The Masterpiece

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

March 1975

Clara should have never come back. She felt like a paper-thin shell of a person. An apparition, sitting in this abandoned art school. Better yet, a relic, just like the dried-up paint cans and brittle brushes.

All her savings had been spent on her big trip to New York. Just like last time, it had ended in failure. Clara’s new life back in Arizona had been fine, rich in beauty. She’d found a town of artists on the edge of a mountain, most of whom made Indian jewelry, metal sculptures, or misshapen macramé webbings to sell to tourists. Her house had a sagging front porch and a tiny bedroom that was boiling in summer and freezing in winter. She made some friends but never got close to anyone. Teaching art at the local school paid the bills. No one questioned her clothes or voice, asked if she was a man or a woman. She was free to be Totto, the name she came up with on the train out west.

New York City, when she first returned, had thrown her off-balance. The crowds made her dizzy; the filth overwhelmed. But she’d settled into a routine with the job she got from Terrence, a distant relation of one of the teachers in Arizona. Her old knowledge of the terminal returned right away, although every so often, early on, she’d answer a question incorrectly, sending the inquirer to the newsstand near gate 37, when it had relocated decades ago. Her sole purpose had been to see if she could get that watercolor. She dreamed of it at night, rued the day she didn’t take it home with her instead of leaving it on top of the cabinet.

She looked around. The sorry state of the old art school matched her own.

Virginia spoke cautiously. “Where are you staying?”

“I found a short-term rental. Downtown.” Clara narrowed her eyes at her. “Don’t tell anyone in the booth about me.”

“I swear I won’t.”

The dimwit had handed the watercolor over to the Lorettes, just like that. Mr. Lorette, who’d had it in for her since the very beginning.

“I’m sorry for all the suffering you’ve been through,” Virginia said. “The train crash, losing everything.”

The girl wouldn’t give up. It was as if she was looking for absolution, and Clara wasn’t about to give her that. “It was the Depression. The whole country was suffering. Not like today, where they’re moaning about gas prices or inflation. People were starving to death in the streets.”

“Does anyone else know that you painted The Siren? Is there anyone else alive who could recognize you and stand up for you?”

She was stubborn, this one. Not about to back down. No matter how cruel Clara was. Clara grudgingly respected her for it, to be honest. Same for the way she’d showed up day after day in the information booth, cleaning it up and making herself useful, when she wasn’t being annoying and prissy.

“Not a soul.”

Virginia exhaled loudly. “Where was the last place you saw it, then?”

“In the cottage in Maine. Oliver told me later that he’d stashed it in the attic.”

Virginia scrunched up her face. “Who else had access to the cottage?”

“An actress named Violet, who Oliver eventually married.”

“Is she still alive?”

“No. She died in Palm Springs a decade ago.”

“Anyone else?”

“Mrs. Lorette. She handled all the sleeping arrangements and kept the cottages stocked.”

“Then the Lorettes must have the painting.” Virginia spoke Clara’s thoughts out loud, gathering steam. “That’s why they took the sketch. They don’t want it to come out, because it’ll screw up the auction, rewrite history in the art world.”

The logic made sense, but Clara wasn’t about to thank her. “You delivered it right into the wolf’s hands, just like a fairy tale.” She stood. “I’m going back to work. I’ve come this far; I’ll figure out another way to get it back.”

“Let me help you. I owe you that, at least.”

“Don’t bother. You’ve done quite enough.”

But the woman wouldn’t let up. The day after their confrontation, Virginia approached Clara in the booth and whispered into her ear, “Meet me at the art school at one o’clock.”

Clara ignored her, shoving a timetable through the window at an impatient young man with too-long hair who was carrying a backpack.

She turned to face Virginia, crackling with bitterness. Yesterday, Clara had stomped over to the Lorettes’ town house. By the time she got there, she’d been ready to storm the ramparts. But her fury dissipated when a maid answered the door and said the couple was out of town. Her bored demeanor indicated she was telling the truth, that the Lorettes weren’t hovering on the other side of the door. Clara had tried, lamely, to get inside, but she was rebuffed.

This morning, she’d awoken to the sound of the garbage trucks grinding away outside her window and decided she was done. New York had lost all the mystique that she’d constructed around it during her decades away. From Arizona, even the hard times of the Depression had acquired a dreamy haze, of the gang sitting around Levon’s fireplace, talking about art in order to divert attention from their growling stomachs. The city had since recovered, gone to war a few times, risen and fallen. It was unrecognizable and had moved on without her.

Virginia’s eyes were wide, like a doll’s. Clara hissed at her, “Please stop acting like we’re in a spy movie.”

“Promise you’ll meet me. One o’clock.”

Doris glanced over, sensing the tension. Clara relented, just to get Virginia off her back. “Yes. Go away now.”

At one, Virginia was waiting at the doorway of the school. “I thought you weren’t going to come.” She fiddled with the lock, swearing under her breath, before opening the door.

She ushered Clara inside. “Follow me.”

An easel sat next to a worktable in one of the smaller studios, where a dozen tubes of paint were arrayed in the shape of a rainbow.

“What’s this?” Clara stopped and stared.

“I went to the art supply store on Fifty-Seventh Street, picked up some things. Look.” Virginia pointed at each item. “A palette, some brushes; they said we needed turpentine and a cloth, so I bought those as well.”

“You planning on becoming an artist?”

“No. Not me. They’re for you. I feel bad about getting in the way of everything.”

Clara eyed the brushes. Not the best quality, but not the worst, either. The prestretched canvas was pedestrian but usable. The whiteness gleamed in the dingy room like fresh snow.

Virginia was positively giddy. “Do you like it?”

“What’s there to like? I don’t paint anymore.”

“Aren’t you an art teacher?”

“Doesn’t mean I make it.”

“Don’t you miss it?”

Clara looked back at the canvas. She remembered the way Levon struggled to hold the brush the last few months of his life. “Levon couldn’t paint, near the end. Lead poisoning. Made his arm go weak.”

Funny how regret never let up, even years later. Certain memories still carved out her insides: The look on Oliver’s face when she’d betrayed him on the beach in Maine. How she’d tortured Levon for not trying harder to paint. Learning that her parents had both gotten sick and died a few months before her return to Arizona.

Virginia was looking at her strangely. “Did you and Levon ever consider getting married? Having kids, that kind of thing?”

Clara picked up one of the brushes and ran her finger over the tip. “No. Back then, we were more like the hippies of today. There was no rush to make things official. And the last thing we needed was another mouth to feed.” She pursed her lips. She didn’t want to let Virginia in, the busybody.

“My daughter, Ruby, had a brief hippie phase when she was fourteen. She was into tie-dye and swiped all her father’s white T-shirts, turning them into these wild, swirly designs. Her plan was to sell them and buy a camera with the money.” She shrugged. “My ex-husband yelled at her but then ended up buying her a camera anyway.”

If the girl was going to jabber on, Clara might as well investigate the paints. She opened one, a sunflower yellow, and squeezed it out onto the palette in a brightly colored worm.

Virginia showed no signs of letting up. “Ruby was a lovely girl, but so shy. After I got divorced, she really lost her way, which maybe would have happened anyway at that age. Kids want to find their own space, and I was crowding her, telling her what to do with her life. Which made her resent me, which made me crowd her more, you know?”

Clara didn’t reply. The chemical scent from the paint brought memories flooding back. Sure, she’d been around paints for the past many years, but not in this room, where it all began. She dipped a thick brush into the paint and drew a slash on the canvas, wanting to mark it up, to defile its brightness. “How much did all this cost?”

“No bother. Well, actually, Ruby lent me the money. Just until we get paid on Friday. She’s making lots of cash in tips, working in a hotel bar. Now she’s focused, gets to work early and stays late. Takes photography classes in her free time. She’s energized. Kind of like I was when I found the watercolor.”

Clara mixed in some white to soften the color, tried a different brush. The quality of the canvas was terrible, fighting against the oil instead of supporting it.

“Ryan, one of the other bartenders, was at the O’Keeffe exhibit with me when I figured out who you were. Funny thing was, I thought he was there with me on a date, sort of, when in fact he wanted to ask my permission to date Ruby. You can imagine my shock. I laughed at myself. I do that a lot lately.”

Clara shot her a look. “Did you tell anyone else about me? Who I am?”

“No. Of course not.”

“That’s my secret. Not yours.”

“I understand.”

“I doubt you do. You’re not the type to have secrets. You prattle away in the information booth all day, getting into everyone’s business.”

“That’s not true. I have secrets.”

“Name one.”

Virginia placed her right hand on her left shoulder, diagonally across her torso, like the sash of a beauty queen. Clara had noticed she did it whenever she was nervous, like when the stationmaster stopped into the booth or when Doris mocked her.

Virginia’s voice quivered. “You want me to name one secret?”

“Sure. You know all about me. My losses, my humiliations. What’s yours?” Clara stabbed the air with the point of the brush on the last two words.

“You’re being awfully dramatic.”

Clara turned back to the easel and sniffed.

“I had an operation, about five years ago.” Virginia’s voice dropped to a husky whisper, as if her throat was closing up to prevent the words from reaching the air. “Before I got divorced. They had to take off one breast, and I didn’t know it was going to happen, beforehand. They put me under, and when I woke up, I’d been mutilated. They carved me up.”

Clara turned and studied her. “You look fine to me.”

“I wear a special type of bra. Not very comfortable, and it rides up all the time.” She grimaced, as if remembering something painful, but continued talking. About her recovery, the fear that the cancer would come back. At some point, Clara realized that the woman was talking to her like she would to a sleepy child. Because as she droned on—and no, that wasn’t a kind thing to think now that the poor woman was pouring her sad little heart out—Clara was painting. Mainly to distract herself, and to not have to look Virginia in the eyes. But still.

She was painting.