Lewyn wasn’t handy, but he did design the basement space himself, out of a big room that had once, apparently, been a play area for my older siblings. There was a work space and a long living room and then, behind the galley kitchen, a bedroom that opened onto the Esplanade-side garden. He’d maintained, since his return from Utah a decade earlier, some form of facial hair, and if his biweekly appointment at the old barber shop behind Borough Hall represented the extent of his grooming and self-care routines, it was a vast improvement on the brother who moved back in when I was seven. Now, at thirty-five, Lewyn was generally fit, generally upbeat, and finally single again after an aimless couple of years with a woman he’d met in his master’s program, about which I could not help but feel some relief. He didn’t seem all that unhappy about it, either.
He opened the door with a phone at his ear and beckoned me inside with his other hand.
“Yes, I know,” my brother was in the middle of saying. “No, Hans, I’m not telling you no. I’m telling you we’d need to take more care this time. A lot more care.”
He listened. He looked at me and gave a flicker of a smile.
“No, I understand that you want it. I understand it’s central to what you’re doing. That’s why I’m not saying no. But what I am saying is that you’re going to need to put a better handling protocol in place this time.” He listened again. Then he walked to his desk, jotted something on a Post-it, and held it up for me to read: Moron.
I smiled.
“Hans. A hole. There was a hole in that Diebenkorn, do you recall? Perfectly round, like from a pin. Surely you can understand why I’d be reluctant to send you the Marden or anything else without a very strong commitment to its transport and care. In writing.”
I sat in one of the chairs and picked up a Sotheby’s catalog on the table beside it, waiting for him to get rid of Hans in the other room. When he finally did, he picked up his laptop and typed a note.
“Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne,” Lewyn announced, when he was done. “Great museum, but the last time they requested a painting, it came back damaged.”
“From a pin?” I asked. “What were they doing, playing pin the tail on the Diebenkorn?”
“Oh, who knows. I try not to get paranoid about these things. I actually didn’t end up restoring it, but I made them pay for all the consulting. He never admitted responsibility, though. Which I don’t appreciate.”
“Hans,” I said.
“Yes. Hans.”
“The moron.”
“Well, not really. You down here to vent?”
I laughed. “Not this time.”
Venting was our typical thing. It was good to be able to talk about our mother, her many vicissitudes and shortcomings. Here, it was a low-stakes topic, and often highly enjoyable.
“School okay?”
“Except for bio, yeah.” The truth was, I had done badly on that quiz, and it mattered. Walden had somehow persuaded the admissions officers at the nation’s best colleges that it was special enough to forgo the usual grading and ranking of its students, but the elaborate academic profiles it provided in lieu of a transcript might just mention that I was struggling this fall. Of course, if I got in Early Decision somewhere it wouldn’t matter much, but that was obviously not going to happen if I didn’t actually apply anywhere.
“Well. Bio. I don’t think you’re headed for STEM. Do you?”
“No. No STEM. Strictly a humanities girl.”
“How’s Mom?”
Well. Mom. Mom was Our Lady of Perpetual Entertainment, usually. I ought to have come down with a tidbit already at hand, but that hadn’t been on today’s agenda. I had to think for a moment.