Restoration

by John Ed Bradley

  After they were gone she rapped on the door and I opened it. Joe Butler had left the bedroom and come up behind me and Rondell Cherry was standing there, too. None of us had to ask Rhys how it went. You could see the answer in her face.

  “Was it really that good?” I said.

  “I don’t think they were quite prepared,” she replied. “Mr. Anderson cried. Mrs. Anderson asked if she could touch the figures of Jacqueline and Levette. I told her she could grope them if she liked. This got her to laugh, but her hands were trembling when she reached to place them on the canvas.”

  “They liked it, huh?” Rondell Cherry said.

  “Yes, Mr. Cherry. They liked it.”

  Taylor Dickel came next. He was easier to hear than the Andersons had been because he was a shouter, and a drunken one. “Oh, shit, will you look at that!” he said. Dickel had one of those voices with the old, benighted South in it. The old, benighted South was in short supply these days, but it had a foothold in him. “You knew he had a thing for my mama, didn’t you, Rhys? Yes, he did. Old Levette had a thing. Hey, well, lookee here. Is that Mama? Hell, Rhys, that ain’t Mama…. Who is that? That’s him, all right. That’s Levette. But who on earth is that? Who’s he with? Jesusgodawmighty! Will you look at all them homos!”

  Rhys opened the door and stuck her head inside. Her cheeks were burning red. “Where’s Joe Butler?”

  “Watching TV in the bedroom.”

  “Jack, will you please pour Mr. Dickel a drink. He wants bourbon. Forget I said only a jigger. Give him a glassful in a plastic cup.”

  “Why don’t I pour it in a regular glass?”

  “No, I’m about to run him out of here. Make sure it’s plastic.”

  I did as instructed and five minutes later she’d succeeded in escorting him out into the hall. As he stumbled away I could hear him conversing with the same invisible man all hard-core drunks seem to converse with. “Get me out of this place! Where’s the elevator? Hey, hombre, you call that art? Come here. That’s right, come here. I’ll show you… I’ll show you some art…”

  Although doing so broke one of Rhys’s rules, I looked outside and saw Dickel staggering down the hall. The cup lay in the middle of the floor, with ice cubes scattered on the carpet. Dickel moved on to the elevators, beside which stood several houseplants. “Hang on a minute!” he yelled to his invisible friend, then chose the rhododendron on which to relieve himself.

  At noon we ordered club sandwiches and chocolate cake from room service. In the other suite Rhys was showing the mural to Sam Horowitz of Greenville, Mississippi, a plantation owner with a helicopter pad on the edge of one of his cotton fields. Joe Butler excused himself and toted his tray to the bedroom. Even though three hours had now passed, Rondell Cherry was still reading the paper, his glasses poised at the end of his nose. With his left hand he dipped French fries in a puddle of ketchup; with his right he made circles around listings in the Classifieds. “You shopping for something in particular, Mr. Cherry?” I asked, past my own mouthful of deep-fried potato.

  “Just a job,” he answered.

  The room became quiet again. I watched as he ate, read and circled, all at once.

  “I wish I was a registered nurse. I’d have me some benefits and paid vacation time.” He put down the fries and the pen and touched the bandage on his cheek. “I’m not going to work at no Taco Bell, I can promise you that.”

  “You should ’ve kept that money Tommy Smallwood paid you for the mural, Mr. Cherry. I don’t think anyone would’ve said anything.”

  “That money wasn’t mine to keep, Jack. I thought we already been through that.” He lowered the paper and looked at me over his glasses. “I guess you heard, huh?”

  “Heard what?”

  “About that money.”

  “You paid it to a lawyer for Mrs. Wheeler. His retainer, you said.”

  “I did pay the man. But Miss Wheeler went behind my back and let him go and got back with this so-called niece.”

  “She rehired Alice O’Neil?”

  “That’s it. She rehired Alice O’Neil. The man called me last week and was real nice but said Miss Wheeler had told him his services were no longer needed. He said he tried to talk her out of it but she wouldn’t listen to reason. I told him I understood completely. You know what I think? I think she went and hired herself a shopping partner in this Alice because what those two women do together has nothing to do with the law, I can promise you that. Dillard’s, Bombay Company, Adler’s Jewelry, Chick-fil-A. That’s always last, the Chickfil-A. They sit in the food court with their cigarettes and waffle fries and look at the hairdos and the clothes the other women are wearing. I’ll tell you what else I think. I think she’s tired of the aggravation and ready to give up the school.”

  “Maybe she should.”

  “My wife says the same thing. Maybe she should.”

  “If she doesn’t go to jail first for taking all that grant money.”

  Cherry laid the paper down on the coffee table and pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “You didn’t hear about them applications from me, Jack.”

  “No, it came from the horse’s mouth, actually. Mrs. Wheeler told Rhys about it the first time they met. You remember when I got my hair cut?”

  He nodded.

  “It was then, while I was outside waiting on the steps.”

  “All right,” he said. “I guess Miss Wheeler misspoke. Or maybe it was Rhys that didn’t hear her right.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  “She filled out the applications, Miss Wheeler did. And she sent a bunch in. But to my understanding the goverment never gave her any money. They caught her red-handed at the start. Miss Wheeler’s a good lady, she’s real good. But she’s getting on in years now and her mind tends to wander. Turns out she went and put her own signature on every one of them applications.”

  “She did what?”

  He nodded again. “Let’s say it was one for Tammy Rideau—Tammy was at the school a few years ago…. After Miss Wheeler filled in all the information for Tammy they had a place that said ‘Sign Here’ or ‘Your Signature’ or something like that. Well, instead of ‘Tammy Rideau’ Miss Wheeler signed her own name. ‘Gail Wheeler,’ she put. It was easy to catch, even for the government. Hey, Jack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You want the rest of your fries?”

  “No.”

  “What about your cake?”

  I brought my tray over and placed it on the edge of the coffee table. “Mr. Cherry, you know how Mrs. Wheeler turns around and looks up at the building every day after work when she comes down the stairs and reaches the sidewalk?”

  “You caught that, too, huh?”

  “What’s she doing? Was that something she did when Mr. Wheeler was alive?”

  “Do what, now?”

  “I just wondered if that was their little love thing. You know, would he be watching from a window upstairs? It’s kind of sad. She seems to look at the windows as if searching for his face or something.”

  “Searching for his face? For Mr. Wheeler’s face?” He shook his head, then forked up a piece of cake. “You ever see Mr. Wheeler’s face? It wasn’t a face you looked for. It was a face you looked away from.”

  “Then why does she stare at the building that way?”

  He took another bite and smiled, and I could see the chocolate icing coating his teeth. “Curtains. She’s been talking about curtains. Says the sun from the windows hurts her eyes. I guess that’s one of the things they look for at the mall, Miss Wheeler and this so-called niece. JCPenney, Sears. They carry curtains, don’t they?”

  Between her four o’clock and her five o’clock I asked Rhys to join me downstairs in the lobby for a talk. She refused, saying she’d come this far and didn’t want to leave the mural yet. “Why can’t we talk here, Jack?”

  I glanced at Cherry. “I was hoping for some private time with you, Rhys.”

  “Private time,�
� she said with a look of impatience, then waved me over to the suite with the painting.

  We walked back to the bedroom. She closed the door and sat on the edge of the bed and removed her shoes and started rubbing her feet. The bed had a mirrored canopy and I could see Rhys massaging her feet in the ceiling of smoky glass.

  “If you’re too tired,” I said, “I don’t mind waiting until later.”

  “No. I’d rather you told me now. Something obviously is bothering you.”

  “It’s more like a few things,” I said. “Like three things, to be precise.” I was standing against the wall, with my hands behind my back, palms flat against the textured paper. “It’s probably nothing, Rhys, I hope so, anyway. But one day when I visited Mrs. Wheeler she said something that’s stuck with me ever since. Mr. Cherry was leaving to go to his son’s ball game, and she said, ‘Them blacks sure like their sports,’ or something like that.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “And?”

  “It sounded like something a real cracker would say. And it made me wonder, yet again, why we’re taking such risks for this person we don’t really know. I didn’t respond to what she said, but I wish now that I’d asked her what other things blacks liked. Or where sports ranked behind watermelon and fried chicken.”

  “What else, Jack?” She was still running her hands over her feet. “You said there were three things.”

  “Well, Mr. Cherry just told me she didn’t actually receive any grant money for those phony applications. She sent them off and not long after the agents from Baton Rouge started coming around. They caught on to her right at the start.”

  “And?”

  “And it made me wonder, Rhys, can these people all be cruel and heartless? They can’t be, can they? She’s an old woman with a crappy little hair school nobody wants to go to anymore. You would think they’d recognize that. You’d also think they’d be smart enough to leave her alone and let time and her own ignorance determine the fate of Wheeler Beauty Academy. To my knowledge she hasn’t been indicted and charged with anything yet. But here we are peddling off the greatest thing either of us has ever seen and we’re doing it for the sole purpose of raising money to throw at a situation and a woman that should be left alone. Or I think that’s why we’re doing it.”

  Rhys put on her shoes and leaned back with her arms propped behind her. She glanced up and saw herself in the mirror and immediately turned away. “And the third, Jack? You said there were three things.”

  “The third came to me this morning, as I watched Taylor Dickel water a potted plant down the hall. I don’t know how to say this except to say it. I can’t be polite about it. But I don’t see why someone like that asshole should have the mural.”

  “The high bidder wins the auction. It’s not always fair, but that’s how it works. Do you think the lowest bidder should get the painting?”

  “I didn’t finish,” I said. “Rhys, for weeks now I’ve listened patiently to your rants against the government as if it were the army of the devil. You’ve made it out to be evil and corrupt, without a care for anybody. But it was always my understanding that the government belonged to the people. Hell, I was even gullible enough to believe that it was the people. We’ve been showing these rich collectors Levette’s mural, but how can we let only one of them have it? It’s so beautiful, Rhys, and we both know how important it is. Maybe Asmore didn’t die for his painting, but he died because he couldn’t tolerate a world in which a picture such as the one he created had no place. I don’t want to sound sanctimonious here, and forgive me if I sound like Jimmy Stewart in some old piece of thirties corn pone… but, Rhys, dammit, that mural doesn’t belong to any one man. It belongs to all men and to all women and to all the little children, and it belongs to them equally, without prejudice whether they’re black or white or gay or straight or rich or poor. What I’m saying is, you need to stop this sale. You need to stop it and tell those collectors to go on home, because you, Rhys Goudeau, granddaughter of the artist, have changed your mind.”

  “I should, should I?”

  “Yes. Yes, you should. And you should then donate the painting to a place where people can come and see it and learn from it. You owe that to Levette. How do you think he would feel watching his mural being sold off to some bigot just because the man has more money than everybody else? ‘It’s not about what they’re worth,’ you told me once. ‘It’s about what they are.’ But look at where we are today.”

  She opened the door and stood gazing out for a moment, then she closed it again behind her. “You finished, Jack?”

  “Yeah, I’m finished.”

  “Was that your three things?”

  “Three, maybe three and a half.”

  “Because I intend to kiss you now, Jack Charbonnet.” And that was what she did, pressing up against me as I kept close to the wall, the feeling of her mouth willingly given to mine better than I ever dreamed it. Even after she pulled away, it felt like a while before my heart started to beat again. “Trust me, Jack,” she said. “Always trust me.”

  “Trust you?”

  “Trust me.” Then she walked out to greet her five o’clock.

  Tommy Smallwood arrived fourteen minutes late for his scheduled viewing. Accompanied by Mary Thomas Jones, he was the only visitor who threatened to break one of Rhys’s rules. Positioned in the hallway outside the door, Rhys was studying the minute hand of her wristwatch when he and the conservator stepped off the elevator and came loping toward her.

  “Ten seconds later and I’d have had no choice but to lock you out,” Rhys said.

  “Go on,” said Smallwood, pretending to doubt her.

  Until now Rhys had kept us quarantined next door, but for Smallwood’s visit she’d insisted we stand close to the mural and effect poses meant to appear menacing. Smallwood strode past Joe Butler and me without saying anything and approached Rondell Cherry. “What happened to your face, my man? Cut yourself shaving?”

  Cherry’s body tensed and knots worked at the points of his jaw, but he somehow managed to keep his temper in check. From his nostrils came a noisy exhalation, like a bull about to charge. “I hope it didn’t hurt,” Smallwood said.

  “Leave the man alone,” Joe Butler said, stepping up between them.

  “Go stand there,” Rhys said, shoving Smallwood to the other side of the room.

  We stood back and watched as Mary Thomas Jones ran her fingers over the painting’s surface and studied it under a loupe. Next she produced a black light and asked Rhys to close the blinds and curtains and to shut off the photoflood lamps. Once the room was dark she held the glowing purple light an inch or two from the surface and swept it over the image from left to right, rather in the motion of a windshield wiper. Even from where I stood several feet away I could see areas that appeared dark purple against the light. “So it’s required considerable retouch, has it?”

  “Not considerable, Mary. That’s an exaggeration.”

  “But here on this section I find in-painting on parallel lines from the top to the bottom of the canvas. Was there damage?”

  “Yes, there was. The canvas tore away in a strip before I got it in studio.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad.” Now she turned her attention to the back of the painting. “And you relined it, each panel?”

  “I lined each panel, yes.”

  “And you relined the old way. Why didn’t you use a Beva lining, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “You should know why, Mary.”

  “Edify me. Please. I’m all ears.”

  “I prefer wax lining for several reasons,” Rhys said. “To start, it’s been good enough for the Europeans for five hundred years, so why shouldn’t it be good enough for me now? Also, it’s stable and organic, and it’s easily reversible. Beva lining, on the other hand, requires a synthetic adhesive and a polyester fabric in a process that dates back only about twenty years, if that long. I’ve seen other conservators—you, for instance, Mary—seriously damage a paint layer b
ecause the solvents you used to correct a Beva lining were too strong. Lastly, Mary, Beva lining stinks. It smells like chemicals. And it costs too much.” Rhys glanced at her watch. “Mr. Smallwood, you have twelve minutes left. Shall I continue to take this woman’s obnoxious questions or do you want to examine the painting?”

  “Mary, move over,” Smallwood said.

  She stumbled away and Smallwood dropped to a crouch and positioned his face close to the painting. His nostrils flared and his eyes fluttered closed as he sniffed the surface, and I was reminded of Patrick Marion’s story about the intruder in his apartment who’d seemed as eager to smell the painting as to see it. In this case Smallwood inhaled a warm scent of honey from the beeswax lining. He huffed and puffed like a man on the verge of orgasm, then gave his head a violent shake and instantly came out of it. “Sweet Jesus,” he muttered, and removed a pair of white gloves from an inner pocket of his jacket. He put them on and began to caress the figures of the lovers at the mural’s center. I turned to Rhys and registered the edge of pain on her face. One might’ve thought that she herself was being violated. “Mary, did you count the coloreds?” he said.

  The conservator, already humiliated, smiled weakly at him. She shook her head.

  “If you’re counting the coloreds, don’t forget me,” Rondell Cherry said from his corner ten feet away. “I’m a colored. Born and raised a colored.”

  Smallwood wheeled around and stared. “I meant the ones in the painting, Rondell. The Negroes in the painting.”

  “Me, too,” Joe Butler said. “If you’re counting the Negroes count me in, too. I’m a Negro and always have been a Negro, long as I can remember.”

  “You ain’t no goddamned—”

  “And me,” said Rhys, cutting him off. “You shouldn’t forget me, either, Mr. Smallwood, if you insist on counting them.”

  “What the hell is going on around here?” he shouted, glaring at each of them. “I was talking about the painting!”