Thirty-Eight
Dune Finnegan was the last person on Bridie’s mind the night they ended up sitting at the same table at a fundraiser for the Memorial Art Gallery.
Bridie was at the table because her mother and Finn were board members and the evening’s hosts.
They’d purchased and populated several tables with friends and family.
Ordinarily, at events where both families were in attendance—weddings, funerals, church functions, holidays—Bridie and Dune and Fern would politely greet one another and then retreat to separate corners.
Privately, Bridie and Fern were friendly, and Bridie loved Fern’s partner.
Naomi was cool! But in public spaces, they could feel the eyes of everyone watching.
It was irritating. They weren’t the Hatfields and the McCoys or the Montagues and the Capulets; they were ordinary people and many years ago their parents had divorced and remarried.
Everyone had done their best to move on.
Except Clara, of course, but Clara was aiming for some kind of Guinness World Record level of resentment.
Bridie snuck into the back of the event space and tried to spot her table number, which, of course, was directly in front of the podium where her mother was now positioned.
Bridie still hadn’t gotten used to this version of her mother—the society grand dame.
As Uncle Dennis had predicted all those years ago, Helen Harper had helped make the Finnegan family quite comfortable.
Finn and Nina gave money away hand over fist, both the store’s and their own, and had become forces of goodwill around town, supporting arts organizations and underfunded schools and community food banks.
Bridie guessed it was nice. Altruistic. Philanthropic?
She never fully grasped the semantic differences, but as a social worker did understand how the larger donors to community organizations were both a necessity and a nuisance, as many of them wanted something in exchange for their good-heartedness.
Bridie didn’t think her mother and Finn fell into the purely opportunistic bunch, but it was impossible not to acknowledge that they’d used their generosity to launder the long-ago scandal, and it seemed to have worked like a dream.
Their wallets—and eventually the two of them—were welcomed back into the important spaces in the city.
They’d quieted the critics with their good-enough marriage and generous works.
Behind the podium, her mother was talking about the importance of the Memorial Art Gallery to the city and telling some story about standing in front of one the museum’s paintings at a critical juncture in her life and how MAG had always been a place of comfort and joy since that day she’d escorted her daughter’s class on a school field trip.
This was news to Bridie. As the audience applauded her mother’s closing remarks, Bridie hurried to the empty seat at her table, gave Fern and Naomi a quick wave, sat, and turned to her left to find Dune holding out a hand and introducing himself.
“Hi. Dune Finnegan,” he said, a little sloppily.
“Dune, it’s Bridget. Bridie.” She shrugged off her raincoat and draped it on the back of her chair.
“I didn’t even recognize you,” he said, grinning happily.
“Nice to see you, too.” She offered a thin smile.
“Do you know what this is supposed to be?” he said, using his fork to poke at a piece of chicken breast covered with an unappetizing egg-yolk-colored sauce.
“No idea,” Bridie said. “But it’s pretty foul.”
“Foul fowl.”
“Ha.”
“Sorry. Not a high-quality joke.”
Dune and Bridie picked at their food and made desultory small talk.
Such a cold winter but not that many storms. Sure has been rainy.
Good for the flowers, though. Spotted a group of snowdrops poking through the mud today, that’s always a nice sign.
Plates were cleared. Dessert dropped. Wineglasses refilled and coffee and tea poured.
Back at the podium, Nina introduced the gentleman who would run the live auction part of the evening.
A picture of the first item, a small painting by a local artist, appeared on a large screen at the front of the room.
As soon as Bridie saw the painting, she sat straight up in her seat.
“Oh.” She didn’t realize she said it out loud.
“You okay?” Dune said.
“It’s so pretty.” Bridie looked at her program to see that the opening bid was $250, more than Bridie had any business spending on a painting.
The work was small, maybe eleven by thirteen inches and kind of abstract but also somehow representational of a sunrise.
The auctioneer was explaining that it was an interpretation of a Monet.
Not the one from the MAG collection, but a similar work from the same Waterloo Bridge series.
The small rendering was called After Monet’s Sun through Fog. She wanted it.
Bridie had just moved into her own apartment after years of roommates.
She thought about how much money she had in her bank account and did a quick calculation.
She needed so many things for the space, but she knew exactly where she’d put that painting: on the wall directly above the carved oak mantel in her living room.
She could delay other purchases she’d been saving up for, like nice pots for the kitchen, a better mattress, a chair for the front bay window, where she wished she could sit and read.
$400. She could go that high. She grabbed the paddle in her fist as the auctioneer started the bidding.
$250, $275, $300, up to $325 before Bridie even had a chance to raise her paddle.
She lifted her arm high. “We have a very enthusiastic $350,” the auctioneer said, pointing to her paddle.
“Three hundred and fifty is the bid on the floor. Do I have $400? $375? Anyone willing to go to $375?”
Bridie had less than twenty seconds to savor her high bid before the room lit up again, speeding past $400 and eventually landing on $750. “I have $750 to the gentlemen in the corner. Final warning. Hammer down—sold!”
“You didn’t stay in the game,” Dune said to her.
“A little too rich for me.”
“What about him?” Dune pointed to his father. “Peanuts for that guy. Dad!”
“No,” Bridie said, putting a hand on Dune’s arm, mortified. “It’s fine. Someone else bought it.”
“No deal is truly a done deal.” Now he was slurring his words. He motioned to his father again and Finn stood and came around the table. “Right, Dad? No deal is ever done?”
“I think you’ve had enough,” Finn said gently to Dune.
“Bridie wanted that painting. Can’t we get it for her?”
Bridie shook her head at Finn. “It’s fine. I’m fine.” This had the makings of the kind of public scene they’d all spent years and years avoiding.
“Come on, son,” Finn said. “Let’s get you home.”
Bridie could see her mother at the front of the room, off to the side, watching the slight commotion with a frown.
She raised her eyebrows at Bridie, who shrugged in response.
Finn started escorting Dune through the tables.
Dune was loudly asking anyone within earshot who’d won the painting.
The auctioneer stood silent until both Finn and Dune had left the room and Nina nodded for him to continue.
“Please check your programs for lot number two, a Tiffany lamp that once belonged to George Eastman.”
The next morning, Bridie stared at the empty space where she would have hung After Monet’s Sun through Fog.
Maybe she should have gone for it, but the price was absurd given her salary.
She wondered how Dune was feeling this morning.
Nina had alluded to Dune’s drinking a few times over the years.
Bridie vaguely recalled an incident at Notre Dame and some period of probation.
She’d heard something about a detox program after graduation and before he spent several years “abroad,” whatever that meant.
Once when Bridie ran into Fern and Naomi at a movie, Fern referenced Dune’s European style of drink.
“That’s how he puts it,” Fern said, “if we’re to believe that Europeans start drinking at eleven in the morning and don’t stop until they pass out.
” She’d heard Dune was back in Rochester a few years ago and had seen him around town a bit, but they hadn’t spoken.
She thought she’d heard he was doing well.
She had to tell Clara about last night, even though it was probably too early to call.
As usual, she got Clara’s answering machine and left a message.
As she was trying to decide how to spend her Saturday, make it a chore day or a fun day, the buzzer to her apartment rang.
She looked out the front window and standing on the front stairs, as if her musings had conjured him, was Dune Finnegan.