The Art of Confidence

by Wendy Lee

  “A very mischievous boy. He liked to tease the cats by dangling fish heads just out of their reach, and stowing away on fishermen’s boats. He once boasted that he almost got halfway to Xiamen before he got caught. His spirit was attractive to the Leungs.”

  The Leungs were the couple who had taken Harold’s father in, virtually adopted him, and given him a better life. “He especially liked Mrs. Leung. I did, too—she brought the children in Keelung Harbor toys and sweets. She even brought me new shoes once, which was special to me because I’d always had to wear my older brother’s, these rough, ugly boys’ shoes. The ones she brought me were delicate leather slippers, and I treasured them. I hoped the Leungs would take me away, but they chose your father instead. Of course, because he was a boy.”

  “This was when he was six years old?” Harold knew this much.

  “Yes. One day they came to pick him up in a car,” Auntie Mai continued. “Your father was waving to the rest of us kids from the backseat like he was in a parade. I don’t know if he understood the Leungs were his new family now. I’m sure they paid your father’s family a good sum for him. I never knew if he came back to visit, because my own family moved away from the harbor that year when my parents got jobs at the garment factories in Wanhua.”

  Harold looked around the room and its outdated furnishings. His eyes lighted on a framed black-and-white couple whom he assumed were Auntie Mai’s parents. “So, when did you hear from my father next?”

  “Not until after he started a successful business and married your mother. Of course I had heard about him. The newspapers were all about his financial deals. As the only single daughter out of my sisters, I lived with my parents and took care of them. In this very apartment, in fact. Then one year, the landlord raised the rent to beyond what I could pay on my nurse’s salary. He threatened to evict us, and I couldn’t think of anyone else to go to, other than your father. I sent him a note to his workplace, hardly expecting him to remember me. He gave me the money, and even offered to buy the apartment outright for me, but I refused. We didn’t know each other well enough yet. That’s how we met again.”

  Auntie Mai leaned forward, putting one hand over Harold’s. He wanted to draw it away, but was afraid of offending her.

  “By this time, your mother was sick. She knew about us, though. Your father didn’t want to pretend. Your mother was able to express that she was glad your father had someone to take care of him. I’m not making this up to make myself look better, or to make you feel better. That’s what she said, I swear it. We had your mother’s blessing.”

  Harold looked down at the fraying rug beneath his feet. All at once his resentment of Auntie Mai over the years seemed petty and foolish, not to mention without reason. Instead of faulting her, he should have been grateful that there was someone to take care of his father in his last years. Certainly he and Vicki weren’t going to do it.

  “I’m sorry for how I acted toward you at the funeral,” he said. “That was uncalled for.”

  “I understand,” she replied. “You were grieving.”

  “Are you sure you won’t accept anything other than this apartment?” He now felt obligated to provide as much as he could for Auntie Mai. But she shook her head.

  “Knowing that you’ve accepted my place in your father’s life is enough.”

  As Auntie Mai walked him through her courtyard, Harold noticed the heavy, cloying perfume of the tan hua in the air. Several of them were starting to bloom, spreading their narrow white petals in the evening dusk. Auntie Mai noticed him looking at the flowers.

  “Let me give you a cutting for your wife,” she said. “It’ll be good luck for both of you.”

  She went back into the apartment before Harold could refuse. He thought of how Vicki was trying to conceive—perhaps they needed this luck. Then he recalled another saying about tan hua that had a more negative connotation: tan hua yi xian, used to describe someone whose success was as fleeting as the flower’s blooms.

  Auntie Mai returned with a pair of shears, snipped off a part of the plant that had not started to blossom yet, and put it in a plastic bag. Harold bowed his head in thanks.

  He didn’t remember what happened to the cutting, but it was probably thrown out since Vicki had no interest in gardening. Aside from when she’d sent a polite note at Adrian’s birth, Harold never heard from Auntie Mai again.

  * * *

  Harold waited until late in the evening before leaving the office, when he was sure the reporters had dispersed and Charlie was no longer around. When he got home, the apartment was dark, and he was sure that Adrian and Vicki were already in bed. Then he saw Vicki sitting in the dark, at the dining room table facing the French doors that led out to their balcony. He turned on the light, and she gave a start.

  “I was watching the fireflies,” she said defensively. “The last ones of the season.”

  He nodded, then noticed that the table was set for two for dinner. “Did you make this?” he asked.

  “What, you don’t think I can cook?” she teased. “I cooked for myself when I was studying abroad because of the terrible British food.”

  The food that Vicki had prepared was simple, just rice and eggs, but having skipped lunch, he gratefully devoured it. When he was done, he noticed the bowl in front of her remained untouched.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” he asked.

  “I was waiting for you, but I lost my appetite.” She paused. “How are you? It looks like you had a difficult day.”

  Harold couldn’t remember the last time Vicki had asked about his day. The words coming from her mouth seemed like they were coming from a different person: natural, unforced.

  “Do you remember how I went with Charlie to inspect the factory in Shanghai last month? We wanted to check working conditions, especially after that female worker killed herself.”

  “And how were they?” Harold couldn’t tell whether Vicki was feigning interest, but he continued.

  “They weren’t any different from the other factories in the area. Which is to say, not that good, but good enough.” For mainlanders, he anticipated Vicki adding, but she just nodded silently. “Then today, we were informed that another worker, a male this time, also killed himself, supposedly over these conditions.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible.”

  Vicki looked properly sympathetic while he told her about the ensuing press conference, the impulsive decision he had made to cease operations at the Shanghai factory.

  “Can you really do that?” she asked in wonderment.

  “I have to. I made a promise.”

  Harold found his hands shaking. Reflexively, he pushed the dishes back from the edge of the table, as he’d do with Adrian. To his surprise, Vicki got up from her seat and went to him. She wove her hands through his hair, and he put his arms around her, pressed his face into her stomach, which he knew underneath her dress was smooth and slim and perfect except for the scar where Adrian had been lifted from her body.

  He felt her stomach ripple with laughter. “What?”

  “I’m just imagining Charlie’s face when you announced your decision.”

  “He wasn’t happy, that’s for sure.”

  She drew away from him, placing both hands on the sides of his face. “Charlie is so full of himself.”

  “He may be that. But I’ll need him on my side more than ever now with the shareholders.”

  Vicki kissed him on the forehead, her touch so light it was like a whisper. “You can figure all that out tomorrow. For now, let’s go to bed.”

  Harold reluctantly released his wife. “You go first. I should check to make sure my e-mails haven’t overloaded the server at work.”

  After Vicki had left the room, Harold opened his laptop and scrolled through at least two hundred e-mails, most from reporters, interspersed with few apoplectic ones from Charlie. The shareholders were indeed upset and calling for an emergency meeting as soon as possible.

  Harold deleted that e-mail. He wa
s in the process of deleting the rest of them when he came across one from an anonymous sender. “Andrew Cantrell Painting,” was the subject heading. The text below was direct and succinct.

  Dear Mr. Harold Yu,

  Elegy, the painting by Andrew Cantrell you purchased from Caroline Lowry of the Lowry Gallery, is a fake. It was painted recently and kept in Ms. Lowry’s apartment, located upstairs from the gallery, until it was sold to you. I have seen it with my own eyes. You should not trust anything Ms. Lowry says. If I were you, I would demand my money back.

  Sincerely,

  A Concerned Artist

  Chapter 9

  I should have known Kimi wouldn’t be satisfied when I told her I was sending Mr. Yu an e-mail. She followed up every few days after that, asking me via text whether I’d heard from him. No, I haven’t, I kept saying.

  Then she changed tactics and asked if she could see the art project I was working on. Reluctantly, I invited her over to look at it one Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks later. She arrived at my apartment bearing a bottle of red wine, which I hoped didn’t mean she intended to stay for dinner. Luckily, she suggested we open the bottle at once. Sam and I didn’t have proper wine glasses, so we used empty jars.

  “This is so Amberlin,” Kimi commented when I handed her a jam jar; Amberlin’s cafeteria was known for using their leftover canning and pickling jars for various purposes, even though with the tuition they were charging, they could have afforded water glasses. “Cheers.” She raised her jar to mine and Sam’s, and we clunked.

  Sam only drank a little because he was going to be leaving the apartment soon for a conveniently scheduled dodgeball practice with his team from the urban farm. Their next opponent happened to be the team from Kimi’s summer school program—I supposed there was some sort of nonprofit, do-gooder league—and she joked about joining it just so she could purposefully kick a ball into his face.

  I wasn’t sure whether I was more relieved that Sam wouldn’t be there, or resentful that I would be left to entertain Kimi alone. I watched the two of them carefully when she arrived, and she just hugged him with overt enthusiasm in the same way she had me, but nothing more. Sam, on the other hand, appeared a little embarrassed, keeping one eye on me to gauge my reaction.

  After he left, Kimi asked, “So why don’t you think you’ve heard back from Mr. Yu?”

  I concentrated on the level of wine in my jar. “Maybe his e-mail address doesn’t work anymore. He could have left the company or something.”

  “Really,” Kimi said. “Maybe I should try him, too, just in case.”

  “No!” I shouted. “I mean, please, Kimi, let me handle this.” I tried to change the subject. “Sam seemed glad to see you.”

  “How is our boy doing?”

  “He likes the kids at the urban farm,” I said, ignoring her use of the plural possessive. “He’s always telling me funny stuff they’ve said during the day.” I repeated a few of them, and Kimi genuinely laughed at the “vegans eaten by carnivores” line.

  “That’s what I love about kids that age,” she said. “They say things without being afraid that they’re wrong.”

  “And then when you grow up, you become totally inhibited and expect to be judged,” I added.

  “Exactly. Speaking of judgment, let’s take a look at your project.” She said this in a teasing way, but my shoulders immediately tensed.

  I couldn’t tell by the look on Kimi’s face as to whether she really was absorbed or not by the two finished paintings of my great-grandmother and grandmother. They were traditional portraits, as if they’d been done in the eighteenth century. Haltingly, I told Kimi the story behind the triptych, how I’d discovered the box of old photos in my parents’ attic; and the meaning of the series itself, a representation of the female generations in my mother’s family, as you might find in an ancient manor house in England, only this was in suburban America.

  “So it’s a commentary on how we honor our ancestors,” Kimi remarked.

  “Something like that.”

  She nodded slowly. “I can see the personal and the feminist angles being appealing to people. You just need to know how to sell it.”

  “And I need to finish it. I still have to do the third portrait, my mother.”

  “Once you’ve finished, get slides done,” Kimi instructed. “My parents know a gallery owner in Williamsburg. Most of the art he likes is more conceptual than this, but maybe he’ll go for the simplicity of the form and the idea.”

  “But I don’t think I’m ready—”

  “Stop that,” Kimi interrupted. “From what I see, you’re as ready as anyone who piles some rusted tin cans in the corner of a gallery and calls it art.”

  “I’m glad you feel my work is more meaningful than that,” I replied dryly. “Anyway, I’ll think about it.”

  “Don’t think about it,” Kimi advised. “Just finish your project.”

  * * *

  I guess I could have dragged my feet, claimed I couldn’t execute the third painting, said I’d gotten a mysterious illness, any number of things. But instead, every day for the next two weeks, I came home from work, ate dinner, and went to my studio. I hardly interacted with Sam during this time.

  The portrait of my mother was the easiest one out of the three. I had a million photos of her, all at various stages in her life. I’d chosen one that dated from college, of her in a pink sweater with a white headband holding back her hair. Next to her was her roommate, Caroline, who had long, curly brown hair and was wearing some kind of Indian-print top. Still, I could see a trace of her not only in the Caroline Lowry I knew today, but in the picture of her aunt Hazel. The two girls’ arms were draped around each other in a relaxed, companionable way that I could never imagine being with Kimi.

  The first person I told that I was done with the triptych was Kimi, via text. She immediately texted back a reminder for me to get slides done and send them to her. I did so, and then didn’t hear from her for more than two weeks. Then, when I did, she texted, Good news, the gallery owner wants to meet with you. Name is Solomon Finch.

  I looked up the website for Solomon Finch and saw that the gallery was located on Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg. Its mission was to “present the next generation of young artists to new and established collectors.” I prepared for my meeting with the owner as I would for a job interview, which I could also count among my first, since I hadn’t really had to interview for my job with Caroline Lowry; I’d just gone to lunch with her and my mother. Out came my one good black dress that I’d worn to Sandro Hess’s opening in the beginning of summer, which now seemed like years ago. I’d thrown my heels away that night, so I had to wear flats. That and some inexpertly applied makeup, and I was ready.

  That afternoon, I made my sweltering way to my appointment, envying every girl I passed who was wearing shorts and sandals. When I passed through the front door of the gallery, I stopped for a moment to soak in the air-conditioning. This space was considerably larger than the one I worked in, made for large sculptures and installations. The current installation was clichéd sayings rendered in cursive neon signs—like “Life Is a Bowl of Cherries” in red, “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella” in yellow—except some of the words flashed on and off, like a broken hotel sign in Times Square. The effect was vaguely migraine-inducing.

  Solomon Finch’s assistant was situated at the far end of the room instead of the front, behind a white desk and a sleek silver laptop and nothing else, which made me appreciate Caroline’s old-fashioned decree of fresh flowers every day. The young woman sitting there was my hipper doppelganger, with her short hair falling in an asymmetrical swoop over one eye, thick black-rimmed glasses, and an indeterminate amount of tattoos.

  “I’m Molly Schaeffer,” I said. “I’m here to see Solomon Finch at three?”

  “Sure,” the assistant said. “He’s just about ready for you. But first, do you want some mineral water? Tea? Coffee? Beer?”

  “Beer?”

&
nbsp; She smirked. “Just kidding.”

  “Nothing, thanks,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  The assistant shrugged and after a few minutes took me into a back office.

  With his artfully tousled silver hair, Solomon Finch looked not that much younger than Caroline Lowry, although he wore flashy basketball shoes. Also, his desk and the shelves behind him were littered with collectible action figures.

  “So, Molly,” he said. “I hear you come highly recommended. You’re a friend of the Kitanos?”

  I nodded and tried to make polite conversation. “How do you know them?”

  “Hugh Kitano and I were in marketing together. He stayed and bought a town house in Brooklyn Heights, while I decided to go into art and live in a commune with four roommates. I’ve known Kimi since she was five, so when she says someone’s good, I believe her.”

  I couldn’t help blushing, which Solomon noted.

  “Tell me more about yourself, Molly,” he said. “Kimi told me that you work for Caroline Lowry?”

  “Yes, I’ve been at her gallery since the beginning of the summer.” I was surprised he had heard of my boss, but I guessed the art world wasn’t that big.

  “I’m surprised that place is still going. It was a big deal in the sixties, I think. Way before my time.”

  Not that far, I thought, looking at him.

  “She showing anyone interesting these days?”

  “Sandro Hess. A German-Argentine artist?”

  Solomon gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Never heard of him. In any case, it’s good that you have some experience with the industry. So you know how important it is to make people believe there’s a lot more under the surface of what you’re seeing. What’s the story behind your triptych?”

  I gave him the same spiel that I’d given to Kimi when she’d visited, working in some of her observations, as well.