Little Fires Everywhere(32)

“But this photo,” Mrs. Richardson said, “was sold after Pauline’s death. By someone else. It was a photo of a woman holding a baby. Virgin and Child #1, it was called.”

The phone line suddenly went so quiet that Mrs. Richardson thought they’d been disconnected. But after a moment, Anita Rees spoke again. “Yes, I remember that one.”

“I’m just wondering,” said Mrs. Richardson, “if you could give me the name of the person who sold the photograph.”

Something new flared in Anita’s voice: suspicion. “Where did you say you were calling from again?”

“My name is Elena Richardson.” Mrs. Richardson hesitated for a moment. “I work as a reporter for the Sun Press, in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s related to a story I’m researching.”

“I see.” Another pause. “I’m sorry, but the original owner of that photograph wished to remain anonymous. For personal reasons. I’m not at liberty to give the seller’s name.”

Mrs. Richardson crimped the corner of her notepad in annoyance. “I understand. Well, what I’m actually interested in is the subject of the photograph. Would you happen to have any information on who she is?”

This time there was no mistaking it: definite wary silence, and when Anita Rees spoke again, it was with a touch of frost. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything I can share about that. Good luck with your story.” The line went dead with a soft click.

Mrs. Richardson set the phone down. As a journalist, she was no stranger to being hung up on, but this time irritated her more than most. Maybe there was something here, some strange mystery waiting to be unraveled. She glanced at her monitor, where a half-drafted piece—“Should Gore Run for President? Locals Weigh In”—sat waiting.

Art collectors were often reclusive, she thought. Especially where money was involved. This Anita Rees might not even know anything about the photo, other than whatever her commission was. And who had started her down this garden path anyway? Izzy. Her harebrained live wire of a daughter, the perpetual overreactor, prone to fits of furious indignation about nothing at all.

That alone, she thought, was a sign she was headed down a rabbit hole. She turned her notebook back to the page on the vice president and began to type.





9



Mrs. Richardson remained annoyed with Izzy all week, though truth be told, she was usually annoyed with Izzy for some reason or another. The roots of her irritation were long and many branched and deep. It was not—as Izzy herself suspected, and as Lexie, in moments of meanness, teased her—because she had been an accident, or unwanted. In fact, it was quite the opposite.

Mrs. Richardson had always wanted a large family. Having been an only child herself, she had grown up longing for brothers and sisters, envying her friends like Maureen O’Shaughnessy who never came home to an empty house and who always seemed to have someone to talk to. “It’s not so great,” Maureen assured her, “especially if you get brothers.” Maureen was the oldest at fifteen and her sister Katie was the youngest at two and in between came six boys, but Mrs. Richardson was convinced that even six brothers would be better than growing up alone. “Lots of kids,” she had said to Mr. Richardson when they’d gotten married, “at least three or four. And close together,” she’d added, thinking of the O’Shaughnessys again, how it was an off year that didn’t have an O’Shaughnessy in the grade. Everyone knew them; they were a dynasty in Shaker Heights, a huge and boisterous and exceedingly handsome clan that always seemed to be suntanned and windswept, like the Kennedys. Mr. Richardson, who had two brothers himself, agreed.

So they’d had Lexie first, in 1980, then Trip the next year and Moody the year after that, and Mrs. Richardson had secretly been proud of how fertile her body had proved, how resilient. She would push Moody in his stroller, with Lexie and Trip tagging along behind her, each clutching a handful of her skirt like baby elephants trailing their mother, and people on the street did a double take: this slender young woman couldn’t possibly have borne three children, could she? “Just one more,” she’d said to her husband. They had agreed to have the children early, so that afterward Mrs. Richardson could go back to work. A part of her wanted to stay home, to simply be with her children, but her own mother had always scorned those women who didn’t work. “Wasting their potential,” she had sniffed. “You’ve got a good brain, Elena. You’re not just going to sit home and knit, are you?” A modern woman, she always implied, was capable—nay, required—to have it all. So after each birth, Mrs. Richardson had returned to her job, crafted the pleasant, wholesome stories her editor demanded, come home to fawn over her little ones, waited for the next baby to arrive.

It wasn’t until Izzy that the charmed row of children came to an end. For starters, Mrs. Richardson had had terrible morning sickness, bouts of dizziness and vomiting that didn’t end with the first trimester but continued on unabated—if anything, more vigorously—as the weeks went on. Lexie was nearly three, Trip two, Moody just one, and with three very young children at home and Mrs. Richardson incapacitated, the Richardsons found it necessary to engage a housekeeper—a luxury they would become accustomed to, and which they would continue all the way into the children’s teenage years, all the way up to Mia. “It’s a sign of a strong pregnancy,” the doctors assured Mrs. Richardson, but a few weeks after hiring the housekeeper, she had begun to bleed and was placed on bed rest. Despite these precautions, Izzy had arrived precipitously soon thereafter, making her appearance—eleven weeks early—an hour after her mother arrived at the hospital.