Kate Christensen - The Great Man

Maxine stood at the door of the loft, waiting for her. “Well, hello,” she said with her usual brusqueness. “Let’s sit at the kitchen table.” She stumped over to the table. Abigail followed her and parked Ethan on a chair. He was gently shrieking from the unpleasantness of being moved around from place to place.

“I’m having a bit of whiskey,” Maxine announced. She took down two glasses and poured a shot into each. She set one glass in front of Abigail. Abigail looked at it. This was unusual. Normally, Maxine failed to offer anything to eat or drink, knowing that if her sister-in-law wanted something, she would just get it herself.

Abigail took a tentative draught, as the nineteenth-century novelists called it, a word Abigail had always loved. She put her other hand over Ethan’s, which was trembling on the edge of the table. He had gone abruptly quiet. Her baby, her little bird. His eyes were as blank and his face as pure as those classical Greek sculptures of young men. She wondered for the gazillionth time what went on in there. The whiskey tasted like medicine she needed. “So,” she said, “what is all of this about?”

“It’s about the painting called Helena, ” said Maxine.

“ Helena, ” said Abigail. “One of Oscar’s best paintings.”

“Yes, except for the fact that Oscar didn’t paint it.”

“Of course he painted it,” said Abigail. “What are you talking about?”

“I made a bet with him. I won and he lost. It was during a big argument we were having in a booth in the Washington Square Diner in 1978. Oscar took a catsup packet and a thing of saltines and squooshed them out onto the tabletop and said he thought that mess was as good as the average abstract painting. I told him he was full of shit. The upshot is that I ended up betting him a thousand dollars that I could paint a painting in his style, a portrait of a lady, and he couldn’t paint one in mine. To prove that it was worthy, it had to be accepted into the other one’s next show.”

Abigail laughed. “So what happened?”

“Oscar painted a train wreck that my dealer at the time rejected in no uncertain terms, and I painted Helena. It went in his next show, paired with Mercy, since his dealer thought they were a matched set. Claire’s friend Lila Scofield bought both paintings and had them reframed, and the framer noticed my mark on the back of Helena. He asked Lila about it. Lila recognized it and called me to ask me what my signature was doing on Oscar’s painting, and foolishly I told her the whole story, although I could have lied. She was upset, understandably, but she decided not to tell, to keep the painting and keep her mouth shut. We agreed that to do otherwise would just be silly, but I did offer to reimburse her for the damned thing. She refused, and that’s the last either one of us has said about it in all these years, at least I thought so, but now it turns out she told Claire.”

Abigail rubbed both hands over her face. “Why are they coming here?”

“When these biographers started poking around, I wrote a note to Lila and asked her to give me a call. I don’t want her spilling any beans. But Claire called me instead, which was unpleasant in the extreme. Goddamn it, I cannot stand that woman.” Maxine fished her cigarettes from her pocket and lit one.

“Well, I can’t say I’m too shocked or upset by this,” said Abigail. “I don’t much care one way or the other, actually. Oscar painted enough other paintings, seems like he can spare one.”

“Well, don’t tell anybody.”

“Why exactly?” Abigail said, puzzled. “I would think you would want it to get out!”

“I would,” said Maxine, “but Oscar was my little brother, and when it comes right down to it, I can’t.”

The two women looked at each other without blinking for a moment, Maxine with her eyes bulging a little, Abigail quizzical.

“Those biographers can’t find out about it, either,” Maxine went on. “Can you imagine the field day? I don’t want to give either of them the satisfaction.”

Abigail said with her eyebrows knit, “But what about the truth? For the sake of art history?”

“Does it really matter?” Maxine asked. “Who did what, who painted what. That painting is pretty damn good. Me, Oscar, it’s the same genes, same last name. It says Feldman on it.”

“It says Oscar on it.”

“I can’t damage Oscar’s reputation like that.”

Abigail scratched her cheek, squinting, picturing Helena, the portrait of a naked, pale thoroughbred of a girl in front of a bare white wall, floating in an incongruously ornate frame in the long gilt-edged museum salon where the holy hush of Art permeated the air like incense. And next to it, its sister painting, Mercy, depicting a black woman with a wide red mouth, head thrown back, singing, also naked. Both women’s skin tones were unusual colors for Oscar, azure shadows, touches of electric mauves and greens and hot pinks, even though one woman was clearly black, the other just as clearly white. The two were a matched set, a diptych. Or so she had always thought….

“This is Helena we’re talking about here,” she said. “A famous painting, hanging in the Met, and you painted it! What could be the harm to Oscar’s reputation? Mercy hangs right next to Helena, and Oscar did paint that, am I right?”

“As far as I know,” said Maxine, “but I wouldn’t rule anything out.”

“Well then, I would think everyone would love finding out about that. It would create a lot of attention for you both.”

“Maybe,” said Maxine, “but the point is—” She stopped and took a drag of her cigarette and looked away from Abigail. “I made a promise to Oscar before he died. Not on his deathbed literally, but pretty near it. His death couch, maybe.”

“What exactly did he make you promise?”

“To keep this a secret.”

“Oh,” said Abigail. “Then that explains it.”

“You backed me into a corner,” said Maxine. “I was going to try to come off as noble and altruistic, but your argument just makes too much damn sense for me to keep this up.”

“You know, he wouldn’t know a thing,” said Abigail.

“Abigail! He begged me. Said it was all he wanted from me. He couldn’t stand to think that it might get out, and in fact he was furious when he found out I’d signed it, secretly. Of course, when Lila discovered the mark, I painted over it before she donated it to the Met, so there was no danger of its being discovered by anyone who didn’t already know.”

“He won’t know a thing,” repeated Abigail. “They can remove the paint and see your signature for themselves. Oscar is gone.”

“Good Lord, you’re a terrible person,” said Maxine approvingly. “I had no idea.”

Abigail took another slug of whiskey. “There might be a lot of things about me you don’t know,” she said then, a courageous sidelong glint in her eye.

“Like what?”

“Like, oh, well,” said Abigail. “Give me some more whiskey, Maxine. I’m not sure I can tell you this, but I think it might be good to tell someone before I go, and you’re all I’ve got.”

“Besides Ethan,” said Maxine, pouring a good shot into Abigail’s glass.

They both turned and looked at Ethan, who was fiddling with the tabletop, staring at the ceiling.

“Hello, Ethan,” said Maxine in a loud, overly enunciated voice. She shared Abigail’s private conviction that he understood every word they said, but, unlike Abigail, she treated him as if he were a little retarded.

Ethan fluttered his hands by his ears.

“All right, Abigail,” said Maxine. “You might as well spit it out; we’re not getting any younger sitting here.”