Memento Park by Mark Sarvas

Author:Mark Sarvas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

AND THEN, ALL AT ONCE, with almost obscene ease, Budapest Street Scene was mine. Well, nominally mine. Possessives, I have learned, cause us no end of trouble. Tracy was mine, I was hers. My lawyer. My faith. My father. In spite of which, all these chasms remain.

Still, for the moment, at least, it appeared that my ship had arrived. I am aware of how unlikely that sounds, absent years of motions and appeals and legal maneuvering, the painting moldering in a vault deep in the bowels of the National Gallery. Instead, the panel had reviewed the evidence, found it convincing, and, in the face of no counterclaims, ordered the immediate transfer of Budapest Street Scene to me. A day after Tracy left for a ten-day location shoot in Bali, Rachel e-mailed me the panel’s decision. I could not make any sense of the welter of legal counterpoint that passes for English. The point, she exclaimed over a celebratory drink later that evening, was that the painting was on its way to Los Angeles, would be here within the week, and was mine to do with as I pleased. Given its value, she added, the firm would be happy to store it in their vault until I had made any decisions regarding its disposition.

“There’s still a lot of paperwork and the tax implications are a whole other matter but Matt … we did it. It’s yours.”

We did it.

I did nothing, of course, and I knew it. You surely knew it as well, Rachel. I was a beneficiary of circumstance and connections. Nothing more. You were so pleased that night in the bar, champagne between us, proud of your hard work. I listened to you, tried hard to share your enthusiasm, but couldn’t escape a feeling of incompleteness. There were still too many questions, old ones and new ones. How could I, who knew so little about my father, his father, their lost worlds, take meaningful ownership of this object? Something tugged at me as we sat there. Perhaps I understood that our time together was going to come to an end. All of the above, no doubt. And so I nursed my champagne, lost in the trail of disappearing bubbles.

We did not kiss good night that evening, though I believe we both wanted to. Go home, you smiled. Sleep it off.

* * *

THE NEXT DAY, I woke with the dawn and I tried to call my father to tell him the news. He did not answer, which was not unusual. I left a message asking him to call me back. Then I tried my mother, but her answering machine reminded me she was away on her Pyrénées retreat, disconnected from all communication for the rest of the month. Tracy was several time zones away, so I texted her the news. I then sat back, at a loss for what to do with myself. I had worked steadily since coming to L.A., had never not had a job or not known where my next job was coming from.

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