Читать книгу Mother Mother - Jessica O'Dwyer - Страница 14

SEVEN

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

APRIL 2004—SIXTEEN MONTHS AFTER THE SHUTDOWN

Only three people sat around the conference table for the weekly ideas meeting: Julie, with her pen and yellow legal tablet; Dr. Conrad, sheathed with her odor of cigarette smoke; and Eames. Doni brought in the tray of coffee and pastries that was delivered every Monday from the French patisserie around the corner and set it on one end of the table. The curtains on the large window were opened to the gray morning light, and in the sculpture garden, three men from the maintenance crew were breaking down tables and stacking chairs from the wedding the night before.

“Did you bring the magazine?” Dr. Conrad asked Doni as her assistant set a cup and saucer in front of the director, poured her coffee, and stirred in half-and-half and two sugars.

Doni nodded, laying out a linen napkin before holding up the latest issue of ArtNews. The cover featured a photo of the Bilbray Institute in La Jolla, an oceanfront gallery about the size of the Clay, located smack in the middle of San Diego’s exploding biotech corridor.

Dr. Conrad snatched the magazine from Doni and threw it down in front of Julie and Eames. “San Diego’s a cultural backwater. Explain to me how the Bilbray has expanded.”

Julie and Eames squirmed uneasily. Newcomers to California often underestimated the cultural landscape of San Diego, overlooking its vibrancy. They saw beach, they saw palm trees, and could only conclude backwater.

Julie reached for the magazine and flipped through the pages. It was a twelve-page spread in the middle of the book, with before-and-after construction photos, aerial shots, and details from the galleries: customized niches for sculptures and yards and yards of wall space for monumental paintings. An entire page was dedicated to a Q and A with the Bilbray director.

The Clay’s expansion had been featured in a similar spread several years earlier, and the magazine ran an in-depth profile of Dr. Conrad when she was named director. Julie didn’t point out any of that as she passed the magazine to Eames.

“I was hired to make rain,” Dr. Conrad said. “That’s who I am. The president’s going to read this”—she grabbed the magazine back from Eames and shook it again—“and he’s going to ask me what we’re doing to keep up.”

The low buzz from the recessed lighting was the only sound. Doni picked up the coffee pot to top off Dr. Conrad’s cup, but the director hadn’t yet taken a sip. Nobody had. Doni set down the pot and rearranged the cream and sugar on the tray. The room was getting brighter, the sun peeking out from a pile of cushioned clouds and sending a ray over the Calder and into the conference room.

“The endowment’s getting a good return,” Eames said. The endowment was the stockpile of cash that generated interest dollars to pay for daily operations. Dr. Conrad’s eyes bulged behind her red eyeglass frames. “That’s your trust fund mentality talking. Think again, Eames.”

Eames closed the magazine. “Are we brainstorming ways to raise money?” Julie asked.

“We’re always brainstorming ways to raise money,” Dr. Conrad said.

Julie muttered something and Dr. Conrad leaned toward her. “Excuse me? I couldn’t hear what you said.”

“I said, I thought we brainstormed ways to show good art.”

Dr. Conrad sat back with deliberation, sipped from her coffee cup, sputtered and set it down. “This is cold. Take it away and get me a fresh cup.”

Doni appeared at the director’s elbow and whisked away the offending cup and saucer. Julie doodled hatch marks on her legal tablet, creating an abstract design that grew into the shape of the Clay.

Doni returned with a steaming cup of coffee, set it before Dr. Conrad, and stirred in cream and sugar. Eames sat with his chin in his hand. “The Bilbray had oodles of land to expand into,” he said. “We’ve maxed out our footprint.”

Julie sketched the façade of the building, the low, elegant, glass box structure amid tall condo towers. Eames was right. They’d built out to every available inch. Unless they bulldozed the sculpture garden, the Clay had nowhere to go.

“If we want more space, we’ll have to move,” Julie said. “South of Market. It’s the hip new place.”

“The new ballpark is there,” Eames said.

“Aren’t we obligated to this site?” Dr. Conrad asked.

“The terms of the gift were about keeping the collection intact,” Julie said. “The terms don’t specify where.”

Dr. Conrad pulled the tray of pastries toward her and broke off a piece of croissant. She dipped it in her coffee and chewed silently. “And this is paid for how? To circle back to our original question.”

Eames pulled on his bottom lip. “If we moved, we could lease our space to another non-profit.”

Dr. Conrad groaned, breaking off another piece of croissant. Most non-profits were as cash-poor as the Clay. Julie drew the museum from another perspective and sketched in the Calder. She remembered the day the crane rolled in to install it. Television crews everywhere and Talbot all over the evening news. They’d sacrificed so much to get through the expansion, and the Clay’s location was prime. Julie hated to throw that away. She moved her pen and drew a shelf-like structure above the museum, and over that, layered horizontal stacks. There was more than one way to expand.

“What about up?” Julie pointed her pen toward the ceiling. “Vertical.”

“The Landmarks Commission will never allow it,” Eames said. “It destroys the building’s integrity. You know that.”

“What if we sell our air rights? A developer buys the rights and builds a condo tower on top of us.”

Eames raised his eyebrows, nodding slowly. Doni hovered with a tea towel behind him, also nodding. Dr. Conrad picked up her coffee cup, sipped, and set it down carefully into the saucer, wiping off a red lipstick print with her napkin. “Go on.”

“We expand up into the lower floors and build an escalator to connect the two spaces. The condo tenants upstairs pay our mortgage.”

Dr. Conrad pushed her cup and saucer away and folded her napkin onto the table. She turned Julie’s yellow legal tablet toward herself and studied it for a moment. “May I take this?”

Julie tore the sheet from her tablet and handed it to the director. And with that brief and simple exchange of paper, selling the air rights became Dr. Conrad’s idea.

*

GUATE PARENTS

Call, write letters to your Senator. Harass, harass, harass.

Anyone get PINK this week? Where are we?

Amber waiting on Ella asked me to tell everyone she lost her referral, is starting adoption in Uganda. Blessings to all.

Nobody understood the unique agony of waiting for a child except other parents who were waiting. They banded together on Guate Parents and updated one another obsessively.

The old days of timelines that stretched to ten months seemed ludicrous, enviable. Their infants developed into toddlers, their toddlers to little boys and girls. They became experts at finding cheap flights and prided themselves on quoting inter-country adoption law chapter and verse. When they returned to Guatemala to visit, they buttered up nannies and foster mothers with gifts of blue jeans and Nikes and prayed their kids recognized them.

When Julie overheard Doni talking about her to a cluster of artists at an opening, saying Julie should give up, it was hopeless, Julie didn’t acknowledge Doni for two weeks. Walked right by her into Dr. Conrad’s office or at the sink in the restroom without saying hello.

When Claire called and said, “Gunther’s walking, he’s babbling, and by the way, when are you getting that kid?” Julie didn’t return her sister’s calls or emails for a month. It was too painful. As much as Julie wanted to be a good sister and even better auntie, she couldn’t. Claire doted on Gunther, lived for that boy, as she should, just as Julie lived for Juan. Julie didn’t want to drag her sister down. And with her long hours at the Clay, Julie had no energy to drive to Fresno to visit. She felt terrible that Gunther was two and she’d only seen him once, on his first birthday.

If only Juan weren’t so far away. If only the adoption would get finished. No adoptions were getting finished. Every case was stalled. No explanation was given by the Guatemalan government. The process simply stopped. The parents whose children’s cases remained in the pipeline dubbed themselves “The 600.” Even the U.S. Embassy couldn’t give the group an exact number of how many cases were stalled. The number six hundred covered all possibilities. Only one impulse drove them: to get their children out.

Over the next year, Julie and Mark flew to Guatemala three times, suitcases stuffed with gifts for Berta and clothes for Juan in bigger sizes. They spent a long weekend over Easter, Juan’s August second birthday week, and the week between Christmas and New Year’s, when the Clay’s offices and Mark’s lab were shuttered. Their private joke was they’d accumulated premier status on United and seen nothing except the inside of the airport and the hotel. Only from watching the news were they aware that narcos controlled the country and gangs infested Guatemala City, three hundred bus drivers were assassinated every year for failure to pay kickbacks, and ninety-nine percent of crimes went unprosecuted.

Juan often arrived with a minor ailment: a cough or slight fever, a mild case of pink eye. Nothing that two Tylenol and a tube of ointment couldn’t clear. Mark attributed the bugs to hogar living, reassuring Julie their son would be fine once they got him home.

Their visits followed a pattern. Breakfast in the Marriott restaurant with Juan and any other American families in residence. Juan’s morning nap, while Mark answered emails and Julie socialized with the other mothers, catching up on the latest shutdown updates. Who was in, who was out, did anyone get pink? Lunch, delivered to the hotel by Domino’s or Little Caesar’s, and Juan’s afternoon nap. Dinner, again, in the Marriott restaurant. The best was when Emily and Jake were there with Gabriela, or Rachel and Matthew with Carmen, or Kayla with Mia or Grace with Argelia. The presence of so many other Guate Parents meant no one was getting out. At least Julie wasn’t falling behind.

She was tempted to move to Guatemala permanently—several women in the hotel had stayed for months and told her of others who rented apartments in the small city of Antigua—but they couldn’t afford that. Although life with Dr. Conrad as boss became more challenging by the day, she needed to keep her job to pay for Juan’s hogar care, vaccinations, medical check-ups, plus airplane flights, hotel, and meals.

Julie didn’t care how much it cost. To watch Juan toddle on stiff legs, reach for her nose, splash in the baby pool, she’d spend their last dollar. He liked polenta and papaya, mashed up champurrada cookies served at the hotel’s Sunday buffet, and watching Plaza Sésamo. The hotel’s only acknowledgement of the Christmas season was a wooden Nativity scene by the concierge desk in the lobby. Juan liked a Wise Man and the Baby Jesus, and they took pictures of him playing with both.