The Talented Miss Farwell Read online

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you startled me!” Mac made a big to-do about holding his hand over his heart, then fanning himself. “Darling, why are you lurking?” Then he squinted, for show, scanning her black-ruffled Perry Ellis granny dress. “And so gothic. Is that what they call it? Well, to each her own.”

  “You weren’t going to tell me?” Becky said. Damn it, her voice was a little wobbly.

  “Tell you what?”

  Silently, Becky pointed. To the painting directly ahead of her, alone on the wall, in what she knew was the place of honor despite the dust and the clutter of this small space.

  Mac didn’t look. He didn’t need to. Peter Wand’s Wall, Number Nine, a large-scale oil on canvas in shades of peach and gray. Blocks on blocks, a blurring sheet of repeated pastel images. Just as thrilling as when Becky had seen it hanging in that no-name gallery in New York, on her very first buying trip.

  “You told me not to make an offer.”

  “That’s right.” Mac was smooth and calm.

  “Juvenilia. Underproduced. Color derivative.”

  “I changed my mind once I looked into it. Darling, don’t let’s make this a thing.”

  “You knew at the time. When I called you that day, when I asked for your advice. You planned it then.”

  She’d gotten the rest of the story from mutual acquaintances: Peter Wand as Mac’s comeback, the international bids eighteen months in advance of the show, how quietly Mac had managed to buy and hold on to all the early works, all throughout the collapse. Everyone said it was the coup of the decade, and that only one man in Chicago had the eye and the balls to pull it off.

  Mac had stayed silent, waiting perhaps to see if she’d make a scene. Wanting her to, a little.

  “Okay,” she said, breathing through her nose to ward off crying. She couldn’t look at the Peter Wand painting anymore. “Okay, I get it.”

  “Oh, Reba,” he sighed. “There are so many things you still—”

  “Fuck off, Mac.”

  He didn’t try to stop her when she shoved past him and left the party.

  The whole drive home she gripped the wheel and lashed out at herself for being naïve, for being a fool. For wasting a killer Marc Jacobs ready-to-wear on the washed-up denizens at Mac’s. For where she could have been, right now, had she trusted herself that day in New York.

  It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. (It did matter.) Mac was passé, he was a bitter old vampire, he thought no one noticed his pancake makeup. Mac was her past.

  I’m over it. (She wasn’t, not even close.) Becky listed out loud all the gallerists who’d practically stood in line to talk to her tonight. Everyone who’d called her in the past few weeks, the past few months. They’d wait on images from her, they’d buy whatever she wanted them to. What did she need a Peter Wand for? She’d build her own Peter Wand coup, a bigger one, a better one!

  After some time, Becky quieted. Turned on NPR and let the news wash over her: standoff with fundamentalist crazies in a place called Waco; Oscar winners and losers and Billy Crystal’s best lines; clean-up continued on the Eastern seaboard after the storm of the century. But she didn’t hear a word. She’d come back from this, of course. She could already see how it would fuel her. But right now she still had more than an hour to go, to drive her burning self home.

  19

  Naperville, Illinois

  1994

  Becky turned down yet another Toys R Us aisle, assaulted anew by the flat, bubblegum pink that coated every doll box no matter the brand. Rachel, Ingrid’s almost four-year-old daughter, charged furiously ahead, then skidded to a stop in front of a display of fist-sized stuffed animals. “No! He’s not in there.”

  “You haven’t even looked,” Becky said, coming up behind her. “There’s the cat, and the squirrel . . . Is this a—sloth?” She scanned the shelves. Rachel was right; the panda wasn’t here. Fuck.

  She’d been sure if they drove far enough they could find a county where kids and their parents hadn’t yet scorched the earth buying up every one of these tiny animal collectibles—called, horribly enough, “QT Pets”—but she saw now that her instincts had been wrong. Of course the fad had swept through here already. Now that hour’s drive was moot, and she’d be listening to more kiddie sing-along music on the way home.

  But it would give Ingrid the rest of the afternoon, and that was the point of these excursions. Becky had been taking Rachel out more and more often, on weekends and school holidays. TJ had come to need more and more treatment: physical therapy, social groups, appointment after appointment after appointment. Becky didn’t know if he was getting worse or if Ingrid just couldn’t stop searching for the best way to help him but god knew she’d rather drive to every toy store in the state than listen to Ingrid read her the latest research study on speech delay in the intellectually disabled community.

  “Maybe you should get another deer,” Becky suggested. “Trade with a friend for the panda.”

  Rachel shook her head. “No. Just panda.”

  “You know this is a merchandising tactic, right? They underproduce certain products to manipulate the market so you’ll keep . . .” She took a deep breath.

  Little Rachel stared up at her with that uncanny mini-Ingrid face.

  “All right. Sorry, let me think.” Becky steered the girl back out into the main aisle, where she spotted a restock clerk, in the store’s telltale green apron. “Hold on. We’re not done here yet.”

  “Becky,” Rachel whispered uncertainly.

  A few clipped sentences exchanged with this nimwit got Becky the location of the stockroom. There, lingering in the doorway, she managed to find the right man—older, jovial, on break—to flirt with enough to get them to the loading dock, where Rachel bounced up and down while Becky switched to sweet-talking two men unloading cartons. Whether the girl saw the cash exchanging hands Becky didn’t know. (She hoped not; Ingrid’s one condition for these outings was that Becky spend nothing other than a small amount for lunch or ice cream.) But less than half an hour later one of the men motioned her over, slit the box with his X-Acto, and their small crowd bent over it, sorting quickly until Rachel’s cry of delight made them all laugh. Back they went to the floor clerk, who price-stamped the toy. In line at the cash register, clutching her panda, Rachel was stunned quiet with happiness.

  Becky was so proud of her triumph that she automatically said yes when Rachel caught sight of a restaurant named Jungle Jelly as they walked to the car in the enormous parking lot. Jungle Jelly sounded disgusting but Rachel wouldn’t stop talking about it, so what the hell.

  Jungle Jelly turned out to be a cavernous shrieking hellhole where adults were shunted to one side and fed fourteen-dollar plates of nachos and congealed cheese, while hordes of kids tossed themselves into ball pits, climbed alarmingly high net walls, and disappeared into plastic tubes along the drafty dark ceiling. Becky lost Rachel immediately and figured this was another part of the excursion they wouldn’t need to be specific about when recapping for Ingrid. She abandoned her table with its untouched food and strolled up and down a kind of catwalk set up alongside the play space. How did parents deal with the gruesome amounts of noise children produced?

  “Reba?”

  For a split second Becky didn’t recognize the name, its connection to her.

  “Reba!”

  There, on Jungle Jelly’s catwalk, like an apparition beamed in from another planet, stood Helen Jonson. Co-owner of Thread + Wax Gallery in Chelsea. In New York City. Becky’s mind spun with nausea. Helen was in her mid-forties, less a player herself than embedded in a very tight-knit top art scene. Becky had bought about four major pieces from her over the past six years (including a Bleckner canvas she still owned), and once attended a charity dinner at Helen’s table, where she’d donated a thousand dollars to the cause, something about funding the first museum for gay and lesbian art.

  Helen pushed her thick black-rimmed glasses up into her salt-and-pepper hair. “Holy god, am
I dreaming?”

  Becky matched her smile and went in for a smooth double-cheek kiss. In an instant she sized up Helen’s look—dark jeans, boots, casual-but-expensive oversized cardigan—and prayed her own ensemble could pass muster. Boxy cotton sweater—from L.L.Bean, oh god!—decent vintage-type pea coat, nondescript corduroys cut tight, thick-heeled loafers from last year.

  “What are you doing here?” they both said. Helen pretended to rub her eyes. “Reba Farwell, this is my sister Annabel. She lives in Naperville.”

  “Unfortunately too close to this nightmare.” Annabel, rich blond highlights, slim and sleek, terrifying. Her hand was cool and smooth. “You’re in Chicago?”

  Becky dodged the question. “Oh, I know. I’ve been trying to decide which is worse, the noise or the food.”

  The women laughed. “Apparently they serve margaritas in giant sippy cups,” Annabel said. “Although the sugar content is probably, you know.”

  Helen leaned in toward Becky. “So, Reba, are you—”

  Just then Rachel whizzed by and smacked the plexiglass below them. She motioned to Becky, Watch this, watch this!

  “My niece,” Becky said, for once grateful for a child’s interruption.

  “Oh, how old? Annabel has a girl in fifth and a boy in kindergarten.”

  “Rachel’s in preschool.” Becky felt proud about that answer.

  “Where does she go to—?”

  “Jason, stop it. Okay. That’s one.” Becky and Helen paused respectfully to let Annabel shout and gesture across the play space. “Two. I said two! That’s two, Jason!” She took off toward the slide area, hair flapping behind her narrow shoulders.

  “What happens when she gets to three?” Becky murmured.

  “I frankly don’t want to find out,” Helen said. “To be honest, I’m three days into the visit and already thinking about having my tubes tied. You don’t have children yourself, do you?”

  Becky watched Rachel climb up a rope, squeezing it between her thighs. There was a pulsing wet warmth in both of her own armpits. “Nope,” she said. How to get out of this? “Well. I should probably—”

  “I’ve been meaning to call. Do you have a quick minute? I’m in the middle of this nightmare deal that’s hit the skids and . . . Our table is right over there.” She cocked her head and smiled sheepishly.

  Rachel was slithering through a tube with several other screaming kids. Annabel nowhere to be seen. Becky nodded. “Sure, I have a few minutes.”

  A forged Balthus painting. Helen had images in her bag and Becky kept her hands remarkably steady as she took what was handed to her, one by one. Helen explained it all, while Annabel and her kids came back to the table and noisily resumed eating cold nachos. She’d been asked to handle the estate sale for an important client’s friend and had said yes, sight unseen, as a favor. One of the paintings set off all her alarm bells: a purported early Balthus, sketchy provenance papers, coloring scale all off. Even the client wouldn’t vouch for it, despite his obligations to the friend’s family. Helen paid for three separate expert evaluations and all agreed: slim to no chance it was a real piece.

  “So there you go,” Becky said. She hated having the glossy photos of work in front of her, here. What if someone else from Pierson saw them, saw her with them? Also, where was Rachel?

  “Unfortunately, that’s only the beginning.” Helen scooted her chair closer. “I have a buyer who somehow got wind of it during the presale, and he wants it.”

  “Even though he knows it’s a fake?” This was Annabel, who was apparently not ignoring them as Becky had hoped. “What a tool. Go for it. Buyer beware, right?”

  “It’s not that easy. Reba knows.”

  Becky nodded, straining to catch sight of Rachel. “You can’t have your gallery on that sale record.”

  “Yeah. It’ll come back to haunt us. I can’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.”

  “So call it off.” From down the catwalk, she could see Rachel approaching, a bit shy. She tried to smile at the girl.

  “God, I wish.” Helen took off her glasses and scrubbed at her tangled bangs. “He’s made this other sale contingent, and I’m wrapped up in that with about three other galleries. If I pull out I will seriously piss off some big people. Like a round robin of disaster.”

  Rachel was upon them. “Here’s Rachel, so,” Becky said, half-rising.

  “Wait, here’s another chair,” Helen said. “Are you hungry, honey? We have tons. I just have to bug your aunt about some business stuff, which is so lame of me . . .”

  Becky tried to object but soon Rachel was busily sharing a plate of mini fried cheese sticks, Annabel had included her in another round of lemonade orders for the kids, and she was trapped. She hoped the girl hadn’t picked up on the “aunt” comment.

  “Duh, why would anyone want a fake painting?” one of Annabel’s kids said. She reached into the pile of photographs to pull out a blowup of the dirtiest looking one—Balthus’s typical awkwardly sprawled preteen girls. Crotch shot centering the image. Rachel craned her head to see, chewing her cheese stick.

  “Uh uh.” Annabel took the photo away and snapped it back toward Helen. “But yeah, why? Either he’s a pervert or it’s for the money, I’m assuming. Wants to buy it, then unload it onto someone else, someone unsuspecting.”

  Helen took back all her images and put them away, slowly. She spoke without looking up. “Maybe, hard to say. There’s more at stake than just money. There’s prestige, there’s leverage, there’s the chance to say you made a deal with so-and-so gallery—”

  “That’s you, my big-city sis.”

  “Sometimes I think people in this business can’t help themselves.”

  Suddenly all the noise from Jungle Jelly receded into a faraway roar. Becky’s arms tingled as Helen continued, now looking around the table. “Something takes hold of someone, like an obsession or a mania. They begin to believe they can and should get a particular piece, no matter what. That they of all people were meant to own it. As if they’re the only person the rules weren’t made for.” Helen shrugged; Becky couldn’t speak.

  “Becky,” Rachel asked, tapping her, breaking the moment. “Can I have my QT Pet?”

  “Becky!” Helen laughed. “That’s cute. Is that what you call your aunt?”

  “It’s in the car,” Becky murmured. She stood up unsteadily, tugging at Rachel. Tried to form goodbye sentences in the usual social niceties but her voice echoed loud and fake in her own ears.

  She avoided Helen’s eyes and tried to give some money to Annabel, who refused. Nodded yes to all of Helen’s call me, we should catch up, this was the craziest small-world thing! Dragged a startled Rachel to the exit.

  Not until they were on the highway could she slow her breaths, gain a normal sense of perspective. She hadn’t looked too crazy, there at the end, had she? Of course Helen Jonson hadn’t tracked her to Jungle Jelly for the explicit purpose of scaring her. Naperville was a wealthy suburb and Becky’s art circle was enormous; this had been bound to happen someday. But when would it happen next? She imagined worst-case scenarios of her secret life barging into Pierson: a fellow collector stopping by for poker night with Ken, her New York tailor arriving for a fitting at a Pierson coffee shop, arms full of Versace.

  “That girl showed her underwear.” Rachel, from the back seat, playing with her panda.

  “What?”

  “In that picture. She had no pants on.”

  “Yeah, well. The painter was a dirty old man, and that’s what he liked to paint.”

  Rachel considered this. “Can I get a smoothie?”

  “You can—”

  “Yay!”

  “—if we agree that we don’t tell your mom about Jungle Jelly. Or the . . . picture you saw.” And the people you met, she wanted to add, but maybe that was too much? In any case, the kid in this back-seat car seat was happy to agree to any terms for her smoothie.

  Rachel soon went back to singing weird little songs to her new stuffie.
As Becky made the turns from freeway to small highway, approaching Pierson, she couldn’t stop checking the rearview—as if Helen Jonson and her rich housewife sister would have followed her. But it did feel like her own car was pulling a vapor trail, an unwanted trace of that uneasy encounter, into her hometown.

  Always coming home to Pierson had seemed safe, impenetrable. Like a floating castle only she could see. But now Becky understood that she had twice the work to do. The way Helen Jonson, of Thread + Wax, had passed a plate of fries to Ingrid’s daughter, the angle of her head as she’d spoken the phrase like an obsession . . . Becky had never considered the possibility that anyone from New York would find her here. What did Pierson, Illinois, mean to them? Why would they care who Reba Farwell was or where she spent her weekends, as long as her bank drafts cleared?

  Stupid idiot. She’d forgotten about plain old curiosity. Nosiness. The bigger she got—and last month’s deals had tallied somewhere in the high six figures—the more people would be interested. And if dealers and owners and artists were ever suspicious of her, of where her money came from and whether it was clean, they’d drop her cold. No matter how much she had in RF Capital Development.

  20

  Pierson

  1995

  The day Becky’s Eric Fischl arrived she had the gallery assistant who’d accompanied the piece from New York leave it untouched in the Barn’s main level. The painting stayed there, crated, for almost a month until a new set of workers and their van came to pick it up. Gone in a resale deal she completed without thinking too much.

  The catch to finally getting a Fischl, it turned out, was to completely lose interest in it. Its only value, Becky told herself, was in the name and context, a blue chip that was fading now anyway. What she could keep was the real reward: a more mature sensibility. The type Mac had always touted. That’s what real players had.