Alternate Side(43)

“You run this place?” the woman said.

“Yes,” said Nora, smiling.

“Shame on you,” the woman said, and she tightened her hands on the bar of the walker, like the little claws of a parakeet on a perch, and clumped out of the exhibition hall, her coat sweeping the floor. “Thank the Lord,” the aide said as they left.

Later, as Nora went over their coming events—a class on gem assessment for men buying an engagement ring, a lecture by a historian on Marie Antoinette’s jewels—Richard buzzed her. “There’s a woman here who is asking for a minute or two of your time,” he said. “Her name is Deborah Messer. She says her mother was here earlier.” Nora looked down at her computer screen. Richard had texted: Mother disruptive in southwest exhibit.

Deborah Messer turned out to be a handsome woman perhaps ten years older than Nora. Like her mother, she was a type, albeit a different type, well dressed, in beautifully tailored clothes that might have been in her closet for decades or be brand new, so classic as to be completely unmemorable and acceptable.

“My mother was here today,” she said. “I understand she caused quite a kerfuffle.”

“There’s a word you don’t hear very often,” Nora said, but the woman didn’t smile.

“I also understand she may have caused some damage, and I wanted to take care of that.”

“There was no damage,” Nora said. “She was just confused. She seemed to think that some of the pieces in an exhibit of Navajo silver jewelry were hers.”

“They are.”

“Excuse me?”

“I suppose it’s more accurate to say that they were. My mother was Norman Pearl’s first wife. I’m his daughter.”

If Nora had not spent so many years being politic with older donors and museum trustees, she would have said what she was thinking: Holy shit. Bebe had once told her that most men truly wanted to have three different kinds of wives during their lifetimes: the first one, who was to make a home and a family; the dishy trophy wife, who could be enjoyed and then dispensed with when lust paled and died; and the third wife, who would be devoted but still interesting, admiring but not slavish. The point was that Bebe was that third wife. Nora didn’t know if there had been a second, but it had certainly not occurred to her that Norman Pearl’s first wife was even still living.

“I toured the museum soon after it opened,” the woman added. “As far as I could tell, none of the things on display belonged to anyone but my father’s last wife.” Nora could tell by the way she said this that that was what she always called Bebe: my father’s last wife. No “Bebe dear” from this woman, for sure and certain. “My father didn’t acquire a taste for buying jewelry until after he and my mother divorced. She kept her engagement ring, of course, and a few other things, but there were some items at the weekend house that she’d either forgotten or was forbidden to fetch, depending on whom you believe.” Deborah Messer sighed heavily, as though she was exhaling the poison of years and years.

“I don’t know what to say,” Nora said. She was painfully aware of the Andy Warhol four-panel portrait above the office sofa, the portrait that Bebe had had hung recently to, in her words, “dress up the place.” The father’s last wife, times four, in neon colors.

“There’s no need to say anything,” Deborah Messer said, standing with her camel-hair coat over one arm. “I didn’t intend to make you feel bad. I was just concerned about damages. I’m relieved to know that there weren’t any.”

“Please tell your mother that I’m sorry.”

“For what? She was the first wife of a rich man who got much richer after the divorce. It’s not an unusual story. She has everything she needs. I don’t know how she found out about these things, but I imagine they were just symbolic.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “This whole place is symbolic, isn’t it?” she said, and for a moment the mask fell. It happened so seldom in Nora’s world that it was even more shocking than what had gone before. In an instant the placid water of good manners closed over the fury and erased it as though it had never been, but the mother’s words had seemed reflected in the daughter’s face: Shame on you.

A real museum, Charlie said to her that night. There couldn’t have been a worse night for him to say that. There hadn’t been a time when Nora had felt so uncertain of what she was doing. Shame on you, she heard over and over again, shame on you. And she knew if she told Bebe, the big boss, what had happened, she would say contemptuously, Oh, them. Those two. The detritus of the past, with their silver jewelry and wool coats.

“All those emeralds getting you down?” Phil had said when she passed him at the end of the day, and when she went on without a look or greeting, she heard him say quietly to himself, “One of those days.”

But she shared none of that with her husband. There had been times when she and Charlie had aired their uncertainties with each other, but not this time. Instead she narrowed her eyes and said, “Let me give you the bottom line, Charlie: I am staying in my little job in my little museum living in my little house. I am not selling it. And since my name is on the deed, you can’t sell, either. It’s as simple as that. End of discussion.”

“Bun,” Charlie began, but Nora interrupted.