Yale had a million questions—about family, finances, the art, provenance, Nora’s sanity—but he wasn’t here to grill her. He said, “I’ve brought some brochures from the gallery.” He unfolded one on the coffee table.
“Oh, honey,” Nora said, “I don’t have my reading glasses, do I. Why don’t you tell me about it. Do the students go there? Is it a regular spot for them?”
Yale said, “Not only that, but our graduate students and art majors have opportunities for—”
But there were already voices on the porch. Yale and Cecily stood to greet the lawyer. Stanley was a tall, gray-haired man with a newscaster face and wildly untamed eyebrows. “My favorite lady!” he said to Nora. The booming voice matched the man. He would’ve done a fine job informing people that stocks were down, that fifteen people died on the Sinai Peninsula today.
Yale could see it coming as they were introduced, and he was right. Stanley slapped his back and said, “No kidding! You go there? That’d be something: Yale at Yale. Or were you a Harvard man? Yale goes to Harvard!”
“University of Michigan,” Yale said.
“Must’ve disappointed your parents!”
“It’s a family name.”
Yale had, in fact, been named for his Aunt Yael, a detail he’d learned, around age six, never to share.
Stanley turned to Cecily then and made a great show of looking her up and down, and Cecily jumped in firmly before he had the chance to compliment her. “Cecily Pearce, Director of Planned Giving for Northwestern. We’re glad you could make it.”
Stanley, they learned, lived down in Sturgeon Bay and had been a friend for years. He picked up a teacup, a thimble in his large hand. He was an estate lawyer, Cecily seemed aggrieved to hear. Yale knew that whatever small part of her still held out hope had been wishing for a divorce attorney or ambulance chaser.
And then, as they all sat back down, Stanley put the nail in Cecily’s coffin, if not necessarily in Yale’s. He said, “Miss Nora here puts the bono in pro bono.”
“Stanley!” Nora blushed, flattered.
Yale felt the couch shift as Cecily loosened her grip on the arm, gave up.
So Yale said, “I’d love to talk about the art.”
Debra preempted her grandmother. “None of it’s here, first of all,” she said. “It’s in the safe deposit at the bank.”
“That’s good. Very smart.”
“And she refuses to get it appraised.” She sounded furious. Well, sure. A grandmother accepting pro bono legal work would not have much to pass down except the tchotchkes around them, and maybe the little house itself. And, ostensibly, a fortune in art that Debra wouldn’t get.
“Okay. And they haven’t been authenticated, either?”
Nora said, “I don’t need them authenticated! I got these directly from the artists. I lived in Paris twice, I don’t know if my letter said, from 1912 to 1914—I was just a teenager—and then again after the war until 1925. I sat out the fighting.” She gave a small laugh. “And, if you can believe it, I was an art student, and I was pretty, and it just wasn’t too terribly hard to meet these artists. I began to model for them after the war, which—my parents would have been scandalized, it was looked at like prostitution—and most of these pieces were my payment for modeling. Now there are a few others I didn’t mention in the letter, some works that might not be worth a dime. Plus a lot that I gave away over the years. Someone would die and I’d send the sketch off to his widow, that sort of thing.” She stopped and caught her breath. “They weren’t all geniuses, and I wasn’t going about picking and choosing. But some were big names even then. Oh, was I starstruck. Now they’re signed, almost all of them. That was my condition. And they didn’t always want to sign, especially not with a quick sketch. But it was my price.”
Yale was, if nothing else, intrigued. Nora might be a front for a clever forgery ring (stranger things had happened) or be outright delusional, but she herself hadn’t been the victim of forgers. And in so many of these cases, that was what happened—you had to sit by while some millionaire learned the de Chirico he’d been showing off for years was an utter fake.
“They’re insured?” he asked.
Debra cut in: “For not nearly enough.” She sat with her teacup, not drinking, her glare leveled at the coffee table.
Nora said, “But can’t you authenticate them yourself? At the museum?” And then she said, “Good heavens, look at that!” because outside it had started raining in sheets.
Yale spoke gently. “If museums were allowed to authenticate their own works, everyone would have a hundred Picassos. But listen, if we have reason to believe the pieces are what you say, we might be able to help financially with authentication. We can’t pay for it directly, but maybe we could find another donor who could.” He wasn’t sure this was tenable, but it was worth saying for now.
Nora looked at him strangely. “If they are what I say!”
“I don’t doubt you.” He checked Debra’s and Stanley’s faces. They looked serious, not like they were just humoring this woman. He said, “I’m trying to curb my excitement because this would be such an amazing boon, not just to the university but to the art world—and I don’t want to get my heart broken here.” It was the truth.
Cecily said something then, but Yale was busy wondering if this was the governing factor of his life: the fear of getting his heart broken. Or rather, the need to protect the remaining scraps of his heart, the ones torn smaller by every breakup, every failure, every funeral, every day on earth. Was this why a shrink would say he was with Charlie, out of all the men in Chicago? Yale might break Charlie’s heart—he did it almost every day—but Charlie, for all his possessiveness, would never break Yale’s.
The rain was trying to tear the whole house apart.
Stanley said, “Let’s assume everything checks out. Can you guarantee these pieces will be displayed prominently? You wouldn’t turn around and sell them?”
Yale assured him the works would be in regular rotation. That if the space expanded, they could be on permanent display.
“Now,” Nora said, and she leaned in to look straight at Yale as if what she had to say next was the most important thing. “I wouldn’t want you to play favorites. I want the whole collection displayed.”
“That’s not really up—”
“There are a couple of unknowns in there, and one in particular, Ranko Novak, I’ve hung onto his work for sentimental reasons. It’s good, don’t think it’s some dreadful thing, but he’s not a name. I don’t want you displaying the Soutine and consigning Ranko to a closet.” She pointed a finger at him. “Do you know Foujita?”
Yale was able to nod honestly. He did know a lot more about art than the average money guy, a huge asset. He had a joke now, a practiced line, about how he could have told his dad either that he was gay or that he was majoring in art, and he’d picked gay because it seemed like less trouble. In reality, during the whole ride home for sophomore winter break, Yale had silently rehearsed the news that he was switching from finance to art history—and then that night, his boyfriend had called and mistaken Yale’s father’s voice for Yale’s (“I miss you, baby,” he’d said, and Yale’s father had said, “How’s that?” and Marc, as was his wont, had elaborated), and so the rest of vacation had been devoted to that bombshell, to their mutual avoidance, their silent eating of leftover spaghetti. Yale had planned to tell his father about the professor he could do an independent study with next fall—about how he wasn’t in love the same way with finance, about how with this degree, he could teach or write books or restore paintings or even work at an auction house. He’d planned to explain that it was Caravaggio’s Saint Jerome that had sent vibrations down his arms, made the rest of the world fall away—Caravaggio’s light, oddly, and not his famous shadows. But Marc’s call ruined it; Yale would have been too humiliated to say that all now. Not just gay, but
a gay art major. He went back to school in January and lied to his adviser, told her he’d had a change of heart. But between finance classes, he audited course after course, sitting in the backs of lecture halls illuminated only by slides of Manet or Goya or Joaquin Sorolla.
Nora said, “I’m thrilled you know him, because Stanley and Debra haven’t the slightest clue. The instant Fiona mentioned you, I knew this was meant to be. I used to go visit Nico, you know. I saw that neighborhood, and those boys, and I can’t tell you how much it reminded me—all my friends in Paris, we were foreigners. Flotsam and jetsam.”
Yale wondered if Cecily had understood. He kept his hands still, didn’t look her way.
“I’m not calling Nico’s neighborhood Paris, don’t get me wrong, but all those boys landing there from every direction, it was the same! We never knew it was a movement when I was young, but now they speak of it as the École de Paris, and what they really mean is all the riffraff that washed up there at the same time. Everyone born in some godforsaken shtetl, and then there they were in heaven.”
Yale took the end of her sentence as a chance to change the subject. “I’d love to see the pieces,” he said.
“Oh—” Here Nora gave a theatrical sigh. “Now, this is Debra’s fault, isn’t it? We were planning to go to the bank with her Polaroid, but it was missing something.”
Debra said, “This is what happens when the gift shops all close for winter. I had film but no flash bar.”
“I could find you one in Sturgeon Bay,” Stanley said, and Debra didn’t look pleased.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” Nora said. “I’ll send you some Polaroid shots in the mail. I know you can’t tell much from a photo, but you’ll have an idea.”
Because the possibility of their all heading to the bank in the rain hadn’t been raised, Yale didn’t mention it himself. He didn’t want Debra and Stanley to feel he was being too aggressive, didn’t want them counseling Nora against him. His job was to win her trust, not finger the art. Yale said, “I’ll send you photos of the gallery in exchange. And let me give you my address again, so the package will come straight to me.” He glanced at Cecily, but she’d long since checked out. He handed a card to Nora and one to Stanley. “My private line is on there.”
They left Stanley with the sheets of sample language for in-kind donations and general bequests and headed out the door umbrellaless. Cecily held her file folder over her head as they ran for the car; she didn’t seem to care if it got soaked. Debra, who had seen them out, watched without waving.
“She was certainly enamored of you,” Cecily said. She was trying to figure out the windshield wipers.
“We can work with that.” He didn’t want to explain about Nico, explain that the way Nora had taken to him had nothing to do with the gallery.
“What a disaster.” The wipers blasted on, sending cascades of water down each side of the windshield.
“It was?”
“Tell me you were just humoring her.”
“I’m not sure.”
“Something about that woman and that house made you think her Modigliani is real?”
“I mean—actually, yes. I’ve come around. I think there’s a decent chance.”
“Well. Good luck to you. If you can get past that granddaughter. And the son, for that matter. When they make their wills this late, it’s always contested. ‘Oh, she was senile! The lawyer took advantage!’ But good luck to you.”
Cecily, he realized as she peeled out onto County Road ZZ, was a sore loser. It was probably what made her so good at her job—she was consumed by ambition the same way Charlie was. And he admired that in a person. Nico was the one who’d first introduced him to Charlie, and when Charlie had turned his back to greet someone who’d just arrived at the bar, Nico had whispered, “He’s gonna be the first gay mayor. Twenty years.” And the reason Charlie was so good at organizing people, lighting fires under them, getting his paper read, was that he took loss extremely hard. He absorbed failure by staying up till five in the morning, calling people and scribbling in notebooks until he had a new plan of action. It was hard to live with, but Yale couldn’t imagine his own life anymore without the whirring clock of Charlie at its center.
Cecily said, “I wanted to take a pair of scissors and trim that man’s eyebrows. The lawyer.”
She was driving too fast for the rain. Instead of asking her to slow down, Yale said, “I’m famished.” It was true; it was 3 p.m., and they hadn’t eaten beyond their gas station snack.
They stopped at a restaurant that advertised a Friday fish fry and rooms upstairs. Inside they found mismatched tablecloths and a long wooden bar.
Cecily said, “Are we getting back on the road after this, or are we drinking our troubles away?”
Yale didn’t even have to think about it. “I’m sure they have space.” Tomorrow they could drive home in sunshine.
Cecily sat at the bar and ordered a martini; Yale asked for a beer and said he’d be right back. There was no pay phone in the lobby, but the innkeeper let him use the house phone.
Charlie picked up after ten rings.
Yale said, “We’re definitely staying overnight,” and Charlie said, “Where are you again?”
“Wisconsin. The spiky part.”
“Who are you with?”
“Jesus, Charlie. A woman who looks like Princess Diana’s older sister.”
Charlie said, “Okay. I miss you. You’ve done too much vanishing lately.”
“That’s deeply ironic.”
“Listen, I’m going out to Niles tonight.” Yale had lost track of Charlie’s protests, but he believed this one was about a bar the police kept targeting. Yale had let him know, when they first got together, that he’d never be joining in; his nervous system was fragile enough without the threat of billy clubs and tear gas thrown in.
He said, “Be safe.”
“I’d look great with a broken nose. Admit it.”
Back in the dining room, the bartender was telling Cecily how Al Capone used to stay here, how the gangster’s men would drive carloads of liquor across the frozen lake from Canada. Cecily gulped down the last of her martini, and the bartender chuckled. “I make ’em good,” he said. “Now I do a cherry one, too, call it the Door County Special. You care to give that a try?” Yes, she did.
They sat there long enough that the room slowly filled. Families and farmers and lingering vacationers. Cecily was drunk, and she picked at the potpie she’d ordered, said it was too greasy. Yale offered her some of his fish and chips, but she declined. When she ordered herself a third martini, Yale pointedly asked for more bread.
She said, “I don’t need bread. What I need is an avocado with some cottage cheese. That’s the diet food. Have you ever had avocado?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you have. I mean, not to imply.”
“I’m not sure what that could possibly imply.” He glanced around, but no one was listening.
“You know. You guys are more urbane. Wait, urban, or urbane? Urbane. But listen.” She rested two fingers on his thigh, close to the fold his khakis made near his crotch. “What I want to know is, don’t you ever have fun anymore?”
Yale was baffled. The bartender, passing, winked. He supposed they made a believable couple, even if she was several years older than him. Waspy career woman and her young Jewish boyfriend. He whispered, hoping she’d follow suit. “Are you talking about me personally, or all gay men?”
“See? You are gay!” Not too loudly, thank God. She didn’t move her hand; maybe it wasn’t a sexual move after all.
“Yes.”
“But what I was saying was, I was saying how gay men—I mean, I’m sorry for assuming, but I assumed, and I was right—how gay men used to have more fun than anyone. You used to make me jealous. And now you’re all getting so serious and staying home because
of this stupid disease. Someone took me to the Baton Show once. The Baton Club? You know. And it was amazing.”
There was still no one listening. A toddler pitched a fit over by the window, throwing her grilled cheese on the floor. Yale said, “I’d say there was a good ten years where we had a lot of fun. Look, if you know people who are toning things down, I’m glad. Not everyone is.”
Cecily pressed with her fingers, leaned in. He worried she’d fall off her stool. “But don’t you miss having fun?”
He carefully removed her hand and set it on her own lap. “I think we have different ideas of fun.”
She looked hurt, but recovered quickly. She whispered. “What I’m saying is, I have some C-O-K-E in my purse.” She pointed to the pale yellow bag under her barstool.
“You have what?” He couldn’t have heard right. She hadn’t even gotten the bong joke.
“C-O-C-A-I-N-E. When we go upstairs, we could have a party.”
Yale had quite a few simultaneous thoughts, chief among them the fact that Cecily would be horrified in the morning by how she’d acted. He was so embarrassed for her that he wanted to say yes, to snort coke right here off the bar. But lately his heart couldn’t handle more than one coffee a day. He hadn’t so much as smoked pot in a year.
He looked at her as kindly as he could and said, “We’re going to get you a big glass of water, and you’re going to eat some bread. You can sleep as late as you want, and when you feel ready I’ll drive the whole way back.”
“Oh, you think I’m drunk.”
“Yes.”
“I’m actually fine.”
He slid the bread toward her, and the water.
Cecily might take it out on him, try to screw him over on future Brigg bequests—but really, no, he had dirt on her now. He wouldn’t blackmail her, nothing like that, but this might put them on a more equal footing.
The Great Believers Page 7