PIECE: Ankle-length mink purchased from Furs by Hershleder in Madison.
Betsy unzipped the cotton bag containing her mahogany mink coat and paused to rub her cheek against the short, glossy fur. She heaved the weighty garment off its hanger and set it on her bed, then lay her body down next to it, winded from the effort.
The coat was probably too much for a midwestern exhibition opening—too formal, too old-fashioned. Certainly too big to fit in her suitcase. She’d have to bring it on the plane. But Minneapolis was positively glacial in winter, she told herself. And these days, she felt chilled to the bone even when sitting in front of a roaring fire.
Though she never would have admitted it to anyone but herself, Betsy wondered if this would be her last opportunity to wear the coat. It had been a gift from Walt for their thirtieth anniversary, specially fitted for her by a local furrier. Dropping the coat off in March or April for cleaning and storage had become an annual rite of spring, as reliable for Betsy as seeing the first crocus stalks push through the soil in her sculpture garden.
When she arrived in the Twin Cities, Betsy was glad she’d decided to bring the coat, after all. She’d arranged for a car service to take her from the airport to the gallery, but even the two minutes waiting at the curb outside the terminal were enough to make her flip up the tall collar against the wind.
When the driver pulled up in front of the Foster Gallery, Betsy was impressed. She’d been there a couple of times before, when it had been just a small storefront. It had expanded since then, taking over the next-door loft to build a second exhibition space specifically for regional artists. Today was the grand opening of the new space. The floor-to-ceiling windows glowed yellow in the early dusk, with patrons milling around inside—a mix of well-dressed, older people like herself and younger, trendier types.
The driver asked Betsy how long she’d be.
“Depends if I buy any art,” she said. But as soon as she walked into the expansion wing, she knew she’d be buying something. It was only a question of narrowing it down.
She used to buy art with a lot of different motives in mind. She had to think about which pieces were likely to acquire value over time, which artists were apt to have long careers because they were doing something new or unusual. She tried to be sure she wouldn’t tire of a piece, too, which often meant that it had to have multiple dimensions and meanings. And then there were practical considerations, like would the piece go with the other items she’d acquired? Would a particular artwork even fit in her home or her yard?
Now, though, with a breast cancer relapse that her doctor described as “aggressive,” Betsy found herself looking at art with simpler criteria—a single question, really. And that was: Did it bring her joy, or move her in some other way?
Today, the piece that answered that question with the loudest yes was a four-foot-by-four-foot mixed-media piece. The canvas was covered with damask wallpaper in bold coral and white. On top of the wallpaper, in the center of the canvas, was a big green chrysanthemum bloom with the word “forward” printed over it in red capital letters.
But when Betsy got closer to the work, she realized it wasn’t a mixed-media piece after all. The entire thing, including the patterned background she thought was wallpaper, had been drawn in oil pastels. What she had guessed was a green flower was actually a ball of frogs, dozens of them, clinging to one another in a scramble of webbed feet and varied shades of green. Even the lettering, which appeared so perfect it could have been typeset, had been hand-rendered and painstakingly colored in. Betsy stood there, marveling at how anyone could achieve such dimension just by drawing on flat paper.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” said a voice from behind her.
Betsy turned around and recognized Sloane Foster, the young gallery owner, standing tall behind her in heeled boots and a short black dress.
“Betsy Barrett, right?” Sloane said. “Thank you so much for coming.”
Betsy nodded. “I’ve followed what you’ve been doing here. I knew you had a good eye when I was here last time, and I see that hasn’t changed.” She gestured toward the drawing in front of her, a shock of color against the white wall. “Tell me about this one.”
“So, this is by a young artist from St. Paul. She does the initial design in colored pencil, then fills it in with oil pastel.”
Betsy removed her reading glasses from the silk-lined pocket of her coat. “Always Ahead,” she said, squinting to read the title typed on the information card posted to the wall.
“Because frogs can only jump forward, not backward,” Sloane said.
Betsy had already fallen in love with the drawing before Sloane explained the title. It made her think of her late brother, and his childhood nickname, Zaba—the Polish word for frog. But once Betsy heard about the concept of moving only forward, she was sold. “I’ll take it.”
“The artist does commissions, too,” Sloane said. “I just saw a piece she did for a client’s home. With text, like this one, but bigger. They installed it above their fireplace.”
Betsy loved commissions. It gave her a chance to communicate with the artist, to go back and forth about ideas and get a glimpse into how the person worked. She had a few commissioned pieces in her home and she treasured each of them not just for the finished product but for the process that went into them. But now, she feared she didn’t have enough time to see a commissioned project from start to finish.
“No, no, this one’s perfect,” Betsy said.
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.” Betsy felt a rush of excitement up her spine, as she always did when she found a new piece for her collection.
Sloane pulled a sheet of stickers from the pocket of her dress and affixed a red dot to the corner of the information card, to indicate that the piece was sold. “It’s yours, then. I’ll send you the invoice, assuming you haven’t moved?”
Betsy shook her head. “Still in the same house.” She wasn’t sure how long that would be true, though, if her doctor was right about her prognosis. But she didn’t want to think about that now, not when she was surrounded by so much beauty. She turned her attention to a group of metal sculptures near the front windows. “I see there are also a lot of red dots for those sculptures over there.”
Sloane’s face lit up as a smile spread across her lips. “Those are by another local artist, Odin Sorenson. Well, he’s from Wisconsin, but he lives here now. That’s him there, in the plaid shirt.”
Betsy followed Sloane’s gaze to a tall young man with broad shoulders and a beard. His head was bent in conversation with a gray-haired couple looking at one of the sculptures. Although Betsy had met Sloane only a couple of times, she’d come to recognize a sort of sharp, exacting element in her facial expressions, an angular scrutiny in her body language. It seemed appropriate for someone who evaluated and sold art—a largely subjective commodity—for a living. Now, though, there was a softness that settled over Sloane when she caught Odin’s eye and smiled.
“This is the first time I’ve shown his work,” Sloane said. “I think it’s fantastic, but I was a little nervous about it, truth be told. Metal isn’t for everyone. I’m so glad to see his stuff is selling. It will be a huge boost of confidence for him. He’s insanely talented, but I think the whole art scene intimidates him. He grew up on a farm, where the nearest town had like three hundred people.”
“He’s lucky to have you,” Betsy said.
“No, I’m lucky to have him.” Sloane pulled at her necklace, a gold tassel on a long chain.
Betsy recognized the mutual admiration that flowed between the young gallerist and the artist across the room. A warm memory stirred in her chest as she remembered how she and Walt used to look at one another through the crowd at a cocktail fête, or from opposite ends of their dining room table during a dinner party. Despite all their differences, Betsy and her husband shared a spark of understanding, a history, and a similar sense of humor. These connections bound them without the need for words. She could see something similar going on with Sloane and Odin, and suddenly Betsy missed her husband desperately.
She’d gotten along fine without him in the years since he’d passed. She sometimes felt guilty, even, at the sense of freedom she now had. She could be vocal about her ideals in a way she never could be when Walt was alive, still running his manufacturing business and worried about public perception. But not a day went by that Betsy didn’t miss him. She envied Sloane, now, for all she had still ahead of her.
THAT WAS THE last time Betsy purchased a work of art in person. She’d planned to have the piece installed somewhere on the main floor of her house. But by the time the delivery truck arrived six weeks later and the movers carried it into the house, Betsy was spending her days in bed, drifting in and out of drugged sleep. The hospice nurse who’d been tending to her tapped her on the shoulder just as she was waking up from a dream in which she was a young woman again, walking down Mitchell Street to Goldmann’s with her mother to buy fabric.
She was confused, then, when she opened her eyes and she was not on Mitchell Street and it was not, in fact, the forties. Instead, she was in her room in Madison, in the house she’d lived in for five decades. She was not wearing stockings and pumps but, instead, shivered in flannel pajamas underneath a thick duvet.
“The art movers are here,” said the nurse. She was young, this one. But everyone seemed young, now. It was such a strange part of growing old. At some point, nearly every face Betsy encountered was younger than her own.
“They want to know where you want to put it,” the nurse said. Betsy tried to remember her name. Sally? Cindy? She couldn’t keep up with the shift changes.
“Tell them to bring it up here,” Betsy said.
“I think it’s pretty big,” the nurse said. “Are you sure it will fit?”
Betsy pushed off the covers and inched her legs over to the side of the bed. With enormous effort, she rose to a sitting position. A wave of dizziness crashed over her and she had to close her eyes.
“Please, Mrs. Barrett.” The nurse grabbed Betsy’s arm and put the other hand on her back to hold her steady. “If you just tell me where you want it, I can . . .”
But Betsy pushed the nurse’s hands away and got to her feet. She wobbled over to her low dresser and braced herself against its shiny surface for a second, catching her breath. She caught sight of herself in the mirror. Betsy barely recognized the pale, thin face that stared back at her. She’d looked into that same gilt mirror while she dressed for hundreds of dinners, dozens of charity events. She remembered, distinctly, putting on her favorite necklace and looking at her reflection on the morning of her husband’s funeral. How heavy the familiar pearls had felt in her fingers that day, how difficult the clasp had been to close.
Now, in a swift movement that surprised her, she reached out and grabbed the mirror, pulling it off the wall and knocking over the perfume bottles that had been arranged in a tray on the top of the dresser.
The nurse rushed over and grabbed the mirror before it toppled Betsy over.
Betsy sat back down on the side of the bed and looked at the now-blank space above the dresser. The wallpaper was dark and unfaded where the mirror had hung for so many years.
“There,” she said, pointing. “I want the new artwork there.”