‘Even better,’ Anne said. She tasted rosemary; the sweetness of slow-roasted tomatoes; and olive oil of a pungency that made the ordinary stuff seem like dishwashing liquid. Half a lifetime ago, Anne recalled, in her New Haven kitchen, she had given Flannery a bossy lesson in the importance of olive oil. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Paul.’ Tricia’s cheeks turned pink with pride, an emotion Anne had scarcely seen on her sister’s face, except when talking about her son. ‘Castellanos. He works at the Institute too. So, you know, it’s an office romance, you could say.’
‘Tsk, tsk.’ Anne feigned disapproval. ‘And? What else? Tell me about him.’
Paul Castellanos worked closely on the museum’s Diego Rivera pieces, tending the Detroit Industry frescoes that made up the core of its modern collection. He was overweight, Tricia admitted, but she didn’t mind; this was offset by the fact that he had thick dark hair, and, ‘Attraction-wise, having a head of hair makes up for a lot in a man.’ Anne, considering Marovic, agreed.
‘We met at the Spring Gala. I hate those things, having to get all dolled up and talk to donors and all that crap, but you feel like they’re going to fire you if you don’t go. You were supposed to dress up as either Diego or Frieda Kahlo.’ Her sister had a gallery of eye rolls, one for every occasion. ‘I didn’t bother with the costume, and neither did Paul. You can imagine, for a large Mexican American man to dress up as Diego Rivera seemed kind of redundant. Or offensive. Or both. Anyway, that’s how we got to talking.’
‘Sounds like fate.’ Anne tipped her wine glass toward her sister, a gesture of cheers.
Tricia tried to see whether she was being mocked. She took a gulp of water and for a moment, Anne suspected, wished she could lean over and sample Anne’s wine. ‘It was luck. That’s for sure. He and Mitchell really get along too. If he’s as good a guy as he seems, it will be more like a miracle.’
‘A miracle,’ Anne repeated softly. She was happy for Tricia; and did not intend the note of melancholy in her voice. ‘So Santa Maria has been at work, after all.’
Tricia smiled. All the cynicism had fallen from her face. She looked like the girl Anne remembered, who used to braid Anne’s hair for her. Then Anne would braid hers; they took turns.
‘Bless that lady,’ Tricia said. ‘She has.’
21
‘Are you in touch with Jazz at all?’ Tricia asked.
Her tone was uncertain, and Anne was uncertain how to hear it. From her sister’s roundly inquisitive face Anne perceived that Tricia’s sympathy, ampler now from her own nascent contentment, was competing with a primitive satisfaction that for once the younger sibling was somehow ahead. It was hard for anyone from a conflictual family to be purely sorry for one member’s sadness. And it was anyway maybe a zero sum game. One can only be as happy as the other is less so. Was that right? Or was it Anne’s second glass of wine that suggested this cynicism? On the one hand, when younger, Tricia had clearly wanted her glittering big sister to achieve, to be a worthy object of her adoration; when Anne was valedictorian at their girls’ school fourteen-year-old Tricia radiated nothing but pride. On the other hand, if Anne fell, she guessed that the pressure on Tricia lessened greatly, and Tricia’s divorce shrank in importance. At Irène’s funeral, Tricia confessed to Anne that their mother had never been kinder to her than in the last months of her life.
‘No,’ Anne answered, about Jazz. ‘I’m not. What would be the point?’
Tricia looked away. She had always had a slight crush on Jasper, it seemed to Anne, which didn’t bother her (though her appropriation of Anne’s nickname for him did). Jasper was interested in Tricia’s work and friendly to her, and to her son Mitchell, when they came to visit. The three of them used to play poker together, a game Anne appreciated but did not join.
‘I still have a hard time seeing him as a dad. How old are the twins now?’
‘One.’
‘He never seemed to want that before. I mean . . .’
‘People change.’
‘Sure, of course. But after twenty years –’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘I don’t know,’ Tricia began. ‘I still think that if you’d –’
‘Don’t.’
Anne’s voice was low and sharp, a knife-thrust.
When they were children, Anne learned early that her voice could pin Tricia down more effectively than any wrestle hold. She was physically strong when she needed to be, and Tricia was timid around her for that reason, but it was the voice that scared her little sister most. Throughout Anne’s life, at work and in love, she commanded with her voice. It was a weapon, as well as a charm. It could utter endearments at a warm, stirring vibration only audible to her lover; or it could deliver a slap as cold as that of Irène’s own hand.
Tricia looked away, her eyes dipped like a scolded dog’s.
‘Just . . . don’t,’ Anne said again.
The repetition was unnecessary.
22
After a silence, Tricia pulled out her cell phone and examined it. While she tapped out messages, Anne asked for the bill. They settled it and left.
They ambled without talking along a sidewalked canal lined with buildings of autumnal colors, then across the pretty Ponte dei Pugni — the word meant fists, though this didn’t seem a good time for Anne to mention it — and on through a populated campo. Anne was poised between aggravation at Tricia’s intrusion and regret at her own loss of temper; Tricia, by the look of her, between apology and defiance. That stalemate could have continued, but finally, the third time Tricia stopped in front of an elegant palazzo, smiling into her held-up phone to take a selfie, Anne issued a peace offering:
‘Here, let me take it. They come out better.’
‘OK. Thanks.’
Tricia posed, Anne obliged and handed the phone back. ‘For Paul?’ she asked, and Tricia, checking the image, nodded. ‘He told me if we couldn’t do this trip together, the next best thing was me sending him pictures.’ She seemed to sense the imbalance in the moment and said, ‘Look, I didn’t mean –’
‘Forget it. Let’s move on.’
They continued walking.
‘The curator’s notes, for the Biennale –’ Anne tried to bring them back to neutral — ‘had a nice line about the worlds we carry in our cell phones. The way an image of a loved one becomes a kind of talisman.’
‘This is the guy who pulled together The Encyclopedic Palace?’
‘Yes. Though it sounds better in Italian. Il Palazzo Enciclopedico.’
‘Everything’s better in Italian.’
‘True.’
‘Like gelato,’ Tricia said, as they approached a tiny vibrant shop selling some. ‘I mean, how much classier than ice cream? You know it can’t have as many calories, with a name like that.’
‘Shall we?’
‘Absolutely.’
They chose gelati the colors of flags of nations — Brazilian green, Spanish gold — and a brilliant cherry-streaked stracciatella.
‘Heaven,’ Anne announced.
‘It really is.’ Tricia hummed with satisfaction. ‘My boss at the DIA, Beal, told me that the show is about trying to contain all the knowledge of the world in one place. Just that, you know. No big deal. Just everything.’
‘Right. Like Wikipedia, in a way. Gioni calls it “delusions of omniscience”.’
Tricia looked sideways. ‘You suffer that occasionally, don’t you, sis?’
‘More than occasionally, even.’ It was Anne’s way of apologizing for snapping earlier. ‘A hazard of my profession.’
They crossed back over the Grand Canal on one of the spare undecorated gondolas known as traghetti. It was a simple, inexpensive ride, no singing, no accented lectures about the city’s architecture, just a stand-up crossing to the other bank. Anne considered making a joke about Charon crossing the riv
er Styx; but knew that would only have proved her sister’s point.
‘So,’ Tricia said, as they moved through the teeming evening alleys. ‘The word from Beal: Israel is fascinating, South Africa inspiring, France is lame.’ She sounded like a god, looking down on his world. ‘China’s total crap. America’s genius.’
‘I’ve heard that.’ Then, so that her sister should not think Anne was unable to revisit her own history, she said, ‘The year Jasper and I came, in the nineties, the American Pavilion had a bombastic piece with lots of weaponry — a Kalashnikov rifle, landmine, grenades — and then scattered bloody dove feathers, plastic hearts. War and Peace.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Get it?’
‘That was Charles Marshall.’
‘Right.’ The name lit a synapse in Anne’s brain. ‘Jasper had some time for it, but to me it seemed like a one-note idea.’
‘Well, that’s Marshall. If he finds a note he likes, he’ll keep playing it. He’s doing a piece for us, did I tell you? It’s way overdue, and he’s a nightmare to deal with, but it’s a coup for us to have gotten him.’
‘Congratulations.’ Anne was slightly distracted, though, recalling a gossip item that had startled her some years earlier. ‘I think he’s married to someone I used to know.’
‘Still?’ Tricia barked a short laugh. ‘He changes wives pretty often. Wives and dealers.’
‘I read this a while ago.’
‘Well, he used to be married to that movie star, what’s her name? The one in all the sci-fi blockbusters. Hell, what is her name? My god, my memory. Middle age is eating it alive.’
‘No, this woman is a writer. Flannery Jansen.’
‘I don’t know.’ Tricia shrugged. ‘All I can tell you is, he’s an asshole. Charming, but an asshole. Always blaming everyone else for what goes wrong. His assistants, us, some metal supplier — whoever.’
I might be seeing her in October, Anne thought of mentioning, a prospect which suddenly brought a honey flavor to her tongue that blended with the icy vividness of the gelato. But as they picked their way through the hot crowds, her sister had carried on to a story about Charles Marshall. Something about enlightenment.
23
Was it any more pleasant to stand jostling next to sweaty, noisome people on a boat hopscotching over low, wake-made waves across a broad canal than to do the same on a bone-rattling train a hundred feet underground?
It was, Anne decided the following morning, but only marginally and because you were nearer to fresh air, even if ‘fresh’ did not seem the right word precisely to describe the sultry Venetian atmosphere in August. Anne and Tricia stood on a busy waterbus making its slow way up toward the gardens of the exhibition. Tricia kept nearly stumbling at the boat’s jerky movements, reaching for Anne to steady her. The gesture’s metaphor disturbed them both — the younger sister leaning on her older one for stability — but it was preferable to leaning into a rank bearded man on her other side.
‘Well, it’s not the Stella Maris,’ Anne muttered, briefly missing that ship’s dignified rhythms, its engine’s leonine purr.
‘Or even the Beaver Island ferry,’ Tricia concurred, referring to a crossing they made a couple of times as children across Lake Michigan.
‘Giardini!’ called a harassed black-haired woman with a pink forelock as the boat pulled up, swaying like a drunkard, to a basic dock. The conductor, if that was the word for her, made a cursory effort to secure the vessel to its mooring. A heave of tourists vomited themselves out of the vaporetto, leaving behind a scum of chocolate wrappers, used tickets, and the occasional abandoned pair of sunglasses, or stray hat.
‘The Italians are so inefficient,’ Tricia announced when they were on solid sandy ground again. ‘They never even check that you’ve paid. People must rip off the system all the time. No wonder the country’s bankrupt.’
‘People in glass houses . . .’ Anne said. ‘For someone who comes from Detroit, which is thinking about selling off van Goghs to pay off its debts, I’m not sure that scolding the Italians –’
‘Don’t,’ Tricia said, in an exaggerated but plausible rendition of her sister’s voice. ‘Just . . . don’t.’
It was a risk, as a joke; with sisters, teasing could always go either way. It could start a fire, or create a new thread of comedy.
Anne laughed. They both did, then made their way companionably through the Biennale’s stone entryway to a landscaped maze, where thirty countries had separate pavilions devoted to their art.
24
In Russia, umbrellas were handed out at the entrance to fend off coins falling from the ceiling; the piece had to do with lust, and capitalist greed, and somehow gender. (Only women were allowed into the room that rained coins.) In the Netherlands, imaginary newspapers decorated the space, Japan had a ball thrower and sums on the wall, while the United States housed rooms with ornate and delicate assemblings that spoke of issues of work and time, precision and entropy. So the sisters decided, anyway. They marveled at Sarah Sze’s whittled table legs, egg-like deposits of stones and boulders, and otherworldly contraptions that looked like machines you might design in your sleep, to complete jobs that had not yet been conceived. Tricia was a sharp guide, drawing on more awareness of material and technical challenges than Anne was used to from Jasper’s cerebral excursions.
Outside each nation’s building, whether configured as crypt or town hall, igloo or banqueting house, crowds milled cheerfully. Children ran about unmonitored in the close heat, and pairs strolled arm in arm under the high plane trees. More than Anne remembered, it was like being at a fair. She half expected strong men or painted ladies, stands selling snow cones or cotton candy.
So many couples. This was something you did with your mate: travel. Like the Stella Maris’s amiable Knudsens or the cardiganed ladies from Maine, the affectionate analysts, a third entity was created when two people came together. In that configuration they could go further, see and hear more, touch and know better. It was all part of the system she and Jasper used to talk about, the call and response, the gears moving, as new geographies led to traded perceptions that were part of layered conversations, which in turn became memories on which you continued building, brick by brick, your adult self.
Still. The self was still there, after. Even without the other. It did not crumble. Sometimes Anne required her own professorial sternness to remind herself of this. Yes, you can bunk alone in your cabin and sleep perfectly well, the ship’s rhythms will soothe you. You can let your younger sister take you through an international art exhibition and tell you what she knows. It is good for her to be the one in charge for a change.
This was not an original revelation, Anne realized, but for the be-reaved, and the adjusting, it bore repeating: the world need not be less colorful, just because you were moving through it now uncoupled.
The women paused between Hungary and Finland to get their bearings, when the sound of a thin, chirping alarm came from Tricia’s purse, like a little electronic chick. From a chaos of tissues, euros, pens, coins, receipts, lipsticks — Anne shuddered to see the cluttered guts of her sister’s clutch — Tricia extracted her telephone, and on seeing its playing-card-sized surface, her cheeks bloomed with maternal pleasure: the flattered face of a parent receiving the attention of an adolescent son.
‘It’s Mitchell! He’s FaceTiming me.’
There was no chance Tricia would not have answered the call. If the Internet invaded, the phone positively trampled over whatever conversation it happened to find in the field, and your only choice, as the other person, was not to mind. Tricia pressed a button and Mitchell’s face and voice were suddenly with them on the gravel path in Venice, under the shade of the high green trees.
‘Hi, honey!’ Tricia’s voice grew louder and warmer as she smiled at the device in her hand. ‘It’s early there! Is something wrong?’
‘No. I’m just getting ready for work.�
�� The miniature Mitchell yawned. ‘But I have a question about the car.’
‘What is it? Say hi to your Aunt Anne first.’
‘It’s OK.’ Anne held up a fending-off hand, but the phone was flipped around before she could move, and captured her face like a spy’s swift recorder. ‘Hi, Mitchell,’ Anne conceded, as her image was beamed into a bedroom thousands of miles away, where her nephew waved to her, then cutely brushed a mop of sleep-mussed hair off his forehead.
‘Hi, Aunt Anne. How’s it going?’
‘All right, thanks. How are you?’ Anne tried to ease the strain out of her voice, and make her smile relaxed rather than taut. It wasn’t Mitchell’s fault that she had not felt ready for her close-up. Tricia, satisfied, took the phone back from Anne, then held it above her head and waved her arm in a wide, slow circle through the air, as if she were the pope bestowing some kind of magical benediction on the crowds.
‘Look! We’re here at the Biennale!’
‘Cool,’ Mitchell obliged.
Anne moved away from her sister and the son-containing cell phone as they began talking. What did the Check Engine light mean in the car? Did Mitchell have to, actually, check the engine, meaning take it to the mechanic? Should he ask his dad for help with it, and if so . . .
‘You can catch up with me,’ Anne called, unconsciously issuing the classic older sister taunt, but Tricia just gave her a silent salute, like a busy executive dismissing an associate. Anne ambled over toward Australia, which neighbored Germany, while a memory came to her of her nephew when he had been a young, rambunctious boy visiting New York, and her fear for him had nearly slayed her.
25
Mitchell was seven at the time. Tricia had secured permission from her ex-husband, as if the boy were a valuable artwork that required travel insurance and special packaging, to take him to New York for a few days to visit his aunt and uncle.
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