Seventeen

THREE YEARS EARLIER

The first week after Isaac left, I spent almost all my time feeling sorry for myself: crying, whining to friends, eating little, sleeping much. The following week, I flung myself into a frenzy of work, creating some of the most maudlin paintings ever made. I threw them all out. It was a month before I finally emerged from what I guessed from my undergraduate psych classes was a “situation-specific manic-depressive episode.” Not truly nuts, just momentarily so. When I returned to myself, my grief and self-pity edged into fury.

Isaac and 4D were still everywhere. Hardly a day went by without a piece in the “Names and Faces” section of the Boston Globe about Isaac eating at some fashionable restaurant with some Red Sox player or celebrity chef. And everything from the New York Times to the South End News contained articles about him or his work. It made me want to throw up.

Much attention was given to my hourglasses, to “Cullion’s remarkable exploration of time on every conceivable level, including the inspired juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary painting styles.” The critics waxed ecstatic about his “brilliant marriage of theme, image, and meaning within the paint itself” and his ability to “mesh the abstract and representational” into a conceptual whole greater than its parts.

“Artist of the Hour,” ArtWorld claimed in its Spring catalog issue, and the Wall Street Journal did an editorial on the effect of curated museum shows on the price of a rising artist’s work. Of course, Isaac was their case in point. It seems that his earlier paintings were being snatched up for between ten and twenty times what he’d received before the MoMA show.

He never mentioned my name. Never called. Never e-mailed. Not even when I left multiple messages asking him to talk to Karen Sinsheimer about returning my phone calls. Which is how I found myself riding the Chinatown Bus—twenty dollars round trip—into Manhattan. I was on my way to MoMA to see 4D, my 4D, and to give Karen another copy of the slides she’d claimed she wanted to see. Her assistant kept telling me they never arrived.

Although I’d been to the museum multiple times since the new addition, it’s always a bit of shock to enter the building. After all those years of the tighter, more confined space, the wide open lobby with its soaring atrium and view of the sculpture garden took a moment to process. But I was on a mission and didn’t dawdle.

The temporary exhibits are usually on the top floor of the Rockefeller Building, and that’s where I headed. But as I wandered through the spacious, sky-lit galleries, I didn’t see any sign of Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture. I’d assumed the show would still be up, and I was simultaneously crushed and relieved. Were these really the circumstances under which I wanted to view a painting of mine hanging in the Museum of Modern Art?

Apparently so, for I went back to the lobby and got in line at the information desk. It was highly unlikely that a piece so recently acquired would already be hanging as part of the permanent collection, but still, I waited my turn.

“I know this is a long shot,” I said to the woman behind the desk, “but is there any chance that a new acquisition is on public display? It was just bought a couple of months ago. Isaac—”

“Ah, yes, you must mean 4D,” she interrupted with a knowing smile. “Our new Cullion.”

Our new Cullion. Like our new Picasso. Our new Rembrandt.

“Contemporary Collection. Second floor, Rockefeller,” she said. “Next?”

I stumbled up the stairs. When I made it to the top, the light from the atrium windows filled all the space around me, seared into my eyes, and for a moment, all I could see was white. Disoriented, I turned toward the bookstore rather than the galleries. I gripped the top handrail, took a deep breath, and forced myself to walk slowly in the right direction.

It took me a while to find it, but when I did, it nearly brought me to my knees. There it was. Between Chris Ofili’s Prince amongst Thieves collage and Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Untitled (Perfect Lovers) clocks. 4D. A painting by Claire Roth, hanging with an Ofili and a Gonzalez-Torres. In one of the greatest contemporary museums in the world.

And although the little white card on the wall attributed the work to someone else, I knew, and 4D knew, that she was mine.

OF COURSE, IT wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Especially after Karen Sinsheimer’s assistant—who was about my age and much, much better dressed and coiffed—wouldn’t let me see her boss and informed me that although I was free to leave my slides, Ms. Sinsheimer was extremely busy and there was no guarantee she would have time to look at them.

When I explained that Ms. Sinsheimer had asked to see my work, the assistant held my gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable, then, without a word, lifted them out of my hand with her perfectly manicured fingers. I can only imagine what she did with them after I left the office.

On the way back to Boston, the bus blew a tire, and we had to wait on the side of the Mass Pike for three hours before they could find another bus to pick us up. By the time I got home, I was enraged. So enraged, I called Isaac from a phone booth so he couldn’t screen my call.

When he answered the phone, I said, “I just saw 4D. Nice spot between Ofili and Gonzalez-Torres.”

His voice was a low growl. “What do you want?”

“Just calling to check in. Compliment you on your latest success. A former student connecting with her old prof. A former student who painted your current masterpiece.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Claire. You and I both know she’s mine.”

“I don’t think that’s what either of us knows.”

“Sure, you got 4D started, and I’ve thanked you for that many times. In front of both Karen and Markel, if I remember correctly. But it was my idea, my series, my style. You didn’t even know how to throw your body behind your brush. I had to show you how to do that. I had to show you! You didn’t know how.”

For a moment, I was speechless. “Who painted it?” I asked softly.

“I did.”

I couldn’t believe he was actually saying this to me. “You ungrateful fucker . . .”

“What do you want, Claire?”

“I want you to tell them it’s mine,” I said before I realized that this was exactly what I wanted. What I’d wanted all along.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, I’m not going to do it.” The phone clicked dead in my hand.