The Wish(4)

A little more than a month ago, at the beginning of November, she had undergone another round of CAT and PET scans, and in December, she’d met again with Dr. Brodigan. The doctor had been more subdued than usual, although her eyes brimmed with compassion. There, she’d told Maggie that while more than three years of treatment had slowed the disease at times, its progression had never quite stopped. When Maggie asked what other treatment options were available, the doctor had gently turned her attention to the quality of the life Maggie had remaining.

It was her way of telling Maggie that she was going to die.

*



Maggie had opened the gallery more than nine years ago with another artist named Trinity, who used most of the space for his giant and eclectic sculptures. Trinity’s real name was Fred Marshburn and they’d met at an opening for another artist’s show, the kind of event Maggie seldom attended. Trinity was already wildly successful at that point and had long toyed with the idea of opening his own gallery; he didn’t, however, have any desire to actually manage the gallery, nor did he want to spend any time there. Because they’d hit it off, and because her photographs in no way competed with his work, they’d eventually made a deal. In exchange for her managing the business of the gallery, she would earn a modest salary and could also display a selection of her own work. At the time, it was more about prestige—she could tell people she had her own gallery!—than it was about the money Trinity paid her. In the first year or two, she sold only a few prints of her own.

Because Maggie was still traveling extensively at the time—more than a hundred days a year, on average—the actual day-to-day running of the gallery fell to a woman named Luanne Sommers. When Maggie hired her, Luanne was a wealthy divorcée with grown children. Her experience was limited to an amateur’s passion for collecting and an expert’s eye for finding bargains at Neiman Marcus. On the plus side, she dressed well; she was responsible, conscientious, and willing to learn; and she had no qualms about the fact that she’d earn little more than minimum wage. As she put it, her alimony was enough to allow her to retire in luxury, but there were only so many lunches a woman could do without going crazy.

Luanne turned out to be a natural at sales. In the beginning, Maggie had briefed her on the technical elements of all of her prints, as well as the story behind each particular shot, which was often as interesting to buyers as the image itself. Trinity’s sculptures, which utilized assorted materials—canvas, metal, plastic, glue, and paint, in addition to items collected from junkyards, deer antlers, pickle jars, and cans—were original enough to inspire spirited discussion. He was already an established critical darling, and his pieces moved regularly despite their staggering prices. But the gallery didn’t advertise or feature many guest artists, so the work itself was fairly low-key. There were days when only a handful of people entered the premises, and they were able to close the gallery the last three weeks of the year. It was—for Maggie, Trinity, and Luanne—an arrangement that worked well for a long time.

But two things happened to change all that. First, Maggie’s Cancer Videos lured new people to the gallery. Not the usual seasoned contemporary art or photography enthusiasts, but tourists from places like Tennessee and Ohio, people who’d begun to follow Maggie on Instagram and YouTube because they felt a connection to her. Some of them had become actual fans of her photography, but a lot of them simply wanted to meet her or buy one of her signed prints as a keepsake. The phone began to ring off the hook with orders from random locations around the country, and additional orders poured in through the website. It was all Maggie and Luanne could do to keep up, and last year, they’d made the decision to keep the gallery open through the holidays because the crowds kept coming. Then Maggie learned she’d soon have to begin chemotherapy, which meant she wouldn’t be able to help at the gallery for months. It was clear that they needed to hire an additional employee, and when Maggie broached the subject with Trinity, he agreed on the spot. As fate would have it, the following day, a young man named Mark Price walked into the gallery and asked to speak with her, an event that at the time struck her as almost too good to be true.

*



Mark Price was a recent college graduate who could have passed for a high schooler. Maggie initially assumed he was another “cancer groupie,” but she was only partially correct. He admitted he had become familiar with her work through her popular online presence—he was especially fond of her videos, he volunteered—but he’d also come in with a résumé. He explained that he was looking for employment and the idea of working in the art world strongly appealed to him. Art and photography, he’d added, allowed for the communication of new ideas, often in ways that words did not.

Despite her misgivings about hiring a fan, Maggie sat down with him the same day, and it became clear that he’d done his homework. He knew a great deal about Trinity and his work; he mentioned a specific installation that was currently on display at MoMA and another at the New School, drawing comparisons to some of Robert Rauschenberg’s later work in a knowledgeable but unpretentious way. Though it didn’t surprise her, he also had a deep and impressive familiarity with her own body of work. And yet, though he’d answered all her questions satisfactorily, she remained a little uneasy; she couldn’t quite figure out whether he was serious about his desire to work in a gallery, or just another person who wanted to witness her own tragedy up close.