Alice Mattison

Kathleen Grant worked part-time as a carpenter while making art from used building materials: slats with flaking paint, bowing strips of molding with nails sticking off them, splintery trim salvaged from demolition sites. She sometimes decorated structures with ironic glitter. She lived in New Haven, where her work had been shown in galleries a couple of times. A wooden ladder—smashed, splintery, encrusted with sequins—was almost in a New York show. Kathleen could afford this life because her wife was a professor at Southern Connecticut State University. But Kathleen had brought a daughter into the marriage. She wanted to make a larger financial contribution. Many days, anyway, carpentry plus a four-year-old left her too tired for art. Someone mentioned an office job at a small artists’ colony; Kathleen was hired. The Institute was pleasantly scruffy. The main building had once been a house, and there was still a bathtub in the restroom. Half a mile away was a converted warehouse where the art fellows had studios. Kathleen was cleaning old tools in a storeroom there one afternoon when she saw an email on her phone: a call for submissions to a juried show with a feminist theme. It would be at a gallery on the Hudson, important enough that being shown there would help, obscure enough that she would have a reasonable chance. They wanted pieces smaller than hers, but the deadline was far off. Maybe she didn’t have to work with building materials. The storeroom contained old furniture as well as tools and supplies. Some mahogany chairs must have once furnished a dining room. She ran her fingers over an Adirondack chair’s pitted wooden slats. It had been outdoors through New England winters.

          That afternoon, before picking up Star at daycare, she stopped at the director’s office. Jeremiah Wilton looked fussy but wasn’t. Star’s occasional presence in the office, Kathleen’s need for afternoons off to make art—Jerry was unfazed. The office manager, Steve, who wrote poetry and was starting a novel, told Kathleen that Jerry had once been a photographer of some distinction. The three of them were the whole office staff.

          When Kathleen asked whether she could take some of the broken furniture in the storeroom, Jerry didn’t know what she meant. “You don’t mean the storeroom here?” No. On Jerry’s desk was an opened package, thick with stamps and tape: it had an old-fashioned, pre-Amazon look.

          “I meant to ask you,” he said. “Sure—the furniture, whatever you like. But I wanted to ask you—”

          He nodded toward a chair and Kathleen, though she was impatient, sat. Someone with a scheduled residency had asked to come a week early. Ordinarily Steve would have just said no, but this was the sister of a board member. “Can we manage that? You know, I didn’t remember a storeroom there. How big is it?”

          “She’s a visual artist?” Kathleen said.

          “Does it have a window?”

          She pictured the storeroom. The Adirondack chair was in front of a window. “One. Small.”

          “A painter,” he said.

          The sketch in Kathleen’s mind now was of columns made of chair legs—official-looking, as on a courthouse. What would they be attached to? Jerry had turned his desk chair. His feet, in shoes she hadn’t seen before, stretched out to the side. She’d have noticed these shoes: lush, soft, golden brown leather.

          “I covet your shoes,” she said, though she was really coveting time to draw the columns and see what came next. She rubbed a fingertip on a fingertip.

          “They’re from England,” Jerry said. He leaned over to tighten the laces. They must have come in the package. Jerry’s shirt was open at the collar. He had floppy straight white hair. Kathleen liked him: she had told her wife she could see clear into his soul. She said she’d find out whether a painter’s studio might be free a week early.

          He stood, turned to adjust the blinds, though it was already getting dark. “I wonder if we could fit them both in,” he said. “At different times, of course.”

          “Wait—both?”

          His back was to her. “Eleanor Ashwood.”

          “Who? Is that the painter?”

          “A second painter.  Apparently she was accepted years ago but it never happened—an illness.”                   

          “Another painter? How did this even come up?”

          “That storeroom—that’s a possibility.”

          “I guess so,” Kathleen said. She couldn’t quite follow. She needed to pick up Star.

                                                   *

Compiling news of former fellows for the Institute website, a precise task that was less interesting than you might imagine, Steven Brisbank watched Kathleen leave.  She wasn’t just in a hurry; there was something else.

          “Steve.” Jerry placed a sheaf of papers on his desk. Jerry still preferred paper. “A lot here. It won’t seem to make sense, but it does.” If Steven were more at ease with Jerry—if he could say, for example, that he preferred “Steven,” to “Steve”—they might also have discussed (lightly, casually) whether specific items did or didn’t make sense, which would have made it possible to ask questions rather than just nod.  Numbers didn’t add up. Categories shifted. Sometimes the oddities were clearly mistakes, and Steven fixed them when he put it all into digital form. Sometimes they were inexplicable. If Jerry had been Black it would have been easier. No, harder. He’d have resembled Steven’s grandfather.

          But looking at Jerry’s papers could be postponed, so Steven could get a little further on the fellows’ news before he had to quit tonight. He was up to H: a composer named Horner had won a prize. Steven’s girlfriend was cooking, early. No time for writing until late. Steven had a rule: one sentence minimum daily. But often those were good sentences—the ones he wrote when he finally got back to his apartment, maybe a little drunk, a little mad or happy or tired.  When he wasn’t on guard, the novel permitted him to know things. There would be a library in it: he saw oak shelves and tables.

                                                   *

Jerry had new leather boots. “Gorgeous boots,” Kathleen said, when he stepped into her office.

          “Thanks. I agree.”

          Star said, “I drew a penguin.” She was on the floor. The daycare was closed that day.

          “May I see it?” Jerry crouched. The penguin’s black back was thick with marker. “I’ve got carpenters coming,” he said, his back to Kathleen.

          “What?” She could do any carpentry required.

          “The storeroom in the art building.”

          “Why?”

          “Maybe you and I can—well, look things over. Maybe there’s something you can use.”        

                                                   *

Steven stood in Jerry’s doorway and asked a question in an oh-by-the-way voice. The answer was hard to follow. Whenever Steven complained, his girlfriend asked why he didn’t simply tell Jerry in plain terms what bothered him. “What can he do to you?” Nothing, Steven conceded. Jerry was a friendly boss—too friendly. He and Jerry talked about basketball, politics—would Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders be the candidate, now that Obama’s term was ending?  Jerry was curious about him, full of questions and suggestions about the novel he was starting. How did you get from a discussion like that to what was wrong with the papers? Steven couldn’t do anything about the anxiety he felt at the office. Well, there was one thing. A young choreographer on the board was almost a friend of his. Without implying anything, without even really saying anything, he could have a conversation.

                                                   *

Kathleen liked working in the garage, even in winter. She used mortise and tenon joints to attach the last of a scarred but shapely row of columns, two feet high, to the front of a lean-to that was smaller than an actual lean-to would be if it were fronted by a colonnade of this size. It had taken a long time. Elegant fittings looked right to her on roughly surfaced pieces. The lean-to was made from the Adirondack chair and the columns from the mahogany chair legs. She had decorated them with carvings, then spoiled them on purpose, a little, using a sharp knife that she ordinarily kept locked up.

          She had taken the whole afternoon off. Star had been dropped off after daycare by another parent and was now fooling around in the driveway with an old eggbeater. She wouldn’t play by herself for long. Melissa, Kathleen’s wife, was teaching late that night. But Kathleen had a little more time. The columns needed more spoiling. She made a slightly curved cut in one of them. Slow down, she told herself. No, even more. Her phone rang. Don’t look. She looked. Jerry. He didn’t call her at home unless it mattered. She put down the knife. Her feet were wet.

              Someone on the board was upset. “What I did is not unheard of,” Jerry said. “She’s coming in three weeks, by the way.”

              “Who’s coming?”

              “I don’t know why anyone thinks it’s an issue,” he said. “She was admitted like anyone else—but a long time ago. And the board member’s sister—well, I feel bad about that. I would have—but we do make clear when they agree to the schedule that it’s final.”

              “Wait—this is the painter?”

              “Not the one who wanted to come early.”

              “I know. But the one who’s coming—”

              “Eleanor Ashwood. She’ll be in the new studio.”

              Indeed, carpenters had transformed the storeroom into a studio. They’d added a second window. The changes must have been expensive.

              “This board member got a call from her sister. Then Facilities told her Eleanor is coming.”

            “What did you say?” Kathleen tried to remember how all this connected.

              "I said you and Steve agreed about both of them.”

              “You did?”

              “So if she asks you, I’d appreciate it—”

              “Wait,” Kathleen said. “This painter. Eleanor Ashwood. How did—how did you even know about her?”

              “She phoned me. Out of nowhere. She’s just a nice woman—a nice painter—who had cancer, thirty years ago, and then it came back, but now she’s fine.”

              “She was admitted thirty years ago?”

              “So she says. I couldn’t find the records.”

              “Wait, but—”

              “True. It was crazy,” Jerry said. “She was just this very nice woman—something about that phone call. . .”

              She should have paid closer attention.  Her soaked feet were freezing, and she turned to stand in a sunny spot, just outside the garage.

              Star came toward her. “Ma.”

              Kathleen held up one finger—soon! Star stepped into the garage. A few toys were in the corner. Something made her turn just in time to see her daughter seize the knife by the blade. Kathleen let go of the phone. Star screamed; they both screamed. The knife fell to the floor. The cut was bad—across Star’s right palm and onto a finger. The car keys were on the kitchen table. Kathleen ran, carrying Star. She opened the back door, saying, “Sweetie, sweetie, sweetie.” Grabbed the keys, wrapped a kitchen towel around the hand, carried Star, still screaming, to the car. The hospital wasn’t far. She heard herself: “It’ll be OK, sweetie, OK.”    

              The intake nurse waved an arm, and Kathleen ran again, Star’s shoes knocking against her legs. Nurses took over. Stitches. Tetanus shot. Soon her daughter was lying on a bed, a rumpled, dirty burst of color in the hospital whiteness. Kathleen’s feet were terribly cold. There was blood on her clothes. Where was her phone? She had to call Melissa.

              Star fell asleep. The nurse stuck her head in. “Your uncle.”

          “What?” Kathleen had an uncle, but in a distant state. Jerry came into the cubicle, squeezed her shoulder. “I figured only family could get in.” He’d driven to her house after she screamed and dropped the phone—that was where the phone was, on the ground outside the garage—then to the hospital when her car wasn’t in the driveway. He apologized more than once for phoning, then called Melissa on his phone. An hour later, Kathleen brought Star home while Jerry picked up takeout, came to the house and dished it out, then talked quietly to Star while Kathleen went out to the garage, found her phone, then locked the knife away. Halfway through eating, Star dropped her face to the table, her bandaged hand stretched in front of her. Kathleen carried her off, and got her into bed, sang. She took off her own bloodstained clothes. When she came down in her robe, the kitchen had been tidied and Jerry was gone.

                                                   *

The painter, Eleanor Ashwood, stayed for three weeks, working in the former storeroom. Steve found her a room in one of the residences. Kathleen never saw her work. She met her only twice—a small, aged, shy woman in a smock. She might have been Black. Each time, they commented on the weather and Eleanor returned to her studio.

                                                   *

By spring, Jerry had six pairs of elegant shoes that Kathleen knew about. Some looked like duplicates of shoes he’d already bought, but in different colors. Two more fellows hadn’t been on the schedule and could not be explained: a photographer and a playwright. Kathleen had to ask someone to change studios. One man stayed in Jerry’s house. “I have room,” he said. “Why not?”  

          “What does he want?’ Steve said to Kathleen, one spring afternoon when Jerry had left early. He reached up one hand to touch the top of a bookcase. He was tall. “He’s not just out for more power. He doesn’t push us around.”

          “He’s a rebel,” she said. It was what Kathleen liked best about Jerry: the freedom, the spontaneity that couldn’t be bothered with rules, despite elegant shoes and a prep school accent. As a teenager, he’d marched in Washington for civil rights and had heard the “I Have a Dream” speech. In college he marched against the Vietnam War and took LSD. “He’s a well-dressed hippie.”

           “I’m scared,” Steve said. “My girlfriend laughs at me. She keeps telling me to talk to him, just talk to him.  She has great faith in the human tongue.”

          “Scared of what?”

          “I could not tell you.”

          “Like, he’s working for the FBI?” Kathleen said. “He’ll get us into something shady and we’ll go to jail?”

          “I have no idea. Listen to this.” Steve sounded annoyed. He moved back to his desk, scrolled, read from the screen. “Last month, ‘Repairs, $2000.’ Month before, ‘Repairs, $1000.’ Two months before that, ‘Repairs, $3000.’”

          “Did you ask Facilities? Maybe the toilets—”

          “Yes, I did.”

          “Oh,” Kathleen said. She needed to get home. “Oh, wait—the storeroom in the art building. He spent piles of money on that. I don’t know why he didn’t just say so. But I gotta go.”

          “And the fellows that turn up out of nowhere,” Steve said. “The friend I talked to thinks he’s great,” he said. “He’s looking over some figures, but I don’t think anything will come of it.”

          “What friend?”

          “On the board. Choreographer.”

                                                   *

When Kathleen forced herself to go back into the garage, the very idea of working was impossible. She watched herself, not even caring, as she considered picking up the colonnade attached to a lean-to and didn’t. The colonnade looked awkward. It lacked the irony she was after. Was this Jerry’s fault? If he hadn’t called, Star wouldn’t have been hurt. Would the piece have looked better? He said the accident was his fault, and she assured him that, no, she was to blame. She could have ignored the call, or ignored the call temporarily, secured the knife, and called him back. Or not taken out the knife in the first place. She had known Star was reaching her limit.

          She wanted to protect Jerry. Protect him from what? He should have told her what was going on. Unexplained fellows. Numbers, according to Steve—who, Kathleen sensed, no longer spoke freely to her. Shoes. Why did shoes matter? The piece would never work. She put it on the floor, in the corner behind her tool cabinet. But without it, what would she send? The deadline wasn’t far off. And once the pieces were finished—three—they’d have to be photographed. She had completed one, a cute little house that was also a prison. Maybe too cute. She closed the garage door and drove back to the office. Jerry needed a ride—his car was being repaired.

They drove in silence for a while. Her discontent made her less cautious. “Jerry,” she said. “What’s going on?”

           “Mostly an oil change.”

          She laughed. It was stupid to think she could learn anything by asking a simple question. “No. Jerry, who are the extra fellows?”

          He glanced at her. “Nobody extra at present.”

          This was true. Then he asked, “Do you worry about money?”

          “What do you mean? Are you offering me a raise?”

          “I mean—I ask in friendship. Do you and Melissa worry about money?”

           “Believe it or not, we support ourselves,” she said. Men of his generation did not expect much of women.

          “I beg your pardon. It was an insensitive question. I ask because I worry about money.”

          “I thought they paid you plenty,” Kathleen said.

          “They pay me generously,” Jerry said, “for a program of this sort.”

          Her hands, on the steering wheel, hurt. She needed to thrust them deep into something, into the heap of wooden pieces in the garage at home. Yet when she had time, she couldn’t. She asked again where exactly they were going.

          “I really appreciate your doing this, Kathleen,” he said. He gave better directions.

          She told herself he hadn’t meant anything about money; she was just in a bad mood. She should trust him. “Jerry. Honored boss.”

          “Yes, ma’am?” How gracefully he sat in a car, his well-made coat, ideal for spring, open. He had the precise size and shape envisioned by the automotive designer.

          “Those two fellows. The photographer who stayed at your house. And the other one. The playwright?” They came to the correct street and she downshifted, aimed the car into the turn.

          “Yes,” he said. “I see.”

          “They hadn’t been admitted.”

          “Nor had Eleanor,” he said, “At least, not recently. But she made sense. They all did.” Was that all he was going to say? She didn’t think she could push him harder. He’d be getting out at the garage, two blocks away, driving back to the office in his own car. But when Kathleen braked at a red light, Jerry began to talk. “I met the photographer—I don’t know, thirty years ago? Forty.” It was in Chicago, when Jerry’s late wife had been alive. They’d stayed in touch sporadically. He was quirky, unappreciated. His gallery closed. “Goddamnit, it was time for someone to appreciate him. I just called him up and invited him. I asked myself, Who’s stopping me? I’m the director. Room? I have room in my house. But then I guess you were the one who had to find a studio.”

          The explanation made a kind of sense and also didn’t make sense. Kathleen didn’t want to hear the story of the playwright, but he told her that too. He was local, young, Black. The public library had put on a staged reading of a play he had written. “Of course, ordinarily, I wouldn’t—I’d tell him to apply. But it was that good. It was that good. It was just so obvious what to do. So simple.” They arrived at the garage. He opened the passenger door. He thanked her again. “You see?” he said, as he got out, ducking his head back into the car. “About the fellows?”

          “I see,” she said. “I sort of see.”

                                                   *

Steven stayed late in the office one spring evening. Kathleen had left, and Jerry was on vacation. There was plenty for him to catch up on, primarily Jerry’s latest figures. He went out for a sandwich, brought it back, kept working. After 8 PM, someone knocked at the office door. There were a few studios upstairs, but the dining room was in one of the residential buildings, a couple of blocks off, and mostly people didn’t come back after dinner. At the door was a middle-aged white woman with hair swooshing around her shoulders.  He knew she had a studio upstairs but hadn’t met her. “I saw your light,” she said. “I’m Tamara.” It had been a while since any unexplained fellows had appeared, but this was another one—or apparently another one. Jerry had come to him with an application marked “Approved,” which he told Steven to add to the most recent group of accepted fellows: a poet. Steven glanced at the writing sample and wasn’t excited, but did as he was told.

          “I had a few questions,” Tamara said, “but I should come tomorrow.”

          She seemed upset. “Is your room okay?” Steven said. “Do you like the studio?”

          “Oh, it’s fine. I mean, I’ve always wanted—”

          Steven knew why people wanted to come to the Institute. He wished he could just settle into one of the studios and have two or three weeks for his novel. He was on page 41, but would have to rewrite much of it. “I shouldn’t be here,” Tamara said, “so I’m shy with the others.” He was startled. He too thought she probably shouldn’t be there, but wasn’t the whole point that she thought she should be?

          “Imposter syndrome,” Steven said, and looked up for the laugh. He was turning off the computer.

          “No, I’m the real thing,” she said. “Don’t tell.”

          “A real poet?”

          “A real imposter. But I should go.” She put her hand on the doorknob, then said, “You don’t happen to know where I can get something to eat at this hour? I missed dinner. I wish I could say I was writing, but I took a nap. There’s a cot in my studio—very nice.”

          Of course she knew the story of her own admission. This had not occurred to him. He took her to a bar that served decent food pretty late. With her Cobb salad she ordered wine for them both. He ate nachos. He liked her. She was about his mother’s age; his mother, too, would have been shy if she thought she didn’t belong someplace.

          “Jerry was my boss at my last job,” she said as they ate, though he had not asked. “Seven years ago.” Jerry had been the director of a small museum of photography in Chicago, where Tamara was his assistant. “Yeah, just what you’re thinking. Sex, rejection, obsession. It didn’t go away, and finally I decided it might help to get in touch with him. I texted him and asked if we could talk, but he didn’t answer. Then he emailed me. He said he knew I wrote poetry, and he worked here. He said I should email an application straight to him, not upload it. Of course it was a bribe—I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut. He didn’t have to say it in so many words. You’re wondering if I’ve seen him. No. I’m going home in a few days.”

          “I write poetry,” Steven said—anything to change the subject. Now that he knew he didn’t want to know. Why did he feel so embarrassed? As if Jerry were his grandfather. “Just now I’m starting a novel.”

          “Being here is beyond my wildest dreams,” she said. “I’m one of those people who sends stuff to every magazine, joins every workshop, gets nowhere. The irony is, I didn’t get in—so it actually is beyond my wildest dreams. I mean, he knew I wouldn’t get in. I’m pretty pathetic, aren’t I? I’m fifty-two years old and I finally know I’m not a good poet.”

                                                   *

Two weeks before the deadline Kathleen made up her mind to start a third piece. It would be slightly larger than the others, made from something she’d been wanting to use for years, an elaborate, massive broken oak staircase she’d found in a dump: a newel post, eight or ten balusters, a handrail. She still didn’t know what she wanted to do with it. If only she had more time. She spent a whole Saturday afternoon hanging around the garage while Melissa took Star to the playground. Kathleen went into the house for coffee, sketched, wandered back to the garage. On Sunday Melissa had papers to grade. Kathleen had promised Steve some work. She brought Star to the office with a tote bag of art supplies, and wrote two reports. When Star got restless she packed up, then met Steve on his way in. He thanked her. He was having an argument with his girlfriend. “You know about Tamara?”

          She didn’t. He explained: another mysteriously present fellow, who had told him after only half a glass of wine that Jerry had slept with her, then bought her silence by offering her a residency.

          It couldn’t be true. It just didn’t fit. “Have you asked Jerry about it?”

          Steve’s girlfriend thought they should go straight to the board.

          “Like—like we’re catching him? Like he’s a criminal?”

          “Well, isn’t he?”

          Melissa, when she heard the story, wasn’t surprised.

          “What do you mean?” Kathleen said. “I’m surprised. When he brought in people before who weren’t on the list, he wanted to help them—not to help himself.” She couldn’t stop thinking about it. That night she called Steve for more details. This supposed gift had deprived the woman of her self-esteem, even her self-respect. “I can’t stand it that you’re right,” she said to Melissa. She sent Jerry an email, asking for a private metting.

          Jerry, still out of town, proposed dinner a week later. “My treat.”

The Insitute was quiet. Tamara left early one morning, taping a thank you note to the office door. Evenings, after Star was asleep, Kathleen tried to work. The oak staircase gleamed with possibility. Melissa told her several times a day that the colonnaded lean-to was good; once she said it made her laugh and be scared at the same time. When Kathleen imagined seeing it through someone else’s eyes, it was bold, shapely, both ceremonial and wild—which was the idea. But she didn’t move it from the corner of the garage. The first piece she’d made continued to seem okay, but not much more. Kathleen’s dinner with Jerry would be the night before the submission was due. Not relevant. Melissa said, “There will be other shows. Maybe this one was never quite your thing. You work large.”

          “But I love working with old furniture.”

          “Give it time,” Melissa said, as if Kathleen were her student.

The restaurant, Sunday evening—the night before Jerry’s first day back at work—was new to Kathleen, quiet and expensive. Through the appetizer, Jerry talked about his vacation. He had visited friends in Chicago, gone camping alone in Michigan. She commented politely. After the waiter brought the main course, he said, “So what’s up?”

          “Tamara,” she said.

          “I thought so.”

          “Tell me.” She still hoped for something that would make her feel better.

          “This isn’t a pretty story,” he said. “I seduced her. I know how that sounds and I can’t disagree.” They’d gone out for two months before he admitted to himself that she bored him. “I had this idea that I’d fall in love with her—which would make it okay.”

          Kathleen opened her mouth to speak but Jerry kept talking. Tamara had quit, and taken a job elsewhere that didn’t pay as much. He didn’t hear from her for years. “Then she texted me. She wanted to talk. It was a long text. Embarrassing. I couldn’t believe I’d taken this person seriously.” Kathleen’s tuna was excellent but she didn’t want it.

          Jerry said, “The text mentioned a lawyer. Well, maybe she didn’t say ‘lawyer,’ maybe it was just ‘advisor.’ I panicked. You will think I’m utterly stupid and I am. I invited her to apply—but I told her to send it to me.” He was silent but Kathleen didn’t say anything. “I’ll defend those other invitations to my dying day,” Jerry said, “but I can’t defend this one.” He looked down at his plate and up again. “At least she got her residency,” he said.

          She refused dessert and coffee, thanked him, said it was getting late.

          “See you tomorrow,” he said.

A few days later, Jerry met Kathleen as she came into the office in the morning. He said, “Forgive me,” and pulled her into a hug. “Too much,” he said, still clutching her.

          “What?” She stepped back.

          “Finished.”

          “You’re quitting?”

          “Fired. My own fault.” Kathleen stepped further back, so he was not touching her, until the edge of a desk pressed into her body. “I’m leaving the shoes,” he said. “Sell them! Wear them!”

          “What?”

          Steve must have told the board about Tamara, she decided. All those unscheduled residencies broke the rules—this last one just made clear why rules matter.                            

          “That’s not what it was,” Steve said later.

          The money had never made sense—expenditures, income, the budget. Jerry had made purchases for himself using the Institute credit card and tax exempt status. He bought things, not just shoes. He also used his personal credit card to charge purchases for the Institute. “He fixed up that storeroom. Cost him plenty—brought in a carpenter, painter, had shelves made. The same carpenter who worked on his house. He paid for it.” He’d overdo in one direction, then overdo in the other. But in the end, he’d taken thousands. The board was in touch with the police—but Jerry was already full of remorse. “He’ll get a plea deal.”

           “What he told me—” Kathleen said slowly, feeling her way. She couldn’t finish the sentence. What he had told her, in their conversations, had been true. Jerry surely did march for civil rights. He did befriend the unloved photographer and the young playwright; letting them in had been unfair to other applicants, but good if you thought only about them. He hadn’t turned into someone else when he stole money or seduced a woman or made that woman feel terrible about herself. He’d pay back the money—and the enormity of theft and atonement would obscure the rest. But it was the rest that interested Kathleen most, the impossibility of saying where good ended and bad began.

          “He’s simply the most self-confident person on earth,” Melissa said, when Kathleen told her. “Aren’t we all supposed to believe in ourselves and what we want? Believe in our ability to break the mold and surprise everyone, blah blah blah?”

          Probably she was right. Jerry had trusted his brains, talent, privilege, and good intentions. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, even Tamara—on the contrary. But what did that prove? That creative thinking was dangerous and fussy adherence to rules would be better? And what about Kathleen? What should she have done differently, other than locking up the knife? The story was also about her. For weeks she was disgusted with herself for trusting Jerry at any time. While the board searched for a new director, she gave up her afternoons off, so she and Steve—he told her he preferred “Steven” and she worked on getting used to that—could keep the place going. But the oak staircase still looked good. Creative thinking was dangerous, but not merely dangerous. Bad didn’t wipe out good, was that it? Kathleen took the lean-to/colonnade out of the corner and put it back on the workbench before she could have said why.