The Imperial Wife Read Free

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    â€œThey think it’s original. Their gut impression is it’s right. But this guy is the final word on Catherine relics.” Regan eyes me skeptically.
    â€œGreat. Let’s do it. It’s our top star. It’s huge.”
    â€œReally? Are you sure? We’ve got the Goncharova.”
    â€œAre you kidding? This is much better. This is also a good news story.” I ignore Regan’s caution. It’s a moment every specialist dreams of, a moment that occurs only once or twice in a career. We’re all archive rats who dream of uniting a work of art with its provenance and this is one hell of a provenance because it belonged to Her. I felt it when I first laid eyes on a digital image of the medal, this radiating milky heat, as if Catherine herself were sending me a private message across the ocean. So her Order exists after all, not buried with the royal dead as the research implied. I perform a little dance on my toes.
    One of the girls unearths a lukewarm bottle of prosecco from her desk, another offers to fetch Marjorie, but the panicked face of Mr. Reed William Brooks peers out from the square window of the viewing room.
    â€œUh-oh,” I say. “Better get back in there.”
    There’s a round of protests from the girls. It’s practically the weekend! Even Regan says, “Come on, how often does this happen?”
    â€œYou know what? We should celebrate with real champagne. Where’s the one Medovsky sent over?” I’ll bring Mr. Brooks a glass too, it’s the least I can do. I give him a signal to wait just one tiny moment.
    While the foil is unpeeled, while one of the ladies struggles with dislodging the cork, pointing it toward the books and away from the canvases and sculptures, I call Carl again.
    His phone rings and rings, his voice mail once more assuring me that he will return my call. I leave him a message to meet me and my parents at a restaurant in the neighborhood.
    A few of the girls are arranged around desks like rose petals, heels hooked around the legs of chairs. The last of the chocolates are consumed. A knock, now loud and insistent, is coming from the direction of the viewing room. The champagne is poured into plastic cups, warm and overflowing with foam.
    Before returning to one of the many clients who always seems to need me, before leaving the girls with their cardigans, their pearl earrings, their diamond engagement rings, among whom I will never, ever belong, I quickly drain my glass and grab the cell phone. In case Carl calls me back sooner than I expect him to.
    *   *   *
    â€œIt looks like it’s Catherine the Great’s. Ekaterina Velikaia.” As the sparkling water is being poured, I’m wondering if I hadn’t been hasty arranging the foursome in a spontaneous spurt of pride. My parents are not restaurant people, have never grown comfortable with fussy service and the constricted nature of a meal among music and noise. My mother is wiping a perfectly clean knife on her napkin while my father pushes away the bread basket and asks for raw vegetables to dip in olive oil.
    The lighting is too dark, so they’re squinting at the picture of the Order, passing it from one to the other. As usual, I fixate on their approval, their excitement. I’ve never understood why I still need them to be impressed with me, as though in order to repay them the immigration freight of passage, I had to prove my successes justified their decision to uproot us to America. For as long as I can remember, from grade school to my marriage to my job, I’ve been repeating ever-escalating versions of “Look, Ma, look, Pa, look what I’ve done!”
    â€œAnd what is this I’m looking at?” my mother asks.
    â€œAn order. You know, like a medal she’d wear.”
    â€œCatherine the Great wore this?”
    â€œPeter the Great established this honor for women marrying into the royal