The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World (15 page)

“A naked lady,”William said.

“A nude,” Amedeo corrected. “Jake always tells me that there's a difference between naked and nude. Jake insists that even if they are men, they are to be called nudes. In art, for some reason, there are a lot more nude women than there are nude men, even though a single fig leaf doesn't cover as much on a female.”

As he continued to clean the glass, Amedeo thought about what Mrs. Zender had said about the ninety percent and the ten percent, and he suddenly understood the difference between naked and nude. Naked shows the ten percent, but nude reveals the other ninety. Out loud he muttered, half to himself, “There is definitely a difference between naked and nude.”

William said, “Tell me what it is—in a way that wouldn't make Ma blush.”

Amedeo replied, “Naked
shows,
but nude
reveals.
” Not that the rest of it—the part about the ninety percent and the ten percent—would have made Mrs. Wilcox blush, but for reasons not entirely clear to him Amedeo was not yet ready to share the conversation he had had with Mrs. Zender at the Dairy Queen.

The drawing deserved a better cleaning than he was giving it, but he couldn't let Windex and paper towels do
one thing more. The rest of the cleaning would require softer, finer tools and far more time.

Amedeo carried the drawing over to Mrs. Zender. “Oh, this,” she said, holding it at arm's length until she put her glasses on. “Come see this, Mrs. Wilcox.” Mrs. Wilcox came forward. “This is
The Moon Lady.
That's what Mr. Zender called it when he gave it to me. It was a wedding gift.” She extended the drawing and a magnifying glass to Amedeo. “Can you read the signature, Amedeo? It's there somewhere in the upper right, I think. Can you read what it says?”

Amedeo said, “I can read it without the magnifying glass, Mrs. Zender. It says ‘Modigliani.'”

“Ah, yes,” she replied. “Modigliani. He was Italian. Like my mother.”

“I know him,” Amedeo said. “We have the same first name.”

“That is so,” she said. “I forgot he had a first name. You do have that in common.”

“And something else. He was Jewish.”

“Is that so?” Mrs. Zender said. “Jewish.”

“Are you named for him?” Mrs. Wilcox asked. “Being that your daddy is an artist and all.”

“No. I was named for my grandfather.”

“Was your grandfather a Jew?”

“One was. Not the Amedeo one. He was Amedeo Bevilaqua. I am a Kaplan by marriage.”

“So what do you know about this Amedeo? Amedeo Modigliani?”

“I know some poems my father taught me.”

“Tell us the poems, dear,” Mrs. Wilcox urged.

“They're by a woman named Phyllis McGinley. My father said that all the kids in art history used to say them.” Amedeo recited:

H
OW TO
T
ELL
P
ORTRAITS FROM
S
TILL
-L
IFES

Ladies whose necks are long and swanny

Are always signed Modigliani

But flowers explosive in a crock?

Braque.

O
N THE
F
ARTHER
W
ALL,
M
ARC
C
HAGALL

One eye without a head to wear it

Sits on the pathway, and chicken,

Pursued perhaps by astral ferret,

Flees, while the plot begins to thicken.

Two lovers kiss. Their hair is kelp.

Nor are the titles any help.

T
HE
M
ODERN
P
ALETTE

Picasso's Periodic hue

Is plain enough for any dullard.

The simple red succeeds the blue,

And now the Party-colored.

They applauded, and Amedeo took a little bow like the one he had seen Peter take after making his
welcome, everyone
remarks at the gala.

Mrs. Wilcox said, “Bein's it was a wedding gift, this little drawing must be very valuable to you, Mrs. Zender. I'm sure you'll be wantin' this for the Waldorf. For the shelf of your past.”

“No,” she said firmly. “I'm sure the work of a dead Jewish artist is worth a lot of money.”

“If it's as valuable as all that, Mrs. Zender, don't you think you might could send it to Christie's or Sotheby's or one of them other famous auction houses? They'll know how to get the best price for it.”

“No,”Mrs. Zender said. “I don't want that.”

Without raising an eyebrow, without doing a single thing that would betray her surprise, Mrs. Wilcox coded the drawing and put it on the list of things she would recommend to Bert and Ray.

Mrs. Zender picked up the copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
and said, “I changed my mind. I'm taking this to the Waldorf.” Looking at Amedeo she said, “I once wrote to Harper Lee and told her that she ought to make an opera of her book.”

“Did she answer?”

Mrs. Zender replied, “I don't know. I don't always open my mail.”

T
HE TIME HAD COME.

It was late afternoon on the last Wednesday before the sale, and Bert and Ray were to be let in.

For the occasion, Mrs. Zender wore a silver lamé wide-legged pantsuit. She had affixed a long lavender scarf over one shoulder and drawn it across her chest and tied it at her waist. On the arm opposite the knot, she wore a noisy assortment of bangle bracelets that reached halfway to her elbow.

Immediately after the introductions, Mrs. Wilcox started her solicitations. She asked Ray, How was his cholesterol? Any new allergies? And Bert, How was his blood pressure? She invited them into the music room. It was in that room that she had gathered all the small, moveable items she thought would be of particular interest to them. Four of the Chippendale chairs had been carried there as examples and
for them to sit in. As soon as Bert and Ray had wedged themselves into the chairs, Mrs. Wilcox offered them iced tea that she had flavored with mango. She had made a pitcher of plain iced tea as well, in case Ray was allergic to mango. Neither was allergic to mango, but Ray asked if she had sweetened it. He was watching his carbohydrates.

Bert and Ray were as coolly polite to Mrs. Zender as the telephone saleslady had been, but Amedeo noticed that their smiles, like hers, were an invitation to make Mrs. Zender a shared joke. But Mrs. Wilcox passed, just as Amedeo had.

Amedeo went with William to fetch the mango-flavored iced tea. He was feeling uneasy. Resentful. From the minute Bert and Ray said hello, Amedeo felt a chill come over the house. Everything suddenly looked shabby again.

As soon as he knew that no one but William could hear him, he said, “You would definitely think that Elvis has entered the building.”

William smiled. “I warned you. Ma's attitude toward Bert and Ray is borderline religious. They are her holy couple, and don't expect it to let up. Just let me know if she starts in sayin'
thee
and
thou.
”

Amedeo laughed.

When they returned with the iced tea, Mrs. Wilcox was saying, “You know, Bert and Ray, you are not limited to choosing only from among these here pieces. I just thought that these pieces were prime, and I wanted y'all to have first pick. There are other things throughout the house, but some of them were just too awkward to carry, so we can take a look around.” They started their tour of the house. William went with them.

Amedeo stayed behind with Mrs. Zender.

As soon as they left, Mrs. Zender took in a deep breath, which she let out slowly through pursed lips. Right before his eyes, she grew as limp as a bouquet of Mylar balloons that had been sitting out for an hour too long. She handed Amedeo her glass of iced tea. “I'll have champagne,” she said. “I've got a bottle chilling in the refrigerator.” He started toward the kitchen. “No plastic,” she said, “the stems always come off.”

“I know. My godfather taught me that.”

“Good for him. Remember it. No information about champagne is trivial.”

“Where will I find the champagne flutes?” Amedeo asked.

“Somewhere in the inventory I'll be taking with me to the Waldorf.”

As he walked to the kitchen, Amedeo realized that for
the first time there was no music in the hallway. The saddest music in the world could not be as sad as the silence in those dismantled rooms. But music was not the only thing that he sensed was coming to an end. Bert and Ray were intruding into a world that had become as close as the un-air-conditioned air they breathed.

When he returned with the champagne, Mrs. Zender's posture was less limp, but her majesty had not yet returned. He took a seat beside her. She sipped champagne. He sipped mango-flavored iced tea. He allowed his eyes to circle the room. Every item there was prime, chosen by Mrs. Wilcox and available to Bert and Ray for purchase. Each piece seemed to be the diary of a day's work. The sterling silver: the day he and William had a misunderstanding, followed by an understanding. The Meissen candlesticks: that day, he got his marking pencil. The Chippendale chairs: Mrs. Zender's mock dinner party.
The Moon Lady:
the library. But
The Moon Lady
was an unfinished entry.

Amedeo got up to look at the price tag: five thousand dollars.

William had taught him that pricing was tricky. Mrs. Wilcox had to be fair to both the seller and to the buyer. Pricing something too low may make it easy to sell, but may also be cheating the seller of a fair price. Pricing
something too high may raise the seller's profit and the liquidator's commission, but can also make it too hard to sell. Dealers like Bert and Ray had to buy at a good price so that they could resell at a profit.

Five thousand dollars was the price Mrs. Zender herself had suggested.

Amedeo had heard enough adult conversations to know that most of them were about numbers: How big? How old? How long? But mostly they discussed: How much? In his mother's company, the numbers were usually about real estate, but he had heard enough conversations from Jake's friends to know that
how much
also counted in the art world, and he also knew that five thousand dollars was a lot of money but not nearly enough for an original drawing by a dead Modern artist, or as Mrs. Zender kept reminding him, a dead
Jewish
Modern artist.

Amedeo looked over at her, sitting there in her NASA moon-landing pantsuit. She sighed occasionally but said nothing. With each sip of champagne, though, her spirit inflated a little.

The tour group returned. They stood in the hall just outside the music room. William followed, carrying a folding luggage rack from one of the upstairs guest rooms. He put it down in the hall and wrapped a red
SOLD
sign
around one of the legs. Mrs. Wilcox asked Bert and Ray if they were interested in the Bibendum chair that was in the upstairs sitting room.

Ray said, “You must mean Biedermeier.”

Mrs. Wilcox was leaning over her clipboard to check her notes when Mrs. Zender's voice rang out. “No, gentlemen, she does not mean Biedermeier. She means Bibendum.”

Bert said, “I can't remember what period Bibendum might be.”

“It's not a period, Mr. Grover. Bibendum is the name of the Michelin Man. The chair was designed to look like a stack of Michelin tires, and like the tires themselves, the chair is French. Designed by Eileen Gray, who was Irish. If you must know a period, it is Art Deco.”

Mrs. Wilcox said, “Yes. It's Art Deco. You might could take another look at it.”

Ignoring Mrs. Zender, Bert addressed Mrs. Wilcox. “You know, Dora Ellen, Huntington Antiques does not do well with Modern art.”

Mrs. Zender was not to be ignored. “Messrs. Grover and Porterfield,” she called out, “you two are not the first people I've known to malign Modern art. There's a long history of people before you who have done it more vociferously and more effectively. I think it best, gentlemen, that
I withdraw the Bibendum chair. It is no longer for sale. I shall take it with me to the Waldorf.”

Mrs. Wilcox said, “I'll just remove it from all the sales lists, Mrs. Zender.”

Bert and Ray made an awkward entrance into the music room. They took a few minutes to survey the pieces there, and their focus almost immediately went to
The Moon Lady,
which had been placed in the center of an assortment on the lid of the closed baby grand. Bert reached for it and said, “What do you think, Ray? Do you think we'll be arrested for dealing in pornography if we display this in our shop?”

Ray replied, “If it's old enough and expensive enough, it's not pornographic, it's antique.”

Mrs. Zender spoke up. “It is not antique. It is Modern art. And like the Bibendum chair, it too is French.”

Without trying to hide his sarcasm, Ray pointed to the signature. “And is this Modigliani Irish?” Ray pronounced it “Moe-DIG-lee-ahn-nee.”