The desk was covered with files and notebooks, and a laptop. “Your project?” I asked.
He nodded.
I picked up one of the books: We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America.
“I’m … writing about white-to-nonwhite ethnic self-reassignment.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, there have always been Black people passing as white. If they were light-skinned enough, it could be a very attractive opportunity for all kinds of reasons, chiefly economic. But it also happens in the other direction. Much less common. But not unknown. And,” he added, “ongoing.”
“Like that woman, a couple years ago.”
“Rachel Dolezal. Yes.”
“So these are people voluntarily declining ethnic privilege?”
“Essentially. But of course it’s complicated. Anyway, this,” he tapped his desk, “is about someone … in the public eye. I’ve been working on it for nearly a year, with a research team at Yale Daily News. I need to be very, very thorough, not just for myself, though I certainly wouldn’t want to start my career in journalism by making a mistake of this magnitude. I know it’s going to be absolutely cataclysmic for the person I’m writing about. And their reputation. And…” he said carefully, “for everyone who’s trusted them, or worked with them. So I’m here, going back over all the sources, just interrogating every bit of information. I’m nearly ready to publish.”
“I can’t believe you’re my brother,” I told him suddenly. “I’m so happy.”
He smiled, but he was holding back. “I’m happy, too. It was hard not to say anything, last summer. I’m sorry. I promised my mom. She was very distressed about the whole thing. Not just because of the contract. She respects your mother. Salo respected your mother, and she honors that.”
I hugged him. After a moment, he hugged me, too.
When we went back downstairs, Lewyn and Stella were still at the dining table, the open bottle of wine between them. “You should hear this, too, Phoebe,” said Lewyn.
“What?”
“I’m telling Lewyn about the Rizzoli drawings,” Stella said. “Not just a film subject.”
“Oh no?” I said.
“They met because of the Rizzolis,” said Ephraim. “At the Outsider Art Fair.”
“Re-met,” his mother corrected. “I’d already begun working on Rizzoli, though there wasn’t much to film. I’d found a couple of people who’d known him, but there wasn’t a lot of expertise around. Even as a concept, Outsider Art was brand-new, and frankly, at that time, there was only room for one artist.”
“Henry Darger?” Lewyn asked.
Stella sighed.
“Who’s Henry Darger?” I said.
“The Pelé of Outsider Art,” Lewyn said. When I looked blank he added: “The soccer player everyone’s heard of even if they don’t know anything else about soccer.”
“Oh. Well, I’ve never heard of him. Either of them.”
“I loved that your father bought the Rizzolis from the dealer. Certainly there wasn’t any financial upside, absolutely no prospects at all for Rizzoli back then. When I saw the rest of the art he’d collected I really understood what an outlier Rizzoli was, for him. I know he did that for me, so I’d have access to the pictures. And because they were right here, right up the street, I was able to film every piece in detail, which has really been a godsend since I haven’t laid eyes on them since 2001.” She paused. “I asked her for them. Your mother. While we were working on our agreement. Actually, I begged her for them. Not just because of my film. They were a part of my story with your father. Finally, she said she didn’t have them and didn’t know where they were, and if I brought them up again she would terminate our negotiations and I could move out of the house. I didn’t believe her, of course. That she didn’t know. But I had to let it go. I’d already spent a year with a lawyer I couldn’t afford, and I was exhausted and in debt. I loved the Rizzolis, but I didn’t need to own them. I needed to own this house.” Ephraim put his hand over hers. Stella nodded. “I don’t know if your mother understood what those pictures represented to me, or if it was simply because I was asking for them. But I do know that it became something really painful for her, and I felt terrible about that. We were both grieving, and we were both angry. But when Salo was alive, those pictures were in the warehouse, and after I asked for them they apparently were not. Or so I was told.”