The Imperial Wife (2 page)

There I stood before that slumping, bearded reporter, a young man wearing a T-shirt that superimposed the phrase
RAW BROOKLYN
over a picture of a bleeding steak. He seemed shocked by his modest surroundings, as if he had trekked all the way uptown for a subject more identifiably ethnic, someone glitzier, out of a New Russian reality show. He was clearly expecting gold fountains, jeweled tubs, bedsteads lined with Swarovski crystal, a balcony onto Central Park.

“Is this your primary residence then?” He looked confused as he scanned our galley kitchen with its pans dangling on hooks above the stove, our bathroom with its chipped black-and-white tile, our walls cluttered with photographs, posters, and the odd expensive gift from clients, our mid-century reproductions and flea market finds. He kept checking his phone as if to make sure he had the right address.
Why am I interviewing this lady again?
I saw it in his eyes.

“I'm just a simple girl from Moscow,” I explained, but then it occurred to me that I could be misquoted into a version of all the other insufferable “somebodies” in these pages (“I am so used to having a trainer that the machines daunt me. It's as though my whole morning is devoted to trying to work out how to program the StairMaster”). I started again.

The real secret to being the best specialist in an auction house is understanding the psychology of your clients, I told him. You have to know how to entice reluctant bidders to get into the game, intuit who says he wants privacy but doesn't mean it, whose privacy is so crucial that his very life depends on it. It's a skill divorced from art expertise. Your job as a specialist is to know without being told, to penetrate the brains of busy people and extract their deepest desires.

I watched him take notes between sips of black coffee, enjoying the texture of the words on my tongue. When my husband came home, the reporter practically fell on him, insisted on watching him type some sentences on a computer. From the fascinated way the guy skimmed Carl's books and notebooks, it seemed like he was a frustrated writer who would have preferred to do the feature on Carl, not me. And who could blame him? Who cared about a Russian art specialist when there was a best-selling writer in the house? The reporter asked many questions about Carl's “process,” then moved on to America's strained relationship with Russia, grilled him on whether the next Cold War was brewing.

“Why don't you talk a bit more with my wife? Isn't she the subject of your profile?” Carl asked him, pulling apart a nectarine.

The reporter was so pushy about wanting to peruse a marked-up draft of my husband's manuscript of
Young Catherine,
that it was Carl who finally had to kick him out. We were both relieved when he was gone.

“Asshole,” Carl said, disappearing into the alcove that we had turned into his office.

“Just give me some good news, please,” I say to Regan now. “I need it.”

A coven of assistants and interns gaggle, a whole group of recent college graduates I can't tell apart. Working at Worthington's is like being at a place like Smith College in the 1950s, all that hair and cashmere and hyacinth scent and girls fantasizing for their true lives to begin. Regan was such a relief because she didn't fit this profile. I liked her aggressive resilience, her Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures, the tattoos she didn't bother to hide, her unconventional style: a blazer over a 1950s-style dress, oversized costume clips in her ears, her hair swept into a French twist. Why did I need another competitive oligarch's daughter or fragile flower working for me? At a place like Worthington's, with the kind of clients we work with, you need someone on your side.

Regan can't hide her grin. “Natasha at the Hermitage called. Guess what they're busy authenticating? The Order … wait for it … that belonged to Catherine the Great. The consignor says it's ours if we want it.”

I can't help myself: “Holy shit.”

“Can you believe it? I can't believe it,” Regan says.

“Can we get it into the catalogue?”

Regan squints, a grimace of disapproval. “She says authenticity would be contingent on this one Catherine historian. He's famously slow with his written evaluations. But he's cautiously optimistic.”

“I think we have enough for now. Let's move forward.” I lower my voice. “We might not have another opportunity. You know the situation.”

“Yeah, but won't it take some time? What kind of assurances can we make?”

I talk it over with Regan, calculating what we'd need to do—photograph, draw up copy, get it shipped here in time for the preview. “But it looks pretty much okay to Natasha, doesn't it?”

“She counted the stones with the old weight and cut and compared it to the court records.”

“And the box?”

“They think it's original. Their gut impression is it's right. But this guy is the final word on Catherine relics.” Regan eyes me skeptically.

“Great. Let's do it. It's our top star. It's huge.”

“Really? Are you sure? We've got the Goncharova.”

“Are you kidding? This is much better. This is also a good news story.” I ignore Regan's caution. It's a moment every specialist dreams of, a moment that occurs only once or twice in a career. We're all archive rats who dream of uniting a work of art with its provenance and this is one hell of a provenance because it belonged to Her. I felt it when I first laid eyes on a digital image of the medal, this radiating milky heat, as if Catherine herself were sending me a private message across the ocean. So her Order exists after all, not buried with the royal dead as the research implied. I perform a little dance on my toes.

One of the girls unearths a lukewarm bottle of prosecco from her desk, another offers to fetch Marjorie, but the panicked face of Mr. Reed William Brooks peers out from the square window of the viewing room.

“Uh-oh,” I say. “Better get back in there.”

There's a round of protests from the girls.
It's practically the weekend!
Even Regan says, “Come on, how often does this happen?”

“You know what? We should celebrate with real champagne. Where's the one Medovsky sent over?” I'll bring Mr. Brooks a glass too, it's the least I can do. I give him a signal to wait just one tiny moment.

While the foil is unpeeled, while one of the ladies struggles with dislodging the cork, pointing it toward the books and away from the canvases and sculptures, I call Carl again.

His phone rings and rings, his voice mail once more assuring me that he will return my call. I leave him a message to meet me and my parents at a restaurant in the neighborhood.

A few of the girls are arranged around desks like rose petals, heels hooked around the legs of chairs. The last of the chocolates are consumed. A knock, now loud and insistent, is coming from the direction of the viewing room. The champagne is poured into plastic cups, warm and overflowing with foam.

Before returning to one of the many clients who always seems to need me, before leaving the girls with their cardigans, their pearl earrings, their diamond engagement rings, among whom I will never, ever belong, I quickly drain my glass and grab the cell phone. In case Carl calls me back sooner than I expect him to.

*   *   *

“It looks like it's Catherine the Great's. Ekaterina Velikaia.” As the sparkling water is being poured, I'm wondering if I hadn't been hasty arranging the foursome in a spontaneous spurt of pride. My parents are not restaurant people, have never grown comfortable with fussy service and the constricted nature of a meal among music and noise. My mother is wiping a perfectly clean knife on her napkin while my father pushes away the bread basket and asks for raw vegetables to dip in olive oil.

The lighting is too dark, so they're squinting at the picture of the Order, passing it from one to the other. As usual, I fixate on their approval, their excitement. I've never understood why I still need them to be impressed with me, as though in order to repay them the immigration freight of passage, I had to prove my successes justified their decision to uproot us to America. For as long as I can remember, from grade school to my marriage to my job, I've been repeating ever-escalating versions of “Look, Ma, look, Pa, look what I've done!”

“And what is this I'm looking at?” my mother asks.

“An order. You know, like a medal she'd wear.”

“Catherine the Great wore this?”

“Peter the Great established this honor for women marrying into the royal family or as gratitude for some great accomplishment. I think his wife got the first one. Catherine got hers when she committed to marrying Peter's grandson. There aren't many of them around, much less one that has been proven to be Catherine the Great's.”

“It looks like an ordinary necklace.”

“How can you say that? Look at that sash of scarlet moiré, the silver star encrusted with diamonds.”

“And people actually believe this trinket was really Catherine the Great's? Americans are so gullible,” my mother persists, fully enjoying herself.

“Are you ready to order?” the server says.

“We're waiting for someone.” I turn back to my parents.

My father is the mediator as usual. He has finished reading my profile in the paper. “Your mother is joking. We are very happy. This means your auction will be good, yes? You were worried.”

My father is spreading butter on a roll. He hands it to my mother. For himself, he dunks a carrot in oil and bites off a chunk. Olive oil and protein and a regimented eating schedule are his secrets of eternal youth. I like seeing them together, the way my father takes care of my mother, the tiny acts of making sure she is lacking for nothing.

“Well, of course we're happy for you,” she says, taking the bread as if challenging the idea that eternal youth, if it means forgoing rolls and cookies, is not worth it. Her fingers are a pianist's, an eagle's. “I just don't know why anyone in their right mind would pay millions for this thing. Are you sure it's not a fake? Did they say it was definitely hers or did someone just make it in their basement? But either way, it is very nice that you can finally show that Kudrina a thing or two. She is very annoying on television, always showing off how she is the only Russian expert in this country. As if my boopchik doesn't even exist.”

Why must my mother also bring up Nadia Kudrina? But I work very hard to flash an insouciant smile, then fold away the digital scan in my tote. Carl walks in. He is wearing an eye-popping coral button-down that rarely makes it out of his closet, his blond hair still wet from a shower. His breath is unhurried.

“You're always late,” is on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow it. Better to be encouraging, praise the victories, not the shortcomings. Four years of marriage have taught me this. “Nice shirt,” I say instead.

“Thanks.” He kisses my parents hello, then me. He smells of the shampoo he favors, a barklike lemongrass. I still can't believe a Jewish girl like me married someone this light-haired, this at ease with the world's accommodation of him. The servers flap about him like butterflies.

“Kak dela?”
he asks, unfurling his napkin. The question, in his charming secondhand Russian, seems to be directed at all of us at once. My mother beams. In the end I wonder if this isn't my greatest success in their eyes. Not my job, my education, my apartment. But to have married someone this American, this effortlessly charming.

“You heard about Tanya's great coup?” my father asks.

“Papa, let's order first, okay?” I flag down the server. My mother and I decide what healthy dish my father will order, and settle on the poached trout.

“Coup?” Carl turns his calm, almost hazel eyes to me.

“The
Financial Times
came out. Hey, it's not as horrible as we thought it would be. Isn't that great?”

“Oh, well, that's good, isn't it?”

I pass him the newspaper. I'm not ready to tell him about the Order after all. This is Catherine the Great we're talking about and there's still this tension around us after the book. When something awkward and unsayable enters a marriage, it plants its feet right in the middle, folds its arms and refuses to budge. Our voices are still unnatural in each other's presence. Too high, too friendly, too easygoing.

I imagined the restaurant would eventually turn bustling and jammed with people's voices, but other than a single couple tucked into the back near the kitchen, we occupy the only other table in the dining room. There are all these hopeful pale blue candles flickering on empty tables, illuminating decapitated heads of hydrangeas. My every word is magnified.

“But what is really exciting is the auction,” my father says. “Why aren't you telling him?”

Carl finishes chewing. Unlike us, he observes strict protocols of mealtime decorum. “That's great! Did the Burliuk come in?”

“The Burliuk was a fake.” I make way for my salad. The plate drops before me with a ceramic thud, a gnarled mess of arugula. “But we did get validation of something else from the Hermitage's curator of eighteenth-century Russian decorative arts.”

“Ekaterina Velikaia! Just like your book!” my father proudly interrupts. “Wasn't she wearing it on your cover, Carl? This is romantic coincidence, yes, Vera? They are both … how we say it? Catherine-heads?”

“Romantic,” my mother repeats, her eyes more observant. I can tell she is worried. She knows I don't summon them from New Jersey to eat at restaurants on random Friday nights. But I'm continuing to smile, to ride the swell of celebration.

A mother and son walk in, and are seated near us. A family of four is right behind them. Now the door is revolving, voices pervading the empty air. The weight of my choices lightens.

“Oh, yeah? What'd you get in?” Carl asks. His interest is so sincere, so well-meaning.