The Muralist: A Novel

by B. A. Shapiro

  After the conductor and a cop escorted the boy from the train, Alizée sat down hard on her seat. The woman placed a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  “Thank you.” She clutched both the suitcase and her pocketbook tightly to her. “I’m fine. Fine now that you saved my things. Thank you.”

  The other passengers clucked and smiled at her sympathetically, and she nodded her appreciation. As the train picked up speed, the others turned back to their concerns, satisfied all had ended happily.

  She was furious at herself. She’d been so caught up in her own self-importance, in her daring and the magnitude of “her mission” that she’d become cocky. If the boy had managed to get off the train with her belongings, the memo would have been lost. Stupid, stupid, stupid girl. She sat straighter in her seat but kept her arms locked around her belongings. What if the memo had been his target?

  When the conductor returned, she asked if she could speak to him privately. He motioned her to the tiny space at the end of the car. “I’m a little afraid someone’s going to try to take my things again, sir,” she said. “Is there anywhere on the train where maybe I’d feel safer?”

  The conductor grumbled but led her the first-class car. After he settled her into a wide velvet seat and inspected her ticket, he pointed to a broad-shouldered Negro porter. “Jacob here will make sure you’re safe while you’re here. He’s leaving the train in Washington and will give you whatever help you need when you get there.”

  At first she was on edge, her watchfulness spiking at every station, whenever anyone got on or off. When a man reached for his luggage, when a woman came or went from the toilet. She startled at loud noises, of which there were many. But by the time the train pulled into Washington’s Union Station, she’d convinced herself it had just been a case of bad luck, that there was no way the boy could have known the memo was in her pocketbook, that everything would go smoothly from here on.

  She was calmer, but still watchful, as Jacob helped her down the steps and led her toward the cabstand. She glanced surreptitiously around the station, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Still, she was relieved when she slammed the taxi door behind her and they pulled onto the wide boulevard. Time to get Breckinridge Long.

  When she arrived at the gate of the White House there were a slew of uniformed guards, which initially gave her confidence. Until they wouldn’t let her in. “I’ve got an important message to deliver to Mrs. Roosevelt,” she explained. “Very important.”

  They pointed her toward the exit.

  “Miss Malvina Thompson is expecting me,” she said with her most engaging smile.

  One of the guards, a boy about her age whose eyes roamed down her body, made a phone call. He grinned at her wickedly when he put the receiver down. “They said it’s okay,” he told the others.

  She followed another guard through seemingly endless corridors, some very grand with marble walls and flooring, others quite ordinary. They rode what appeared to be a service elevator, and then she was standing in the office of the First Lady of the United States.

  The anteroom was huge, the ceiling at least twenty feet high with moldings that appeared two-feet thick. An enormous Persian rug covered the floor, and the cobalt-blue curtains against the stark white walls added elegance and solemnity. The White House. It was difficult to take in. Stay with me, Maman.

  At first the room appeared to be empty, but then she noticed a small desk in a far corner. A woman sat behind a typewriter, and Alizée approached briskly. It was actually happening. She was doing this. It was going to get done. “Miss Thompson?” she asked.

  “I’m Mrs. Cartwright,” the woman corrected her. “Miss Thompson’s secretary. How may I help you?”

  The secretary had a secretary. “I have a message to give to Mrs. Roosevelt. I was told to see Miss Thompson.”

  “Your name?”

  Alizée told her, and Mrs. Cartwright rose and turned the handle of a door Alizée hadn’t noticed: it sat flat against the wall without any molding. The door opened into a smaller but just as elegant office. A minute later, Mrs. Cartwright returned with an older woman who said, “I’m Malvina Thompson, please follow me.”

  Alizée stared at Miss Thompson’s impossibly straight back, did the same with her own. “Is Mrs. Roosevelt in?”

  Miss Thompson didn’t answer her question, just pointed to a chair in front of her desk, and Alizée sat. She put her pocketbook and suitcase down and realized this was the first time she’d done so since leaving New York.

  “I was told to expect you. You have something for Mrs. Roosevelt?”

  Alizée placed the envelope on the desk.

  The secretary read it quickly, then read it again. “Are you telling me this is an original memorandum from Breckinridge Long?” She glanced at the date. “Written earlier this summer?”

  Alizée kept her voice calm, although her heart was pounding. “That’s my understanding.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “To tell you the truth,” she lied, “I’m not sure.”

  Miss Thompson stood. “Please stay right here.” She took the memo and hurried through yet another door, which she closed behind her.

  Within minutes, the First Lady strode into the room. Alizée jumped up, and Mrs. Roosevelt threw her arms around her. “I don’t know how you did this, my dear.” She held Alizée at arms length. “All I can say is that the hand of God is at work here. And I am deeply grateful. To both of you.”

  They stared into each other’s eyes, grinning. “Me, too,” Alizée said.

  Mrs. Roosevelt dropped her arms. “Tell me everything. Where you got this. From whom. I won’t be able to do anything until we’re absolutely certain this came from Long’s office.”

  After Alizée explained what she knew, Mrs. Roosevelt handed the memo to Miss Thompson and whispered a lengthy list of instructions. Then she turned back to Alizée and smiled affectionately. “I wish I had more time to talk with you, to take you to lunch at least, to thank you properly. Unfortunately, I’m leaving first thing tomorrow morning, and my schedule is more overscheduled than usual.”

  “No thanks are needed,” Alizée assured her. “As you would say: it’s my pleasure.”

  Mrs. Roosevelt pressed Alizée’s hand between her own. “Once this is verified, I promise you I will show it to the president immediately. And if all goes well, very soon Breckinridge Long will no longer be at the State Department.”

  32

  DANIELLE, 2015

  Although I was still responsible for the larger paintings, after our last meeting, George reassigned the squares to a recent hire named Ryan. Obviously, George preferred a staffer who would follow his directions and not make waves like someone else who shall not be named. So I borrowed the three original squares from Ryan and lay them on my desk next to the square Grand-père got from Lee.

  There was no doubt all four had been painted by the same artist: Alizée Benoit. Nor was there any doubt the four two-by-two canvases were part of a larger mural. Or, to be more precise, there was no doubt in my mind. George’s mind turned out to be another matter altogether.

  “First of all,” he told me, “all the testing so far points to Mark Rothko. The brushstrokes in particular. And the colors. Ryan’s been focusing on the alienation in the animal and human faces. Doing a convincing job using Rothko’s WPA paintings for comparison.”

  “Look at these.” I placed the four squares on his desk. “You can’t deny the square Lee Krasner gave my grandfather is part of this same work. And we know for sure Alizée painted it.” I thought if I mentioned Lee’s name he’d take it more seriously.

  Wrong again. “Not necessarily,” George corrected. “His letter about a seventy-year-old conversation with Krasner doesn’t put it in the ‘know for sure’ category.”

  “What about that interview I showed you when Lee said Alizée was a major influence on them?”

  “And exactly how is that interview connected to this square?”
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  It was slowly beginning to dawn on me that, despite the unassailable evidence, George was going to stonewall. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m not trying to say anything,” he said with a calmness that infuriated me. “I’m just pointing out that you can’t be certain this square is your aunt’s work. It could just as easily be Rothko’s. Wasn’t it you who told me they were lovers? Krasner could have been confused. Or lying.”

  “Why would she do that?” I practically shouted. “You can’t really—”

  “And your theory that these are pieces of one mural is just that: a theory. You might be right or they could be part of a series or separate—”

  “I’ve got two other paintings I know are Benoit’s. I’ll bring them in and we can have them all authenticated.”

  George was shaking his head. “You know we don’t have the budget to spend on that kind of speculation this early in the process. Given Ryan’s initial results, I say we go through our usual procedures, and if there’s no definitive answer after the authenticators have completed their evaluations, we’ll take this new evidence into consideration and give your aunt Alizée a second look.”

  I poured out my frustration to Nguyen. He was sympathetic, but I needed more. I wasn’t going to let George and Anatoly’s ambitions—no matter how well hidden under calm or expletive-laced practicality—keep Alizée from getting the recognition she deserved. Nguyen and I brainstormed possible ways to get around Christie’s but didn’t come up with much.

  It was obvious to us that George was posing, looking for any way he could to stop me from interfering before the authentication process moved beyond his direct reports. If the experts—who were wrong more than you might think—determined the squares were Rothkos, there wasn’t much a low-level employee like me, or even a midlevel one like Nguyen, could do about it. Clearly, finding more squares before the others went to the specialists was the best option, but exactly how to do this wasn’t nearly as clear. And really, what were the odds?

  Nguyen suggested I contact a friend of his who was working on the Early Abstract Expressionist show at the Louvre. The show was opening in a couple of months, and Jordan Washor, whom Nguyen had gone to graduate school with, was an assistant to the assistant to the curator.

  Jordan was happy to talk to me but explained that he had more contact with paperwork than he did with artwork. I was further disappointed when he told me that due to the value of the art and all the recent thefts, over half the committed pieces hadn’t been received yet—particularly those from small collectors. Exactly the paintings that might harbor a square.

  We did share a few laughs over Nguyen’s successful suck-up antics at Christie’s, and Jordan promised he’d look at the back of any painting he came in contact with. He also invited me to visit the show if I got to Paris. Like that was going to happen anytime soon. Anatoly had nixed this idea when I’d raised it when the paintings first came in—not that I’d ever thought it was a real possibility—and when I talked Nguyen into trying to get permission to go, his boss gave him the same answer.

  Dead ends everywhere. Lee’s square. Alizée’s politics. Even Grand-père’s letter, which had seemed so promising at first, fell short under closer scrutiny. His flight through Europe was interesting to me but shed no light on his sister’s whereabouts. His mention of trying to meet with Eleanor Roosevelt, which at first I’d taken as proof that she’d given him Turned, in the end meant nothing of the sort; Grand-père hadn’t been able to see her. And while his suspicions of Bloom Sanatorium echoed mine, there was no more Bloom Sanatorium.

  I was thinking I needed a vacation, but when I checked around, none of my friends had the time, and the idea of going somewhere by myself wasn’t particularly appealing. The truth was, aside from Paris, I couldn’t think of anywhere I wanted to go and didn’t really have the energy to figure it out. I started spending more time at work, more time watching Seinfeld reruns, more time drinking wine.

  Frustration and the waning light of late summer always do that to me.

  33

  ALIZÉE, 1940

  Alizée’s success swallowed her worries whole. More visas would be available soon, and that was all that mattered. Mrs. Roosevelt would surely insist some of the first be assigned to her family and hopefully use her influence to make sure they got out of France and Belgium, Drancy, too. Soon they would all be in New York. Safe. Together. And maybe Henri would find his way here, too. Or at least to safety in Palestine.

  Her happiness was difficult to contain, and she could barely sit still as she listened to her committee reporting on its progress, or lack thereof. Nathan was by far the most industrious, coming up with page upon page of details on Long’s early public life. Although Long was plainly a despicable character, rife with bigotry and narrow-minded arrogance, he had an amazing way of getting exactly what he wanted and then wrangling free from the repercussions.

  Like the way he’d bamboozled Roosevelt into not imposing an embargo on Italy after Long’s buddy Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. Or when he’d convinced the House of Representatives that it wasn’t necessary to establish an agency to rescue refugees by giving testimony that was patently untrue. Or when FDR supported a plan to save thousands of French and Romanian Jews, and Long delayed acting until it was no longer feasible. But now it was going to be different. Breckinridge Long was going to get his due.

  When everyone finished their reports, Alizée pressed her palms on the table. Gideon hadn’t wanted her to say anything about the memo until Long was out of the State Department, but she’d insisted her committee had a right to know. “I’ve got something to tell you,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm, failing. “But you can’t talk about it to anyone until it’s all confirmed.” She looked each in the eye. “Okay?”

  They glanced at one another, clearly attuned to her excitement, and nodded expectantly.

  When she explained what had happened, the room was completely silent. No one moved. Then they all roared to life.

  William pressed his hands together and cried, “Praise the Lord!”

  Nathan, who usually had only antipathy for William’s piousness, punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Praise whoever you want, my boy. This is a great moment!”

  Bertha rushed to Alizée and threw her arms around her. “You’ve done it,” she kept repeating. “You’ve done it!”

  Aarone, as bighearted as he was imposing, began to cry.

  34

  ELEANOR

  Eleanor waited impatiently for the meeting to end, Long’s memo in her hand. When everyone left the Oval Office, she went in and closed the door. Franklin took in her expression, the sheet of paper she held, and frowned. “I don’t suppose this can possibly wait?”

  “No.” She slapped the memo on top of the papers covering his desk. It was still difficult for her to believe that Alizée Benoit was the one to bring this to her, and she wondered if there was perhaps a larger purpose for their seemingly random meetings or the bond they’d formed. “Read.”

  The president slipped on his reading glasses and did as she asked. He read it a second time, folded the page in half and then half again, put it into his jacket pocket. “Where did you get this?”

  “More important, what are you going to do about it?”

  “I need to know where it came from. It could be a hoax.”

  “I had it checked out,” she said, not liking the tone of his voice. “Look at it. Touch it. That memo sounds just like Long. Looks just like a State Department memorandum. I can hear him saying those exact words—and I know you can, too. It’s incomprehensible that he would put something so despicable in writing, but then he probably didn’t think it was despicable. He’s in direct violation of Congress. In direction violation of the law—not to mention your wishes. If this doesn’t finally prove to you that the man’s a dangerous bigot, I don’t know what will.”

  Franklin shook his large head. “He’s worried about jobs. And it worries me, too. Unemployment�
�s still at fifteen percent, and we’ve got to be careful about immigrants taking jobs from Amer—”

  “This isn’t some political speech!” she exploded. “You’re talking to me, not the America First Committee. And these aren’t ‘immigrants taking jobs from Americans’; these are political refugees who are going to die if we don’t do something to help them.”

  “We can’t know that.”

  “Long took an oath to uphold the law. Laws made by Congress, not by him. His actions are illegal, immoral, dead wrong. And he’s going behind your back. ‘Secret memorandum,’ my eye.” She glared at Franklin. “What are you going to do about this?”

  The president sighed. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Talk to him? That’s all?” She was incredulous. “He’s breaking the law. Worse, he’s taking the law into his own hands. He’s blinded by his own hatred and doing whatever he wants with impunity—and now with your tacit approval!”

  “These things aren’t always what they seem to—”

  “What it seems is that your man in charge of visas is illegally conspiring not to approve any!” She knew Franklin’s heart in a way no one else did. And she knew this response was not coming from his heart. “And what about the Jews running from Hitler? Many with families here. American families. They need more than talk. They need us to help them.”

  “You know,” Franklin said pointedly, “this is a Protestant country, and the Jews are here under sufferance. It’s my decision who gets visas and who doesn’t, and it’s up to the citizenry to go along with what I want.”

  She grabbed the back of a chair, her knuckles white. “You’re going to let him keep out qualified refugees because that’s what he chooses to do? Because he’s an anti-Semite? Even if thousands of people die? You can’t be serious.”

  The president sat tall in his wheelchair. “This isn’t just what Breckinridge chooses to do. There are many others who agree with him and many valid reasons for their caution. It’s more complicated than you know.”