Robbing the Cradle

"I used to be in this barbershop quartet, back in Skokie, Illinois."

It was a perfect end to a perfect week.

The phone rang right at 5, just as I was shutting down the computers to go home for a much needed weekend. The woman on the other end was exasperated.

“Are you still there? I’m coming in right now. This is Deborah, (or Barbara), from The Cradle Project. I need to pick up Nick’s cradle to photograph it. We’ll have it back by Monday. Can you wait there for 10 more minutes?”

Ok, I told her. I had heard something about a person coming to pick up Nick’s work, but I had forgotten about it completely until the phone rang. As I said, I had been working a 6th day in a row, and was considerably tired and stressed out from the long week as we prepared to open our next exhibit, so it was fortunate that she called when she did. One more minute and I would have been gone. Thankfully, she arrived just as she said, 10 minutes later.

Nick’s cradle is a large, ungainly looking thing. It doesn’t weigh a lot, because it is made mostly of old rocking chairs, bamboo, and wicker, but it is difficult to find a good spot to grasp. Deborah, or Barbara, began to hoist it from the plinth on her own, and I quickly grabbed the other end.

“Do you think this is a two person job?”
“I would just feel better if we both did it.”

As I backed my way down the curb and toward the woman’s Volvo station wagon, the woman continued to speak quickly as she had on the phone.

“Thank you again for waiting. This piece was actually made from an old chair I gave Nick. I found it in my basement, and I was going to throw it away, and then I thought Nick could probably use it. Anyway, I’m glad you were still here. I completely forgot that I was supposed to come get this until just now.”

I confessed that it had slipped my mind as well as we jammed the thing into the trunk. She shut the door, shook my hand and sped off, easy as pie.

I went back to the office, scribbled a quick note to my co-worker not to worry, that the cradle would be returned Monday morning before we opened, that it had not been stolen. And it was only then that I realized I had not done as thorough a job as I perhaps should have.

My job duties at the gallery are varied, but they almost all amount to ensuring that the artworks are looked after, handled properly, and installed safely. It is hard to imagine a more thorough collapse of said duties.

Now that the cradle was no longer in my possession, it was clear to me how very silly my story would sound if the woman does not call back on Monday, if she does not remember to return it, if in fact she has absolutely no intention of ever returning it. The rotten thing about my memory is that it looks and feels a lot like my imagination, and in times of stress I have been known to confuse the two. In this case, I was wondering if there had been talk of an appointment to pick up the cradle at all, or if that had been a post phone call, post 60-hour week hallucination.

I must say that to a sleep deprived Art Handler, she appeared to be an unremarkable middle-aged woman with an old car and a lot of bumper stickers about Earth and being nice to it. She did not seem dishonest, or wear black, or have on a ski mask or anything, so she is either the person she claimed to be⎯someone involved with The Cradle Project who was running a bit behind schedule⎯or Keyser Söze, and all the things she said and did had been to put me on my heels:

“…be there is 10 minutes.”
“…found it in my basement.”
“…a two person job.”

!!

I am trying to think of ways so that my police interview will not sound so unbelievably stupid:

“And then you carried it to her car for her?”
”Not for her. With her!”
“Did you have her sign for the artwork?”
“No.”
”Did you get her phone number?”
”No.”
“Did you ask her for some ID?”
“No.”
“Did you talk to the artist about this?”
“No.”
“What was her name?”
“Deborah. Or Barbara. She drives a Volvo.”

Rats. Sorry, Nick.
But I guess, if a person is going to get fired, they might as well have a good story to tell.