Frank

by Fred Petrovsky

  She looked at her watch and said, “I have to go.”

  “So do I,” I said.

  We exchanged sad smiles, hugged again, and drove away.

  Strangely, I didn’t feel satisfied. I knew her better. I had a taste of what she had gone through and how it had affected her family. But I still knew relatively little about Frank. She had held back something, I was sure of it. But I decided it was all right. Memories of her husband were personal, really not to be shared with someone she hardly knew. Anyway, it didn’t matter. Anything she could have told me wouldn’t have made a difference.

  On the drive home I kept thinking of the photograph she’d shared with me. I would have thought the image of Frank would have affected me, but it didn’t. Instead, it was his daughters that haunted me. I saw them there in front of the camera, all of them smiling. I could see the photographer telling them to settle down, posing them smartly. They probably said something like “cheese” before the flash captured them. And I, a broken nurse without any children, felt so sad and alone.

  I stopped at the bank and withdrew ten thousand dollars in cash from my account. When I got home I put it in an envelope with a note that said: “For your children.” Then I waited until it was dark and drove to Janelle’s house. I parked around the corner so I wouldn’t be seen, then walked to her house and put the envelope on her front door welcome mat. I rang the doorbell and ran as fast as I could back to my car and drove away without looking back.

  I felt clean and refreshed. And more determined than ever to be by Howard’s side.

  24: Neil Lavery

  The days before my father’s name became public were desolate ones at the gallery. A good day would see maybe fifteen people walk the wooden floors. After the news broke and my father’s identity was revealed there was a rush of interest. But only that: curiosity. People and media came. What were they looking for? For clues about my father? I couldn’t fathom. What did his place of business have to do with his medical miracle?

  One television network news magazine did an exposé on my father by focusing on the gallery. Its premise: one could learn about my father by exploring his gallery and his taste in art. That was nonsense. First off, I’d made many changes in the gallery. New artists. New themes. I’d commissioned several works that I’m sure my father would never have displayed. I even made some gallery improvements, most notably a new halogen lighting system, and I’d knocked out a wall to create better traffic flow.

  That didn’t stop the television folks from drawing their conclusions. I watched the show. It began with an iron-jawed news personality standing in front of the gallery. The camera slowly zoomed in on him as he spoke. “The clues are tantalizing. Stark walls with colorful paintings. Images of life and death. A vast array of artistic shades and styles. Inside this unassuming gallery are hints into the world’s most famous mind—the brain of Howard Lavery. The choices he has made, the art he’s brought to light, give us a portrait of the man that is at once enlightening and fascinating.”

  That’s pretty much the direction the entire segment went. I consented to an interview for the program, but they didn’t use any of it. I can’t blame them. I was entirely up front about what I thought of their focus.

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” I said. “A gallery doesn’t necessarily reflect what the owner likes or believes in. That’s part of it, yes. But it’s also a commercial enterprise. My father showed work he thought would sell. He’s an entrepreneur, after all. Some of them he liked. Maybe liked a lot. Sure. But don’t take it any further than that. But even if you were right, where’s the story? So what. Maybe my father liked this artist. Maybe he liked that one. Maybe he wanted to share his appreciation with other people. Big deal. And you can save all your footage, because I’ve been running this place for quite a while and I’ve made changes. A lot of it reflects me, not him. I’ve kept some of his artists. Of course I have. But I’ve brought in some of my own, too. Like those over there. See? My father’s never seen that artist’s work. Get it? If he was an artist, I can see your point. Then you’d have something valid to talk about. But now you’re wasting your time.”

  None of the gallery’s artists agreed to an interview.

  It didn’t take long for interest in the gallery to fade and things to get back to normal. I never liked the attention for a single moment. Why would someone be interested in the gallery or in any of the works inside just because my father owned it? I sold very little. Maybe one painting a week, but only minor works and smaller canvases. None of the larger paintings attracted much attention. And none of the works by new artists left the gallery. How did that make me feel? Rejected. It was hard not to take the lack of sales personally. I’d made changes in the gallery and artists because I thought they were more commercial. Maybe because I liked them, too. Besides, you needed to sell works so that you could buy new ones and infuse the walls with fresh art. A gallery that didn’t sell anything was really little more than a museum. Who would come back a second or third time when everything remained the same? I wouldn’t.

  I’d sit at that desk hour after hour with no one in the gallery, thinking about my dad and how, suddenly, my life was going nowhere. I spent a lot of time sweeping and dusting. I pretended I was cleaning for a white glove military inspection. I hosed down the parking lot once a day. The gallery sparkled.

  The highlight of any day would be when Emily came by with the kids. She’d kiss me and give me a hug that never lasted long enough. I knew she could tell that a storm was raging inside me, but she had the smarts to let me go through it without too much questioning or prodding. What I needed more than anything was support, and she gave it to me in spades. But how long she’d put up with my sullen disposition was anyone’s guess. I’d come home from a barren day at the gallery and she’d tell that I wasn’t happy. I found it hard to spend quality time with the boys. She tried her hardest to make our home life as harmonious as possible. At night, when I was mostly inconsolable, she’d be the aggressor and curl up next to me and lay her hand between my legs. Maybe she thought that sex would release my tension and allow me to make it through another day. She was mostly right. Our lovemaking was intense and powerful, but I often faded away during sex. I’d be deep into a rhythm, kissing her, but I couldn’t help my mind from blasting away and flying through the gallery and soaring over a boat on a lake and helping my father out of the water. It was a distant, haunting kind of sex that Emily and I had. I wonder how satisfying it was for her.

  Afterward I’d often feel the need to talk to her, and without her saying anything I’d apologize for the way I’d been acting and tell her how much I loved her. She’d tell me I was being silly and that I should concentrate on relaxing and eliminating my stress. But my confessions pretty much ended there. I didn’t feel like telling her how much I was beginning to loathe going to work. I refused to burden her with my growing boredom and the endless hours baby-sitting the gallery. It’s scary how fast my feeling toward the gallery changed.

  Emily’s wisdom was all-encompassing. She showed her love to me more by what she left unsaid. A lesser woman might have flung questions at me like, “Why did you take over the gallery in the first place?” or “It’s too late now” or “How are we going to pay the bills?” Instead, Emily offered mostly silence. That helped make life bearable, but I know she was thinking about those kinds of things. And because I knew she was pondering those issues it was almost as bad. Things unstated can be powerful. I slept poorly.

  Today, everything pretty much came to a head when, just after lunch, the quiet of the gallery was shattered by three people who came noisily in the door. I took an immediate dislike to them because, unlike most gallery goers, they were loud and obnoxious.

  One was a woman. She was grossly overweight, with thick folds in her neck that hid the top of her collar. She was dressed well, but her outfit was much too tight. She had a long ugly mole just above her left eye. Two men accompanied her. One was very thin and tall, the other of rather aver
age build. The tall man wore a smart three-piece suit, but he wore his hair pulled back in a ponytail that didn’t quite fit him. The other gentleman, well, I can’t even remember what he looked like. He was just average. Brown eyes. Brown hair. He was dressed in slacks, a white long-sleeve shirt, and a red tie. He never said a word.

  “We’ll find something in here,” said the woman, and she pushed past the men. “Hi,” she said to me as she walked by, the men trailing behind her. “I’ve been here before. Good art in here. Big stuff. We need big stuff. That’s what we need. Big things. Wide things. Got a lot of walls to cover. What do you think of that one? That’s pretty big.”

  The tall man said, “Too orange” or “Too red” or “I think that’s upside-down” or “My two-year-old could have painted that.” They hurried through the gallery in a whirlwind. If I hadn’t swept the floors I’m sure they’d have brushed up tiny tornadoes in their wake.

  I approached them once and asked if I could help or answer any questions. I started to volunteer information about an artist.

  “We’re fine,” said the woman. “We know what we’re looking for. Thanks anyway.”

  I went back to the desk and waited for them to leave. They circled around the gallery a few times, then huddled together and talked. Eventually, they motioned to me and led me around the gallery. “We’re ready,” said the woman. “We’ll take that one and that one and that one. That one over there is nice, but it isn’t big enough.”

  “What is it exactly that you’re looking for?” I asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

  “We need big art,” she said. “We just took the next floor up in our building and have a lot of wall space to cover. Can’t have white walls when clients come in. What kind of law firm would we be without art? We need big art. Lots of it. Goodness knows why. I think it’s a lot of crock. Why should people care if you have paintings on the wall when all they really need is an expert in contracts? But Goodman, Hart, and Baxter has paintings. They’re known for it. That sort of forces us. Don’t really have a choice. Me, well, I could care less. Art, shmart, is what I say.”

  “Oh,” I said, unable to craft a response.

  “Anyway, forget all that. No time. We’ll also take that one and that one. Did we decide on that one?” she asked to the tall man.

  “No,” he said. “That one over there.”

  They chose ten paintings, all of which happened to be my largest canvases. They chose them for size, not artistic value. Not because they liked them. Not for any other reason than because they had space to cover. The average-looking man handed me a silver credit card, and I put it through.

  I almost didn’t sell the paintings to them. I was filled with disgust and wanted to kick them out of the gallery. I had half a mind to lecture them about how art wasn’t meant to simply cover walls. But against my better judgment I filled out the credit card slip and the man signed it. One by one they removed the paintings and took them out to a large van they had apparently rented specifically for this purpose. Then, just like that, they were gone.

  I felt like a clerk in a discount store. What had I done? I was ashamed. I walked around the gallery. The large open spaces where the paintings had been made the place seem ghostly. I turned the lights off in the gallery and put the CLOSED sign in the front door. Why was I so upset? Shouldn’t I be giddy? A great financial burden had just been lifted. It was an amazing sale that any other gallery would be celebrating by popping champagne. Why was I so morose? I didn’t have to ask that question. Somehow I had convinced myself that running the gallery was something more than sales. It was a higher calling. I’m sure that’s the way my father saw it. He had run the gallery on a personal level. It had to be something far more important to him than a way to make money for himself and his artists. But when you came down to it, there was very little separating the gallery from one of the hundreds of tourist curio shops that lined the art district. It was a fancy convenience market. Anyone could come in, pick out a painting, and lay money down. I was nothing more than a salesman, and that had absolutely no appeal to me.

  I left the gallery and drove to see my father. It had been a few days since I’d seen him, so I was surprised at how much progress he had made. First off, I could see that his color was better. And he could move his arm. He couldn’t lift it, but he could make it twitch and wriggle. His spirits were high because they’d just decided that the next move would be home, perhaps in a few days.

  I couldn’t hide my gloom.

  “What’s bothering you?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your voice. Your tone. I can tell.”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “In fact, things couldn’t be better. I just sold ten paintings.”

  “You don’t sound excited.”

  I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. I probably shouldn’t have tried to hide my feelings. That’s why I came to see him in the first place. “How did you do it?” I blurted out. “All those years!”

  “What happened?”

  “The people who bought the paintings today. They looked for maybe fifteen minutes tops. And they bought ten paintings without any more thought than I’d spend picking out a tub of butter. They chose them for the size, not anything artistic. I don’t think they even considered what the artist was trying to say.” I went on and kind of rambled.

  “Why does that bother you?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “It just does. It makes me feel cheap. Doesn’t bring any meaning to my life. I feel like crap.”

  “Have you called the artists?”

  “What?”

  “The artists whose work sold,” he said. “Were any of Earl’s bought?”

  “Two of them.”

  “You haven’t called him?”

  “No.”

  “That’s the first thing you should do.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s money involved,” he said. “But it’s more than that. It’s their life. They live to communicate.”

  “But that’s just it,” I said. “They’re not communicating. The people who bought them didn’t even really look at them. The paintings might as well be blank.”

  “How about the people who will see the paintings once they are hung. Who will they be?”

  “I don’t know. People. Just people. It’s just a law office.”

  “Even a law office deserves beauty,” he said, his arm vibrating. “Think of all the people who will see the paintings. They probably need art in their lives. Maybe one of them who’s being sued or is suffering will stop and look at them. They will bring comfort. They might help him. You never know who will see the paintings. The people who bought them may be lost, but that won’t prevent the works from reaching out to other people. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah,” was what I said.

  “Don’t forget the artists,” he said. “Do you think Earl paints so no one will see what he creates? Do you think he does it for fun? He doesn’t. He wants to move people. Wants to get them thinking. Wants to make a difference. A lot of people will see his work at the law office.”

  “You don’t think it would bother him that people chose his painting without any thought? Without ever thinking about what he was trying to say?”

  “Maybe a little,” said my dad. “But he’s moved on. When an artist finishes a work of art, he’s done with it. And by the time it’s hanging in the gallery it’s almost from another time. He’ll be pleased to have the money.”

  Then I said something that had been on my mind for days but hadn’t had the guts to talk to him about. It was something that had been calling my name. A feeling that grew larger every day. “I think we should sell the place.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Just because,” I said, overcome by emotion, holding everything inside and taking deep breaths to keep myself from losing it. “It doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s a burden. I can’t do it.”

  Unexpectedly, he simply said, “The
n sell it. I agree with you.”

  “You agree?”

  “I’ve spoken to your mother already about it. I think I knew this was coming. The gallery was mine. It was me. It was wrong of me to try to force it on you. I don’t know why you jumped in like you did. Maybe you felt like you had to be me for a while. I’m sure guilt was involved, too.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Mother has the name of a gallery broker who’s made inquiries over the years. I’m sure he can find a buyer.”

  “You’re not angry?”

  “No,” he said. “I love you. You’ve already made me proud. Exceeded my expectations many times over. Hold my hand.”

  I held my breath and my father’s hand and didn’t say anything else for a long time.

  25: Sidney Bernstein, M.D.

  I had been dreading it for quite some time, and had done everything in my power to put it off for as long as possible. It was a special, closed-door meeting of the state medical board, and I’d been called to give testimony. There was only one agenda item on the meeting: me. I had avoided this by being unreachable. How could they summon me to appear if they couldn’t contact me?

  It wasn’t long ago that I had dreams about a triumphant appearance before this very body. I imagined a very public forum with media in attendance and accolades galore. There would be speeches of praise and wonder. I would be raised to levels of unheard-of exaltedness.

  What had I been thinking?

  Stanley Gardner had been my ear, and he told me what I pretty much had feared and expected. I was considered an outlaw who needed to be reigned in, a cancer that must be excised. The news conference had branded me as a dangerous entity that must be stopped at all costs for two primary reasons.

  First, envy. The only thing worse than a physician’s ego is the combined egos of many physicians. Lavery’s procedure had made me a celebrity, albeit an infamous one I believe, and hateful darts of jealousy were directed at me. How dare I attempt such historic surgery without obtaining the consent of the region’s most respected physicians and those holding office on the state medical board? They were surprised and blind-sided by what I did, and that was not to be tolerated.