It is dramatically gorgeous here—I keep thinking that a painting wouldn’t do it justice, because you’d never capture the black of the rocks that glint in the sun, or the turquoise of the water. It feels kind of … ?rugged and unfinished. There are iguanas just hanging out everywhere, like they own the place. I’m pretty sure there are more of them than there are human residents.
Speaking of residents—I hope you’re okay. I hate not being able to hear your voice. Yes, even when you’re singing off key in the shower.
Love, Diana
From preschool, at my first easel, it was clear that I had some kind of gift for art. My father was the one who worked on paintings—from ceiling frescoes to giant canvases, doing conservation—but he would have been the first to tell you that he was not a creator, but a re-creator. When I was a freshman at Williams and one of my paintings was chosen to be part of a student exhibition, my father proudly came to the opening, wearing the only suit he owned.
My mother did not attend. She was embedded in Somalia, chronicling their civil war.
My father spent twenty minutes absorbing my piece. He stared at it as though he had been told that the world was about to go black and white, and this was his last chance to see color. Several times I saw his hand twitch as he reached toward the frame, and then settle at his side again. Finally, he turned to me. You have your mother’s eye, he said.
The next semester, instead of signing up for more art studio classes, I filled my time with art history and media and business courses. I did not want to spend my life being compared to my mother, because I was determined to be nothing like her. If that meant finding a different branch of the art world to perch on, so be it.
I wasn’t surprised to be selected for a summer internship at Sotheby’s when I was a rising senior, because I had structured my entire college career around being accepted to their program. On my first day, I was shuttled into a large room full of equally bright-eyed summer interns. I sat down beside a Black man who—unlike the rest of us, in our conservative blazers and tailored trousers—was wearing a purple silk shirt and a midi skirt printed with enormous roses. He caught me staring, and I jerked my head toward the front of the room, where the directors of the different departments were lining up, calling out interns’ names.
“If I didn’t want people looking,” he whispered, “I wouldn’t have worn it. McQueen.”
I held out my hand. “Diana.”
“Oh, honey,” he said. “No. The designer of the skirt is Alexander McQueen.” He reached out his own hand—beringed, with silver polish on his nails. “I’m Rodney.” Then he cataloged me from my neat part to my sensible heels. “Middlebury?”
“Williams.”
“Hmm,” he replied, as if I might be wrong about my own college. “First rodeo?”
“Yeah. Yours?”
“Second,” Rodney said. “I was here last summer, too. They work you like a three-legged husky at the Iditarod, but I’ve heard Christie’s is worse.” He raised a brow. “You know how this goes, right?”
I shook my head.
“It’s like Harry Potter’s sorting hat. They call out your name, and your department. No trades.” He leaned closer. “I’m a design major at RISD and last year I got placed in Fine Wine. Wine. What the hell do I know about wine? And no, before you ask, you don’t get to drink it.”
“Impressionism,” I told him. “That’s what I’m hoping for.”
Rodney smirked. “Then you’ll probably wind up in Space Exploration.”
“Musical Instruments.” I grinned.
“Handbags.”
He reached into a satchel and pulled out a foil-wrapped package. “Here,” he said, breaking off a piece of cake. “Drown your sorrows preemptively.”
“Cake makes everything better,” I said, taking a healthy bite.
“So do hash brownies.”
I choked, and Rodney whacked me on the back.
Diana O’Toole, I heard, and I popped up out of my chair. “Here!” I called.
Private Collections.
I looked down at Rodney, who pushed the rest of the brownie into my hand. “Could have been Rugs and Carpets,” he murmured. “Chow down.”
As it turned out, I did not finish the hash brownie, even as I sat at the front desk, where I had been assigned to answer phones and direct visitors to floors of a company I didn’t yet know. I routed calls and read obituaries in The New York Times, circling in red pen the obits of rich people who might have estates to be auctioned. Then, one afternoon, a man who was nearly as wide as he was tall strode up to the desk holding a frame wrapped in linen. “I need to see Eva St. Clerck,” he announced.