Before the Fall(87)

“Yes,” he says. She narrows her eyes. “I know that. But I didn’t.”

He reads her eyes, her doubt, not knowing who she can trust anymore.

“Someday I’ll tell you what it means to be a recovered alcoholic. Or recovering. But mostly it’s about avoiding—pleasure—about staying focused on the work.”

“And this heiress in the city?”

He shakes his head.

“She gave me a place to hide, because she liked having a secret. I was the thing that money couldn’t buy. Except—I guess that’s not true.”

Scott is about to say something when JJ pads in. Eleanor straightens, wipes her eyes.

“Hey there, boo. Is it over?”

He nods.

“Should we go read some books and get ready for bed?”

The boy nods, then points at Scott.

“You want him to read?” asks Eleanor.

Another nod.

“Sounds good,” says Scott.

*



While the boy goes upstairs with Eleanor to get ready for bed, Scott calls the old fisherman he rents his house from. He wants to check in, see how the three-legged dog is doing.

“It’s not too bad, is it?” he asks. “The press?”

“No, sir,” says Eli. “They don’t bother me, plus—turns out they’re scared of the dog. But Mr. Burroughs, I gotta tell you. The men came. They had a warrant.”

“What men?”

“Police. They broke the lock on the barn and took it all.”

Scott has a chill in the base of his spine.

“The paintings?”

“Yes, sir, all of them.”

There’s a long pause as Scott thinks about that. The escalation. What it means. The work is out there now. His life’s accomplishment. What damage will come to it? What will they make him do to get it back? But there’s another feeling deep down, a giddy nerve jangling at the idea that finally the paintings are doing what they’re meant to do. They’re being seen.

“Okay,” he tells the old man. “Don’t worry. We’ll get them back.”

After teeth are brushed and pajamas acquired, and after the boy is in bed, under the covers, Scott sits in a rocking chair and reads from a stack of books. Eleanor hovers in the doorway, not knowing whether to stay or go, unclear of the boundaries of her role—is she allowed to leave them alone? Should she, even if she is?

After three books the boy’s lids are droopy, but he doesn’t want Scott to stop. Eleanor comes over and lies on the bed, nestling in beside the boy. So Scott reads three more, reading on even after the boy is asleep, after Eleanor too has surrendered to it and the late-summer sun is finally down. There is a simplicity to the act, to the moment, a purity that Scott has never experienced. Around him, the house is quiet. He closes the last book, lays it quietly on the floor.

Downstairs, the phone rings. Eleanor stirs, gets out of bed carefully, so as not to wake the boy. Scott hears her pad downstairs, hears the murmur of her voice, the sound of the hang-up, then she wanders back up and stands in the doorway, a strange look on her face, like a woman riding a roller coaster that’s plummeting to earth.

“What?” says Scott.

Eleanor swallows, exhales shakily. It’s as if the door frame is holding her up.

“They found the rest of the bodies.”





3.





Chapter 34


Screen Time



Where is the intersection between life and art? For Gus Franklin, the coordinates can be mapped with GPS precision. Art and life collide in an aircraft hangar on Long Island. This is where twelve oversize paintings now hang, shadowed in the light that spills in through milky windows, the large hangar doors kept closed to keep out the prying eyes of cameras. Twelve photorealistic images of human disaster, suspended by wire. At Gus’s urging great care has been taken to ensure no harm comes to the work. Despite O’Brien’s witch-hunt dogma, Gus still isn’t convinced they’ve done anything except harass the victim, and he won’t be responsible for damaging an artist’s legacy or impeding a well-earned second chance.

He stands now with a multi-jurisdictional team of agents and representatives from the airline and aircraft manufacturer, studying the paintings—not for their artistic pedigree, but as evidence. Is it possible, they ask themselves, that within these paintings are clues to the erasure of nine people and a million-dollar aircraft? It is a surreal exercise, made haunting by the location in which they stand. In the middle of the space, folding tables have been erected, upon which technicians have laid out the debris from the crash. With the addition of the paintings, there is now a tension in the space—a push/pull between wreckage and art that causes each man and woman to struggle with an unexpected feeling—that somehow the evidence has become art, not the other way around.

Gus stands in front of the largest work, a three-canvas spread. On the far right is a farmhouse. On the far left, a tornado has formed. In the center a woman stands at the lip of a cornfield. He studies the towering stalks, squints at the woman’s face. As an engineer, he finds the act of art beyond him—the idea that the object itself (canvas, wood, and oil) is not the point, and that instead some intangible experience created from suggestion, from the intersection of materials, colors, and content has been created. Art exists not inside the piece itself, but inside the mind of the viewer.