I began to model for them after the war, which—my parents would have been scandalized, it was looked at like prostitution—and most of these pieces were my payment for modeling. Now there are a few others I didn’t mention in the letter, some works that might not be worth a dime. Plus a lot that I gave away over the years. Someone would die and I’d send the sketch off to his widow, that sort of thing.” She stopped and caught her breath. “They weren’t all geniuses, and I wasn’t going about picking and choosing. But some were big names even then. Oh, was I starstruck. Now they’re signed, almost all of them. That was my condition. And they didn’t always want to sign, especially not with a quick sketch. But it was my price.”
Yale was, if nothing else, intrigued. Nora might be a front for a clever forgery ring (stranger things had happened) or be outright delusional, but she herself hadn’t been the victim of forgers. And in so many of these cases, that was what happened—you had to sit by while some millionaire learned the de Chirico he’d been showing off for years was an utter fake.
“They’re insured?” he asked.
Debra cut in: “For not nearly enough.” She sat with her teacup, not drinking, her glare leveled at the coffee table.
Nora said, “But can’t you authenticate them yourself? At the museum?” And then she said, “Good heavens, look at that!” because outside it had started raining in sheets.
Yale spoke gently. “If museums were allowed to authenticate their own works, everyone would have a hundred Picassos. But listen, if we have reason to believe the pieces are what you say, we might be able to help financially with authentication. We can’t pay for it directly, but maybe we could find another donor who could.” He wasn’t sure this was tenable, but it was worth saying for now.
Nora looked at him strangely. “If they are what I say!”
“I don’t doubt you.” He checked Debra’s and Stanley’s faces. They looked serious, not like they were just humoring this woman. He said, “I’m trying to curb my excitement because this would be such an amazing boon, not just to the university but to the art world—and I don’t want to get my heart broken here.” It was the truth.
Cecily said something then, but Yale was busy wondering if this was the governing factor of his life: the fear of getting his heart broken. Or rather, the need to protect the remaining scraps of his heart, the ones torn smaller by every breakup, every failure, every funeral, every day on earth. Was this why a shrink would say he was with Charlie, out of all the men in Chicago? Yale might break Charlie’s heart—he did it almost every day—but Charlie, for all his possessiveness, would never break Yale’s.
The rain was trying to tear the whole house apart.
Stanley said, “Let’s assume everything checks out. Can you guarantee these pieces will be displayed prominently? You wouldn’t turn around and sell them?”
Yale assured him the works would be in regular rotation. That if the space expanded, they could be on permanent display.
“Now,” Nora said, and she leaned in to look straight at Yale as if what she had to say next was the most important thing. “I wouldn’t want you to play favorites. I want the whole collection displayed.”
“That’s not really up—”
“There are a couple of unknowns in there, and one in particular, Ranko Novak, I’ve hung onto his work for sentimental reasons. It’s good, don’t think it’s some dreadful thing, but he’s not a name. I don’t want you displaying the Soutine and consigning Ranko to a closet.” She pointed a finger at him. “Do you know Foujita?”
Yale was able to nod honestly. He did know a lot more about art than the average money guy, a huge asset. He had a joke now, a practiced line, about how he could have told his dad either that he was gay or that he was majoring in art, and he’d picked gay because it seemed like less trouble. In reality, during the whole ride home for sophomore winter break, Yale had silently rehearsed the news that he was switching from finance to art history—and then that night, his boyfriend had called and mistaken Yale’s father’s voice for Yale’s (“I miss you, baby,” he’d said, and Yale’s father had said, “How’s that?” and Marc, as was his wont, had elaborated), and so the rest of vacation had been