Chapter 12: Larkin Gallery

Larkin Gallery opened on a Friday in April, six weeks after my son was born.

Forty people came, which was thirty more than I had hoped.

My feet hurt, and my body was still not entirely mine.

The black sedan from the hospital had not come back, and the lawyer's notebook still said Brooks.

I checked the street through the window anyway, twice an hour.

Rory slept in a basket in the back office with Ansel's mother on a stool beside him, knitting something yellow and refusing to let anyone in.

The walls were white.

The long plinth was uneven at one end on purpose.

On the main wall, alone, hung the painting of the terrace.

It was the old man, weeping into his sleeve, with a woman in a gray coat holding his elbow.

It was the best thing I had ever made.

I had hung it under a card with only two letters.

I. L.

Ansel had talked me into it a week earlier.

"Nobody here has to know who you are," he said. "Not yet. People buy the paintings or they don't. You don't need the Merrick name hanging off them."

"And if they ask?"

"I'm the owner, and I say the artist is shy."

"You're not very convincing when you lie."

"I told a lawyer I had a son," Ansel said. "I'm excellent."

Around eight a woman in a long wool coat stopped in front of the terrace.

She stood there for five minutes without speaking.

Then she turned and found me.

"Who painted this?" she said.

"The artist prefers to stay private."

"Does the artist sell?"

"Sometimes."

"What's the price?"

Ansel appeared at my elbow with a glass of water, and he named a figure out of the air.

It was twice what I would have asked.

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