The Price of Inheritance (8 page)

I shivered as I tried to hail a cab and muttered the time of my train to the driver, asking him to hurry. The city still had Christmas decorations up, but in the wet snow, they looked sad. Why had these people bothered me with their story when they knew how close we were to the January auction? The catalogue had been out for weeks. It was ­January 11 and I had a week left before the auction. I had met them, I had listened to them and looked at their pictures, I had offered to help them when the auction was over, and I would. But right now, there was nothing else I could do.

CHAPTER 4

T
he morning of our January auction brought sheets of freezing rain, the kind of rain where you feel wet even if you're just watching it from indoors. Five degrees colder and it would have been snow. Instead, New York was being forcefully flooded: the cars, buildings, streets, and people bathed in freezing rain. Like every evening sale since Nicole and I had worked together, she got there first and I joined her on the later side in the back of the room. Maybe I'd left my nerves in Baltimore, or maybe I had just gained a little faith between September and January, but when I moved through the already packed auction room and stood in the back with Nicole, my heart felt steady and my sweat glands were behaving.

“Did you see Nick Marshall-Smith in the second row?” said Nicole, nodding very subtly in the direction of one of the country's biggest collectors of mid-Atlantic eighteenth-­century furniture. “And Harriet Traymore is three down from him. Michael Floyd is sitting far left, sixth row back. Marvin Levine and his new wife, there, right side, by the phones.”

“This crowd . . . ,” I said, scanning the room and recognizing many of the faces. For some auctions—Impressionists, contemporary art—reservations were required to attend. We had an open-door policy, as we had enough low-dollar items to appeal to a wide audience, and we had enough high-dollar items to bring energy and adrenaline to the room.

As always, Olivier Burnell was calling the auction, and as always, he packed the front with some of the best items, brought the dollar amounts down for a few lots, and kept the very best for smack in the middle. Nicole looked at me again, pushing one of her curled strands of hair out of her eyes, and smiled. “No hives today?” she said, looking at my smooth face. I had about a pound of pancake makeup with me, but so far, I had no need for it.

My short nails dug into my clenched fist as Olivier transitioned to Lot 29. The rotating wall to his right turned and on a small platform anchored against it was the Hugh Finlay.

“Lot number twenty-nine is the Hugh Finlay pier table, inlaid with gold leaf and marble.” Olivier lifted his arms and started the bidding at $75,000. “Seventy-five thousand dollars on the floor, seventy-five thousand,” said Olivier, looking at the crowd.

It was times like these when I cursed my short stature, but try as I might, I did not see Nina or her brother in the room. Thank God. Thank almighty God. I would not have to hurl myself across the podium as they reached for the table screaming their mother's name.

The bids moved quickly past $170,000 and Olivier said, “I can sell at one hundred ninety thousand,” revealing the reserve to the buyers. “The lady's bid here at one hundred ninety thousand,” said Olivier, pointing to a woman seated on the left side of the room. “Two hundred thousand here in the room,” he said, switching sides. When it moved past two hundred and ten, I let myself exhale. The woman on the left finally dropped out, there were no phone bids, and it stood at $260,000. “Are you all done in the saleroom?” asked Olivier with his hands up. “I'm going to sell it.” He hit the podium and announced, “Sold at two hundred and sixty thousand dollars.” And like that, the Hugh Finlay table sold to another collector, who had nothing to do with the city of Baltimore.

When Elizabeth's estate had finished and we were an hour and fifty-five minutes into the auction, Nicole pressed the total key on her phone calculator and put it in my hand. The estate had gone for $40,900,000, including buyer's premium.

“Didn't I tell you thirty-seven million was way too low for a guarantee,” she said with a grin.

The auction wrapped up twenty minutes after nine o'clock and Nicole and I agreed that if there was ever a time for celebratory drinks, this was it. Elizabeth, our trip to Texas, pulling it all together for January when we should have had nine months more—it was crazy, and I hadn't come down from all of it yet, and this time I didn't want to.

“Let me just see Louise before we go,” I told Nicole when the auction room was nearly empty. “I'll meet you and Erik at the bar.”

I found Louise in the narrow hallway leading back toward our offices on the fifth floor. She was leaning against the frame of her office door, not quite inside and not quite outside. When she saw me, she motioned for me to come closer and pointed toward the phone she had against her ear.

I loitered a few feet away as she wrapped up. I was about to do a very restrained and respectable celebratory dance involving a backflip, but Louise's face stopped me. She finished the call, put her phone in the pocket of her dress, and looked at me.

“I need to talk to you, and here you are.”

She motioned to a chair in her office and closed the door. She put her hands in her lap and stared blankly at me across her desk. It had a little paperweight on it made from a Japanese cherry tree branch that I had bought her for her fiftieth birthday. Louise always used the things you gave her, and I always noticed.

“I just got the strangest call from the newspaper in Baltimore, the
Baltimore Sun
. They asked me for a quote regarding a human interest piece they're running tomorrow about a family whose store was looted during the Baltimore riots of 1968 and somehow their table ended up in our auction catalogue and just sold for two hundred and sixty thousand dollars.”

Maybe it was the fact that my body had just gone rigid, but Louise asked, “Would you know anything about this? Because that reporter who just called me said you did.”

“I should have told you, I mean, now that I have the stress of the auction off my shoulders and I'm thinking a little more clearly, I realize I should have told you.” My words poured out of me, my voice starting to crack. Louise looked at me trying, and failing, to steady myself. There was no compassion in her face. “This brother and sister, about fifty-five, sixty years old, they called me,” I explained. “They said the table was their mother's and that it was with them in Baltimore. I went to see it—which I know I shouldn't have—but I did. I just wanted to be sure there was nothing to their story because I cared so much about Elizabeth's estate. And when I got there they didn't have the table. They lied. All they had were some blurry pictures and a story that didn't add up. I thought, if anything, it was a companion piece that was now lost. What was I supposed to do with that? Pull the piece? Pull the whole collection? Seventy percent of our January sale?”

“What you were supposed to do is to ask me what I would do because I am your boss!” Louise screamed, pushing the desk with her hands.

“Of course I should have. I'm sorry, Louise. I'm so embarrassed. It's just that you were under so much pressure from Dominick. You said your hair was falling out from stress. I didn't want to be the source of—”

“Those people are black, Carolyn. And poor! We're going to look like we steal from poor black people!”

I didn't interrupt her again.

“That reporter said the table, that very low-, low-dollar table, was their mother's. And that their mother got it from their grandmother and that she got it from some family that she worked as a maid for in the early nineteen hundreds. This reporter found that family, the Smarts or the Smarths or something, and they confirmed she worked for them. They even have pictures of her! So they're now claiming that the grandmother got it as a gift from the children of this family who were very attached to her and she gave it to her daughter who owned it until it was stolen and the Tumlinsons bought it from a dealer and we sold it thirty-five minutes ago.”

“What!” I screamed through panic. “I didn't know any of that. Nothing! They didn't say a thing about another family or their grandmother or anything. If they had mentioned any of those details I would have told you immediately. All I saw were some old pictures of a table they hadn't seen since 1968.” I was paralyzed with fear. This could not happen. This absolutely would be the death of me. I wasn't the only one involved in the estate of Mrs. Adam R. Tumlinson, but in Christie's eyes, I was.

“I didn't know about any of that, Louise!” I repeated. “They didn't tell me anything.”

“I need to talk to our general counsel,” she said, still holding the edge of the desk. “We need to contact the buyers, the media. We need to suspend all of the sales in the Tumlinson collection until they are verified. Do you know what this will do to the department? We're going to be shoved with the instrument sales! Numismatics and armor! I'm already selling chairs with lamps, Carolyn. I don't know if you understand the gravity of what you've done. And it all could have been avoided. We would have pulled one lot.”

“I'm so sorry, Louise. I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do.” I glanced up at her desperately.

“Carolyn, I'm sorry, but . . .”

There is nothing more terrifying than the silence of your own heart. I knew it was just a few seconds before I opened my mouth to respond, but in that long moment, I couldn't hear anything but a stillness of where my heartbeat should have been and the cold shock of my promise, my potential blowing away.

“I know,” I said weakly, trying to dry the tears from my face. “I understand. I'll get my things.”

I ran to my office, looked at Nicole's empty chair with the gray cashmere cardigan on it, pulled out my phone, and called the number I had for Nina Jones Caine. She answered after one ring.

“Who did you tell about your table? What did you do!” I screamed into the phone.

“I didn't
do
anything. I just told my story to a reporter over lunch. I've known his mother for years; we were just eating as family friends. It wasn't even meant to be on the record.”

“Really? Well, when we don't want something to be on the record, we start with the words ‘off the record,' which you clearly forgot! Nina, I just lost my job because of what you did.”

“No . . . not really . . . did you?”

“Yes I did!” I said, unable to hold back the tears. “You have ruined my life! I tried to help you. But these things don't happen overnight. Why couldn't you have talked to me first? I went down to Baltimore. I listened to your story. I did everything you asked. I was going to help you.”

“I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you, to get you fired! I just thought it was time to increase public interest in our story, with the auction about to happen. And Jeffrey, the reporter, he was able to find out so much in such a short period of time. I showed him an album of my grandmother and he recognized the house she was standing in front of. He knows the people who live there now. We were shocked. But still, maybe that wasn't the right thing to do. Is there someone I can talk to? Can I try to fix this?” When I had met Nina, she had spoken in a firm, self-assured way. But now her voice had flown up in pitch. She sounded worried, almost repentant, but I didn't care.

“Your talking just caused Christie's to potentially lose millions, for me to lose my job, for my boss to get in major trouble. All the Tumlinsons' pieces from Baltimore will take years to recover their value. Elizabeth Tumlinson is ­seventy-six years old. She'll probably die before that happens!”

“I'm so sorry. I didn't know that our story had so much more story to it. Jeffrey just traced it faster than we ever could. He found this family we didn't even know about, thanks to that photo and some black-and-white picture in the
Baltimore Sun
archive, and the whole thing unraveled. But he couldn't have written anything yet; I just talked to him.”

“Well, now you know that in this world, that's all it takes. One conversation!”

I slammed down the phone. I wanted to stay in my office forever. Maybe no one would notice me. I could climb into the comfortable oblong metal trash can, lean back against piles of crumpled paper, and stay there until I died. How long did it take a person to starve to death? A few days? Weeks?

At quarter to ten, Louise opened my door and watched me empty the contents of my first desk drawer into a paper bag. “I can always bring you the rest tomorrow,” she said, watching me. My purse wasn't much bigger than an envelope.

“No, it's fine, I can manage tonight,” I said. “I don't need much. I'm sorry I'm still here.”

When I walked out the doors of the almost empty building and into the night air, crisp and cold, I knew I would never step foot inside Christie's again.

CHAPTER 5

I
barely remember the hours after I left Christie's that night. I wanted to sprint, to get away from everything that had been jarringly stripped from my life, but my heels were too high and my body was too tired to do anything but move slowly and sadly. This couldn't be happening to me. This sort of thing happened to other people. The men or women whom I read about very quickly in
the
Art Newspaper,
I'd purse my lips at their gaffes and announce to Nicole how I was “embarrassed for them.” We'd whisper something kind, like “morons,” and continue our dominance of all things American and made of wood. When word got out about Elizabeth's sale, some girl, just like me, would do the same thing, but it would be my name she was reading.

Somehow my feet turned in the right direction and took me home. I found my keys under a thick stack of embossed and letter-pressed business cards that I'd shoved in my purse, let everything I was holding drop to the ground right inside my front door, threw my clothes in the direction of the bathroom, and cried. I felt pathetic, but I didn't know what else to do but mourn the person I had been only two hours ago. Had it all been my fault? Would Nicole, Erik, or Louise really have acted differently in my situation? Was it terrible judgment or terrible luck? It didn't matter now. I couldn't undo it.

My apartment was freezing so I turned the heat up to 85 and then remembered that I was no longer employed and turned it down to 50, adding another blanket to my bed instead. The blanket smelled like wet dog, and I didn't have a dog. But who cared. So I would smell. So I would become a shut-in who resembled Jodie Foster in
Nell
. I'd forget the English language. I would sleep on a bed of moss. I'd be like
Lord of the Flies
without the other flies. “The lone fly,” I said, crying. “Piggy.”

I heard my phone ring repeatedly that night but didn't stir to turn off the ringer or answer it. When I woke up the next day at noon, all I did was open my metal apartment door to take out the keys I had left in the lock, close the door, put the chain on, and pretend that the world outside was something that no longer applied to me. I didn't turn on my computer to see if the article had run in the
Baltimore Sun
. I didn't check to see if it had gained traction or if someone had made a GIF of my head with the words
EPIC FAIL
flashing on it. I didn't want to know. I ignored voicemails from Nicole and text messages from Alex. I just let my phone battery blink in warning and die.

After seventy-two hours with the curtains drawn I lost track of day and night. When I wasn't hiding from the outside world, I alternated between sleeping in my bed and sleeping in the wooden chair I had spent the night in before everything happened, before Christie's became a place I was no longer welcome. And then, suddenly it was Monday. It was January 22, four days since the auction. I had almost no food left and I didn't want to order any. Instead of eating, I drank tap water with the occasional shot of vodka chucked in. I just wanted to sit, and stare, get wildly drunk, and ignore my newly acquired life crisis.

But I wasn't that lucky. Only one person had the key to my apartment besides my landlord: my mother. On Wednesday night, she decided to use it. I was facedown on my bed, naked, covered in sheets and blankets, which were starting to get pungent from sweat, when I heard the lock snap open. I should have immediately turned around to make sure it wasn't some zombie-eyed killer who liked to bludgeon women who'd already lost the will to live, but I didn't. It wasn't until I heard my mother's monotone voice imploring me to remove the chain that I turned my head to look at her. I could just make out a thin strip of her body between the wall and the door and her left eye. She put two fingers on the chain motioning for me to come open it.

“Carolyn. Now, please,” she said, rattling the paint-coated old chain.

I looked up from my bed, registered that it was her, and lay back down, not planning on moving again. Maybe she would give up and go away. My parents were fond of abandoning me. They'd forgotten me in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence once for seven hours. I'd been found napping under Caravaggio's
Bacchus,
which could explain my penchant for alcohol and men with questionable morals.

“Nicole called me. She told me everything,” my mother said from the hallway. “We were worried when we didn't hear from you after the auction, but you can be very distant. So we weren't all that worried. Actually your father won an indoor tennis tournament last weekend, men's senior singles. They gave him a laurel wreath, which I thought was odd . . . but I'm off topic. Nicole, she called and explained everything that happened, she sent the link to the
Baltimore Sun
article. And understandably, now we're very worried.”

So there had been an article. Was I mentioned by name? Was Louise? Or did they just use the general Christie's American Furniture and Decorative Arts department label? I wanted to ask. But I didn't want to know the answer. My mom was the very last person I wanted to see. She, who never failed.

I remember when I was little and brought home report cards full of A's, she would smile and say, “Good job, kiddo. You're just like me. Smart as a flea.” She'd blow a kiss in the general direction of my face and go straight back to her work. But I remember living for that praise, hence my lifetime of near-perfect grades.

I heard her fiddling with the chain again, trying to break her way inside. She raised her voice and demanded to be let in or she would “find an ax and chop, chop, chop,” so finally I got out of bed completely naked, removed the chain, and went straight back under the covers. The TV was still on and she immediately turned it off, cracked a window open muttering something about “a retirement-home-strength stench,” and sat on the edge of my bed. She smelled like wool sweaters and parental disappointment.

“What happened?” Her hand grazed my calf and then moved on to my foot. She wrapped her hand around it, not exactly stroking it or massaging it, just holding it. My mother was only twenty years older than me and she barely looked it. When she turned forty-nine at Christmastime, she shrugged, glanced at herself in the mirror, and announced that everything was just fine. That's the way it was in my family; everything was always supposed to be just fine.

“I don't know what happened,” I replied, not lifting my head from the pillow. She could probably barely hear me, but I didn't care. I hadn't asked her to come.

“And is it as bad as Nicole said?” she asked, still awkwardly holding my foot, which probably smelled like a fish at this point. “Have you disgraced yourself, your family, and your future offspring?”

Is that what Nicole said? How wonderful. I was so glad to have acquired such loyal friends during my decade at Christie's.

“I'm sure it's much worse,” I replied, lifting my head slightly. “You read the
Sun
?” I asked, finally looking up at her.

Her face looked smooth and distinguished, the kind of face that never wrinkles very much because it never moves very much. Her light blue eyes looked at the wall next to my bed and fell on the chair by the window.

“Is that chair broken?” she asked, looking at it and ignoring the question.

“The arms fell off,” I replied.

And by
fell off
I meant that the night before she knocked on my door uninvited I ripped them off with the help of my foot.

“That's too bad; such a pretty chair.” She turned her face and looked at me. My mother's presence was making it feel more real. She was here to bail me out and I knew that it took a lot to get her to that point. She unbuttoned her cardigan and put it on the broken chair. She looked nothing like me. She was tall, with willowy limbs, an air of ambivalence, and a perpetual tan. I, on the other hand, was regularly described as petite, pale, and intense.

“What am I going to do?” I asked sadly.

“You're a very smart girl, Carolyn. You're my girl. And you're not going to worry about it now. In a few days, you'll fix it.”

I ignored the second half of her sentence and concentrated on the first. My mother wrapped her thin arms around me and mumbled something about my flair for the dramatic. It wasn't the kind of hug that warmed your bones with love and compassion. It was the kind of hug that came from a woman who shuddered at the thought of professional ruin. But she'd called me her girl. And she was here, helping me.

She changed my sheets and blankets, pointed to the center of the bed, and told me to wait there while she went out to get us food. And I did. I sat still until I started to slink down, deeper and deeper until I was lying flat again, drifting off to sleep. I faintly heard her come back in, but I barely stirred. Then I could sense her getting into bed next to me. I had never been a kid who curled up in her parents' bed. There were very firm lines drawn in my house of where I could and could not be. But here was my mother sharing my bed. Watching me. Taking care of me. And for a second, between all the self-pitying I was doing, I felt lucky. I felt loved.

“I have a plan,” my mother said as soon as my eyelids fluttered the next morning. She smiled at me as if she were about to announce that I was going to have all my teeth removed with rusty pliers by children playing doctor.

“Nothing in life is worth mourning like this, Carolyn. You need to make a few of the right moves now, and then you'll see, everything will turn out just fine. You are allowed to mourn your loss for twenty-four hours and then you have to let it go and get your life back. Like I said yesterday, you're my girl, and this”—she pointed at me slumped over in bed, a jar of peanut butter and a baking spatula on the floor next to me—“is not my girl.” I looked at her with my recently perfected sad face. With her shiny brown hair and flawless makeup, we didn't even look related. She even smelled like success.

“I think I'm the horse who jumped off the track and now the owner has to shoot it.”

“Oh Carolyn, stop it. Where did I find you? Universal Studios? You're being ridiculous. You're going to go out and get a haircut. Getting haircuts always makes a person feel better.”

“I just got a haircut.”

“Well, then get it cut again!” my mother screamed without really looking at me.

“After you have a day of relaxation, we are going to go to the Vollinger Gallery at seven
P.M
. sharp for the opening of the Pennsylvania Furniture Show. I know you already RSVP'd to it. I asked Nicole this morning. She plans on being there, too. She was instructed not to speak to you by Louise but she's going to blink at you across the room three times to show she cares.” My mother paused and listened to me say the word
no
about fifteen times.

“The thing you do not understand, Carolyn, is how important it is to get back out there immediately. You put on a brave face and show the world that none of this affected you. You're above this and too smart for their petty gossip. Tell the art world that this was just an inconsequential misunderstanding. If you act that way, they'll see it your way. Trust me. I know about these things.” She sighed and stared at me like I was some rent-a-kid she still couldn't believe she got stuck with.

“No,” I said again. “No way, not happening, not even entertaining the idea.”

“You will go, or I will not leave your apartment. Ever,” my mother said firmly. “If you go with me tonight, I will leave tomorrow morning and let you make your own decisions. Now, doesn't that sound appealing. How to get rid of your mother.” I knew I should have emancipated myself at sixteen like Macaulay Culkin.

I left the apartment, but only because my mom was in it and I wanted to be far away from her. But I was not getting a haircut. What I needed to do was read. I had to suck it up and open the
Sun
article. I had to check my email, listen to my voicemail, and tell Nicole, Alex, and Jane that I wasn't dead. I turned on my now-charged phone and sent three texts, all of which said, “I am not dead. Just trying to figure things out. I'm sorry I've been out of touch. I appreciate your concern and I'll call you soon.” My hand was shaking so I stood up and bought two Rice Krispies treats, sat at a table in the back, and tried not to hyperventilate. It didn't work. I was hyperventilating. Next I'd be sweating, and based on the last few days, tears would follow. But what choice did I have. I couldn't exactly go to some party at the Vollinger Gallery and not know what shape my career was in.

The
Baltimore Sun
. I had to start with the
Sun
. Or maybe I should just google myself. No. The
Baltimore Sun
. It was a warm and friendly paper. Meg Ryan's character worked there in
Sleepless in Seattle
. There was no way they were going to trash an innocent person like me. I loaded the home page on my phone. “Triple homicide, all children, bludgeoned by masked man.” Great. That was a swell headline. Was this paper printed at the penitentiary? I searched for my name in the paper's archives and exactly one article came up. “Christie's big Baltimore boo-boo.” I dropped my phone on the table and stuffed one of the cellulite bars in my mouth.

The article followed just what Louise had said. This enterprising reporter, whom I now wished great harm upon, had managed to find the family that Nina's grandmother worked for and that family had produced photos of the table in their house. They'd also found some bankbook or record where their great-grandfather had noted that the table had been given to “the negro maid” when she retired as a thank-you gift. There was no concrete theory on how it had gotten from the Joneses' shop into the Tumlinsons' house, first in Baltimore and then in Texas, but some unnamed source said Adam Tumlinson had dealt with art dealers who had been in trouble before and another said that Adam Tumlinson himself employed several personal aides who were less than ethical in helping him build the perfect collection. Where exactly was this information when we were working with the Tumlinson estate? Had I not checked enough? Could I have found all this? Christie's had been helping Adam buy and sell for decades and nothing like this had ever come up. I felt sick. The provenance of all of the Tumlinsons' Baltimore furniture was now in question, and the whole estate felt shaky. The paper called it “a grave embarrassment for the small, yet respected, American Furniture and Decorative Arts Department, led by Louise DeWitt.” Some art expert who they probably found selling chalk art to tourists on the Inner Harbor said it would take the department “years to recover. Maybe a decade.” But I knew that. I knew that as soon as I had heard Louise utter the word
stolen
.