The House Girl by Tara Conklin

Author:Tara Conklin [Conklin, Tara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical, Adult, Mystery, Art, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780062207517
Amazon: B0089LODXW
Barnesnoble: B0089LODXW
Goodreads: 15781725
Publisher: William Morrow
Published: 2013-02-12T06:00:00+00:00

Lina

MONDAY

The run-in with Garrison earlier that day had left Lina feeling scoured clean, lighter, and somehow more self-assured. This, Lina thought, was what she needed, a blanket thrown off, a curtain lifted. Something truthful and necessary had happened that gave her this sense of simple resolve, clarified purpose, as she walked the Clifton halls, rode the Clifton elevators, made bland and proper chitchat with Meredith at the shared copy machine, told Sherri to book a hotel for her Richmond trip. The woman who performed these tasks seemed a simplified version of the old Lina. Lina improved, Lina redacted.

And it was this Lina who looked forward to tonight, the opening of Oscar’s show, Pictures of Grace. Her fears and suspicions had receded, and she was left with a straightforward wish to see the pictures and be done with them. Oscar’s lie about Marie, those random, contextless notes written by her mother, had muddled her thinking, confused and upset her. Oscar’s pictures of Grace were nothing more than pigment, canvas, wood. That was all. No magic, no mystery. Her father was an artist, and he drew inspiration from his life, as all artists did. I want to show you some things about your mother, Oscar had said that first night in the studio, and now Lina felt ready to look, with calm reason, with dignified reserve. The visceral reaction she had experienced at home, when she saw the Enough portrait and those first raw images of Grace, would not happen again. Of this, Lina felt sure.

Outside Natalie’s gallery, people crowded the sidewalk and leaned against the front windows. They held small paper plates loaded with cheese cubes and little salamis, glasses of wine, cigarettes. Festivities had been going for an hour already and the mood was celebratory, voices loud and off-key. Lina edged through the door, holding her bag sideways, and wove her way through the bodies. Everyone towered tall, outfitted in high heels and attitude.

The first picture Lina saw stopped her cold; she felt a flip in her belly, a stumble in her gait, a faltering of her new resolve. It was not a picture Oscar had shown her. It was Grace, naked from the waist up. Her breasts were beautiful, the nipples dark, hair falling to her shoulders, her mouth open. Lina looked away.

Her eyes fell next on a triptych, and in each panel Grace seemed a different woman. From this painting, Lina did not turn away. In the left-hand panel, Grace stared straight out, realistically rendered in a simple blue dress, the skirt just grazing her knees, her face flat and composed, hands hanging loose at her sides. The right panel portrayed the same woman, but her mouth was opened wide, wider than a mouth should open, her eyes looming large and wild as though she sought to devour everything before her. In the large central panel, Grace appeared in profile, and the side view filled the frame, just half a nose, a sliver of lip curled cruelly, one black eye staring out, trapped and enraged.

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