The Talented Miss Farwell Read online

  Becky swigged some more of the sour-sweet sparkling wine, now flat. Ingrid didn’t seem to be enjoying it much, either. To soothe herself, she ran down a list of numbers: the funds she’d taken in the past two weeks since signing the lease on the Randolph place with Marcy: $2,800 from Water Management; $800 (twice) that should have been put to Human Resources; $5,000 from Infrastructure; and $740, $600, and $1,560 out of Buildings. These amounts were nearly double the rate she’d been depositing into RF Capital for the past year. It seemed like a lot, if you viewed those amounts—$12,000, set aside in just a few days!—but Becky had transferred so many other sums back and forth between the many other (legitimate) town accounts during that time, subtracting and refunding and paying back, that her own money was nearly impossible to see in that snowstorm swirl of transactions. Or to miss.

  But could she keep it up? Not at this level, not forever, of course. She’d ramped up hard because of the apartment. And because Karl’s leaving brought an added layer of cover for her in the chaos of transition. How long could she push it this time? Should she ride the edge for another week or bring the Activity back down to what she thought of as its regular pace—a few thousand here and there, paid back within a week or two, almost entirely. Modest, stately.

  In all these calculations Becky failed to realize Ingrid had sat back and was watching her with a strange and quiet little smile.

  “What?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Now Becky sat back too. “In what sense?”

  “Becky.”

  “And you’re sure it’s . . . Neil’s?”

  “Becky!”

  “What? Sorry. I didn’t know if you guys were still serious.” She didn’t particularly like Neil Yesko, who’d been two grades ahead of them in high school. (Not that she ever particularly liked any of Ingrid’s boyfriends.) He’d played ice hockey all through school and still did in a semi-pro league somewhere. Was in a group of dolts who bragged about any and all sexual activity and got in trouble senior year for making T-shirts that said “Pierce One High” with a bawdy cartoon. Ingrid said he’d straightened up and he’d moved up to management at the big-box electronics place. But still. Neil Yesko? For Ingrid?

  Ingrid was still looking at her, across the table. Waiting.

  “What?” Pregnant? Jesus Christ.

  “Aren’t you going to say something? Try to talk me out of it?”

  “Not my place to say. What do you want to do?”

  In response, Ingrid slapped her left hand onto the table, next to the bread basket. There was indeed a chip of a diamond glinting out of a shiny new gold ring.

  Becky’s throat squeezed. “Are you happy?” Suddenly it was all that mattered, that Ingrid be happy with this and every other thing that would come to her in life. “You’re happy about it, aren’t you? Do you want this?”

  “Becky. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing! I just—” Hot tears gummed up her throat. Too much newness, too much rushing forward—this new mayor, her apartment in Chicago, Ingrid leaving her for Neil Yesko . . .

  “Yes,” Ingrid said softly. “I want this and I’m happy. He’s a good guy. You’ll see.”

  Becky groaned, and wiped her eyes hard. “Do I have to?”

  “Everything will stay the same. Except now there’ll be three of us. I mean, four.”

  10

  New York City

  1989

  Ten days before Ingrid’s wedding, Becky drove to O’Hare and parked in the windblown long-term lot. She dragged her suitcase onto the airport shuttle, checked in quickly, and was at her gate three and a half hours before departure, time which she spent reading Art in America and then ARTnews, in between intense study of every gate agent and disembarking passenger. At precisely forty-five minutes to boarding Becky carried her luggage into the largest stall of the women’s room, where she rapidly changed out of a boat-neck, gathered-waist jacquard print dress, pearl string necklace, and open-toe bowtie pumps. She folded these and expertly repacked them, including her nude hose. When she exited the stall, slightly red-faced, she wore high-waisted black silk slacks and a cropped zip-up thin black leather jacket. She dunked her head briefly under a rushing faucet and then immediately patted her hair dry with a small hand towel produced from her purse. Six brushstrokes and a squirt of hairspray and that perky bouffant was now a modern, slicked-back fall. Makeup she’d deal with on arrival.

  Back at the gate, a boarding delay was announced. Harried stewardesses conferred, a long line formed at the counter. Lightning flared about the grounded planes. Becky asked someone where the cafeteria was and got a blank look. She ate a carton of yogurt while sitting on her suitcase and read headlines at a newsstand.

  At last the plane boarded. Becky didn’t notice the uncharacteristic quick movements up and down the aisle, the curt intercom announcements—all business, no jokes—or the thwacking gusts against the rising plane. She was slightly disappointed when no carts of food or drink came by, and only a little startled the time they hit an air pocket so hard that her view of the cabin bounced, and several overhead bins slammed open. This wasn’t much different from riding in the pickup bed; whenever Hank went over a road rut she’d popped into the air.

  “I’ll help you with the oxygen mask,” she told her seatmate, a college-age boy who had slept through the safety presentation, and was now clutching his Walkman.

  He just stared at her. Oh well. Becky went back to ARTnews, glancing up only when another wave of gasps interrupted her. When they touched down, once, and then again, a hard slam, she cheerfully joined in the applause, thinking it was too bad the thick storm clouds had blotted entirely the New York lights.

  Becky stepped quickly past the captain’s area on her way off the plane, where one stewardess had her arm around another, crumpled and crying. She hurried around the slowpokes on the jet bridge, unable to contain her excitement any longer. Flying on an airplane for the first time had been interesting, but now Becky was in New York.

  Although she had assumed her host would be long asleep—after the delays and the taxi line, Becky didn’t reach the third-floor walkup on the corner of Thirtieth and Park Avenue South until after midnight—Fernanda Ebersole yanked the apartment door open just as Becky fumbled quietly with the keys Mac had given her. Giant wineglass in hand, music blaring, Fernanda ushered Becky into a living room where half a dozen people were smoking, arguing, and in the case of one couple, passionately kissing. Even over the course of the next three days in Fernanda’s guest room Becky never quite got the full story of how Fernanda and Mac knew each other. When she wasn’t hosting late-night dinner parties Fernanda was on the phone in Italian or Portuguese or French, pulling the long cord with her into the bathroom or kitchen, tangling it on armchairs and toppling lamps.

  Whatever Mac had told Fernanda about her, Becky was able to come and go as she pleased, with no other requirements than to join the living room party as often as she could, as a source of witty remarks and an appreciative audience of catty gossip and fashion world scandal. (Fernanda did something in PR for one of the Italian houses. At first sight, in her sweeping floor-length caftan and silk turban, Becky would have pegged her for early forties. Making coffee in the late morning, first cigarette between her lips . . . fifty or upward, for sure.)

  On her way downtown that first Friday morning—it wasn’t even 9 am and she would find that no galleries opened before 11—Becky reflected that, on the whole, no matter how friendly her host seemed, she would rather have stayed in a hotel. That delicious anonymity, the chance to be alone and drop the thousand minute arrangements of face and voice and body position, the ones she had to instantly assume for other people. The chance to be away, for a few expensive hours, from other people!

  But Mac had insisted, because Fernanda was an essential acquaintance for Becky. There must be a benefit to him, Becky speculated, in her staying there. So she had acquiesced, as she acquiesced to almost all Mac’s directions. Not that he approved of her going
to New York. Overpriced, overhyped. Why bother when one could scheme a beautiful collection right from the shores of Lake Michigan? Had she never heard of a fax machine, darling?

  There were more and more barbs in Mac’s assessment of Becky’s purchases, her deals. And the whole “I made you, sweetheart” routine, with its required deference, was getting old. It was a relief to be away from that, Becky thought now, reversing direction and walking quickly back along the same block. She hadn’t yet figured out the subway, and she’d be damned before she’d be a rube asking for help, so her MO was to walk swiftly and confidently in the general direction of where she wanted to go, even if that meant missed turns and repeated changes of course.

  On her map, the map in her purse that would not be brought out, Becky had used a ruler and colored pencils to grid the area bounded by Fourteenth and Canal, Greenwich and Avenue D. At least ninety galleries worth visiting clustered in that space, so thirty a day, about four hundred twenty minutes viewing time (once she realized operating hours), meant she had fourteen minutes allotted to each space. Not including bathroom breaks.

  Except Becky spent nearly three hours in the very first gallery she entered that morning. She couldn’t resist, she refused to check her watch, even as her face got hot and her inner voice screeched that she was making the rookiest of all rookie mistakes: falling in love with the first thing seen. Because Becky had fallen in love with the six canvases—oil, pastel palette, abstract images of boxes on top of boxes. Every physical indicator was going off like an alarm: shallow breathing, prickly armpits, the inability to stop pacing. She just wanted to look at them, to look and look and look.

  Becky summoned all her acquired skills as a collector when she sat down with the owner to learn about the pieces and the artist. All of what she heard only added to her conviction. The artist, as the gallery owner explained, was Peter Wand, a fiftyish classically trained figurist based in Zurich, who had been on the outskirts of the Ab Ex movement, had one solo show in Lausanne (not that that mattered), used to be married to Patricia Nadal (again, irrelevant). Poised for a breakout. He’d delivered this series only last week, no promises but the Voice had been considering a major profile and space was already lined up for a quarter column ad buy in Artforum.

  Becky drank deeply from her glass of Perrier. For less than ninety thousand she could buy all six works. Ship them home, sell four—already her mental Rolodex was throwing off potential buyers—and watch Wand’s star go up. This was it, the find. The one she’d make her name on.

  “May I use your phone?” How was her mouth so dry? The owner graciously set her up at his own desk and then excused himself.

  It took Becky three tries to dial the right number. She couldn’t see straight for the sheets of pastel bricks raining down her mind, and the dollar calculations, and her brute force of want.

  Mac was cheerful, at first. Happy to hear of her excitement. He claimed he’d even heard of Peter Wand, and listened to Becky spew all her disjointed thoughts and plans. He waited until she was finished, and then he gently, very gently, dismantled every angle of her idea. Becky had to grip the strange desk to absorb the blow: Mac’s utter dismissal of Peter Wand’s worth and work. How limited the market was for late Ab Ex, the way the line and color screamed Twombly derivative, a dozen more reasons a buy of that magnitude was premature, a bad investment, off the mark.

  In an instant Becky saw all her idiot enthusiasm for what it was: naïve inexperience. How far she still had to go to catch up with someone like Mac, who could call on decades of deals and trends before putting a play into action. Who did she think she was? Thoroughly chastened, she tried to thank him. Mac brushed it off. Even, perhaps, forgiving her for going to New York, without him.

  The next afternoon Becky took a seat in a bright second-floor library at Swann Auction Galleries on East Twenty-Fifth. She’d been downtown all morning trying to make up for yesterday’s folly, cramming in as many galleries as possible, and she’d take another taxi back to SoHo afterward. But for now, she tried to take slow calming breaths in the peaceful space, the rows of folding chairs slowly filling in, the light-wood lectern awaiting the auctioneer. She didn’t know what to do with the paddle, white card stock printed with the house’s blue S logo, that she’d been handed after checking in. Hold it on her lap? Dangle it by her side? Sit on it? Becky noticed one woman fanning herself with casual aplomb.

  As soon as the auction began, however, she forgot her unease. Staff set up each work—from the lot “Selected Sketches, 19th Century”—and carefully adjusted the lighting before the grandly mustachioed auctioneer rapidly detailed artist, style, background, quality, provenance, and highlights. Whistler, Bellows, Lewis, Léger. Becky craned and peered, trying with no success to see behind the curtain to the next work. Finally, finally, the small page was set up for all to see. The drawing was exactly as perfect as in the catalogue where she’d clocked it over a month ago. It hit her all over again: the insouciant curve of the line, the spiky end of one charcoal edge, the ideal balance of white space and plain coal-colored sketch.

  “Mary Cassatt, early study for an unfinished drawing, mother and child theme. Initiating bids at ten, do I see ten thousand—”

  Becky’s hand shot up. Without her paddle, which had slipped to the floor in her excitement. Keeping her hand up, arm extended, she groped down. The man in the next seat bent and retrieved it for her but she had no time to thank him. The bids swept ahead, eleven and now somehow fifteen, she kept raising but so did at least two other paddles. And why did the auctioneer keep glancing to his side? Who was . . . Oh. An agitated younger man taking orders from a telephone, one of several set up on a plain light-wood table.

  Becky held her ground. Up, she lifted at eighteen thousand. She’d promised herself twenty would be the max, had to be the limit. But then there was still one paddle and the man on the phone and she went up again at twenty-two.

  The very first time she’d laid eyes on the image she’d seen Ingrid in the drawing. Ingrid’s tired night-nurse tenderness in the easy way the mother held her baby.

  Up, she flipped her paddle, answering the auctioneer’s look. Twenty-five. A long moment, would the other paddle . . . No. The room let out a soft sigh. Becky almost hovered on her seat, alight in every nerve.

  Twenty-six, yes from the phone.

  Twenty-seven, Becky’s paddle up.

  Twenty-eight, a longer pause. The man on the phone covered the receiver with a cupped hand. His nod, to Becky’s eye, was one millisecond slower than it had been.

  “Twenty-nine thousand dollars,” she called out, putting up her paddle before the auctioneer could turn to her again. That did it. When the man on the phone shook his head, face drawn, warm applause broke out in the room.

  Becky nodded tightly to those in her row who leaned over to murmur congratulations. She had to hold it all in, bursting elation, body-rocking adrenaline that made her want to shriek with triumph. The underlying ripple of fear about how much more she’d spent than she’d wanted to, how very much deeper she’d dug into the hole.

  Ingrid, though. The thought of Ingrid. That’s what carried her through.

  Becky managed to learn the subway: people exited through the same turnstiles for entering, and sighed loudly if you dithered even a moment with your token. She fit in openings and retrospectives and ate a hot dog or a pretzel from a street cart every few hours. She even mostly recovered from the gentle sting of Mac’s correction, with those Peter Wand paintings. Becky did what Becky did best: put it behind her and hurried forward.

  She redoubled her efforts at self-discipline: she checked off every gallery on her map grid, she took extensive notes, she made introductions and pacified a jealous Fernanda (You never here! I have all these for you!). She kept her mind off her bank book, which was drained because of the Cassatt. Focused instead on listening, learning, taking it all in.

  On the last night she went to an event in the Puck Building on Houston Street, a dark-red structure that loom
ed high over its corner, marking the essential division between SoHo and everywhere else. Becky wasn’t sure who was being celebrated—a tenth anniversary for one of the nearby galleries, perhaps—or how she’d made it onto the list, but she’d changed into a Betsey Johnson black-and-purple-flowered frock, slicked back her hair on the sides, and milled around the crowded loft space holding a plastic cup of tepid chardonnay. Her feet hurt so much she couldn’t feel them anymore, and smiling enigmatically at people she didn’t know was leaching away her last bits of energy. How long ago had she eaten her last hot dog? Why couldn’t the stereo system play something other than David Byrne, David Byrne knock-offs, or David Byrne parodies? She had to find some food.

  A few turns in the halls adjacent to the main room led her to a kitchen, where at first Becky thought she was alone. Alone with food, platters lined up on a long metal table—untouched mini quiches and grapes and cubes of Brie. She found a napkin and piled it high.

  “You’re supposed to wait until they bring it out.” The voice came from a young boy, unnoticed until now, sitting on a dish counter and kicking his heels against the metal below.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” Becky spoke through a mouthful of quiche.

  “It’s six thirty,” the boy said.

  “In the pm,” another voice clarified, this one from an even smaller girl, with matching brown bangs, intent on a coloring book spread open on an overturned white bucket.

  “In the pm is when grownups get their food.” Becky wondered if it was time to push on to the Fleshman opening, which started at seven.

  “We got pizza already,” the little girl said, frowning at her drawing.

  “Can you bring me a 7UP?” the boy asked Becky. “From out there? She forgot again.”