No One Suspects an Artwork Thief Sporting Sandals and Socks

Marie-Helene Bertino

Writer of the novel Parakeet (FSG, June 2020)

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Lottie Woodside and the Diamond Mud Cher by Marie-Helene Bertino

Lottie Woodside was studying it takes two fools to start out a wedding and a crew to finish one. Legal professionals, a notary clerk, Derek even introduced the girlfriend: an overmatched however dear-­wanting factor who prevented Lottie’s eyes and sat on the bench within the notary’s hallway, reinforcing her bangs with a handbag comb.

“I hope you promised her ice cream after,” Lottie mentioned, and regretted it.

Since that they had agreed to divorce, Derek most well-liked to maintain their interactions brisk {and professional}, however the finality of paperwork and a state constructing appeared to stir previous compassion. “Properly, you realize,” he mentioned. Lottie knew this phrase, unfinished and delivered with chagrin, was meant to be conciliatory, a hand up into her new life.

The wedding was defunct. Thirty years folded right into a drawer like vacation linens.

Lottie thought this earned her a cab journey.

She discovered one however upon opening the door noticed that it was already occupied by a lady who, speaking on her cellphone, blinked into the shock of a brand new individual. Lottie scanned the road for an additional cab however the girl waved are available, as if her departure could be extra of a delay.

“I won’t be on the way in which,” Lottie mentioned.

“Every thing is on the way in which,” the lady mentioned. Then, into her cellphone: “Not you, Steve. The girl moving into this cab.” The cabdriver protested however the girl gave the impression to be in charge of his cab and everybody in it.

The sunshine turned inexperienced.

Lottie gave the cabdriver her Brooklyn deal with.

The girl caught her wanting on the massive, flat package deal wrapped in brown paper and propped in opposition to her knees. Her hand flew instinctively to guard it. Whoever was on the top of the road expressed dissatisfaction. “Calm down,” the lady whispered. Lottie pretended to not discover the lady scanning her. “She’s no supplier. Sandals with socks.”

Lottie pressed her brow in opposition to the chilly window. She had taken a private day from her nannying job and was wanting ahead to getting residence. She deliberate to clean Derek from their condominium with cleansing provides that smelled like timber and by transferring the sofa from one aspect of the room to the opposite.

At a crimson mild, the cabbie consulted the ladies in his rearview mirror. “We’re going nowhere quick.”

The girl leaned in to the partition separating them. “Are you able to strive Tenth?” Elegant cuff hyperlinks blinked on one sleeve.

The cab driver pulled out of site visitors and carried out a fast flip. The road was clear. He reached Tenth Avenue and made a pointy left, jostling the ladies in opposition to one another.

“Pardon me,” mentioned Lottie.

Yards forward, a streetlight turned yellow. The cabdriver accelerated.

Lottie pointed to a spot on the ground close to the package deal. “You misplaced one among your cuff hyperlinks.”

“Did I?” The girl clutched at her sleeve. “Dangle on, Steve.” She bent over the package deal to really feel round on the ground. “These items by no means keep the place they’re supposed—”

Lottie didn’t hear the remainder of the sentence. She was exterior the cab, sitting on the curb, legs organized uncomfortably beneath her. An expression of glass fell over her in waves. A gem shone on the pavement. It turned and signaled to somebody. To her? Lottie leaned in; her eyes adjusted and the article resolved into focus. The girl’s cuff hyperlink. Lottie’s purse slumped in opposition to a close-by hydrant. She stood, shook her legs and arms. Her bottom ached. The place the curb stopped me, she reasoned.

A Subaru had collided into the cab on its left aspect, the place the lady had been looking out the ground. Its driver was out of his automotive holding his head, questioning on the wreck. The cab was pummeled right into a crescent form; the cabbie settled on one aspect of it, the lady on the opposite. Lottie noticed the place her door had flown open and ejected her. The cabdriver’s cheek rested in opposition to the steering wheel, smiling dimly in a great dream. Lottie had been within the presence of demise solely as soon as and it was unmistakable.

Within the again seat the lady clutched at her chest, as if attempting to find the pendant to a necklace. The cab steamed and bitched round her. “I’m okay,” she mentioned.

Folks clambered out of the encompassing retailers, wanting jobs. They requested who wanted help and made cellphone calls. Lottie picked up her purse and shook it. How fortunate, she thought, every part that belongs to me is undamaged. Within the distance, a siren yearned towards them. The girl within the again seat cried for assist. Her door was caught. Strangers took turns pulling. The ambulance arrived. Paramedics spilled out and tended to the drivers, the lady. A policeman established a divide with yellow tape, creating a brief order that Lottie appreciated. Nobody in a roundabout way concerned within the accident ought to be capable to take part.

Somebody recognized Lottie as concerned within the crash, and a paramedic slipped an oxygen masks over her mouth and nostril. She sat on the curb respiration into it whereas the others labored on the cabbie. She was sure he was lifeless so when his eyelids rebooted, when he exited the cab unassisted, Lottie felt some cousin of duped. It felt stranger than anything that had occurred: man returned from the lifeless. The gang watched him try tentative, directionless steps. He made it to the nook and threw up right into a metropolis trash can. The paramedics turned to the lady within the again seat who’d gone quiet.

It was the form of overfamiliarity that Harolyn had hated, however Lottie appreciated that the physician used we and us, as in the event that they’d each been in a wreck.

“Are we married?” he mentioned, putting in opposition to her breastbone a stethoscope he’d breathed onto twice to heat. There are two sorts of docs: those that heat the stethoscope and people who don’t.

For the primary time in thirty years, Lottie answered the query within the unfavorable. We aren’t married.

“Is there anybody we should always name?”

She pictured Harolyn the final time she noticed her, laughing at a household of picnickers battling the wind on Higbee Seashore. She felt the acquainted, comfortable ache of lacking her pal.

He shone a light-weight into her eyes. “What’s at present’s date?”

“I by no means know the date,” Lottie mentioned.

In a framed image on the shelf behind him, the physician was smiling the identical approach he was smiling now, his arm round a blond man holding a SOLD! signal.

“It’s Memorial Day,” he mentioned. “The beginning of the summer time. What’s the very last thing we bear in mind?”

Lottie advised him she’d hailed a cab that had been hit by one other automotive. The police had pushed her there, to the Midtown hospital, over her insistence. Now she was speaking to him. She wasn’t nauseated, had no neck or again ache, had no hassle respiration.

“You’ll be sore tomorrow,” he assured her, penciling a prescription for painkillers. “For those who’re feeling indicators of a concussion, come again. Generally these items hit us later. Confusion.­ Forlornness. Scattered ideas. Mania. Euphoria. It indicators swelling of the mind. You suppose you’re fantastic, then increase!”

“I’m seventy,” Lottie mentioned. “What you’re describing is Wednesday.”

She requested how the driving force made out and he advised her fantastic.

“And the lady?”

The physician blinked a number of instances. “I’m sorry.”

So the one she thought would make it didn’t, and the one she thought wouldn’t did. “I didn’t know her.” Although applicable, the sentiment fell brief. One thing about nearness, fondness, one thing about significance appearing out of proportion with time. A nurse’s arrival appeared to sign to the physician that their go to had concluded. “That’s quite a bit to course of,” he mentioned. “Keep if you happen to want a minute.” When he was a baby, he will need to have been each instructor’s favourite. His pinched, honest expression reminded her of Pumpkin, the little boy she nannied. “Don’t overlook your issues.” He pointed to her purse and a package deal propped in opposition to the wall. Lottie acknowledged it because the one from the cab.

“That’s not mine,” Lottie mentioned. However the physician and nurse have been gone.

It was onerous to imagine she and the package deal had emerged from the identical automotive. Its wrapping was intact. Its pristine label indicated an workplace on the Higher East Aspect. Lottie carried it out of the hospital.

Lottie discovered a close-by espresso store and ordered a sandwich and a cup of tea. At a free desk she propped the package deal up by itself chair. She tugged on the tape and gently pulled down the wrapping to disclose a brightly coloured portrait of Cher.

“Tuna salad!” the barista referred to as.

Lottie left the portray to retrieve her order. On the condiment stand she shook pepper onto the bread, a behavior Derek hated. She used greater than she usually would, chewed, and studied the portray. Cher wore a sheer crocheted halter and sat elegantly slumped. She smiled together with her mouth closed, lips outlined twice in black, eyes brilliant. Lottie returned the lady’s heavy-­lidded smile, having fun with the texture of the solar via the window flattening in opposition to her collarbones. Somebody had mentioned it was the start of summer time. It certain was. Ambulances seared previous the espresso store, little question heading for the scene of her accident. No, that will have been cleared already.

Lottie completed her sandwich and reclothed Cher. The deal with on the label was up twenty streets and over three avenues. She walked to the bus cease, pausing to attend out a surge of ache in her decrease again.

An almost-­empty bus arrived. Lottie and Cher had their very own seat. Faculties have been letting out; at each cease, kids charged onto the bus, yelling and draping themselves over her seat with no apology, till Lottie needed to stability Cher on her lap. Lottie by no means minded kids as Derek had. She appreciated that they made split-­second judgments and that they appeared her within the eye. More often than not Lottie loved the invisibility that got here with being older, the truth that nobody thought she was able to something prison or notable, however she often wished to be seen.

At every cease kids hurled themselves down the steps, into the arms of fogeys and nannies and by the point they reached the Higher East Aspect, a neighborhood of artwork sellers and museums, the bus was empty once more. Lottie and Cher disembarked and walked to the deal with, the place Lottie repeated her identify into the intercom.

“Who’re you right here to see?” The receptionist sounded uncertain. “We’re booked.”

“Steve?” Lottie tried.

The door buzzed and Lottie opened it. She climbed 4 flights to a gallery area the place a younger girl sitting at a small, gleaming desk greeted her.

“Is that this in regards to the Basquiat?”

“I used to be in a automotive accident,” Lottie started, however then a person yelling from an workplace on the opposite aspect of the area startled the receptionist. The woman gestured to a folding chair subsequent to a stack of magazines, crossed the room, and disappeared behind the door.

“Is it her?” the person mentioned. “It’s been hours.”

“It’s an previous girl,” Lottie heard her say.

Lottie gave Cher the chair and appeared on the artwork. On an overlarge canvas the phrase RAPE stood in opposition to a discipline of crudely sketched penises.

“Isn’t it superb?” The woman stood behind her. “The artist is a public defender of rapists.” She gestured throughout the area. “Over there will probably be our Warhol exhibit. All of the diamond dusts arrive at present. That’s why it’s a zoo.”

Lottie set free a low whistle. “Diamond mud,” she mentioned.

From the workplace Lottie heard the sound of one thing massive being thrown in opposition to steel. The person yelled for the woman, who jogged to rejoin him. They didn’t hold their voices low. “It’s solely been a number of hours. You recognize her, she’s in all probability speaking. There’s a lady right here to see you.”

“What does she need?”

“I haven’t requested but.”

“If it’s not your job to ask her, whose is it?”

Lottie remembered what it was wish to work in an workplace like this. She remembered refreshing her make-up after crying within the toilet. Bonding with folks her age. She’d met Harolyn once they labored on the identical ground of a Midtown constructing. They ate their sandwiches out of wax paper, sitting on the identical park bench every single day. Lottie thought she’d spend the remainder of her life assembly Harolyn at twelve forty-­5. However Derek disrupted her schedule, barely, then extra. She couldn’t bear in mind when or why she’d left that job. She couldn’t even bear in mind the constructing’s deal with. And he or she spent so a few years there.

A cellphone rang within the again workplace. The person mentioned, “It’s me.”

The receptionist emerged. “It’s not a great day,” she mentioned. “He received’t be seeing shoppers.”

“I’m not a consumer,” Lottie reminded her.

“Oh my god,” the person yelled. “Anna!”

“That’s me,” the woman mentioned.

Lottie nodded. She had decided. “Good luck with the diamond dusts.”

“Diamonds aren’t even uncommon. Everybody thinks they’re however they’re not.” Her voice was sorrowful. “Did you wish to depart a message? I can take down your identify.” However the woman was already turning to the again workplace the place he was calling her once more. “No want.” Lottie picked up the portray and began towards the door. She stepped into the vestibule and pressed the button for the elevator, which got here directly. Because the door closed, she heard the person’s sizzling voice and the receptionist’s salving replies.

“She wasn’t a consumer. In a automotive accident. Sandals and socks.”

“Properly, convey her in!”

“Properly, she’s gone!”

Within the foyer, males argued over a pallet of packing containers. Lottie maneuvered previous, via the door to the road. She was relieved to listen to an unlimited lock activate behind her.

Lottie wasn’t sure what she was doing was stealing, however she wasn’t sure it wasn’t. She’d convey the portray again after she had time to suppose. The bus was nearing Midtown when her cellular phone rang.

It was her employer, Alice Blakeman, who in regards to the start of her son, Pumpkin, as soon as mentioned: “I’d have been simply as comfortable had we adopted a cocker spaniel.”

“I do know it’s your time off,” Alice mentioned. “However only for an hour?”

Lottie wished to go residence, take off her sneakers, and scrub the partitions. However she wanted hours. Although guilt had made Derek financially thoughtful, the divorce had been costly. She and Cher disembarked on the subsequent cease.

Lottie and Cher crossing Fifty-­Sixth Road.

Lottie pulling Cher away from a supply cart’s path.

Lottie and Cher ready for a stroll signal subsequent to a pharmacy window that appeared to mirror all the sunshine on the planet. Amidst the blurred, brilliant folks crossing and ready, Lottie was a hunched determine in a light-weight jacket. She considered Cher’s sure gaze and straightened herself.

Lottie and Cher weaving via commuters belching up via the Fifty-­Ninth Road subway exit.

Within the Blakeman workplace, Pumpkin jumped on the sofa whereas Alice stood on a chair within the middle of the room, spraying him with water.

“Thank god,” Alice mentioned when Lottie entered. She motioned to Pumpkin together with her shoe. “Ice cream, or no matter?”

Lottie and Pumpkin walked to the ice creamery on Fifth. Pumpkin ordered three scoops of mint julep. Lottie ordered one scoop of vanilla.

“Why would you order one scoop when you would have three?” Pumpkin mentioned.

They sat on a low stone wall that bordered a park. Households dotted the garden. Pumpkin stabbed at his ice cream together with his small, pink tongue. Lottie had as soon as attended Derek’s firm picnic on this park. They’d crossed this garden holding eggs balanced on spoons. Groups. On the subway residence, Derek had mentioned he was pleased with his “jock spouse.” He balanced a platter of macaroni salad sheathed in plastic wrap on his thighs.

The solar retreated behind a cloud and threw shadows onto the sector. The boy sitting subsequent to her dragged his tongue throughout his ice cream whereas turning the cone for advantageous angles. He was hooked up to her, this was clear by how shut he sat, how relaxed he was in her presence. Who was he?

“Do you want your ice cream?” she mentioned.

He nodded. “It’s pleasant.”

It was Pumpkin, she realized. The rich boy she cared for, who once in a while opened right into a second of startling tenderness. Lottie anxious these moments would change into rarer as he aged. What did Harolyn all the time say about life? It’s like a chunk of pottery. A kite? A motorcycle. “Was I right here yesterday?” Lottie mentioned. “Did I watch you?”

Pumpkin nodded. “We made turkey casserole for Alice.”

“You’re a great boy,” Lottie mentioned.

“What’s that?” He pointed to the package deal.

Lottie unwrapped the highest half of the portray, revealing Cher from the chin up.

“Ugly,” Pumpkin mentioned.

Lottie felt a stab of loyalty. “It’s trendy artwork.”

Pumpkin produced a marker from his pocket and, earlier than Lottie may cease him, drew a pert mustache on the canvas. She slapped his hand, sending the marker via the air to clack in opposition to the concrete.

“Ouch,” he mentioned, extra loudly than the slap warranted. Receiving no response, he mentioned it once more.

“I wish to know,” Lottie mentioned, “what made you suppose you would do this.”

He retreated, flashed, hardened right into a plan. “I’m telling Mom.”

She licked her fingers and tried to erase the smudge. It blurred and unfold. She pulled Pumpkin off the bench, to the curb, throughout the road, towards his mom’s workplace.

Lottie and Cher sitting on the bus.

“No, thanks,” Lottie mentioned, when a person supplied his hand.

Lottie and Cher leaping to the sidewalk.

Store house owners hosed off sizzling concrete. It was the start of summer time. Or summer time was virtually over. In any case, the solar was to be loved, as a result of it had been absent for therefore lengthy or as a result of it might quickly be going away. It was nightfall when Lottie and Cher walked residence via the park. The lamps have been lit. Baseball video games have been concluding within the fields. Winners and weepers. Reluctant households trudged towards the subway.

Her condominium had three rooms: bed room, kitchen, and household. Pale yellow partitions and a partial view of the park, if you happen to frolicked the window the other way up like a bat, clenching the railing together with your toes. This was her joke with Pumpkin, and it by no means didn’t elicit his throaty, grownup chuckle.

Lottie sat on the sofa, eliminated her sneakers, and spent a very long time rubbing every foot. Her historic answering machine flashed with a message. The gallery, she assumed, but it surely was Alice Blakeman.

“I don’t know what to say. Pumpkin tells me—­it’s onerous to even imagine—­he says, properly, Lottie, did you slap him?”

This might be essentially the most thought Alice would ever give her and it might come within the type of bewilderment that somebody on her payroll would do something to confuse her. Lottie knew that over the course of the evening the confusion would calcify into self-righteousness, then insult. Lottie must apologize.

“Or else what?” she mentioned aloud, rubbing and making a distinction to a agency knot in her heel.

The condominium was neat however not clear. A portray of an Italian café hung over the dusty tv. “A dialog starter,” Derek had referred to as it. He purchased it throughout his touring part when he examine different nations and went nowhere.

It was meant to be their starter condominium, however that they had lived in it for thirty years till a number of weeks earlier than, when Derek got here residence from his job at a medical provide agency and advised her he could be transferring into his girlfriend’s condominium that very evening. She was a coworker and had attended the park occasion, watching the couple cross the garden holding eggs on spoons. She’d even expressed remorse that nobody had eaten Lottie’s macaroni salad. “A waste of fine noodles.”

Although it had been Derek’s resolution to divorce, they’d each participated within the relationship’s dimming. His dalliances, her aloofness. There have been no kids or cash to divvy. There had been a child who hadn’t lived lengthy. When Lottie pictured her, which she’d been doing extra typically, she lay within the hospital’s bassinet on one among her solely days, too delicate for the world to carry. The one time she’d been within the presence of demise earlier than that morning’s accident. Weeks of damaging silence adopted. Derek couldn’t meet Lottie’s gaze. He by no means blamed her however didn’t contradict her when she blamed herself.

Lottie poured a glass of wine and waited for regret to separate her in two. Backyard-­selection doubt, at the very least. No feeling arrived. Even after a second glass. She appreciated that the dishes within the sink have been hers. Her work attire, pressed and zipped, hung within the entrance closet. A headache bloomed on the base of her neck. She considered Derek on this area as she throated two aspirin. He’d all the time appeared too huge in it, clumsy fingers pulling a pot from a excessive shelf.

Lottie eliminated Cher from her wrapping and leaned her in opposition to the wall. Apart from Pumpkin’s smudge, Cher was ­ flawless, making every part within the room appear boring. Her affected person, beaming face. The daring lavender and fuchsia. They smiled at each other.

Lottie propped Cher on one of many kitchen chairs, turned on the radio, and pulled a pork cutlet from the fridge. She appreciated noise whereas she made dinner. On the information, a person was being interviewed about one thing that had nothing to do with Lottie or anybody she knew. She chopped chives because the water boiled, tossed a pad of butter right into a warming pan.

Lottie and Cher consuming dinner on the kitchen desk.

Lottie had by no means felt younger, not even in youth. She disliked just one factor about time: the accrual of loss. At fifty, Harolyn mentioned, folks begin to depart the room. Generally Lottie would store to take her thoughts off all the nice folks gone. Harolyn, her child, a number of pricey mates, Derek too, in a approach. She’d miss components of him. The evil you realize, Harolyn would say. Harolyn had been essentially the most individual with a capital P Lottie had ever identified. Nobody made her do something. How had demise managed it? One second you’re an individual and the subsequent you’re not.

After dinner, Lottie surveyed the household room. A knobby sofa, a simple chair, two bookcases. She eliminated the café image and changed it with Cher. She stepped again and studied the lady.

“This should appear so shabby to you.”

Lottie ran the vacuum over the lounge and hallway carpets. The sofa was lighter than she had anticipated. Or she was stronger. She dragged it to the alternative wall. The simple chair to the place the sofa had been. The tv to the opposite wall. This rearrangement would create an enclave for Cher, she thought as she yanked the plug from the socket, a sacred area. She walked to the kitchen and retrieved a pint of ice cream from the freezer.

It occurred to her that the enclave ought to be on the smaller wall. The far wall didn’t supply the kind of intimacy an enclave required. Lottie dragged the chair again throughout the room to the smaller wall, however there it was too near the sofa. The room creaked to 1 aspect, Cher within the center, a gradual rudder. Lottie pushed the sofa to the far wall. Now the tv was subsequent to the sofa as an alternative of throughout from it. Then the bookshelves: two five-­tiered towers of unfinished wooden that Derek had put along with nails and a excessive heel. He wasn’t all dangerous. It’s unimaginable to hate an individual you actually know.

Lottie determined to maneuver the sofa to the bookshelf wall and the bookshelves to the inexperienced wall, creating the enclave she desired. She needed to progress inch by inch. First one bookshelf, then the subsequent, then she ran to the sofa and moved it a number of inches. The system labored however Lottie realized too late that the sofa wouldn’t match previous the bookshelves. She ought to have executed one bookshelf then the opposite. She tried to maneuver the chair to make approach for the bookshelves. It lodged between the sofa and the wall and refused to budge.

Lottie’s energy was gone, her fingers chapped and crimson. She tried to elevate the tv over the sofa to unlock some area, but it surely was too cussed to maneuver. Lottie had positioned each bit of furnishings so it may transfer neither ahead nor again. A miracle of geometry.

Her headache was not responding to the aspirin, and an hour had handed. Or, three. Why the headache? It had been a daily day. She’d sorted Pumpkin and picked up a sleeve of veal on the way in which residence for dinner. No, that was the yr earlier than. It had been Derek who knew what to do with veal. He’d stunned her with dinner and a fistful of wildflowers. They’d eaten on the kitchen desk because the room crammed with afternoon daylight. If that was the earlier yr, what was at present? Lottie remembered the accident, the portray. The lamp on the desk subsequent to her was off. She will need to have executed it in her sleep. Her coronary heart thumped. Had it been a dream, the cab, the Cher? There she was on the wall, each a part of her glimmering in errant mild. Two girls in a room. Each lately survived a wreck.

“We’ve skilled fairly a shock,” Lottie advised her. It was the appropriate sentiment: sincere, easy. A kiln, Lottie remembered. Is what Harolyn mentioned life is like. It turns up the warmth till your true colours present.