“How’s the adoption coming?” he asked, and Julie thought of Juan Rolando somewhere in Guatemala, out of her reach.
“Fairly well,” Julie said. “Thank you for asking.”
Talbot nodded. “I’ve put your name forward for the director position. The search committee should be contacting you soon.”
“Me? Are you kidding?”
“You know the Clay from the bottom up. A director needs that.”
Julie almost laughed with shock. True, she’d dedicated years of her life to the Clay. True, Talbot had been her consistent champion. But she never dreamed he’d advocate for her this way.
“I’ve worked hard to establish the Clay and want to leave it in the best hands,” Talbot said. “That means you.”
“I’m honored. Thank you.”
Talbot passed her a yellow legal tablet so she could take notes on ways to maximize her chances to land the position: what to say, how to behave during interviews, pitfalls to avoid. He asked her not to tell anyone until the board contacted her for an interview, which he promised would happen very soon. They shook hands and she left his office, nodding to Doni on her way out, almost floating through the labyrinth of offices, back to her desk. Eames lifted his head with a quizzical raised eyebrow, but Julie gave nothing away.
That night, she drove home in a daze, inching her car forward in heavy, early evening traffic over the Golden Gate Bridge toward Redwood Glen. Achieving the position of director would justify her career choice of giving up trying to make it as an artist and moving to curatorial. Her destiny was to support the masters, not become one herself. She viewed herself as if from above, leading a tour of high-end donors through the galleries, lauding this artist or that, dropping hints about who was bound to be the next art star, whose work was the best investment. Because that’s what it was about for many collectors. Art as investment. Julie could talk investment. With the right buyer, the value of an artwork could skyrocket overnight. The art market was very impressionable. Which is why Talbot dedicated most of his energy to developing relationships with museum patrons. That, and fund-raising. About which Julie knew nothing. But she could learn. Couldn’t she?
She drove up the hill to their house and turned into the driveway, past the garden bed outside the kitchen window where yellow chrysanthemums blazed. Mark kept that square plot planted so Julie always had something lovely to look at as she stood at the sink. She clicked open the garage door and unlocked the door to their kitchen. Life would be different as a director. Julie might not be the one who made dinner every night, for example. She might not be the one who collected the mail and paid the bills while waiting for her husband to come home. Julie might not be the one who was primary caregiver to their son, if their son ever arrived, if his adoption was ever completed. She measured out brown rice to steam and cut up vegetables and tofu for stir-fry. Actually, even if she got home late, she’d probably remain the one who did those things. Julie was so eager for a stable home life she sometimes overcompensated.
“Hard work pays off,” Mark said later, practically leaping from his chair with enthusiasm as he congratulated her. “What else have you been slaving toward all these years? Did he discuss a salary increase?”
Julie had forgotten to ask about money, but Mark was right, an increase in salary must be a given. She didn’t know exactly how much Talbot was paid, but Eames often complained it was twice the amount they made. Not that Eames should care: he lived on his trust fund, as did most of Julie’s colleagues, she’d discovered. She was one of the few employees who depended on her salary to pay bills.
“More than what I’m making now. We can pay off the line of credit we took to pay Kate.”
“First thing,” Mark said.
“I can’t believe he asked me. I mean, most directors have PhDs and I just have a master’s.” They’d talked about her returning to school at some point, but she’d gotten the internship at the Clay, and the day never came.
“Those are just letters after somebody’s name,” Mark said.
“Said the pathologist with a medical degree and post-doctorate.”
“We’re talking about ink on paper, not analyzing cells for cancer.”
Julie smiled grimly. In his own way, Mark was defending her, protecting her from critics who might question her qualifications or ability. In his eyes, she was more than capable of handling any position. But after all their years together, he didn’t quite understand that the art world had a hierarchy, the same as any profession, and people got promoted based on degrees, internships, resumes, and connections. She watched as he leaned over his plate and shoveled the first forkful of broccoli and rice into his mouth.
“Remind me who else is in the running?” he asked.
“Everyone from everywhere.”
He rubbed his hands together conspiratorially. “That’ll put you on your best game.”
“Ha. Says you.”
After dinner, Julie went out to the garage and climbed onto the workbench, careful not to disturb the hooks where Mark hung his hammers and wrenches. She wanted to look at her old portfolio. Go back to the beginning. She clambered onto a chair to access the crawl space above their cars and pulled out the large black sleeve. She carried it to the dining room table.
Here were the artist’s proofs of her Birds, Nesting series, the one that won the Senior Artist Award at Davis. Here were the dozens of sketch books she’d carried since adolescence, pages of fluid and quick lines that captured the essence of things seen: street lights, hub caps, an array of ceramic plates on a table, the hands of old people, entire studies of cobs of corn and another of crinkled paper bags. And here were early drawings from when she was a girl: cheap paper torn from spiral-bound notebooks, drawings of their kitchen cabinets, the placemats like maps, the back of her mother dressed in a short bathrobe and standing at the sink with a glass of gin.
She remembered seeing a poster in the public library of a mother and child painting by Mary Cassatt, and the effect was like a current of electricity passing through her. The picture was beautiful, but it was more than beautiful. Cassatt had used paint to make emotions visible. Julie saw pure love as solid as the baby’s fleshy legs and chubby little hands.
Julie felt Mark’s arms around her waist and tilted her head back into the notch of his shoulder. “What made you start drawing?” he asked, although he knew the answer.
Nobody told her to draw. She’d simply picked up a pencil and started drawing, all the time, on any flat surface. It was like a compulsion, her need to express herself.
She gathered the drawings from her childhood into a pile. She was good. The work was good. Tomorrow, she’d delve into the Clay storage closet to assemble a portfolio of artists she’d discovered, their exhibition catalogues and press releases, their folders of press clippings. That’s who the committee wanted, the person she had become. And Julie would give her to them.
The next morning, she sifted through museum storage crates with the eagerness of a prospector panning for gold. So much had happened in her twelve years at the Clay. The capital campaign to raise funds for the expansion. Two years of construction dust and the staff pounding away at computers in hard hats. The debut of the emerging artists gallery and launch of the sculpture garden. The years had blurred into one another, not stopping or slowing down.
But Julie’s greatest contribution was the artists. The ones she spotted during open studio nights, not only in San Francisco because that was obvious, but Vallejo, Richmond, Oakland. Unknown painters and sculptors working diligently in obscurity until Julie walked into their studio, basement, or converted closet. She’d chat with them a few minutes, artist to artist, to make them comfortable, before inspecting whatever was on the wall or table or floor. And within one second, she knew. She knew if the work held.
Discovering Patricia Westerman had been