Catch 26

by Carol Prisant

  Fernanda sits straight up and blinks. Because she’s only seen two men naked in her life, and though it’s dark-ish in here, she can just make it out. His pubic hair seems to have been shaved in a kind of buzz-cut around his penis, which looks that much bigger because of it, but still … It’s incredibly small. The size of one of her thumbs, really.

  Can a little penis get her pregnant?

  “I’m sorry.” He misreads her. “I’m kind of puny and maybe you won’t want to fuck. Probably won’t. But a BJ’s okay. I’m sorry.”

  “No. No.” Fernanda is nothing if not polite. “Listen, it doesn’t bother me. And let’s just have sex. I’d prefer that.”

  “You would?” His voice, so richly confident back at the bar, has leaped an adolescent octave. His expression softens and blurs. He’s a kid and this is Christmas.

  Abruptly, Fernanda isn’t terrified.

  She rises slowly from the bed, even languidly – probably sexily, she’s almost sure – and turns her back for him to unzip her dress. It floats to the carpet gracefully. Like in a movie.

  She might even grow to like this … Ben.

  She unhooks her new lacy bra and facing him in just her panties, she stretches her arms one at a time above her head and falls backward onto his bed. This may not be dreadful, she thinks. It had never crossed her mind that sex and compassion can mix. Although Marcia would call it something else. Something like … was it “pity sex”?

  But, Fernanda doesn’t really care right now. She’s just realized – first with surprise and then with profound gratitude – that she hasn’t felt like this in more than forty years.

  A man and a job. She has Ben for the former now, but no job. And no job skills. Her serendipitous computer literacy seems to have odd limitations. She can barely type, for instance, let alone take dictation. (Do people still take dictation?) And she’s not at all sure about cellphones. Or Wikipedia, whatever that may be. To tell the truth, she couldn’t even sell bath towels at Bloomingdales, because she’s never worked in “retail”. Never worked, period, of course. Worse yet, she’s gathered from the doleful nightly news that many jobs – even secretarial jobs (if she were remotely secretarial) – are incredibly hard to come by.

  Still she intends to try.

  Ensconced one sunny Monday morning on her fusty sofa – she’s hidden its wine spills under a knitted throw from a really upscale thrift shop – Fernanda opens yesterday’s New York Times classifieds, an act that on its own lifts her spirits. Because she’s sitting here looking for a job in the actual Sunday Times. In actual New York, in her own apartment. Stanley would be what?

  Surprised? Critical? She misses him now and then.

  But the classified ads seem scant. And what is “I.T.”? Is that something she can she do? But what’s happened to all the ads?

  Anxiously, she riffles through the pages. Maybe she’s missed a section?

  But, no. That was it. This is it.

  If there’s really no work, how will she pay her rent?

  Fernanda thinks back to all those years with Stanley paying the bills and the mortgage and funding their Friday-night movies and their rare trips to Chicago. He took her to London once, too. And well, yes, he made everything a struggle always, asking for her receipts for the littlest thing, begrudging her antique chairs, damning air conditioning as an extravagance they’d only need ten days a year. And yet, the money was always there.

  Oh, online. Fernanda remembers now with relief. Yes, she’ll need to check online. She’ll go over to the library and Google the New York Times.

  Reassured, almost eager, in fact, she springs off the sofa with such unaccustomed ease that the Times and her afghan spill on the floor, and it’s while she’s enjoying the painlessness with which she’s able to kneel and pick them up that her eye is caught by a neat grid of photos toward the top of an arts page. Paintings, they seem to be. A number of them, part of an ad for an auction of what? – Old Master paintings at the Berger Gallery. Fernanda flops down on the sofa again, smoothes the paper across her lap and studies the ad, because, tucked among the smaller images, she thinks she’s glimpsed a photo of a painting that looks very much like her oil from Aunt Teeks. She carries the paper to the better light of the window.

  It’s remarkably like hers, actually. The painting that’s still in its protective brown wrappers and leaning against the wall in the entry hall. This one has the same rocks and trees. A similar woodsy landscape and several classical figures, all entwined. Plus, an elegant, old gold frame. It’s so much like hers.

  But still, she’s looking at a newspaper image, which is nowhere near sharp enough for her to compare in any detail. Fernanda scans the text and sees that an exhibit for the auction seems to be going on right now – that today is the final day, in fact – and she carefully tears out the ad. It may not even be too far from here, she thinks. She’ll just take the oil over there to show someone, and maybe, if it’s good, they’ll even want to sell it. It would be nice, if she can’t find work, to be able to live here a few more months. Good thing she hasn’t hung it.

  Shrugging into her brand-new navy coat (exactly like the old one, although smaller and longer) and clutching the weighty, paper-wrapped painting under her arm, Fernanda takes the elevator down, makes a silly face at a strollered toddler rolling by, breezes past the lobby’s fake-silk palms and steps through its double glass doors to the street. Outside, she joins all those New Yorkers with important things to do: texting, pushing baby carriages, carrying groceries, exclaiming into phones: “I was in heaven,” “Do you really, like, think I’d, like, put up with that?” “He’s so selfish in bed.” All out loud. Right on the street.

  But the air feels soft and warm and welcoming, and Fernanda decides she doesn’t need her coat after all. Awkwardly, she shrugs out of it as she walks. The Spring sun is as brilliant here as it ever was at home. There are trees in the rest of Manhattan, too, not just in the park. How is it she never realized that? They’re the faintest green right now – almost an aura of green, not even leaves. Maybe there will be flowers somewhere when summer comes. She bends to pull a weedy thing and straightens easily. Is she ever going to get over being limber again, she thinks? Not to mention that New York city has trees. And weeds?

  In about twenty minutes, she’s pretty sure she’s on the right street, except what does an auction house look like? A house? A store with big show windows? Maybe it’s upstairs in an office building, like some of the art galleries she passes on her runs? Poking around in her bag for the ad and the address, Fernanda slows down, scanning every door for a number. She’s beginning to think she really ought to ask – maybe this woman walking towards her – when she realizes that the woman is Randi. Without thinking, she dashes into the street. Is that a cab? But there it is, at the far end of the block. THE hoped-for Berger’s sign, and she races across to the opposite sidewalk. A turbaned driver leans hard on his horn. From relative safety, she turns back to look.

  Oh, it wasn’t Randi at all. She sees that now. Just someone who looked … nothing like Randi, really. And her heartbeat slows. That was very strange, she thinks, breathing deeply. Scary.

  Shifting the package under her arm – it’s bulky more than heavy – Fernanda leans her weight into Berger’s big door. From nowhere, a doorman appears to hold it open, making her feel slightly country mouse.

  The pale furnishings of its super-chic lobby aren’t very comforting, either. Neither are the marble floors, gold-leafed ceiling, or the pervasive and meaningful hush. Oh dear, she thinks, thoroughly cowed: this is it. The Halls of Great Art.

  Before her, behind a high counter, sit three of the most impeccably dressed and groomed young women she’s ever laid eyes on. At the moment, they seem to be sharing some marvelous private joke, but as she approaches, the three turn as one. Fernanda feels caught in the glare.

  “Can I help you? Do you have an appointment?” The girl who addresses her isn’t laughing anymore. Or even smiling.

  She has that
dead-weight honey-blonde hair that Fernanda has been seeing everywhere lately, except that this girl was born to that hair. It frames a face that’s less pretty than handsome, but her voice is arresting. Uninflected and, in this large space, frighteningly resonant, it exudes born self-confidence. It’s the kind of voice that usually makes Fernanda shrink. Now, however, it’s not just the voice, it’s the other two women, her clones. All are plainly inspecting her now.

  “I’m sorry.” Is that her, whispering like that? “I didn’t know I needed an appointment. Should I come back? I’ve brought a painting I’d like to show someone.”

  To her born-Midwestern ear, Fernanda’s new voice seems distinctly East Coast. She hopes these women think so too.

  “I’ve been sort of hoping it might be, well … worthwhile.” She tips the parcel towards the desk. The trio regards her and it impassively. “Then I saw the ad in the paper for your Old Master’s Auction and I thought there might be someone here who could tell me. Is there someone? Today? Who’s available?”

  Babbling again. Still babbling.

  The women are eyeing her so coolly she feels a lot like poor, sad Oliver Twist, wanting more. Perhaps she’s supposed to show the painting to them?

  She begins to undo its white string. Palm upraised, the middle blonde stops her.

  “If you can tell me what type of painting it is, I’ll know which department to call for you.”

  “It’s an oil painting.”

  The other two exchange an eye roll and Fernanda wants to die.

  “No, no. I mean, what’s its style: contemporary? Nineteenth century? Impressionist? What?”

  “Oh,” she says hesitantly. “I think it may be an Old Master.”

  “I see. An Old Master.” The girl’s voice assumes a weariness that conveys to Fernanda how many vaunted Old Masters show up at this front desk each week.

  Still, she gathers her courage and, her voice sounding – amazing – even to herself, she goes on. (She could be this woman’s grandmother, after all.)

  “Yes, I have an Old Master.”

  The receptionists consider her solemnly. Until this moment, they’ve clearly written her off as an unsophisticated ditz. Now, from their rearranged expressions and some elbow interplay, she understands she’s become an unsophisticated and rather-too-nervy ditz.

  “If you’ll take a seat,” says the original inquisitor frostily, “I’ll call the department to see if anyone’s free to come down.”

  They indulge in a tiny, in unison, smile.

  Lowering herself cautiously into a glove-soft tan-leather chair (when will she get used to the fact that her joints aren’t going to hurt?), Fernanda leans back tensely and lets the painting rest against her knee as she wonders where, exactly, girls like these learn to be so well-spoken and self-possessed. Growing up in Connecticut, she supposes. From family with a capital F. And boarding school, naturally. Generations of boarding school.

  While she waits, trying not to fidget, but being intermittently distracted, fortunately, by processions of well-dressed men in soft, looped scarves and pairs of elderly, perfectly turned-out women, she thinks she overhears two or three phone calls being made to “the department.” For her?

  All that’s readable here are the thick Berger’s auction catalogues, each more richly illustrated than the next, evidently, and all written in a vocabulary Fernanda hasn’t seen since college. They’re beautiful, the catalogues: small glossy art books full of photos of jewelry and furniture and sculpture and art. She flips through two or three, enjoying the color photographs, but floundering, now and then, on the text.

  When, finally, the departmental “anyone” arrives, Fernanda is taken aback. She’s been expecting a distinguished Englishman, or perhaps a delicate Frenchman, but this “expert” is a plump young Asian woman with dimpled hands, each adorned with more gold and silver rings than Fernanda has ever seen, especially on ten such childlike fingers. With an endearing gravity, she introduces herself as Christina Kim, briskly shakes Fernanda’s hand twice, and pivoting on one low-heeled pump, asks Fernanda to follow her to the “lift”.

  They step out on the fourth floor, where Fernanda is impressed by the hush. No auction viewers. No visitors. No one who even looks like an employee, either, except perhaps the two burly middle-aged men in navy jackets with Berger’s patches on the pockets. Who stare at her. A little rudely? Guards, she decides. For what?

  If she’d ever thought about it, Fernanda might have supposed that auction galleries would be bustling halls full of decorators and clients. Or Cary Grant and James Mason; Joan Fontaine and Ronald Colman. But, in fact, there is no one here at all. This featureless, high-ceilinged space is altogether empty except for a few angular sofas placed here, Fernanda decides, in case any (nonexistent) buyers need to perch for a moment while chatting knowledgeably about whatever it is they have no plans to bid on.

  Her package pressed firmly and a little painfully to her side, because its frame is beginning to bruise her ribs, Fernanda trails her escort through a series of spacious white rooms, their walls sparsely hung with canvasses depicting gaily-colored circles, or long neon tubes in orange and green and turquoise. They pass a wall-size, night-black canvas. Must be a Modern Art exhibition, she decides, pleased with herself for having recognized the period and even tried, in the few moments before she’s swept along by her silent guide, to even like it just a little bit.

  Along one long, empty wall, finally, one of several small doors pops softly open and she’s waved into an ill-lit room, tinier even than the safe- deposit-box cubicle in the St. Louis bank where Stanley kept his collection of U.S. mint coins. The room is stuffy, and within it, the shorter side of a small rectangular table abuts a wall. Both of the little desk chairs, one on either side, have access to an insect-like swing-arm lamp. On the leather tabletop, several well-thumbed auction catalogues lie askew.

  Miss Kim gestures towards a chair.

  “Would you mind waiting here please?” She nods at Fernanda and smiles for the first time. “Courtney Bamber will be out to speak with you in a few minutes.”

  So she isn’t the expert.

  The expert may yet be a man, though, because, well … Courtney? A girl named Courtney? She’d love to meet an arty man.

  “Should I unwrap my painting now?” Fernanda asks the closing door.

  Deciding not to chance “Courtney’s” condescension by being discovered in the act of tenderly unwrapping a treasure that isn’t a treasure (completely adolescent, she thinks) Fernanda sets her package on the desk and hastily unties its knotted strings. She folds the hard brown paper and hides it beneath her chair. She’s careful with the wrappings. She’ll need to reuse them when she takes the painting home.

  But there on the table now, lying bare, flat, and scalded by the overhead light, it’s looking incredibly vulnerable. Worse yet, it isn’t looking “good” to her anymore. Don’t some of those figures seem … clumsy? Are their torsos too long? The men seem all at once too beefy; the women, way too smooth. And now that she looks closely, many of the hands, female and male, seem, not just badly painted, but – Lord, Fernanda thinks – deformed.

  She pushes the swing-arm lamp out of the way and gnaws on her unfamiliarly plump lower lip.

  What could have possessed her to spend $3,500 – so much money! – plus tax! – on a painting that, in this moment she knows beyond any doubt, is merely a mediocre copy? Or maybe it is a print! Oh, God. She flicks the lamp switch again and pulls the picture closer to scrutinize its bouillon-esque varnished surface. Why on earth is she risking this sure humiliation when she could be at the library, fruitfully scrolling through classified ads?

  As she’s gathering up the wrappings to hide her dreadful mistake and somehow, sneak away, the door opens soundlessly and a woman enters the room. Stick-thin and smiling a toothy smile that exposes a good half-an-inch of pink gum, she offers a hand so frail that Fernanda fears she might break it. She takes it gingerly.

  “How do you do? I’m Cour
tney Bamber, one of the specialists in Old Master pictures.” She’s reassuringly informal, and yet … This woman can’t be more than thirty-five. And she’s a specialist?

  Before glancing toward the painting, Courtney Bamber smiles up at Fernanda.

  “So what have you brought us today?” she asks.

  “Well, it’s probably not anything,” Fernanda murmurs. “I just thought it might be worth your having a look.”

  The woman shoves the catalogues and string out of the way and, a palm on the table each side of the frame, she leans in to look.

  No immediate reaction, Fernanda thinks. Is that good?

  Now the woman parks herself in the chair, adjusts her glasses, and pulling the lamp and the painting to her, frowns and purses her lips. She doesn’t speak.

  Across the table, Fernanda watches the expert look at her painting: turn it over and examine the back; lever the head of the desk lamp as low as it will go. She moistens one finger and touches it lightly to the canvas. A minute, two minutes, five minutes pass. The specialist’s neutral face tells her nothing at all. The over bright ceiling light makes straw of her fine, light-brown hair.

  At last, she turns to Fernanda.

  “Where did you get this?”

  Fernanda is shocked. She hopes this Courtney person doesn’t think she stole it.

  “I got it in a St. Louis antique shop,” she replies, hearing her voice rise defensively. She tries to calm down. No one’s accused her of anything, after all. “I just paid for it and took it home.”

  ‘I have the receipt,” she adds.

  She delves into her bag for her wallet, then stops. This is foolish. The receipt thing is foolish, but also, she recalls now, she didn’t take it home. The day she bought the painting, her home wasn’t home. She’d gone directly to the airport with her purchase and had flown here nonstop.

  “Oh no, I’m sure you do,” says the expert, smiling and placing a hand on her arm. “I only thought you may have inherited it. But did you buy it recently? How recently?”

  An uncomfortable question for a number of reasons, and Fernanda doesn’t think she wants to be overly specific.