The Curiosities Page 3

  Josh looked at the picture on his own bottle and laughed. “You’re right. Good call. I forget you used to be a gamer.”

  Nell remembered all the lonely hours she’d spent playing video games while her mom, a single parent, worked late evenings as a pharmacist. She shook her head. “If only I’d taken all that time playing Nintendo and applied it to something more useful.”

  “Like, say, learning to repair cracks in plaster . . .” Josh waved his arm toward the curved, ninety-year-old kitchen ceiling, which was embossed with a decorative scroll pattern.

  “Never,” Nell said. “You can’t touch those moldings. Whoever did the plaster in this house was an artist. And, anyway, the cracks are part of the house’s charm. Like how the Winged Victory sculpture at the Louvre wouldn’t be the same with an intact head.”

  She took a sip of beer and skimmed the list of job postings she’d been perusing online. “Let’s see here . . . ‘Females wanted, age 18 to 30, for independent film project. No prior acting experience needed.’ Too bad I’m too old. This could have been my big break.”

  Josh set his bottle down on the counter. “I don’t even want to know what sort of film they’re making.”

  Nell read the listings aloud. “Line cooks, office temps, baristas. Wait a second . . . ‘Private nonprofit arts foundation looking for director. B.A. required, graduate degree preferred. Call for inquiries.’”

  “Sounds interesting,” Josh said. “At least worth a call.”

  “Well, considering it’s the only posting I’ve seen with the word ‘art’ in it, I think I’d better check it out. Hopefully it doesn’t involve any independent film projects.”

  When Nell called the number from the ad the next morning, a cheerful-sounding woman answered. “Peterson Law. How may I direct your call?”

  Nell paused. She hadn’t been expecting a law office. Perhaps she had misdialed.

  “Hello?” the woman said.

  “I’m calling about a job listing for an arts foundation,” Nell said. “Perhaps I have the wrong number?”

  “No, this is the right place. Let me transfer you to Don, he’s in charge of that.”

  Nell waited on hold, tapping her foot to the 1812 Overture, until a booming voice came over the line.

  “Don speaking.”

  “Hello. My name is Nell Parker. I saw a listing in yesterday’s paper seeking a director for a nonprofit arts program. I’m calling to find out more information.”

  There was a long silence, followed by “Of course! The Barrett Foundation. Thank you for calling.”

  “Can you tell me a little bit more about the position and what you’re looking for?” Nell asked.

  “Certainly. Are you available to come in at two o’clock today?”

  “You mean for an interview?” Nell looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. Two o’clock was just a few hours from now.

  “You could call it that,” Don said. “Or an informational appointment. Whatever you’d prefer.”

  “Two will be fine,” Nell said. She wrote down the name of the law firm and the address Don gave her and said, “I’ll see you then.”

  Shit, Nell thought as soon as she hung up the phone. What had she gotten herself into? She didn’t have an interview outfit that still fit her. She didn’t even know if she had any printer paper for her résumé.

  She went upstairs and paused with her hand on the door of what Josh called the “home office.” Nell never went in there. Although she and Josh had not gotten to the point where they’d painted the walls or bought any furniture or anything, she still thought of the room as the nursery.

  When they first moved in, Nell had stored the few baby items they’d already acquired in this room. The tiny, yellow crocheted hat that her mother-in-law had given them after she and Josh told their families they were pregnant. The onesie that Josh’s former colleagues had given them as a going-away gift, with the words “Future U of C Law Grad” printed across the chest.

  And then, for months after their loss, the room had sat empty. Nell kept the door shut, unable to set foot inside without feeling the weight of what the room signified. When she first started fertility treatments, she’d admonished Josh not to use the room as a storage area.

  “I don’t want to have to move a bunch of crap out of there when we need the space for a baby,” Nell had said. It hadn’t occurred to her—not in any real way, anyway—that the treatments might not work. She wouldn’t let herself believe it.

  Slowly, though, Josh started to take over the room. First he put just a folding table and his laptop in a corner and used the space for grading papers and doing late-night reading. Then a bookshelf. One day he came home from work with an antique desk hanging out of the hatchback of their car, secured with bungee cords.

  “I picked it up at a garage sale,” he’d said. “Fifteen bucks. I couldn’t pass it up.”

  Nell had stayed quiet as he and a neighbor hoisted the desk up the stairs and set it up in the room. But after that, she’d been furious for days.

  Josh tried to reason with her. “This house is small to begin with and we only have two bedrooms,” he’d said. “It doesn’t make sense to have one of them sit unused.”

  Nell eventually stopped sulking about the desk, but she’d never forgotten the realization that dawned on her as she watched, from the hallway, as Josh filled the drawers with pens and legal pads and stacked the bookshelves with thick treatises. She knew for the first time, then, that Josh had moved on from their loss, leaving her behind, still in the midst of mourning.

  Now, Nell squared her shoulders and pushed open the door. She walked straight to the computer and pulled up her résumé on the screen. After a quick skim for any obvious errors, she hit print. It wasn’t until she’d grabbed the warm papers off the printer that she stopped for a moment to look around the room. Since the day he brought home the desk, Josh had also moved in a floor lamp and an old armchair. Every piece of furniture felt, to Nell, like further proof of his lack of faith in their ability to have a child together. And, worse, his acceptance of that fact.

  She didn’t have time to dwell on those feelings, though. Not today. She needed to find something to wear to her interview in just a few hours. A new suit would have been nice, but she winced when she remembered the large, looming balance on the credit card statements that kept coming in the mail—all the more reason she needed today’s interview to go well. She managed to suck in her stomach enough to zip up the same pair of dress pants she’d worn to defend her dissertation. The button, though, was another story. She looped an elastic hair tie through the buttonhole and around the button, employing a trick she’d learned in early pregnancy. She let the matching black blazer hang open over an oxford shirt, which she left untucked to cover the hair tie holding up her pants. It would have to do.

  At two o’clock sharp, Nell sat in the reception room of Peterson law offices on the Capitol Square. She could feel herself sweating beneath her blazer. Damn hormones, she thought. She tried not to be too obvious as she fanned herself with the Wall Street Journal.

  Fifteen minutes later, Don, a stout man in a gray suit, ushered Nell into his office. “I apologize for the delay,” he said. “I had a very talkative client on the phone. And my living clients have to take priority over my dead ones.”

  Nell’s confusion must have shown in her expression because Don laughed as he settled into his leather desk chair. “Please, sit down. I can see I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

  She handed him a copy of her résumé and sat down across from him.

  Don looked down at the paper. “I reviewed the copy you emailed over. So, tell me, Eleanor. How did you hear about this job?”

  “Please, call me Nell,” she said. No one called her Eleanor, not even her mother. “I read the listing in the paper and it seemed like a good fit for my background.”

  “You’re probably wondering why you’re sitting in a lawyer’s office to interview for a job with an arts foundation.” Don lea
ned back in his chair. “This firm represents the Estate of Elizabeth Barrett. Have you ever heard of her?”

  “Barrett . . . ,” Nell said. “I think I’ve seen that name around. Isn’t there a Barrett Gallery at the art museum on campus?”

  Don nodded. “That’s the same one. Betsy was a well-respected philanthropist in the community before she passed away recently from cancer. She was particularly known for her patronage of the arts.”

  “Ah,” Nell said. “That’s wonderful. With public resources constantly being cut, the arts are in dire need of private funding.”

  Don nodded. “That’s what Betsy was always saying. So, when she died, she left the bulk of her estate to a private trust I helped her set up—the Barrett Foundation for the Arts. And the foundation needs a director. We had someone lined up, but we just got word that she had a job offer from the Guggenheim Foundation. Can’t say I blame her for taking it, but it would have been nice if she’d given us a little more advance notice. So that’s why you’re here.”

  “Well, I’m intrigued so far,” Nell said. She tried to strike a balance between enthusiastic and desperate.

  “So, tell me, do you have any management experience with nonprofit organizations?” Don asked.

  Of course he has to start with my area of weakness, Nell thought. She took a deep breath and said, “About that. I don’t actually have any experience with nonprofit work, unless you count a few days spent swinging a hammer for Habitat for Humanity when I was in college.”

  Don’s bushy eyebrows scrunched together.

  “But, as you probably saw on my résumé, I have a PhD in art history, and I’m passionate about art—especially the visual arts,” she said. “I finished my dissertation just before my husband and I moved to Madison. Since then, I’ve been looking for the perfect position.” She hoped she sounded breezy rather than defensive.

  “Well, I’m not sure how you define ‘perfect,’” Don said. “But what I can tell you is that as director, you’d have a lot of independence. Within the parameters set by the trust, of course.”

  “Of course,” Nell said. Although she didn’t understand exactly what Don meant, she figured Josh could help her sort through any legal documents.

  “The salary is a livable one,” Don said. “Not luxurious by any means, but livable. Betsy made certain that was one of the terms of the trust—that the director be compensated fairly. She thought it was essential for attracting the right candidate.” He pushed a piece of paper toward her with columns of figures on it. “The director’s salary is listed on there at the top.”

  The first number Nell noticed was not the salary, though. Instead, she was distracted by the bolded total at the bottom of the page—the foundation’s net assets—and nearly fell out of her chair. There were six zeroes behind the number. She was so stunned by the idea of someone leaving millions to an art foundation that she almost forgot to look at the line that showed the director’s salary. When she located the figure, she saw that Don had been right—the salary was not a lavish one. The position certainly paid less than what she’d make in a tenure-track teaching position. It might be enough to chip away at her debt, though, if she could negotiate just a little bit more.

  “Would that number work for you?” Don asked.

  Nell paused, thinking of the credit card bills. “I could do it for another three thousand a year,” she said.

  Don blinked, as if he hadn’t been expecting her to push back before she’d even been offered the job. But then he smiled, and Nell could tell he respected her for it. “I think Betsy would have been amenable to that, given your qualifications,” he said. “As director of the foundation, you’ll report to me, as trustee, for accounting and tax purposes. But I don’t plan to be involved in the day-to-day happenings. I don’t know the first thing about art, other than what I managed to absorb from Betsy.”

  A dozen questions buzzed in Nell’s brain. “Would you mind explaining to me exactly what the foundation is supposed to do?”

  “Certainly,” he said. “Betsy’s vision was that her home, which she left to the foundation, would serve as an artists’ colony, taking in a handful of artists at a time for half-year residencies. The hope was that by providing a grant from the foundation for living expenses, plus a bedroom and studio space at the mansion, the artists would be freed up to focus on their work.”

  “That’s very generous,” Nell said. “I wish I could have met her.”

  Don nodded. “She really was an extraordinary woman. She wasn’t one of those people who just wrote checks and sat on boards. Though she certainly did plenty of that. She also got to know the art community here in Madison and, to a certain extent, around the country. One of the things she often talked about was how nearly all the artists she knew spent most of their time doing something else that wasn’t art—working day jobs in order to eat and support their families. Creative work was something that happened in the margins of their lives. Betsy wanted to bring it to the center, even if just for a short period of time, through the residency program.”

  Nell nodded. She didn’t know many artists personally, which was rather strange, now that she thought about it, given the fact that she’d dedicated six years of her life to the intensive study of art—ten, when you factored in undergrad.

  “How many artists will there be?” she asked.

  “Three,” Don said. “This year’s class has already been chosen. Betsy wanted to be sure she was involved in that process. It was one of the last things she did before she died. I know I have their names written down somewhere. I remember one of them is a student from the university who came highly recommended by the art faculty. Betsy had close ties there and wanted to keep up that relationship through this program.” He fumbled through some papers on his desk. “I’ll have to get back to you with the artists’ names. That is, if you decide to accept the position.”

  Nell blinked. “Are you offering it to me?”

  Don crossed his arms in front of his chest, pushing his striped tie to one side. “You seem like you’re well qualified. Probably overqualified, to be honest. And with our previous director gone and the candidates already planning to start soon, we’re in a bit of a lurch. So, yes, I’m offering you the position.”

  A rush of surprise and excitement rose up in Nell’s chest. She had been expecting to go through a call-back interview, at least, maybe some reference checks.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m thrilled. I’ll still need to discuss the details with my husband, though, before I can give you a definite answer.”

  Talking it over with Josh wasn’t the real reason she wanted to wait to give her answer. There was no question in Nell’s mind that Josh would be happy to hear she’d be making more than minimum wage. And with a job in her field, no less—at least sort of. But running an artist-in-residence program wasn’t exactly what Nell had envisioned when she went to grad school. In some ways, it sounded more interesting than teaching undergrad classes and grading countless papers. But the details of the position sounded largely unknown, and that scared her a little.

  “Certainly.” Don gave her a knowing smile. “My wife would kill me if I made such a big decision without consulting her.”

  “It shouldn’t take long for me to get back to you,” Nell said.

  Don turned his chair slightly, glancing at his computer. “Take your time,” he said. But his attention had already shifted to something on the screen. “You know where to find me.”

  Nell waited until she got home to call Josh. With the snow-covered streets and icy intersections, she didn’t trust herself to talk and drive. Even though Chicago got its fair share of snowstorms, Nell had usually been able to avoid driving during them by taking public transport. Her winter driving skills were rusty.

  She dialed Josh at work as she unlocked the side door of their house. Josh finally picked up on the fifth ring.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he said. “Sorry, I was just getting off the phone with the dean. Some big-sho
t Yale law professor is coming here the first week of the semester and we all have to volunteer to show him around for part of his stay.”

  “I got the job,” Nell said, pushing the door open with her hip.

  “Congratulations. Wow, that was quick.”

  “I know, I can’t believe it.” Nell stepped out of her heels and took off her coat.

  “I can,” Josh said. “You’re probably overqualified.”

  “That’s what Don said—he’s the lawyer who interviewed me. The trustee of the foundation. I might need you to give me some basics on trust law. Turns out this whole thing was set up by a rich lady who died recently and left all of her money to a residency program for artists.”

  “So are you going to take it?” Josh asked.

  “You know what?” Nell tossed her coat on the bench in the hallway. “Yes. I wasn’t sure until just now. I’m a little afraid of jumping into a job I don’t know very much about, but I think it will be a good challenge for me to do something different.”

  She didn’t mention that her other fear—the fear of Josh finding out about the debt before she had a chance to pay it down—outweighed any lingering doubts she had about the directorship.

  “Great,” Josh said. “Listen, I’ve got to go, but I’ll pick up a bottle of Champagne on the way home. Tonight, we’re celebrating.”

  If Nell had known her first day of work would be the very next day, she probably would have stopped after one glass of Champagne instead of three. She slept in after Josh got up for work, waking past nine when her phone rang.

  “Hello?” she said, sitting up in bed.

  “Hello, Eleanor?”

  “Don?” Her voice came out gravelly. She covered the phone with her comforter and cleared her throat. When she raised the phone to her ear again, she said, “What a coincidence. I was just going to call you.”

  “I hope it was to accept the job,” he said. “Because I could use your help.”