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The young man with the boom said, “Yeah?”
“Are we about ready?”
Rosemary had been dismissed.
Her daughter had left her on the threshold of a vast attic room with a wood floor, high ceilings supported by massive beams, and twelve-foot-tall paned windows with a view of downtown Manitowoc.
The center of the room housed row upon row of shelves stacked with antiques and collectibles, racks of vintage clothing, lamps and lightbulbs and crockery and antique letterpress equipment, Victrolas and records and sheet music, metal signage—an impressive collection of junk.
Near the windows at Rosemary’s right, a scene had been staged in a clear space: an oriental carpet, a lamp, an occasional table, a lavender velvet divan. A middle-aged woman rose from the divan. She wore an asymmetrical black sweater. An Alice band held her dense naturally curly hair off her face. Rosemary recognized her as Nancy Fredericks.
This was the woman Beatrice had decided to make a film about: an ordinary homemaker with an extraordinary and secret history of coordination and production work for the artist Justice. This was also the woman Beatrice had been living with for the past several months, and the mother of Winston’s girlfriend, Allie.
Nancy crossed the room and extended her hand. “I’m going to get in trouble for not staying on that couch, but I wanted to say hi. You must be Rosemary.”
“And you must be Nancy.”
She had bright blue eyes that softened and brightened when she smiled. “It’s good you could make it up to see her.”
“I hope so.” Beatrice bustled around, busy and important, quite pointedly not looking at Rosemary, who found it hard to take her eyes off her daughter. “I needed to. After the avalanche.”
“I can imagine. We prayed for you, you know. Bill and I, and Bea. Winston and Allie called to tell her, and we kept a vigil until we heard you’d landed safe in New York.” She said this in a breezy tone, but her hand came up to touch Rosemary’s elbow.
“Was she…What was she…?” Rosemary couldn’t formulate a question. She hurt for her daughter, for herself, for all the people who had never landed safe and would never make it home. “Thank you.”
“Bea was beside herself.” Nancy’s voice was kind. “But she kept her spirits up. She told us you knew how to keep yourself alive. You would do what you needed to to get home.”
“I was only lucky.”
Nancy squeezed her elbow. “She’s proud of you.”
“I’m proud of her, too. Thank you for keeping her. At your home, I mean. Thank you for giving her a place to sleep and the opportunity to make a film about you.”
“It’s been an education. I had no idea what I was getting into when I said yes. I thought she’d ask me some questions, videotape me with a handheld camera, and we’d be done with it. The time I’ve put in on makeup alone, not to mention dinner table conversations about B-roll and post-production color adjustment. It’s like being in art school again.”
“This space is remarkable.”
“Isn’t it? It belongs to Allie. This is her building, and she rents out to the restaurant and shops downstairs, but up here is where she keeps her best junk and does most of her work when she’s in town. We’ve borrowed it for the main interviews, the ones Bea says make the story of the movie.” Rosemary heard Kal’s voice drifting up the stairwell just as Bea shouted for Nancy to get back into place. “I guess I’d better do what she says. We’ll talk more later—will you be here a few days?”
“Just this morning, actually.” She turned to acknowledge Kal and Yangchen as they passed through the entryway behind her. “These are my friends, Kal and Yangchen Beckett. We have to go to Milwaukee after lunch to meet with someone.”
Nancy took the time to shake hands with Kal and Yangchen, who told her, “I love your work.”
“You do?”
Yangchen nodded. “The Brooklyn Bridge sailboat, the Statue of Liberty with the fabric draped on it, the jetty in New England. I liked Justice’s art. I liked it more when I heard it was you doing it. I said to my friend, only a woman could plan something like the bridge and get ev
ery detail right.”
The bridge installation they referred to was one Nancy and Justice had completed last fall, when Nancy’s identity as Justice’s long-term artistic collaborator was first revealed to the public—and to her family. Beatrice had been on the scene and had interviewed Nancy in a film that went viral and led to this documentary project.
“You saw it?” Nancy asked.
“Yes, we went the first day,” Yangchen told her. “Crowds everywhere, and the sails in the morning sun. It was beautiful.”
“Since when are you a fan of modern art?” Kal asked.
“You don’t know everything about me. You only think you do.” Yangchen turned to Nancy. “I climbed Mount Everest seven times, more than any other woman alive, and he unwrapped my straw for me at breakfast.”
