by Fiona Davis
“I want to be in your hair, darling.” Xavier scooted over and ran his fingers through her unruly mane. “What were you trying to do, here?”
“It’s a shag.”
“It’s a shag rug. Let me play, won’t you?” He returned with a towel, scissors, and a chair, which he placed in the middle of the rug. “Sit.”
“I don’t need a haircut at the moment.”
“Go on, Mom.” Ruby wouldn’t relent, so Virginia, again, did what her daughter told her to do.
“How are you guys doing these days?” asked Finn as Xavier snipped away.
Ruby snuggled in next to her uncle. While Virginia was happy that her daughter and brother had established a close connection, she couldn’t help but feel she’d been kept out of some private club.
“We’re okay. And Mom’s totally fine now. Right, Mom?”
“What does she mean?” Finn swiveled around to face Virginia.
From the concerned look on Finn’s face, Virginia could tell he didn’t know about the cancer. Her letter must have gotten lost. But now was not the time. Virginia answered, keeping her head as still as possible. “I’m enjoying the single life. I have a job, working for Penn Central, which runs Grand Central Terminal. In the information department.”
“That’s great, Vee.”
Thankfully, Ruby stepped in, asking Finn about Europe, and he regaled her with stories about careening through Naples on a Vespa and dining on octopus in Portugal. What a shame their parents weren’t alive to see what a success he’d made of himself: a worldly, charismatic musician who made money playing the very songs they had loved.
Finn interrupted himself mid-story and pointed to Virginia. “You look way better than you did before.”
Xavier stepped back. “My work here is done.”
Virginia went over to a gilded mirror in the front hallway. He’d cut it short, in a boyish pixie. The lack of hair around her neck highlighted her chin and jawline. “I like it. Thank you.”
“Like it? You look fabulous.” Xavier gave her a hug.
Finn showed them to the guest room, where a daisy-print coverlet clashed with the foil-patterned wallpaper.
Ruby changed into a pair of pajamas and snuggled under the covers while Virginia unpacked. “You’re not mad at me, are you, for bringing you here?”
It was way better than the alternatives. “Of course not. This was a good idea. I’m glad you and your uncle are close. You did well.”
Ruby turned over and curled into a ball, whispering, “I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Virginia wandered back out into the dark apartment, not ready to sleep. She quietly made some tea and sat at the lemon-yellow Formica table, reading through the insurance company binder she’d brought from the apartment, trying to make sense of the legalese.
Damn.
The deductible for the apartment policy was huge. She’d been trying to cut costs in order to afford her dream apartment. Which was now ruined. She’d be able to pay it off, but just barely. And not right away.
Her neck itched from the haircut, and the overwrought decor made her jumpy. There was no way she could sleep. She let herself out and took the elevator down to the first floor. The bar was still hopping, but she found a single seat.
A man with a thick head of white hair tended the bar. A silver fox. That’s how Betsy would describe him. One of the lucky ones who wasn’t losing more hair with every passing decade.
“What would you like?” He spoke with an Irish lilt that reminded Virginia of her grandparents.
“I’ll have a Jameson. Where are you from?”
“Dublin. Came over a few years ago.” He held out his hand. “Name’s Ryan.”
Virginia introduced herself. “My parents were Irish. Lived in Hell’s Kitchen, and my dad owned a pub there.”
“That so? I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be. It was a dive.” Her father had owned the bar on the ground floor of their building his entire life, showing up every day in black pants, a white shirt, and a tie, as if he were an accountant. His sad, hound-dog eyes—which Finn had inherited—and quiet demeanor seemed completely wrong for the owner of a West Side Irish bar, but they worked in his favor. His regulars knew they were the focus, that they’d be listened to and sided with as they ranted about their jobs or their wives, that he’d laugh at their jokes. Seeing Finn again made Virginia ache for her father. She shook it off. “This place, though, is fabulous. The murals are the perfect touch, low-key but lovely.”
“Done by a man named Ludwig Bemelmans.”
“Hence the name of the bar.”
“Hence.” Ryan’s skin was smooth, unlined. Must be from all that Irish fog. Put him on a trawler in a fisherman’s sweater and he’d make a great ad for frozen fish sticks.
She rambled on, driven by edgy exhaustion. “I came in with my daughter earlier; we met up with my brother, who plays here. I haven’t seen him in ages.”
“That’s right, I saw you before with Finn. You’re his sister?”
She nodded. “We’re going to be staying with him for a little while. Him and Xavier.”
“That’s great; maybe we’ll see more of you, then. Great haircut, by the way. Suits you.”
She touched a tendril near her ears. “Thanks.”
A new group of customers burst through the doors, tourists carrying shopping bags, cameras slung around their necks. Virginia took another few sips of her drink before waving good-bye to Ryan and retreating to her brother’s lair.
CHAPTER TEN
November 1974
Virginia filtered through the lunch-hour crowds outside Grand Central. Thanksgiving was in two days, and the pedestrians bustled about with pre-holiday zeal. Yesterday, in between stacking brochures, she’d snuck in a whispered call to the Art Students League, one of the top art schools in Manhattan, and to her surprise, she had gotten a meeting with a curator there. She figured if the watercolor was worthless, the curator would tell her without making her feel like an idiot, as opposed to presenting herself as a laughingstock to the people at Sotheby Parke Bernet. If so, that would be fine. She’d frame it and enjoy looking at it just as much as if it were worth a thousand dollars. And if it happened to be worth something, as much as she’d hate to part with it, perhaps she’d have enough to pay off the deductible on the insurance. In any case, she wanted to know more about Clara Darden and Levon Zakarian and how the canvas might have ended up stuck behind a cabinet at the Grand Central School of Art.
She’d been inside the Art Students League many years ago, during a field trip for an undergraduate seminar, but she had never really studied the grandeur of the exterior. The embellished five-story building looked like it belonged on a Paris boulevard, not on Fifty-Seventh Street, but the ornate detailing did seem fitting for an art school. Inside, she encountered a hive of activity, with students of all ages, from eighteen to eighty, passing along the hallways, calling out to one another.
Virginia waited in a second-floor gallery where students’ work was on display, as well as a small pamphlet on the history of the school. It had been founded in 1875, and artists like Pollock, O’Keeffe, and Norman Rockwell had studied there.
A young woman with long black braids approached. “Ms. Clay?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Janice Russo.”
“You’re the curator I’m supposed to meet with?” Not what she expected. The girl was young and so pretty.
Janice clearly heard her surprised tone. “That’s right. I have a PhD in art history, and I’m the curator for the school.”
“How fantastic. Good for you.”
“Thanks.”
Virginia kicked herself for assuming it would be a crusty old man, for falling into the trap of assuming such a thing. It made her feel older than ever.
“They said you had some
thing to show me?” Janice led her into a small office off the gallery, where a desk took up most of the space. One wall was devoted to bookshelves, with oversize art books taking up the bottom row, and the thin spines of auction catalogs lined up in date order along the top. “Have a seat.”
Virginia pulled the portfolio out of her bag. “I found this artwork the other day and was curious about it. I noticed it looks a lot like a painting by Levon Zakarian that’s up for auction.” She took out the auction catalog and opened it to the earmarked page. “I was hoping you’d take a look and tell me what you think.”
The curator opened the portfolio and let out a sharp breath. She pulled the painting close and examined it carefully, not touching anything but the very edges, looking back and forth from the catalog to the paper. “What strikes me is that the brushstrokes are quite similar. Like it’s a trial run for the real thing. It’s watercolor, though, not oil. To my knowledge, Zakarian only worked in oil, using the impasto method. He was known to have detested watercolor, for some reason.”
“What’s impasto? Sounds like a noodle dish.”
Janice laughed. “No, it’s a technique where the paint is laid down very thickly, so that the work has a lot of texture. Like Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Basically, it’s the opposite of watercolor.”
“Huh. I was wondering if maybe this is a real Levon Zakarian, what with the auction coming up.” She added, quietly, “That maybe it might be worth something.”
Janice reached into her desk drawer and took out a magnifying glass. She peered through it, paying special attention to the bottom right corner. “Unfortunately, there’s no signature, neither Clyde nor Levon Zakarian.”
“Who’s Clyde?” asked Virginia. “I thought the artist was Levon Zakarian.”
Janice turned and scanned the bookshelf, pulling out a thin catalog. “This exhibition catalog is one of the few remaining records of the Clyde paintings that were shown in New York in the early 1930s, although at the time, no one knew who the real artist was. He preferred to remain anonymous. The paintings were a huge hit, heralded as one of the first direct links between the School of Paris—cubism, for example, or fauvism—and the New York School, where abstract expressionism got its start.”
Virginia’s head spun. If only she’d studied modern art instead of medieval, this might make sense. “Cubism is Picasso, right, and fauvism is Matisse?”
“Exactly. Cubism was an early-twentieth-century movement, where the artists portrayed an image from many different angles, broken up into cubes.” She pulled out a book on Picasso and pointed to the cover. “Girl with a Mandolin is the name of this one.”
“It’s jarring.”
“Sure is. That’s the School of Paris, an umbrella term for all the remarkable artists who lived and worked there at the beginning of the twentieth century. The New York School, which includes abstract expressionism, came later, after World War II, with men like Pollock and de Kooning, who turned away from using a figure entirely. Pollock’s drip paintings, for example.”
“You’re saying that this Clyde artist was a bridge between the two?”
“Yes.” She pointed to the watercolor. “Look at the way the figure is barely suggested. Even less so than the Picasso painting. It might not be a figure at all.”
“How are Clyde and Levon Zakarian related to each other?”
“As I mentioned, at the exhibit in New York in 1931, the artist behind the Clyde paintings insisted on remaining unknown. Not until a second exhibit in Chicago was he supposed to step forward. Of course, there was great speculation, as the paintings had made an enormous impact with art critics.”
“What happened?”
“The train carrying the works from New York to Chicago crashed, ended up in a river. A horrible accident. All the paintings were destroyed, and the art dealer who represented the artist died on the train, along with Levon Zakarian. It was easy enough to put two and two together. Ever since, Clyde’s work has been attributed to Zakarian.”
Levon Zakarian must be the ghostly presence that Totto had mentioned her first day on the job.
“How terrible.” She thought for a moment. “You said all the paintings were destroyed. But what about the one that’s for auction?”
“That surfaced recently. Happens every so often; something comes to light that’s been stored in an attic for decades. Usually, the owner’s family never realized it was valuable. Even though the one that’s for auction wasn’t listed in the original exhibition catalog, the experts examined it and agreed it’s a Zakarian Clyde painting.”
“What are the chances mine is also a Zakarian Clyde? A study for the oil painting?”
“Hard to say. As I mentioned, he didn’t like watercolors. It could be a really good reproduction.”
Virginia turned over the watercolor. “What about this drawing on the other side?”
“How strange. Clara Darden, of all people.” Janice’s brow furrowed. “Darden was an illustrator who did magazine covers and that kind of thing. During her day, she was considered a huge commercial success.” She picked up a history of illustration from her bookshelf, turned to the section on Clara Darden, and handed it to Virginia.
In the black-and-white image, Clara Darden was wraithlike, her pale eyes, hair, and eyelashes hardly distinguishable from the gray background. The defiant look on her face, though, was familiar. Virginia recognized it from the illustration of the secretaries she’d seen on the wall of the art school her first day. The model in the center of the drawing had been a self-portrait, she was certain.
Janice continued. “Both Zakarian and Darden were on the faculty of the Grand Central School of Art, but Darden wasn’t in the same league as Zakarian, artistically.” She examined the signature at the bottom right-hand corner of the drawing, then did the same for the image in the auction catalog. “This is odd, though.” She picked up the magnifying glass again.
“What’s that?”
“The letter C in the signature lines. Take a look.”
Virginia examined both signatures, Clara Darden on the sketch and Clyde in the auction catalog. Both C’s had an extra swirl at the top. “They both curl around, more like a swirl than a letter C.”
“Yes.” Janice looked up and blinked a couple of times. “That’s unexpected. Astonishing, really.” She turned the page in the illustration book. “Here’s one of Darden’s illustrations for Vogue.”
Virginia’s eyes went right to the signature. “A curly C.”
“A curly C.” Janice pointed to the watercolor. “Your drawing is dated as well, 1929.”
“But the exhibit wasn’t until 1931.”
“Right.”
Virginia couldn’t contain herself. “So it probably wasn’t a reproduction. What if Clara Darden was Clyde?”
Janice raised her eyebrows. “The similarity in the name is interesting. However, it could be that Clara Darden did the sketch, and then Levon Zakarian took the paper and made this as a kind of study, in watercolor, for the final work. Artists often reused supplies and canvases in order to save money. The whole thing is quite odd.”
“But you said yourself he didn’t like watercolor. And why would they both use a curly C?”
“The curly C points to both works being by the same person, that’s true. I have to admit I’m stunned by the close correlation between the drawing and the watercolor.”
The way Janice drank in the painting, practically devouring it with her eyes, gave Virginia a surge of excitement. She really should be getting back to work, but this was worth being late. She might be in possession of a valuable work of art. To hell with Terrence’s scolding. “In that case, Clara Darden might be the original painter, not Levon Zakarian. After all, the train crashed before the artist was officially revealed, right?” Virginia’s thoughts rushed over one another. “Why would Levon Zakarian want to stay anonymous in the first place?”
/>
“Good question. Maybe because it was so unlike his earlier work, for shock value. Bear in mind this was during the Depression, when no one was buying art. At the time, a lot of folks wrote it off as a publicity stunt to boost sales.”
Virginia shifted to the edge of her seat. “Is Clara Darden still around?”
“I’m afraid not. Nothing was heard from her after 1931.”
“The same year of the train crash. Maybe she was on the train.”
“You would think it would’ve made the newspapers. After all, she was one of the most successful female illustrators of that era. What’s really strange is that we know what happened to all the other illustrators in this book, but for her, there’s nothing. Like she just disappeared.” Janice touched the painting, gently, as if it were a relic. “You’ve discovered something important, I think.”
“Is it valuable?” Excitement rose in Virginia’s belly, like the quickening she’d felt while pregnant with Ruby.
“If it’s a Zakarian, a study like this could fetch more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“Wow.” The number floored Virginia. It was more than she could have imagined. She took a moment to gather herself. “What if it’s a Darden?”
Janice sat back in her chair and blew out a breath. “Then all bets are off. It means that a little-known female artist had an instrumental influence on the progression of art in the twentieth century. A revelation like that could be incredibly valuable.”
To prove that a woman had been the driving force between two art movements was exciting, and not only because then the watercolor would be worth even more. Virginia had followed with great interest the news coverage of the women’s movement, how the Equal Rights Amendment was certain to be ratified. When Chester made stupid jokes about women marching in the streets, she and Ruby had scolded him into submission.
For more than forty years, Clara Darden had been shoved to the sidelines, overshadowed by a man. Just as Virginia had felt overshadowed by Chester during their marriage. Perhaps this was Virginia’s chance to make something of herself in the wake of Chester’s desertion, and bring Clara out into the light.
