Unbecoming (9 page)

“No,” Grace lied.

“Well, if you want a truly rigorous academic environment, there is no reason you shouldn’t apply to”—she moved the pile of glossy brochures at her feet into her lap—“Vassar,” she said, pulling the top one open to display the inside as if it were a children’s picture book. “Jane Fonda went to Vassar.”

Grace shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. She felt Riley slipping away with every word of this conversation. “There’s probably no time, anyway.”

Mrs. Busche held up another catalog. “New York University,” she said. On the cover, a frowning boy with dark poufy hair touched a yellow-tipped paintbrush to a canvas taller than he was. “They have an excellent art department as well,” she said. “And all those museums.”

Grace could not imagine Riley coming to visit her in the nowhere wilds of the Northeast, but she could imagine him coming to New York City. Yes, Riley would come to her, and they would go to museums and art galleries together, and she would be able to teach
him
things, and she would hardly have to come home at all. And the feeling, which she had begun to think of as a secret disease, something progressive and debilitating, would wither, all those miles away. Maybe Riley would want to come too; maybe he would transfer or something. She would become one of those art people, whoever they were, and he an artist. The math was so obvious she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. Of course.

“Woo!” Mrs. Busche said. “Look at you! Won’t that be something?”

 • • • 

Riley made her case for her. “She’s too smart for Garland,” he said to Grace’s parents, sitting on their couch and shaking his head. He looked at them one at a time. “
I
want better for her.”

What could they say? This little chat had been a show. She didn’t expect their support, any kind of it.

Grace’s numbers were very good, but she had to invent her extracurriculars. She wrote an essay about overcoming her hillbilly upbringing, bogus Appalachian minstrelsy cloaked in upmarket vocabulary. NYU offered her a partial scholarship and suggested she borrow the rest, which turned out to be simpler than getting a library card. She and Riley gloated over her acceptance, but their peers were skeptical, particularly the girls. At the graduation parties, they held their red plastic cups in one hand and worried their promise rings with the other. She was leaving Riley here?
Without
her? Grace told herself they were just insecure and immature, tying themselves to Garland with their flimsy romances, to their boyfriends with diamond-dust rings from Palmer Family Jewelry & Plaques.

“Let’s get married,” Riley said the morning of her graduation.

“Yes,” she said.

“Now,” he said.

She would turn eighteen in two weeks. “It’s legal on my birthday,” she said.

“I should give you a ring,” he said. “Come on, let’s go buy a ring. I have eighty bucks.” He laughed. “It might have to be a mood ring.”

“Wait,” she said. “Your mom would be crushed. We can’t do it without them. It would be a slap in the face. They’ll think I’m pregnant.”

“You and my mom,” he groaned.

“Then we’d have to keep it a secret,” she said. “From everyone.”

“We know how to do that,” he said, kissing her collarbone.

“And we’ll have the big thing later, like she wants.”

“I love you so much,” he said.

“They’ll put it in the paper though. They run the marriages with the legal notices.”

“So we go somewhere else, some other nowhere a few hours from this one.”

On Grace’s eighteenth birthday, Riley drove them to the Klumpton County courthouse, three hours away. They didn’t know anyone in Klumpton County. They found witnesses among the people waiting for the DMV. Riley started to cry when Grace said “I do,” and then she began to cry at the sight of his crying. Afterward, they split a fifth of Old No. 8 in the car and reclined their seats back, hands clasped and staring at each other, overcome with the weight of their love.

III

Paris

6

O
n Sunday morning, Grace lay in bed and listened to Mme Freindametz and her daughter, who came every Sunday to do her laundry, bickering in the kitchen about how long you could leave eggs out on the counter.

Grace’s mother and the twins would go to mass this morning. Her mother wasn’t even Catholic, but since Riley’s arrest, she had taken to going to the Grahams’ church from time to time, and she liked to mention this in her occasional e-mails to Grace. She couldn’t have known how these mentions of Mrs. Graham and occasionally Dr. Graham—how they’d looked, what brief politenesses they’d exchanged, if Mrs. Graham seemed to have a new purse—pained Grace. They cut her right across the heel. Grace knew her mother wouldn’t bring them up
just
to hurt her (although those sightings of the Grahams gave her mother a nasty kind of satisfaction, Grace was sure), but only because she was sure her mother couldn’t possibly understand how much Grace loved the Grahams.

If Grace’s mother took the twins to mass this morning, they might see Riley there. Grace wondered if the twins would recognize him on their own, or if their mother would point him out. Riley had almost never come over to their house. He’d wanted to be there about as much as Grace had. The twins were thirteen now, about to start eighth grade. Grace didn’t even know what they looked like. She still pictured them ten years old. Her mother said they asked about Grace, but she didn’t believe it. What would they ask? They had hardly known her.

Grace hadn’t left the house since she’d gotten home on Friday night, but the boys had been out of prison for almost two days, and she had heard nothing.

I’m coming
, Riley had said back then.
I promise.

Unlike Grace, Riley had always kept his promises.

This was not just Sunday in Garland, though. It was Sunday in Paris too, and on Sundays Grace went to the flea market. This was the life she had left for, the life she was so desperate to keep, and here she was lying in bed like an invalid, as if this crudely stitched patchwork of hers were a quilt she could clutch and hide under. No. She pulled back her blanket and got her feet on the floor.

 • • • 

The Marché aux Puces was perhaps the only flea market in the world where a six-thousand-euro Louis XIV love seat sat outside on the sidewalk. Today the sky was overcast and the whole neighborhood was ghostly, almost no one there but the proprietors of the glass-walled rooms and their dogs. In August, Paris left.

The treasures in the glass rooms always seemed recklessly lavish: Chandeliers carelessly dripped crystals; gilded chairs reclined with legs splayed open, their deep seats exposed. Dogs ran up and down the aisles yapping to each other or snored lazily on their exceptional beds. In one three-sided room, a dachshund curled into a doughnut on a red plush pillow shaped like a pair of sunglasses, R
AY-
B
AN
embroidered across the surface. Across the way, a bichon frise dozed on a miniature chaise longue with claw feet.

Grace wandered to the end of the row and turned in to the street market. She combed the tables of the open-air stalls, turning away when the dust flew up, waiting for the glimmer of recognition that meant she’d spotted something of value. The moment of detection produced a high, a fizz of pleasure in her veins and in her ears because she had seen what no one else had seen, had known what no one else had known. At Clignancourt, she knew she was flattering herself; the stalls were so overflowing with treasure that treasure was common. This flea market was a stocked pond. When Grace found something a little damaged, she would repair it, lovingly, to sell. The money helped, but the thrill was in the spotting. It was how she imagined other people must feel when, from afar, they recognized a long-lost friend.

Grace ran her hands down the arms of a wheel-back chair missing one leg, a forgotten amputee from a dispersed estate. Her fingers came away with a faint green mildew that smelled like a cave. Her eyes roved over old jars, suitcases, juice glasses, rhinestone jewelry, and cardboard boxes full of wooden coffee grinders. She watched as a very tall man in a camel hair coat strode up to the coffee grinders as though he’d been waiting all week to visit them. He dropped to a low squat, pulled a bag of coffee beans from his coat pocket, and dropped a few beans into each grinder, pushing and pulling the handles, holding the wooden boxes up to his ear to listen. He didn’t buy any, and the stall’s proprietress cursed at him. He shrugged. “No good,” he told her.

Grace was looking through a mountain of old hairbrushes when she saw a curiously shimmering box hiding behind some wooden shoe trees. Its lacquer was roughed up, the corners chipped and showing the wood beneath, but she recognized the soft, warm silver color of the paint. She felt the thrill flick up her spine. This little piece of tack looked like a James Mont cigar box, American, from the 1920s.

“Julie! Find something good?”

Hanna. She strode over, reaching for the silver box only because she saw Grace’s eyes on it. Grace hurried to snatch it up herself.

“Just a china pig,” Grace said, their term for something unimportant but charming, if slightly offensive to taste.

Hanna squinted. There was a good chance that she wouldn’t know what it was. James Mont was an American designer for retro American palates. Still, Grace tried to feign indifference. She didn’t want to get into a bidding war.

“I hate coming on Sundays. Everything good is gone by Saturday noon.”

Not quite. “Better bargains, though.”

“You’d rather paw through the leftovers. I’m only here today because I worked all yesterday. I’m just
loving
this project. It feels so endless and intricate, almost like building something from scratch.” She cocked her head up the street. “Would you like to get lunch? I’d like to have an omelet and rest my eyes before I do the rest of the market.”

Grace asked the proprietor for a price on the box. He knew her and said thirty, knowing she wouldn’t pay that much. She got the box for twenty-two, but still Hanna whistled. Grace was pleased. Hanna had no idea.

 • • • 

Hanna used her knife to cut her plain omelet into a dozen narrow rows. One by one, she rolled each section of egg around her fork. Between bites, she set down her fork at the ten o’clock position and took two sips of water. Grace had seen this all before.

“So what is it?” Hanna asked her.

“James Mont,” Grace said, relishing her small victory. “Turkish American, 1920s to 1950s.
Orientaliste
, shiny case goods, lots of velvet.”

“I’ve never heard of him.” She cast a dubious eye at Grace’s tote bag.

“He was the decorator for the American Mafia. And he assaulted some poor girl, another designer, and went to prison for years. When he came out, people loved him more than ever.”

“If only that were how it worked for the rest of us,” Hanna said. “The rich and famous can put prison on their résumés.”

Grace flushed at
the rest of us
, but when she looked up, Hanna’s mouth was pressed into an inward smile. Hanna had meant herself.

“You?” Grace asked her. “Do you mean that you—”

“Unlicensed reproduction,” Hanna said. “Fraud. A long time ago, in Copenhagen.”

“You forged antiques?”

“You don’t think I could do it?”

“I have no doubt.” She thought of Hanna’s fastidious sourcing, her obsession with glues and lacquers that were not anachronistic.
You’re not going to tear the space-time continuum
, Grace had teased her.

“I had a gift,” Hanna said with a shrug. “But I misjudged a client. I have better eyes for art than for people.”

Grace imagined Riley sitting on his bed, paging through a college course catalog, his knee bobbing. She imagined him looking through his drawers for photos of them, of her, that had long been removed. She kept her eyes down on her soup bowl. “When you got out of prison, how much did you start your life over? I mean, how much did you try to return to, and how much did you have to, or want to—”

“Start fresh?” Hanna said with distaste.

“I understand if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Other people are the ones who don’t want to talk about it,” Hanna said, pursing her lips. “Well, I had to find something else I could do. And restoration, as you know, is not so far from forgery.” She smiled. “Except the work is half done for you.”

“Why did you come here?”

“To Paris? I’m not allowed in Denmark, and no one would hire me there even if I were. Not now. But France has been very forgiving. Of course, I should be somewhere much better than Zanuso, but—” She shrugged.

“You should,” Grace agreed.

“And so should you.”

Grace was pleased by the compliment even as she felt the prickle of implication. She might need to give Hanna more of a story, but only if she asked. To bring it up before then would only sharpen Hanna’s suspicions, whatever they were.

“How long were you in prison?” Grace asked.

“Almost four years.”

“Four? For antiques forgery?”

“No,” Hanna said. “For that, only two months. The rest was for assault. The matters got tangled up, legally.”

“What did you
do
?” Grace hadn’t meant to say it like that, and she didn’t really expect Hanna to answer her. But she could see that Hanna was thinking about the question and choosing her words, which Grace had never seen her do before. Hanna’s words always sprang neatly from her mouth as complete and orderly thoughts. Whatever Hanna was about to tell her was important, Grace knew, and she tried to keep her face relaxed.
I certainly won’t judge you
, she wanted to say, but that might have far overshot the mark.

“What was it?” Grace pushed.

Hanna tore off a crust of bread and chewed it at her. “You can look it up,” she said. “There’s no secret.” She cracked her neck from side to side.