The Curiosities

by Susan Gloss

  “There,” Cindy said, holding up a hand mirror.

  Betsy tried to look at her reflection, but the image was blurry. “I need my glasses,” she said.

  Cindy pushed aside papers and bottles on the nightstand until she found a pair of tortoiseshell glasses, round and oversized. She handed them to Betsy.

  “That’s better,” Betsy said when she’d put them on.

  “You look like Iris Apfel in those,” Cindy said.

  Betsy laughed. “Or maybe Mr. Magoo.”

  “I just watched a documentary about Apfel. If I live to my nineties, I hope I have even a smidge of her energy. Here she is, this woman famous enough to have her clothing displayed at the Met, and she’s running around a flea market with her cane, pawing through tables of bargain accessories.”

  “Normally I’d say it’s dangerous to tell a woman she looks like someone older than her,” Betsy said. “But in this case I’m flattered by the comparison. I’ve always thought it was a shame that I never got to meet Apfel when she lived in Madison. But she graduated from art school at UW in the forties, and I was just a kid then. I didn’t move here until the late fifties, after I got married.”

  “Well, it’s her loss as much as yours.” Cindy straightened Betsy’s wig. “Are you ready?”

  Slowly, deliberately, they made their way to the hallway and down the stairs, where every step seemed like a mile. Betsy clutched the smooth handrail on one side and, on the other, she leaned her weight against Cindy’s sturdy shoulders. They inched downward like that, pausing to rest on the landing where the staircase curved.

  “I feel like we’re in a three-legged race,” Betsy said. “Good thing no one’s racing against us, or else we’d surely lose.”

  Cindy laughed, then supported Betsy the rest of the way downstairs and out the front door.

  Betsy leaned on the white wooden rails of the front porch, taking in the view of the sculpture garden at its midsummer peak. Bush roses in white and peach hues bloomed in the beds that bordered the front porch. Clustered around the mother-and-child statue Betsy loved so much were bunches of hydrangea in shades of purple and blue, their puffy, carefree blossoms swaying in the mild breeze off the lake.

  Cindy led her to the wrought-iron bench in the yard, positioned for perfect views of the sculptures. Throw pillows in various colors and textures had been placed on the seat—Betsy had had Cindy bring them all upstairs so she could select patterns that complimented one another.

  Betsy played with the fringe on a rust-colored pillow with a silk brocade cover. “I bought this fabric in China,” she said. “At a gift market near the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall.” She closed her eyes. “Oh the steps! I know you’d never believe it now, after having to practically carry me down a single flight of stairs, but Walt and I climbed hundreds of steps that day. It was autumn, and from on top of the wall you could see miles and miles of orange and red treetops. That’s why I picked out this particular fabric, actually, at one of the market stalls on our way out of town. It reminded me of the color of the autumn leaves.”

  A warm wind blew up from the lake, rustling the grasses in the garden. Without even opening her eyes, Betsy could picture the fronds of green and yellow ornamental grass that flanked the stone footpath leading around the side of the house. She inhaled the sweet, heady scent of the roses near the porch.

  When Betsy opened her eyes, Cindy was no longer standing in the yard with her. Instead, she saw a gray-haired woman in overalls making her way up the front walk with a camera slung around her neck.

  “Annie Beck?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to photograph you,” she said. “If it’s okay with you.”

  “Of course. I didn’t put all this on just to sit out here in my own garden.” Betsy swept her hand to indicate her made-up face and tailored attire. “Did the magazine send you?”

  “There’s no magazine,” Annie said. She knelt down in the grass and started snapping pictures.

  Betsy sat silent for a moment, trying to put everything together. Had she mixed something up? She wouldn’t be surprised. Her head felt so foggy these days, floating from the effects of one medication to the next. But Cindy was usually pretty good at keeping track of details.

  “I don’t understand,” Betsy said.

  Annie had climbed on top of the berm that separated Betsy’s yard from the neighbor’s, to shoot from a different angle. From her perch Annie said, “I’m the one who called about doing a magazine article. But I made the whole thing up.”

  “Why?” Betsy asked. “If you’d just asked to photograph me, I would have said yes.”

  “We wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Robbie and me. That night, after my show at his gallery, I mentioned something to him about how much I’d enjoyed talking with you, and whether you’d be invited to the retrospective we’re planning for a future date. He said he didn’t think so. That you were sick. And once I heard that, I suddenly understood why my pictures of people who were dying—like the professor with her Proust books—resonated with you so much. I asked Robbie what he thought about me photographing you, and he liked the idea. So here I am.”

  Betsy scratched at her scalp, which was starting to itch from the combination of the wig and the humid summer air. She wasn’t sure how to feel about all of this. On one hand, she was flattered by the gesture, but on the other, it felt like an invasion of privacy. Betsy had often kept details of her personal life private, even while publicly taking on causes she believed in. And nothing was more private than dying.

  “I never told Robbie about my relapse,” Betsy said. “I’ve hardly told anyone.”

  “You didn’t have to. He knew you had cancer once before and said he could tell you were sick again as soon as he saw you that night, from how much weight you’d lost.” Annie sat down on the bench beside Betsy and removed the camera from around her neck. “Look, we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Robbie said there was a chance you might not be up for it or that you might even be offended. But the risk of offending people usually doesn’t stop me from doing something I think is worthwhile, so I figured it was at least worth a shot. Not for my series, but just because I sensed you had a lot of spirit and personality, and that you might enjoy all of that being captured while you’re still here, by someone who could see it. Who could see you. Not for my series.”

  “I’m not offended,” Betsy said. “I don’t even care if you want to use the photos. Use them however you want. You just caught me by surprise. I was expecting an interviewer and photographer from a local magazine.”

  “Are you disappointed there’s no magazine article?”

  “Lord, no. I’ve done so many interviews. I don’t need another article saying all the things I’ve already said dozens of times before: when I started collecting, what my favorite pieces are, et cetera.”

  “If you let me, I think I can capture something about you that hasn’t been said yet,” Annie said. “Or at least I hope I can. That’s why I came.”

  Betsy thought about the photographs she’d seen at the show in New York—the beauty and grace that shared space in the images with pain and death. It was a complicated combination that many people shied away from even talking about. Annie, instead, chose to focus a lens on it. It was exactly the kind of creative courage that Betsy hoped could be nurtured by the residency program she’d dreamed up.

  “Okay,” Betsy said. “Let’s take some pictures.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Nell

  PIECE: Letter from Annie Beck, New York, New York, to Elizabeth Barrett, Madison, Wisconsin.

  That Friday afternoon, Nell was working on hanging some of the artwork for the show when she looked out one of the back windows and saw a boat towing a big barge out on the lake. It seemed to be headed straight in her direction. It came closer and closer until, from her vantage point, it looked as if it were going to hit the boathouse at th
e edge of the property. Nell got up and ran outside, waving her arms at the two men in the boat.

  “Stop!” she yelled. The last thing she needed was for a barge to crash ashore just hours before the Colony was supposed to open its doors for its first public show.

  The driver cut the engine and turned within ten feet of the boathouse. The other man jumped from the boat to the barge, which swung around so that it was parallel to the shore. He was laughing. From where she stood now, Nell could see that there was no danger of the boat hitting anything onshore. But she’d never seen any boat get this close before, let alone one towing a barge carrying what looked like big wood pallets.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, this time at a normal volume.

  The man looked down at Nell, who now stood on the rocks at the lake’s edge. “We’re putting in your pier,” he said. “We store it off-site and put it back in the first week of May every year, weather permitting. Been doing it for twenty years. Then in the fall we come and haul it away to storage.”

  The driver anchored the boat and, wearing waders, got into the water. The man on the barge lifted one of the wood pallets—which Nell could now see was a pier section—and lowered it into the water. Then he looked at Nell. “Did the lady who used to live here move?”

  “She passed away,” Nell said. “The property is owned by a trust now.”

  The man in the water paused. “So do you still want the pier in, or should we take it back to storage?”

  Nell had never even thought about it. It occurred to her now that it should have been obvious, from the fact that there was a boathouse, that there also had been a pier at some point. But the boathouse didn’t have anything inside it other than a few old canoe paddles and gas cans.

  “Yes,” Nell said. “Go ahead and put it in. Have you already been paid or do I need to pay you?”

  “We’ll send a bill to the house,” said the man standing on the barge. “That’s what we’ve always done.”

  By the time the two men chugged away in the boat an hour later, they’d unloaded, assembled, and adjusted an L-shaped pier with a bench built into the end of it. Nell thanked them and watched as they stopped at another house a few lots down and started the whole process again with someone else’s pier. She made a mental note to ask Don the next time they spoke whether she should expect anything else to be delivered, by land or by sea. She’d sent him a flyer for Gallery Night, after mulling for a couple of days whether it was a good idea to invite him. He’d called her after he saw the short article that ran in the paper about Caroline’s overdose.

  “Isn’t this the same block as the Barrett mansion?” he’d asked. “Is everything okay over there?”

  At first, Nell had been tempted to tell him as little as possible. But then, remembering the mess she’d made in her marriage by not disclosing the whole truth, she filled Don in on what facts she knew, including that Josh was helping out with the case.

  “If she gets convicted of a felony, you’re going to have to ask her to resign from the residency,” he’d said.

  “I kind of figured that,” Nell said. “I’m really hoping we don’t get to that point.”

  The residency was nearing its end, with less than two months left. Nell had begun to review applications for the next group of artists. Even so, she hoped she wouldn’t have to let Annie go before the end of the program. Not only would Annie be missed, but Nell would also feel like she’d failed in her role as director. Already she chided herself for not having paid closer attention to what Annie had been up to in the basement, and not asking the right questions.

  Now, Nell went back inside the house and looked over each of the new works she’d set out and hung on the walls. She hoped she’d placed them well enough to get the attention they deserved. She didn’t have enough time to rearrange them now, with just a couple of hours to go before she opened the doors for Gallery Night.

  The centerpieces of the exhibition were the photos Annie had found in a dresser drawer in one of the unoccupied bedrooms. The dresser had been emptied out except for a few pieces of costume jewelry and some old photo albums. Tucked into the back of one of the albums had been pictures Annie had taken of Betsy, along with a note.

  I hope these photos reach you at home before your move. I hope, too, that they captured some of the style, grace, humor, and generosity that I saw in their subject.

  Annie Beck

  Nell had framed the photos and hung them in the foyer, both to display for Gallery Night and to remain there, so that everyone who walked in could see the woman whose vision had made the Colony possible.

  There were ten photos, five in color and five in black and white, displayed in two rows. The color photos showed Betsy from different angles and ranges, sitting on a striped woven blanket, and leaning against the trunk of the bronze tree sculpture in the garden. In her lap she held a mosaic made from blue-and-white pottery pieces. Behind her, propped against a wrought-iron bench, stood the Lee Krasner painting that now hung above the fireplace. On top of the bench was an arrangement of colorful pillows in varied textures, patterns, and colors—red, pink, orange, and purple. A stack of books also shared space on the bench seat. Nell recognized the spine of one of the books as the children’s poetry collection she’d seen on the office bookshelves, inscribed by Betsy’s mother. The photograph looked like something out of the pages of Vanity Fair.

  “It’s so colorful, isn’t it?” Annie came up beside Nell now and said, “She handpicked all the items she wanted in the picture with her.”

  “She certainly had a knack for knowing what went with what.” Nell turned to look at Annie. “Why didn’t you tell any of us that you met Betsy?”

  Annie shrugged. “I didn’t want people to think I was chosen just because I knew her, and not for my work.”

  Nell nodded and looked back at the pictures. “I can’t get over the fact that the Krasner painting is just sitting there in the grass. It makes me feel a little better about when Grady took it down from the wall and put it on the floor.”

  “The painting is resting on top of a little box you can’t see unless you look closely,” Annie said. “I promise you, it never even touched the grass. I was worried about the same thing. I didn’t even want to bring it outside. What if the sky suddenly opened up into a downpour, or the wind kicked up and blew it into the lake?”

  “What did Betsy say?” Nell asked.

  Annie lifted her chin and lowered her voice. “‘Art is like life. It’s fragile, but that doesn’t mean you should never take a risk.’”

  Nell stood silent for a moment, thinking about just how true those words were. She knew all too well how fragile life could be. You could feel a baby kicking inside you, swift and strong, only to watch her take her last breath less than an hour later. Or, in Annie’s case, you could listen to a friend talk about her strides in sobriety and photograph her young, hopeful face one day, only to lose that friend to the strangle of addiction the very next time you saw her.

  Nell brushed a tear from the corner of her eye before she even realized she was on the verge of crying. Annie noticed, though, and asked, “What is it?”

  Nell took a deep breath. “Josh and I lost our baby, shortly after she was born. But before that, a photographer came and took pictures of her. And I’m so glad she did. It takes a special kind of person to be able to show up under the kind of circumstances that most people would rather not think about.” She gave Annie a small smile. “You’re that kind of person.”

  “I try to be,” Annie said. “I’m afraid I screwed things up with Caroline, though. I know that what happened isn’t my fault, but I wonder if I could have done more to help.”

  “Trust me, I know exactly what you mean,” Nell said.

  “When I started my photography series on death and pain management, I was really passionate about it. Like you said, I felt like I could do something—capture something—that not just anybody could. But then I stopped doing that, and shifted into doing the series on
addiction, because of the promise of getting my own big retrospective show.” Annie shook her head. “Once all of this blows over, I want to get back to the sort of thing I was doing initially with my Elysium project. Because, even if death isn’t the hot topic of the day, it’s something we all have to deal with. It’s essential to being human. And isn’t that what art is all about? Trying to create just a snippet of something real and true and permanent?”

  Nell nodded. It was why she’d always loved art so much. When she thought too hard about all the things that were impermanent, she wanted to shut down. She wanted to shut the door to pain and discomfort, like she’d done with the nursery at home. Like she’d tried to do by keeping her debt a secret. Paycheck by paycheck, though, she’d started to chip away at the balances she’d racked up. And with every payment to the credit card company, she hoped she was that much closer to bridging the gap between her and Josh. Even more than the money, though, Annie’s case had brought them closer.

  Josh liked to be needed, Nell knew that. He liked having a problem he could fix. When they lost their daughter, the difference in the ways she and Josh processed their grief had wrought a chasm between them, into which all feeling fell, tumbling down to some unreachable place. The Colony, though, made Nell feel something again, besides pain. It wasn’t a substitute for all she’d lost—the years of raising her daughter, the countless moments never realized—but it gave her something to nurture.

  Annie’s phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket. “Your husband is calling me,” she said. “I’d better take this.” She went into the office. A few minutes later, Nell heard a whooping sound from behind the closed door.

  Annie came running back out, her cheeks flushed.

  “What happened?” Nell asked.