“I am,” Isabel said. “I think that would be best.”
Mina let herself drift, almost as if she were just shifting her weight to her left leg, a bit closer to Isabel. At the same time Beatrice North seemed to shift to her right, and the unfortunate effect of both women moving slightly at the same time was to make it seem that the three of them were circling one another. It felt absurd, an accident of choreography, but still Mina felt the hair on her arms stiffen.
Beatrice North smiled, stretching her painted lips across her face in an expression that seemed to reveal some wound, involve some painful denuding.
“I should have everything I need,” she said. “I really am so pleased you’ve gone with our house.”
“Well, it was really a matter of the time frame,” Isabel said. “That, and the guarantee.”
“Of course. And you know, it’s so rare that you see someone who works so closely with MoMA gravitate toward drawings rather than contemporary painting or sculpture. It’s really quite unique, this collection. We can see a whole story, a history really, unfolding. There’s a whole trajectory of cause and effect there. We can sell it that way. That’s the narrative for the auction, I mean.”
“Well, that’s good,” Isabel said. “I’m glad you have a narrative.”
Mina looked at Isabel, at the slight puckering of her chin, and she saw that Isabel couldn’t bring herself to make the woman leave.
“I understand that discretion is going to be—that this is a private matter, insofar as it can be kept that way,” Beatrice continued. Blood-red fingernails curled around her portfolio, holding it against her hip.
“Well,” Isabel said, “I’m sure you’ll get a big splash when it’s announced, whether you like it or not. But I don’t expect that to fall within your purview. I don’t expect it would matter, actually, even if we tried. Of course I’ve been selling things for years, but no one’s ever shown any interest.”
“That’s the nature of the beast,” said Beatrice North.
OUT BY THE POOL, later, it was clear to Mina that they had at most another ten minutes before the rain came. It seemed silly that they were outside at all, but after Madison barged in with Lily and Beatrice took a hint and let herself be sent on her way, Isabel had insisted they come out here. Mina hadn’t been sure she shouldn’t follow Beatrice out, but Isabel had touched her arm, so brief and light it felt almost secret, conspiratorial, and so she had stayed.
A chilled bottle of white wine, unseasonable though it was, sat in an ice bucket on the table between them. Lily brought it out without being asked, at least that Mina had seen. There was something new between Isabel and the nanny, some unrehearsed choreography now existing between the needs of one and the duties of the other.
“Are you sure you want white?” Mina said when Lily appeared with the bottle, and Isabel had waved a hand in the air, leaving it unclear who was being waved away. The wine remained.
Mina waited a few minutes before she asked anything.
“Weren’t you afraid he’d wander out and come across that woman?” This was a gamble. She’d guessed where and how Bob was spending his days, but it was just that: a guess.
“I’m not afraid of him,” Isabel said, her black sunglasses confronting Mina head-on.
“No, I know.”
“He’s out. He’s been out all afternoon.”
Of course, Mina thought. He might have come home, unexpectedly, but then she had me here with her.
“I don’t know where he goes,” Isabel said, and Mina saw that it was her role, here, to acknowledge this honesty by changing the subject.
“Do you really think you’ll sell all of it?”
“If they want it,” Isabel said.
“But not—not all of it, right?”
“Isn’t it in poor taste?” Isabel said, a harsh, flat tone creeping into her voice. She picked up her wineglass and drained it. “Isn’t that the point, now? I’m not allowed any of it?” She nibbled her bottom lip with great fervor for a few moments. “He asked me to hang on to Madison’s painting, if we can.”
“The Picasso,” Mina said, thinking of the painting that hung at the end of Madison’s bedroom hallway and then wishing she hadn’t identified it quite so quickly. She knew the story well, that he’d bought it shortly after he made CEO, as a present for his daughter. But Isabel didn’t so much as look away from the pool, the surface of which had held her gaze for their entire conversation.
“The Picasso,” she said. “There’s that Newman drawing, the study for one of the zips. The one he gave me when he proposed. He didn’t ask after that one, however.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Mina said, afraid that her own pity, for Isabel, would be written clear across her face either way.
“You know I started that first year or two,” Isabel continued. “When we were first married. People were so dismissive of drawings. Obviously he wasn’t CEO yet, but still. And they knew my father, too. They could never believe I was in the meeting to see about buying just drawings. You can’t imagine how many times I heard that. ‘Just the drawings?’”
Mina tried to hold herself very still, looking out at the pool with Isabel, watching the outlines of the trees beyond where they sat, coming into stark relief against the darkening sky.
“But it wasn’t because that was what I could afford,” Isabel said. “Or it wasn’t just about that. I love those drawings. You can see the whole process. You can see how the man’s mind worked. You can see him putting together the thing that will make him a success, everything he had to do to get there. Only the things he needed.”
“They’re beautiful.”
Isabel shrugged.
“Some people don’t think so,” she said. “But those were mine.” She wrapped herself more tightly in the blanket and let her head rest back against the chair. Mina imagined she’d closed her eyes.
“Madison loves that painting,” Isabel said. “You should have seen her when we took her to Madrid. She stood in front of Guernica with him for a half hour, and he explained it all to her. They took so long I left and waited for them on a bench on the plaza outside.”
Mina knew then that it hadn’t been Bob’s idea, the auction. It wasn’t Bob who knew to stay a few steps ahead of whatever would be written about them. He was going to leave it all to her. Isabel had tried to hide away for a while, to refuse to leave the house and enter the world. She’d tried to force his hand, but it hadn’t worked. He’d won, he always would in the end, and now Isabel had to be in charge. She had no other choice.