Quest

by Richard Ben Sapir

  “The killing was a week ago,” said Claire. She had not touched her napkin. Her right fist rested on top of it. Her egg sat unopened in the throne of the Wedgwood cup.

  “Claire, we shouldn’t blame ourselves for the crazy things other people do or say.” Mrs. Andrews delicately chipped away at the top of her egg with a spoon, concentrating on every shell chip as though she were performing brain surgery.

  “I cannot take a Lenore McCafferty Andrews life popsicle for an answer. I’ve got to have a direct clear answer as though I am a twenty-eight-year-old woman,” said Claire.

  She threw her napkin on top of her damned egg in the damned cup and it didn’t even knock it over. She wanted to cry about that. She wanted to cry about anything. About Dad. She pushed the triumphant egg and her plate away. She wasn’t hungry, and she resented the fact that her mother was eating her toasted English muffin and one soft boiled egg just as she had when Dad was alive. Of course, what could Claire demand? That her mother should fast? There was so much soul-consuming anger with no legitimate place to go.

  “Apparently, when you attempted to sell Dad’s property two days ago, and when it was stolen, you filed a report with the New York City police,” said her mother.

  “I had no way of knowing the art dealer was a thief. Anyone could have been misled by him. He was very effective, I told you,” said Claire.

  “I’m not blaming you, dear.”

  “I told you, the man knew so many things about Dad and the saltcellar.”

  “I’m not blaming you, dear. We don’t need the money to survive.”

  “I don’t care who you blame. You’re always blaming someone for something. I’m just explaining,” said Claire, and knew she was being unreasonable, and knew that Mother knew it and was overlooking it, making Claire feel childish, and all Claire had wanted was an answer to what the latest commotion was about.

  “Because of that report, for which I am in no way blaming you, dear, the wire services sent out a single-paragraph story about the complaint, according to Bob Truet. What the papers in Columbus did was put reporters on the story because, while it wasn’t important in New York or the rest of the world, it was here in Ohio, especially with large papers that circulate here.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “The implication is that your father was trying to sell something through less than reputable sources, something that could be considered what they call hot goods.”

  “That’s ridiculous. What did you say to the papers?”

  “Bob Truet says the story will blow over in a few days, it always does,” said Lenore.

  “You did deny everything to the papers, of course,” said Claire.

  “What could we deny? I never even knew he had a saltcellar. He kept it hidden.”

  “It was his lucky piece, Mom. I saw it. I want to talk to the newspapers.”

  “Bob Truet thinks that would only prolong things,” said Lenore, breaking off a piece of the English muffin and, before it could get cold, dunking it into the yellow egg yolk.

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Claire, livid.

  “What do you honestly want from me, dear?” asked her mother.

  “Oh, that is so like you,” said Claire, feeling her whole body boil, snarling at Mother, who did not look up from that damned egg. “I’m not going to let this go. I’m not letting anything go. We’re going to get back that cellar, too. I have a New York detective on that situation. I am not giving up. I’m not letting everything of Dad’s go just like that because he’s not here to defend it.”

  Claire turned over her eggcup and cracked it down hard on her plate. The plate, thank God, broke. Her mother paused, looked up, and placid as a pond returned to her breakfast. Claire knew this would not even be mentioned again.

  She went by herself to the family lawyer, Blake Comstock, who immediately cancelled all appointments for the morning and sat with her on the soft leather couch of his dark warm office with the funny cartoons of lawyer business behind his desk and the degrees from Ohio State and Harvard on the wall. She had been here with Dad a few times. Mr. Comstock had been at the funeral. She had phoned him from New York City when the cellar was stolen.

  She explained what was happening now. Mr. Comstock was younger than her father, but looked older because of his white hair and the layers of fat around his face. Ordinarily analytic, he would lay out options for things and what they could do and others could do.

  This time, he told her bluntly, a libel suit against the Columbus newspapers for the damage to Dad’s reputation was absolutely inadvisable. Absolutely.

  “For one I don’t have any tangible evidence Vern owned the saltcellar. He did sell it from a bank vault quite discreetly.”

  “He couldn’t let his creditors know how much he needed cash.”

  “Claire, you asked me for some receipts, some bills of sale in a phone call from New York City. Nowhere in Vern’s estate is there any evidence that he owned a saltcellar.”

  “What are you saying? I want it clear and direct,” said Claire. She wore an autumn sweater and a dark wool skirt, her hair hanging loose, looking almost like she had in high school. She leaned forward in the couch, a very hard thing to do with so much soft leather around her. Mr. Comstock sat on the other end of the couch.

  “Vern Andrews knew what he was doing. While Bob Truet wouldn’t even hint at it in his Carney Daily News, I think most of us, without thinking any the worse of Vern, have to acknowledge that he was trying to sell something that was to all intents and purposes stolen or at least questionable.”

  “How could you not think the worse of him in that case? I would. But I don’t. Because both you and I know Dad would never do anything illegal.”

  Mr. Comstock looked pained, and in his most comforting manner said: “Claire, I considered Vern not only a client but a friend. I knew him, perhaps in ways that a daughter didn’t. I liked him. I trusted him and I also knew he played in the fast lane and he wasn’t afraid to cut corners. He amassed quite a fortune. Even the collapse has left enough rubble for you to live on for the rest of your life. Comfortably. Here. You come from a good family, the McCaffertys …”

  Claire pulled back in the sofa. She could not believe this man, who went out of his way so often to tell her how wonderful her father was just on the chance it might get back to Dad, now felt so free without any evidence to slander him.

  “I don’t think he trusted you enough to confide in you as to the purchase of the cellar.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  “But it is a fact that there were many deals he made that you were not privy to.”

  “Yes.”

  “So it is possible that he had purchased this cellar as an investment and never told you, which does not mean he was dealing in stolen property.”

  “It’s very hard, Claire, for someone to see one’s own father in a less than ideal light. A suit for libel first of all has to show allegations are false. The Columbus newspapers only reported facts that would make people suspicious. Can we disprove that you said he kept it hidden in a cellar until he chose an art dealer to sell it on the quiet?”

  The couch, like the whole office, felt sticky. Claire sat rigid, her hands squeezing the life out of her little white purse.

  “Doesn’t right mean anything anymore in the world? Do you have to be assured of winning before you try? Is that what we’re down to?”

  “It’s the world, Claire.

  “It’s only the world if you let it be. My father was killed while trying to sell his property. I am going to not only get it back, but prove eventually that he acted as he lived, honestly and decently. I would have hoped that I could have had your support.”

  “You do. The best support I can tell you is to let this go. It’s too bad Vern was killed. It’s too bad all this came out the way it did, but it did. I am your friend. Let me be that.”

  She left Mr. Comstock’s office forcing herself to be civil. At the b
ank, at the shoe store, at the magazine vendors, no one mentioned Dad as they had just after his death. Even her once closest friend from high school, Mary Beth Hayes, now Mrs. Mary Thornburgh, talked about everything but Dad when they met outside Prangle’s Market.

  Mary Beth had two boys, seven and eight, and they were tearing up the family station wagon.

  “Do you think my father was dishonest, Mary Beth? Do you?” asked Claire.

  “I don’t believe the papers,” said Mary Beth.

  “Do you believe Dad would deal in something that was stolen. You’ve always been honest. Be honest now. Please. I want to know. I have to know. What do you honestly think?”

  Mary Beth warned one of her boys to act mannerly.

  “What do you think, Mary Beth?” asked Claire.

  Her friend looked pained and drew in a good solid breath.

  “No one blames you, Claire. Everyone likes you, Claire. You and your mother will always be considered the best part of this town,” said Mary Beth and had to drive off because the boys were just too much, leaving Claire alone in front of the market, and knowing she alone not only believed her father innocent, but also knew that he belonged with the best of Carney. No, he was better than they were because he had come so far with his life, while all Mother’s family had to do was be born.

  I don’t want to live among these people, thought Claire. I don’t even think I can anymore.

  By the time she got home, Mother had heard from Mr. Comstock about her plans to prove Vern Andrews’s innocence. Mother had Bob Truet there in a casual sports jacket, which meant he was going to stay for dinner. Bob was explaining how difficult facts were to unearth for trained professionals much less someone who did not have much experience. Mother nodded as the town’s publisher delivered the McCafferty line for the McCafferty convenience. Claire heard him through, then went upstairs to pack.

  She was going to New York.

  Finally, that got to Mother.

  “You can’t do that. You hate New York.”

  “I do,” said Claire. It felt good. It felt so deliciously, perfectly good because it was beyond reason. Even her bloodstream knew it was good, and she didn’t stop to make sure she had everything. In front of Bob and her mother, she phoned her airline reservations.

  Bob begged her to wait a day to think it over.

  Claire ignored him. Her mother didn’t know what to say. But Mother never knew what to say. She just stood there quiet, making Claire feel guilty and stupid and then childish and furious about feeling all those things.

  Mother asked a stupid question about whether Claire had enough clothes, and Claire answered that she could buy whatever she needed in New York. They did sell clothes there just as on Main Street.

  “You don’t have to prove anything to anyone, dear,” said her mother.

  “Oh, but I do. And most of all to you. I will always have to prove something to you, but I never thought it would be that Dad wasn’t a crook.”

  Bob Truet offered to drive her to the airport, and she refused. Then, to add to the craziness of it all, in the parlor overlooking the east garden, Bob, in begging her once more not to go, proposed marriage. Again.

  “Thank you. No,” said Claire, just about the same way she had rejected the ride, with gratitude and aversion.

  Claire Andrews left Carney alone in a taxicab to Columbus through the cornfields whose yellowed stalks were being plowed under for the winter, past the stadium on a street named for an All-American who had played there and had the bad taste not to make it in the pros but returned to a job selling cars right up on Troy Road, and every year the Carney Daily News asked his opinion on the new Carney High School team and every year they were the best bunch of boys he had ever seen. Quickly she moved away from all that she had ever known, past the fairgrounds, and farms, and wood fences, and the Miami River quiet and low now, waiting to ice over later in the year.

  She flew to New York and because it was late spent the first night in a hotel room. But the next day, she rented an apartment in the borough of Queens.

  It was the first lease she had ever signed in her life, and the rent was exorbitant, but much less than Manhattan, which was unreal. And the street seemed somewhat nice. It had trees on it. The apartment had a single bedroom and a large living room that could be turned into an office to conduct her work. She did not know how she would begin or even where. She knew this great city had to have more libraries and lawyers and people who could find out things than practically anywhere on earth. And it was here that Dad’s cellar was stolen, and here he died, possibly even was murdered, she thought now, by those who had swindled her. She didn’t know. She only knew that here she had to start.

  She signed a two-year lease and phoned her mother to send her personal furniture, but even then she did not feel as though she had left. Only at 3:00 A.M., when sleeping on a bare mattress she had purchased quickly, did she realize she had really left home. She had awakened and thrown her feet out over the bed and there was no bed, only floor that rudely smacked her feet.

  It was dark and there was no one to call and no one to help, and she was alone. Cars honked outside on the street, and she didn’t know where the light switch was at first. On her knees she crawled to a wall and then stood up.

  She was twenty-eight years old and realized she had been sleeping on a mattress, waiting for furniture, and this was going to be her life. It would be as good as she would make it or as bad as she would make it, but she would have to make it herself.

  And in her twenty-eighth year, this was her first real night alone. And it scared her bone-numb just shy of weeping. All her noble promises of vindicating her father and seeing justice done seemed emptier than the night. How could she do all those things? She didn’t even feel secure enough now to make it to morning.

  She walked out into the living room that she had planned with such certainty to become a headquarters. The walls were fresh white and bare. The floor was polished, and there was nothing on it. And she didn’t even have a teabag or a cup or any place to sit. The only thing in this room was her.

  This is the lowest point in my life, she thought. And then she thought that if it were, things could only get better. It did not reassure her. It only made sense.

  She didn’t want to return to the bedroom because she knew she couldn’t fall asleep now, but she didn’t want to stay in the living room, this supposed headquarters of her mission, because that reminded her of how really helpless she was in the world. She looked at the walls. Barren.

  She could remain standing all night feeling helpless, or she could do something. She had to fill up the night with something besides her fear, she knew. From her suitcase, she took out her notebook, a pen, and a roll of tape she had purchased in the hotel. She tore a sheet out of the notebook and facing the longest blank wall taped a piece of square white paper at eye level near the right side.

  “That represents the last two weeks,” she said. It was a piece of white paper on a white wall. But it was something. The wall was not barren anymore. The paper was the time in which Dad came to New York to sell the cellar, when he was killed by the mugger, and when the cellar was stolen by the Battissen Galleries with that twenty-two-year reputation for integrity. Then, on the extreme left of the blank wall, she taped another piece of paper. She did not have a date for that, but wrote that this was the day the cellar was made.

  She stepped back and looked at her two points in time. In between, it had to have been bought and sold and traded. The wall was very white. There was so much space. She added another piece of paper, next to the one on the extreme right. That was twenty years ago, when she had seen it in the basement.

  She wrote down a schedule for herself for the next day. First, there was the New York Public Library. Then there was a telephone call to Detective Modelstein. She decided she would need a separate book for the criminal aspect of the cellar. So she put down getting more stationery supplies as the third most important thing.

  Then she
again reviewed the questions she had written down in that fresh notebook, the ones she had asked Detective Modelstein. She decided that now was the best time to make as good a drawing of the cellar as she could remember.

  It was an awful drawing. She used a pencil and none of it was quite right. The more she drew, the more she realized she was forgetting what it looked like. Suddenly, she tore out pages of the notebook and laid them flat until they were roughly the size of the cellar. And then she made a dot where the ruby was, and another dot where the sapphire was, and a dot where she remembered what looked like topaz, and the jade lions and the polished clear diamonds around the base. Then she shut her eyes and tried to imagine the cellar as she had seen it in the vault, and as soon as she opened her eyes, she made a circle the size of the ruby around the dot exactly as she had remembered it. She knew this was inaccurate as all getout, but it was something. There were borders of reality. Once it got down on paper she was no longer dealing with infinity. There were limits. And in those limits fear and doubt could not get out of hand.

  She had never been to a business school and would have been surprised if anyone had told her she was establishing direction and parameters, a prerequisite for any operation. Nor would she have been impressed that what she had done was cut infinity down to size by taking the first steps toward determining where the cellar had been, and, she hoped, where it was.

  All she knew was that if she did not do these things, she would open herself up to despair without borders.