We were so naïve! Our fantasy that Courtney would be willing to come back to Calista, confront her brothers, reclaim her freedom and her fortune, then live something akin to a normal life … we should have known that was absurd.
She was too badly damaged, she’d spent a quarter of a century in a sanatorium, and considering all she’d been through, it was a wonder she could still make art.
Noah advised us that if she wouldn’t come back and testify, there was no hope of reclaiming her life. Yes, Ted Schechtner’s therapy notes were devastating, but would likely be inadmissible in a legal proceeding. Could Noah replace Nate Silver as Courtney’s guardian ad litem? Possibly, but what would be the point? She was content where she was, her maintenance was being paid, and – it turned out, to our surprise – she was aware her shrink was selling her work. There was no real scandal aside from her brothers’ abuse decades in the past. The only purpose in airing that would be to embarrass them, which would be useless. Those who would hate them already did so on account of their politics and environmental crimes.
‘I wish there was something purposeful we could do for her,’ Noah told us. ‘Alas, I don’t think there is.’
Hannah and I had several long discussions about this. We understood that Courtney’s life was beyond our power to reclaim. Even so, we’d accomplished our primary goal: discovered the story and meaning behind the Locust Street Murals. Joan’s interviews with Penny in Key West and Dr Ted’s notes on his sessions with Courtney explained much of what had been mysterious about the murals. Now our remaining goal was to preserve and protect them.
A week or so after a lengthy FaceTime exchange with Penny, in which she described her meeting with Courtney in detail, I received an excited call from Cindy Broderick.
‘We finally got half a mural out. It was tough. There was some minor chipping at the edges where the panels meet, but that can be easily restored. Three and a half murals to go.’
‘Which half?’ I asked.
‘Two sections. Left side of the A wall.’
Terrific! That was the part that included Courtney and her puppy, Bonnie.
Cindy told me her biggest problem was getting the panels off the walls, then down the attic ladder.
‘We considered loosening the gazebo, bringing in a crane to lift the whole thing off the roof, then setting it down on a flatbed truck. We decided that was too risky. The structure might fall apart. So we’re carefully loosening the panels and bringing them out piecemeal. It’ll take time and a lot of patience, but I’m convinced it can be done with minimal damage to the art.’
Hannah was frustrated. ‘We know the story and Cindy is preserving the work. Why isn’t that enough?’
It was a rhetorical question. We both knew it wasn’t nearly enough. We had to do something about the brothers. Since it was clear that Courtney couldn’t and wouldn’t confront them, perhaps we owed it to her to do so on her behalf.
I got everyone together to discuss such a confrontation. Noah was the obvious choice, but he had a good reason not to take on the job.
‘If I ask to meet with them, they’ll refer me to their lawyers. Then what? For reasons I explained, without Courtney’s participation this can’t become a legal matter.’
‘What kind of matter is it, then?’ Hannah asked.
‘Emotional. It’s about satisfaction. You want to confront them with what you know and make them react.’
‘They’ll deny everything,’ Hannah said.
‘Of course! But it’s how they deny that’ll be telling,’ Noah told her. ‘Remember, they have no idea what you’ve been up to all these months, or even that the murals exist.’
‘Vile as they are, they’re a big piece of the story,’ Joan said. ‘At least we should try to hear their side of it.’
We all turned to her.
She shook her head. ‘You guys want me to talk to them?’
‘Why not? You’re a journalist. Just ask for an interview,’ I said.
Joan smiled. ‘It would be an ambush interview.’
‘All the better!’ Hannah said. ‘Are you up for it?’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘Be careful how you handle them,’ Noah warned. ‘Those guys play rough. Soon as you bring up Courtney’s name, they’ll probably throw you out.’
From the way Joan continued smiling, I had a hunch she was formulating a plan. My confidence in her was such that I was certain she could pull off such an interview. So far she’d done a terrific job for us: obtaining the police file on the raid; interviewing Loetz and Silver; getting Penny to open up, then recruiting her to go to Zurich and discover where Courtney’s head was at. Meantime, she was writing an amazing series on the summer fires, chasing down leads from her arson investigator source. She’d already published three articles on the fires, each of which appeared on the front page of the Times-Dispatch. She was making a name for herself as an investigative journalist, just as I had once made my name as a conflict photographer. I was sure that if I hadn’t gotten her involved, we would never have been able to put together the story behind the murals.
I went over to Locust Street to watch the conservators remove the final A-wall panels. I was impressed by the care they took bubble-wrapping the plywood panels, then lowering them to the third floor. After they took them down to their van, I went up to the attic to look around. With one wall now empty, the effect was different. There was no longer a sense of being overwhelmed. The paintings on the B, C and D walls were strong, but without the A wall the room felt incomplete. It was the four walls together that made the murals so powerful, the feeling that one was dead center inside a total work of art.
Driving back to the Capehart, I felt let down. The murals project was near its end, and I wasn’t sure what I should do next. Finish up with Leavings, put together a show and accompanying book, then go back to full-time teaching in the fall – of course. But still I felt an emptiness. The murals had consumed me. I had come upon them on account of what some considered my great strength as a photographer, but which I had come to view as my great weakness: a love of taking risks. Just as I’d gone to Aleppo to be a witness, so I had entered the world of the murals with the intention of cracking their code. I had left Aleppo broken, and now was feeling pangs of withdrawal from the murals. I’d crawled into all those abandoned houses to document desperation and loss. What I found was something both terrifying and magnificent, a work of art that had its roots in horrendous betrayal and abuse.
I understood again, driving back into the city, that my quest to comprehend and ‘read’ the murals had really been a quest to understand myself, the forces that drove me to take photographs of trauma and pain. It was upon that realization that I decided to go back to eye-contact photography. Images of the things people left behind could say a good deal about them, but the confusion and sorrow in their eyes would say far more. I was long done covering wars. But I wanted to go back to gazing at people as they gazed back at me, discovering the truth in their eyes.
What was it in my own life that drove me to identify with the agony in others? I had a hunch I would never plumb that mystery, but that was the road I was on and which I felt I had no choice but to follow.