“Yeah.” Lizzie smiled, drained her cup. “It’s a classic Joseph story. Back in the nineties, he found out from his friend Judy, the woman who owned the gallery where we held the memorial actually, that Shulman liked visitors. And that he would sell prints to anyone who asked. It was Judy’s assistant who had told him, a gorgeous young arts student—”
“Oh no, I can see where this is going,” Rose said with a touch of a groan.
“Maybe,” Lizzie said. “Maybe not. Anyway, this young art student had been to Shulman’s house in Laurel Canyon. She said that Shulman liked visitors of all kinds, particularly women, and particularly those who came bearing single-malt scotch. So my dad got the address and showed up at his house, and the old man opened the door, and my dad laid it on thick: ‘You’re a brilliant photographer,’ he said. He gave him the scotch, and Shulman sniffed and said, ‘No, it’s tequila that I like.’ And my dad said, ‘You want me to run out and get some? Because I will.’ And Shulman waved him off and invited him in and my dad kept praising him, telling him how much he loved his pictures of Neutra’s work. ‘That guy was a nutjob,’ Shulman said. ‘But he could build a building.’ Shulman must have been charmed because he pulled out a bottle of tequila and the two drank. Shulman had been born in Brooklyn, like my dad, and they talked about that, and the store that my grandparents had owned. It turned out that after Shulman moved to L.A., when he was a boy, his parents ran a general store too, in Boyle Heights, and Shulman used to sell pickles out of barrels to immigrants from Japan and Mexico.”
“So at some point, during all this carousing, your father bought the print from Shulman.”
“I wouldn’t call it carousing, but yes, I think it was the second time he went by, my dad said to him, ‘You know, Julius, how much I respect you as an artist.’ And Shulman said: ‘Come now, don’t bullshit a bullshitter. Just ask.’ So my father did. He asked to buy a print. ‘I’ve got loads lying around here,’ Shulman said. ‘Take one.’ And he did.”
“Wait, Joseph didn’t pay for the print?”
“No, no,” Lizzie reassured her. “Of course he paid for it.”
“How much?”
“I’m not sure, exactly,” Lizzie said, although that wasn’t true. She was growing uncomfortable. The story she had told many times before, her father drinking and charming a famous photographer, seemed to be shifting under Rose’s attention.
“Come now. How much?”
“I think it was two hundred for the print.”
“It was probably worth ten times that even at the time, if not twenty, at least. He ripped him off. He took advantage of a lonely old man.”
Lizzie reddened. She had doubled the amount. “Shulman knew what he was doing. He was famous, even then. He was giving them out, left and right. He liked my father,” she protested. “Plenty of people visited him and did the same thing.”
“Really? That’s your excuse?” Rose let out a snort. “Other people behaved poorly? Your father had ulterior motives. It wasn’t an original sin, but let’s at least acknowledge that.”
“I’m only saying,” Lizzie said, and stopped. What was she saying? She could see what Rose meant, but she also knew that Joseph genuinely liked Shulman, he enjoyed talking to him. It wasn’t so simple. “The Getty acquired Shulman’s collection before he died. It’s worth millions. He did quite well for himself,” she said.
“That’s not the point and you know it,” Rose said, rising. “I need more coffee.”
Lizzie got up too. But Rose picked up her cup and commanded: “Stay: I’ve got it.”
If her father were here, he would explain himself, Lizzie thought as she regarded the framed wall-hanging of the birds above the couch. Looking closer, she saw that it was silk, the edges finely stitched, even the birds’ feathers painstakingly detailed, elegant. There was discoloration in the lower right corner; it looked like it had been used.
Rose came back, handed Lizzie her cup.
“This is beautiful,” Lizzie said to Rose, nodding at the frame.
“It was my mother’s,” Rose said. “Her favorite scarf.”
“Oh,” Lizzie said, and she felt an urge to touch Rose’s hand, but she held back. “It’s beautiful,” she repeated. “I’m so glad you have something of hers.”
“She gave it to me the night I left. It’s one of the only things of hers that I do have.”
“Oh,” Lizzie said again. It was unbearable, what Rose had gone through, and the pain never stopped, did it? Lizzie thought of all her father’s things that she had, her mother’s too. Even incidental objects—maybe especially those, like her mother’s copy of Valley of the Dolls that Lizzie had always wondered if Lynn had kept as a joke—comforted Lizzie through the years. “I wish you had more,” she said softly.
“It’s gone,” Rose said crisply, and Lizzie knew Rose well enough now to know that the sharpness in her tone was only a small part of the story.
“I know you might not want to hear this,” Lizzie decided to begin. “But the other day, I realized that I had a connection to a lawyer who is an expert in art restitution.”
“Okay.”
“Michael Ciparelli. He used to work with my boss, who says he’s a good guy and an excellent attorney. I think it’s worth talking to him.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Just hear me out. He’s hugely connected and has a wealth of expertise in this area. He’s been doing this for decades.”
“Lizzie, it’s not for me,” Rose said, and moved to the edge of her chair, sitting taut and straight. “You have to stop trying to convince me.”
“But why?” Lizzie asked. She couldn’t shake the belief that she could make things better for Rose. “I know that it’s not my place, it’s your decision, but I feel like there are things that can be done—”
“You’re right, it’s not your place,” Rose snapped. “You don’t understand. This didn’t happen to you. I don’t know how to make you realize that. As sorry as you are, as horrified as you may be, this did not happen to you. So, please, stop acting as if it did.”
“I know it didn’t,” Lizzie said quietly. Did Rose really think that she presumed it had? “I never meant to suggest that it did.”
But Rose was shaking her head. “I’m friends with a man, a former German professor. A few years ago, his granddaughter took a school trip to the Museum of Tolerance. Like all the students, his granddaughter was given identification when she walked in. The ID was circa World War II, and it featured a child. The girl on her paper happened to have the same last name,” she said. “She walked through the interactive exhibits—full of video and buttons you can press. At the end, she and her classmates found out the fate of the children on the papers they carried. My friend’s granddaughter learned that the girl on hers had died at Auschwitz. She went home with the paper, showed it to her parents. Her father told his father. ‘That was my sister,’ my friend said.”
“That is awful,” Lizzie said. “That is so awful.”
“Do you understand? Rose said. “This might be a game to you, but it’s not for me. Losing the Soutine was the least of it.”