The Art Forger

by Barbara Shapiro

  When I finally finish and Chantal’s come for the paintings, I shower, change, and pack. The car’s picking me up at four, which should get me there about seven. In plenty of time for dinner, the woman at the ranch assured me. When I get a call from the service a bit before four telling me they’re running about fifteen minutes late, I switch on CNN and relax into the couch until the sound of the newscaster mentioning Markel G brings me upright. Could they be talking about my show on CNN? My heart pounds. Has Aiden’s promotion actually reached that far?

  It takes me a few moments to understand what’s happening. They’re not talking about my show. They just mentioned the gallery because Aiden owns it. Because it’s where he was arrested. Because it’s where the film clip they’re showing takes place. Of Aiden being led onto Newbury Street. In handcuffs.

  Thirty-six

  THREE YEARS EARLIER

  A month or so after my meeting with Beatrice Cormier, rumors began circulating that some woman had gone to MoMA claiming Isaac Cullion hadn’t painted 4D, that she was the artist who created it. At first, it was just whispers that were easily scoffed away. But soon, notices began appearing on art blogs and in gossip columns reporting that the museum, which had determined 4D was Cullion’s work, was wrong: The claim was legitimate.

  After disclosure that Isaac had been having an affair with “a much younger graduate student,” it didn’t take long for people to conclude that the “she” in both stories had to be me. Isaac, of course, denied everything, as did MoMA. Initially, I did, too. I still hadn’t recovered from the shock of the museum’s original decision, and I didn’t know what to do.

  But plenty of other people did. I was stared at, whispered about, and often strangers, not to mention friends, asked me intrusive questions. Some were quite cruel.

  “So did you do it because he broke up with you?” Like it’s your business.

  “How much less do you think 4D is worth now?” Like I know.

  “Do you still love him?” Like this is appropriate.

  “Why would you try to destroy such a talented man?” Like that was my intention.

  Although I was dubbed “The Great Pretender” by the tabloids and it was generally assumed I was seeking some kind of wrong-headed publicity for myself, the possibility that my claim was legitimate also sparked interest. Editorials appeared about museum experts who saw what they wanted to see and collectors who were willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a name. Journalists and pundits speculated on the rights and wrongs of the situation. And to whom they belonged.

  “Where does art’s value lie?” an editorial in ArtWorld demanded. “If it was painted by a graduate student, is 4D still a masterpiece?”

  These were good questions, questions I kept asking myself. And although almost all of the arguments concluded that the value lay within the painting itself, that brands and celebrated names were nothing but “the glaze of our ego-driven consumer society,” one only had to look at the meteoric rise in the value of Isaac’s paintings after 4D to know the truth.

  I WAS IN such a deep sleep that it took me a while to understand that the phone was ringing. The clock radio said it was 3:24 a.m. I fumbled for the phone.

  “Murderer!” a woman’s voice screamed.

  “Huh?”

  “You killed him. You killed him. If it weren’t for you he’d still be alive!” Then she burst into huge, heaving sobs.

  I shook my head to clear it. “I think you’ve got the wrong number.”

  More sobbing, deeper now, more painful.

  “Listen, ma’am,” I said, “I’m really sorry, but I didn’t kill anyone, so you’ve really got to hang up and dial again. Or, better yet, get someone to help you. Are you alone? Is there someone I can call for you?”

  “You and your goddamned ego,” she managed to spit between sobs. “If you hadn’t, if you hadn’t gone there, claiming, claiming, if you’d let things be, then he, then he …”

  I snapped straight up in bed. “Who is this?”

  A wail. A keening that froze the marrow of my bones.

  “Martha?” I asked, hoping against hope I was wrong, but knowing I wasn’t. Isaac’s wife.

  A long intake of breath, a sob, a hiccup. “He’s gone, Claire.”

  “Isaac?” I whispered.

  The sobbing began again.

  “No,” I said, but it came out as a moan. “No, no, please no.”

  “He shot himself.” Martha’s voice was suddenly hard and clear. “But it wasn’t suicide. Not even close. And you’re going to have to live with the fact that you’re responsible for ending his life for the rest of your own.”

  “Ending his life,” I repeated, sickened by her words. “No, no. I … I didn’t do that. I’d never do anything—”

  “You can deny it all you want, but that doesn’t change the facts,” she spat, and hung up.

  I dropped the receiver on the bed. I was numb, freezing cold, shivering as if I were running a high fever. I wrapped myself in a blanket, tried to pace the studio, but my knees wouldn’t hold me up. I collapsed on the floor, curled into a fetal position, rocked. And rocked. Isaac was dead. His great talent along with him. If only I hadn’t, if only I hadn’t, if only I hadn’t … But, of course, I had.

  THE FUNERAL, HELD at Trinity Church in Copley Square, was a mob scene. News vans and reporters swarmed the plaza in front of the church, onlookers ogled. Rik came with me, and it was a good thing. When Martha Cullion turned her back in response to my condolences, he was there to catch me. When no professor from the museum school would meet my eye, he was there to hold my hand. And when I found I couldn’t bear the sight of Isaac’s casket, Rik took me home.

  Martha told the press she blamed me for Isaac’s death. That my “preposterous claim” was an attempt to punish him for going back to her. Intellectually, I knew I hadn’t caused his death, but there was a great distance between my head and my heart, and guilt filled my gut.

  I ignored the media calls for a statement. Although my friends begged me to tell my side of the story, I felt too responsible to defend myself. I wasn’t sleeping or eating, I wasn’t working, and I wasn’t leaving my studio. Rik tried to convince me to pack up my canvases and paints and move into his parents’ barn in Connecticut to finish my capstone project. I didn’t want to go anywhere—I’d become addicted to soap operas and daytime talk shows—but my overwhelming desire to put the whole museum school experience behind me finally got me to the barn.

  When I returned to Boston with the first two completed works though, none of my professors was impressed. “Derivative,” Maya Myers, the chair of my committee, declared, and I noticed George Kelly and Dan Martin share a smirk.

  “Derivative of what?” I asked.

  “Go back and sit with them, Claire,” Maya said. “Review your early expressionists. I’m sure you’ll see what we mean.”

  Expressionists? I stared at my paintings. Marc Chagall? Edvard Munch? Distortion of reality for emotional effect? Not even close. These were portraits of homeless people, one a man and the other two women, both highly representational. They were emotional, yes, that was the point. But there was no bending of reality, just reality staring you in the face.

  I looked at George and Dan, waiting for someone to contradict her.

  “I agree with Maya,” Dan said.

  “Me, too,” said George.

  I gathered the paintings and marched over to Rik’s apartment. I set them against the wall behind his kitchen table. “Would you call these expressionistic?”

  He scrutinized them. “Well … they do create emotion. Strong angst. So I suppose, in that way, they’re expressionistesque.”

  “Through distortion?”

  “Couldn’t say that.”

  “Are they derivative?”

  “Of whom?”

  “That’s what Myers claims. She and her two monkeys.”

  Now Rik scrutinized me. “And you’re thinking this is because of Isaac?”

  “What e
lse?”

  “Maybe she’s testing you, pushing you to new creative heights.”

  “Except that she loved the idea when I first presented it. Told me to get right to work after she saw the initial sketches.”

  “You’ve got to let this go, Bear. Not everything that happens to you is about Isaac.”

  Yet everything else seemed to be about Isaac. Despite hurricanes and blistering heat, international unrest and a presidential election, the media wouldn’t let the story go, quoting Isaac’s friends and colleagues about his great talent and all that the world had lost. I finally gave the Globe an interview, explaining how everything happened, how 4D was mine, and that I’d gone to MoMA to set the record straight. But it seemed that no one, except my family and a few friends, was willing to believe me. Martha’s story had much more appeal.

  So when I finally emerged from the barn, reworked “non-expressionist” paintings and a newly minted MFA in hand, I wasn’t surprised to step into a world that pretended not to see the Great Pretender. But when the freeze flowed into the responses I received to the slides I submitted to galleries and competitions, to the lack of responses I received to my résumé, I realized that Rik was wrong. Everything was about Isaac. And in contradiction to conventional wisdom, I was fast discovering that there was, indeed, such a thing as bad publicity.

  Thirty-seven

  The Nashua Street Jail looks more like a high-end hotel or classy office building than a house of correction. Facing an open expanse of the Charles River, its angled windows and imposing entrance façade rival most courthouses. But inside, the disrespect of the defiant guards mingling with the odor of sweat, Lysol, and hopelessness is all too reminiscent of Beverly Arms.

  While the whole rigmarole at juvy is demoralizing, Nashua Street brings this to a new level. And not just because Beverly is a juvenile facility and Nashua maximum security. It’s that now I’m a visitor rather than a teacher, supplicant rather than volunteer. Still, being white, English-speaking, neither hostile nor whimpering, and more-or-less appropriately dressed works in my favor.

  The guards turn away a boy wearing oversized jogging pants, a girl in a shirt deemed too tight, and a man with only a photocopy of his birth certificate for identification. An elderly woman, who tries to explain in halting English that she spent over two hours getting here, is told she can’t see her grandson because he’s already had three visitors this week. Begging, tears, offers of favors, and children crying for Daddy make no difference here. Yelling and swearing, not to mention punching the wall, do even less.

  By the time I’m questioned, searched, scanned, stamped, and ordered into a room the size of a bathroom stall, I don’t know whether to be relieved or distressed. The tiny room is overheated and claustrophobic. A small metal stool is attached to the wall, and I sit, facing an empty glass panel with a circle of small holes at the bottom.

  A similar metal stool and a closed door face me from the other side. My nose fills with the stench of dirty socks, and acid bile burns up into my throat. But I’m aching for Aiden. The thought of him locked up in here crushes my ribs. I haven’t been able to speak to him since his arrest.

  Apparently, Patel knew more than Aiden thought or the FBI was better at working its way through the levels that Aiden believed would protect him. According to the paper, he’s charged with sale of stolen goods, transportation of stolen goods, and conspiracy to commit fraud. The FBI spokeswoman said that charges of grand theft are pending.

  I focus on the murmur of voices on either side of me, although I can’t make out what anyone’s saying. Guards shout names and numbers. I listen for his name, close my eyes, try to breathe normally. It feels as if I’ve been waiting for hours, but I’ve no idea how long it’s actually been. The clock on the wall reads 6:15, and the hands haven’t moved since I entered. My watch is in the locker room. Only wedding bands and medical-alert jewelry allowed inside.

  Finally, the door across from me opens, and Aiden walks in. At first glance, he doesn’t look all that bad: dressed in a too-large faded jumpsuit, a bit rumpled, yet clean-shaven and standing tall. But when he sits down across from me, I see his face is deathly pale. Lines etch his bloodshot eyes, and blue-black smudges circle beneath them.

  I try to smile. “Hi,” I say, and it comes out high and reedy.

  He leans down to the holes, “You’ve got to go, babe. Now.”

  I press my hand to the glass. “How are you? Have they told you anything? When are you getting out of—”

  “I mean it,” he says. “Out of town. Away. And don’t come here again. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Aiden, I want you to know that you can count on me. That we’re in this together. As soon as you get out we can start to fight—”

  “I’m not getting out. They’ve told me that much. Flight risk.” His mouth squeezes into a grimace. “The Gardner heist.”

  “But these things can change, right? What does your lawyer say? Are they filing motions or whatever they do? I can check with another lawyer for you if you want.”

  “You’ve got to stay out of it. You haven’t done anything wrong, and you’ve got to keep it that way. The less contact you have with me and this mess the better.”

  “But if I haven’t done anything wrong, I’m not in any danger, so I’m going to do whatever I can to get you freed as soon as possible.”

  “You’re not listening to me: I’m not getting out. No chance of bail.”

  “But—”

  He holds up his hands as if this will stop my words. “But nothing. They think—”

  “What happened?” I demand. His right forefinger is in a metal brace wrapped in adhesive tape.

  “Nothing.” He lowers his hand.

  “It doesn’t look like nothing.”

  “Please, Claire. Believe me, some things are better off left alone.”

  “Somebody hurt you,” I say.

  “It’s nothing,” he repeats.

  “Tell me.”

  “I warned you.” He hesitates, sighs, and says, “I never got a chance to pay the sellers.”

  “What sellers? What pay?” But as soon as the questions are out of my mouth, I know the answers. “Patel’s money? The men who gave you Bath?”

  “They want it now.”

  “But what does your finger have to do with that?”

  “It’s a threat.”

  “What kind of threat?”

  The circles under his eyes appear to grow even darker. “It’s what’s going to happen to my finger if I don’t get them their money.”

  “They’re going to break it?”

  “It’s already broken.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He raises his right forefinger and makes a slashing motion at the finger’s base with his left hand. “They’re going to cut it off.”

  My stomach rolls, and for a moment I think I might be sick. “That’s insane,” I protest. “No one would do that.”

  He just looks at me, his eyes steely, his jaws clamped together.

  “But you’re in jail. How could anyone get to you to, to …?”

  “The same way they got this to me.” He shows me his finger again.

  “Where’s the money?” I cry. “Tell me and I’ll bring it to them.”

  “No.”

  “I’m not a child you need to protect. It’s you who needs help and I want to give it. Are you actually saying you’re willing to lose your, your …” I can’t say the word.

  “It’s already gone.”

  I look at his two hands resting on the small ledge and my cramped cubicle starts to spin. “What are you talking about?” My voice rises with each word.

  “Claire,” he says sharply. “Don’t do this.”

  My eyes fill with tears. “I’m just so scared for you.”

  His face softens. “If you promise to leave right after I finish and not freak out, I’ll explain.”

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath, not sure I actually want to hear the explanati
on. “Okay.”

  “The only way to get into the gallery’s vault is with the print of my right forefinger.”

  It takes a moment for this register, and when it does, I’m certain I’m going to be sick. I choke back the bile rising in my throat.

  “You promised,” Aiden says. “No freak out. Now go.”

  “But, but,” I stutter, not wanting to leave him alone with this. “What about your rich friends? Clients? Someone you could go to for a loan?”

  “Already tried,” he says. “I’m kind of persona non grata at the moment.”

  “Your paintings? You could sell—”

  He shakes his head, and I understand that he’d rather lose a finger than part with any of his artwork. “Then bail,” I say. “If you could get out, even for a day, an hour, then, then …” My mind grasps around for any solution, but all I find are blank spaces.

  “Please,” he says, with such sadness that I feel it inside of me. “Go.”

  Then I realize what I can do: I’ll find the original painting. It would prove Aiden’s Bath was a forgery. And then, at least for a short time, none of the charges against him would apply: no transportation or sale of anything stolen, no fraud, no initial connection to the heist. His lawyer could get him out on bail then. Even a short time will be long enough to save his finger.

  “Aiden, Aiden.” My voice fractures. “I’m so sorry, really sorry. I never told you this before, I should have but I didn’t, but the painting you brought me isn’t what you thought it was. I knew—”

  “To your mother’s, a friend’s, wherever,” he interrupts, too concerned for my safety to hear me. “I can’t have you go down for this, too.” He presses his left hand flat to the window that separates us, just as he did the first night we made love. “I love you.”

  A full sob escapes my lips. “I love you, too,” I manage to whisper, and as I say it, I know it’s true.

  “Kristi and Chantal can handle the details of your show.”