She followed the docent through the rooms, nodding and smiling, taking notes in her small field book. The library was easily the room most crowded with stuff. Returning to these rooms after she’d studied them in photographs was eerie, like going back to a place you had lived years ago. Everything looked both better and worse in three dimensions. On the desk sat a bronze inkwell in the shape of a lion. Grace imagined how it would feel in her pocket.
The docent gestured outside toward the peony garden. “They bloom in May and June,” she said. “But it’s been a warm winter this year, and I’m just worried it’ll—” She then leaned forward, her nose almost touching the glass, and Grace’s right hand darted from her body to the bronze inkwell, which was far heavier than she’d expected it to be. The docent turned around and smiled. “Sorry, I thought I saw a rabbit. They do terrible damage to the little spring shoots, and sometimes right in the middle of the day. Just brazen!”
The bronze was heavy on Grace’s thigh, and she worried it would drag down the waistline of her skirt. She still had her notebook in her left hand. She crossed one arm over the other and told the docent that the rabbits in her parents’ yard would practically eat out of your hand. Together, they shook their heads.
Outside, Grace mounted her bicycle and positioned the pocket of her dress to hang between her thighs instead of on the outside, and she rode home slowly, the cold, heavy weight swinging beneath her, her ears pounding with the thrill of what she’d just done.
Alls was home, eating cereal on the couch and watching a Seinfeld rerun.
“Hey,” he said without looking up.
“Hi,” Grace said, too brightly.
“What you got there?” He nodded at one side of her skirt, which hung a good three inches lower than the other. Next time, she’d need a better receptacle. She took out the inkwell. She felt better than she had in months—good enough, even, to look him in the eye.
“I got it at Lamb’s,” she said. “Sixty percent off.” She set the inkwell down on the coffee table. The lion had an oversize head atop a tiny, cublike body on a square marble base. She lifted the lid, the top of the lion’s mane, and looked into the bottle. “See, that’s where you pour the ink.”
“What ink?”
“The ink,” she said. “I’ll have to put something else in it.”
“Weed,” he said, chewing toward the TV screen. Whenever they found themselves alone together, he was resolutely stupid toward her.
The inkwell was sitting on an open bill. Grace reached for it. “You’re never home right now,” she said. It was Alls’s car insurance bill.
“I need another job,” he said.
“Are they cutting down your hours? Is that why you’re home in the middle of the day?”
He nodded. “I need eighteen hours a week, and I can only get twelve with my practice schedule. They pay me sixteen an hour, though, and I’m not going to do better than that around here.”
“Do you have time for a second job?”
“Fencing is thirty-six hours per week plus travel. Class is sixteen plus the actual work. It’s true that I’m sleeping a luxurious forty-two hours per week. Maybe there’s some fat to cut there.” He rubbed his eyes.
“Why don’t you just get a loan?” she asked him.
“Never going to owe anybody anything,” he said.
“But you can’t possibly—”
He rolled his eyes. “If it’s all the same to you, ma’am, I’d rather not go through the particulars.”
“Do you want to talk?”
“I just told you I didn’t.”
“I mean, about anything.” This was idiotic, this hand patting. He would think that was what she was doing. But she felt generous and daring. Look! She wanted to whisper. I just stole this from the Wynne House! Nothing is as bad as it seems!
His eyes were blank with anger and blinking fast. “No, I don’t. You’re not my girlfriend, Grace.”
“I know I’m not, but I am your friend, and—”
“No,” he said, standing up. “Do me a favor, okay? Don’t try to make me feel better. Don’t even talk to me.” Alls then gave her a look of such withering disgust that she could not say a word.
He went into his bedroom and closed the door.
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She told Riley that she’d paid only twelve dollars for the inkwell.
“I think it might be worth something,” she said.
He wiped some dark, gunky dust from the lion’s roaring mouth with his pinkie finger. Outside the historical context of the Wynne home, its value did seem dubious.
“If I’m wrong we can keep weed in it,” Grace said. “But I don’t think I’m wrong.”
She would sell the inkwell and help him out, and then he would see that she had not given up. She had merely redirected her ambitions and reclaimed her smarts, her grit, her allure. She would be not diminished by her return home, but transformed.
But after trawling the Internet and the Garland College fine arts library for information, she couldn’t value the inkwell. She found no identifying markings, and the materials didn’t tell her anything. Even the nailheads in the base were inconclusive. What if she’d stolen something stupid? What if the Wynne docents had peeled off the gold made-in-China sticker before they’d plunked it on the desk? She’d never come up empty before.
She called Craig Furst. She couldn’t call Donald; she’d have to explain too much. She knew Craig had a taste for “gentleman” things—desk blotters, shaving kits, valets, humidors.
“Grace!” he said. “How are you?”
“I’m well, thank you,” she said. “And you?”
“Oh fine, fine. Going to Boston to do a huge estate tomorrow, probably take me three days just to take photos of it all. Massive collection. The off-grid aristocracy, if you know what I mean. They’re so desperate to legitimize. What are you doing? Donald working you to the bone?” He chuckled.
“No, not really,” she said, relieved that he didn’t even know she had gone.
“Oh? Do you think he—and your school, of course—could spare you for a few days? You know I’d love an assistant with me.”
“I’d love to,” Grace said. “But I’m not in New York right now. I had a death in the family.”
“I’m so sorry! No one close to you, I hope.”
“My grandfather,” she lied. “He’d been sick for a long time.”
“Terribly sorry to hear that.” He sounded as though he meant it.
“This is going to sound so crass, but that’s sort of why I’m calling you. He left me a few things, and it’s been a lot of fun, actually, finding out what they are and where he got them and tracking them down and all.”
“Grace, are you appraising your inheritance?” He laughed conspiratorially. “It’s an addiction, I know.”
“Just for information,” she said quickly. “I just want to know where—”
“Uh-huh,” he said. No one ever admitted their desire to sell off the family heirlooms, not at first. There was a required series of dance steps to get to that point—mourning the dead, enjoying their memories, discovering their treasures, “learning about them,” feigning surprise or masking disappointment, and then and only then, quietly selling it all off.
“What do you have?” he asked.
“An inkwell. Totally unmarked, no stamps or anything. A bronze lion with a marble base, about five inches high. The lion has glass eyes, and you lift the top of his mane to get to the well.”
“A lion! How charming. Is the ink bottle glass or pottery?”
“Porcelain, I think. And very irregular—not by machine. I think it could be nineteenth century.”
“Sounds like it. Could be Austrian, or maybe French. Can you send me a picture?”
She said she would, and he asked her to have coffee when she returned. And then, just after she’d thanked him again and just before she hung up, he asked her why she had not asked Donald.
Of course he would wonder that. She could have said that she had asked Donald and he hadn’t known, but of course Craig would tease Donald about that.
“I asked him about another piece,” Grace said. “I don’t want to wear out my welcome asking for freebies.”
“Ha! Fair enough,” he said.
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