I dressed up a bit for my appointment at Rochelle Steiner’s law firm, which was on Madison Avenue and Forty-Fourth Street, right around the corner from the Cornell Club, where she had once climbed onto a chartered bus, chosen a seat next to the toilet, and set a number of complicated, long-ranging things into motion. It was a general law firm, and it looked to be evenly balanced in terms of women and men, which might have been one of the reasons Rochelle picked it (and after Harvard Law, a clerkship for a New York State Supreme Court judge, and the obvious fact that she was ridiculously good at practicing law, she probably had her pick of attractive options). A woman showed me into the office one afternoon a couple of weeks later, and from the beginning it didn’t go as I’d planned. Which is not to say that it went badly. Just … not as planned.
“Phoebe Oppenheimer,” said Rochelle Steiner. She got up from behind her desk. “Well.”
I’d been doing pretty much everything I could do to seem older than seventeen, from the go-to-work skirt I’d bought for an internship at Wurttemberg the summer before junior year to the mascara swipe, and I was instantly thrown, but I did my best to crawl back into the saddle. “Hi, my name is Phoebe.”
“Yes. Phoebe Oppenheimer. Like it says here on your file. Which my assistant prepared for me when you made your appointment.” Rochelle held it up: a generic red folder, with a name on the label: Oppenheimer, Phoebe. “You’ll recall that you gave my assistant your name.”
I nodded. Exactly thirty seconds in and I was bested. No longer trying to seem older than seventeen, now I was trying to seem older than ten.
“Yes.”
I took the seat Rochelle Steiner was pointing at. The desk between us was wide and covered with an old-fashioned blotter, which made no sense given the oversized iMac desktop weighing it down. The walls were not crowded, the better to focus on her college and law school diplomas in oversized frames, and a photograph of a very young Rochelle, standing beside a woman in a sleeveless yellow dress.
“I used to know a couple of people named Oppenheimer,” Rochelle was saying.
“Oh? Well, it’s a common name.”
Rochelle threw her head back and howled with laughter. It was so surprising I could only stare at her.
“I’m certainly not falling for that one again,” she said, after a moment. “Phoebe Oppenheimer. Sister of Sally and Lewyn, I presume. And that other one, from Fox News. What a shanda.”
I could not disagree, so I said nothing.
“The last time I saw you was on a beach on Martha’s Vineyard. September 10, 2001. A hard date to forget.”
“I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it. Given I was in diapers at the time.”
“I’m sorry. And your father. I’m so sorry about that. I shouldn’t be cavalier. Even before what happened the next day it was already awful and surreal. In fact, you might have been the only member of your family I didn’t loathe when I left your house that night.” She stopped. She looked intently at me. “Wait. Do you even know what I’m talking about?”
“I know enough,” I said. “There’s been a lot of Come-to-Jesus in my family over the past month or so. Oppenheimers, as I think you might know, are not natural sharers of information. I figure I’ve got a few more months to get them sorted out before I take off.”
Rochelle raised her eyebrows. “Where are you going?”
“Oh God.” I shook my head. “Not you, too! We just met!”
“I meant … well I guess you’re going to college. I wasn’t asking where.”
“Sorry,” I told her. “Little sensitive.”
Then, without any forethought, at least on my part, the two of us smiled at each other.
I hadn’t been shown a college-era photograph of the woman on the other side of the desk, so I would not be in a position to appreciate the transformation until later, but it was impressive. Rochelle Steiner was still short and still thin, but she no longer looked like a middle schooler trying to pass for a grown-up. The wavy hair she had once braided into submission now landed where it fell, mainly in curls, and the complexion that had stubbornly clung to adolescence had at last moved on. Rochelle wore a simple wool dress and not a single piece of jewelry or lick of makeup. She looked as if it took her about four minutes to get herself dressed in the morning.
“So. Phoebe Oppenheimer. How may I help you today? I doubt you are having an intellectual property issue, and I certainly hope you’re not filing for divorce. Which leaves me with what you told my assistant when you set up the appointment.” Rochelle held up the folder again, then opened it. A single blank sheet of paper was clipped inside. “Tabula rasa.”
I sat forward in my chair. “We’re having—my brother and I are having—a family issue.”
“Which brother? You have two, I seem to recall. One of them lied to me from the moment we met, the other, as I said, I barely knew, but I still want to smack him.”
“You and me both,” I agreed. “Actually, I have three brothers, not two. Which may or may not be relevant. I brought you this.”
I reached into my bag and handed Rochelle Steiner a copy of the letter from the American Folk Art Museum. (The original I had finally delivered to our mother the day after I’d seen Harrison. I had to, since he was obviously going to tell her about it.) When the lawyer finished reading it, she said: “Yes?”
“These artworks were once a part of our father’s collection. They were kept in a warehouse in Brooklyn which my father purchased in the early 1980s. The rest of his art collection is still there, but these particular works have disappeared. Lewyn and I believe that our mother removed them, sometime around 2002, 2003.”
“Well, that’s certainly her right. Unless your father specified otherwise, his surviving spouse is the default heir to his estate. Is that the case?”
I nodded.
“Then they’re her property. She can move them, store them, throw them in the Hudson River if she wants. I hope she hasn’t, it sounds like they’re important, and probably valuable. But there’s no legal issue.”
“We also believe that our father intended them not to be included in his collection. We think he meant them to go to someone else. A woman he was involved with.”
Rochelle raised her eyebrows. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Sudden deaths often create this kind of difficulty. Things that don’t get settled while the person is alive, or they’re kept secret and have to come out eventually. Learning about the deceased person this way, it’s got to be very painful for you. And…” she added, “your brother.”
“Well, it’s been a process. What would you advise us to do?”
“Do?” Rochelle sat up. “I’d advise you to talk to your mother. It’s the only thing you can do.”
“But I have,” I said. “Weeks ago. She insisted she knew nothing about it. Refused to discuss it further.”
“Well, I’m no therapist, and I don’t even know you, but I have to say, I’m surprised you’d take that without a fight. Talk to her again. Tell her you won’t let her off until you understand what it means. Tell her if she’s trying to protect you, she can stop. Tell her that if she’s trying to be vindictive, she should stop for her own sake. You could tell her you love her, too. That might accomplish more than anything else, since you’re the youngest and, as you put it, about to ‘take off.’ You’d be amazed. A lot of intractable issues suddenly become very pliable when people start telling other people they love them. Assuming it’s true, of course.”
I thought about it. It was true. Of course it was true. Only just at the moment it had gotten lost behind a couple of other truths. After a moment I said: “Can I ask you something?”
“Keep it short,” Rochelle smiled.
“Are you married?”
Rochelle didn’t say anything right away. I could tell that she was weighing a kaleidoscope of potential implications as they slipped in and out of position. “I was,” Rochelle finally said. “I’m not. Now.”
“Huh.”