False Impressions - Laura Caldwell

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they appear?’

      She shook her head. “I despise censorship. I feel with deep conviction that response to art is as important as the art itself.”

      Madeline showed me the next comment. Dudlin not only aged at the end of his life…. Check your Dudlin if you have one. Especially if you bought it from this gallery.

      I stopped reading and pointed at the sentence about checking a Dudlin artwork. “Is this the first indication you had that something might have been forged?”

      “The first public one,” Madeline said, her voice thin. “But it’s the last few lines that disturb me most.”

      I looked at the last two lines. Madeline Saga makes everything she touches rotten. She obliterates.

      “Obliterates,” Madeline said. “Obliterates. I don’t understand that. I try to bring things to life. I bring art to the world.”

      “Do you have any idea what they mean in context with you?”

      “No.” She sounded bereft. I wanted to comfort her, but I had no idea how one would do that with Madeline Saga.

      I looked at the comment again, then at Madeline. “I think it’s time to enable your approval settings on these comments.”

      Madeline’s face was distressed.

      “Let me run it by Mayburn.” I texted him what I wanted to do, and he agreed.

      But Madeline didn’t move when I told her that.

      “Do you want me to handle it?” I asked.

      Finally, Madeline nodded, gave me her passwords and watched in silence as I adjusted the controls of her website comment section and deleted those about the Dudlin.

      I was just about done when the sound of a bell startled me.

      “That’s the front door,” Madeline said softly. But she still gazed at the space on the screen where the comments had been; she was staring into it as if it were a long tunnel, one where she could somehow see many things. And those things—whatever they were—were deeply disturbing to her.

      “Let me go see who it is,” I said, since Madeline wasn’t moving. I was glad to have something official to do for my new job.

      She looked at me. “Thank you,” she said earnestly, as if someone hadn’t helped her with anything for a long time. “But no, I’ll come with you. And Isabel, I don’t mean to be difficult but…Mayburn has suggested that you’ve had a lively few years.”

      I looked at her, unsure where she was going with this.

      “I was wondering if we could give you an alias. Perhaps we call you Isabel or Izzy Smith. I wouldn’t want anyone to search you on the internet and find out you’re really a lawyer and not an art dealer. It might raise more questions than I can answer right now.”

      “Of course. I should have already thought of that.” I stood and began to follow her out the door.

      But, one more time, she looked back to the computer screen, and somehow I could tell that she was pondering that one word—obliterates.

      5

      As I reached the front of the gallery, I felt the Chicago wind curling inside.

      I wrapped my arms around myself instinctively but I noticed that Madeline did the opposite. She faced the door, arms at her sides, her body somehow moving outward, stretching to its limits as if opening itself to whatever those winds brought.

      A woman had stepped inside. “Lina!” she called.

      The woman wore a peach-orange coat that looked like soft cashmere and an ivory scarf that surrounded her face. She was one of those women, like my mom’s friend Cassandra, whose age was impossible to tell—forty-five? Or a well-preserved sixty? She was lovely and elegant, her face smooth, so either seemed possible.

      Madeline introduced her to me. “Jacqueline Stoddard,” Madeline said. “This is my new gallery assistant, Isabel.”

      “Oh, a new assistant. Welcome.” She shook my hand. “Lovely to meet you.” She looked at Madeline. “Speaking of assistants, how is Syd?”

      “Syd is doing well, thank you. I’ll tell him you asked after him.”

      “Please do,” Jacqueline said. “Listen, I stopped in because I wanted to see if you have any of Roberto’s work. I’ve got a client who is looking.”

      “Wait here and I’ll see.” Madeline gestured to me to follow her to the back room of the gallery again.

      In the manner of a professor, Madeline walked to a high cabinet made with long, thin drawers and began to lecture. “These hold some of the canvases from our artists that haven’t been framed,” she said. “Jacqueline is looking for a Roberto Politico. Her gallery is on the other side of Michigan Avenue. Much more traditional, but occasionally we represent the same artists. She knows Roberto favors me, since I’m his Chicago gallery. She thinks that it will upset me that she might sell one of his.”

      “But it doesn’t?” I asked, watching her slip on a pair of thin, white gloves and flip through some of the canvases.

      “No, no of course not. Jacqueline is competitive with me, as many gallery owners are, because they think differently.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “This is my passion, to show the world these beautiful things, to make people shift how they view the world. So it makes no difference to me who gets them out there. I simply hope for distribution.”

      We said nothing for a second. I watched her remove two canvases, one predominantly orange and one mustard-colored. They both bore tiny slashes in the paint to form a profile of a woman.

      “Jacqueline called you Lina,” I said. “Did I hear correctly?”

      “Yes, she did.” She put the canvases on a tall table. “I’m not sure where that came from. She started calling me Madelina, and then she just sort of shortened it to Lina.” Madeline gave a casual shrug.

      A moment later, we were back in the gallery’s main space and Madeline placed the canvases on a glass table. She and Jacqueline discussed the merits of each painting, the subtleties, while I tried to absorb the conversation. There was clearly a dialogue, they said, between the two paintings, but Jacqueline’s client was only interested in one, for a spot in a hallway that had certain measurements. Also, Jacqueline said, the artwork had to complement an eighteenth-century yellow Chinese vase. They launched into a discussion of prices. Seventy-eight thousand dollars, Madeline said. That was as low as she could go.

      I blinked at the two women. A seventy-eight thousand dollar painting, that’s not even framed, that’s going to be in a hallway next to a yellow vase?

      I had a lot to learn about the art world.

      “Well, let me know about the paintings,” Madeline was saying to Jacqueline. Then she turned to me. “And I am taking you out for a welcome drink tonight.”

      There was no question there, just a statement. Luckily, I had lots of time on my hands lately since I was sans boyfriend. “Love to,” I said.

      I expected her to invite Jacqueline, and from the vaguely anticipatory expression on Jacqueline’s face, she might have been looking for the same.

      But Madeline only repeated, “Let me know about the paintings,” then walked Jacqueline to the door.

      6

      “I love this place we’re going to,” Madeline said when we were in the cab.

      Now, as we walked in, I could see why. The interior was like the pearly pink inside of a shell, the walls curved, the lights trailing around and up and down in ways I’ve never seen light displayed before. I could see a bar at the back of the place. Like

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