Page 55

THIRTY-SIX

W yatt appeals the judge’s decision, but he figures it will only buy us a few weeks, a month at the most. I’m a complete wreck, not sleeping, barely eating, trying not to succumb to grief over the impending separation.

I can’t lose her, not this soon—my family, my solace.

And Wyatt said it will be near impossible to get her back once she’s in France.

I can’t. I won’t. Beating Damien is now my second job.

When I’m finally able to pull my head out of the office avalanche, I call Wyatt and ask if it would be more difficult for the foundation to bring Party to France if she were in a museum instead of in storage.

He pauses. “Storage?”

“Theoretically.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. There’d be more paperwork—that’s for sure—so it would definitely take longer.”

“I’ll get on it right now.”

“If you’ve got time to do that, there’s something else that would be an even bigger help…”

So instead of contacting museums, I switch to job #2.

A FEW DAYS LATER , Wyatt and I are hanging out in my apartment after Sunday brunch at Aquitaine.

He’s working at the kitchen table, and I’m fruitlessly researching in my study.

Although it’s March, Mother Nature has decided it’s the middle of winter, and the snow is coming down hard, making it all the more pleasant to stay inside.

For dinner, we order delivery from an Ethiopian restaurant in Back Bay, and when we finish eating, there’s more than a foot of snow on the ground, and it’s still coming down.

Wyatt eyes the drifts blowing across the sidewalks. “Fine,” he says, as if I’ve badgered him into doing something he’d refused to do. “I’ll stay here tonight.”

“Sure.” It’s far too nasty out to send him home.

He’s clearly not happy to be in the same apartment as Party , and, as if making a point, when we go to bed, he turns his back to me and falls asleep.

I need to finish the art history book I’m reading anyway, an academic tome that includes thousands of footnotes—well, at least many hundreds.

It’s pretty dry stuff, but following my father’s dictum, I persevere.

And Dad turns out to be right, for I stumble across what might be that elusive needle.

According to a PhD with a dozen books under her belt, after édouard died, Antoinette Manet, his mother, contested his will, demanding the return of the dower she’d provided at his marriage and challenging the provision that upon Suzanne’s death all of édouard’s personal artworks be passed down to Léon.

She said Suzanne wasn’t eligible for the dower because she’d treated Antoinette with disrespect throughout her marriage and failed to give édouard a son, a wife’s most important duty.

She claimed that as Léon was Suzanne’s brother and not a Manet—which presumably she knew wasn’t true—he wasn’t a legitimate heir to édouard’s paintings, which belonged to his real family.

Mme Manet won on the dower and lost on the legitimacy of Léon’s inheritance.

I ponder whether this might be of help. It does offer further verification that Léon wasn’t édouard’s son, doubling the evidence that Damien isn’t édouard’s direct descendant—even if it’s not exactly relevant to the case.

But maybe it’s an additional piece for Wyatt to add?

I’m jacked up and can’t fall asleep. I give up, and end up on the couch in the living room, hanging out with Berthe.

Wyatt finds me there in the morning, wrapped in the coverlet and sleeping. “What are you doing in here?” he demands.

I climb from the couch and press myself into him, throwing the blanket over his shoulders and pulling him closer. He wraps his arms around me, rests his chin on the top of my head. “Tamara, Tamara, Tamara, what am I going to do with you?”

We go into the kitchen, where I make coffee and he makes us smoothies. When we sit down, I tell him about the contested will. “I couldn’t sleep because I thought this might be something.”

“Harrumph,” he says. “Let me see how I can use it.”

He drafts a response to Delphine’s interrogatives that combines Nova’s proof that Party was in the Bernheims’ collection, my list of documented swaps, the facts of Léon’s birth, along with Antoinette’s claim against édouard’s will.

Wyatt sends it off, and within forty-eight hours Delphine offers us $25 million, which we reject.

She counters a day later with $27 million.

I interpret this as an indication our evidence is convincing, but Wyatt sees it differently.

“Take it,” he recommends. “It’s a huge wad of cash for a painting you never heard of a few months ago.

We could both quit our jobs, travel the world,” he adds, staring dreamily at the piles of snow the plows have pushed onto the sidewalks.

“Live anywhere. Buy a house in Paris, another on Santorini, a condo overlooking Central Park.”

This “we” freaks me out, and I say quickly, “I like my job, and I like where I live.” I raise my chin. “I’m not selling to him.”

“It was tough enough with just the foundation’s lawsuit, but if the Louvre appeal is rejected, you’re going to be out of luck. And once Party is on French soil, you’re fucked.”

“You said there might be a way to get a stay. French versus US laws.”

“‘Might’ is the operative word here.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Like I warned you before, you could easily end up with nothing—no cash and no painting.”

“Tell her I won’t sell Party to them at any price, and that I’m ready to go to court.”

PARTY HASN’T MOVED in weeks, nor have I heard any voices or had a Berthe dream, all of which means I don’t need any psychological testing.

Even when the dreams start up again, this doesn’t change my mind.

Dreams are a whole different thing from the visual and auditory hallucinations that I’m sure are what Ruth Hawthorn is concerned about.

The dreams almost always take place in the studio where Berthe and I waltzed so gaily, but now the mood is more somber.

Her brow is often wrinkled, and she frequently shakes her head at me while I sit in one of those overstuffed grandmother chairs and watch her paint.

I wouldn’t call these nightmares exactly, not the wake-up-screaming kind, but I’m concerned they might start to slither in that direction.

Ghostlike male figures often hover at the other easels, but no one except Berthe paints, and she seems as annoyed with her canvas as she is at me.

I wonder if her anger is directed at the misogynous world she was forced to live in.

I wish she could see me, her great-great-great-great, able to do whatever a man can do—and doing it.

Then the photograph of my ex-boyfriend/ex-colleague, Nick, ringing the bell on Wall Street flashes through my mind. Well, almost anything a man can do.

Jonathan calls and asks if he can visit Party , offering to bring lunch.

When he arrives early Saturday afternoon, we eat our wraps while sitting on the couch and gazing at the painting, chatting about her, our jobs, this and that.

We haven’t seen each other in a while, and it’s nice to catch up. I find his presence reassuring.

When I tell him the judge ruled against us, he says, “That’s a problem, but maybe not that big of one.

Extraditing artwork from one country to another is difficult—both legally and practically—especially when the ruling is made in one and the art is in another.

I’ve seen this kind of tussle lots of times.

Could take months. Years, even. If it drags on and you miss the date of the retrospective or win at trial, it’ll be moot. ”

“Really?” I cry, clapping my hands together. “Really? That’s great. Are you sure?”

“Yes, Tamara.” He shoots me a goofy grin. “There is a Santa Claus.”

“My lawyer said it would be a long shot to keep her here.” This is odd. Wyatt is usually on top of all the legal ins and outs. Unless he didn’t want to be on top of them because he wants her out of my apartment.

Jonathan shrugs. “Probably focused on the actual trial.”

“Will that work the same way? Will I be able keep her here even if the verdict goes wrong?”

“Well, there’s the whole appeal process, which can add time. But the difference is that the foundation’s lawsuit was filed in New York City, not Paris.”

“She’s still being sent to another country.”

“True, but the legal aspects will be less complicated than they are in the Louvre appeal because both the painting and the suit are in the US. So you won’t be able to push it out as far as you might be able to in the other situation.”

I stare at the ceiling. “Damien upped his offer.”

“How much?”

“Twenty-seven.”

Jonathan whistles. “Hell of a lot of money.” He looks at Party , and a clouded expression crosses his face. “Do you think he’d loan it to the foundation or the Louvre if you sold it to him?”

I don’t want to answer this question, so I say, “I’ve been working on gathering evidence for the trial, but as soon as I have a second I’ll start in on moving her to a museum around here.”

“Excellent news. Like I said, there’ll be difficulties, slow bureaucracies and paperwork, so you should start right away. But getting the painting to an environment that’s more—”

Before he can finish his sentence, the front door opens and Wyatt walks in.

Yes, I tanked and gave him a key after he insisted I have one to his house because my office is so close and I might need to let myself in if he isn’t there.

But I made my stand and refused to leave any toiletries there. Big stand.

I don’t know which of the men is more startled. I’ve never mentioned anything about Wyatt to Jonathan, except in vague references to my lawyer on the foundation suit. And the same goes for Jonathan to Wyatt, who’s just the guy from the Claims Conference.