I emailed Joan as soon as I returned to the hotel: Saw her. She doesn’t want to leave. Then I pulled the drapes and crawled into bed to catch up on sleep.
I was happy to have seen Court again, to find her in good health and relatively happy, but I felt that although she was seemingly more content, she was actually more disturbed than the girl I’d known years before. She was no longer that wide-eyed girl with the puppy I’d painted in a corner of one of the walls. That girl was troubled but alive with possibility. The woman I’d met with that afternoon had a far narrower vision. It was as if the world she lived in had contracted, and as fine and well made as her dolls were, there was something locked-in about them; my sense was that she was lost in a repetitive cycle with no possibility of breaking free.
I was glad I’d come. It was good to know she was alive and functioning as an artist. I also believed she was right about not going back to Calista to face her demons. She was far too brittle for that. I felt that if she left the clinic and went back, the experience could break her.
Her words haunted me: ‘I have a story to tell and I’ve found a way to tell it with cloth and thread.’ It was the same story that we had painted on the walls – You-Will-Be-Betrayed, You-Will-Not-Be-Believed. This was the story she was telling herself when we met, and had been telling herself ever since, again and again.
I also wondered if the paintings we made on those attic walls were her best expression of it, and, in fact, her greatest work.
Jason Poe
We were so naïve! Our fantasy that Courtney would be willing to come back to Calista, confront her brothers, reclaim her freedom and her fortune, then live something akin to a normal life … we should have known that was absurd.
She was too badly damaged, she’d spent a quarter of a century in a sanatorium, and considering all she’d been through, it was a wonder she could still make art.
Noah advised us that if she wouldn’t come back and testify, there was no hope of reclaiming her life. Yes, Ted Schechtner’s therapy notes were devastating, but would likely be inadmissible in a legal proceeding. Could Noah replace Nate Silver as Courtney’s guardian ad litem? Possibly, but what would be the point? She was content where she was, her maintenance was being paid, and – it turned out, to our surprise – she was aware her shrink was selling her work. There was no real scandal aside from her brothers’ abuse decades in the past. The only purpose in airing that would be to embarrass them, which would be useless. Those who would hate them already did so on account of their politics and environmental crimes.
‘I wish there was something purposeful we could do for her,’ Noah told us. ‘Alas, I don’t think there is.’
Hannah and I had several long discussions about this. We understood that Courtney’s life was beyond our power to reclaim. Even so, we’d accomplished our primary goal: discovered the story and meaning behind the Locust Street Murals. Joan’s interviews with Penny in Key West and Dr Ted’s notes on his sessions with Courtney explained much of what had been mysterious about the murals. Now our remaining goal was to preserve and protect them.
A week or so after a lengthy FaceTime exchange with Penny, in which she described her meeting with Courtney in detail, I received an excited call from Cindy Broderick.
‘We finally got half a mural out. It was tough. There was some minor chipping at the edges where the panels meet, but that can be easily restored. Three and a half murals to go.’
‘Which half?’ I asked.
‘Two sections. Left side of the A wall.’
Terrific! That was the part that included Courtney and her puppy, Bonnie.
Cindy told me her biggest problem was getting the panels off the walls, then down the attic ladder.
‘We considered loosening the gazebo, bringing in a crane to lift the whole thing off the roof, then setting it down on a flatbed truck. We decided that was too risky. The structure might fall apart. So we’re carefully loosening the panels and bringing them out piecemeal. It’ll take time and a lot of patience, but I’m convinced it can be done with minimal damage to the art.’
Hannah was frustrated. ‘We know the story and Cindy is preserving the work. Why isn’t that enough?’
It was a rhetorical question. We both knew it wasn’t nearly enough. We had to do something about the brothers. Since it was clear that Courtney couldn’t and wouldn’t confront them, perhaps we owed it to her to do so on her behalf.
I got everyone together to discuss such a confrontation. Noah was the obvious choice, but he had a good reason not to take on the job.
‘If I ask to meet with them, they’ll refer me to their lawyers. Then what? For reasons I explained, without Courtney’s participation this can’t become a legal matter.’
‘What kind of matter is it, then?’ Hannah asked.
‘Emotional. It’s about satisfaction. You want to confront them with what you know and make them react.’
‘They’ll deny everything,’ Hannah said.
‘Of course! But it’s how they deny that’ll be telling,’ Noah told her. ‘Remember, they have no idea what you’ve been up to all these months, or even that the murals exist.’
‘Vile as they are, they’re a big piece of the story,’ Joan said. ‘At least we should try to hear their side of it.’
We all turned to her.
She shook her head. ‘You guys want me to talk to them?’
‘Why not? You’re a journalist. Just ask for an interview,’ I said.
Joan smiled. ‘It would be an ambush interview.’
‘All the better!’ Hannah said. ‘Are you up for it?’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘Be careful how you handle them,’ Noah warned. ‘Those guys play rough. Soon as you bring up Courtney’s name, they’ll probably throw you out.’
From the way Joan continued smiling, I had a hunch she was formulating a plan. My confidence in her was such that I was certain she could pull off such an interview. So far she’d done a terrific job for us: obtaining the police file on the raid; interviewing Loetz and Silver; getting Penny to open up, then recruiting her to go to Zurich and discover where Courtney’s head was at. Meantime, she was writing an amazing series on the summer fires, chasing down leads from her arson investigator source. She’d already published three articles on the fires, each of which appeared on the front page of the Times-Dispatch. She was making a name for herself as an investigative journalist, just as I had once made my name as a conflict photographer. I was sure that if I hadn’t gotten her involved, we would never have been able to put together the story behind the murals.
I went over to Locust Street to watch the conservators remove the final A-wall panels. I was impressed by the care they took bubble-wrapping the plywood panels, then lowering them to the third floor. After they took them down to their van, I went up to the attic to look around. With one wall now empty, the effect was different. There was no longer a sense of being overwhelmed. The paintings on the B, C and D walls were strong, but without the A wall the room felt incomplete. It was the four walls together that made the murals so powerful, the feeling that one was dead center inside a total work of art.
Driving back to the Capehart, I felt let down. The murals project was near its end, and I wasn’t sure what I should do next. Finish up with Leavings, put together a show and accompanying book, then go back to full-time teaching in the fall – of course. But still I felt an emptiness. The murals had consumed me. I had come upon them on account of what some considered my great strength as a photographer, but which I had come to view as my great weakness: a love of taking risks. Just as I’d gone to Aleppo to be a witness, so I had entered the world of the murals with the intention of cracking their code. I had left Aleppo broken, and now was feeling pangs of withdrawal from the murals. I’d crawled into all those abandoned houses to document desperation and loss. What I found was something both terrifying and magnificent, a work of art that had its roots in horrendous betrayal and abuse.
I understood a
gain, driving back into the city, that my quest to comprehend and ‘read’ the murals had really been a quest to understand myself, the forces that drove me to take photographs of trauma and pain. It was upon that realization that I decided to go back to eye-contact photography. Images of the things people left behind could say a good deal about them, but the confusion and sorrow in their eyes would say far more. I was long done covering wars. But I wanted to go back to gazing at people as they gazed back at me, discovering the truth in their eyes.
What was it in my own life that drove me to identify with the agony in others? I had a hunch I would never plumb that mystery, but that was the road I was on and which I felt I had no choice but to follow.
Hannah Sachs
I was anxious to express my gratitude to Anna, tell her that her tip had been correct, that the Ragdoll Artist and the murals artist were one and the same. I phoned her a couple of times, left messages, was upset when she didn’t return my calls.
Finally she sent an email: Feeling awful. Not answering the phone. Please come see me when/if you can.
I immediately emailed back. We made a date for me to come over to her place at six p.m. the following day.
She lived in the Windsor Arms, one of a pair of twin Style Moderne apartment houses just a block from Waverly Square. The Windsor Arms and the Cambridge Arms were two of the better buildings in the suburbs, streamlined with touches of nautical ornamentation, horizontal lines, rounded corners, and anomalous molded escutcheons set over their grand entranceways.
Anna didn’t look well.
‘I’ve been sleeping poorly,’ she said as she fixed us drinks. ‘Actually, I’ve been feeling like crap. Last week I even felt suicidal. Don’t worry, that’s over, but I’m still depressed.’
Her problem, she confided, was Anders Carlsen, who, she told me, was about to be fired from the CMA directorship.
‘Turns out the museum board decided to get rid of him, not because of our affair, but for lying to Jack Cobb about it. I told you about the anonymous letter, and that Jack asked Anders if what it said was true. Anders shrugged it off, then tried to find out who wrote it. He called his curators into his office one at a time and interrogated them like a Grand Inquisitor. Several of them complained to the board, and then someone pointed out he’d never completed his PhD as he claimed. Did all the course work, but never handed in his dissertation. Yet he insisted everyone address him as “Doctor Carlsen.”’
‘Jesus!’ I said. ‘Aren’t you glad you cut him loose?’
‘Sure. But it’s been painful. And really humiliating to find out everyone in the museum knew we were involved and gossiped about us at dinner parties. Now Anders insists he needs me. He keeps calling, leaving messages that because of me he’s losing his job and his family, and begging me to take him back. “I’m being shit-canned at the museum and you’re all I’ve got left. And now you don’t return my calls.”’
‘He really said “shit-canned”?’
‘At times he can be pretty crude. Thing is, I don’t know how to react. I can’t take the pressure. I’m tempted to see him if only out of pity. I’ve also thought about blocking his email address and his number, but I’m afraid that’ll just enrage him.’
‘Do it, Anna. And don’t you dare even contemplate suicide. He’s not worth it. No one is. Forget him. Move to New York. Become a private dealer there, like you planned. You were right – Courtney Cobb is the Ragdoll Artist. If it weren’t for you and your terrific eye, we would never have made the connection.’
I told her the whole story, and that we had video of Courtney’s shrink surreptitiously selling Courtney’s dolls to Susanne Weber. I urged her to go to Zurich, talk to Courtney and then DeJonghe, use the video and photos of the pornographic doll as leverage to get herself appointed Courtney’s US dealer. Then return to New York and start representing Courtney’s work to collectors.
‘As for Anders – he’s damaged goods,’ I reminded her. ‘You’ll be damaged too if you take him back.’
She gazed into my eyes. ‘You’re such a good friend.’
We talked for a while then about the murals, how they’d been created by two young people caught up in the passionate throes of art-making, who created an amazing work that most likely neither one of them could have produced on her own.
‘And the terrifying part for me,’ I said, ‘is that if there had been no violation, no abuse, those murals would probably not exist. So was it worth it? Can art that good justify such terrible pain?’
‘That,’ Anna said, ‘is always the great, horrible and unanswerable question.’
‘Well,’ I laughed, ‘now that we’ve dealt with the fundamental issue of art-making, what say we go out to dinner? Maybe try that sushi bar “O” on the square. Get ourselves a couple flasks of really good sake and celebrate the start of your new life.’
I waited while she changed and touched up her face.
‘Anders has a set of keys,’ she told me as she locked her apartment door.
‘You gotta get them back.’
‘That would mean seeing him.’
‘I’ll see him. If he doesn’t hand them over, change your locks.’
As we strolled out of the Windsor Arms, Anna suddenly stopped.
‘Shit!’ she hissed. ‘Across the street. That guy in the doorway – it’s him.’
I peered at a man wearing a fedora standing in the shadowed entrance of the Cambridge Arms, the twin of Anna’s building. He was standing ominously still. He seemed to be gazing back at us. I couldn’t make out his face, but then a car passed by, its headlights illuminating the doorway. For the fraction of a second that the man’s face was lit, he raised his eyebrows in an ironic way and a tight half-smile curled his lips. No question, it was Anders.
‘This is what I’ve been afraid of,’ Anna whispered.
‘Is he a stalker?’
‘He told me in grad school he stalked an ex. He thought that was clever. “Got under her skin. Really freaked her out,” he said.’
Jesus!
‘I’m going to talk to him.’
She grasped my arm. ‘No, Hannah! Please don’t!’
‘I’ll be right back. I’m going to get your keys and warn him to stay away.’
I broke free and strode across the street.
‘Anders?’
‘Do I know you?’ he asked.
‘We’ve met. My name’s Hannah Sachs. Stay away from Anna. Stop this stalking bullshit, or you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.’
‘Who the hell are you to tell me what to do?’
I studied his face – strong jaw, intense blue eyes, dark blond mustache and goatee. Under other circumstances I’d probably consider him decent-looking. That night I viewed him as a creep.
‘I’m Anna’s friend,’ I told him. ‘My brother’s a lawyer. Leave her alone or he’ll serve you with a restraining order. How’s that going to look along with your being fired from the museum for playing Torquemada with the curators, and lying to everyone about your doctorate?’
He sniffed. ‘I see that’s gotten around.’
‘Yeah, it has.’
‘I need to talk to her. Please tell her that.’
I shook my head. ‘She doesn’t want to talk. And she wants her keys back. Better hand them over now.’
As he stared at me, I saw madness in his eyes, the look of a cornered animal deciding whether to lash out or retreat.
‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ I warned him. ‘You’re in enough trouble as it is.’
‘Yeah. Because the bitch ruined my life.’ He turned to where Anna was standing. ‘Hear that, cunt?’ he yelled. Then he reached into his pocket, threw a set of keys at my feet. ‘Take ’em! Tell her we’re done. Tell her I’ve got no use for her.’ And with that he huffed, spat at the spot where he’d thrown the keys, tipped his hat, huffed again, turned his back, then walked off with the swagger of a man under the delusion that he was making a dignified retreat.
When I got back to Anna,
I found her looking strong.
‘I heard the whole thing,’ she said.
‘Still want to go out?’
‘Oh, yeah!’ she said, taking my arm. ‘Let’s go get that sake.’
Joan Nguyen
I spent a week prepping for the interview. I read every article I could find on the Cobb brothers, then contacted the public relations office at Cobb Industries. I spoke with a Ms Evelyn Maw who told me in an efficient tone that she handled all interview requests.
‘The guys rarely grant interviews,’ she told me briskly. ‘They’ve been burned too many times.’
‘I’ve no intention of burning them,’ I assured her. ‘My piece will be about the Cobb family’s commitment to the arts.’
‘Sounds innocuous enough. What about politics?’
‘I don’t write about politics, never have.’
‘I’ve read your articles about the fires. Not bad.’
‘Actually, most of my writing’s about art.’
‘Well and good,’ Evelyn said. ‘Send over a file of all your articles from the last two years. I’ll look them over, and if I think an interview will be worth their time, I’ll pass it along with my recommendation. The final decision will be theirs.’
I sent over the file as requested. Three days later she called me back.
‘They’re up for it, so long as there’s no discussion of politics or environmental issues. Confine yourself to the arts, and you’ll be fine. They’ll give you half an hour.’
The Murals Page 24