Chapter 30
At Doven, Jahan welcomes him warmly. Paul never tires of this happy welcome, of Jahan treating him like someone important.
But today it unsettles him. Will Jahan view him the way Malcolm did, as a craven opportunist?
He could always invent some other reason for coming in, but he finds it’s impossible; the story he came to tell fills his brain, fizzes his nerves, demands to spill out.
And it’s important. Paul takes a seat across from Jahan and gives a wobbly smile.
“Is everything all right? Introduction coming along?” Jahan asks with a touch of anxiety.
“Oh, I’ve made great progress,” Paul says, relieved to tell an easy lie. It loosens him up like loosening a necktie. He begins to see a path forward, a way to play this conversation more wisely. He leans on his side of the desk and clasps his hands, warming to his task now.
“I came because I have to share something with you. Something—sensitive.” At this, Jahan hops up to close the door. When he sits again, Paul looks him in the eye.
“Judith may have killed herself.”
Jahan’s face falls in shock. He listens intently as Paul tells him everything, beginning with his trip to the Harrington PD.
He details Detective Schuyler’s leading questions, his own realization of what Schuyler was intimating, and the talk he had with a “respected psychiatrist friend” who confirmed the detective’s theory as valid and even offered a diagnosis.
“My friend thinks she had dissociative identity disorder, or something like it,” Paul says, and Jahan nods as if he’s heard of it.
Malcolm would be horrified, of course, but it’s not as if he’s made the diagnosis public—yet.
“I couldn’t sit with this by myself any longer.
I had to run it by you, had to get it out.
” Like a confessional, Paul thinks. Like a man who’s come to his priest for spiritual relief and has no intention of spreading the word outside of this closed circuit.
Jahan nods again, then sits staring at a spot on the wall to the left of a towering stack of art books, papers, and manila folders.
How has the man accomplished so much in such an overwhelmed office?
Paul wonders idly. It’s relaxing to think of something entirely unrelated to himself or Judith or to how Jahan might react to his “confession.”
Finally, Jahan shakes his head sadly and looks again at Paul, but with a gleam in his eye.
“Poor woman. She did this to herself? Invented it somehow? And believed it, too.”
“It certainly seems that way. I had a hard time accepting it—but the more I learned, the likelier it seemed. And the likelier it seemed, the more disturbed I was.”
“Well, it’s terrible. Truly terrible. Almost worse than having a stalker in the flesh. She must have been very ill. And you say her husband didn’t know?”
“He did not. And I don’t think he would accept this diagnosis or the idea of Judith committing suicide…if it ever came out,” Paul adds, carefully watching Jahan’s face.
“Hmm. Well, as sad and horrifying as this is, and as much as I hate to say it…this could mark an opportunity for us, and for the show. For Judith herself. For the legacy of her work.”
Paul tilts his head as if he doesn’t entirely understand what Jahan means.
“Paul, I know it’s a bit…delicate, but I think we should share this revelation—carefully and with qualifications, of course. Our press release has already generated excitement, but this? Something like this could absolutely ignite the show.”
There. Jahan has done it, given him a directive, couched in that comforting use of the collective pronoun.
Maybe Paul will be the spokesman—his head on the proverbial chopping block for the Stanleys, the Malcolms, and the avid fans, but he’ll have the weight of the gallery and Jahan’s impeccable status behind him.
We decided to release this story. We felt it was a necessary addition to provide context for Judith’s work.
When Paul feigns hesitation, Jahan leans forward over his desk, looks Paul in the eye.
“I never knew Judith in real life, but, looking at her pictures, I believe she would have wanted this. She would have wanted her viewers to know the truth, don’t you think so?
” Paul gives a slight nod and shrugs. “She’s an artist who fearlessly plumbed the depths and revealed stark truths. Isn’t that how you’d describe her?”
“Absolutely. But she was a private person, Jahan, I don’t know…”
“She isn’t a private person anymore. She asked for your help with publication and you gave it.
She has since become a public figure, and is about to become an even larger public figure.
And she is—gone. There’s no help for it.
” It’s a comfort to hear Jahan voice the rationalizations that Paul has told himself many times, even if one is a half-truth at best.
“I want to do right by her,” Paul says softly. “And if you think this is the best way—the best way to be fully honest with the public, to give them the full picture, then…I’m on board, whatever it will cost me.”
Jahan claps him on the back, grinning from ear to ear.
“It won’t cost you anything, my friend. If you’re worried about Mr. Stanley, he signed a contract, didn’t he? Handed over her work to you. He can make a fuss—it will only add to the attention, honestly—but I have a very good team of lawyers. Very, very good. You’ll be protected, Paul.”
Paul thinks of Jahan’s beautifully groomed, suited lawyers encircling him.
Protecting him. Shielding him from the worst possible outcomes of the world.
He’s become one of those people at last: The safe, exalted ones.
The ones with teams who whisk danger away.
The notion fills his stomach with warmth and his eyes with tears.
He has to look away quickly to hide it—though he supposes this show of emotion only enhances his performance of hesitation and gratitude. Jahan leans toward him.
“Paul, you’ll be doing a great service. You’ll bring a more sensitive, multidimensional portrait of Judith Stanley to light.
The truth about her life—and death—will make her photographs even more resonant with viewers.
They’ll see her complex, flawed humanity, something every single person on the planet can relate to. ”
Paul nods along, feigning a growing enthusiasm.
He remembers making this same argument with Malcolm, who swiped it away.
Spat on it, essentially. Malcolm could have profited by this, too, Paul thinks, appearing with him on television and radio as the “psychological expert” in Judith Stanley’s case.
But he lost his chance, and Paul doesn’t need him now.
He doesn’t need anything but Jahan’s unwavering support—and he has it.