Edith Pearlman - Binocular Vision - New & Selected Stories

His great-grandfather, bearded, one hand resting on the laws of the commonwealth, had thrown his noble gaze across the room at the early map of Massachusetts. Portrait and map had provided an axis of honor. The Vuillard corrupted the room.

“Attractive,” said a former colleague who’d come over for some advice. “New?”

“Relocated,” Francis said, holding his breath. The conversation turned to the present governor, such a dimwit.

“Oooh, Mr. Morrison,” said the cleaning woman.

“Nice,” said the man who came to fix a leak in the bathtub, but he seemed to be referring to the apartment in general.

Louanne’s glasses glinted at the painting on her first few visits after the bestowal; then they didn’t. She was writing a paper on the Electoral College. Discussions of that valuable, antiquated procedure occupied their sessions. At the Zerubins’ they talked about dogs and baseball.

Nowhere could he find news of the theft. The painting had probably been stolen to begin with. He could not identify it in the catalogue raisonné; even under the heading “Privately Held” he could not find Mme Vuillard with Flowers or anything like it. Still, its most recent possessor must have noted its absence by now. Perhaps the Russian mafia was making confident plans to kill him.

Louanne was still teaching those dirty lawyers. “And the one in the grand house, if he should mention that he’s been robbed?” asked Francis.

“He hasn’t mentioned.”

“If he does?”

“In which language?”

“Oh … English.”

“I’ll say: ‘Speak Russian.’

” “In Russian, then.”

“I’ll look sympathetic.” To demonstrate, she slanted her head and pursed the corners of her mouth, an executioner checking the knot on a noose.

He loved the gift she had given him. As time passed he did not love it less. Nor did he get used to it: the woman’s head so close that her voice could almost be heard; the economy of line and the limited palette; the slight distortion of the angle of the head; the lack of a grand idea. The humble daisies. A humble artist: secondary even in his heyday.

“Our constitution is more specific than yours, because we do not rely on the judiciary,” she was saying one Wednesday. “Judges were considered an extension of the Little Father, and—”

“Yes,” Francis said, though he was not certain of the accuracy of her statement. “Louanne, my dear, we must relinquish the painting.”

Her glasses stared at him.

“I cherish it,” he went on. “But it is too much for me. I will die of it.”

“You will die of a heart attack. Isn’t that why you take that powdered stuff?”

“The Cystadane is to prevent my dying.”

“To delay it. Anyway, no one ever died from beauty.”

“Then I will be the first.”

Silence while she surveyed him. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that her spectacles probably reduced what was before them. “I’ve still got the big brown bag,” she admitted. “But I’ve been teaching those crooks at their office lately. I don’t know when I’ll be at the house again.”

“We cannot return it to them, Louanne. It demands a public place. A shared arena, a location where any person, moneyed or penniless, cultured or gross, passionate or indifferent, can benefit from its—”

“Mr. Francis?”

He halted. With effortful simplicity he said: “It belongs at the museum.”

“Oh. So donate it.”

“Well, no, not with its murky provenance.” He did not want her deported. “We must slip it in.”

“Like a bomb?”

“Like a bomb.”

“My great-great-uncle threw a bomb. They shot him for it. Asshole.”

She was referring to her relative, he hoped.

“GOOD MORNING, NICK.”

“Mr. Morrison, good morning,” the guard said. “Good to see you. Ah … the young lady will have to check her parcel.”

He had hoped for exactly this: that the Big Brown Bag would prove a distraction, that his familiar backpack, rarely challenged, would not be challenged now, though it wasn’t the familiar one after all. It was new, considerably bigger, still fairly flat though.

“The young lady is well known to me; she’s carrying her art supplies,” Francis said. “Show him, Louanne.” And Louanne, feigning resentment, pulled out one by one a sketch pad, a sketch board, and pencils bound in their middle by a rubber band, fanning in both directions just as Vuillard’s daisies fanned upward from the mouth of the vase and their stalks downward into the expertly rendered water. Louanne then turned the bag upside down. A paper clip fell onto the floor.

“She’s going to copy a Rembrandt,” Francis confided. “Drawing a painting, it trains the hand.” The guard had to turn his attention to the visitor behind them. Louanne scraped up her tools.

They trotted upstairs to the Rembrandts. Louanne put some lines on paper. Then they trotted downstairs again, to the members’ lounge. From there they went to the trustees’ rooms and from there slipped down an out-of-the-way staircase to the basement and then farther, to the basement of the basement. There stood a dozen lockers, a few closed and padlocked, the rest ajar.

She helped him off with his backpack as if it were an overcoat and she a maid, a maid in a blue denim shirtwaist. He’d never before seen her in a dress. Francis unzipped the pack. Louanne withdrew the item without removing its bubble wrap. Francis slid it gently into a locker and closed the door.

Louanne took a padlock from her pocket, slipped it through matched metal loops, snapped it shut. She offered him the key on her palm. He shook his head. Her fingers closed over it.

Later, he figured, she’d swallow the key. She’d probably been practicing the maneuver. No matter: the painting would escape from captivity, in ten years or maybe fifteen — whenever a committee of janitors determined that the locker was abandoned. The padlock would be forced open, the locker’s secret brought to the director. A mild excitement would flutter the art world. Somebody would judge the painting authentic; somebody else would declare it an anonymous donation; the curious manner of its donation would be remarked. It would be hung on the wall of a numbered room. But first it would be displayed in an exhibition of recent acquisitions. He’d mail her an invitation and a round-trip plane ticket.

Following the girl up one stairway and the next, stopping for breath on each skimpy landing, he acknowledged to himself that Louanne might by then have vanished into a dark corner of Moscow, he into the blinding fluorescence of a nursing home. “ Ars longa ,” he muttered.

She turned her head. “Just a few more steps,” she assured him.

February 5

Dear Ms. Jenkins,

Josephine Salter has informed me that Caldicott Academy will not grant an extension for her Jan Term paper until you receive a request from me. Consider this that request. Of course Josephine could not meet the deadline; there was an upheaval in her family due to her stepmother’s unexpected return on January 31 after a two-month absence. You probably know, too, as does most of the town, that her father greeted his wife’s homecoming by throwing crockery at the wall and pouring Scotch into the family’s aged computer. Josie and young Oliver, whom the family calls Tollie, were more welcoming.

Let me say, for whatever it’s worth, that Josie was an asset to Forget Me Not during January — the customers miss her respectful presence and I miss her height. Standing on only a telephone book she could reach bibelots from my highest shelf. She seems to have learned something about antiques, too. Nevertheless, I continue to think that Jan Term is Caldicott Academy’s devious method of giving teachers an extra month’s paid vacation and in the process driving parents frantic with worry. The fifteen-year-old girls who volunteer at shelters, veterinary establishments, ethnic restaurants, and Central American villages are at risk for TB, psittacosis, salmonella, seduction, kidnapping, and deep boredom. Josie, working at my store, at least avoided the first five.