A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,50
want to seem pushy, but unless the provenance was solid, it would be hard to get its maximum value.
“He bought it in a gallery, he said.”
“Any more surprises lurking in your storage unit?” Elm asked.
Indira smiled. “I don’t think so. But, then, an old lady’s memory is not what it used to be, so you never know what will turn up, do you?”
Elm wasn’t sure if she was teasing or not. She felt like there was a joke being played on her, like the time she was sure that Colin had planned her a surprise party for her fortieth birthday a couple of months before Ronan died, and she spent hours getting ready each morning for the two weeks surrounding her birthday, just in case (it was her pet peeve that everyone knew about surprise parties except the guest of honor, who then appeared in every photo in what was potentially the worst outfit in her closet on a terrible hair day). But when on the big day Colin presented her with a pair of earrings, a babysitter, and a nice dinner not too far from their apartment, she finally relaxed. How had she thought him capable of deceit, even for her own benefit? A full week later when they went for their regular date-night dinner, all her nice clothes were at the dry cleaner’s, so she threw on a pair of slacks from the previous decade (pleats, a little snug in the hips), and put her hair up in a ponytail. Sure enough, when she walked into their local pizza joint, forty people yelled “Surprise” and the flashes lit.
Was it possible that Indira didn’t know she was storing major masterpieces, even though she was an artist herself? It was illogical, considering the woman still lived alone and seemed to forget nothing at all. Elm looked at her; she was wearing foundation. Foundation that exactly matched her skin tone, none of the clownlike myopic mess many older women adopted.
Elm considered: Pastels lurked in a murky space between drawing and painting. As the Hiverains were theoretically Impressionist, Elm wondered if she shouldn’t notify Claudio in nineteenth-century painting. But the Impressionists always filled their “quota” and Elm needed the boost. She decided that if it came back authenticated she would enter it in an auction under her supervision. Indira was a respected artist; surely that was provenance enough.
Indira stared back, waiting for Elm to challenge her. Elm opened her mouth to speak, but Indira’s foamy eyes wandered past Elm, unable to focus on her face, and Elm saw that she was indeed old and frail, blind as a newborn, incapable of guile.
Elm spent too long in the shower, and was late to drop Moira off, which made her late for her doctor’s appointment. She calculated—the office was ten blocks downtown. She could walk it in fifteen minutes, or she could grab a cab. But a cab down Second Avenue at this time of day could be a disaster, plus she would either have to catch one going uptown and go around the block or walk crosstown, which would eat up time. She decided to walk, and arrived overheated and frazzled. She stripped and put on the flimsy gown and then sat, increasingly frustrated at the passing time, in the chilly exam room with its view of a brick wall.
Finally the doctor came in. Elm had changed ob-gyns in the wake of Ronan’s death; she just couldn’t imagine explaining to her former doctor what had happened. When Dr. Hong took her history, she asked how many times Elm had been pregnant. “I have one child,” she answered.
Dr. Hong didn’t speak much during the exam, for which Elm was grateful. She hated having to make small talk with doctors. The nurse was silent as well. Soft music drifted in from a different office. Below, a truck backed up shrilly.
“Well,” Dr. Hong said, “everything looks fine.”
Elm had waited until the last moment. She and Colin hadn’t discussed it any further, but she said, “I was thinking about having another child.” Elm wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or if she saw the nurse raise her eyebrows. Dr. Hong looked at her chart again. “Well,” she said, slowly. “I won’t lie. You’re almost forty-three. You’re still getting regular periods?”
“Yes,” Elm said. They weren’t regular, necessarily, but they were not infrequent.
“There are two things we can do,” Dr. Hong said, resting her clipboard on her hip. “First, we test your FSH level, your follicle-stimulating hormone.”