by Martin Brown
Given her years of previous experience in Manhattan, the nation’s most competitive fine arts acquisition market, more than likely the position could be Barbara’s for the asking. What had been a convenient excuse to avoid the vacuous delights of the Sausalito Women’s League was perhaps a reasonable step forward in her life.
This was an omen, Barbara thought.
She and Grant had decided long ago not to go down the endless path of parenthood. While their choice had never been doubted by either of them, it was more keenly questioned now that they had stepped away from the daily demands of their own gallery and the frenetic pace of Manhattan.
Both of them were still very much in love with the picture book place they had chosen to call home. But now that their cottage by the bay was looking just as they imagined it would one day, the obvious question they both faced was, what next?
Plus, between Grant’s newly found body building passion and his curatorial side emerging in his nearly daily visits to the artist’s co-operative—not to mention his position on the arts commission—their time together had transitioned from too much to perhaps too little.
Anna Ruth Moss was delighted to hear that Barbara Randolph wished to join her team. Barbara was equally delighted that she would be reconnecting with the art world from a west coast perspective.
Perhaps, best of all, three days a week she would once again be surrounded by the vitality of a great city.
She missed Manhattan more than she had ever imagined. While San Francisco and New York were as different as Paris and London, it was that buzzing rhythm of a busy city center that gave Barbara the feeling of being back home.
Grant was pleased with Barbara’s choice of galleries, yet found himself asking repeatedly, “But you are happy with our choice of Sausalito, aren’t you, sweetheart?”
“Oh, absolutely, Grant. I can’t imagine a more idyllic place to live. But I do miss the gallery business, and I need to get back to something that challenges me to be at my best. I’ll be forty-three in a few months, and that’s a little young for retirement,” she explained.
She could tell that Grant did not like the sound of that. “Well, I’m forty-eight. You don’t think of me as retired, do you?”
“Not exactly…”
Grant frowned. “Okay, maybe in a sense I am, but I’m at least keeping busy.”
Barbara came close to saying something, but held back. While Grant was certainly in the best physical shape she had ever seen him in, the competitive business of fine art acquisition and sales kept him sharp in ways that he simply was not anymore. There had always been a lean hungry look in his eyes when he was about to make a significant acquisition, knowing that he had several buyers who would eagerly compete against each other to add a particular piece to their collection. That hunger seemed to have all but vanished.
Like the campfire extinguished by a small bucket of river water, all that was left were puffs of steam hinting of what had once been there.
On some level, Grant knew this too. It was the likely reason he had embraced his involvement in the city’s small but thriving art scene.
It was a discussion about their future that neither Barbara nor Grant was willing to have. With the passage of time, Barbara wondered if Grant loved their new life too much.
Grant thought perhaps Barbara did not love it enough.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Warren made it his mission to keep a careful eye on both Barbara and Grant.
His seemingly innocent patter would go something like this: “Have you met the Randolphs? They bought the old McFadden home, up on Bulkley. They seem very nice. I’ve been told that he ran an art gallery in Manhattan. In fact, Grant Randolph has become chair of the art commission. I understand he has some exciting ideas.”
Warren would seed a conversation the way farmers seed a cloud—drop enough words and ideas, and you may be delighted to find that it’s suddenly raining information. Most of his prodding would go nowhere. But there were those unexpected moments when a small investment in time led to an unanticipated reward.
“I don’t know if I much care for Barbara Grant,” Marilyn Williams said. “We invited her to a lovely luncheon at the league, but then she turned down our offer of membership.”
“That wasn’t very nice of her,” Warren said sympathetically. “Did she tell you why she didn’t want to join?”
“Something about starting a new job in the city at a place called Moss Gallery.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of the place. Anna Ruth Moss is the owner. She’s one of the grand dames of San Francisco’s Presidio Heights.”
Few things raised the ire of the Ladies of Liberty more than the mention of a Bay Area neighborhood with more expensive real estate than that of Sausalito.
Warren was a walking directory of the Bay Area’s wealthiest and most influential citizens.
“Well, she won’t be getting a second invitation to the league any time soon! I’ll tell you that, Warren.”
“I should say.”
Warren begged off Marilyn’s invitation for tea, and in a few moments he was on his way. He knew that their exchange might have appeared to be all but meaningless, but to an astute observer, it was clear to Warren that Barbara was not far from being regarded as a social outcast. Most likely a great disappointment to a woman who had hopes of fitting into Sausalito’s tight social circle.
Warren could exploit the tone of these conversations with the highly trained touch of a first violist. It wasn’t long before the first small rock he tossed in the water began to ripple back towards him.
Beatrice Synder told Warren that she had been hearing, “some discouraging comments about Barbara Grant. I don’t know if she fits in well with the rest of the community.”
Even Alma joined the chorus, telling Warren, “I have my doubts that Barbara Grant is one of us.”
The next morning, prior to writing his column, Warren sat in his small kitchen stirring his cappuccino and wondering how he could stir up trouble for the Grants. Clearly, Barbara was standing on a precipice, close to proving, as Alma suspected, that she was indeed not “one of us.” Surely, there must be some way to get behind Barbara and give her a little push. Of course, he reasoned, his “Heard About Town” column would have to serve as his most valuable asset.
Having reached Barbara by phone at the gallery, Warren introduced himself and explained, “I want to do a small piece for my column in the Standard about your new position at the Moss Gallery.”
Of course, Barbara was pleased to have something in the local paper alerting wealthy collectors that she was now affiliated with one of San Francisco’s premier galleries. She chatted happily about her new job.
Near the end of the conversation, though, she was somewhat surprised when Warren said, “I understand that you recently turned down an invitation to join the league.”
“Oh, yes,” she responded cautiously. “I’d love to have time to do it all, but at my age, I have to place my career above social engagements.”
Hearing the comment he was looking for, Warren graciously expressed his thanks and hurried off the phone. In trying to express to potential clients that she was a fully dedicated professional, she had slighted the women of the league—something Warren would certainly use against her.
Wednesday afternoon, when she pulled the Standard from her mailbox, she turned quickly to Warren’s column and found this small item:
Barbara Grant, who recently declined an invitation to join Sausalito’s League of Women, has accepted a position with the Moss Gallery in San Francisco as a new sales associate. She describes herself as excited to be a part of the gallery’s team. As for the league, she commented that, at her age, “I have to place my career above social engagements.”
Warren then quoted Marilyn Williams, the Women’s League membership chair, about the nature of the league’s efforts at community outreach: “I’m sorry to hear that Barbara Grant considers the league to be nothing more than a ‘social engagement.’ In
our annual student scholarship drive, and in so many other ways, the league is an essential part of what makes Sausalito, Sausalito!”
As many of Warren’s cookbooks pointed out, carving meat off a roast should be done neatly.
That afternoon, he reread his piece. He was satisfied that he had dealt a terrible blow to Barbara Grant with a very light touch.
Barbara was stunned with the way the piece read. She toyed with the thought that Warren had set her up, but decided she was being paranoid and just put it down to small town navel gazing and let it go at that.
The same afternoon that Barbara read Warren’s column, Rob sat at his desk and read the entire edition of the Sausalito Standard. After reading the “Heard About Town” column, Rob barked to Holly to come into his office.
“Do you think this guy Warren is being a bit of an ass about this woman Barbara Grant? He pretty much trashes her in his column this week.”
“I think Warren likes doing that a lot,” Holly responded. “Some of the people in this town act like the ‘cool kids in school.’ They can never feel good about themselves unless they know they have caused someone else to feel bad. Rob, I’m telling ya, pal, if I were you, I’d dump his ass.”
“I’ve thought about it,” Rob said, “but then Alma and her gang would be organizing another boycott of the Standard, and I’ve got enough on my plate to deal with.”
“Well, at least have a talk with Bradley about some of these hatchet jobs that he does on people. I’m sure this woman Barbara is wondering what hit her.”
During Rob’s walk home that evening, Warren’s gossip column kept crossing his mind. In truth, he would happily toss Warren off the paper’s community staff, but he knew that would equal a loss of readership and a loss of sales…neither of which the Standard could afford. He resolved to leave the status quo for now, but made a promise to himself to continue his monitoring of Warren’s weekly column. At some point uncertain, he’d speak with Warren.
Barbara remained willfully unaware that she was slowly devolving into a social outcast. But one day, several weeks after Warren’s column about her had appeared, she went for a Saturday afternoon walk with Debbie and heard for the first time that she was not well thought of by many of the women in town.
Debbie, who had been a long time member of the league—in fact, she was a onetime chair of the holiday follies program—seemed shaken by it. “I was surprised to hear many of the women in the league referring to you as the ‘ice queen.’ When I pressed them for what that meant, the only answer I could ever get went something like, ‘Well, actually, I didn’t say that, someone else told me.’”
Further, when Debbie asked them to recall who they heard that from, she was dismissively told, “I really can’t remember,” which Debbie took to mean, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore; it’s not my problem.”
Debbie was annoyed by all this nonsense. But, as she shared with Barbara, “I think they don’t like the fact that you’re a professional woman with more on your mind than holiday follies, cake sales, and silly gossip.”
To Warren’s view, damaging Barbara’s social standing was the low hanging fruit. He was certain that he needed to be more careful regarding what he said about Grant Randolph.
It was difficult to control his urge to undermine Grant’s standing in town. He was intimidated by and envious of Grant. Intimidated by the simple fact that, as much as he prided himself on knowing all there was to know about fine food, music, and art, he could never hope to compete with Grant’s knowledge of fine art.
During the arts commission’s outing to San Francisco’s Legion of Honor to celebrate Grant’s appointment and to see the well-reviewed retrospective on the work of Danish-French Impressionist Camille Pissarro, it was to Grant that everyone directed their questions, especially after he corrected the older man’s faux pas as they walked along, viewing the museum’s impressive collection.
“It’s not Matisse you’re referring to, it’s Manet,” was one of Grant’s admonishments of Warren. Another time, he declared, “No, no, no, that’s not a portrait by the American master John Singer Sargent. It’s the work of Anders Zorn, Sweden’s greatest painter…”
Catching the sly smiles of the others, Warren realized that his unquestioned position as a learned man of great culture and refinement was now in question.
It also didn’t help that Grant looked the role that Warren so desperately coveted. The younger man’s buff physique was envied by men and admired by women. His shirts fit him perfectly, doing little to hide a strong flat stomach. Warren could just imagine his rival’s washboard abs. His shoulders were massive, and when he crossed his arms, his biceps were certainly as impressive as the rest of him.
All of which fed Warren’s resentment of this obviously handsome and successful man.
His one shining hope in the dismantling of this bronzed statue of a man was that Alma and the Ladies of Liberty no doubt felt that the husband of Barbara Grant could not be much better than she was.
“Both of them are a little full of themselves, don’t you think?” was Robin Mitchell’s question for the other women on any committee she served. Whether it was the Library Ladies Auxiliary, the Waterfront Beautification Association, or several other groups, Robin Mitchell, following Warren Bradley’s lead, felt it her place to sound the alarm that these two immigrants from the “cutthroat business of Manhattan art galleries are to be embraced only with the greatest of caution.”
Robin enjoyed speculating with Warren that perhaps the two of them were involved in the sale of forged artworks or other nefarious crimes.
“What a delicious scandal that would be,” Warren told her, as his gray eyes lit up and his aging face broke into a smile.
CHAPTER NINE
Some, but not nearly all, of the storm warnings regarding the Randolph’s social standing blew back in the direction of Barbara and Grant. What little did, they took as one more example of Debbie’s advice regarding, “small towns with even smaller minds.”
But as much as Grant still enjoyed his work in Sausalito’s small, but very active art scene, and as much as Barbara continued to say she loved their home and frequently put up pictures on her laptop’s wallpaper of views from their patio, the town’s insular nature began to wear on both of them.
Of more concern was the fact that the two of them, once inseparable, had begun over the past months to spin more actively in distinctively different circles.
Barbara thoroughly enjoyed working with Anna Moss. Even at seventy-two, the gallery owner moved with ceaseless energy. Her passion reinvigorated all Barbara loved and missed about the art world.
Regularly, Anna would come to Barbara with a digital portfolio of a new artist and ask her opinion. “Is he too daring for us?” was invariably Anna’s first question. “I think of our artists as a blend of different flavors, all unique of course, but they have to work well together, otherwise you’ll never be able to cultivate a collector to move from one artist to another.”
Anna’s experience came through in everything she said and did.
What Barbara enjoyed most was Anna’s constantly prodding her for her opinion. “I want to know what you think, Barbara. I don’t think I’ve met anyone more in tune with collectors than you.”
Barbara equally enjoyed getting to know Anna’s forty-year-old son, James. Barbara felt an immediate attraction to him, since the first day they met at the gallery. James, she learned, had divorced two years earlier, and as he told her, “I doubt that I’ll ever find the right woman now.”
Barbara, ever the optimist insisted, “none of us knows what tomorrow might bring, James. The perfect woman for you might come walking through the gallery’s front door next week, and all your pessimism will vanish as if it was never there.”
“What if that woman already walked in? What if she’s you?” James asked in that sly, half-teasing, half-serious attitude that she’d come to recognize.
James didn’t have the raw physical appeal that G
rant embodied, but he had a level of sensitivity that Grant had in short supply. His eyes were a remarkable blend of blue and green. His face was open and kind. And while it would have been impossible for her to explain, a small thrill went through her whenever he would laugh and gently pat her hand.
Watching Barbara and her son together, Anna declared, “Watch yourself, my dear. When he wants, James can be very charming. He’s much more like his father than I ever thought possible.”
Barbara laughed. “James is wonderful, but I assure you, my Grant is man enough for me.”
Still, as the commuter bus that dropped her within six blocks of her home crawled along the overburdened approach to the Golden Gate Bridge, Barbara found herself staring out the window and wondering what James would be like to hold in her arms. Would his kisses be tender? Would his lovemaking be a little less fierce, and hopefully more patient, than Grant’s?
She had to admit that she was curious. But she had no intention of acting on her curiosity until, at a reception for the budding young geniuses that made up the heart of the Gate Six Artists Cooperative, she met Grant’s latest prodigy, Kitty.
Twice during the evening event, she caught a glimpse of them sharing a joke. At one point, when Grant wandered off to another artist’s studio, Barbara made it a point to strike up a conversation with Kitty.
“We have two artists at the Moss Gallery in San Francisco where I work who use a similar blend of colors and materials as you,” Barbara said, hoping to seem relaxed when she really wasn’t. “You should come in one day, and we can have lunch.”
Kitty seemed disinterested and distracted, and then said, “I should ask Grant if he’d like to go into the city with me; all three of us could have lunch together.”