The High Season

A shadow passed over Lark’s face. As though Doe had hurt her? Doe saw it happen, how the shadow grew and overtook the mood. “What is it?”

  “Is it so funny, to think that I’m serious about you?”

  Doe felt the precipice, ahead in the dark. There seemed to be some sort of call-and-response needed here, something not in her skill set.

  Even as Doe’s brain was trying to move fast enough to solve this, the moment was flying by, and she was losing ground with every passing second. Soon whatever she said wouldn’t be enough. Doe was usually so adept at reading currents of emotion, of want and need, and tucking herself into them. How had she missed this?

  Lucas walked across the lawn, heading toward them. The woman next to him stumbled in the grass—ridiculous shoes, Doe had no patience for women who wore stilettos to a lawn party—and she saw it was Shari.

  “Shit.” She jumped up, knocking over the champagne, and heard the tinkle of breaking glass. Lark started, but Doe was already moving, ignoring the sharp pain in the sole of her foot, heading off Lucas if she could. The prick. She should have seen it coming.

  Shari’s mouth opened in an O of exaggerated happiness that didn’t fool Doe one bit.

  “I found her alone at your place,” Lucas said. “I stopped by to see if you needed a lift.”

  Shari’s uneasy smile widened. “Lucas got pissed that I took so long to get ready. But we’re here!”

  “Doe, you’re bleeding,” Lark said, coming up. She leaned down. “We need a bandage or something.”

  “Oh, angel!” Shari cried when she saw the blood. Lark looked up sharply, alert to the intimacy in Shari’s voice.

  Doe looked down. Lark was on one knee, risking the magnificent embroidery of her dress. She felt the warmth of Lark’s hand on her foot and saw the stain on the hem of Lark’s dress, bright red. She felt nausea overtake her like a wave, and she had to close her eyes, which made her dizzy. The beautiful dress was ruined. But what did it matter, since Lark could replace it? What did anything matter, really?

  “Lark, this is my mother, Shari Callender,” she said. “Mom, this is my friend Lark Mantis.”

  Lark unfolded to her full five feet eleven inches. She and Lucas stood almost shoulder to shoulder, twin American gods, the stiff breeze ruffling their blond hair and fluttering their silks. Never had Doe felt shorter. Darker. Runtier. Brought up on diet soda and factory chicken and bottled salad dressing.

  What did it matter.

  Shari was talking, Lark was nodding, Lucas looked around for a waiter. Lark signaled and a tray appeared. Shari accepted the champagne by thanking the server profusely, as if he’d delivered a cash bonus, took a long sip, and belched out a “Delicious!” Doe felt herself shrink smaller still. Shari was loving every second of the fancy party while being utterly clueless about what was happening in front of her eyes. In Shari World, you smiled at the servers, you drained a glass of champagne and said “Ooooo,” and if someone gave you cake that was delicious you ate every bite and then pressed your fork into the crumbs and licked them off the tines. You cleaned your plate, swayed to music, called a big house a mansion. Look, Lucas’s smirk said, you come from people who know nothing.

  There is nothing wrong with those things, she wanted to say.

  Lark’s manners held throughout as Shari chattered about arriving from Hollywood, not the fun one, the one in Florida, about looking for work, about what a hard worker Doe was, how she was always crazy for art—had her friends ever seen her artwork, her photographs?—and Lark found cake and seats at a table. Lucas tried to drift away but Lark firmly and pointedly noted what a gentleman he was to keep Shari company while she had a word with Doe.

  Doe allowed herself to be steered (limping now, her foot hurting like a mother, ha) toward the museum, into the gallery where Adeline regarded them with brittle amusement, an Adeline with wrinkles and sags and a thick line of dark plum along her soft jaw. She waited for Lark to start. She’d seen her happy, sad, sleepy, pissed, nonchalant, drunk, tender, eager, lustful, breezy, sullen, asleep and awake and in the shower, but she had never seen her like this.

  “Tell me you have two mothers,” Lark said.

  “What?”

  Lark shoved her. “Tell me.”

  “I don’t!”

  “So there’s no Katherine Callender from Minneapolis? There’s only Shari from Hollywood-not-the-fun-one? No Katherine, who studied ballet and never got over it? No mining money? No family ranch in Upper Michigan? No Mary McFadden originals collection?”

  “No.”

  Lark shoved her again and Doe went stumbling back and almost fell.

  “Okay! I’m Dora Callender from Florida,” Doe said. Never had she been so far from tears. “I didn’t go to Reed. I went to Miami Dade College and worked my way through. My mother is a train wreck. I have one sister who lives in Pensacola, who used to be a speed addict. My little brother drowned when he was four because I left him alone while I ate cereal and watched TV. We all have different fathers. I don’t know mine, he left before I was born. He was either Brazilian or Dominican because my mother is an idiot who thinks anyone who speaks Spanish is either Cuban or something else. I made myself up, okay?”

  Lark shook her head.

  “Okay, I’m sorry my mother crashed your party. Lucas is a dick. He wanted to embarrass me. I can get her out of here—”

  “You think I’m angry because of your mother? I don’t even know her! You are such an asshole!” Lark turned away. Doe saw her reflection in the glass of the window, a ghost Lark that wavered and threatened to dissolve. “Don’t you realize you just blew it all apart! You were the only good thing in my life and you ruined it!”

  “I’m the only good thing in your life? Jesus, Lark! You have everything you want, everything you need. You live in a twenty-million-dollar house!”

  “Thirty million.”

  “And you just had this job handed to you by your father. You think you got it because of your experience? Because you interviewed well?”

  Lark jerked her head away. Doe watched her chest rise and fall.

  “You don’t get it, Doe. You don’t get that wealth is a neutral. It doesn’t bestow anything on you except nice stuff and staff and yes, opportunities. You have to look for goodness just like everybody else. It’s not easier or harder. Maybe it’s harder, okay? Maybe we don’t have the tools to really see things, because no one is real with us. But I thought you were real! I thought we were true.” Was Lark drunk? Her voice wobbled, and she scraped a hand hard across her mouth, as if to wipe away a kiss.

  “You wouldn’t have given me more than two seconds if you knew who I really was,” Doe said.

  “You’re right,” Lark said. “You know, I can spot a climber. I knew that’s what you were. That was okay. I saw that you were turned on to all of it—my father and the house. I didn’t mind, because I get it, it’s a lot to take in, take on. But you don’t just exaggerate, you fabricate a whole story. The details of what you told me! It was a fantastic construction, let me tell you. You are really a player and I got played. I fell for all of it. I never fall for it.”

  “You fall for everything!” Doe cried. “It’s what I like about you!”

  “Shut up,” Lark said. She struggled to take off the watch, then tossed it to Doe, who almost dropped it. “Take your fake watch and get out of my life.”

  “Go ahead, then,” Doe said. “Add this to the list. Just another thing you throw away. A shoe with a scuff mark. A bloodstained six-thousand-dollar dress. A shirt that is just the wrong shade of pink after all. A little too close to that tacky breast cancer ribbon color—”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Lark. We can’t just stop!”

  “I can stop if I hate somebody’s shoes,” Lark said. She looked weary. “Go. You’re fucking bleeding on the gallery floor. And by the way? You’re fired.”

>   58

  YOU CAN’T STEAL a painting if it’s yours. You can’t steal a painting if it’s yours. It’s not a forgery if you don’t sell it. It’s not a forgery if you don’t sell it.

  Over and over, she told herself this.

  She walked into the service door of the museum. She knew this place as well as her own home. She knew that Vivian was always the last to go, after the caterers had packed up, after every car had left, one last check and then set the alarm, but before that, with caterers in and out of the side door to the kitchen, dressed like a server, she could walk right in.

  She could just see a corner of the kitchen, where servers were moving fast, packing up glasses. Dodge’s crew was scarfing down the leftovers.

  Empty flat pizza boxes were piled by the door near open plastic containers of used glasses. She grabbed an empty box from on top of the pile and walked out into the hallway, then toward the front gallery.

  Lark and Doe had left. She’d seen them in here talking, their heads close together. Then Lark had run out the service door straight toward the parking lot. Ruthie had watched her peel out of the parking lot fast and screech a right turn to the west.

  The gallery lights were out. She couldn’t hear the party at all. Outside the dark window there were only a few groups of people on the lawn in the fading light. The trees danced with a sudden gust of wind and a woman pressed her skirt down against her thighs, laughing.

  She could see the painting, bluish and spooky. Adeline’s green eyes looking at her.

  She put down the box and crossed to the painting. She lifted it off the wall.

  It’s not stealing if you made it.

  Carefully she placed the painting in the box, as though it were a real Peter Clay and not a worthless Ruth Beamish. She would text Lucas that it was gone and instruct him to tell Daniel and Lark that he’d changed his mind. What could he do but comply?

  She walked out, through the same door, heading for where she’d parked, in the spaces saved for employees. She placed the box on the roof while she reached for her keys.

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  Ruthie jumped and dropped her keys as Joe stepped forward. She might as well have been wearing the black mask of a cartoon criminal, a striped shirt, stubble on her cheeks. Caught.

  “I saw you on the lawn with Lucas before,” Joe said. “I thought you left. Did you see the painting?”

  She nodded.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think…it’s…” Her voice trailed away.

  “Classic Clay, right?” He strolled closer. “Quite a find. Do you remember the show at MoMA, those exquisite drawings of her? This seems to nullify them. Why would he paint her like this?”

  “He painted all women like this.”

  “Not all. Just the commissioned work.”

  “I could never understand why Peter did the things he did.”

  “Daniel called Adeline and told her about it. She was surprised. She didn’t remember the painting. She asked me to check it out. Strange how it popped up.”

  “What do you mean?” Ruthie bent down to pick up her keys, allowing her hair to conceal her face. “Paintings have a way of doing that, don’t they? Popping up?”

  Joe shoved his hands in his pockets. “I was trying to remember. Maybe you can. The year Peter got divorced.”

  “I don’t know, maybe ’96? Why?”

  “I was his dealer then. It was a complicated couple of years.”

  “I left the studio before that.”

  “I remember when you left, yeah. Because I wished you were still there. We had to do a complete inventory of everything, drawings, sketches, paintings. The settlement’s value was based on all the unsold paintings in both studios, Sag Harbor and New York. This wasn’t in the inventory. I’d remember this.”

  Ruthie leaned against the car and crossed her arms. She tried to look interested, as though she was following the action in an anecdote about people she didn’t know.

  “Why would Simone conceal it?” Joe asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “They split everything down the middle during the divorce. Which means, I think, that since this was painted before the divorce, technically half of it belongs to Peter’s estate and half to Simone’s.”

  “Adeline owns half the painting.” How could they have been so stupid? They were the most inept criminals in criminality. “So it’s not Lucas’s to sell, then,” Ruthie said.

  “I’m not a lawyer, but no. There’s no paperwork, so he can’t prove it was a gift to her from Peter. And logically, why would it be? In any case Lucas is morally obligated to inform his stepmother and offer it to her first. That’s what I told Daniel. He wasn’t happy. Or maybe the word morally confused him. The thing is…”

  “The thing is?”

  “What do you think? You know his work as well as I do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The painting. Something. That’s why I wanted to ask you.” He shrugged. “Lucas—do you know him well?”

  “Not really.”

  “Me neither. But I did know Simone. She was not an easy person, and God knows at the end she hated Peter with every cell of her body, but…she was honest. A no-bullshit person. She either concealed the painting—which I can’t quite believe—or forgot she had it, it was overlooked, which is beyond comprehension. Lucas said the storage unit was rented when she moved from Sag Harbor. So at that point, she knew she had it. So why throw it in a storage unit? She was out of money a few years later. She left Lucas almost nothing.”

  Ruthie leaned against the car to conceal the fact that her legs were shaking. “Are you saying it could be a fake? That Lucas might know it’s a fake?”

  “I’m not saying anything. I just wouldn’t say that he’s automatically trustworthy. I know Adeline has had trouble with him. And this…could hurt her.”

  “You want to protect her.”

  “I’m used to protecting the Clay family. I did it for years. I still do consulting work for the foundation. When you’re someone’s dealer, you’re their best friend and their confidant and their attack dog. So, habit.”

  His gaze moved, absently, to the leaves fluttering.

  She needed to say something. She needed to say, This has nothing to do with me. She needed to lie. She needed to take the painting and run.

  A low, distant rumble of thunder. “It’s going to storm,” he said.

  59

  “I’M NOT HAVING as much fun as I thought I would,” Shari said.

  Doe sat in the grass. It was dusk now, the sun behind the trees, a few fireflies flitting, turning off and turning on. The party was just about over. “Yeah. Time to go.”

  “Lucas dumped me here and took off with a blonde. I mean, I’m not mad, I get it, I’m not his date or anything, but he didn’t introduce me to anyone and the way he took off was kind of rude. I know he’s a friend of yours, so. Sorry.”

  “He’s not a friend.” Doe collapsed backward and looked up at the sky, an inverted bowl of murk, like diner gravy spilling down onto her head.

  Starting over again would be exhausting.

  “How’s your foot?”

  “Fine.”

  “I hope you put cream on it or something. Listen, I knew your girlfriend was rich, but this is ridiculous. There’s, like, crab puffs and caviar.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “And Lucas isn’t your friend. So why are you here?”

  “Mom, do me a favor. Don’t talk.”

  “I wore the wrong thing, didn’t I.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll drive us home.” Doe looked up through the trees for the moon, but couldn’t find it. Clouds covered the sky. The leaves were making a scratchy sound, as if the edges were already dry. A sudden strong gust fluttered
the edge of her dress. Weather blowing in from the sea.

  “The girl was pretty,” Shari said. “The blonde. I mean the one Lucas was with. She looked really young, though.”

  Doe had seen Jem, wall-flowering on the edges of the party. She sat up. “What was she wearing? The blonde?”

  “I don’t know, a blue top? It was a pretty color. Everybody else here is so boring. No color at all.”

  “Did you see where they went?”

  Shari waved a hand. “That way. Toward that bouncy castle.”

  Doe sprang up. “She’s fifteen, Mom.”

  “Fifteen?”

  “Ruthie’s daughter.”

  “That nice Ruthie?” Shari stood up, too.

  Doe looked toward the castle. A blast of wind lifted it off the ground at least a foot. The ropes shuddered. She remembered back in his studio, Dodge saying something about wind, about what the regulations were. He had the safest crew in New York, he said. Yeah, but they actually had to be there. Lark was supposed to keep an eye on things, direct them. She was the curator, she was the one to keep them on schedule. And she was gone. They were scheduled to dismantle everything fifteen minutes ago.

  A seagull cried, one of those annoying sharp yelps.

  Did seagulls cry at night? Or was it a scream?

  60

  THE TREES SHOOK like hula dancers. Down the lawn, a napkin flew into the air. The inflatable animals were whipping side to side. One of the enormous pool toys barrel-rolled free and a woman shrieked in happy fright.

  “The sculptures,” Ruthie said. “They have to be deflated. This wind is gusting.”

  “Where’s Lark?” Joe asked.

  “Gone. And the crew is eating cake.”

  Then a blur of someone running hard across the lawn. Doe? She vaulted inside the bouncy castle.

  “I’ll get the crew,” Joe said, and turned and ran.

  Behind her, the slap of running footsteps. Time slowed down as Shari ran toward her, carrying her pink heels in both hands. Calamity approaching, slowed down to the pace of a royal procession, Ruthie trying to read Shari’s face, her open mouth, ready to speak.