Chapter3 - 4

“I’ll think about it.”

Reka turned to go, wrinkled hand stealing self-consciously to the nape of her neck. She felt oddly—well, not naked. Seen.

“Reka.”

Grace waited until Reka turned back. Standing there in her paisley skirt, swirling the turpentine in its can, her gaze thoughtful. “Be careful.”

“Why?”

“Whatever it is that’s eating you up... It’ll poison whatever time you’ve got left, if you aren’t careful.”

She took up the brush, reached for the primer. “Let it go.”

It was Fliss—annoying, perky, pink-cheeked Fliss—who gave Reka the idea.

“Have you been watching the Christmas decorations go up around the square?”

she chattered in the hallway when December came rolling around. Reka had come down for her mail, glower fixed firmly in place so Pete at the hallway table knew better than to say Good afternoon . But Fliss, wheeling the baby carriage through the front door, was impervious to glowers. “Angela just loves the Father Christmas in the drugstore window—Santa Claus,”

Fliss corrected herself. “What are you doing for Christmas hols?”

“I hate Christmas,”

Reka stated. In Berlin, she and Otto had stayed in bed all day drinking pálinka and eating stollen , getting powdered sugar on the sheets and exchanging presents at midnight, utterly ignoring the world outside. She’d at least kept up with the last part of the tradition.

“Why don’t you come to Christmas Eve church service with us?”

Fliss reached down to rearrange the fluffy pink blankets around her daughter. “The candles at Trinity Presbyterian are always so pretty. Grace and Claire and Pete and Lina are coming—”

I’d rather be drowned in pálinka, Reka nearly said, but the idea hit then like a bolt. Fliss’s voice, not today but weeks ago, addressing Mrs.Sutherland when the woman escorted Reka home in a cloud of Shalimar: Haven’t I seen you and your son at Trinity Presbyterian on Sundays?

The Sutherlands. A churchgoing family; all politicians were. Nothing like a little public piety in this land of God, country, and McCarthy. And even if most politicians were too busy sleeping off their Saturday martinis to make every Sunday service, all politicians would be front and center in that pew on Christmas Eve. A night when all servants were off, when all families went to church, when almost every house from Foggy Bottom to Georgetown would be empty.

Otto considered this train of thought a very bad idea. Reka , he said sternly as soon as she made it back to her room on the second floor, having left Fliss midsentence in the front hall. Reka, don’t.

“Did I ever pay attention when you told me don’t in real life?”

she scolded aloud, tossing her mail aside. Nothing but advertising circulars, anyway.

Or not... A letter with a New York postmark. Reka ripped it open, ignoring Otto, who was now sputtering in Hungarian, and saw a familiar decisive scrawl on Betty Parsons Gallery stationery. Jackson’s fifth show with me , Betty wrote. Better get a look before it closes on the 15th!

“I can’t go to Jackson’s show, Otto,”

Reka said, addressing the worn armchair in the corner as if her husband were actually sitting in it, glaring at her. “I can’t afford it. I can’t afford one ticket to New York, one admittance fee to the gallery, one lousy ten-cent beer at the Cedar. That’s what life is now, Otto. Every last small pleasure being stripped away one by one.”

No excuse to do what you’re planning , he said inexorably. Reka put down Betty’s card, thinking oddly of a voice that wasn’t Otto’s. Grace March’s voice, Grace’s golden-brown eyes. Let it go, whatever it is that’s eating you up.

“It is eating me up, Otto,”

Reka whispered, feeling the ache deep in her throat, her swollen feet, her arthritic hands. It felt like her entire body, every joint and fold of it, was holding back tears. “I know it is. But I need to try—one more time. After that?”

She blinked, and this time she almost could see him there in that armchair, black-haired and vigorous, young and still unembittered. “After that,”

Reka said slowly, “if I fail, I let it go.”

She’d made promises like that before. Broken them. But she thought she meant it this time.

One more disappointment was all this bitter old woman had left in her.

Christmas Eve, a faint lace of snow frosting the sidewalks. Reka stood in her old coat, watching the postcard-perfect families parade inside Trinity Presbyterian for the evening service. Little girls in velvet holiday frocks, fathers with a sprig of holly in their buttonholes, mothers in Christmas pearls... Reka didn’t dare get too close, but she was positive she saw the Sutherland men in a swirl of flunkies and expensive overcoats. The senator would have passed out Christmas bonuses and cigars; his son would have finished his holiday brandies with all the important Capitol Hill people, both of them making plans for the new year when the son would run for his first term in office. Prayers and politics, the one flowing into the other. It was the District way.

Stille nacht, heilige Nacht ... Humming the carol as the first strains of music wafted out from the church, Reka crammed her green hat down over her tightly permed curls (she hadn’t had the energy to talk the beautician into any kind of bob) and set off for Georgetown, her biggest handbag swinging over one arm. Even if your goal was a spot of burglary rather than a church pew, one should look appropriately festive on Christmas Eve.

You could go to jail, Reka , Otto warned, but it was a feeble thrust. He’d already said everything there was to say on the subject; Reka was going anyway. Could she walk into the Sutherland house on Christmas Eve, the holiest day of the year, and walk out again with her Klimt sketches? Probably not. She had no guarantee she could get in; she had no guarantee she would find the sketches hanging on a wall or if they’d long since been sold. She only knew she had to try one last time, that it was running through her like a madness. One last try—and this time she wouldn’t try begging for what was hers.

She’d just try to fucking take it.

So this time Reka didn’t come to the front door but headed to the back where the staff came and went. Locked, but she put it at a coin toss there was a key under a mat or a flowerpot nearby... Still, she knocked first with a story prepared about collecting for a Christmas charity if the Sutherlands (bastards) really had made that poor maid work on Christmas Eve.

No answer, no sound from the darkened house. Reka exhaled and began searching under the mat, along the sill, among the flowerpots for a key when she heard footsteps inside. Her heart barely had time to sink when the door opened.

But it wasn’t the maid.

“Can I help you?”

slurred the young Mrs.Sutherland.

Reka forgot her story about the Christmas charity and stared. Normally she would wonder why an ambitious political hopeful would leave his wife home for the Christmas Eve service, when you wanted future voters to see you looking like a devout family man. But Reka wasn’t wondering at all. No woman with a swollen cheekbone, a cut lip, and a black eye like this could show her face in church, probably not until after New Year’s.

“I know you,”

the senator’s daughter-in-law said, squinting. She wore an old cardigan over a silky lilac negligee, woolly socks showing incongruously below, black hair hanging lank in her face. “Don’t I know you?”

Reka stiffened. She’d counted on the maid not recognizing her—not with her smart hat and fox-trimmed coat, unlike the snarling woman in the old sweater who’d come to the front door weeks ago. But Mrs.Sutherland had ridden in a taxi with her, talked with her... “Sorry to bother you on Christmas, ma’am,”

she began, doing her best to tamp down her German accent, edging away. This had all gone wrong; her last try was done. But Mrs.Sutherland’s next words froze her.

“You’re the one who said my father-in-law stole from you.”

Reka froze. Half turned away, then turned back. “He did,”

Reka heard herself answering, looking dry-mouthed into those bruised, puffy eyes.

“Sounds like him.”

Mrs.Sutherland turned back into the house. “Want a drink?”

However Reka imagined the night going, she had not imagined this. But she found herself following the younger woman into the empty, echoing house. Not a servant here; all the lamps turned off; a Christmas tree dark and silent in a huge drawing room as Reka followed the other woman’s unsteady footsteps past the archway. Mrs. Sutherland reached for a crystal decanter on a side table and sloshed out a generous measure of whatever was inside. “Whiskey suit you?”

she asked, pushing the glass over. That British accent was a good deal less crisp, with her perfect mouth so swelled up on one side. “Or maybe it’s bourbon, I don’t know. What’s the difference, anyway?”

Who could hit a face like that? Reka couldn’t help but think. She’d have bristled to see any woman so battered, no matter what she looked like—but the artist in her felt an additional pang to see anything beautiful damaged. It would be like taking boxing gloves to the Mona Lisa .

She expected Mrs.Sutherland to slosh out a measure of whiskey for herself—judging from the slurring, it wouldn’t be her first—but the woman stoppered the decanter without pouring more. “I don’t drink,”

she said, seeing Reka’s glance. “I hate it. All those cocktail parties we have to go to, I end up pouring my martini into the nearest plant. I’ve killed potted palms all over the District.”

She looked up, and Reka revised her opinion that the slur came from drink. Her dark eyes were all pupil, dilated black.

“What did they give you?”

Reka heard herself ask. “A few slaps, or more than a few, then call the doctor for a little pick-me-up?”

“Oh, no one has to call the doctor for chemical assistance around here.”

Mrs.Sutherland pushed a lock of hair behind her ears—she wore huge amethyst earrings like chunks of purple glass. “We have tablets on hand for these occasions. My little boy thinks I fell down the stairs this afternoon. Mummy’s so clumsy. It’s part of the family lore by now.”

“I’m sorry.”

Reka had no idea what else to say.

Mrs.Sutherland pushed a floppy cardigan sleeve up her slender arm. “I asked the senator about you, you know. Or not you , but a woman with a German accent, saying something about theft.”

“Is that why he did this?”

Reka’s hand fell away from the whiskey glass before she’d even touched it. If she was to blame for this...

“Oh, no. My father-in-law wouldn’t hit me. He’s a thief, but he’s a gentleman. He just told his son, You keep your wife in hand, she’s getting mouthy , and Barrett did it for him. That wasn’t this, though—”

She made an unsteady gesture at the black eye, the split lip. “Normally Barrett’s very good at hitting me where people won’t see the bruises. No, that time it was a cracked rib. Right before Thanksgiving. Made it easier not to eat too much. He weighs me every week, see, so I always get tense around holidays. All that pie sitting around...”

Reka’s spine did its best to shiver its way right out of her skin. She’d never given the younger Sutherland much thought—just a junior version of the man she really hated. “Leave him,”

she heard herself saying harshly. “Just leave. Surely—”