After
Gretchen
The café on Great Jones Street across from the Pearson Gallery was small and had no table service; customers were required to order at the counter and bring a little numbered flag to their table.
But it was sophisticated in a downtown way, Gretchen supposed.
That was obvious from the artful way the pricey, modern pastries were displayed and the high-tech barista machines.
It was early still as Hilary and Gretchen sipped their cappuccinos.
Hilary had tracked down a decent amount of information about Frankie Callahan, thanks to her Instagram and her upcoming show.
Some of it Gretchen already knew, of course.
But the gallery’s website included a lengthy bio with information about where Frankie had grown up (Colorado) and where she’d attended college (NYU) and graduate school (The New School).
From Frankie’s Instagram, Hilary thought she’d figured out who her closest group of friends were and had surmised she didn’t have a boyfriend.
And there had been those small photos of her work.
But now they were here to see her new paintings in person.
The show was available to “registered users” for online viewing, but leaving that kind of digital footprint seemed unwise.
So Hilary had suggested a field trip to the gallery.
As much as Gretchen wanted to mine Frankie’s paintings for some insight into the woman who had swung like a wrecking ball into her life and—let’s be honest—to find them lacking, she couldn’t shake a sense of unease.
What if the reverse turned out to be true?
What if they proved she was brilliant, insightful, kind?
Gretchen reminded herself for the hundredth time that it didn’t matter who Frankie had been.
As dark as the thought was, she wasn’t competition for anyone anymore.
For nearly an hour, Gretchen and Hilary nibbled croissants and nursed their coffees, waiting for the gallery to reopen. There had been one of those We Will Return Shortly signs in the window when they arrived—elegantly old-school. But the gallery was open on a Sunday, which felt lucky.
“Would you ever live in a five-million-dollar apartment that didn’t have a doorman?” Hilary asked. She gestured with her phone to a rather unassuming door and row of buzzers, tucked a few doors down from the gallery.
“Who says that’s how much an apartment there costs?”
“Zillow,” Hilary said with a shrug. Gretchen had no idea what Zillow was and no interest in finding out.
It was terrifying to her how much information was available publicly these days.
How connected everyone was in all the wrong ways—too much intimacy with complete strangers.
“I mean, what is the point of paying all that money if you’re not going to get a little service along with it? ”
“Maybe it’s exciting to live downtown,” Gretchen offered. She tried not to wonder if Richard thought so, too. If that was one of the things he’d seen in this woman—an opportunity for a different, more interesting life. For a life full of art.
“Well, I think it’s exciting to have dry cleaning dropped off with my doorman,” Hilary said.
“I mean the whole life that comes with it,” Gretchen said. “It’s…edgy.”
“Ha. Edgy. Gretchen, stop sounding so rich,” Hilary said. “Only rich people pay to be made uncomfortable in the name of style.”
For not the first time this morning, Gretchen wondered if she should have come on her own. There was something reassuring about Hilary’s matter-of-fact judgment of anything and everything, but her endless chattering was grating on Gretchen’s nerves.
“Would you ever go on a trip like that?” Gretchen asked. “With a bunch of men you don’t know?”
It did seem maddeningly brave. No matter how Gretchen looked at it.
“I might,” Hilary snorted lightly, “if I could leave Scotty here.”
“Is everything okay between you two?” Gretchen asked.
Hilary made a face. “Come on, I’m joking. You know I couldn’t survive without that aggravating man.”
Gretchen forced a smile as she returned her gaze to the gallery, where a stunning blonde had paused on the sidewalk.
Incredibly thin and tall, she had on oversize sunglasses and was wearing a short dress with very high heels.
If she wasn’t a model, she should have been.
She was digging in her stylish, oversize bag—a Birkin knockoff, of course.
“I think she’s looking for keys,” Gretchen said quietly.
But Gretchen felt stuck to her chair. Did she really want to see Frankie’s work, after all? To even be in a space where she was so admired? Already Gretchen felt so wounded. Maybe she needed more Xanax.
“Excellent, we’re in.” Hilary jumped to her feet before noticing that Gretchen had not moved. Her face softened, the playful gleam in her eye vanishing. “You need to stay focused on why we’re here.”
“And why is that again?”
“To get Richard out of jail.”
—
The gallery wasn’t large, but it was extremely chic—lots of steel and clean lines in the small entryway. Gretchen waited for the beautiful blond woman, now seated behind a sleek reception desk, to ask why they were there. But instead, she just smiled.
“Good morning. Let me know if you have any questions. The official opening celebration has been delayed until Tuesday, but the paintings have been available for sale online for several days. A number have already been purchased.”
A delay. Maybe they already knew about Frankie. That this was all postmortem.
“Of course.” Gretchen smiled easily. “Thank you. We’ll let you know if we have questions.”
Hilary had disappeared around a corner. Gretchen followed, her low heels clicking noisily on the polished floor.
Despite her time in classes at Dartmouth and in museums all over the world, Gretchen didn’t really understand art.
It didn’t make her feel anything at all, though she knew enough to feel a certain shame about this, especially when Richard went on and on.
But Gretchen startled when she rounded the corner and emerged into a vast, all-white central gallery space.
An enormous canvas hung straight ahead—muted pinks, reds, purples.
It was of a naked woman. Abstract, but the figure’s disembodied…
female parts…were certainly very easy to make out.
Much easier than in real life. Outsize breasts, more than one actual…
vagina. Gretchen looked around at the other paintings.
More naked women. That’s what every single painting was of. Was this a sick joke?
Some of the figures confronted the viewer, others looked away, their broken, angular bodies arranged in various degrees of open sexual display.
But as strange and provocative as they were, there was something tender about them—even Gretchen had to admit that.
Vulnerable. Gretchen found herself suddenly overwhelmed by sadness.
They should never have come. Some things really were better left unknown.
Now Gretchen was drowning.
* * *
It was Richard who reminded her of the dream when they’d gone to stay at her parents’ house.
Newly pregnant with Elizabeth, she had been sitting by the pool with Richard while her mother walked the garden holding Cassandra’s puffy little baby hand and enthusiastically identifying the flowers.
Her mother should have only ever been a grandmother.
Midge excelled at attentive warmth in fifteen-minute increments.
“Maybe it was this,” Richard said, drawing Gretchen’s attention. He motioned to the pool with his newspaper, his tone bright, as if he had just solved an inexplicable mystery.
“The pool? What about the pool?”
“That dream you used to have,” he said. “Didn’t you say you fell in once before you knew how to swim?”
When Gretchen was little, she’d had a recurring nightmare that she was drowning in her bedroom. In her dream, she’d wake to find the water rising, her bed rocking back and forth on the waves.
“Oh,” she said, and laughed. “God, how did you even remember that? I think I told you that on our second date.”
“Our third,” he said, winking at her before returning to his crossword puzzle. “But who’s counting?”
Gretchen shifted her gaze back to the garden. When she’d fallen in the pool she’d been a couple years older than Cassandra now, but not much.
“You know, I always screamed when I woke up, like some kind of horror movie. And my parents never, ever came.” Her mother’s figure was growing blurry when Richard reached over to take her hand.
“I would have come,” he said, squeezing tightly. “I would have come every time.”
* * *
Gretchen woke to the sound of buzzing. She had fallen asleep at the kitchen counter, her cheek pressed against the cool marble. She’d left a small puddle of drool—how embarrassing.
The text was from Scotty.
FYI. Brooks at some company retreat. I tried his cell, but a receptionist said he might not have a signal. Left a message at the hotel, too. If you want, here’s a link. I’m trying to track down his assistant, too. I doubt he knows anything useful anyway.
“Hey, Mom.”
Elizabeth loomed in the shadows of the kitchen doorway like some kind of judgmental ghost. Gretchen was in no mood to justify anything, not after seeing those paintings. “Oh, hello, honey.”
Elizabeth stepped closer. In the light, her face didn’t look angry or judgmental at all. Only sad.
“What if…he did it?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Well, you look upset. You’ve looked upset ever since I got home.”
“Of course I’m upset, Elizabeth. Your father’s been arrested,” Gretchen said. “You haven’t trusted the government for years, and now you believe that just because the police arrest someone they must have actually committed the crime?”
Elizabeth lifted her chin, but instead of snapping at Gretchen, she remained quiet for an excruciatingly long time. It was far worse, it turned out, than her daughter’s usual frontal assault. “Mom, who was this woman?”
“She was in Afri—”
“I know that part,” she said. “I mean—what does she look like? What’s her story?”
Mikey Pearce and Scotty had said her full name, but probably too quickly for any of the children to have looked her up. A small mercy that depended, Gretchen knew, on borrowed time.
“What difference does that make?”
Elizabeth’s eyebrows raised. “Seriously, Mommy?”
Mommy. And just like that, all the years—years and distance, so much distance—were stripped away and discarded in a pile on the floor between them.
Gretchen swallowed once, then again, but it felt already as if her entire face were engulfed in flames.
There her daughter was, still staring at her.
It was a test. Gretchen needed to be able to answer this simple question. For her own sake and for Elizabeth’s.
“Well, Frankie Callahan was a gorgeous young artist with whom your father climbed Kilimanjaro. It seems she was very talented and probably charismatic and popular. According to Hilary she has many, many followers on her”—Gretchen waved a theatrical and yet also deliberately dismissive hand—“social whatever. Is this what you want to know? Are you trying to upset me further?”
“Upset you? Is that seriously what you think I’m doing?” Elizabeth looked appalled.
“No, of course not.” Gretchen felt annoyed and guilty now. She wasn’t trying to upset Elizabeth, but she also couldn’t face an interrogation. Gretchen rubbed her cheek. “I’m just— What is it you’re trying to tell me, Elizabeth?”
“I’m just worried that you’re doing that thing you do.”
“What thing that I do, Elizabeth?”
“Pretending.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mom, I was fucking snorting Ritalin and then cocaine in this house all over the place. I did it on this counter. For like two years straight. There was white powder everywhere. I left rolled-up bills out on the coffee table, and you never noticed.”
She had forgotten all about Elizabeth and the drugs. As bad as the cult was, it was better than what came before. At least she’d been clean since she took up with the group.
“I noticed, Elizabeth.” And she had. She had just…decided to wait it out. It was mostly Elizabeth’s friends, she had told herself.
“So you noticed and you didn’t say anything?” Elizabeth’s mouth hung open.
That was the thing with her younger daughter—there was never a right answer. “Elizabeth, you kept your grades up, you had friends, you seemed happy, it didn’t seem like—”
“What about Cassandra?”
“Cassandra didn’t do drugs.” At least Gretchen was pretty sure she hadn’t.
“Mom! She was a fucking vombot for all of high school!”
“A what…?” But as soon as the question came out of her mouth, Gretchen remembered the toilets.
For at least two years, every time she went into any bathroom in the house, the toilet seat had been up.
She’d scolded both Richard and Becks several times, but they’d sworn it wasn’t them.
And then, poof—it had just stopped. Had she suspected?
…Yes, she had. But Cassandra had never been dangerously thin.
And she obviously didn’t do that nonsense anymore. She’d been pregnant, for heaven’s sake!
“Mom, Jesus Christ. I’m in a cult!”
Gretchen’s throat was tight. “I don’t know exactly what you’re accusing me of, Elizabeth.” Her voice trembled. “But I resent the—”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Elizabeth shouted so loudly Gretchen’s ears rang. Her daughter’s eyes were glassy and unfocused. “I’m just worried. I’m really worried about Dad.”
“Regardless of what you apparently think of me, your father didn’t kill anyone, Elizabeth.
And that is the only thing that matters.
” Gretchen was angry now. Also hurt and scared and lots of other things, but the anger was within easy reach.
“And, as you said yourself, you are in a cult. I think you should ask yourself how clearly you see anything these days.”
Now Elizabeth looked like she was going to burst into tears. Gretchen felt paralyzed, torn between the urge to wrap her arms around her daughter to comfort her and the certainty that reaching past her rage would send her insides spilling out all over the floor.
“Yeah, great, thanks, Mom.” Elizabeth’s tone was icy again, wounded betrayal in her eyes. Gretchen blinked back tears as she watched her daughter disappear down the hall. When her phone rang, she answered without thinking, without checking.
“You didn’t show up.” The deep voice was calm and steady but so menacing.
Did she honestly think she could ignore people like this without consequence? Was she insane? “I’m sorry, I know. Things are just so complicated right now. My husband has been arrested and—”
“Not my problem.”
“No, I wasn’t saying— Of course it’s not your problem. Let’s set another time and I will—”
“No more games or this is going to end badly, for everyone. Ask Frankie Callahan.”