what they’d built. She wasn’t ready to begin that process over a piece of canvas. She made a timeout signal with her hands. “Okay. Truce. We’ve met the morning’s quota for arguments over hypotheticals. Let’s move onto something else before we say things we’ll regret.”
Peter reached for the envelope. Kate covered his hand with a firm grip. She didn’t want to say the words out loud, but she didn’t believe Peter would actually mail it. Her disappointment that this lack of trust had wormed its way so deeply into their marriage after staying away for so many years trumped even her anger.
The gesture froze Peter. He pulled his hand back.
“You needn’t bother, Peter. I’ll take care of it.”
ELEVEN
MK was almost breathless when Kate met her in the lobby of the Metropolitan Museum a little before ten on Monday morning.
“You’ll never believe the remarkable coincidence I stumbled on to yesterday. I was so excited I almost called you at home, but realized I didn’t get back from New Haven until eleven.”
“New Haven? Is that where you’re from?”
“The guy I’m seeing is in medical school there.” Her voice was racing with the excitement of what was about to come. “But listen to this. At a party Saturday I started talking about Courbet and this complete stranger told me she was a curator at the Yale Art Museum. It’s being sued by a German family who claims one of the Courbets in its collection was stolen by the Nazis.”
“That can’t be Chris Franklin’s.”
“Of course not, but she burned a CD for me of some of the evidence produced in the case so far, including copies of every catalogue of his shows and listings of all the galleries that sold his work. We can check those names against the name of Franklin’s picture once you identify it. I’ve run a hundred different scenarios of what the letters d and i might stand for. Isn’t it amazing that I ran across this woman? This must be what Einstein meant when he said God doesn’t play dice with the universe.” MK was a red helium balloon ready to float away.
MK asked the guard to call the curator with whom Kate made the arrangements. She was an older woman, perhaps seventy, tall, taller than either Kate or MK, with a pleasing smile. Her dress was dark blue. She had a bright red belt around her narrow waist. She wore gold earrings but no other jewelry or even a wedding ring. Her name was Sylvie.
Sylvie led Kate and MK into the reading room. It could have been an exhibit. Burnished glass-faced cabinets lined with leather-spined books that appeared to have been painted in place encircled burled oak tables and chairs with green cushions. If it hadn’t been for the small reading lamps and the computer behind the front desk, Kate might have been stepping back into another century. The lighting was muted, to protect the archives. The only sound in the room was the pendulum of a grandfather clock.
Sylvie had set out everything the museum had in its collections about Courbet’s life and exhibitions on two tables. She handed each woman a pair of white cotton gloves to protect the pages and a small jeweler’s loupe.
Kate thanked MK for the research that brought them here. She used the words ‘thanks for letting us know’ about her email, in the hope MK might ask about the use of the plural when she sent only Kate the email. MK’s reaction, though, betrayed nothing. Kate didn’t know whether Ed would grill MK about their time together and certainly couldn’t nose around about how Ed knew about her email.
There were books in five languages about the painter, each book filled with color prints. He was as prolific as he was gifted, intensely visual and free with his use of color. Kate started with a book in French (she remembered enough from her high school days to understand a bit of the text) while Mary Kay bent over an Italian catalogue that chronicled every picture the man ever painted. The pictures were tiny, often not more
Peter reached for the envelope. Kate covered his hand with a firm grip. She didn’t want to say the words out loud, but she didn’t believe Peter would actually mail it. Her disappointment that this lack of trust had wormed its way so deeply into their marriage after staying away for so many years trumped even her anger.
The gesture froze Peter. He pulled his hand back.
“You needn’t bother, Peter. I’ll take care of it.”
ELEVEN
MK was almost breathless when Kate met her in the lobby of the Metropolitan Museum a little before ten on Monday morning.
“You’ll never believe the remarkable coincidence I stumbled on to yesterday. I was so excited I almost called you at home, but realized I didn’t get back from New Haven until eleven.”
“New Haven? Is that where you’re from?”
“The guy I’m seeing is in medical school there.” Her voice was racing with the excitement of what was about to come. “But listen to this. At a party Saturday I started talking about Courbet and this complete stranger told me she was a curator at the Yale Art Museum. It’s being sued by a German family who claims one of the Courbets in its collection was stolen by the Nazis.”
“That can’t be Chris Franklin’s.”
“Of course not, but she burned a CD for me of some of the evidence produced in the case so far, including copies of every catalogue of his shows and listings of all the galleries that sold his work. We can check those names against the name of Franklin’s picture once you identify it. I’ve run a hundred different scenarios of what the letters d and i might stand for. Isn’t it amazing that I ran across this woman? This must be what Einstein meant when he said God doesn’t play dice with the universe.” MK was a red helium balloon ready to float away.
MK asked the guard to call the curator with whom Kate made the arrangements. She was an older woman, perhaps seventy, tall, taller than either Kate or MK, with a pleasing smile. Her dress was dark blue. She had a bright red belt around her narrow waist. She wore gold earrings but no other jewelry or even a wedding ring. Her name was Sylvie.
Sylvie led Kate and MK into the reading room. It could have been an exhibit. Burnished glass-faced cabinets lined with leather-spined books that appeared to have been painted in place encircled burled oak tables and chairs with green cushions. If it hadn’t been for the small reading lamps and the computer behind the front desk, Kate might have been stepping back into another century. The lighting was muted, to protect the archives. The only sound in the room was the pendulum of a grandfather clock.
Sylvie had set out everything the museum had in its collections about Courbet’s life and exhibitions on two tables. She handed each woman a pair of white cotton gloves to protect the pages and a small jeweler’s loupe.
Kate thanked MK for the research that brought them here. She used the words ‘thanks for letting us know’ about her email, in the hope MK might ask about the use of the plural when she sent only Kate the email. MK’s reaction, though, betrayed nothing. Kate didn’t know whether Ed would grill MK about their time together and certainly couldn’t nose around about how Ed knew about her email.
There were books in five languages about the painter, each book filled with color prints. He was as prolific as he was gifted, intensely visual and free with his use of color. Kate started with a book in French (she remembered enough from her high school days to understand a bit of the text) while Mary Kay bent over an Italian catalogue that chronicled every picture the man ever painted. The pictures were tiny, often not more
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