There was more to it than that. The joke was only the start. She could hear her father say, Tim-ing, now that is everything. But Lizzie only said: “I always thought being funny could get you fairly far.”
The woman looked at her, her thin mouth expanding into a smile. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Rose Downes.” She held out a hand. “I’m so sorry about your father.”
Oh God, was she supposed to know her? Lizzie could be terrible with names. “Thank you. It was nice of you to come today.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry; how did you know my father?”
Rose touched the silk at her neck and smiled inwardly. “You probably know me better as the woman whose family used to own The Bellhop.”
Lizzie couldn’t have heard her right. “The Bellhop?”
“Yes.”
“My Soutine?”
“Well,” Rose said, and drew her lips in. “Some might argue it’s my Soutine. It was my family’s. But yes, that painting.”
“And my father knew this?” Lizzie said thickly.
“Yes, of course he knew,” Rose said with a touch of exasperation. “That’s how we met.”
“I’m sorry,” Lizzie said. “I didn’t realize—” She couldn’t finish her thought.
Lizzie first saw the painting on the day she arrived in L.A. after her mother died. She hadn’t been to her father’s house in close to a year. He opened the front door and she was hit by the light, a blinding California light. The floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room were like a taut glass skin—a country of it, everywhere you turned. She walked to the windows, stuck her face up against the glass, and peered down into the mouth of the parched ravine, the yawning canyon far below. The depth to which she could tumble filled her with a bruising, voluminous peace. It was larger than her mother’s cancer, bigger than moving across the country to live with a father she didn’t really know.
She turned around and, with her fingers still pressed up against the glass, she saw him. Across from the fireplace hung a painting of a man. A young man, dressed in a uniform, a fancy red uniform with gold buttons. His face and limbs were elongated, his ears elephantine. His nose was crooked, as if someone had slammed a fist into it. His stance was awkward, his head too large for his body. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. But the colors! His face was a riot of swirls: when she went closer to the canvas, she discovered other hues in his uniform, dips of blue and white, streaks of gold and black and purple, as if whoever had painted it couldn’t contain himself, as if he were unleashing all the pigment he had at his disposal. It was angry and ugly and dizzying and beautiful, all at once.
“You like that?” Joseph asked. “It’s pretty nice, isn’t it?”
She shrugged. “It’s okay,” she said, and sat down below it. All that red!
He cleared his throat. “For someone not interested, you’re paying a lot of attention.”
Lizzie gave another shrug, stayed silent. She made her father nervous, she was realizing, and she found, to her surprise, that she liked this feeling, the tart taste of power like a cold marble in her mouth.
“It’s by a guy named Soutine. He was a French Expressionist. Which can refer to many things, but expensive is one,” Joseph continued. “I first saw it years ago, in New York.” He paused. “With your mother. She liked it too.”
Rose, eyes narrowed, was looking past Lizzie at the elephant in the room. “I thought your father told you, but perhaps I misunderstood,” Rose said. “I truly liked him. My condolences to you and your sister.” She nodded quickly.
“Your family owned the Soutine,” Lizzie said, her mind too awhirl to settle on a question.
“We did.”
“Where? Where are you from?”
“Vienna. My mother purchased it in Paris, in the twenties, and brought it back home.”
“Oh,” Lizzie said. The accent fell in place. “And then?”
“It was stolen. When the Germans came.”
“Oh,” she repeated. She did the math in her head. She understood. “I’m sorry.”
Rose nodded. “I know it was taken from you too. I met your father, afterward. I read about the theft in the newspaper. There was a small item in the L.A. Times—”
Lizzie felt a familiar tightness in her stomach. She remembered reading that article months later, before she left for college. She was looking for stamps on her father’s mess of a desk when she came across a short clipping from the paper, and the memories from that night came flooding back as surely as if she had been slapped. Why was he saving it? Why was it here on his desk? She crumbled it up, buried it deep in the wastebasket. But within the hour she stole back into his study, fished it out, ironed out the wrinkles as best she could, and placed it back where she had found it, feeling guilty once again.
“My husband read it,” Rose was saying. “I couldn’t believe it—The Bellhop, here, in Los Angeles! I hadn’t seen it since I left Vienna as a child. I got in touch with your father. In the beginning, we met to talk about the painting and the theft. But—well, through the years, we just kept meeting. Not often, but we’d go to lunch or maybe an exhibit together. He always drove. I abhor driving. And he took me places I hadn’t been.”
“Really?” Lizzie asked, the tightness beneath her ribs easing up. She could imagine it, her father with Rose. “Where would you go?”
“Different places. The Bradbury Building, for one.”
“Oh, I love that building.” Her father took her there after she watched Blade Runner in her high school film class. She could remember the moment of stepping past the plain fa?ade into the sun-soaked interior, all that gorgeous wrought iron. It’s even better in person, isn’t it? her father had said, and there was such delight in his voice; even if she hadn’t liked it, she would have agreed.
“It’s overrated,” Rose said with a shrug. “Too much going on. You know the architect famously claimed he got a message from a Ouija board as to how to design it. It looks that way.”
Lizzie let out a snort of a laugh. She couldn’t help herself. She liked this woman.
“We went years ago,” Rose continued, unfazed by Lizzie’s laughter. “And to Grand Central Market afterward. This was before it was cleaned up, fancified. We tried four different kinds of mole, and all were delicious.”
Lizzie could picture it precisely—her father leading past stalls filled high with dried chilies and avocados and mangoes, past the lunch counter with its neon sign advertising chop suey. The thought gave her a lift, made her, for a brief moment, happy. “I wish I could have been there.”
Rose gave a hint of a smile. “Yes,” she said, and they both fell into silence. Rose glanced toward the front of the room and Lizzie followed her gaze. The gallery had emptied out; Lizzie saw the bartender stacking glasses into an orange plastic crate. “I have to get going,” Rose said. “My condolences again.” She nodded seriously.
“No, you haven’t met my sister yet—”
“Another time.”
“Only if you mean it. I really would like to talk to you more.”