Restoration (24 page)

“I’m ready,” I said.

Working from the right to the left side, Rhys used a putty knife to scrape each section off the wall. As she progressed, Joe stayed close by her side with both hands on the canvas to make sure it didn’t fall. When she finished scraping under the canvas Joe would reach up with his tack puller and remove the last of the tacks, then together they’d lower the panel for me to hold until they could come down from the platform. We rolled each section onto a tube and then Joe and I moved it off to the side. In the lamplight I could see the sinew of his small arms and streaks of perspiration cutting the film of dust on his glasses. His strength surprised me. Like his voice, it might’ve belonged to a much larger man. Rhys was always first back up the ladder, and then the residue came raining down again. By the time we got the last panel down my hair was powdered gray and dust sat a
quarter inch deep on my shoulders. “God, I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t realize there would be this much.”

“You’re hell with a putty knife.”

“Just hang in there.”

I checked my watch against the lantern and it was a little after 3:00 A.
M
. “What time does the janitor show up for work?” Joe said.

“Six,” Rhys answered.

“I don’t think we have enough time,” he said.

“Don’t tell me that. We have enough time, we have plenty of time.”

She started cleaning the surface of the wall with an iron brush, more dust from the paste spitting out with each thrust. Joe went outside and brought the van over to the rear door and he and I unloaded the replacement mural and carried it into the building one section at a time. It was good to be outside in the night air, with stars fanned out across the sky and the moon full and shining up past the trees. A truck motored down Magazine Street, but there was no other sign of life, human or otherwise. Joe lighted a cigarette and took a few long drags. “Can I ask you a personal question?” I said.

“This the time you want to be doing that?” He removed a fleck of tobacco from the tip of his tongue.

“Are you a black guy or a white guy, Joe?”

“Am I a
what?”

“Are you a black guy or a white guy?”

“The first one.” He looked at me. “Is that important, for some reason? So important it couldn’t wait?”

“The first one. You mean you’re black?”

“Why is that important at four o’clock in the goddamned morning and we’ve broken into a building and we’re stealing a painting?”

“It’s not important,” I said.

“You asked it.”

“I asked it but it’s not important.”

“It was important enough for you to stop what you were doing and make the words come out of your mouth.”

“I was standing here watching you with your cigarette and the question popped in my head.”

“That’s right, that’s what makes me wonder. Of all the things you could’ve asked me you asked me if I’m a white guy or a black guy. What kind of question is that?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“It’s a dumbass question from a dumbass motherfucker, that’s the kind of question it is.” He dropped the cigarette to the ground and crushed it with the heel of his boot. “What about you, Jack? You a white guy or a black guy?”

“I’m a white guy.”

“Nice,” he said. “Now you ready to go do some work?”

After we moved all four replacement panels inside he returned the van to the street and I took Rhys’s place on the platform prepping the wall to accommodate the new canvas. She sat on the floor between the lanterns with her legs splayed and sucked hard on a bottle of spring water. I could reach higher than Rhys did but not high enough, so Joe and I raised the extension ladder and he went up and finished the job. We set up the platform again on the folding ladders and Joe and I lifted the first of the replacement panels onto the boards while Rhys lathered glue on the wall. The new canvas wasn’t as heavy as the old one, but it was a bitch to hang. Rhys and I worked from the platform as Joe stood just behind us on the extension ladder. Except for the time I kissed her I’d never been so close to Rhys before and I could smell the shampoo in her hair and the smell of her sweat and I had to remind myself to keep working and not to think about it. By the time we’d hung each panel and hammered in tacks along the edges it was after five o’clock and I could see fatigue competing with panic for control of Rhys’s expression. Panic was winning. “We’ll make it,” I said.

“I don’t know. I think Joe was right.”

“Why all of a sudden are you listening to anything I have to say?” Joe said. “I don’t know shit. Now let’s finish.”

She went back up the ladder with a small can of paint and a small
brush and began painting the heads of the tacks to match the yellow of the canvas. She had it all figured out. She’d been able to envision the heads needing that last touch of paint to make them look convincing. Joe removed the paper from the windows and I swept and cleaned the floor with a wet rag mop. “We can’t leave anything behind,” Rhys said. “Not a tack, not a piece of tape, not a mote of dust from the wallpaper paste.”

Joe went out for the van and brought it back around. We loaded the panels for the original mural and then the ladders, supplies and bags filled with trash. The room looked as clean as we’d found it. Rhys, however, refused to leave before inspecting it a final time. She placed both lanterns on the floor and dropped to her knees and crawled around looking for evidence that we’d been there. “It’s dusty here,” she said, peering up at me with a look of recrimination. “You missed a spot.”

“Did I miss a spot?”

“You missed it,” she repeated, then started to wipe down the floor with a paper towel. “Missed it and with all we stand to lose. Goddammit, Jack.”

“Let’s go, we need to go,” Joe said.

I was tired and sore and covered with dust and I could feel the twitching of the muscles in my arms as I stood in the middle of the room looking up at the wall where the replacement mural now hung. It looked exactly like the original. Rhys’s work was so thorough that she’d remembered to put bubbles and other surface defects in the canvas. It also had water stains dripping down under the air-conditioning vents.

“Amazing,” I said.

“To you, maybe,” she said. “The real test will come when Mr. Cherry has a look.”

“And Mrs. Wheeler.”

“Nah, she’s oblivious and half blind to boot. I wish the new tacks were identical to the old ones. The heads aren’t exactly the same size, did you notice?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“And I’m afraid the new paint’s too shiny. Do you see that, Jack? Does the paint on the heads look too shiny?”

“Let’s go, we have to go,” Joe said from the door.

We left as quietly as we’d come, and with daylight just starting to break. I sat in front squeezed between Rhys and Joe. It wasn’t yet six o’clock, but as we turned the corner onto Magazine Street I spotted Rondell Cherry stepping off a city bus stopped a block away. We drove by him and watched in silence as he lumbered down the sidewalk carrying a lunch pail and wearing headphones connected to a small music box at his hip. “You remember what he was listening to that day we first met him?” I said to Rhys.

When she didn’t answer I leaned forward to get a better look at her face. Her hands were tight on the wheel, whitening her knuckles.

“I think it was some Teddy,” I said, in answer to my question.

“Who?” Joe said.

“Teddy. You don’t remember Teddy Pendergrass?”

For a moment I thought Rhys was crying. But then she turned and faced me and a big powdery smile came to her face. “We did it,” she said.

“Yes, we did,” I replied.

Farther down the street, she lowered her window and stuck her head out, letting the wind blow the dust out of her hair.

Dr. Gilbert Perret, wearing a black turtleneck sweater and wool trousers even in summer, stepped out on the third-floor gallery and summoned me with a finger curling backward. “Here to see
Christine
, are you?”

“Yes, thank you for the opportunity.”

He seemed to be trying to suppress a belch. It took a moment before I realized he’d meant to nod. “Always glad to show the old girl off,” he said.

Perret wasn’t much older than I was, and yet he might’ve been my superior by at least a generation. Perhaps it was the pair of reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. More likely it was the rim of hair ornamenting a bald dome ridged with fat blue veins. He smelled like old books. “How was Europe?” I said.

“Cold and rainy but still Europe. Wonderful, in a word. Kind of you to ask.”

We entered the administrative offices. The elderly docent who’d scheduled my meeting with the museum curator welcomed me with a wave as we approached her desk. “Appreciate your help, ma’am.”

“Any time, Mr. Charbonnet.”

The painting hung to the right of Perret’s desk as you entered his office. To the left, and equally impressive, was a French Quarter Mardi Gras scene by Marion Souchon, a mid-twentieth-century Fauvist from New Orleans who also regularly turned up in books about southern art. “My first Souchon,” I said, pointing.

“Ah. But you’ve seen other Asmores?”

“Yes, I have: most recently
Beloved Dorothy
, from the Neal sale.”

“A real beauty, wasn’t she? And a winning example of the series. But I prefer this one, if only because of the museum’s familial connection to the sitter.”

The lapse between his comment and my comprehension of it ran to about half a minute. I looked away from the painting. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Standing behind his desk now, Perret adjusted the blinds to lessen the flow of sunlight in the room. “What do I mean by what?” he said, in a tone to suggest he welcomed any intellectual challenge I might present him with. A sheet of glare had been reflecting off the surface of the Asmore, but now the painting’s color glowed in soft, diffused light. Christine was a fair-haired, rather chesty girl standing before a river, with flowers in her hands. About her expression was the post-coital glow that identified her as yet another satisfied notch on the Asmore bedpost. In the background a circle of sun illuminated a stand of enormous oak trees.

“You said something about the State Museum having a familial connection to the sitter. What do you mean by that?”

“Christine,” he said. “The woman you’re looking at, as well as the one who welcomed you earlier with a wave as we walked by her.”

I still refused to understand. “Forgive me, Dr. Perret.”

“Come on, Mr. Charbonnet. My assistant, Christine Dalrymple, out in the hall.” He pointed to the top of his head. “Don’t you recognize her? The docent, Mr. Charbonnet, the one with the… well, with the curiously colored hair.”

“Mind if I sit down?”

“Please.” He came out from behind the desk and showed me to a chair.

I felt it in my chest. Someone had reached down my throat and was trying to yank my heart out. Perret walked past the open door into the hall. “Christine, if you have a few minutes, dear, I’m sure Mr. Charbonnet would enjoy hearing about Levette.”

He pulled back a second chair and turned it toward me. I rose to my feet as the elderly woman entered the room, shambled past without a word and stood next to the painting. She held her head at the same angle as the girl in the portrait, and calculated her expression to mimic that of
Beloved Christine.
Obviously she’d practiced the pose many times before, and it seemed to delight Perret, who all but guaranteed future demonstrations by giving spirited applause. “Thank you,” he said. “Mr. Charbonnet, I have a full calendar this afternoon, so if there are questions please ask them now.”

“He’s too shook up,” said the docent, clearly pleased with herself. “Even worse than that other fellow. What was his name, Dr. Perret?” She put a hand up to her mouth. “We thought he’d throw up.”

“I’ll leave you with Christine, then,” Perret said.

I cleared my throat and glanced back at the curator. “Someone else was here? To see the Asmore?”

“Only yesterday,” he said. “Do you know Thomas Smallwood, by chance?”

“No, I don’t. I mean, I know of him, of course. And I’ve met him. But I don’t
know
him. He’s a collector of this sort of thing.”

“Yes, and a determined one. I must say, I admired his enthusiasm, exhausting though it may have been.” Perret laughed. “He spewed out more hackneyed details about the Asmore myth than I’ve heard from even our least inspired museum guides. No, if you want to know the
truth about the artist, Mr. Charbonnet—the man, the
real
one—then Mrs. Dalrymple here is your source.”

“He took my picture,” she said. “This Mr. Smallwood did. He had a camera and he took me with the painting, didn’t he, Dr. Perret?”

“I saw him do it,” said the curator, rocking back on his heels in a show of pride.

“Maybe I can get you a copy,” she said to me.

“Pleasure to have met you, Mr. Charbonnet.” He extended his hand. “And do make sure she tells you everything.”

As soon as he disappeared past the door Christine Dalrymple said, “Fire away and don’t be bashful. I’ll sit here.” With her descent into the overstuffed leather chair came the motherly scent of skin lotion and talcum powder.