Geneva/Violet

A short story set at the Antiques Roadshow.

Image by Werner Weisser from Pixabay

The line for appraising paintings snakes around a corner and seems to move at half the speed of the other ones. In front of me, a woman wearing too much turquoise jewelry and a denim jacket listens intently to an old lady in mauve velour as she explains the symbolism in the piece of folk art she’s carrying.

I’m grateful for Turquoise Jewelry. If not for her, I’d be the one nodding along to the old bat’s lecture about vernacular this and non-academic that. Her painting looks like a kindergartner’s homework assignment: a yellow sun, a big-headed man with a goofy smile, some sort of green-backed duck. All it’s missing is the square house with a curlicue of smoke twisting out of a rectangular chimney.

“Luke!” My boyfriend, Kai, calls to me as he crosses the convention center’s gray carpet and slings an arm around my waist.

“You’re done already?” I ask, glancing at the figurine he’s clutching in his other hand.

“Yeah. Mass-produced in the fifties for the Hawaiian tourist market,” he says.

“So your grandma lied to you.”

“It should have tipped me off when she said it was a gift from King Kalakaua himself,” he says, his smile shimmering in the fluorescent light.

“I guess that means you didn’t get any camera time either,” I say. I brush a strand of black hair out of his eyes.

“I’ll just go on with you,” he says. “They’re bound to put yours on TV.”

“Ugh, no,” I say. “This line is taking way too long. I think we should just go.”

“We can’t,” Kai says. “We have to find out what Geneva is worth. That’s the whole reason we came.”

We both look down at the painting I’m holding. A young woman stares back at us, her auburn hair clashing with the lilac of her dress. She wears a prim lace collar and an amber heart on a silver chain. Pink-and-white lichens bloom on the backs of her hands and forearms; Kai says it's psoriasis. She has deep green eyes, and the artist managed to capture their subtle glow. There’s a window behind her, and on the other side of it, a black horse in harness. On the other side of her is a fern that fades into the darkness.

It’s the slight upturn of the corners of her mouth that gets me, though. She smirks at the viewer like she knows a secret. It’s why she caught my eye one afternoon when I was browsing at a thrift store, killing time in between buses. I paid five dollars for her and when I brought her home, Kai said she needed a name. We had no idea who she was, and the artist’s signature, which we couldn’t decipher, offered no clues.

“You know what,” Kai said after we’d decided where the painting should hang, “I think she looks like a Geneva. Geneva the Diva.”

Finally, the line inches toward the appraisers’ table. I strain to hear what they have to say about the old lady’s finger painting, but the ambient noise swallows up second-hand conversation. When she turns, her face is in ruins, and I’m dying to know what the appraiser said to make it fall.

I wait behind Turquoise Jewelry, who nods and walks away with a twenty-dollar estimate. A woman in a red blazer with thick, ready-for-TV foundation smiles at me as I hand Geneva over to her.

Her jaw drops.

“Come over here,” she says, pulling us out of line and instructing us to stand by the table. “Wait here a minute.”

She disappears and returns minutes later with a bespectacled man wearing a headset mic and carrying a clipboard.

“Which of you is going on?” he asks in a nasal voice.

“Both of us,” Kai says.

“Fine,” he says, handing us clip-on mics. He leads us to an area with a dark blue velvet backdrop, a table with an easel, a photo umbrella and a camera. The appraiser sets Geneva on the easel.

“Nervous?” she asks in a whisper. We shake our heads as the clipboard guy stands next to the cameraman and counts down to one, then points his finger at the appraiser.

“Gentlemen, what can you tell us about this painting you’ve brought here today?”

I glance at Kai, who nods. My voice shakes slightly as I say, “I found her in a thrift store. I just loved the look on her face. It’s like she’s saying, ‘I know something you don’t.’”

“We call her Geneva,” Kai says.

“I see,” the appraiser says. “And how much did you pay for Geneva?”

“Five dollars,” I say. I’m sweating. Kai reaches behind my back and gives my hand a squeeze.

“Well, I have to tell you, this is an incredible find. It was painted by Augusta Merz in 1899. Now, as a married woman in the 19th century, Augusta’s ability to choose her subjects was limited. She mostly painted still lives and portraits of people she knew, but in the early spring of 1899, her husband went out of town on business, and Augusta left her children with a hired girl. She took a train to Red Wing, Minnesota, where she hiked Barn Bluff and painted the view of the river and the town below. That painting hangs in the Smithsonian today.”

She pauses while the camera zooms in on our reactions.

“Now, the hired girl who looked after Augusta’s children was more than just a babysitter. She was Augusta’s coconspirator. Her name was Violet Jensen, and she’s the woman you see in this painting.”

I glance at Kai, and his eyebrows jump.

“As you can see here,” the appraiser says, pointing at the canvas with a baton-type thing, “Violet had a pretty severe case of psoriasis. Augusta kept diaries, which are also at the Smithsonian, and wrote often about Violet’s psoriasis and the various remedies she tried for them. What’s unique about Augusta’s style is that she did not gloss over flaws. A portrait of her mother-in-law clearly shows drool on the woman’s chin. In her painting from the summit of Barn Bluff, you can see that some of the houses were in disrepair. Many painters chose to flatter their subjects, but Augusta Merz had an unflinching eye.”

“What about her dress?” I ask. “With her hair, she might have looked better in blue or green.”

The appraiser laughs, and in the light, I can see that her teeth are capped. “There is a bit of a clash, isn’t there? As a working-class girl, she probably only had one nice dress, and purple dye was quite expensive at that time, so she’d have felt a great deal of pride wearing it, even if it didn’t complement her complexion. Now, do you have any idea what this painting might be worth?”

“More than five bucks, we hope,” Kai said.

“Recently, another one of Augusta Merz’s portraits was sold at auction for thirty thousand dollars. Because this is a portrait of Violet, and what we know about her from Augusta’s diaries, and the role she played in helping Augusta create her most famous painting, I would estimate that this would go for forty-five or fifty thousand.”

“Fifty thousand?” I say. My spine tingles as Kai squeezes my hand again.

“Not bad for a thrift store find!” The appraiser says. “Now, for insurance value, I’d go as high as $75,000.”

“That’s amazing,” Kai says.

The appraiser turns to the clipboard guy, who says, “I think we got it.”

“Thanks, guys,” she says, turning to us as the light inside the umbrella switches off. “Take my card. That’s an unbelievable find, and if you decide to sell it, give me a call.”

The clipboard guy takes our mics and ushers us away from the backdrop.

After the taping, we cross the parking lot in stunned silence. Kai pops the trunk of his electric blue Camaro and we gently nestle Geneva/Violet into a pile of old quilts. We drive across town to our Art Deco apartment in Los Feliz and return Geneva/Violet to her place above the couch.

“What should we do with her?” I ask. “Should we sell her?”

“No way,” Kai says. “She’s too cool to sell. We own a piece of art history.”

“But fifty thousand dollars…what about that property you’re saving up for in Hilo? That’s almost enough for the down payment.”

Kai shakes his head. “It wouldn’t be right,” he says. “You bought it.”

“It’s ours,” I say, suddenly wishing I hadn’t mentioned Hilo.

“You have an eye, you know. Maybe you can find us another one,” Kai changes the subject.

“I don’t have an eye,” I say. “I liked the look on her face. It was just luck. Like lottery tickets.”

“Maybe we should start buying lottery tickets,” he says, grinning.

That night, I visit the Smithsonian’s website and find an image of Augusta Merz’s Barn Bluff painting. It’s gloomy with thick clouds, a slate-gray river, and tan, dormant grass. A white riverboat with a paddlewheel sits on the river. The website’s text points out the fine details in the painting, like the tiny lintels over the hotel’s windows and the broken wagon wheel in front of one of the small houses in the valley. Distant bluffs are black. According to the website, their names are Sugar Loaf and Sorin’s Bluff.

“That almost reminds me of Diamondhead,” Kai says to me as he looks over my shoulder. “Only it looks a hell of a lot colder.”

On the website’s gift shop, I find Augusta Merz’s diaries, which someone has turned into a book. I add it to my cart.

Two days later, I come home from work and make calls to insurance companies until one agrees to insure the painting for eighty thousand dollars. A day after that, the book I ordered from the Smithsonian arrives.

“Get this,” I tell Kai, “While Augusta Merz was in Red Wing painting the view from Barn Bluff, she met a man and carried on a torrid affair with him. He commissioned a portrait. Look.”

I show him the photo of a painting of a man leaning against a leafless tree, looking out a silvery stretch of river.

“You are obsessed with that painter,” Kai says.

“I am not,” I say. “I’m just taking an interest. Besides, he was hot, wasn’t he?”

I make him look at the portrait again. He has dark hair just like Kai, and his intense gaze borders on steamy, probably because he was thinking about how much he wanted the woman who was painting him.

“He’s alright,” Kai mumbles. He’s on his laptop, looking at a listing of a weed-choked lot in Hilo.

We have friends over to watch our episode of Antiques Roadshow when it airs. I pour glasses of prosecco while Kai pops popcorn and pours it into overflowing bowls. He finishes it off with butter and salt.

“You two look so cute,” says our friend Lisa.

Aston can’t stop talking about how I’ve got to start going to estate sales with him. Jenny doesn’t say much, but she helps Kai rinse out the popcorn bowls after the show ends.

“What’s with him?” Lisa asks me, sotto voce.

“Who?” I ask, even though I know what she means.

“Kai,” she says. “He’s been quiet all evening.”

“I don’t know,” I confess, and she gives me a knowing look as she pats my knee.

By the time our friends leave, the episode has just finished airing in Honolulu, and Kai’s grandmother calls. Her voice is so loud, I can hear everything she says.

“I saw you and that haole on TV,” she says.

Kai changes the subject: “That figurine was not a gift from King Kalakaua like you told me.”

I leave Kai alone in the living room and run a bath and sink into the jadeite tub. Steam clouds the matching jade-colored tiles and the black border tiles that run along the top edge.

In her diary, Augusta Merz wrote that Violet had married a man who drove the streetcar and resigned her position. They kept in touch, but she felt isolated when Violet was no longer around, and she wished she’d run off with her lover when she’d had the chance.

Kai comes in and sits on the edge of the tub.

“How is everyone in Honolulu?” I ask.

“I don’t know. She didn’t talk about everyone. She just said she saw us on the show.”

“I heard.”

“Don’t take offense at her calling you haole,” he says. “She says that about anyone who isn’t descended from Queen Liliuokalani.”

I want to say that would make Kai’s entire family haoles, but I keep my mouth buttoned.

“It’s better than ‘faggot’ I suppose.” I pause and look up at Kai, but he looks away. “She knows we're not just roommates, doesn’t she? You told me you were going to tell her.”

He sighs heavily. “I did.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Believe what you want,” he says as he walks out of the room. I frown and yank the plug from the drain. The water goes down with a loud gurgle.

A month goes by. Aston thinks there may be more Augusta Merz paintings in Minnesota, and comes up with several leads. We book plane tickets and make plans for places to visit and restaurants to try.

Kai scoffs. “You’ll spend more on that trip than you’ll ever make on paintings you find.”

“Who cares,” I counter. “It’s going to be fun.”

Two weeks before the trip, a fire breaks out in the kitchen.

“Let’s go!” Kai says, running from the smoke. Without thinking, I snatch Violet from the wall and follow Kai down the fire escape. The fire engine arrives, splashing Kai’s face with red, blue, and red again.

“Why’d you save that?” He asks when he notices me holding the painting. “It’s insured for eighty thousand dollars!”

“I can’t just let her burn,” I say, and Kai rolls his eyes. “I’d rather donate the painting to a museum than let it get destroyed.”

From the street, we can see the firefighter enter our kitchen and douse the flames.

“So, you do want the money,” I say, “to buy that place in Hilo.”

Kai crosses his arms. “I didn’t say that.”

“Eighty thousand dollars!” I say, imitating him. “Here,” I say, holding the painting out to him. “Sell it. Get your money. Make your down payment.”

“You don’t want me to sell it.”

“I asked you weeks ago if you wanted to sell it!”

“I can’t take your money,” he says.

The firefighter exits the building and pulls off his mask. “Fire’s out,” he says. “Just a little grease fire. You can go back in. There’s just a little cosmetic damage, is all.”

Over the roar of the fire truck’s engine, I say, “You want the money. You just don’t want me.”

We return to the apartment in silence. It reeks of smoke.

In the morning, I stand at the window, watching Kai load his last box into his Camaro. After his tail lights disappear, I turn to Violet, who is back in her rightful place above the couch.

“Thanks for having my back, girl,” I say to her.