The Icon (9 page)

“Retsina,” she groaned. “My God, that stuff is poison.”

“This is where I’m supposed to say—with my chin in the air, like this—that you haven’t had the good stuff. ‘That export retsina,
Theomou, scatá!
’”

“That’s good, you look like somebody.”

“Marlon Brando.”

“I was going to say Mussolini.”

“Gee, thanks. The truth is, all retsina tastes like tree sap to me. Greek food, French wine.” He swirled the dark liquid in his glass. The cooking had eased some of his tension. “Everybody, do what they’re good at.”

She stuffed a forkful of omelet into her mouth, as if she hadn’t seen food in days.

“Do all Greek men know how to cook?”

“It’s an omelet, Ana. Any single guy can make one, it hardly qualifies as cooking.”

“To you. In this kitchen it’s the height of culinary achievement.”

“I’m honored.”

“Can I ask a rude question?”

“Why start looking for permission now?”

“Why
are
you single?”

“Well, how do I answer that? Fate? I could ask you the same question.”

“We’ll get to me.” She adjusted her wineglass on the table, minutely, precisely, as if it were an important engineering project.

“So you’re not involved?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You can make a last-minute dinner date without having to answer to anyone.”

“Maybe my girlfriend is out of town.”

“Why make me guess?”

“All right,” he conceded with a tight smile, “you’re correct. I am currently unentangled.”

“Now how can that be? A handsome, intelligent guy like yourself.”

She said it casually, as if he must be used to such compliments, but Matthew felt his face flush once more. Maybe it was just the wine.

“This city is full of handsome, intelligent, lonely people,” he answered carefully. “It’s not such a mystery. Anyway, I just split with somebody I was with for a long time.”

“Whose doing was that?”

“Her doing. My fault.”

“Why your fault?”

“It was the Mussolini imitation, drove her nuts.”

“Come on.”

“Too many questions, Ana.”

“Sorry.” Her fork went down with a clatter. Her plate was empty.

“Looks as if somebody hasn’t been eating.”

“I forget, isn’t that pathetic? I’m a grown woman, but I forget to eat. When I’m in Santa Monica I have friends I always see for meals. Here, it’s more free-form. Actually, I used to have dinner with my grandfather a lot, before he became really ill.”

“Don’t tell me I’m sitting in his chair.”

“Eat in the kitchen, my grandfather? We always sat in that gloomy dining room, even when it was just the two of us. I don’t think he knew what the kitchen looked like.”

“Who did the cooking?”

“André. A sweet old guy, who I think I need to let go.”

“Maybe you should keep him,” Matthew noted, pointing to her empty plate.

“He’s almost eighty and wants to retire. I’ve already dumped Diana, that pain in the ass.”

“She was the nurse?”

“Thought she owned the place. My grandfather was sure she was stealing. I don’t know about that, but there was no reason to keep her. Gave her a nice severance and a good recommendation.”

“And you’re left with no one to take care of you.”

“And no one to take care of. I am also, how did you say it? Unentangled?”

“Here’s to that.” They toasted with their half-empty glasses, crystal pinging against crystal. “Do you prefer it that way?” The wine was loosening his normally careful tongue.

She stared off into space, seeming to consider the matter. “Not really. No.”

“All that jetting around the world makes it hard to maintain a relationship?”

“I never thought so, but it was definitely a problem for my exhusband.”

“The plot thickens.” He refilled their glasses, working hard to keep his hand steady, making sure to give her more. Two of his fingertips were stained red from the wine. “What’s the story with that?”

“Not much of a story. Married at twenty-four, divorced at twenty-eight. No kids, thank God. He was a painter, turned commodities trader. Not a bad guy, just immature and stupid. Almost as immature and stupid as I was. Tell you what.”

“What?”

“You did such a great job with dinner, why don’t you make the coffee?”

It surprised him how comfortable he felt in her kitchen. Perhaps because it wasn’t really hers, but her grandfather’s, or not even his, but old André’s. And kitchens were familiar. His family was always in the kitchen, his father doing as much of the cooking as his mother, holding forth on some complex scientific theorem, his sister arguing. Robin and he spent a lot of time in the kitchen as well, touching as they slipped past each other going to the stove, cabinet, freezer. Though constantly together, they had separate apartments, and he was always aware of being at her place, on her turf, not his own—except for her kitchen, which felt somehow connected to his, a seamless parallel space passing from West to East Side. He recalled her stinging reply when he once admitted this strange theory to her: he loved her kitchen because that was where the front door was. It wasn’t a long way from that comment to the end of their relationship.

“My grandfather loved good coffee,” she said to his back. “He couldn’t really drink it anymore the last few years.”

“Which explains this cheapo coffeemaker. Who bought this, Diana?”

“Actually, I did.”

“Sorry.” He really shouldn’t drink socially.

“I like good coffee too, but I can’t be bothered with the effort. Turkish coffee, that’s what he liked. Middle Eastern food, Orthodox religion. I think he hated being born Swiss.”

“Did he join the Orthodox church?”

“No. He sort of drifted away from Catholicism, tried a bit of everything—I mean, of the Old Testament choices. He didn’t do Buddhism. Eastern Orthodox art seemed to speak to him, and that’s what pushed him in that direction. I don’t think he even went to church.”

“So it was more a personal spirituality.”

“I guess. To tell you the truth, I don’t really know how religious, or spiritual, he was. Sometimes he seemed intensely so. Other times, it just felt like superstition. I guess it all feels like superstition to me.” She was quiet long enough that he wondered if he was expected to respond. “One thing I can tell you, though,” she said finally, “he worshiped that icon.”

Matthew came back to the table as the coffeemaker finished burbling. “So can I ask
you
a rude question?”

“Fair is fair.”

“If he worshiped it, like you say, why did he leave no directions for its disposal?”

She looked perplexed. “He left all that to me.”

“In most cases, with a collection like this, there are specific instructions about what should be done. Usually these things are worked out in detail with museums and galleries, long before the person dies. You must know all that. Did the will say anything?”

“There were instructions, but they weren’t specific. A lot of latitude was built in for me to do what I wanted, add to my collection, sell to cover expenses. He had no relationship with museums. He knew very few people by the end of his life. And he never mentioned the icon.”

“Do you find that odd?”

“I did,” she nodded. “Then Wallace suggested that maybe the icon was too personal to him, that he simply couldn’t deal with the idea of being separated from it, even in death.”

Matthew stifled a skeptical laugh. It had a ring of truth, after all.

“Mr. Wallace is a psychiatrist too, huh? Didn’t he draw up the will?”

“The primary will. Notes on the paintings were appended to my grandfather’s copy, in a safe, here. He didn’t believe in safe-deposit boxes. I guess that came from being a banker. At one point some pieces were left to Swiss museums, but those were crossed out. Wallace pressed him to come up with a plan, but he just wouldn’t deal with it. I think he believed he would live forever.”

“He did pretty well. Ninety-seven years old, the obituary said.”

“And very sharp of mind, right up until the last year or two. He had a bunch of illnesses and injuries in his eighties and nineties, all of which he bounced back from. I think the blindness really broke his spirit.”

“He was blind?”

“Almost. The last several years, his vision started to go. It was devastating for him. That’s when the other things, the arthritis and the weak heart, got the better of him.” Ana caught his eyes lingering on her a little too long. “That coffee is ready.”

The last thing either of them needed was more coffee, but it gave Matthew something to do, and he sensed that she took some comfort from his serving her.

“Wow, this is strong,” she said.

“Don’t drink it.”

“I’m up all night anyway, might as well be alert.”

“This has been very tough on you.”

“Mostly it’s the responsibility. There’s a lot to handle with the estate. I snipe at Wallace, but I’d be lost without him.”

“There’s no one else, no brothers or sisters, uncles, cousins?”

“My dad was an only child, and he’s gone. I’m his only child, so it’s just me on the Kessler side. There’s my mother, but she’s no help. She and my grandfather hated each other. Well, she hated him, anyway.”

“That’s too bad.” There was a story there, Matthew figured, but it was her business whether she felt like telling it. “You were close to him, right?”

“Off and on. Less so in recent years. Too much traveling.”

“You enjoy it.”

“Buying and selling art is what I do, for myself and a few friendly clients. I have to travel. But I do love it, it’s true. I keep waiting for the settling-down urge to hit me. You must travel a lot, also.”

“I lived in Greece, went to Turkey a few times. Ravenna, Venice, great Byzantine stuff there. Otherwise, I never go anywhere. Hate to fly.”

“Most people do,” Ana agreed. “I sleep like a baby right through turbulence. Must come from my dad owning a jet. I was always flying off with him someplace from the time I was, like, ten.”

“Was he in the art trade too?”

“The family curse,” she said, sadly, leaning back in her chair.

“Actually, he was a banker, like my grandfather. But he dabbled in art, especially when the old guy stopped being able to travel. In fact, he died on a business trip for my grandfather.”

Matthew wondered what to ask. She glanced over at him and he merely nodded.

“Plane crashed,” she went on. “Nobody knows why. Mechanical failure, I guess. He was a good pilot.”

“He was flying himself?”

“Oh, yeah, he loved to fly. But the circumstances were kind of awful. He and my mother were supposed to take a trip, about the same time that my grandfather was supposed to go to South America and see this painting. Another icon, actually. I guess the icon was being auctioned, or there was another bidder or something. Anyway, he got sick and persuaded my father to go in his place. So my dad flew down to check it out. And his plane crashed into a mountain in Venezuela, coming back. Took them days to find the wreckage and there was so little left they couldn’t figure out what happened. They think he was too low and hit the mountain in a fog bank, but we’ll never really know.”

He waited a few moments to see if she would say more, then found his voice again.

“When did this happen?”

“Fifteen years ago. I was in high school.”

“That’s a terrible story. I’m sorry, Ana.”

She shrugged. “History.”

“It must have wrecked your grandfather.”

“He was never the same. And my mother still hasn’t forgiven him.”

“Well. That’s unfair, but understandable, I guess. Given the circumstances.”

“I went through a period of blaming him, but it was no good. My dad could have said no. He loved that kind of thing, jetting off on a lark. You can’t live in fear of what might go wrong.”

“Maybe she’ll forgive him now that he’s dead.”

Ana scoffed. “Mother’s not big on forgiveness. She hasn’t forgiven me for reestablishing a relationship with him, and I’m her only damn child.”

He glanced at the clock above the refrigerator for the first time since arriving. It was late, after eleven.

“Doesn’t look like you’re going to get that reading done,” she said.

“It’ll wait.”

“Thank you for dinner. And for talking to me.”

“I don’t know that I said anything useful.”

“You listen, you ask good questions. And I find your voice soothing.”

“Almost puts you to sleep,” he countered, needing to make light of her words.

“Anything that puts me to sleep these days should not be disparaged.” She stood abruptly and stretched, rolled her neck about gently. “Come on, let’s make good on our deal.”

Matthew followed her down the old, looping staircase, his steps uncertain, his suppressed excitement leaping up again with distressing intensity. She fumbled for the lights in the small antechamber, and then they passed through the narrow arch. The chapel was smaller than he remembered, claustrophobic. He made a show of examining the panels from eastern Europe, stations of the cross, but his eyes were drawn inexorably back to the icon. The colors, subtle to begin with, appeared to shift about. The cloak was maroon, mauve, bloodred; the luminosity seemed to come from a place below the surface. Focusing on details usually helped, but the closer he got, the harder objective observation became. He grew agitated. One of the Virgin’s hands seemed to move, and he closed his eyes and stepped back.

“I’m not sure it’s good for you to be in here,” Ana said quietly.

“Don’t read your own discomfort into other people’s reactions.”

“I’m not. I’m looking at you, and you seem very uneasy.”

He shifted to avoid her gaze, then took a deep breath.

“Just tired. I should get going.”

In fact, he had no real desire to leave, but he was troubled by her attention, by her seeming need to get under the lid of his emotions.

“All right,” she answered.

He closed his eyes once more to compose himself. Then felt her hand on his shoulder, her lips on his, softly, gone again in a moment. She stepped back, the contact brief enough to have been only friendly if he saw fit to leave it at that. They faced each other for half a minute, enveloped by the warm light, the near walls. Ana tried to wait him out, but couldn’t.