An Illustrated Death (3 page)

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

M
ONDAY MORNING’S SKY
was as dingy and rumpled as the bed I’d left behind. The September sun would burn through by noon, giving the fall landscape the golden light of a Maxfield Parrish illustration, but my ride out to Springs was gray. On the other hand, who cared? I had been awake since 5 a.m., too excited about Nate Erikson’s books to sleep any longer, and equally worried too about my ability to do them justice. Although I’d attended the Colorado Antiquarian Booksellers Seminar twice and spent the last five years assessing books daily, I had never done a formal appraisal. I made sure that my laptop, my trusted deputy, was in its black canvas case beside me.

Pausing for the red light on Bridgehampton’s main street, it occurred to me that the Eriksons might not have wi-fi. I’d been to sales this far out on Long Island where they couldn’t get a signal for credit card machines. I had an image of myself staying up late every night, confirming book values once I was home.

One more thing to obsess about.

Bianca Erikson was waiting for me on the gravel driveway unsmiling, her arms crossed. Today she was dressed in a navy-striped jersey and expensive slacks, her hair tied back with a navy-and-gold checked scarf. Her prominent nose kept her from being conventionally pretty, but her face was that of a wealthy young duchess.

Was the appraisal off? Was I
late
? I glanced at my dashboard clock, but 9 a.m. was the time we had agreed on.

“Hello,” she called, walking over to my van. The blue “Got Books?” logo on the dented white front door seemed to amuse her. “I wondered if you’d actually come.”

“Why not?”

“Well, most help shows up at
their
own convenience—if they bother showing up at all. You should see the trouble we have getting someone to do the weeding!”

The weeding?
Did she really equate me with a Guatemalan day worker?

“Anyway, the cover story is that you’re here to illustrate my book of children’s poems.”

I grabbed for a part of the sentence I understood. “You write poetry?”

“I’ve had three chapbooks published. Chapbooks are what they call little books of poems.”

Oh, really?
Evidently she had forgotten that I was a book dealer. She didn’t know that my husband was the poet Colin Fitzhugh, so didn’t know that I had spent too many years buried alive under those precious little volumes. One of Colin’s chapbooks,
Voices We Don’t Want to Hear
, had been shortlisted for a National Book Award.

“All I mean is, we need an explanation for my mother as to why you’re here. She’d be upset if she knew anyone was touching my father’s precious books. She wants the studio left exactly as it was when he was alive.”

“Who do the books belong to now?”

It seemed a reasonable question, but Bianca looked as if I’d caught her cheating at golf. “You have to understand something if this is going to work. My mother hasn’t been herself for a while. She’s been worse since it happened, so it’s easier if she doesn’t know about you. When we walk down to my cottage, we’ll be blocked by trees and can go into the studio through the back door. Oh, good—you’ve brought a professional-looking bag.”

We both looked at my black laptop case, and I remembered my earlier fears. “Is there wi-fi?”

“Are you kidding? We’re probably providing Internet for all of Springs. My brother Puck had a very strong signal installed.”

Puck?
Another escapee from Stratford-upon-Avon
.

I followed Bianca down a grassy path. I should have known there would be a catch. Things were never straightforward for people like me. The only contest I had ever won, writing an essay on forest fire prevention, was because I was the only entrant. Did I really want to be here under false pretenses? “What about the rest of the family? Do they know why I’m here?” I asked.

Now she looked as if I had just rammed her with my shopping cart. “Of course. You met Claude. This was a group decision, except for Mama. We’ll probably have to remind her who you are every day.”

Why would I be seeing Mama every day?

When we got closer to one of the white chalets, Bianca said, “My father had these built for us so we would never leave. No one did, except for my sister who’s out of the picture. Speaking of pictures, don’t touch any of the paintings!”

I felt like I was on a school trip. “What if I want to touch up a few of them during my lunch hour?”

She didn’t get the joke. “You won’t have time.”

“The help doesn’t get lunch?”

Now she did smile
.
“I mean, you’ll be eating with us.”

“That’s okay, you don’t have to feed me.”

“No, you
have
to be there, you’re my collaborator. I’ve already told Mama about you, she’ll be suspicious if you don’t eat with us.”

I glanced at my work clothes: jeans and a faded red Cornell sweatshirt from my younger daughter, Hannah. I had planned to escape back to Sunrise Highway and relax with a book and a strawberry shake. If I‘d known I’d be trading bon mots with the Eriksons, I’d have listened to
Morning Edition
.

Finally we were outside Nate Erikson’s studio, a two-story building with the same silvery shingles as those on the house. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it on Saturday, then realized that my view had been blocked by the garage. We went around to the back door, which was painted the deep green of the fir trees on the property behind us. Strips of paint had turned brittle and started to pull away, and I resisted the urge to reach out and rip one off completely.

Bianca twisted a key into the lock, then handed it to me. “Don’t lose it.”

“Why don’t you keep it?”

“No. If I need to get in there’s a key in the pantry. Anyone can use it—not that anyone does. Growing up we were never allowed inside the studio.” She gave the door a small push. “I’ll come get you at one.”

And I would be meeting Nate Erikson’s family.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

I
STEPPED OVER
the threshold, into the studio of one of America’s best-loved illustrators. There should have been organ music, a beam of heavenly light illuminating the wooden floor. At the least, a mounted camera to make sure I didn’t steal anything. I breathed in the dry smell of summer attics as I patted the wall for a light switch, relieved that there was no scent of damp or mildew. Mildew is a death sentence for books.

When I flipped a toggle, lights came on everywhere, but were strongest over the worktable. Its rough wooden surface held coffee cans jammed with brushes and half-used tubes of paint in jagged rows. Serious-looking magnifying glasses had their own container. There was even, eerily, a white china coffee cup, matching breakfast plate, and neatly folded napkin still in place. Like Miss Haversham’s parlor, waiting for someone who would never come back to use it.

Automatically, I glanced toward the door. When no ghostly hand opened it, I set my case gingerly on the table, feeling like I was in a museum display. It seemed sacrilegious to sit in Nate’s metal, high-backed chair, and I half expected a guard to rush over and order me out. But it was the only seat in the work area.

The wall behind me, which faced south, was made of large windows, now covered by black drapes. The long wall opposite held tall art bins with each canvas in its own stall like a Thoroughbred pony. Those paintings had to be worth a fortune. Norman Rockwell’s cover painting for the
Saturday Evening Post
,
Breaking Home Ties
, had sold at auction in 2006 for over fifteen million dollars.

If the family needed money, why hadn’t they sold a couple of these? Then I remembered the widow’s insistence on leaving everything just as it was.

At the far end of the room were stairs to a loft that circled the perimeter of the studio. The opposite side held a fireplace and several faded chairs. Nearby were bookcases holding plumed hats, golden crowns, pith helmets, and other accessories needed for historic verisimilitude. Gowns, velvet waistcoats, and army garb were squeezed indiscriminately together on a long metal clothes rack. When Nate Erikson started illustrating, the Internet was not around for reference.

All I needed now were the books.

They had to be up in the loft. I climbed the stairs and stepped into a cloud of dust motes sparkling in the light. But at least there were hundreds of books here, housed in tall shelves facing each other. From downstairs all you could see were the bookcases’ wooden backs.

I walked up and down, my fingers gently touching spines, but no
Finger-Spitzengefuhl
kicked in to guide me. I did see that they were shelved in chronological order and decided to begin with Nate Erikson’s earliest work. I pulled out as many books as I could carry and brought them to the table downstairs. Next I set up my laptop. When my e-mail loaded instantly, I realized that the signal was strong indeed.

Nate had begun his career in the time-honored way by accepting any assignment he was offered, starting with a short-lived series about a boy explorer in the Arctic, a collection of dog stories, and two minor novels of Zane Grey
.
Although the stories were forgettable, these books had been published in small print runs before Nate Erikson was famous, making them more valuable than his later best sellers. The illustrations were vividly colored, but had an impressionistic quality not typical of his later work. I wondered when his style had changed.

B
Y LATE MORNING,
I could no longer resist looking at the paintings the illustrations were based on. I informed the imaginary museum guard that looking at them was part of my research, that I was not touching anything I shouldn’t—not really—then went over to the wooden bins and started removing canvases carefully. They weren’t large, perhaps twenty-four inches by thirty-six inches, and spanned Nate’s whole career. I was delighted to see the painting of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea from my storybook, a baby looking wide-eyed over his mother’s shoulder at the Egyptian soldiers as they started to drown.

The next canvas caught on something. I wiggled the edge back and forth, then gave a tug—and was horrified to hear a ripping sound. I had ripped a Nate Erikson canvas! I had destroyed a museum masterpiece. I might as well have gone to the Met and slashed Monet’s
Water Lilies.
No wonder Bianca Erikson had warned me not to touch anything. She had known from looking at me that I was not reliable.

My instinct was to push the picture back into its slot, and pretend that I had never gone near this part of the studio. But I had to see what I had done. I slipped my arm in as far as I could and, with a sinking heart, tried to remove a canvas that had gotten caught on a nail. How much damage had I caused? Would it take everything I earned here for its restoration? Maybe I would be making restitution for the rest of my life.

I finally worked the painting free, and stared at it, confused. It was no book illustration. It was a nude of a young woman with a large black X obliterating her face. Someone had crisscrossed her breasts with a knife as well, leaving hanging triangles. It was one of these flaps that had gotten snagged.

Thank you, Lord.
I had not destroyed a priceless painting. It was hardly a masterpiece and it had already been ruined. Had Nate even painted it? If he had, why would he mutilate his own work? Yet Bianca had told me no one else had been allowed in the studio. I studied the painting more carefully. There was something familiar about the tangled waves of light hair that fell past her shoulders.

Belatedly I realized the hair was just like mine.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

A
KNOCK ON
the studio door brought me out of the Old West. I looked at my watch and saw, surprised, that it was after one.

“Did you think I’d forgotten you?” Bianca said when I pulled back the door. “I got a phone call just as I was leaving that I had to take.”

She had changed her clothes and was wearing tan slacks, a pin-striped cotton blouse, and chunky gold jewelry. Her crinkly red hair had been released from the scarf and was held behind her ears by tortoiseshell combs.

“I brought you a clean shirt in case you wanted to change.” She held out a white waffle-weave cotton sweater with navy and red stripes highlighting the V-neck. It looked like it had been ordered from a Talbots catalog and I couldn’t imagine myself wearing it. That’s the thing about us non-fashionistas. We look as if we’d wear anything. But we won’t.

“I can wear something else tomorrow and meet your family then.”

She took another look at my red sweatshirt with its grinning Cornell bear and shook her head. “No, you’re fine. You’re supposed to be an artist. You should see what some of our other guests used to come to table in.”

Come to table? Was this a meal or a coronation?
“What did Andy Warhol wear?”

“Oh, he never came here. My father thought he would be a bad influence on us. My father was very careful about who we were exposed to. We didn’t even go to school.” She seemed proud of that.

“Isn’t that against the law?”

“Oh, we had tutors. The schools around here were terrible anyway, all Bonacker families.”

Bonacker was the traditional name for the farmers and baymen who had settled Springs back in the 1600s and 1700s. The fact that names like Miller and King were revered by historical societies, did not seem to impress Bianca. “My father thought school was a waste of time, even college. Vietnam was his art institute.”

O
UTSIDE THE DAY
had already started to perk up, a thin gold line outlining the trees and clouds. After a steamy summer, the cooler air felt wonderful. But as soon as I thought that, I started to feel sweaty. What was I doing, invading this family’s world? Less than three months ago they had suffered a terrible double loss. I couldn’t imagine why they would want to entertain a stranger and wondered if the parents of the dead child would be there.

I followed Bianca up the front stairs into a dark-paneled hall covered with paintings. I recognized Fairfield Porter, Ben Shahn, and other artists and hoped that the family had a good alarm system. Below the artwork were dark brown wicker chairs with flowered cushions and the kind of undistinguished rugs you might see in a hunting lodge. That was what the room reminded me of, I realized, one of those lakeside vacation homes that upstate owners called “camps.”

The hall turned right and opened into a dining room. With its pale blue woodwork and corner cabinets stuffed with silver, the room seemed to belong to a different house. A portrait of a young, light-haired man in a pale blue painter’s smock hung over an impressive brick fireplace. He was smiling so broadly that he seemed ready to burst out of the frame. I realized it was Nate Erikson and my heart squeezed
. I don’t belong here.

At the head of a long cherry table was a woman with a pretty, finely creased face and white hair clipped back with a barrette. Several strands straggled thinly over her midnight blue turtleneck. Her sharp eyes, also blue, followed me all the way to the Windsor chair that Bianca pulled out for me.

“You’re late,” the matriarch, Eve Erikson, announced.

Not exactly the dithering personage Bianca had warned me about, though a dark-skinned woman in a pale green uniform hovered in the shadows behind her. A personal attendant?

Then Eve was gaping at me as if Bianca had brought in Typhoid Mary. “What are
you
doing here? Who invited you here?”

Before I could open my mouth, several people at the table rushed to explain. Bianca prevailed. “Mama, this isn’t— This is my collaborator, Delhi Laine. Remember, she’s here to illustrate my
Good Night
poems.”

Eve squinted at me. “You’re an artist? Where did you study?”

I could sense that everyone at the table was watching, waiting to hear what I would say. But I was my parents’ daughter, unable to lie. “I’m self-taught.”

“No shame in that.” She turned away, dismissing me.

“You’ve already met my brother Claudius—Claude, I mean, and this is his wife, Lynn.” Bianca tipped her head toward the man at the foot of the table. Still standing, I could see that his reddish curly hair had retreated to a fringe above his ears, leaving a considerable dome. In the breast pocket of his wrinkled cotton shirt was a collection of pens and compasses, signaling a draftsman too busy to change clothes for lunch.

Lynn, with her cap of blond hair and pleasant expression, was the kind of woman I would chat with in the supermarket line.

I nodded at them.

“My other brother, Puck.” Puck, across from me, tilted his head in a small salute. With his fair curly hair and wry expression, the name suited him perfectly.

Bianca and I sat down. She was unfolding her white napkin when I became aware of a rhythmic clatter of silverware. I looked over and saw that the young woman beside Puck was tapping the back of her spoon against her knife and looking at Bianca. With her head turned, I saw that her dark hair was pulled back in a long braid, and realized that she reminded me of the Indian women in Santa Fe paintings. From the top of her ear and bisecting her cheek to her chin was the kind of running scar made by stitches.

Puck’s wife?

“Oh, sorry. This is my sister, Rosa.” Bianca’s voice was as flat as the pale mauve tablecloth.

“Hi, Rosa.” I smiled at her.

But she only nodded shyly. Was she mute?

Bianca and Claude bore a strong resemblance to the portrait of Nate, Puck had his mother’s Irish features, but Rosa was hard to place. The red turtleneck she had on gave an unfortunate emphasis to the roll of fat above her stomach.

I was picking up my own napkin when I realized I had forgotten to wash up, because I didn’t usually when I was eating alone. I didn’t even wash fruit before eating. It was only book dust, but I kept my hands in my lap.

A Caesar salad had been carefully arranged at each place setting. But before one fork stabbed one piece of romaine, everyone raised their glass of iced tea and tilted it toward a blue-and-white porcelain urn standing in the center of the table.

“To the best dad ever!”

“Always in our hearts.”

They took a ceremonial sip at the exact same moment, then set down their glasses with a single thud and reached for forks.

Could Nate Erikson’s ashes really be in that jar?

So glad your father could join us.

Then Mama gave a cry of alarm. “We can’t start without Nate!”

Was there another brother? I looked around, but could see no vacant chair.

The uniformed attendant stepped away from the sideboard and placed a consoling hand on Mama’s narrow shoulder. “Now Miss Eve, you know he went to the city today. We’ll save plenty of lunch for him.”

I realized, chilled, that Mama must be talking about her dead husband. But was that really so unusual? It was easy to forget for a moment when someone hadn’t been gone that long.

“Are you married to another artist?” Lynn asked me, smiling as she would have over her grocery cart. “I noticed your unusual wedding band.”

It wasn’t exactly a wedding band, though it was on my left hand, third finger. It was wide and ornately woven, an Art Deco design that Colin and I had found in an antiques shop. Neither of us cared much for conventional rings. Now, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t slide it over my knuckle.

Time for more truth. “We don’t live together right now. He’s an archeologist who travels a lot, he teaches at Stony Brook and writes poetry. We’re still mar—”

I felt Bianca’s arm bang into mine. “What’s his name?”

“Colin Fitzhugh?” I don’t know why it came out as a question.

Her salad fork clattered onto the plate. “You’re married to
Colin Fitzhugh
?”

I turned and our eyes met, hers steel gray with accusation.

Now what had I done?

I glanced at her mother—surely Bianca should know who her collaborator’s husband was. But Mama was absorbed in pushing her salad croutons into an arrangement of eyes, nose, and mouth, creating a Green Man.

Claude came alive at that. “Does he have to patent his archeological finds to keep other people from claiming them?”

“Well, he publishes his findings, but everyone knows which archeologist is working where. You can’t just go in and start digging. He can’t keep his finds anyway. Most countries have preservation acts and they own what you excavate.”

He looked disbelieving. “Then why bother?”

“For the same reason you invent things, sweetie,” Lynn said, rolling her hazel eyes at me.
Men, ya gotta love ’em.
“You want to be the first to make a discovery and get recognition for it.”

“Screw recognition. Show me the money. I’m not inventing stuff for the good of mankind.”

“That’s for sure,” Puck said.

Claude slammed down his fork. “Don’t patronize me, you little weasel. That company in Japan is giving Paper Pusher very serious consideration.”

Paper Pusher?
It sounded like an overworked clerk. “What’s Paper Pusher?”

“Well . . .” He gave me an appraising look, then decided I was too dumb to steal the idea. “The Japanese are far in advance of us in many areas. They have toilets that not only take your temperature, they can analyze your blood sugar.
My
device senses when you are finished and automatically releases five squares of bathroom tissue right into your hand. At a certain content weight, it will give you ten. There’s no having to fish around for a loose end and touch toilet paper that someone else has touched. The Japanese are extremely fastidious.”

“The Japanese are
bad
,” Eve cried, back in the conversation. “Your father hated the Japanese, and so should you.”

“That war’s over, Mama,” Puck said easily. “After they surrendered, Dad didn’t hold a grudge. My grandfather died in the South Pacific, trying to take Chichi-Jima Island when Dad was a baby,” he explained to me in a lower voice. “There may have been torture involved.”

So Nate Erikson’s father had died in World War II and Nate himself had fought in Vietnam. I couldn’t imagine either Claude or Puck holding a gun.

We were finishing our salads when there was a clatter from the archway and a woman pushed a food cart into the room. She had on a white apron over a black turtleneck sweater and pants, and looked to be in her late sixties. The golden braids twisted across her head made her look like a merry hausfrau. They also showed she was no stranger to L’Oreal hair coloring.

When she placed a platter of bluefish and bowls of mashed potatoes and zucchini on the sideboard, my appetite spiked.

I could get used to this.

But Puck looked over at the food and groaned. “Oh, Gretchen, not fish again! Don’t you know how to make anything else?”

“Get a life,” Bianca scolded him. “You aren’t a cute little boy anymore.”

“And you like fish because?”

“It’s good for me.”

The woman turned and looked at him, head cocked. “No dessert for you, Master Puckie.”

It was so unexpected that I started to laugh. “I love bluefish,” I assured her. “Any fish that has a real flavor. Especially with mashed potatoes.”

Puck rolled his eyes at me. “Suck-up.”

And I worried that the conversation would be too sophisticated. That the family would be too bereaved to want to talk.

I felt as if I had been dropped into the middle of a Woody Allen movie,
Annie Hall
or
Radio Days.
I tried to think of a literary analogy, but the best I could do was the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Yet except for the toast to the urn, it seemed to be business as usual. Bianca had mentioned another sister. Perhaps she was the one who had lost her child along with her father. Perhaps the mood was more serious when she was present.

“Thank you, Aunt Gretchen,” Claude called as she left, giving Puck a disgusted shake of his head.

Aunt
Gretchen? Even the servants had pet names. I imagined a legion of gardeners, chauffeurs, housekeepers, and parlor maids eating below the stairs.

O
N THE WAY
out, passing the painting of Nate Erikson over the fireplace, I said to Claude “Is that a self-portrait?”

“No.”

I waited to hear who the artist was, but he just kept on walking.

Outside on the grass, Bianca attacked me. “Why didn’t you
tell
me you were married to Colin Fitzhugh? I just thought you were—” She stopped abruptly and looked over at the oak leaves that had started to turn color.

What could she say? That she had assumed, from my shabby jeans and untamed hair, I was one of the great unwashed, one of the masses born to serve people like her? She must have thought she was in Merrie Olde England.

I took advantage of her misstep. “You said that what happened to your father wasn’t an accident.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Her coral lips were as vivid as they had been before lunch, and I realized there were some lipsticks that didn’t disappear as soon as you put them on. “Did I say that? I guess I did. I just get so frustrated with my family sometimes. Claude especially is ready to move on. He doesn’t seem to realize that when you lose a child you can’t just ‘move on.’ ”

“She was
your
daughter?” I heard how shocked I sounded.

“Morgan. That was her name.” She jerked her head toward the studio and we started walking. “This has been the worst year of my life. First my husband in March, and now this. Oh—shit.” I turned to see what had happened and saw streams of tears running down her pale face. “I’m like a goddamn sprinkler system. Everything sets me off. It’s a wonder I can even get out of bed in the morning.”