False Impressions

by Laura Caldwell

  “Oh, a new assistant. Welcome.” She shook my hand. “Lovely to meet you.” She looked at Madeline. “Speaking of assistants, how is Syd?”

  “Syd is doing well, thank you. I’ll tell him you asked after him.”

  “Please do,” Jacqueline said. “Listen, I stopped in because I wanted to see if you have any of Roberto’s work. I’ve got a client who is looking.”

  “Wait here and I’ll see.” Madeline gestured to me to follow her to the back room of the gallery again.

  In the manner of a professor, Madeline walked to a high cabinet made with long, thin drawers and began to lecture. “These hold some of the canvases from our artists that haven’t been framed,” she said. “Jacqueline is looking for a Roberto Politico. Her gallery is on the other side of Michigan Avenue. Much more traditional, but occasionally we represent the same artists. She knows Roberto favors me, since I’m his Chicago gallery. She thinks that it will upset me that she might sell one of his.”

  “But it doesn’t?” I asked, watching her slip on a pair of thin, white gloves and flip through some of the canvases.

  “No, no of course not. Jacqueline is competitive with me, as many gallery owners are, because they think differently.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is my passion, to show the world these beautiful things, to make people shift how they view the world. So it makes no difference to me who gets them out there. I simply hope for distribution.”

  We said nothing for a second. I watched her remove two canvases, one predominantly orange and one mustard-colored. They both bore tiny slashes in the paint to form a profile of a woman.

  “Jacqueline called you Lina,” I said. “Did I hear correctly?”

  “Yes, she did.” She put the canvases on a tall table. “I’m not sure where that came from. She started calling me Madelina, and then she just sort of shortened it to Lina.” Madeline gave a casual shrug.

  A moment later, we were back in the gallery’s main space and Madeline placed the canvases on a glass table. She and Jacqueline discussed the merits of each painting, the subtleties, while I tried to absorb the conversation. There was clearly a dialogue, they said, between the two paintings, but Jacqueline’s client was only interested in one, for a spot in a hallway that had certain measurements. Also, Jacqueline said, the artwork had to complement an eighteenth-century yellow Chinese vase. They launched into a discussion of prices. Seventy-eight thousand dollars, Madeline said. That was as low as she could go.

  I blinked at the two women. A seventy-eight thousand dollar painting, that’s not even framed, that’s going to be in a hallway next to a yellow vase?

  I had a lot to learn about the art world.

  “Well, let me know about the paintings,” Madeline was saying to Jacqueline. Then she turned to me. “And I am taking you out for a welcome drink tonight.”

  There was no question there, just a statement. Luckily, I had lots of time on my hands lately since I was sans boyfriend. “Love to,” I said.

  I expected her to invite Jacqueline, and from the vaguely anticipatory expression on Jacqueline’s face, she might have been looking for the same.

  But Madeline only repeated, “Let me know about the paintings,” then walked Jacqueline to the door.

  6

  “I love this place we’re going to,” Madeline said when we were in the cab.

  Now, as we walked in, I could see why. The interior was like the pearly pink inside of a shell, the walls curved, the lights trailing around and up and down in ways I’ve never seen light displayed before. I could see a bar at the back of the place. Like Madeline’s gallery table, it looked as if it was made of clear glass. In front of the bar were acrylic stools with gray cushions. It was like a cave—but instead of being dark and foreboding, this cave was softly light-filled and soothing.

  I looked at Madeline. “Where did you find this place?”

  The small club was called Toi, which was a New Zealand Maori word, Madeline said, that referred to art, as well as the source of art. It was on a strange street, west of Halsted and one or two blocks north of Chicago Avenue. A few blocks away was Fulton Market, once the meatpacking district of the city. Now, Fulton Market contained fine restaurants and bars, shops, galleries and hip office buildings. But here, around Toi, the streets were dead, an odd collection of vacant lots, a random house or two and a few monolithic brick buildings that looked as if they contained storage units. Apparently, even no-man’s land in Chicago could still offer up a little treasure like Toi. A happy energy seeming to swirl around the building, despite the lackluster architecture.

  Ahead of us, an invisible cloud of laughter billowing out into the air.

  Madeline stopped short. “Amaya?” She sounded surprised.

  “Hello, Madeline,” the woman said, in a low but trilling voice. She was Asian, her dark hair in a severe cut—bangs straight across, the ends also bluntly cut at her shoulders. Her black eyes bore a wary quality, as if they were set farther back in her face in order to watch the world closely, suspiciously.

  Madeline pulled her fur collar tighter around her neck. “I didn’t think I’d see you until Friday.” Madeline looked at me. “Amaya and I take a weaving class together on Friday.”

  “Yes.” Amaya sighed. “If I can get myself together to get there. My little boy is sick right now, and I don’t know if he’ll be better by then.” Amaya was tinier than Madeline, and she had a very slinky quality.

  “What were you doing here?” Madeline asked.

  “Jasper brought me. You know I bought another one of his sculptures.” She paused. “I’m sorry, I didn’t purchase it from you. When he switched galleries…”

  “No, of course.” Madeline shook her head.

  “I know you must be devastated.”

  “Not at all,” Madeline said. “Jasper remains a dear friend of mine.”

  “Well, as dear as someone can be when they’ve left you,” Amaya said. “I’ve got to relieve my sitter.” She swished past us, a small sea of black clothes and hair. “Goodbye, Madeline.” Again that low, rolling voice.

  A young blonde woman came to Madeline and greeted her warmly, hugging her. Madeline introduced us, and she shook hands with me. “Muriel,” she said, and I had the brief thought that it was an old name for such a youthful and very beautiful woman. “I’m the manager here,” she said. “As a friend of Madeline’s, we welcome you. Anything we can bring you—anything at all—let me know.” She spoke with a grace that belied her years.

  I thanked her, and she walked Madeline and me farther into the club to a table near the back. When she reached it, Muriel whisked a reserved sign off with a flourish and gave a sort of head bow toward Madeline. I noticed how everyone in Madeline’s life liked to contribute to the art of being her.

  “Madeline,” Muriel said, as we slipped into the satiny booth. “A number of people are here hoping you would come in tonight.”

  Madeline looked around, waved and smiled in a few directions.

  “Everyone is going to want to say hello,” Muriel said. “If you’ll have them?”

  “Please say hello to Jasper for me, but otherwise not just yet,” Madeline said. “Isabel is my new assistant, and we have much to talk about.”

  “Of course, of course,” Muriel said. “I’ll send over some of your signature cocktails. Don’t worry about anything.” Off she walked.

  “So that woman, Amaya,” I said. “You’re friends?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that. We met in the weaving class I mentioned. She bought a few pieces from me. But she seems to resent me for some reason.” Madeline loosed her fur scarf and tossed her black shiny hair over her shoulder. “Or perhaps I resent her....” Madeline appeared open to both possibilities.

  “Is she someone to think about regarding your—” I glanced around, knowing we were in the midst of Madeline’s community “—your situation?”

  She shook her head. “No, I can’t imagine.”

  “What about Jasp
er, whom she mentioned?”

  Madeline tossed the other side of her hair. She nodded across the room toward a group of men. “Jasper is a wonderful artist. In many ways, we had a somewhat typical artist/gallery relationship. I discovered him. Eventually, he felt he needed to grow farther than my wing span and I let him go. It’s perfectly natural.”

  “And Jasper feels good about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Jasper or Amaya ever have any access to your gallery or house?”

  “Never.”

  “Madeline, I have to ask. If someone stole the paintings from your gallery, it would take time to forge them and replace them. Wouldn’t you notice that something was missing?”

  “Well, I don’t often purchase oil paintings—those take forever to truly dry. Also, I often have many works that are not yet stretched or framed stored in the back room of my gallery. If someone was able to remove them from my gallery, I would not necessarily notice right away. I have others in my house.”

  “Anyone have keys to your house?”

  Madeline shook her head. “There’s a doorman, so I’ve never given anyone extra keys.”

  “Mayburn mentioned that you’ve noticed doors open at your home.”

  “Yes. Sometimes it’s my home studio, which I always close because of the chemicals. Sometimes it’s a closet door that’s open, one I rarely go into.”

  “Could it be the doormen?”

  “I’ve asked and they said, ‘Of course not.’ I’ve asked my cleaning person, and she denies opening those doors, as well.” She shrugged. “It’s probably nothing.”

  I hoped so. But something made me doubt it.

  The waitress delivered our drinks. It turned out that Madeline’s signature cocktail was a lychee martini—a glass with a cloudy, whitish liquid and a cocktail stick speared with two round, gelatinous-looking fruit—the lychee.

  I took a sip and moaned, “Shut the front door!”

  Madeline looked confused, so I explained. “It’s my way of saying ‘shut the fuck up.’ I’m trying desperately not to swear, but like my friend Maggie is fond of pointing out, I almost always end up saying the swearwords anyway.”

  Madeline laughed. “Have you ever tasted anything like this drink?”

  I took another sip. “No! It’s delicious.” I put it on the table to stop myself from guzzling it.

  Madeline and I started talking then, and the conversation flowed easily even though the topics we broached weren’t always so easy. We talked about what a shock it had all been for her—finding out about the thefts, the forgeries, how she thought she might still be a bit in shock. She spoke about seeing the comments on her website.

  Whenever there was a lull in the conversation, Madeline didn’t seem to view it as something to fill. In fact, I’m not sure she knew what a “lull” was. Instead, she glanced around the club, serene, a small smile on her face, the sight clearly bringing her enjoyment. I made a few stabs at conversation during these times, but unless we stumbled onto something that made her eyes light up, Madeline had little taste for trivial conversation. Unlike most Chicagoans, she couldn’t even be drawn into a discussion about the weather.

  “It is cold,” she acknowledged when I tried, then said nothing further.

  In her serenity, I found calm, too; it made me look around and just…notice.

  The next time I spoke, I chose my words carefully. “I’m really glad to have met you, Madeline.”

  She looked at me, her face breaking from enjoyment to joy. “You, too, Isabel. You, too.” She reached across the table and squeezed my hand.

  “It’s funny,” I said. “Because I’ve heard about you from Mayburn.”

  Madeline looked at me in sort of a curious way. “You call him by his last name.”

  “Yeah. Always have.”

  She gave a little laugh. “Mayburn. It seems such a tough name for him.”

  “Well,” I said, shrugging, “Mayburn is a tough guy. As far as I know.”

  But Madeline didn’t seem to share my assessment. “John is a sweetheart,” was all she said.

  I blinked a few times. “Sweetheart sounds like a brother/sister relationship.”

  She nodded. “That’s what it became.”

  I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrows. I knew that Mayburn viewed Madeline as a great love of his life, second only to Lucy.

  She seemed to read my look. “That’s what it became…for me,” she said, clarifying.

  “Why is that?”

  “In part because I’m an only child. I was adopted.”

  “When you were a baby?”

  “Yes. My parents are blonds from Wisconsin.” She smiled as she thought of them. “But my dad did a lot of work in Japan. That’s where they adopted me from.”

  “Do you know your birth family?”

  She shook her head. “They did give me a gift once.” She smiled. “I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

  “How long did you and Mayburn date?” I asked. “Years?”

  “Six months,” Madeline said.

  “Is that it?” Mayburn had made it seem longer, or maybe it was the way he remembered it, the way he gave it import.

  Suddenly it dawned on me that the people I considered of great importance in my life—Theo, Sam—might not think of me the same way.

  Sam, for example, I hadn’t seen or spoken to in months. For all I knew, he was once again with Alyssa, his ex-high school girlfriend. Maybe Sam felt, now, that I was a swerve, something he’d veered around before getting back to his first love.

  And Theo—we’d dated about the same amount of time as Mayburn and Madeline. Right now, he’d told me, he simply couldn’t be in a relationship. Theo, an only child, had been close with his parents. But recently, some disturbing events had Theo questioning not only himself but everyone around him. I understood such issues well. I understood that Theo needed to hide to lick his wounds. Who knew what—or who—was important to him at this moment.

  “How did you and Mayburn decide he would work on your case?” I asked to pull my thoughts away.

  “I told John what was happening—he’s one of a handful of people I’ll talk to when I’m deeply upset.”

  I wondered who the others were.

  “And then John insisted he look into the matter,” she said.

  “Because he knows how important the gallery is to you.”

  She nodded.

  “Talking about how he feels like a brother now, when I know he didn’t feel the same, makes me sound so cavalier with my relationship with him.”

  “He was pretty hurt,” I said, then immediately regretted it. Mayburn would kill me if he’d heard me say that. “Actually he was just sorta hurt,” I said, reducing Mayburn’s pain factor.

  “Of course,” she said, shaking her head back and forth. “He had bought a house he wanted us to live in.”

  “The one in Lincoln Square.”

  “Yes. And that’s when I knew we had different ideas about what our lives would be. I’m not a Lincoln Square kind of person.”

  “I can see that.” Historically, Lincoln Square was a predominantly German neighborhood. Much of that heritage was preserved in bars like the Chicago Brauhaus and Huettenbar. The streets surrounding Lincoln Avenue, the main thoroughfare, were populated mostly with wood-frame, single family houses. Wonderful cafes from other regions, as well as cute boutiques and bookshops, now flourished there, too. Still, the hood was more “livable city” than “urban city.” Madeline Saga wasn’t the type to live there.

  “I was so shocked that he didn’t understand the life he was planning would never be me,” Madeline said. “That fact surprised me so much, hurt me so much, I just broke up with him. Just like that. And now I’m shamed by my cruelty.”

  I reached over the table. Now it was my turn to pat her hand. “Don’t worry about it. He’s wonderful. He’s got a girlfriend, the kids, and obviously he still thinks well of you since he wanted to do this job for you.”

  She l
ooked up at me, a considering expression on her face. “John had children?” she said, the words disclosing shock.

  “No, no. He’s dating someone who has kids. She’s great. So don’t worry about him.”

  “No,” she said. “I suppose not.”

  She waved at a passing waiter who soon returned with another round of lychee martinis.

  “Tell me about you, Isabel,” Madeline said. “How do you know John?”

  I told her my fiancé had experienced “some problems.” The topic of Sam’s disappearance more than a year ago seemed a little much for our first night out, so I only disclosed that I’d met Mayburn through that situation. “Now we’re friends.”

  “He is an excellent friend.”

  I nodded.

  “And where do you live, Isabel?”

  “Old Town.” I told her about the three-flat condo building I lived in. I was on the top floor, which was a drag because of the stairs but also a joy because of the private roof deck.

  “And this…” She gestured around the bar. “Is this the type of place you would go to with friends?”

  “I grew up in Chicago. In the city. So I have an affinity for dive bars.”

  “Dive bars!” she said, sounding delighted.

  We talked about the city then, about how Chicago had changed so very much, had become, in some ways much more metropolitan, and yet it was still the same hard-working Midwest town it had always been.

  Another round of lychee cocktails appeared.

  Madeline beamed and thanked the waiter. “To Chicago.” She lifted her glass in a toast.

  I did the same. “To Chicago,” I said, clinking her glass lightly, trying not to slosh the drink. The truth was, I was getting a little sloshed.

  We both took a sip, then Madeline excused herself and left the table, heading toward the restroom. I sat and let myself just notice, as I’d watched Madeline do over the last hour or so.

  I thought about Madeline. I was impressed with the way she was handling the forgery. I could tell it deeply distressed her, and yet despite that, she still allowed herself to enjoy her life when she could.