Watermark

by Karin Kallmaker

  She was admiring a Hieronymous Bosch replica — it made her think of that woman yet again, which was not fair — when she heard Ken say, "Well, I'll be darned."

  She turned. "What?"

  "Look." He pointed.

  "It's a chartreuse square with red lines around it."

  "I looked and I thought — gay people come in all colors."

  Teresa chortled. "You'd better be careful — Satan can quote art books for her purpose."

  "Teresa, may I quote your father?"

  "Yeah," she said warily.

  "Shup."

  She really was offended this time. "You don't know me well enough to tell me to shup."

  Her father breezed by, saying, "Reese, everyone who has ever met you knows you well enough to want you to shut up."

  "Oh! Years of filial devotion and this is what I get?" Teresa looked at Melanie for support. "For this I let him father me?"

  Melanie sighed. "They're just men, Teresa."

  "Melanie, you can call me Reese." Over her shoulder she said to Ken, "But you can't."

  She let the colors of a Stuart Davis canvas claim her emotions, which were as jumbled as the painting — all red and gold and shocking orange. Always an only child, one parent for as long as she could remem¬ber, and now this family dynamic was happening. She hadn't really asked for it. She wasn't sure she'd

  missed much. Spending a year with her mother's mother in France had given her all the taste for high-strung matriarchs she ever wanted. So she would not think of Melanie as a mother, but she and Ken were now part of the family. It was disconcerting to her sense of the world. But her father was happier than she had ever seen him and that was worth an adjustment to reality on her part.

  It occurred to her that if life got rough she wouldn't be able to run home to daddy because Mel would be there too. She knew she should be grateful to have Melanie's affection and support, but she hadn't realized that she was losing something in the bargain.

  Crap, she thought. I really am going to have to grow up. You'll be twenty-eight very soon, she re¬minded herself. And you have a wrinkle. Crap.

  6

  "Tucker, you scared me to death!" Rayann bent to pick up the bag of treats she'd dropped. "And I brought emergency supplies just for you."

  "Sorry, Ray." A fiendish Frankenstein face loomed over the bushes. Gory red goo bulged from one eye and sticky green stitches crisscrossed his forehead.

  "Good makeup." The night was split by a piercing yowl and she jumped again. "Whose idea was this?"

  "Joyce likes it." Tucker's grin proved that Joyce wasn't the only one. He dug into the treat bag she'd

  brought. "Cheese sticks, you're the best. Joyce won't let me eat any more of the stuff for the party."

  Rayann could just imagine. Joyce reported it wasn't unusual for him, on the verge of sixteen, to absorb three peanut butter sandwiches after a full dinner and still look around for more. She pushed her way through the open front door and realized she had to navigate a maze to find the kitchen.

  Where on earth did Joyce find black sheets? The maze forced her to stumble into two mummies and a sulfurous cadaver. Halfway through, Frankenstein jumped out at her again and did not look in the least sorry when she yelped.

  Teddy appeared from the backyard, dragging his left leg behind him. "Welcome to Ghothly Manor," he lisped. He wore gray sweats and a hunter's cap with the flaps down. There was an enormous hump on his back.

  "Did you get that moving all the furniture?"

  He straightened. "Yes."

  "You love it," Joyce informed him. She was fetch-ingly clad in a Catwoman costume, complete with tail, ears and stiletto heels.

  "Wow, you look great," Rayann said, then worried she had put too much feeling into it. Joyce had long since proven her acceptance of lesbians and willingness to be friends, but sometimes she reacted awkwardly to certain types of comments.

  She took Rayann's admiration in stride, however. "Thank you." She sent a pointed-dagger look at Teddy. "Some people notice."

  "I worthip you, Mithreth. Igor think Joyth thwell." Teddy lurched toward her.

  Joyce thrust a plate of appetizers at him. "Igor, take these outside."

  "Igor obey." He slunk toward the patio.

  "I feel totally outclassed," Rayann admitted. "I cheated with my costume." She tapped the name badge that adorned her suit jacket lapel. She'd dressed in all-black, but the nametag proclaiming her status as Union Representative for Witch's Local 1313 was her only costume.

  "That's cute," Joyce said. "Very clever, and you didn't have to spend an hour letting out a costume seam. Come out to the patio."

  Heat lamps kept the chilly night air at bay. From the patio she could glimpse parties on either side as well. You'd like this, and Tucker is getting so tall.

  She said hello to Teddy's assistant and her husband. She'd met them at Louisa's memorial. The assistant wore a T-shirt that said "Middle-aged fat chick." Her husband's said "Chubby Hubby." It was a relief to see others who hadn't rented costumes.

  Teddy offered the appetizers and Rayann managed to nibble. Everything tasted like cardboard to her. I'd give anything for your ham and eggs, Lou. Or your apple pie.

  "Don't leave without talking to me, Ray." Teddy scratched under his cap. "I think we can finalize the lawsuit and get it over with."

  "That would be great." She swallowed hard. "I decided yesterday to sell the bookstore to Ricki, and at the price she offered."

  "Great. I think that's really wise. She loves the place as much as Mom did, and having lived upstairs since you and Mom moved, she knows what she's getting."

  "Ricki's thrilled. I'm going to loan her the money, carry the paper myself. There's no point in her paying fees and stuff like that. Her willingness to work like a slave was the reason we could find a separate residence at last. It'll be hard enough to make ends meet." Meanwhile, the house she and Louisa had moved to was still in disrepair. She had no energy for anything. Coming to this party had taken a monu¬mental effort of will.

  "Don't I know it? I'll do the mortgage paperwork and the trust deed — it's really easy. You could do them yourself if you wanted."

  "You do them — I can't think that hard." She was joking, but Teddy's expression said he believed her.

  "How's the job front coming?" He sounded far too casual.

  "Nothing exciting. Every once in a while, Tony still bugs me to come back, but it's not what I want anymore." It's where I was when I lost you— / can't go back.

  "Are you doing any work? Woodwork, I mean."

  She wanted to ask him why he was so interested. But she knew why. "I'm working on some small pieces for Christmas gifts. Thanks for telling me that Joyce likes calla lilies, by the way." She hadn't had time to handmake Christmas gifts in six years — since she'd gone back to advertising. She had all the time in the world now, but her chisels needed sharpening. Maybe next week she'd take them in.

  More guests arrived and the doorbell rang incessantly. Tucker gravitated between the food and scaring trick-or-treaters. Rayann made conversation for a while, then drifted back into the house. She wandered into Teddy's home office and sat down to

  look at the picture of his mother he still kept on the credenza.

  You looked great that day. It had been taken in Scotland. Louisa's black and silver hair was flying in the wind, streaming out over emerald green hills and the dark green ocean. She looked like a Druid priestess.

  "I thought I'd find you in here." Teddy, sans hump, eased onto the sofa next to her.

  "Sorry," she said quickly. "I don't know that many people."

  "No problem. I'm glad you could make it. Joyce really knocks herself out."

  "Joyce is great."

  "I got lucky the second time around." Since Tucker's mother had never been in contact with ex-husband or son after leaving when Tucker was a baby, Rayann definitely agreed with him.

  Teddy went on, "Anyway, I have the proposed settlement from the trucking company's insurance la
wyers. They came up with the extra million, which means we'll have enough to buy that building for the Oakland Women's Center. Nancy already has two subtenants lined up for the first floor, a family-services lawyer and a security company owned by women."

  Rayann felt a genuine flicker of interest. "That sounds great. A perfect match." And you would have loved this, too.

  "The settlements for you and me and Tucker are the same and there's also enough to double what we thought for the other charities. If you invested wisely and lived simply you could do almost anything. Didn't you teach before you met Mom?"

  "Way back when. It didn't suit me."

  "Well, you could do almost anything."

  "Lucky me." She had meant it as a joke, but her voice broke.

  After an uncomfortable silence, he said, "I some¬times have the oddest urge to pick up the phone and call her. I haven't forgotten she's not there, and yet I still get the urge."

  "I know what you mean," Rayann said. She knew all too well.

  He picked up Louisa's picture. "Why is it you have to be pushing forty before you appreciate that time is too short? I spent all those years being a jerk about her being gay. What a waste."

  Tears rose but she forced them down. She had made it nearly three months without crying. She was not going to start now.

  "When Chris died, I missed her so much. She was the only other parent I'd ever known. I knew how Mom was feeling. But I pretended I didn't really care. I said it wasn't as if she was family." He let the words out as if he'd held them in too long, and not saying them now was more than he could bear. "She had lost the love of her life and I made her pretend she was just a friend because I didn't want anyone to know my mom was a lesbian. She went through it alone because I made a scene every time Danny came to visit. All the nights she must have spent crying it out so I wouldn't see. What a selfish bastard." He scrubbed his sleeve over his eyes.

  "Teddy, she loved you."

  "It wasn't until you came along that I let her be a person. I told her I was sorry about the way I reacted to you. But I never could say how sorry I was about Chris."

  "She knew. She had to know. She understood you better than you understood yourself."

  He put the photograph down, then looked at her with compassion. The resemblance of his eyes to his mother's was too painful to endure. She studied her thumbs. "Poor Ray. Comforting me when you're still getting over it yourself."

  There was no "getting over it." Rayann didn't understand how anyone could think she would get over it.

  "And I didn't mean — when I said that Chris was the love of her life — I didn't mean you weren't."

  "I know. She once said she didn't know what she'd done to get lucky twice." She had made her peace with Chris's existence a long time ago. Part of Chris had been in Louisa, and she had loved all of Louisa.

  There was a sudden burst of music from the living room. "Tucker's started up The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I see."

  She did the "Time Warp" with Tucker — she'd taught him the steps, after all — then left shortly thereafter. Between double-parked cars and wandering costumed ghouls and goblins, traffic was horrible.

  She had an urge to go to the Castro, but the thought of the crowd made her decide against it. What would she do if she went, anyway? Go to a bar? Look for that woman again?

  Everyone said that time heals all wounds. Every¬one said she needed to get on with her life. Everyone, particularly Judy, said she should go to a grief counselor.

  Everyone could go to hell, she thought. None of

  them had lost Louisa's love. She viciously cut off another driver on the approach to the bridge.

  The rush of anger left her shaking, then ex¬hausted. She'd been fighting it for weeks. She didn't want to be angry. She wanted to be in control. Numb. Which meant another night at home. It wasn't too early in the season to watch Miracle on 34th Street. Louisa had loved it.

  "How are you coming along with those?" Carla leaned over the banister from the floor above.

  "Great. This is a perfect project to take up on a slow day." Teresa had set about sorting the canvases as soon as she'd arrived.

  "I'm sure everyone is at the day-after sales. Did you have a good Turkey Day?"

  "I'm still stuffed. My roommate wanted to impress her new girlfriend with her culinary prowess, and I was a lucky bystander." Teresa indicated the stacks of small canvases around her. "I've got the wheat sorted from the chaff. And this one," she said as she picked up a canvas and held it under the desk lamp, "is un¬doubtedly the best of the lot. It will have to be authenticated, but I'm pretty sure it's a Klee sketch."

  "A Klee?" Carla's head disappeared and her heels rapped along the floor and down the staircase toward Teresa. "You're kidding!"

  Teresa wasn't perturbed by Carla's patent disbelief. An estate gift of 100 mixed canvases, most of little value, would not be where she'd go looking for a Paul

  Klee, sketch or ^painting. But she was reasonably sure she knew a Klee when she saw one. Chalk one up for art school. "It could be an imitation, I suppose. But I recognize the final piece this sketch was a preliminary for."

  Carla took the frame in her hands as if it was made of eggshell. "Did you hold it up to the light?"

  "Um, no." It hadn't occurred to her.

  Carla turned the frame over. "It looks like it was specially framed so that the back could be viewed, too."

  "I thought that might be to see the date." She pointed at the small inscription.

  "There could be more to it than that, if I know anything at all about Klee. Let's go look in a bright light."

  They went to the small balcony off the second floor. Carla held the small frame up so that sunlight streamed through it. "Ah! There it is! His watermark!"

  With the sunlight illuminating every grain and weave in the paper, Teresa could see the artist's signa¬ture watermarked in the paper. "I'd never have looked for that. I didn't know to look."

  "Experience, my dear, it's all in the experience."

  "Do you think the family knew it was in here?"

  "I doubt it — it would be worth thousands . .. Look at the condition, though. At one time, someone knew what it was." She handed it back. "Go find the history of it, girlfriend. Good eye!"

  Her heart pounding with jubilation, Teresa sat down at the terminal that would let her sign on to the Network for the Fine Arts. She confined herself to

  humming. The hours were long, the tasks sometimes mind-numbing, but she'd certainly won Carla's respect and the respect of the board members for whom she'd done special projects.

  A Paul Klee, she congratulated herself. In amongst dime-a-dozen watercolors and reproductions, she'd found a valuable piece of art. She had always liked Klee's clean lines and wire art.

  According to the NFA, the final piece was held by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. She wondered what they might like to trade as a more or less permanent loan if Carla wanted to loan them the sketch to go with the final piece.

  She also found that there were believed to be at least two dozen sketches, but only seven were accounted for in the NFA. All were held by private collectors with appraisal dates. It looked better and better that what she'd found was genuine and pre¬viously unlisted.

  She bounced into Carla's office. "I'm almost certain that it's genuine. I've got an e-mail in to Boston, they've got the final —" Carla looked as if she was going to cry. "What's wrong?"

  "Paul Sallter died this morning."

  "Whoa." Teresa sat down. Paul Sallter underwrote a quarter of their operating budget. "I didn't know he was sick."

  "He wasn't. Heart attack. I'm a terrible person," Carla added.

  "Why?"

  "I liked Paul and all I can think about is, what are we going to do? I'm pretty sure the current Mrs.

  Sallter will have lots of other plans for the Sallter fortune." She snorted. "The new Mrs. Sallter prefers wearable art."

  "He'll have left something in his will," Teresa said with far more conviction th
an she felt.

  "I just hope we're not all looking for work next month. We didn't get this month's check yet, either." A tear ran down her cheek. "It seems so petty to worry about it right now. He was a nice person."

  "I'm sure everything will be fine," Teresa said. She'd never met Mr. Sallter, so she didn't feel in the least bit restrained from petty worries like if she was going to get her next paycheck. Carla was really pale. If she was worried about her job, then where did Teresa stand?

  Then it hit her. At the bottom of the totem pole, that's where. All of the other assistants had way more tenure than she did.

  Vivian was not a lot of help when Teresa un¬burdened herself that night. "No one thinks they have a job forever anymore."

  "But I really like it. And I finally finished the new database and we got all the pieces security-tagged. I was going to get to do some fun stuff finally."

  Vivian brushed lint off her black suede high heels. "Well, you should start looking right now, just in case. By the time you've had some interviews, you'll know if you need to take another position."

  It was good advice. She hated the thought of look¬ing, though. "I'll never find anything in museum work. I'll have to look for computer design. And that means going back to advertising, most likely."

  "It pays well. Until something better comes along."

  Vivian strapped on the shoes, then smoothed her red sheath. She had another date with Kim, which meant Teresa most likely had the place to herself for the night. They usually went to Kim's place, two or three nights a week since Kim's roommate worked nights. Imagining all the fun Vivian was going to have did not improve her spirits.

  She slumped on the sofa. "Well, you can bet I'm avoiding the place where I worked before like the plague. There must be someplace decent to work, where you're not just a cog in a machine."

  "You dreamer, you. See you tomorrow night," Vivian said over her shoulder.

  Teresa dug out the job classifieds part of the Chronicle, and stretched out in front of the TV She found nothing to her liking in the paper, not one thing she'd send a resume to.