by Wendy Lee
Now that she was officially the owner of the Lowry Gallery, Caroline decided to adopt her mother’s maiden name—Hazel’s last name. She had never liked her father’s last name of Russo and Bob’s last name, Kleinman, had never sounded right to her. By changing her name, she felt closer to Hazel than ever.
* * *
After a few days of reveling in the sight of Elegy in her own home, Caroline contacted Harold Yu to tell him the painting had been restored and was ready for purchase. He replied within the day that he had scheduled a trip to New York at the end of the following week, and would meet with her then. Meanwhile, could she line up an expert to verify the painting’s authenticity?
Caroline planned carefully for that Friday. Peter, of course, would serve as the expert. She told Molly to take the day off, as she couldn’t have the girl, with her sharp eyes and inquisitive nature, hanging around. Molly said she’d take the opportunity to go visit her parents for a long weekend, and even asked Caroline what she thought would be a good gift to take for her mother. Caroline had no idea what Rose’s tastes were like now, but recommended a local store that sold handmade ceramics at ridiculous prices.
That morning she was nervous and skipped breakfast. Peter, who had come early for moral support as well as his later role, told her she had nothing to worry about.
“Where did this painting hang the last time you saw it?” he asked.
Caroline assessed the gallery, which hadn’t changed in configuration since Hazel had owned it. She walked over to one of the walls. “Here,” she said.
“Then let’s put it where it belongs.”
Together, she and Peter removed the Sandro Hess painting that hung there and replaced it with Elegy. Peter was right, it did look like it belonged there; although perhaps, she thought to herself, less so than in her own living room.
“Much more impressive,” Peter observed, then put a hand on her arm. “Caro, you’re shaking.”
“I just haven’t had anything to eat this morning. Aren’t you concerned?”
“Why should I be? There’s no way Mr. Yu has connected the two of us, and even if he did, why does it matter? I still have the credentials. I can still give a good talk.”
“I’m sure you can.”
Caroline had just allowed herself to relax slightly when Peter tilted his head. “There’s our man.”
She conjured a smile to her face and went to let Harold Yu in, taking care to lock the door after him and make sure the TEMPORARILY CLOSED sign she’d asked Molly to make the day before was affixed to the outside. She didn’t want to take the chance of anyone walking in on them.
Harold Yu was as impeccably dressed as last time. He refused any refreshment, and went straight to the painting displayed on the wall. He looked at it for so long and without saying a word that Caroline wondered whether he had changed his mind.
Then he turned to Peter. “This is the expert?” he asked.
Peter rushed forward to introduce himself—too eagerly, Caroline thought—with his hand extended. Yu took it, and then mid-shake looked over Peter’s head toward the front of the gallery, where someone was trying to rattle the door open.
“I’ll get that,” Caroline said hastily. “Probably the mailman.” Who can’t read.
Before she could move, though, Molly’s voice tentatively rang out, “Is anyone there?”
Caroline went to intercept her untimely assistant while Peter attempted to regain Yu’s attention. She tried to keep the irritation from her voice as she asked the girl, “Molly, what are you doing here? I gave you the day off. I thought you were going to visit your parents.”
Molly emerged from behind the front desk, having dropped an overnight bag on her chair. “I was,” she said, pushing back her hair from her face. “I just forgot this.” She held up a bag from the ceramics store Caroline had mentioned. “I got my mom something from there, like you suggested. Do you want to see it?”
With one ear alert as to what was happening on the other side of the room, Caroline said, “Sure.” Probably best to go along with the girl and hopefully she’d leave soon.
From the bag Molly withdrew a white porcelain vase in the shape of a squirrel. “You think she’ll like it?”
“Of course. It’s a great choice.” Privately, it was one of the most ridiculous things Caroline had ever seen, more like a joke gift. But it had probably cost Molly half her week’s wages, given what little she was paid.
Peter’s voice could be heard from across the room and Molly said, “Oh, do you have a client?” Before Caroline could react, she left her desk and Caroline heard her say, “Hey, Peter, nice to see you again. And Mr. Yu, isn’t it?” Caroline recalled that Yu had given Molly his card, as well.
When Caroline caught up with Molly, she and Peter gave each other resigned looks over the girl’s head. Might as well proceed as planned; there was nothing about the situation that would lead Molly to think this wasn’t a regular sale. Perhaps she would even learn something.
“Isn’t that an Andrew Cantrell?” Molly said next. Now the look Peter shot Caroline was tinged with alarm.
“Yes,” Caroline replied easily, thinking that the girl must have recognized it from the catalogs she’d asked her to clear out of the basement.
But Molly added, “I’ve seen it in one of my art history classes.”
“You have?” Yu seemed to find this an interesting fact. “This painting is well-known enough to be in an American textbook?”
“It was quite well known during its time.” Peter stepped in.
“But I thought it was destroyed in a fire?” Molly turned questioning eyes to Caroline, who cleared her throat.
“Well, yes, it was assumed lost for many years. But it turned out my aunt Hazel, who owned this gallery before me, kept it in storage. I only found out about it recently.”
Molly subsided as Peter continued his spiel about why he thought the painting was authentic. He had brought color reproductions of Cantrell’s other paintings, which he used to compare brushstrokes. He sounded, Caroline had to admit, like he knew what he was talking about. Yu seemed to believe him, too, occasionally nodding, which Caroline found herself unconsciously imitating. Molly stood to the side, her arms folded, without an expression on her face.
“Does this meet with your satisfaction, Mr. Yu?” Caroline finally asked.
“It does. But I will need the weekend to make my final decision. I am flying back to Taiwan on Monday and will let you know that morning.”
“Certainly,” was all Caroline could say. She had thought Yu seemed convinced, but now she had no idea what was going on behind this man’s polite, unreadable exterior.
She was about to tell Peter this, after Yu had left the gallery, when she realized Molly was still there. “Don’t you have a train to catch?” she snapped, and Molly jumped to collect her bags and left.
Chapter 7
When I called my mother to tell her I was coming to visit for the weekend, I could sense the knee-jerk panic in her hesitation, before she said cheerfully, “Of course! Your father and I will be happy to have you.” You’d think she’d be more excited at the idea of a visit from her only daughter, but her hesitation was a natural reflex from earlier that year, when I’d announced two months before graduation that I was coming home.
“It isn’t for long, is it?” she had asked that time. “Did you get into a fight with Sam? You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?” I could already tell the possibilities that were racing through her head: pregnancy, depression, an eating disorder, an altercation with the law.
“Can we talk about it later?” I replied.
“Sure, sweetheart, of course. Your father will pick you up at the train station.”
When I’d called her that time, I was crossing campus with a duffel bag of things I’d retrieved from my dorm room. It hadn’t taken me long to pack up. I barely slept there anyway, preferring to take advantage of Sam’s perpetually absent roommate. While I hadn’t fought with Sam, he also
didn’t approve of my decision to leave school. At the moment, though, I had no choice. I had been suspended for the rest of the month, and I’d decided I wasn’t coming back.
As I walked across the main lawn, I noticed all the signs of spring—students in short sleeves, tender green grass, white and pink flowers on the trees, the occasional sound of someone allergic sneezing. It was a picture straight out of a catalog. If not for the actual college, then for one selling preppy clothes that let you pretend you went there.
My school, Amberlin College, was known for its New Hampshire location, lenient pass/fail policy, and focus on sustainability. The most popular classes involved farming skills and food preservation, in which students learned how to can vegetables from the college’s hundred-acre farm, which were then served in the cafeteria over the winter months. For someone like Sam, it was a perfect blend of food-based academics and practicality. For me, not so much. Amberlin had a small art history department but no applied arts.
The nearest town to Amberlin was so small that I had to take a bus to Boston before catching a train to Hartford. By the time my father picked me up from the station, it was after dark. He nodded amiably to me as I threw my bag into the backseat and got into the front. The radio was tuned to the Red Sox game so we didn’t speak at all for the twenty-minute drive home, but that wasn’t unusual. My mother was the one who worried for the both of them.
“Are you hungry?” was the first thing she asked when I arrived. Then, without waiting for an answer, “I put aside some dinner for you.”
Although my mother made elaborate meals while my brothers and I were growing up—exotic stir-fries, pungent curries—she stopped after I left for college. One weekend I came home to find my father eating a microwaveable meal in front of his computer. Meanwhile, my mother had parked herself in front of the television in the living room with a prepackaged salad.
That night, though, I ate whatever my mother put in front of me, also so that there wouldn’t be any opportunity for her to ask questions. She watched me scarf my food, a worried look on her face. When I was done, I said, “I’m feeling kind of tired. I think I’ll go to bed.”
“Okay,” my mother replied reluctantly. “Sleep well.”
My brothers’ rooms and my room all had been transformed into something else—Josh’s into an office for my dad, Ricky’s into a craft room for my mother, and mine into a guest room. I was the only one who regularly came home. Josh was married and had two kids, so they rented a vacation house whenever they came for the holidays. Ricky, who had a rotating cast of girlfriends, preferred to stay in a hotel. They were twelve and ten years older than me, so we weren’t that close growing up. Too old to even tease me about being an accident when my parents thought they were done with having kids.
I did once overhear Josh on the phone telling my mother she indulged me too much. He must have been in his late twenties and just thinking about settling down with his now wife, and worried about inheriting our mother and father’s parenting skills. I would have been sixteen and had just decided to quit an expensive backpacking program, after my parents had paid the nonrefundable deposit, because my best friend had decided to drop out of it. Vanessa and I were supposed to have spent the summer hiking the Appalachian Trail, bonding with eight other girls and learning how to be self-sufficient. The only person I wanted to bond with—or rather, re-bond with—was my best friend since sixth grade, whom I was quickly losing to an older boyfriend and his pothead crowd at school. I’d explained it this way to my mother, who said she understood how important friendships were at that age, and helped convince my father to pull me from the program. So maybe they were indulging me, because there was no doubt spending three weeks in the woods would have toughened me up, and Vanessa and I lost touch after we’d gone to college anyway.
They were less enthusiastic about my choice of major, although they were also committed to letting their children make their own mistakes. I didn’t know how they would take my deciding to leave school, though, especially with graduation so close. At some point I would be ready to tell them, but that first night back home in the guest room, lying between crisp, fresh sheets, I just didn’t want to think about it anymore.
I did wonder, however, where my old roommate Kimi was. Whether she was currently tucked in bed at her parents’ the way I was. Wherever she had ended up, I hoped she was safe.
* * *
Kimi Kitano was the one who had introduced me to Sam, if you can call it an introduction. She was half Japanese and half white, wore dyed blond dreads covered with a blue bandana, and printed Indian skirts over her jeans. Although she insisted her hair color was natural, the shape of her eyes gave her away. She told me she’d grown up with three sisters—all home-schooled, of course—in a yurt her father had built in upstate New York.
Although Kimi and I had shared a number of classes, I knew her better by reputation. She called herself a performance artist, and the previous spring had entertained the student body with a project in which she’d knitted wool sweaters and put them on Amberlin’s flock of sheep after they’d been sheared. Then she’d released the sheep, and they’d run across the main lawn, disrupted classes, and snarled traffic in town. I’d watched them out of the window of the library, where I’d gone to study. Something about those sheep, dressed in their new, rainbow-colored coats, was pure joy.
When I told Kimi that I wanted to be an artist, too, although in a more traditional sense, she said, “Never apologize for who you are, Molly. You’re already an artist by existing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our interaction right here.” We were sitting opposite each other on our beds, and she pointed to the space between us. “We’re performing right now.”
“About what?”
“Daily rituals. Female friendship. The art of conversation.”
“But there’s no audience.”
Kimi gave me a mysterious smile. “What makes you think there isn’t?”
At night, I was the audience for Kimi’s performances in bed. A few times a week she’d bring back boys and I’d try to ignore the sounds that ensued, the giggles and bed frame creaks and muffled groans, by turning my back and burying my head under my comforter. Then I eventually realized there was just one boy. I was beginning to identify the sound of his weight when he shifted on top of her, the sighing sound he made when he came. I started keeping my head uncovered so I could hear better, my right hand sneaking underneath the waistband of my pajamas and between my legs. In the morning, I waited until Kimi’s boyfriend had left before pretending to wake up. When I did so, Kimi would give me a sly look and say, “I hope you slept well.”
All I could do was nod, but both of us knew I had heard everything. I suspected Kimi wanted me to hear, that she was making such theatrical sounds for my benefit. Maybe I was jealous, although I wasn’t sure of whom. What made Kimi so attractive? Was it her mixed ethnicity? She could be pretty if she tried, but her hair looked unwashed, and it went without saying that she didn’t shave her underarms or legs. Although she only used baking soda as deodorant, her odor was not unpleasant, if a bit nutty, like coconut oil. Underneath her layers of clothes, which she wore like a form of protection, her body was sinewy and taut. Having sex with her, I thought, must be like having sex with a piece of twine.
Then one night, Kimi and her boyfriend were so loud with their grunting and yelping that I couldn’t tolerate it anymore. I turned over in my bed and kicked the wall. They were silent for a moment, and then a giggle from Kimi, and then they resumed what they were doing, completely ignoring me. I couldn’t help it, but I started to cry. Out of frustration, anger, or envy, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t keep the tears from running down my face. I had enough shame for all three of us.
The next morning I woke up with a massive headache, my eyes sandy and swollen. I got dressed without looking at the bed opposite me and headed to class. When I was only a few yards away from the dorm, I heard someone running after me. Kimi? No,
a boy with brown hair, a rumpled flannel shirt, his glasses askew. So this was Kimi’s boyfriend. He was serious-looking and weedy, not the type I thought she would go for, or, for that matter, the type I would go for.
“Why were you crying last night?” he asked, almost shyly.
“Because I can’t stand hearing you guys fuck anymore.” I started walking away.
He ran to keep up, his untied shoelaces slapping against his skinny ankles. “I’m sorry. Can I at least walk you to class?”
That was Sam. As far as I knew, he never slept with Kimi again, and soon it was my neck he was sighing into. Kimi didn’t seem to care when I told her about Sam and me, and to keep things from getting awkward, I would spend nights in Sam’s room, where his roommate, who was less tolerant than I had been, got driven out.
By spring of my senior year, I was barely spending any time in my dorm room, just stopping by to pick up fresh clothes or a book I needed for class. Most of my stuff had migrated to Sam’s anyway. I often missed seeing Kimi, although I observed that her side of the room was gradually being covered by laundry, dirty dishes from the cafeteria, and library books. I figured she was in the middle of writing her senior thesis, like me. I had chosen the most written-about and uninspired topic ever—light and dark in the works of Caravaggio—but the upside of that was I had plenty of resources and had almost finished writing the damn thing.
The next time I saw Kimi in our room, I was surprised at how thin she was, the way her clothes hung off her body. Her hair was as matted as it could get before becoming a complete rug.
“I haven’t seen you for a while,” I said. “How’re you doing?”
“You know, working hard on the thesis,” she replied. “I can’t decide on a topic. Should I write about Chinese landscape painting during the Tang dynasty? A feminist interpretation of Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer? At least I’m not writing about some clichéd, religious hack like Caravaggio.”
I swallowed. “Well, good luck.”
“Wait!”
