“By her guilt?”
“Regret, I think. But more than that, by a fear of being alone. I could feel it in her, whenever we said good-bye; the way she’d hold on to me, with this sort of fierceness. It was an odd embrace, hungry, almost like she thought she could weave us into one person. And that, I can understand. It’s so dreadful to think you’re alone in the world.”
It was a thought Stephen preferred not to consider. “But what about the painting? Natalie never told you anything about it? Or mentioned the other pieces?”
“Therese told me it’d been done by a friend of the family. I never asked about it. I never liked it, really. My aunt must have brought it with her when she bought the house or else sent it with Therese. I remember being afraid to look at it when I was little; Natalie’s expression was so intense. At some point I must have gotten used to it. Now I forget it’s there.”
“But you can see there’s something special about it, can’t you? Your father is a genius. I could look at that painting every day for the rest of my life and never get tired of seeing it.” He pulled a piece of paper from the sketch pad he’d been taking notes on and roughed out the main panel of the triptych for her. “If you could see the two pieces together, you’d be amazed by the transition of color. It’s seamless, from one panel to the next, brighter in the center, darker on each end, as if to convey something about the uncertainty of the future. The shadows in this panel, the light bleeding in from the window Natalie’s standing in front of, the strokes he used to paint her skirt—you can almost feel the suede fabric between your fingers when you look at it. It’s probably worth millions of dollars, Agnete. Even without the other panel.”
“I’d have traded that money to have my family without a second thought.” Agnete turned her head away from his sketch. “You’re just looking at layers of paint, Stephen. I’m looking at my life. All I see when I look at that painting now are the people missing from it.”
* * *
After dinner, Stephen took great pains to pose the Kessler women beneath the painting. Chairs were moved, objects brought into the field to add balance, the positions of arms and legs adjusted, faces turned, chins tilted up. Finch was exhausted and rapidly losing patience, especially when he could see Alice fading. “You’re not Stieglitz, Stephen. Take the picture. We’ve overstayed our welcome.”
Stephen waved Finch away but took several shots in quick succession and then several more of the painting alone.
“Professor Finch, would you take a picture of Stephen and me? I’m going to use it as blackmail to remind him he promised to buy one of my pieces.” Agnete favored him with a wide smile, and Finch felt his heart melt as he helped Alice from the hard chair where Stephen had deposited her. Bayber blood. Apparently he was powerless against it.
Stephen and Agnete struck a pose on the hearth, the two of them talking a blue streak. Their arms rested casually across each other’s shoulders, their heads bent together, one mass of inky hair. Had he ever in his life had that much energy? It seemed unlikely. Finch peered through the viewfinder of Stephen’s 35 mm, adjusting the lens, fiddling with the zoom, trying to bring Stephen and Agnete into focus. “Something’s wrong here,” he started, then pulled the camera away and looked at the two of them more closely, his heart in his throat. The identical shape of their faces, the aquiline noses, the high cheekbones—how had he not noticed it earlier? He peered into the viewfinder again, praying to see something other than the same high forehead on each of them. But there was nothing wrong with the camera. The picture was perfectly clear.
He sat down on the top step and held the camera out to Alice. “Could you . . .?”
“I’m afraid the buttons and dials are too small for my fingers.”
“No,” Finch said. “Just look.” He handed her the camera and concentrated on a nick in the step tile, not wanting to see her expression. She stared through the viewfinder for a long minute before setting the camera down. Then her hand was on his sleeve, and he turned to see in her face the same disbelief that must be in his own: eyes wide with shock, mouth slightly agape. He shook his head and closed his eyes before cursing Thomas under his breath. And Dylan’s wife, for good measure. So this was the reason he’d insisted on Stephen.
“You’re going to have to tell him,” Alice whispered.
Finch felt a fist constricting around his heart. “I don’t think I can,” he said.
“Finch, he’ll have to know. And soon.” She tilted her head toward the pair of them, chittering away in front of the fire.
* * *
Finch called for a cab, adamant that Agnete and Alice had done enough already and that everyone would benefit from a good night’s sleep. Agnete finally acquiesced, throwing her arms around his neck in an unexpected hug and pecking Stephen on the cheek. They left, agreeing to meet at the hotel for a late breakfast the next day. He was quiet during the short ride back to the hotel, doing his best not to look at Stephen.
“Finch, have I done something?”
“Hmmm? No, no. You haven’t done anything.” Finch gritted his teeth, grimacing at the truth of his words.
“Alice seemed a bit put off by me, I thought.”
“Really? I didn’t notice that,” Finch said, and stared out the rear window of the cab at the lights woven through tree branches, haloed and sparking in the cold air. “I imagine she’s still trying to absorb the day’s revelations. They seemed to be unending.”
At the hotel, Finch divvied up their correspondence before saying good night. He assigned Stephen the task of filling in Cranston and forwarding the photos he’d taken of the second triptych panel to the lab, while insisting he’d handle the update to Bayber himself. “And I’m turning this damn thing off,” he said, waving his cell phone in Stephen’s face. “Lydia has my room number if she needs me, as do you.”
Safely behind the locked door of his room, he collapsed on the bed. It was one thing to contemplate causing pain to a total stranger, as he’d done with Agnete. But she’d been only two-dimensional to him then, a figment imagined, not wholly believed. Stephen was real, an oddly endearing, frenetic, brilliant mess, desperate for approval from the one person who could no longer give it to him—the man he knew as his father.
The thought that he might be forced to tell Stephen a truth that would likely upend him was more than Finch could stand. Help me, Claire. He closed his eyes and buried his face against the starch of the bedsheet in fervent prayer—that it would not be now her voice faded away from him for good, a star slipping out of the dark sky into a void of silence.
Her breath was on his cheek. It pains me to see you like this.
What do I do?
There was silence, in which he could count every day she’d been gone from him as a dull strike against his heart. What was it you said to Alice when she asked you about Natalie, earlier? I will say the same thing to you now. Stephen is an adult. He will come to his own conclusions regarding what you tell him, and make his own judgments of those involved.
But he will be hurt.
Yes. But he will be healed, as well. He has more family than he imagined. A half sister, and her mother. And the man her mother loves, and that man’s nephew, and the woman who cares for them all. And you, Denny. Aren’t you his friend?
That’s not the same thing.
She gave a derisive snort, and her hair tickled against his ear. Oh, isn’t it? Go to sleep now, you foolish gizzard. You’ve worn yourself down to the bone. You’ll have to build up your strength if you expect to be toting any grandchild of mine around on the back of your stubborn neck.
* * *
In his hotel room, too keyed up to sleep, Stephen downloaded the photos from camera to laptop, then quickly forwarded them to the lab and knocked out the message to Cranston. Risking Finch’s wrath, which had yet to be so severe he couldn’t cajole him out of it, he e-mailed a few of the pictures to Mrs. Blankenship, instructing her to print them out and show them to Bayber as soon as possible: Agnete in the backyar
d standing next to one of her sculptures; Alice and Agnete seated under the painting; and then on a whim, and to show Bayber his daughter seemed fond enough of the men he’d tasked with finding her, the picture of himself sitting next to Agnete on the fireplace hearth. Having finished, he stretched out on the bed and folded his arms behind his head, staring at the low beams of the ceiling and trying to puzzle out where the third panel could be.
Both Alice and Agnete claimed never to have seen the remaining triptych panel, and there was little reason for them to lie. Now that he and Finch had found the second panel, Stephen felt confident the third would have as its subject a pregnant Alice, since the painting of Natalie and Agnete resembled the second photograph Natalie had sent to Bayber.
Everything turned back to Natalie. Stephen put a hand over his eyes and focused on her, trying to steal his way into Natalie’s head. She was clever enough to have known the painting’s value, so it was unlikely she would have disposed of it. That thought alone caused him to shudder, a ruined and slashed Bayber sitting atop a trash heap, or charred beyond recognition, the singed frame smoldering in an alley somewhere. No. She was smarter than that. Keeping it, and keeping it hidden, would have pleased her, thinking only she and Thomas knew of its existence. Another thing linking them. Another secret kept from Alice.
So if she hadn’t gotten rid of it, it was stashed somewhere. She couldn’t risk insuring it without revealing its existence. He could think of only two possibilities: George Reston, Jr., or the Edells. While he wished it would be in the hands of the oblivious and slightly dim-witted Edells, the far more likely scenario, also the more distasteful, was that Natalie had instructed George to hold on to the painting. If George knew Natalie was dead, Stephen was certain he would sell the painting as quickly as possible. The idea that another appraiser at another auction house might be working on the catalogue description at this minute was enough to sour Stephen’s stomach and send bright screws of light spiraling into his brain. He and Finch had to find the painting before someone else did.
He squinted at the bedside lamp, fumbling to turn it off, then dragged himself into the bathroom, retrieving a cold cloth for his head. On his way back to bed, he turned down the thermostat and waited until the fan stopped whirring and blasting the room with hot air before crawling between the sheets. Morning would come soon enough, and he would have another chance to prompt Agnete into remembering some elusive but critical detail that would provide him with the answer.
* * *
The yolks ran across his plate in a river of yellow, into the soft mash of beans he’d pushed to the side. It was a mistake eating eggs after eleven-thirty in the morning, Stephen decided. They’d outlived their appeal by that hour, and he eyed Finch’s untouched sandwich enviously, the flagrant red of a charred pepper peeking out between toasted bread and a glob of pale, milky cheese. Ordering poorly was always a disappointment. He gulped his latte instead, and considered ordering churros, a food that could be enjoyed regardless of the hour.
In spite of what Finch had claimed the night before, Alice was definitely avoiding him, scarcely able to look him in the eye. She was sitting behind a plate of blue cornmeal pancakes, and he felt sure she’d rather be in her own kitchen, eating Saisee’s grits. Finch kept his coffee cup to his mouth, and even Agnete was subdued, pushing pieces of food around her plate as if excavating something. Evidently the responsibility of starting the conversation was going to fall to him. He was about to tackle the subject of auctioning the triptych, providing the missing panel could be found, when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Ignoring Finch’s glare, he pulled it out and checked the number. Mrs. Blankenship. He excused himself from the table, due to Finch’s vigorous nod in the direction of the lobby more than a sudden glut of manners, and sank into one of the deep leather chairs to check his messages. There were three from Mrs. Blankenship, beginning at six o’clock that morning Santa Fe time. Eight o’clock in New York. She likely hadn’t been able to reach Finch, with his phone off. It was early for her to be calling, unless she’d had a problem downloading the file he’d sent. She’d finally left a message with the third call, a little more than an hour ago, and just before it played, Stephen was gripped by something awful and familiar, a memory he had desperately tried to keep at the far back of his brain: his mother’s calls while he was in Rome.
He didn’t remember walking back into the dining room, or sitting down again in his chair, or putting his napkin in his lap. He only remembered that there was something he should definitely not say in front of Alice. In front of Agnete. He looked at Finch and realized it would hurt Finch just as much, in a different kind of way. If no one asked him, he wouldn’t have to say anything, and until he said it, it didn’t have to be true.
“Stephen?” Finch said, suddenly alarmed.
He was crying. He couldn’t remember crying before, in Rome, with his mother’s quavering voice on the other end of the line; or at his father’s wake, while waiting for the never-ending procession of mourners to snake past him in the receiving line. He couldn’t even remember crying at the funeral, standing outside in the rain, with his face already frozen and wet. But he didn’t have to say anything to Finch after all; Finch, who somehow knew him so well, and knew exactly what had happened without Stephen having to say a word.
Everything after—the decisions, the plans, the phone calls, the flights—was a blizzard. All the information fell around him in a blanket; he waited for someone to point him in a direction and give him a shove. Go here, do this, pack that. Finch collected the details from Mrs. Blankenship: Thomas had been improving; then he hadn’t. Thomas saw the photos Stephen had sent and seemed to rally, but when she went in a little later with his breakfast, he had a fever and his coloring looked off. She called the doctor, and then on the recommendation of the day nurse called for an ambulance. He’d died with the pictures clutched in his hand.
“I let him down,” Stephen told Finch, while they were waiting for Alice and Agnete to return to the hotel with their own luggage.
“Stephen, you gave him his reunion, even if he wasn’t there to see it.” Finch seemed to choose his words carefully, speaking to him slowly, as if he was a child. “He was very ill. Liver failure, the doctor said, among other things. He wasn’t going to get better. You know that, don’t you?” Finch’s voice floated over him, a cloud of comfort. “If you can, you’ll need to help Agnete. Try to remember, she never had the chance to meet her father. Not once.”
Finch had spent more than an hour on the phone trying to get a direct flight to New York for the two of them, but it was too close to the holiday and everything was booked or involved convoluted routes, hours in the air and on the ground. It was decided they would keep their existing reservations and go back to Tennessee with Alice and Agnete for a couple of days, all of them making their way to New York from there.
“I need to go home first,” Alice said, and Stephen noted her tentative emphasis on the word home, as though trying it on for size. “I have to see Phinneaus.” She said it the same way she might have said I have to have air.
She was more shaken than Stephen would have thought, considering she hadn’t seen Thomas for over thirty-five years. It was the compression of too many surprises, he assumed, everything spring-loaded like a jack-in-the-box, jumping out at her with flailing arms when she hadn’t expected it. They huddled together in lines, and at points of departure, and sat next to each other on the airplane, four ashen, grim-looking people who periodically cried but rarely at the same time or for the same reason. Phinneaus picked them up in Memphis.
“You should drive,” Stephen said to him, his voice dulled from breathing in the recycled air of transit.
“Stephen, it’s my car,” Phinneaus said.
“Right. Just don’t give the keys to Finch. He’s a lunatic behind the wheel.”
“Get in the backseat, Stephen.”
At least when he was riding with Finch, Stephen could claim shotgun. Now, instead, he was crammed into th
e back with Agnete and Finch, Finch sitting between the two of them since his legs were shortest. On the drive to Orion, Stephen dozed in fits and starts, jerking awake in a state of disorientation, unsure of where he was. Alice sat so close to Phinneaus in the front seat that in the dimming light it was hard for Stephen to tell where one stopped and the other started. He realized he would soon be alone again. After the funeral Alice and Phinneaus would come back to Tennessee and Agnete would eventually end up back in Santa Fe. Finch would no doubt be consumed with his impending grandfatherhood and his teaching. The professor snorted in his sleep; his head lolled to the side. Who was going to watch out for the man after all this was over? Not Lydia—she and the Kelvin would soon be otherwise occupied. Stephen managed to extricate himself from his coat and wedge it against Finch’s neck. Who would caution him about his reckless driving? Who would understand his misguided and, ultimately, mistaken arguments regarding the importance of American Regionalism? With or without the final panel, whether in a slightly larger office or in the same dank square he currently inhabited, Stephen was the only one going back to the same life. Bayber was gone, and the thing Stephen had most wanted to achieve, bringing back the two panels, had eluded him.
In Orion, he fell through the front door of the house he’d seen only once before, grateful for the familiarity of something—the sound of Saisee’s voice, the smell of her cooking, the warm, fragrant air of the kitchen. There was Frankie, who after lightly hugging Alice, astonished Stephen by wrapping his arms around his knees, locking him to the spot where he stood, a more enthusiastic welcome than the one he’d received previously.
“Your eye’s much better now,” Frankie said.
How long had it been, in child days, since he’d been here? In adult time, it seemed eons. Saisee bustled about, busy and happy to have a house full of people who needed her, to have mouths to feed and clothes to wash and rooms to assign. She’d never known Thomas and had no connection with him save for Agnete, whom she treated like a long-lost doll, smoothing her hair and fingering the fabric of her coat while she clucked and hovered over her.
The Gravity of Birds: A Novel Page 34
