The Talented Miss Farwell Read online

  “You can’t do this,” Phil said. But his eyes were on the photos and she knew she had him.

  “It’ll all be very amicable, just a change of pace, blah blah. Maybe you’ll even want to sell that two-bedroom ranch that you and . . . Karen, is it? That you and Karen bought. Maybe you’ll upgrade to—”

  “Don’t you fucking—”

  “Or these go to Karen,” Becky hissed, swooping in close. “They go to Mayor Brennan, they go to your new employer, any new employer you ever get, wherever that might be. If you even think about stuttering out word one about my business about which you know nothing—” Even she was surprised by the fury in her voice. “I’ll make it my mission to shred your high school sweetheart marriage into a billion miserable pieces.”

  Nearly there. Nearly there. Becky had closed many a hard deal and she knew how to wait it out. Phil was crumbling but she knew he’d make one more weak-ass stand.

  “I’ll tell the council, I’ll send an anonymous—”

  “And you’ll watch your boys grow up with another father.”

  Her ugly words hung there, and Becky saw them finish the job. Phil nodded, gaze cast down.

  Becky smiled brightly and clapped him on the shoulder. Swept up the photos, filled the air with details and promises. His resignation on Ken’s desk first thing Monday. The great middle school out in Freeman County. How smart he was, she always knew he was smart, despite what everyone said. Look at him, taking care of his family as only a true man knew how to do.

  Once Phil was down the hall and out of sight Becky gagged once, twice, then gained control. She’d give herself ten minutes, she told herself. In the cool, in the quiet, she collapsed on her couch. Maybe she’d even try one of those stupid four by four breathing exercises. Before she freshened up, straightened her shoulders, and went back down to plant more petunia bulbs.

  17

  Pierson

  1991–1993

  This was when she could have stopped. Cut her losses and gotten out. In the aftermath of almost being exposed by Phil, Becky felt an exhilarating relief, an almost holy sense of having been spared. Anyone knew a gift like that was the final one, a sign to hang it up and be thankful. That, plus the fact that the art market was still a smoking cratered wreck.

  Not to mention then the overwhelming triumph—temporary, but nonetheless—of Planting Day, the town’s buoyant spirits, the high-fives in restaurants and even church . . . She’d done it, she’d shored up Pierson (if not the riverwalk), and did she mind the constant congratulations, the tangible results of coming through as the hometown hero they all wanted her to be? Not in the slightest.

  One summer evening in late July of 1991 she arranged for a surveyor to come out for a few hours, to walk the property behind her home, taking measurements and soil tests and knocking stakes into the overgrown grass. They went around and around Hank’s old barn, grasshoppers bouncing up and down in the dry heat. She broke the lease on the Chicago condo, paid fees, boxed her art, and transported it all to County Road M, leaving it stacked in as many unobtrusive places (basement, laundry room) as she could find. She told Mac she was looking for something better, and he bought it. He was too busy with his own drama—sales halt, inventory overload, fights with longtime friends—to care. Becky took bids on rebuilding her barn, and pined for the art that had to be hidden away—for now—and waited.

  Ingrid gave birth again, a girl this time, named Rachel. Becky bought too many diapers of varying sizes, came over all the time with takeout, and let TJ wreck her nerves with his screeching and banging (Ingrid and Neil seemed immune by this point).

  “Don’t say it,” Ingrid groused. Walking Rachel around and around to get her to sleep. Becky folded baby laundry and mimed a zipping motion to her lips, but really: what had they been thinking?

  “One time! One lousy time he didn’t pull out. And I—”

  “Okay,” Becky said. “You can stop right there.”

  “You,” Ingrid sang to her baby, “are a terrible mistake.” But she was blissful, fooling nobody.

  If Ingrid noticed that Becky was more willing to come over in those first crazy newborn months, or wondered why her friend wasn’t as busy as always, she never mentioned it. There was too much to do and too little sleep on which to do it.

  By January 1992, Becky’s architectural firm had finished plans for the remodel. They’d need to wait to begin excavation until spring came, but that was fine because she barely had money to cover the drawings and blueprints anyway. All of it, this crazy Art Barn dream, was loaded onto her credit cards, whose sky-high limits had been built over years of outrageous art world charges and payments. She still read Artforum the day it arrived and she still went into the city for openings and parties, but it was merely to keep a hand in. She hadn’t bought anything in a million billion years. Six months, that is.

  Hiring freeze, she and Ken announced. Town Hall staff took it with the same numbness they’d received the news about the ban on holiday bonuses and the hold on raises. Ken kept the biweekly Friday bowling nights but only Becky knew he’d begun to pay for them himself. The swimming pool went dry for the second half of the summer. Hours shrank at the community center, the rec league, the senior center. Tree roots buckled sidewalks, garbage went uncollected. Becky drained her own personal accounts, left bills unpaid, and tried furiously to hold the rickety structure together, week by week, month by month.

  One curling yellow Post-it on a corner of her desk read only: “Riverwalk.” As if she could forget. Nearly every day calls came in from residents: yet another pothole, yet another rat spotted. But no matter how much she schemed, she couldn’t figure out how to fund any improvements that would be worthwhile—that would even be visible. With the art market in the gutter, Pierson’s hopes were pinned on grant applications and state help. Each time she and Ken proposed a tax increase to fund the riverwalk’s repair the council roundly voted it down, and who could blame them. Their tax base was tapped out. So they’d all have to put up with it, the cracked and damaged slabs fronting the town, mud slopping up worn-away steps.

  Life without chasing art was as boring as Becky had guessed it would be. She tried to enjoy magazines and TV, but not being able to buy any of the fashion she coveted made her too frustrated. She read the news, idly followed the debates between Clinton and Bush. She worked up an opinion about Mike Tyson’s conviction for rape, since everyone else had one. She and Ingrid went to see The Silence of the Lambs on one of Ingrid’s rare nights away from the kids, and while Becky hid behind her hands and shrieked at every jump scare, Ingrid downed popcorn unfazed and critiqued the dialogue.

  At least when Ingrid’s special-needs proposal came to Town Hall with three earnest parents none of them was Ingrid, home with a feverish kid and miserable about having to miss the presentation. Becky sat in on the meeting and rejoiced—the ask was so out of reach that even the parents themselves seemed a little relieved when Ken gently held up a hand to stop them. After all, he and Becky explained, they couldn’t even get the elementary school’s regular teacher aides back this year.

  “We’re not quitting,” Ingrid shouted on the phone, later, over TJ’s joyful shrieks. “I’ve got a line on some private donation sources. We’ll regroup, we’ll hit you up again when things are better.”

  Of course, Becky said, dying inside but only for a few bad minutes.

  All the while her barn transformed, bit by bit, in secret. From the outside it was the same structure it had been since her birth and long before that: midsized pitched-roof granary, with top sliding doors, repainted occasionally over the years in classic dark red. Half the homes in western Illinois had an identical version out back, in various degrees of falling down. Mostly they were used now as garages, extra storage for lawnmowers and snowblowers. Occasionally people would do a small to medium renovation of the kind teenage Becky had convinced Hank to do: flooring, partial shelving units, maybe electrical. But no one, her contractor kept saying, had done this.

  On
ly once in 1992 did Becky leave town, for the April weekend of Tracy Moncton’s new show in New York. She was so out of practice that she’d forgotten to set up a story about why she’d taken a personal day for the Friday, and when she’d called to check her messages, more out of habit than anything else, she found that Ken, after leaving several unanswered messages on her machine, had driven over to her place. There were all these trucks parked in front and out back, guys clomping right across her sod, did she know about that?

  “Goddamn it,” Becky muttered, into the blank receiver of a pay phone. Now she’d have to come up with a home improvement project to cover the construction. She hung up, staring at her reflection behind the silver buttons.

  “If it has to do with teenagers, I’ll see your ‘goddamn’ and raise you a ‘fucking hell.’” This from an impeccably dressed woman behind her in the hallway outside the Stone Gallery.

  “Sorry,” Becky said, moving away from the phone. “Go ahead.”

  “I’d much rather hear about your crisis than risk hearing more about my own,” the woman said. Her name was Jessa McGown; she had a slight Texas accent but an Upper East Side address. She was forty-eight, the mother of two rowdy prep schoolers, and a collector specializing in mid-century photography, mostly photo cards. They chatted on the way back into Tracy’s show, which was a knockout, so packed that they could barely see her on the other side of the room, huddled with her agent and some others in a small group. Becky had turned down Tracy’s obligatory offer of a drink the night before—or scratch that, maybe breakfast? No . . . how about a coffee around 9:50 am?—when she understood how furiously overscheduled the artist was. It had been a few years since they’d mutually agreed to terminate that original agreement, once Tracy had vaulted high enough to make many times over what Becky had once paid her monthly. But polite and prompt invitations still came for every show and event, and Becky knew that if she were to make an offer on a piece in today’s show—god, she wanted to buy something, anything—Tracy would instruct her people to give her at least part of the old discount.

  Was this nostalgia? Becky wondered, as Tracy unsmilingly posed for a photograph against the wall next to one of her works. She was happy for her, even as their paths were diverging.

  Meanwhile, Jessa chattered on, asking all about Becky’s interests, what fields and eras. They shared the stories all collectors had, of near misses and disaster deals. Jessa had a gentle, sly wit and wasn’t afraid to skewer some of the big names without first ascertaining how close Becky was to them, as was the usual custom. To her surprise, Becky spent over an hour talking with her, and accepted a ride back to her hotel in Jessa’s car. They exchanged phone numbers and agreed to get coffee the next time Becky (Reba) was in town, or at the very least to find each other at Basel.

  Kicking off her shoes back in her room—the Radisson on Eighth Avenue, for budget reasons—Becky realized that she’d honestly enjoyed the woman’s company. Without wanting or needing something from her. That was regular old friendliness, right? For Christ’s sake, was she getting soft? Was she getting old?

  “Twenty-seven is not old,” Becky told herself firmly, pinching the tiniest bit of skin at her middle. Maybe she should start doing that 8 Minute Abs video again. Then, as she always had, she flopped back on the hotel bed and called Ingrid. With enough well-timed questions about the kids, Becky could keep Ingrid talking about herself so that she didn’t ask, and Becky didn’t need to tell, where she was.

  The Art Barn construction entered its last phases in early 1993. All around Becky the art market giants had shattered and fallen, but Becky had burrowed her way underground where she couldn’t hear any of it. Just as spring approached—you could smell the difference even in the cold air—she began to bring paintings down into the new space. She especially loved to go down into the half-finished galleries late at night, after the workers had knocked off, a huge dark-purple goblet of Barossa’s Signature 1992 in hand. (She was up to Syrah, subset Australia, in her “Wine for New Connoisseurs” course.)

  To enter the lower level, Becky had originally wanted a trapdoor leading to a hidden set of stairs. The contractor balked, as did the installers, so she settled on a descending ramp, and planned to block the view of its entrance with something—a sprayer, a round baler—once construction was complete.

  Underneath the barn—one full story down, she’d fought the architect for this depth—the space opened to a small front rotunda where sketches would go, then narrowed down a hall off of which lay three adjoining rooms: two smaller spaces across from each other (10 feet by 14 feet), and at the end a white-walled real gallery with a high ceiling and—at some point, Becky thought—a top-of-the-line lighting system that wouldn’t be out of place at Pace or Gagosian.

  Tonight, it would be Hartung. Oil on canvas, the width of her chest and one extended arm. She carried the piece across the room and set it on the floor, leaned it against the wall in the precise center—this took several adjustments—as flush as she could, given the risk of it toppling forward.

  And then, looking. As much as one could in that unlit subterranean space. In the chair, squatting on her heels, or her face an inch away. She thought about Hans Hartung, his deceptive technique—how the slashed and curved lines across the canvas appeared haphazard but were in fact painstakingly considered, arranged. She didn’t linger long here, though, because thinking about art was the least interesting way to experience it. The difference between reading the recipe and spooning in a bite of trembling lemon soufflé.

  But Becky did think about collecting, the work of it. Deep underground at night she arced out plan after mental plan, considered every angle of her body of work. Where it could go, grow. Works she wanted in her collection, works she could let go (theoretical until the market returned). Mentally sliding pieces in and out, evaluating, calculating. The question of her photography holdings, options to focus on subject matter, technique, the context or history. Depth versus breadth: the essential conundrum.

  If she had accomplished this much before thirty, imagine what she could do in twice that time. Would she have twice that time? In the chair, eyes on the painting, Becky steadied herself and went to the worst place she could think of: getting caught. How it might happen, who might be the one. The Phil scenario, or another just as bad. What Ken would say. What Ingrid would do. She strained, she goaded her imagination into worst-case scenario, all the while staring at the Hartung until—panic aching in her chest—one perfect bloom of love for the painting erupted in her heart, for the fact that it was hers and here she was and here it was.

  Light-headed, fingers numb, Becky crated the work. She stumbled up the ramp, forgetting her wineglass, forgetting the wine. Not for the first time, she wished she had someone to talk to. Not another collector, not even another Mac or a new friend like Jessa. What she wanted, what she wondered about, was what it would be like to talk to someone else who had an Activity. Who stole as much, who feared as much. One single hour of that conversation, she thought, could bolster her for years.

  18

  Chicago

  1993

  Mac’s apartment was frozen in time. Except for the art, all furnishings were exactly as Becky remembered them from her first visit six years ago, and every visit after that. Music piped in from his giant Sansui hi-fi was just as she’d guessed: heavy on the bossa nova, “ironic” show tunes, and endless varieties of prog rock. Even the menu hadn’t changed; Becky dismissed again the waitress’s proffered platter: California rolls, mini quiche bites, spears of something wrapped in prosciutto. So many things wrapped in prosciutto.

  She’d copied this down to the final detail—god, how she hated lounge music, ironic or not—for her own cocktail parties. Back then she’d thought everything Mac said and did was au courant. Only now could she see the faded edges, the subtle straining for relevance.

  Not that she had much time for anthropological reflection. She’d been swarmed since she first set foot in the place thirty minutes ago: Garret
t Marshall pressed his card into her hand, with a crossed-out phone, his personal number written over it. Then Leon from Cavendish Gallery cut in to say he needed a word, if she could—but Zoe Lang signaled frantically across the room, and two other dealers she recognized hovered nearby, waiting for a chance to break in.

  It’s been forever, they all said to each other. And: are you all right? After the shock of the crash and the tentative beginnings of—knock on wood—a rebound, parties like this were more about reconnections, showing one’s face, rather than any real deals. But the way Becky had gone big right up to and into the implosion meant that her holdings were strong and broad. Word spread fast, and the calls to her private line had begun to multiply. People wanted to buy now, for the first time in a long time.

  As soon as she could, Becky excused herself. She had come for one reason, and for that she needed to case every room. Passing through the crowded foyer, through the sitting room and dining room, pretending she was on her way to speak to someone—I’m sorry, I can’t but I’ll be right back!—she avoided the beseeching calls—There she is! Reba!—as she checked every wall, every painting, every carefully spotlighted piece.

  But Becky knew where it would be, if it was here. Mac’s office, that small back room off the kitchen, door closed and the usual sign taped up: this is not the powder room! first left out of the foyer.

  Becky let herself in.

  Fuck.

  So it was true.

  By the time Mac himself came in, muttering about uninvited plus-ones and boring ones at that, Becky had been sitting behind his desk in the darkened room for some time.