“Well, yes, but—”
Frank assured me, “Nothing wrong with selling stuff. I’ve got a bunch of salesmen in my family going generations back, and so does Isaac, there. And listen, that’s what I was going to tell you. Isaac says that all the old sales registers from Fisher’s store, the old store at Cross Harbor, were donated to the library. Benjamin Wilde would have had an account at the store, so I’m thinking that maybe those records would help us in figuring out what he had in his house at the time.”
“Good idea.” I’d met the librarian. She’d seemed approachable. “I can go take a look at them this week.”
“Isaac also says he’s got a painting,” Frank said, “of the Bellewether.”
Benjamin Wilde’s famous ship had been widely immortalized. We had two paintings of it in our budding collection already.
“But this painting,” Frank told me when I raised that point, “shows the ship being built. And it came from this house.”
I considered this. “Really?”
“Yep. The story goes Isaac’s great-grandfather bought it from mine at the auction.”
I knew about the auction but it took me half a minute to sort the generations of Frank’s family into place so I could put a name to his great-grandfather, who’d been—if I worked backwards—the great-grandson of our famous Captain Benjamin. He’d also been the second son of Lawrence Wilde, the poet, who had given all his children great, romantic names, like . . .
Arthur. That was it, I thought with satisfaction: Arthur Wilde. He hadn’t had his father’s writing talent nor his great-grandfather’s daring, but he’d left his own mark on the history of the house. In the early 1880s he’d lost four of his six children in one week to typhoid fever. Grieving, he had blamed the cove and its “unhealthy” air, and hastily moved his surviving children and his wife to a more modern townhouse in Manhattan, leaving the Wilde House shuttered and empty for all but a few weeks each summer, for years. It was during this time, with the costs of his Gilded Age Manhattan lifestyle increasing, that Arthur had auctioned off some of the Wilde House contents, specifically things that had been owned by Benjamin Wilde and would bring a high price. Arthur’s auction was one of the prime reasons we were now having to track down the long-missing items snapped up at the time by museums and private collectors.
If Isaac Fisher had a painting that had been sold in that auction, chances were that it was something we would want. Especially if it was of the Bellewether.
“Do you think he’d let us have it?” I asked Frank.
He shrugged. “Don’t know. But knowing Isaac, I doubt he’d have brought it up in conversation in the first place if he wasn’t thinking of a deal. He’s an old fisherman, Isaac. He likes to bait his line and throw it out there, see what happens. But you never want to take that bait too soon, or else you’re done for.”
“Good to know.” I filed that fact away.
“And if you want to come out on the right side of a deal with Isaac,” Frank advised, “it never hurts to do a favour for him. Like right now, he’s been walking round in circles with that donkey for a couple hours. You could just wander over there and offer to step in so he could have a break. He’d like that.”
I looked towards the line of children waiting for a donkey ride on Dennis, who was plodding after Isaac Fisher in a steady circle.
Frank said, “He doesn’t bite. Dennis, I mean. And he wouldn’t be the first ass you’ve dealt with today.”
I turned around a little bit defensively because at first I thought that he was talking about Tyler, but he winked and told me, “Saw you putting Harvey in his place. I’m guessing he deserved it.”
“Yes,” I said, “he did.”
“Well, then. If you can deal with Harvey, you’ll have no trouble with Isaac. He’s a pussycat.”
In retrospect, when I had walked across and talked to Isaac Fisher, I wasn’t sure “pussycat” was how I would describe him, unless that included grizzled, wily barn cats that had fought their way through several lives and earned the notches on their ears to prove it, and could spot fresh quarry by the faintest twitch beneath the hay. But he was grateful for the break, as Frank had said he’d be, and in the end Dennis and I got along so well that I was sorry to hand his reins back an hour later.
I did, though. And keeping Frank’s advice in mind I didn’t bring the subject of the painting up with Isaac. I just gave him Dennis back and went to have a break myself, and hoped whatever goodwill I’d just gained would help us come out, as Frank put it, on the right side of the deal.
Under the trees that ringed the picnic tables, snacks and drinks had been set out for visitors to buy. Malaika’s husband, Darryl, reigned over the barbecue where hamburgers and hot dogs sizzled, sending plumes of tantalizing, stomach-tugging scents upwards to catch the cooling breeze. One wafted my way and I changed my course because of it.
Malaika, standing next to Darryl, handed me a hot dog bun. “You’re making friends,” she said. “I’ve just had Isaac Fisher telling me how nice you are.”
“That’s good,” I said. And told her why. I finished with, “So even if he doesn’t want to donate the painting, he might at least go easy on the price. And if the Sisters of Liberty give us that grant, we’ll have money to buy it.”
I saw the brief look Darryl sent to Malaika, and noticed the glance that she gave in reply. They could speak without words, like my parents could, and I envied that. Envied the easy way both of them seemed to be always connected, each strong in their own self but stronger together. Most times when I saw them “talk” to each other like that, I imagined how wonderful that must feel, being so fully in sync with the person you loved.
But today, I was focusing more on what they might be saying, because I felt certain I knew. And it wasn’t good news. “They’ve refused us the grant,” I guessed. “Haven’t they?”
Darryl set a hot dog on my bun as consolation, as Malaika nodded. “Their treasurer called me last night, but I figured that the news could wait. You had enough on your mind for the weekend.”
Deep inside my pocket, my phone vibrated to tell me that I had a call. I took a look, saw it was Tyler, let it go to voicemail. Then I used the time it took to put the mustard on my hot dog to collect my jumbled thoughts and try to turn them to the positive. Because, although I’d hoped my presentation had persuaded them, I’d known from the beginning that my grandmother had power and prestige here. And she wasn’t on my side.
I didn’t bother asking why they’d turned us down. I knew.
Instead I said, “Well, that’s okay. We’ll find some way to raise the money.”
Once again my phone vibrated, and again I let it go. Tyler should understand why, I thought. He’d lectured me enough times on why he couldn’t answer a personal call during working hours, and since I was standing right now talking to my boss it wouldn’t be at all professional to answer.
When my phone went off a third time, though, I reasoned that it might be an emergency. I said, “Excuse me,” to Malaika, stepped away, and answered it.
“You have to come home now,” were Tyler’s first words. I could hear exasperation in his tone.
I tried to keep him calm. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I have to—”
“Rachel’s here.”
That stopped me. Rachel was supposed to be en route to join my parents in Toronto for Canadian Thanksgiving. They had sent her down the plane tickets. Her flight, if I remembered right, should have been in the air by now. “She can’t be.”
“Well, she is. She just walked in with suitcases and everything and all I did,” he told me, heated, “all I did was ask why she was here, and she ripped into me.”
“Is she okay?”