Snow White and Rose Red were two sisters, living with their widowed mother, who loved each other very much. Snow White had flaxen hair as yellow as corn, and loved to spend her time indoors, cleaning and cooking and reading. Rose Red had dark hair as black as a raven’s wing, and loved to spend her time outside, climbing trees and going on adventures and taming wild animals. Both of the girls’ choices were equally valid, for each represented the kind of life that each girl felt was true to her.
—FAIRY TALES FOR LITTLE FEMINISTS:
SNOW WHITE AND ROSE RED, EVELYN HARPER KREIS
June 1997
Saskia was fourteen and had had enough of what the adults insisted on calling her “peers.” Becca Talbot and her ilk were bad enough: moving in a pack, never doing a single interesting thing, spending all of their time just whispering, whispering. But the boys were worse. The snapping bras, the spitballs, the smell; did none of them shower, ever?
The girls were beneath contempt, but the boys felt like another species altogether.
And so, that year, Saskia began to take a secret, fevered pleasure in skipping school for the day, only to spend it in the same building where her mother worked. The logistics had been easy enough to manage: out the door at 7:15, same as ever, to holler at the bus driver: I’m going down to UWM today. Her “independent study” at the university, such as it was—Carrie had arranged for her to have free rein of the practice rooms—would never have been allowed at a public school, and both her guidance counselor and her parents had made her extraordinary privilege perfectly clear, but then again—Saskia wasn’t an ordinary girl.
That June, the trees were bursting with green, century-old elms reaching full branches above her head. There was an extra pleasure in going into the building now, when the university’s regular spring semester had ended and the summer session hadn’t yet started: a sneaking specialness to it, when the students who normally eyed her with suspicion had been banished back to their homes for three months, with only Saskia remaining.
She wanted 10A that day: 10A had a nicely balanced Yamaha. Not as resonant as the best Steinway down at the Conservatory, but with a lighter weight to the keys that would be just right for the Liszt running through her head: La Campanella, sparking like fireworks.
But when she got to 10A, some idiot was playing Haydn in there. Badly.
She turned abruptly to make her way back to another studio. And ran smack into a wall of a man. She squinted up into Patrick’s face, the taste of metal already tanging on her tongue.
“Oh, fuck,” she said, wiping the back of her hand through the blood.
And Patrick pressed a hand to her cheek.
There was nothing condescending or amused about it. Instead, he seemed almost reverent. The strong lines of his face wincing at her.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
As he pulled his hand away, she saw blood on his fingers. Her blood on his skin.
“You, too,” she said.
Nothing was an inevitability yet. Everything was still possible.
“Don’t tell my mom, okay?” she said as she followed him upstairs, to his stairwell-adjacent office, ducking behind him so as to stay out of view from the other rooms.
“No?” he asked, key turning in the lock. It was late spring and there was a chalky, warm smell to the building, something familiar and dry and satisfying.
Evie’s office was a riot of papers, of overflowing sketches and textbooks and portfolios from this student and that one. Pencil shavings and charcoal ends and family pictures and ancient coffee mugs with rings of brown dried all gummy on their bottoms. Her windows faced the older redbrick buildings of what had once been Downer College.
But Patrick’s office looked out over a cluster of trees, waving their almost obscenely full-leafed branches in relief against the sun. It dappled the room with a shifting slideshow of silhouettes. Blonde on Blonde, the Bob Dylan album cover, was framed on the wall. A portrait of a woman’s body, muscular and lithe, was propped up on a bookshelf. One of his? No—she squinted to read the signature. Maple something, she wasn’t sure. The piles of books that weren’t shelved were neatly arranged. Tiny cacti lined the windowsill.
The vibe just felt—young. Like a life Saskia could aspire to, rather than a future that seemed out of reach.
Patrick was younger than her parents. Their friendship had been cemented by his friendly work relationship with Evie, by their shared gallerists, by acquaintances they had in common. Despite the age difference, he’d been coming to their annual parties for at least five years now. He couldn’t have been more than, what? Forty? Not even. Thirty-five? He’d started in the department five years ago or so. That would be about right.
“Up,” he said, pointing to the desk.
“Yes, Doctor,” she said, laughing.
He came close to her. Stood between her parted legs. If she moved her thighs a centimeter in, she would have been straddling him. She fought the wheezing that seemed to be trying to come from her throat. Swallowed.
He stared into her face. His eyes were brown, but this close she could see the rings of gold around the centers. Lion eyes, she thought.
“Hold still,” he said softly.
January 2020
As she drives home, all Saskia can think about is a single question: What does she want? She thought it was just the Elf House she wanted. The Elf House and then that fucking picture taken down.
But the Elf House … the choice isn’t really between her keeping the house forever or Patrick getting it. It’s her keeping it for a time, her keeping it for as long as she can, her holding on to it with bleeding claws; or it’s her selling it, living like a queen, like a princess, in luxury, a kind of wealth she hasn’t known since she was a child—or it’s him. It’s Patrick getting it, Patrick laying claim to one of the few things that had ever made her special. And he’d already taken one of them away from her.
And then there’s the picture. She’s hurt, angry, jealous. Betrayed. And she understands now that even if it gets taken down—which seems less and less likely—she will still feel these things, because it will still exist. She will exist, always now, as one of a series.
That afternoon, as Saskia sits in her mother’s studio with Wolfie at her feet, watching the fading daylight twitch shadows over the desk, she gets an email from Tara. The draft affidavit is attached. It’s good, as far as she can tell; it’s in total legalese, but the writing is strong, the facts are there.
It’s just that the facts aren’t enough. The facts don’t add up to much that Sas can see. It’s not the full story. It’s not even a full story.
What is she missing? She reads back over the body of Tara’s email.
It is a circumstantial case; the best evidence we have is, of course, linked to the opportunity to influence and the coveted result. But these cases usually are circumstantial, so I’m not too concerned. That said, if you find anything at all that might be relevant, even if you aren’t 100% sure how—
That’s enough for Sas. She stops reading, finds the online image of herself on the art museum website, sends the link over with a brief summary of her day’s meetings.
Relevant, irrelevant? Who is she to say?
She hopes Tara can. She wishes somebody would.
Surely the fact of the picture, displayed without her knowledge or permission, means something.
Tara’s email pings back immediately: Revising.
She allows herself to picture it: winning the case. Being the Elf House heiress again, if only for a little while, if only until she can sell it. Getting everything. Patrick getting nothing.
And she has to admit, if only to herself: it still isn’t enough.
Underneath the anger and betrayal, she feels it as a kind of longing, as a spiraling loss: Patrick as a white knight, Patrick as the good guy. The story she had told herself for so long—she still wants it. She doesn’t know what to do, who she is, without it. And now, she can never get that back, and in the meantime, there he is, just out in the world. And the world—people like Sheila, people like the provost at UWM, people like fucking everyone—they’re all still going around with that image of him as the charming artist. They still get to believe in the story.
No. If she doesn’t get to believe in that story anymore, neither do they.
It chills her, the thought that she could still have power in this situation. It’s a responsibility—and yet it’s a freedom, too. To be able to tell everyone: Here’s the real story. To say: Oh, but look—he lied.
To say: I’m the truth teller. Me.
And then, that Wicked Witch voice every woman carries, somewhere inside herself: Who would believe you?
But people need to know what he did, she thinks.
People need to know who he is.
Kelly. Julia. She hears the names again.
Yes. That’s what she’ll do. She will gather them together, a band of Furies. And then—the Journal Sentinel? Maybe. Maybe The New Yorker, why not aim high? Why not begin with the best and see what happens? See what a band of women’s voices can do. How far they can go.
How much they can destroy.
She grabs a fresh notebook from the pile on her mother’s desk, and she writes their names on the crisp front page.
Kelly. Julia.
And what is she supposed to do, in the meantime? What is she supposed to do as the courts and the banks and the fucking museum and everybody else decides who she is, what she’ll get? Her fingers are tapping frantically against the desk—one of Scriabin’s sonatas—and she thinks, suddenly calm: numbers.
She can lose herself in the numbers.
And the numbers being money, it’s not a pointless exercise; they’re the future. Her future.
Gary had wanted Evie’s photos, spoke of Sheila wanting her drawings. Well. She doubts the latter part, but Saskia looks her mother up on Artnet all the same. Evie’s work has appeared in a number of recent auctions, including one at Sotheby’s. Over the past few years, the value of her drawings and her photos has gone up, up: $750, $1,000. Saskia wonders what they’ll do next. What is the value of a dead artist? More than an alive one, if Gary is any indication. Maybe artists are like mothers in fairy tales: the true story begins only after their deaths.
The dog grumbles at her feet as she pages through the enormous files of her mother’s prints, tries to come up with an estimate for how much they’re worth. There are around ninety prints there. Selling at a grand each—but would they? She should have paid more attention to this part of her mother’s career. Should have paid more attention to a lot of things.
As the late afternoon sun gilds the studio, she sits in front of an Excel sheet, inputting value after value. All in one place, it doesn’t seem like so little. In fact, the abundance is almost overwhelming—though somehow still not enough. Not enough to save the house forever. But already this goal is coming loose in her mind, replaced only by the desire to know what she and her father have. To know that they’ll be okay.
She inputs a rough estimate of what the photos are worth. The value of her piano. They can probably get something for the countless sketches and notes for Little Feminists, too. Maybe Jody could be talked into releasing new editions of some of the fairy tales, with bonus material from the deceased author’s archives? The royalty payments for the next two years, which she estimates based on an average of the past three. The initial installment of the advance for Persephone and Demeter went to the property taxes—the sums, $37,500, are identical, and the check went out the same day the advance came in—but there’s still three more $37,500 installments to go.
If the book is publishable.
With jittery fingers, she types up a summary of what she’s read to Ellen, her mother’s agent. She lingers a bit too long on the most recent part she returned to, a part that sticks in her head, a part with that jaunty Evelyn Harper Kreis touch: When Persephone reaches the Underworld, she’s not the compliant, sweet maiden we always read about, Saskia types. Instead, she’s full of piss and vinegar, mocking Hades, conniving, trying to reason her way out of an unreasonable situation. At the end, she hesitates for only a moment before typing: It ends there. Is this in any way publishable as is? I’m attaching the full manuscript here.
But Ellen, it seems, doesn’t need to read the full manuscript, because her phone dings with a new email just five minutes later.
I’m so sorry, Saskia. Your mother wasn’t famous enough for an unfinished manuscript to be publishable. We’re looking at a return of the initial advance here. Luckily, the publisher paid it out in quarters, so it’s not as much as it could have been: $37,500.
Of course, she knows that the publishing house is not a benevolent institution. It’s not the government. She gets that. The advance was not an NEA grant, it was not a Guggenheim award (ah, if only she’d been a Guggenheim)—it was given on the basis of a product for sale.
No product. No sale.
And yet.
$37,500.
The last time Saskia looked at her mother’s bank account, there wasn’t much more in there than in her own. At this point, the January payment from UWM, her last paycheck from her sabbatical semester, should have come through: about $5,000.
Where the fuck is she supposed to get almost forty grand right now? Sell her piano? Wait for the next round of royalties to come in sometime that summer and give up the right to almost half of them?
She could live for a year on $37,500. She’s gotten by on less.
What would the princesses have done?
Written their own endings. Her mother’s voice comes into her mind, clear and strong.
And all of a sudden, she knows what to do.
Ellen—thanks for your email. Given the amount of work Mom’s already done on the manuscript … close to completion … finish it myself. I’m not a published writer … but grew up immersed in her stories … she did name me as manager of her literary estate. With a talented editor …
The reply comes back in minutes.
Mothers and daughters … process mirroring content …
And then the bottom line.
I think I can sell this plan to Jody.
Yes, okay.
How has this happened? Somehow, Saskia thinks, slamming the computer shut with such force that Wolfie jumps awake, her list keeps growing. Somehow her quests keep multiplying. She doesn’t just have to save the Elf House. Doesn’t just have to find the women, doesn’t just have to cancel Patrick. Doesn’t just have to save herself.
Now she has to finish a whole motherfucking book, too.