She graduated second in her class and had had her choice of colleges: a full ride at Oberlin, a partial scholarship at Denison, acceptances all over the state, from Kenyon to Kent State to Wooster. Her mother had been in favor of Oberlin, had urged her to apply in the first place, but when Elena visited the campus, she’d felt immediately out of place. The coed dorms unsettled her, all the men in their skivvies, the girls in their robes, the knowledge that at any moment a boy might saunter into her room—or worse, the bathroom. On the steps of one building, three long-haired students in dashikis sat playing slide whistles; across the green, students held up posters in silent protest: DROP ACID, NOT BOMBS. I DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE PRESIDENT. BOMBING FOR PEACE IS LIKE FUCKING FOR VIRGINITY. It felt, to Elena, like a foreign country where rules did not reach. She fought the urge to fidget, as if the campus were an itchy sweater.
So she’d headed to Denison the following fall instead, with an ambitious and illustrious future plotted out for herself. On the second day of classes she met Billy Richardson, tall and handsome in the Clark Kent vein, and by the end of the month they were going steady. Chastely they made plans for the future: after graduation, a white wedding in Cleveland, a house in Shaker, lots of children, law school for him, a cub reportership for her—a plan they followed meticulously. Soon after they married and settled into a rented duplex in Shaker, Mr. Richardson started law school and Mrs. Richardson was offered a position as a junior reporter at the Sun Press. It was a small paper, focused on local news, and the pay was commensurately low. Still, she decided, it was a promising enough place to start. In time, perhaps, she’d be able to make the jump over to the Plain Dealer, Cleveland’s “real” newspaper—though of course she’d never want to leave Shaker, could not imagine raising a family anywhere else.
She dutifully covered all the local news conferences, city politics, the regional effects of new regulations on everything from bridges to tree planting, sharing responsibilities with the other junior reporter, Dwight, who was a year younger. It was a good workplace, allowing her to take six weeks of maternity leave after Lexie’s birth, then Trip’s, then Moody’s. By the time Izzy came around, however, Mrs. Richardson found herself still at the Sun Press—senior reporter, now, but still relegated to covering the small stories, the small news. Dwight, meanwhile, had moved to Chicago to take a job at the Tribune. Was it because of the time she’d taken off, or the fact—as she was starting to realize—that she had no desire to tunnel into hard stories and bitter tragedies? She would never be quite certain, but the more time passed, the less probable it seemed that she could move elsewhere, and it became a question of chickens and eggs. No one at the Plain Dealer, or anywhere else for that matter, seemed to be interested in taking on a reporter nearing forty, with four children and all the attendant obligations, who had never covered a big story, and it didn’t matter whether that was the chicken or the egg.
And so she stayed. She focused on the feel-good stories, the complimentary write-ups of progress: the new recycling initiative, the remodeling of the library, the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new playground behind it. She covered the swearing-in of the new city manager (“solemn”) and the Halloween parade (“spirited”), the opening of Half Price Books at Van Aken Center (“a much-needed addition to Shaker’s commercial district”), the debate on spraying for gypsy moths (“heated, on both sides”). She reviewed the production of Grease at the Unitarian Church and Guys and Dolls at the high school: “Rollicking,” she wrote of one; “Sit Down; They’re Rocking the Boat!” she wrote of the other. She became known as reliable and for turning in clean copy, if—though no one said it out loud—routine and rather pedestrian and terribly nice. Shaker Heights was dependably safe and thus the news, such as it was, was correspondingly dull. Outside in the world, volcanoes erupted, governments rose and collapsed and bartered for hostages, rockets exploded, walls fell. But in Shaker Heights, things were peaceful, and riots and bombs and earthquakes were quiet thumps, muffled by distance. Her house was large; her children safe and happy and well educated. This was, she told herself, the broad strokes of what she had planned out all those years ago.
Izzy’s request, however, brought something new. Something intriguing, or at very least interesting. Something perhaps worth investigating at last.
True to her word, Mrs. Richardson filed her story and turned to the mysterious photograph. On a lunch break the next day, she stopped by the museum to see it for herself. Until then, she’d been sure Izzy was just imagining things, but she had been right: it was definitely Mia. In a Pauline Hawthorne photograph! She had heard of Pauline Hawthorne, of course. What was the story here? Mrs. Richardson puzzled over this as she dropped a folded five into the museum’s donation box and headed out to her car, genuinely intrigued.
Her first step was to call the art gallery that had lent the photograph to the exhibit. Yes, the owner told her, they’d purchased the photograph in 1982, from a dealer in New York. It had been shortly after Pauline’s death, and there had been much excitement in the art world when this previously unknown photograph had been put up for sale. There had been a fierce auction and they’d been thrilled to walk away with it for fifty thousand—really a bargain. Yes, the photograph had been conclusively attributed to Pauline Hawthorne: the dealer had sold many of Pauline’s works over the years, and the photograph—the only print, they’d been told—had been signed by Pauline herself on the back. No, the owner of the photograph had been anonymous, but they would be happy to give Mrs. Richardson the name of the art dealer.
Mrs. Richardson took it down—an Anita Rees—and, after a quick call to New York City’s public information, obtained the phone number of the Rees Gallery in Manhattan. Anita Rees, when reached on the telephone, proved to be a true New Yorker: brisk, fast-talking, and unflappable.
“A Pauline Hawthorne? Yes, I’m sure I did. I represented Pauline Hawthorne for years.” Through the phone Mrs. Richardson heard the faint blare of a siren passing by and then receding into the distance. In her mind that was always what New York sounded like: honking, trucks, sirens. She had been to New York only once, in college, in the days when you had to hold your purse tight with both hands and didn’t dare touch anything on the subway, even the poles. It had been cemented in her memory that way.
“But this photo,” Mrs. Richardson said, “was sold after Pauline’s death. By someone else. It was a photo of a woman holding a baby. Virgin and Child #1, it was called.”
The phone line suddenly went so quiet that Mrs. Richardson thought they’d been disconnected. But after a moment, Anita Rees spoke again. “Yes, I remember that one.”
“I’m just wondering,” said Mrs. Richardson, “if you could give me the name of the person who sold the photograph.”
Something new flared in Anita’s voice: suspicion. “Where did you say you were calling from again?”
“My name is Elena Richardson.” Mrs. Richardson hesitated for a moment. “I work as a reporter for the Sun Press, in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s related to a story I’m researching.”
“I see.” Another pause. “I’m sorry, but the original owner of that photograph wished to remain anonymous. For personal reasons. I’m not at liberty to give the seller’s name.”