha Christie she’d tell me about, or the two-volume first edition of The Mayor of Casterbridge in its original cloth bindings, or The Pickwick Papers with its printed pale blue wrappers, published in weekly parts. Fortunately for us both, ours was a marriage of unabashed, unrepentant bibliophiles. I reveled in her newfound enthusiasms and did my best to stay out of her way and Mary’s, even though my own knowledge of rare books and manuscripts ran deeper than theirs. Despite my flawed background, I was invited to join the staff as an adviser, or cataloger, or in whatever capacity I might have liked, but I wisely kept my distance. If asked about a book, or the authenticity of an autograph, or any other bibliographic point, I was glad to oblige. But they were riding high on their own, I felt, and didn’t need me for ballast.

  So, what then? For myself—while refurbishing the old Wolf stove, anchoring some better shelves to the kitchen walls I’d stripped and repainted, and generally sprucing up our new place—I proved to be a far better father than I might ever have expected. We had enough savings that I could devote myself to Nicole for the first passel of years back in the Village, and I loved nothing better than to help feed her, teach her vocabulary, join her with her coloring books and, early on, with her astonishing calligraphy. Just as I’d excelled at the latter under my mother’s tutelage, so did Nicole under my watchful guidance. Despite my mixed feelings, not to mention Meghan’s, about teaching her the very skills that had gotten me into such dire straits—though by then my path was straight and narrow—by the time the girl began elementary school, she was a precocious natural. Her ability to focus, tongue caught in the corner of her mouth, was a sight to behold. Tracing different alphabets in block and cursive letters, along with basic calligraphic patterns, gave her joy. No other word for it—joy. Nothing made me happier than to watch her mature, believing fully and not without reason that she would never use her instincts and gifts for anything nefarious.

  With Nicole in school, it became clear I needed to leave behind the self-protective cocoon I’d spun for myself using my daughter to some degree as my excuse. I wished I could reach out to an old bookseller acquaintance up in Providence for advice, but that was out of the question. Where we’d left things two decades earlier was not unlike a happy marriage ending in acrimonious divorce. Atticus Moore and I hadn’t needed a restraining order to understand just how strange things might have become if one of us approached the other. An orchard’s worth of olive branches wouldn’t have sufficed to prevent some inevitable nastiness, unpredictable and damaging, from coming down on one or both of us. He had sent me a sizable cashier’s check with no accompanying letter nor any memo of explanation, and we both knew it represented a comprehensive apology and a warning not to question his role in the ugly things that had happened to me, or to ask him for explanations. If money talks, Atticus’s check shouted. It fairly howled.

  Be that as it may, I found myself one morning, after Meg had left for work, looking him up on my wife’s laptop—that electronic anathema I’d always despised but finally capitulated to using—to see if he still had his store in Rhode Island. He did, and even boasted a website—seems Atticus too had merged Gutenberg with Gates—that offered some beautiful first editions of mostly nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. Scrolling through his online catalog, marveling at this offering and that, I was reminded again, as if I needed reminding, what impeccable taste the man had. After my father, a consummate rare book aficionado whose own tastes weren’t limited to books from the past two centuries but went all the way back to the Elizabethan era, Atticus was the only bibliophile who had truly ever been a soul mate to me. At a book fair in San Francisco once, over drinks at the Fairmont Hotel, he had even floated the idea that I become a partner in his rare book firm. Over the years, I sometimes found myself wondering if I’d made a mistake declining his offer. Water under the Golden Gate Bridge at this point. Still, whatever bad blood lay spilt between us, thanks in no small part to Slader, even now I missed our camaraderie. But that was where I supposed I needed to leave it.

  Assuring myself that nothing providential awaited me in Providence, I logged off. Later the same day, I set up an appointment with an old colleague at a Manhattan auction house where I’d worked some years earlier as an expert in literary and historical autographs. While before I had labored in their dignified, well-lit rooms under the cloud of being a confessed forger—the Frank Abagnale of literature, as it were—now I presented myself as fully reformed, a responsible father happily married to a woman admired in the industry, and by every measure among the most discriminating and informed experts in my field. As it happened, one of their specialists was winding down toward retirement, so I started soon afterward. To say I was exhilarated to be back in my element—verifying inscriptions, ferreting out fakes, researching provenance, collating and meticulously cataloging lots that would go on the block for thousands of dollars—would be a gross understatement. Nor was I tempted to undermine my newfound position at the house by making the slightest false step.

  Even when one of my own early forgeries came over the transom within the first month of my employment, I flagged the book. It was a first edition set of Henry James’s The Europeans, which I had embellished with an inscription from the master to George Eliot upon his visiting her country house at Witley, Surrey, in 1878, two years after she published Daniel Deronda and two years before she died. The quality of the forgery was every bit as refined as its existence was improbable. For all I knew at the time I faked the autograph association, James may well have given Eliot The Europeans, which had been issued right around the time of his social call in Witley. But I hadn’t bothered putting in the research to find out one way or another. If he had, this was not that copy. In the interest of continuing my path on the right side of the law, I expressed my concerns to the head of the department, telling him—without confessing to my own handiwork—that the inscription seemed off. I didn’t like the formulation of several letters in the phrase With the warmest possible regards of, and even questioned the phraseology itself. James, who famously referred to Eliot as a “great horse-faced bluestocking,” yet one whose intellect and passion he admired, wasn’t much of a warmest possible kind of guy.

  As it turned out, however, the seller, who’d consigned a number of distinguished books to the house on this particular occasion, insisted on its legitimacy. He had acquired it in England from a seller with impeccable credentials, who himself evidently purchased the set at auction in London. My ambitious youthful forgery, it seemed, had made quite a journey before arriving back in its fabricator’s hands. I was overruled, which was neither here nor there as far as I was concerned. When the lot came up on auction day and surpassed its high estimate by a tidy sum, it was everything I could do not to laugh out loud. I wished I could share the whole absurd story with Meghan that night—how one of my past bastard creations had orbited into my world once more, like a comet looping around the sun, then ricocheted back into the darkness of the universe, its icy tail burning bright, proud, and false.

  Instead, I kept my own counsel, privately thinking, Godspeed, simulacrum! Nor would George Eliot’s copy of The Europeans be the last time such a situation arose and a forgery of mine would continue its vibrant life outside the precincts of reality. More often than not, when I threw shade on the genuineness of a manuscript or signature, my colleagues heeded my advice. I must confess, though, that whenever one of my early forgeries was debunked and removed from circulation, the moment was less professionally satisfying than personally bittersweet.

  We hadn’t seen such ceaseless gray skies and persistent rain since our days in County Kerry, and the morning after Maisie’s confrontation and my odd encounter was no different, with fresh showers pelting the
eaves and overrunning the rainspouts. She and I both came downstairs later than usual, having slept in, unawakened by even the slightest hint of a sunrise. Will, long since stirring, had brewed a pot of coffee and disappeared into his studio with a cup, no doubt to read the letter and open that mysterious parcel in the light of day, however dim. I considered wandering out to the garden and collecting some fresh zucchini flowers to fry, but it was too soggy to bother. Fried squash blossoms weren’t at the forefront of anyone’s thoughts anyway. I offered to make a tomato frittata instead, knowing it was one of Maisie’s favorites, if she would set the table.

  “How are you feeling this morning?” I asked, reaching out for her right hand, then frowning at her arm, where she’d suffered the nastiest of her injuries.

  “Much better,” she said, crooking it to show me her elbow as well.

  I peeled away her bandages and was relieved to see that, aside from constellations of pitted punctures, some of which had begun to scab over, it looked like she was going to heal apace. Wasn’t it Picasso who said, “It takes a long time to become young”? While Maisie was in many ways old for her age, her ability to heal was strictly that of a healthy kid. “Were you able to sleep all right?”

  “Well, I sort of got my nightmare out of the way before I went to bed.”

  Not coming up with any good riposte, I told her I was glad she was doing better but we’d still keep a close eye on her wounds over the next few days. With that, she began to set out plates and silverware, as I reached down a cast-iron pan from the hanging rack and prepped eggs, shallots, tomatoes, and prosciutto for breakfast. This morning it was Claude Debussy on the radio, a marathon celebrating his birthday. But for the disturbing memory of what had transpired the night before, a memory that hung over us like the very dampness outside, it would have been a typical start to one of our August days.

  When Will joined us, he looked neither shaken nor relieved. Confused was more like it, bewildered.

  Maisie wasted no time asking. “What was in the package, anyway? Guess the guy didn’t know they have post offices for that sort of thing.”

  Post offices, I thought, have security cameras and postmarks, both of which he must have wanted to avoid. A twilight country road was far preferable to a post office suffused by fluorescent overheads.

  Will said simply, “I could use another cup of coffee.”

  “Well, who is he?” Maisie continued. “Are we even safe here?”

  She had a valid question. When, last night, Will had finally come to bed, later than usual after sequestering himself in his studio with the accursed package, I was still awake thinking about my brother, wondering as I had myriad times over the years if Slader had been behind his homicide. The way Adam’s hands had been severed at our bungalow on the beach in Montauk so eerily mirrored Slader’s vicious, partly successful attempt to amputate Will’s at our cottage in Kenmare that it seemed impossible the assaults were coincidental. Yet while the authorities apprehended Slader for his attack on my husband, they were never able to bring charges against him in my brother’s case.

  I had whispered, “It’s Slader, isn’t it?”

  “The handwriting is Edgar Allan Poe’s, and a damn good forgery of it, I have to admit. Beautiful, in fact.”

  Surprised by his candid admiration, I’d switched on the bedside lamp. Earlier, I had drawn the curtains, something I rarely bothered to do, given we had no nearby neighbors with prying eyes to hide from at bedtime. “If they gave him pen and paper, he had plenty of time to practice in prison.”

  “If you offered a thousand inmates pen and paper, and ten years to practice, they’d never attain this level of craftsmanship.”

  “Am I hearing a note of jealousy?” I asked.

  “Maybe a little,” he admitted, turning toward me. “Just because forging isn’t something I do anymore doesn’t mean I can’t admire formidable artistry when I see it.”

  All I could do was sigh. “So what does he want? How bad is it?”

  Dressed for bed, Will slipped in beside me. “I couldn’t bring myself to read the damn thing beyond his greeting line, which was oozing with self-satisfied bravado, all chuffed up like a perfect imbecile. So much for crime, punishment, and rehabilitation—”

  “You want me to read it?”

  “It can wait until morning,” he said, not hiding his exasperation. “We both know his game anyway. It’s just a matter of what the maniac wants now. Either way, he’s not getting so much as a penny or a paper clip. He’s literally gotten his pound of flesh from me, and that’s more than I ever owed him to begin with. By the way, did you move Ripley’s food and water bowls?”

  “Of course not. She’s your spoiled stray, not mine.”

  “They’re missing from the studio doorsteps out back. For that matter, so’s Ripley.”

  “Will. It’s night. She’s making her catly rounds,” I assured him. “Maisie might have brought the bowls in to refill and forgot to put them back.”

  “When? She was out with her friends.”

  “You need to sleep. Ripley’s fine,” and I extinguished the light.

  Now, this morning, back at the kitchen table, I saw the worry that clouded Maisie’s face and realized we owed her an explanation. Especially given that she, through no fault of her own, was part of the whole loathsome narrative. “You remember what we said when you asked about your father’s hand? That he’d lost his fingers in an accident?”

  “I remember.”

  “Ever since you first came to live with us when you were five, we’ve always tried to be truthful with you, Maisie,” I went on, as Will busied himself with cooking our breakfast; this was a confessional moment he had hoped might never come. “After your mother was diagnosed with cancer and asked us if we’d be willing to raise you like you were our own daughter, we made a pact with her and ourselves that we would do our absolute best, and that included always being honest with you. I hope you’ll forgive us for eliding on just this one matter.”

  “What’s eliding?”

  “Means omitting things,” Will spoke from over at the stove. “In this case, fudging.”

  I may have nodded, I’m not sure. “The truth is, many years ago, your father had some business dealings with a man that didn’t go well. This man—”

  “Guy last night?”

  “That’s what we’re assuming. We think he’s the one who attacked your father, hurt his hand, and ended up in jail. I hope you’ll understand that one of the reasons we didn’t tell you the whole story is because you’d had enough of your own hardships, and we didn’t want to burden you with another that happened before you were even born. We figured he was out of our lives forever, so why torment you with it?”

  Maisie stared at Will’s hands for a moment, then at her own. “Who was my real father?” she asked, her voice tight, quiet.

  That was unexpected. But then, everything seemed bent toward the unforeseen since the night before. I glanced at Will, who shrugged his assent. Seemed the time had come for this as well.

  “Your mother always dreamed of having two things, Maisie. One was the bookshop that I started and she developed into the wonderful mecca it’s become. The other was to have a child. To have you. Since there wasn’t anyone special in her life she could raise a baby with, she found a donor and had you herself.”

  “In other words, I don’t have a flesh-and-blood father. Strictly speaking.”

  “Strictly speaking,” Will said, “you do. But probably not one you’ll ever meet.”

  Maisie pondered this for a moment. Her oval face, prominent tall brow, and silky reddish-chestnut hair reminded me so much of her mother, while her brown eyes, cleft chin, and lanky figure—Mary’d had bottle-green eyes and a medium build, not short but not as tall as Maisie promised to become—were clearly from her bio-dad’s genes.

  “I’m afraid,” Will added, “your paternity m
ay always be a mystery.”

  Undaunted, she asked, “You think you ever met this donor?”

  “Your mom was a very private person, Maisie,” I said, wishing I could offer more.

  For not quite half a minute, the kitchen clock ticked louder than I’d ever heard it.

  “I understand,” Maisie said finally, expression unreadable as she reached over to squeeze my hand before getting up, walking around to the stove, and giving Will a sideways hug. “Thanks for explaining. So now what’re we going to do about this man?”

  That was it? That was all? Mary Chandler, I reminded myself, had been like this. Settle an issue great or small, and move on. No sitting around, Rodin-style, with chin on fist. I always admired her for the trait, even envied her a little. When she fell ill, she transferred ownership of the bookshop to me and, in trust, to Maisie without so much as a second thought. Like Mary, her daughter—­now ours—was often tougher, more stoic, than I sometimes credited her with being.

  Will carried the platter with the frittata to the table and set it down. “I’m going to make a couple of phone calls today to check on the status of the man who did this to me years ago”—holding up his right hand as he dished a slice onto Maisie’s plate with his left—“and who we think accosted you last night. Meantime, if you want to visit your friends after dark, Meg or I ought to drive you until we know what that was all about.”

  Impatient now myself, I interjected, “So what did the letter say?”

  “He wants to meet.”

  “What? No—no way are you going to do that.”

  “Not sure.” He hesitated. “The situation’s exponentially more complicated than I might have guessed. More complicated and, truth to tell, more intriguing. Believe it or not, good could come of it, if I’m understanding correctly.”

  “Will, the man is treachery incarnate. Look what happened in Kenmare when you agreed to meet him but refused to do the dirty work he wanted,” I argued, raising my voice higher than intended. Maisie gently asked if I was all right, but nothing was right. While she was putting on a brave face, I knew she’d been badly shaken. As for my husband, he wasn’t making sense. “Will, listen. If Slader’s on the up-and-up, why forge the letter in a hand that can’t be traced to him?”