Page 54

THIRTY-FIVE

W yatt remains annoyed that Party is still in my apartment, and he’s said he doesn’t want to spend the night there until she’s gone.

Presumably, he sees this as a way to spur me into getting rid of her, but as he’s always pushed for staying at his house, I’m thinking it’s just another thumb on the scale.

When he offers to sleep here tonight, I worry that this is an indication he’s interested in a more serious relationship than I am.

Along with the increasing number of his texts, emails, and calls.

But he’s fun, so I push the concern away.

Unfortunately, he’s beside me when I have another Berthe nightmare.

In this one, she doesn’t look at all like she does in Party or in any of the other paintings I’ve seen of her.

She’s old—which she never was—her hair completely white and wrapped in a bun at the nape of her neck.

She’s tenderly holding a little girl, possibly a granddaughter, and she’s staring out at me with a warm smile.

Soon, I realize she isn’t really there, that I’m looking at a painting.

Then I’m in the painting. I’m the child, which is lovely, and I sink into my grandmother’s soft bosom and snuggle there, peaceful and safe. “Grand-Mère,” I say softly.

“My girl,” she coos. “My sweet baby girl.”

I reach up, pat her wrinkled cheek, and begin to drift off.

“You cannot sleep,” she tells me. “You must find the truth.”

I shake my head drowsily.

“Listen to me.” She takes hold of my shoulders, pulls me away from her warm body.

I’m a little girl, and I’m scared because I don’t understand what my grandmother wants me to do. And because it seems like she’s mad at me.

“You must keep moving forward. It’s your destiny.”

I don’t know what “destiny” means, so I shake my head again.

Her fingers press into my arms. Then they squeeze. It hurts, and I try to yank free. But I can’t move. I’m frozen. I startle awake in a full-body sweat, the sheets wet and cold around me. I throw myself toward the middle of the bed, where it’s dry, bump into Wyatt.

He grumbles and opens his eyes. When he catches sight of my face, he comes completely awake. “Another nightmare about that damn painting? Really, Tamara? You’re covered with sweat, and you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“It wasn’t about Party . It, it was about, uh, a rollercoaster. I was on the top, and it was crashing down all around me. And, and it felt so real.” I look down at my arms to make sure there are no bruises. There aren’t.

He doesn’t touch me or try to comfort me the way he usually does. “Go to sleep,” is all he says.

AT brEAKFAST THE next morning, he says nothing about my dream, which is a relief, although it still looms large to me.

What am I trying to tell myself? What truth do I need to find?

What destiny? What am I supposed to move forward with?

Is this in reference to Berthe or to Damien?

To silence my own questions, I ask another one, “If the judge rules I have to send Party to the Louvre, can I keep it here while you appeal and I contact the museums?”

“Yeah, shouldn’t be a problem. Except we never know what kinds of tricks your cousin might pull.”

“Wouldn’t put anything past him.” I pause as another thought hits me. “If I died, who’d get Party ?”

“Do you seriously believe Damien would kill you to get the painting? He may be a major pain in the ass, but I’m thinking murder is out of his league.”

“I guess,” I admit.

“Don’t worry, Tam.” Wyatt covers my hand with his. “We’ll get him in court.”

I stare into my coffee cup. Both of us know that, as of now, we don’t have enough evidence linking the Bernheims to Party to make this happen.

There appears to be a dearth of credible and available detectives in the Boston area, but Wyatt did find a qualified investigator willing to take the case.

Unfortunately, his hourly rate is four times Nova’s—$300 versus $75—and in all good conscience I can’t hire him while the majority of Wyatt’s invoices remain unpaid.

The search for evidence has stalled because I haven’t had the time or bandwidth to do any searching.

Which I have many good reasons for: work, the hearing, the Berthe dreams, a psychologist’s concern I might be mentally ill.

My own concern I might be mentally ill. But the trial is in just a little over two months, meaning I’m going to have to find both the time and bandwidth if we’re going to win.

“I’ll start checking into the whole gift thing. ”

“I’m sorry this is falling on you,” Wyatt says. “But that would be great.”

If we can confirm that édouard and Berthe exchanged paintings, then we can maintain that nothing would have been officially recorded because they were gifts.

Also if édouard gave his brother paintings.

Or swaps between the other Impressionists.

If I could find something on Party , that would be the best, but even without straightforward proof, if this was common practice, as Nova said, it’s a rebuttal to the questions about provenance and lack of paperwork.

You must find the truth.

I SCOUR THE INTERNET , then take another plunge into books about Berthe, édouard, and the Impressionists.

I’m coming to appreciate how difficult it was to be a female artist back then, how truly exceptional it was for Berthe to be considered an equal by the greatest painters of her day.

And how devastating it would be for her to know that after her death, the acclaim she received vanished from view, that she was essentially forgotten.

Today everyone knows Manet, Degas, Monet, and Renoir, all of whom she exhibited with.

But outside of art historians and Impressionist aficionados, how many know Berthe Morisot?

I spend more time than I should reading about her, and have to keep reminding myself that I’m supposed to be searching for evidence for the trial.

But it’s difficult to find something when you don’t know what you’re seeking, and Berthe’s ambition and perseverance are compelling.

I look over at Party . “How did you pull it off?” I ask Berthe.

“How did you keep going when everyone and everything was trying to stop you?”

Berthe leans against the railing and stares across the water at the unseen riverbank.

No answers there. But I do finally find something that just might help.

It turns out that, at the least, Berthe gave édouard Young Girl with a Parrot , The Artist’s Sister at a Window , The Harbor at Lorient , and The Butterfly Hunt .

édouard gave her, also at the least, Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets , Young Woman in a Round Hat , and Mademoiselle Isabelle Lemonnier .

He gave Gène Portrait of Eugène Manet and Music in the Tuileries Gardens .

There were also many swapped paintings between Berthe, édouard, and Degas, along with Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Sisley, including references to how common these kinds of gifts were, and how they often went unrecorded.

The next day, work is horrendously busy, and I’m late to Wyatt’s for dinner. I rush into the house and see he’s already eating a taco and the guacamole is half gone. “Sorry,” I say. “Hell of a day.”

“I can relate,” he says, and reaches for another taco. “Sit. Eat.”

I sit, but I don’t eat. Instead, I tell him what I discovered. “How cool is that?”

“Very cool,” he says. “Maybe you should consider a career change.”

I pull a face. “Wouldn’t get too carried away. I didn’t find anything on Party .”

“The pervasiveness of the practice is what’s important here. Kind of like—in the states where it’s legal—when the prosecutor introduces testimony in a rape trial from other women the guy raped.”

“So you can use it?”

“Damn straight I can. It’s really helpful.

Just wish we had another piece or two to add to what I’m putting together in answer to Delphine’s discovery interrogatories.

” Wyatt has explained that, as part of the pretrial process, the opposing attorneys submit the evidence they plan to introduce in court to each other.

“Like what?”

“The provenance papers, proof Manet gave Party to Gène or Berthe before he died, maybe something in the memoirs or letters of the major players, biographies…”

So I guess what he’s saying is that I need to keep looting the haystack for a needle we can’t identify—and may not even exist. An assignment I can’t refuse.

When my alarm goes off at six o’clock on February 27, there are emails from Damien, Wyatt, and the Manet Foundation’s lawyer.

The hearing was held at nine Paris time, and it’s been over for hours.

The judge decreed that Party on the Seine must be received by the Louvre no later than March 10 for cleaning in preparation for inclusion in the édouard Manet retrospective.