Catch 26

by Carol Prisant

  Then suddenly, confronted by a Madonna and Child she’d never seen before, Frannie came to a stop.

  In an oval format, it depicted a delicate girl – no more than fourteen, perhaps – with her white-blonde hair pulled back from a high pale forehead in a complicated marvel of a braid. The girl/mother’s shoulders were draped in a gray-blue mantle that sat high on her slight, creamy arms, yet exposed the full length of her fragile neck. Her child was barely cradled in one boneless hand, and with its head tucked into one small rosy shoulder, it appeared, to Frannie’s failing eyes, to be very badly painted – she moved closer and squinted slightly – as did the two disproportionately tiny boys crowding the mother’s skirts. The features of the first little boy were sketchy – possibly unfinished – but the other, his blue eyes rolling dramatically heavenward, was pure late nineteenth century. Had this recently come out of storage? What was it doing in this exalted company? She stepped to the side and bent to peer at the labeling on the wall. Donated to the Met in 1929, attributed to Botticelli.

  Ahh. “Attributed”, she thought, feeling smart, quite Fernanda-like, when a tremulous voice beside her said, “I had one like that once. Mine was better.”

  Frannie looked up.

  It was Clary Howell.

  She almost said his name, but she caught herself in time.

  “Really? In what way?”

  Oh, God. She needed to sit. “I’m sorry,” she added weakly, “if I could get to that bench over there …? Would you mind if I took your arm? It’s just that – you startled me a little. I was lost in that painting.”

  She longed to say his name aloud. To hug him. To reach for his hand.

  But he’d become so old she’d barely recognized him. His eyes were half-hidden beneath drooping lids, and they were filmy, as were hers. But his eyes seemed so much sadder, too, so much more deeply sunk in his leathery face. What could have happened to Clary? His once-thick hair was scant, a lusterless white, and she saw that he carried a cane. Overnight – or rather, over years, she corrected herself – he had grown terribly, terribly old.

  She had done the same, of course. Overnight.

  He was observing her intently but politely now, and, he wondered aloud, was she unwell? “Do you need an ambulance?” he asked, glancing toward the doorway and the guard.

  That’s twice in two days, thought Frannie. Old people and ambulances, an inseparable pair. Well, she wasn’t about to die right here, right now. Or in any ambulance, for that matter.

  “I’m perfect, really I am.” Disguising the effort it took, she stood up, just to prove that she could. He nodded chivalrously and smiled and began to turn away.

  “Tell me about your painting,” she asked, trying to keep him here.

  He turned back, seemingly thrilled to be asked.

  “Well, mine was really by Botticelli, for openers. Not attributed, like that one.”

  Frannie took a moment to think. How would the ordinary person react to a statement like that? She settled on reserve with a suggestion of polite disbelief.

  “Really? You owned a Botticelli?”

  She hoped her expression was appropriate: her new-old face still felt queer.

  “I did. I didn’t know it for years, though. Not until an auction gallery took it in to sell and did some thumping good research. It was a lovely painting. I still miss it.” He paused, and toyed with his cane, looking wistful. “Well, if you’re sure you’re all right …”

  He was leaving. But she needed him to stay.

  “But how did they discover it was real?” she hastily asked.

  He turned back immediately, obviously pleased. All he wanted was an invitation to talk a little more. Like every old person. Like her.

  “You know, I couldn’t really tell you what they did. What I mean is, I know they subjected it to x-ray tests and age-tested the wood and the paint, maybe, but all of that only happened after one of the experts there, a lovely young woman, actually, noticed something wrong about – as I remember, it was the hair.”

  Tears pricked Frannie’s eyes and she pretended to examine something on her sneaker toe. He hadn’t noticed, she saw with relief.

  “What a wonderful story. And where is it now?” Her voice was unusually shaky.

  He reached for her elbow, concerned.

  “Are you actually all right?”

  “Oh, I’m fine. Just once in a while I have a little balance problem.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  They strolled side by side toward the next gallery and he stopped before a Sienese altarpiece.

  “To answer your question, I sold it. For about two minutes, you know, I thought about keeping it, but I didn’t want to be responsible for looking after anything so important. It was bad enough that it had just been hanging around unrecognized for years. And also, the family needed the money just then.”

  “But weren’t you lucky to have owned it all that time? To have had the pleasure of seeing it every day?”

  “Oh, yes, you’re right about that. I was very lucky. But the thing is, I had no idea how much I’d miss it. Funny, how you sometimes don’t appreciate a thing until you lose it.” He smiled briefly, stared off into space for a second, then rummaged in his pockets for what turned out to be a roll of cherry Lifesavers. “Nothing new about that, I guess.”

  “Have one?” he offered. And Frannie took one, hoping he’d stay while she consumed the whole roll, one by one.

  “Anyway, I started coming here a lot after it was gone. I never was much of an aesthete, frankly, but after I sold it, I developed a kind of belated urge to know more about it. About the artist.”

  His hands, knotted and blemished like her own, seemed to be struggling to express something more, but at last, they gave up and dived into his pockets. Frannie watched a lone museum-goer in the far gallery hold up his cell phone to the Ingres.

  It was then that Clary seemed to register her face.

  “Do we know each other?”

  Panic struggled with joy as a dozen answers crowded Frannie’s mind. She replied with one – the true one.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Funny. For a minute there … You know, along with all this other old-age stuff,” he waved his cane, “well, I have what my late wife called the forgetteries.” He chuckled. “Anyway, enjoy yourself here. There’s lots to see.”

  With a casual wave, he limped away.

  Frannie watched him until he disappeared, and then, having covertly checked to see that no guard was watching, leaned heavily against the nearest velvet wall.

  My God, what an impossible coincidence! Impossible! What could it mean?

  But he hadn’t recognized her.

  But then, she’d never imagined he would. She didn’t recognize herself.

  She would have loved to talk to him longer, though. All night and tomorrow, maybe. And for whatever remained of her life. They even seemed to share a love of art now, but along with that, she’d felt the suggestion of something like – friendship – there.

  He was gone, though, and she hadn’t even known how to begin.

  And now no one was left in the Wing with her except for those gilt-framed Madonnas, all hundred and fifty of whom agreed, she could absolutely tell, that nice women of their generation – theirs, hers, and Clary Howell’s – would never run after a man. As if she could run.

  Frannie dropped heavily onto a bench, took several deep breaths.

  How could she have actually thought of starting over with Clary when whatever connection they’d had existed only in her mind? When she had next to nothing left to offer him. (But why was he here today, of all days?) Besides, it would be so unfair to him. Because they’d shared – nothing, really. (And still, with that hourglass running out … )

  Should she be bold, like Fernanda? Go after him? Find him? And if she did, then ask him what? To love her because she really was Fernanda? To love her because they were – possibly – soulmates?

  No.

  He’d
call an ambulance. The one that brought the men in white.

  But she’d skip the European galleries, after all. She didn’t have the confidence for that anymore. Couldn’t bear it, in fact. Which meant that all that was left was to finish her circuit of this room. But the shock of seeing Clary, or of being on her feet too long, she didn’t know which, was making the smallest movement hard. Incredibly hard. Which may have been why she halted at the low, glass case.

  Another picture she’d never seen.

  Just a little panel, really, the size of her hand, and unframed. On the left, a rumpled bed where a bearded man lay asleep, one arm hanging heavily down. In the center of the little painting, a thickset woman perched on a low chair. The awkward twist of her body revealed sapped, flaccid breasts and a terrible anguish in a face no longer young. To her right, a smiling Cupid, dimpled and plump, seemed to be departing through a window. She was calling him back.

  The spectator was intended to laugh, Frannie supposed. But there was nothing to laugh at. Because the no-longer-desirable woman here was begging Cupid, before the tiny god withdrew from her life, to grant her a final enchantment: to make the sleeping man desire her as before. Before she grew old.

  Frannie leaned on the edge of the case to support herself.

  Stanley hadn’t loved her enough. André had loved her and left. Clary would have loved her, but was gone.

  It was time to leave.

  Mindlessly, she wandered through seemingly endless processions of rooms, barely noting where she was, intent only on finding the Great Hall.

  He’d looked healthy, though, hadn’t he? Despite his age. (Was there a bus stop right in front or would a bus be speeding by? She’d need to pick the perfect spot.)

  If only he hadn’t been there.

  A guard seemed to be nodding at her. Remembering her from other visits, perhaps?

  No, of course not.

  She’d have liked to be remembered, though.

  In the entrance hall finally, and picking a careful path through its swarm, Frannie located a trash can she’d noted earlier and slid her pretty red wallet from her purse, the wallet that had appeared in her bag on That Day. For a moment or two, head cocked, she held it in her hand and listened to the white roar of the Hall. To those thousands of seekers after beauty. Here to worship Frannie’s gods. Awesome, she thought.

  She tossed the wallet in the can, waited in line for her navy coat, buttoned it and hung her noticeably lighter purse over her forearm. She was shuffling toward the tall main doors when she realized someone’s hand was on her shoulder.

  Frannie stopped in fright.

  Had she dropped something? Done something wrong?

  “Is this yours?”

  It was Clary Howell. Holding her wallet. She took it very gently from his hand.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “You know, I hope you’ll forgive me. My name is Clarence Howell. I really enjoyed talking to you back there.”

  Half-smiling, he thrust his chin in the direction of the Lehman Wing, and leaning on his cane, he looked cordially at Frannie and awaited her response.

  And her failing heart swelled, stretched, filled with joy, soared, and surprisingly, didn’t burst.

  She loved him at this moment, standing there. Shuffling his feet and switching his cane from hand to hand.

  “There’s something familiar about you, Miss, er …”

  Frannie thought fast.

  “Frannie Streep.”

  Oblivious, he went on.

  “I can’t think what it is. Something … Well, anyway, I hope you won’t think me rude, but if you’d let me buy you a Bloody in the Trustee’s dining room – it’s just upstairs – maybe I’ll figure it out. Although if you don’t drink,” he added.

  He was as lovely as she’d remembered.

  “… we can just have coffee and talk about, well, Botticelli.”

  “I don’t drink Bloodies, only Bloodies, though. Otherwise, I’d really love that,” Frannie smiled back, “but I’ll drink almost anything else.”

  His face lit up, and for a second, she saw him as he had been fifteen years ago. Then, together, and slowly, because they had to go slowly, they made their way through the clamor of the Hall.

  “I think we should take the elevator up, don’t you? I’m not much on stairs, these days.”

  “Perfect,” Frannie answered, her happiness shining in her eyes. “Me, too.”

  They found an elevator and, as he reached out to press the unlit button, she saw it, and stricken, be terror, cruelly aware of the shattering of her fragile heart, Frannie Turner slumped to the floor.

  On the web of skin that stretched between his thumb and index finger, was a pale, tattooed pitchfork.

  THE END

  Acknowledgements

  The main characters in this book owe (almost) everything to Marlowe, Goethe and Gounod, but others were inspired by people I have actually known or have met in other writers’ books. Most were invented.

  And because – a long time ago in a galaxy far away— the majority of women expected to have sex only with their husbands, I did just that, for forty-two years. Obviously, I needed to research the subject and, happily, an unanticipated number of women of various ages – some of whom I met over the phone – were unself-conscious and ‘liberated’ enough to help me bring this book reasonably up-to-date. But to any who weren’t part of my research, or who didn’t request anonymity, be assured that inclusion in the following acknowledgment in no way suggests the slightest x-ratedness.

  That said, I offer my wholehearted thanks to the following wonderfully supportive friends – old and new – and fellow writers:

  Judy Kaye, Peter Workman, Sharon Wheatman, Judy Zisk Lincoff, Roger Straus III, Daniella Huges, Pierre Hauser, Dede Reid, Jesse Coleman, Carolan Workman, Jon Gingerich, Deborah Webster, Peter Kapp, Christine Pittel, Patricia Glass, Elena Sigman, Zack Van Buren, Patricia Kruger, Lynne Goldhammer, Stephen Wright, Clare Potter, Kate Lincoff Lewis, Neal Aponte, Catherine Prisant, Stephen Drucker, Amanda Lincoff Willmann, Dr. Jane Galasso and especially, Bo Niles.

  For her very rare mix of technical know-how and poetic sensitivity, I’m particularly grateful to the talented Dylan Landis, who contributed – not just a crucial detail to a key plot twist – but genuine depth and substance to the narrative. In addition, for her helpful comments and careful read of an earlier draft of this novel, I am grateful to Chandler Klang Smith.

  For the many behind-the-scenes auction house details, my thanks to Maggie Banino, formerly at Christies, and at Sotheby’s, Diana Phillips and Clarissa Post.

  Special credit is due my agent, Sharon Bowers, for her unfailing niceness, accessibility and diligence, and to Charlotte Ledger at Harper Impulse for her enthusiasm and constructive guidance.

  Thanks most of all to my family, Richard and Judy Lincoff, and Barden and Catherine Prisant. Also, of course, to my granddaughter, Tucker Velocity Prisant, who writes a pretty mean sentence herself, and who – disconcertingly – might read this book one day.

  Sincere apologies to anyone I may have overlooked.

  About the Author

  Carol Prisant is a widow with one son (an art appraiser in NY) and one perfect granddaughter (a budding equestrienne.) She’s also a former antiques dealer and, for the last 26 years, has been the New York editor of the UK magazine The World Of Interiors.

  Carol has published four non-fiction books: The Antiques Roadshow Primer (a New York Times best-seller) and Antiques Roadshow Collectibles, a companion volume to the above. (Basically, the books are encyclopedias of antiques combined with the occasional anecdote from the US Roadshow.) Good, Better, Best (The connoisseurship of antiques) and Dog House (Written as a chronology of all the dogs of her life but, somehow, an inadvertent memoir. Curiously, a number of young women readers used it for their bookclubs, where it seemed to have an alternate life as a template for how to maintain a 42-year marriage.)

  You can find out more about Carol at carolprisa
nt.com.

  About HarperImpulse

  HarperImpulse is an exciting new range of romance fiction brought to you from the women’s fiction team at HarperCollins. Our aim is to break new talent from debut authors and import the hottest trends from the US, bringing you the very best in romance. Whether that is through short reads for your mobile phone or epic sagas that span the generations we want to proudly publish romance fiction that gets everybody talking.

  Romance readers, come and meet the team at our website www.harperimpu‌lseromance.com, our Facebook page www.facebook.com/HarperImpulse or follow us @HarperImpulse!

  Writers, we are simply looking for good stories! So, what are you waiting for? To submit, e-mail us at romance@harpercollins.co.uk.

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