Mrs. Wilcox said cheerfully, “There’s always a market for matched sets of these here leather bounds, Mrs. Zender. Sometimes decorators, they buy leather-bound books by the lineal foot to fill up the shelves in them mansions they’re building over on the west side.”
“I live in a mansion, Mrs. Wilcox. Those places are not mansions. They are constructions that come in a kit with enhancements from a Chinese menu of features. They feature features.”
Mrs. Wilcox smiled. “Yes, ma’am. But that’s prob’ly where they’d be goin’ unless I got ahold of a book dealer. You might could get more money for them from a regular used-book dealer.”
“Most of them are in German.” Mrs. Zender held one of the books at arm’s length, turned it so that she could examine the spine. “German,” she said, “was Mr. Zender’s native tongue. He was Austrian, you know. Viennese, actually. A very proud people, the Viennese. They think they are above the other Austrians, and only God knows where the Austrians themselves think they are. I’m sure they can’t find anyone important enough to discuss it with. A very masculine language, German.” She laid From Here to Eternity on the table and said, “I haven’t read a book in years. Every now and then I read a review in a magazine at the beauty parlor, and sometimes I think I would enjoy reading an entire book, but I allow the thought to pass.” She surveyed the room. “They certainly do look handsome up there, don’t they? We’ll let the decorators have them, Mrs. Wilcox. Many are the McMansions that need shelves of red Moroccan-leather-bound books. There is no better way to ensure that they will remain unread.”
William came down from the ladder and wheeled it to the next section of shelves. Amedeo was to take a turn up on the ladder and hand things down to William. He had climbed only to the middle rung when he saw a picture in the far back corner of a shelf.
The shelf was empty except for one book and the picture. The book was To Kill a Mockingbird. Amedeo had just read it in paperback as an assignment in Social Studies. Mrs. Zender’s copy was hardback and still had its original dust jacket. Amedeo pulled it from the shelf and held it in his hand for a minute. There is something telling about a book that has been read, and even before he opened it, he knew that this copy had been. Amedeo couldn’t resist looking at the title page. It was not inscribed, but it was autographed. He was impressed.
He said nothing as he handed it to William, who passed it on to Mrs. Zender. She glanced at it perfunctorily, and with a nod of her head, indicated that Mrs. Wilcox was to list it for sale. Mrs. Wilcox put a small numbered Post-it on it and made a note of its number on her preliminary list.
Amedeo turned back to the cubby to retrieve the only other object that was in this section of shelves. It was a framed drawing wedged in the corner. The frame was a little tall for the height of the space, and could not stand fully upright and so was both angled and catercornered in the back. Amedeo had to wrestle it loose. He did not want to scratch the shelf or shatter the glass by warping the frame, so he held his breath as he worked.
When it came free, he saw that unlike the elaborately framed paintings elsewhere in her house, this painting—a drawing, really—was held in a simple, well-made wooden frame of the sort that Jake approved. In the center there was a spot of cleared glass, a window like the one that had appeared on the top of the vintage waffle iron after he had wiped it with a wet paper towel. Amedeo picked off a shred of paper towel that was caught between the bevel of the frame and the glass. Through the porthole in the grime, he saw that he was holding a drawing of a nude. Probably pencil. Possibly pen. There was a bit of color. Red. The drawing itself was slightly larger than a sheet of paper from a school tablet.
Amedeo carried it down the ladder himself.
Mrs. Zender looked up. “What have you there?” she asked, reaching for it.
Amedeo did not hand it to her, and she did not insist. “I’ll be careful,” he said as he walked with it to the kitchen. William followed.
“What are you doing?”William asked.
“I think I found something,” Amedeo answered.
“What?”
“I won’t know until I clean it off.”
“You better be careful.”
“I said I would be.”
“Don’t run water on it.”
“I know that. I just want to clean it enough to see.”
“I think someone already tried.”
“Yeah, I think so too.”
Amedeo applied a little Windex to a paper towel and gingerly cleaned the glass. It was a drawing of a woman. Her face was in profile, and she was looking over her shoulder as if she were mooning the viewer. There was a wash of red paint that followed the curve of her hip. Amedeo examined it coolly.
“A naked lady,”William said.
“A nude,” Amedeo corrected. “Jake always tells me that there’s a difference between naked and nude. Jake insists that even if they are men, they are to be called nudes. In art, for some reason, there are a lot more nude women than there are nude men, even though a single fig leaf doesn’t cover as much on a female.”
As he continued to clean the glass, Amedeo thought about what Mrs. Zender had said about the ninety percent and the ten percent, and he suddenly understood the difference between naked and nude. Naked shows the ten percent, but nude reveals the other ninety. Out loud he muttered, half to himself, “There is definitely a difference between naked and nude.”
William said, “Tell me what it is—in a way that wouldn’t make Ma blush.”
Amedeo replied, “Naked shows, but nude reveals.” Not that the rest of it—the part about the ninety percent and the ten percent—would have made Mrs. Wilcox blush, but for reasons not entirely clear to him Amedeo was not yet ready to share the conversation he had had with Mrs. Zender at the Dairy Queen.
The drawing deserved a better cleaning than he was giving it, but he couldn’t let Windex and paper towels do one thing more. The rest of the cleaning would require softer, finer tools and far more time.
Amedeo carried the drawing over to Mrs. Zender. “Oh, this,” she said, holding it at arm’s length until she put her glasses on. “Come see this, Mrs. Wilcox.” Mrs. Wilcox came forward. “This is The Moon Lady. That’s what Mr. Zender called it when he gave it to me. It was a wedding gift.” She extended the drawing and a magnifying glass to Amedeo. “Can you read the signature, Amedeo? It’s there somewhere in the upper right, I think. Can you read what it says?”
Amedeo said, “I can read it without the magnifying glass, Mrs. Zender. It says ‘Modigliani.’”
“Ah, yes,” she replied. “Modigliani. He was Italian. Like my mother.”
“I know him,” Amedeo said. “We have the same first name.”
“That is so,” she said. “I forgot he had a first name. You do have that in common.”
“And something else. He was Jewish.”
“Is that so?” Mrs. Zender said. “Jewish.”
“Are you named for him?” Mrs. Wilcox asked. “Being that your daddy is an artist and all.”
“No. I was named for my grandfather.”
“Was your grandfather a Jew?”
“One was. Not the Amedeo one. He was Amedeo Bevilaqua. I am a Kaplan by marriage.”
“So what do you know about this Amedeo? Amedeo Modigliani?”
“I know some poems my father taught me.”
“Tell us the poems, dear,” Mrs. Wilcox urged.
“They’re by a woman named Phyllis McGinley. My father said that all the kids in art history used to say them.” Amedeo recited:
HOW TO TELL PORTRAITS FROM STILL-LIFES
Ladies whose necks are long and swanny
Are always signed Modigliani
But flowers explosive in a crock?
Braque.
ON THE FARTHER WALL, MARC CHAGALL
One eye without a head to wear it
Sits on the pathway, and chicken,
Pursued perhaps by astral ferret,
Flees, while the plot begins to thicken.
Two lovers kiss. Their hair is kelp.
Nor are the titles any help.
THE MODERN PALETTE
Picasso’s Periodic hue
Is plain enough for any dullard.
The simple red succeeds the blue,
And now the Party-colored.
They applauded, and Amedeo took a little bow like the one he had seen Peter take after making his welcome, everyone remarks at the gala.
Mrs. Wilcox said, “Bein’s it was a wedding gift, this little drawing must be very valuable to you, Mrs. Zender. I’m sure you’ll be wantin’ this for the Waldorf. For the shelf of your past.”
“No,” she said firmly. “I’m sure the work of a dead Jewish artist is worth a lot of money.”
“If it’s as valuable as all that, Mrs. Zender, don’t you think you might could send it to Christie’s or Sotheby’s or one of them other famous auction houses? They’ll know how to get the best price for it.”
“No,”Mrs. Zender said. “I don’t want that.”
Without raising an eyebrow, without doing a single thing that would betray her surprise, Mrs. Wilcox coded the drawing and put it on the list of things she would recommend to Bert and Ray.
Mrs. Zender picked up the copy of To Kill a Mockingbird and said, “I changed my mind. I’m taking this to the Waldorf.” Looking at Amedeo she said, “I once wrote to Harper Lee and told her that she ought to make an opera of her book.”
“Did she answer?”
Mrs. Zender replied, “I don’t know. I don’t always open my mail.”
THE TIME HAD COME.
It was late afternoon on the last Wednesday before the sale, and Bert and Ray were to be let in.
For the occasion, Mrs. Zender wore a silver lamé wide-legged pantsuit. She had affixed a long lavender scarf over one shoulder and drawn it across her chest and tied it at her waist. On the arm opposite the knot, she wore a noisy assortment of bangle bracelets that reached halfway to her elbow.
Immediately after the introductions, Mrs. Wilcox started her solicitations. She asked Ray, How was his cholesterol? Any new allergies? And Bert, How was his blood pressure? She invited them into the music room. It was in that room that she had gathered all the small, moveable items she thought would be of particular interest to them. Four of the Chippendale chairs had been carried there as examples and for them to sit in. As soon as Bert and Ray had wedged themselves into the chairs, Mrs. Wilcox offered them iced tea that she had flavored with mango. She had made a pitcher of plain iced tea as well, in case Ray was allergic to mango. Neither was allergic to mango, but Ray asked if she had sweetened it. He was watching his carbohydrates.
Bert and Ray were as coolly polite to Mrs. Zender as the telephone saleslady had been, but Amedeo noticed that their smiles, like hers, were an invitation to make Mrs. Zender a shared joke. But Mrs. Wilcox passed, just as Amedeo had.
Amedeo went with William to fetch the mango-flavored iced tea. He was feeling uneasy. Resentful. From the minute Bert and Ray said hello, Amedeo felt a chill come over the house. Everything suddenly looked shabby again.
As soon as he knew that no one but William could hear him, he said, “You would definitely think that Elvis has entered the building.”
William smiled. “I warned you. Ma’s attitude toward Bert and Ray is borderline religious. They are her holy couple, and don’t expect it to let up. Just let me know if she starts in sayin’ thee and thou.”
Amedeo laughed.
When they returned with the iced tea, Mrs. Wilcox was saying, “You know, Bert and Ray, you are not limited to choosing only from among these here pieces. I just thought that these pieces were prime, and I wanted y’all to have first pick. There are other things throughout the house, but some of them were just too awkward to carry, so we can take a look around.” They started their tour of the house. William went with them.
Amedeo stayed behind with Mrs. Zender.
As soon as they left, Mrs. Zender took in a deep breath, which she let out slowly through pursed lips. Right before his eyes, she grew as limp as a bouquet of Mylar balloons that had been sitting out for an hour too long. She handed Amedeo her glass of iced tea. “I’ll have champagne,” she said. “I’ve got a bottle chilling in the refrigerator.” He started toward the kitchen. “No plastic,” she said, “the stems always come off.”
“I know. My godfather taught me that.”
“Good for him. Remember it. No information about champagne is trivial.”
“Where will I find the champagne flutes?” Amedeo asked.
“Somewhere in the inventory I’ll be taking with me to the Waldorf.”
As he walked to the kitchen, Amedeo realized that for the first time there was no music in the hallway. The saddest music in the world could not be as sad as the silence in those dismantled rooms. But music was not the only thing that he sensed was coming to an end. Bert and Ray were intruding into a world that had become as close as the un-air-conditioned air they breathed.
When he returned with the champagne, Mrs. Zender’s posture was less limp, but her majesty had not yet returned. He took a seat beside her. She sipped champagne. He sipped mango-flavored iced tea. He allowed his eyes to circle the room. Every item there was prime, chosen by Mrs. Wilcox and available to Bert and Ray for purchase. Each piece seemed to be the diary of a day’s work. The sterling silver: the day he and William had a misunderstanding, followed by an understanding. The Meissen candlesticks: that day, he got his marking pencil. The Chippendale chairs: Mrs. Zender’s mock dinner party. The Moon Lady: the library. But The Moon Lady was an unfinished entry.
Amedeo got up to look at the price tag: five thousand dollars.
William had taught him that pricing was tricky. Mrs. Wilcox had to be fair to both the seller and to the buyer. Pricing something too low may make it easy to sell, but may also be cheating the seller of a fair price. Pricing something too high may raise the seller’s profit and the liquidator’s commission, but can also make it too hard to sell. Dealers like Bert and Ray had to buy at a good price so that they could resell at a profit.
Five thousand dollars was the price Mrs. Zender herself had suggested.
Amedeo had heard enough adult conversations to know that most of them were about numbers: How big? How old? How long? But mostly they discussed: How much? In his mother’s company, the numbers were usually about real estate, but he had heard enough conversations from Jake’s friends to know that how much also counted in the art world, and he also knew that five thousand dollars was a lot of money but not nearly enough for an original drawing by a dead Modern artist, or as Mrs. Zender kept reminding him, a dead Jewish Modern artist.
Amedeo looked over at her, sitting there in her NASA moon-landing pantsuit. She sighed occasionally but said nothing. With each sip of champagne, though, her spirit inflated a little.
The tour group returned. They stood in the hall just outside the music room. William followed, carrying a folding luggage rack from one of the upstairs guest rooms. He put it down in the hall and wrapped a red SOLD sign around one of the legs. Mrs. Wilcox asked Bert and Ray if they were interested in the Bibendum chair that was in the upstairs sitting room.
Ray said, “You must mean Biedermeier.”
Mrs. Wilcox was leaning over her clipboard to check her notes when Mrs. Zender’s voice rang out. “No, gentlemen, she does not mean Biedermeier. She means Bibendum.”
Bert said, “I can’t remember what period Bibendum might be.”
“It’s not a period, Mr. Grover. Bibendum is the name of the Michelin Man. The chair was designed to look like a stack of Michelin tires, and like the tires themselves, the chair is French. Designed by Eileen Gray, who was Irish. If you must know a period, it is Art Deco.”
Mrs. Wilcox said, “Yes. It’s Art Deco. You might could take another look at it.”
Ignoring Mrs. Zender, Bert addressed Mrs. Wilcox. “You know, Dora Ellen, Huntington Antiques does not do well with Modern art.”
Mrs. Zender
was not to be ignored. “Messrs. Grover and Porterfield,” she called out, “you two are not the first people I’ve known to malign Modern art. There’s a long history of people before you who have done it more vociferously and more effectively. I think it best, gentlemen, that I withdraw the Bibendum chair. It is no longer for sale. I shall take it with me to the Waldorf.”
Mrs. Wilcox said, “I’ll just remove it from all the sales lists, Mrs. Zender.”
Bert and Ray made an awkward entrance into the music room. They took a few minutes to survey the pieces there, and their focus almost immediately went to The Moon Lady, which had been placed in the center of an assortment on the lid of the closed baby grand. Bert reached for it and said, “What do you think, Ray? Do you think we’ll be arrested for dealing in pornography if we display this in our shop?”
Ray replied, “If it’s old enough and expensive enough, it’s not pornographic, it’s antique.”
Mrs. Zender spoke up. “It is not antique. It is Modern art. And like the Bibendum chair, it too is French.”
Without trying to hide his sarcasm, Ray pointed to the signature. “And is this Modigliani Irish?” Ray pronounced it “Moe-DIG-lee-ahn-nee.”
Amedeo spoke up. “No,” he said. “Italian. Modigliani was Italian.” He took delight in pronouncing the painter’s name “Moh-deelee-AH-nee” as he had been taught to do when he learned the poems. He knew that he was showing off and that Ray would be insulted.
Ray picked up on it. “How do you say it?”
“Say what?” Amedeo asked, stalling for time. What he was doing could not possibly be helping Mrs. Wilcox, but he seemed unable to help himself.
“The painter’s name. How do you say it?”
Amedeo swallowed. “Moh-deelee-AH-nee. The g is silent.”
“Is that French?”
“No,” Mrs. Zender said emphatically. “As the young man just told you, the name is Italian. Modigliani”—she pronounced it with the silent g—“was Italian. What makes the drawing French is that Modigliani”—the silent g again—“drew it in France. French is what we commonly call things from France. Modigliani”—the silent g—”drew it in Paris, which happens to be in France. The capital city, actually.”
The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World Page 10