a lit­tle jaunt to Not­ting Hill

Despite the glo­ry of our autumn gar­den, where bright yel­low leaves float past our win­dow and dri­ve the cats crazy (“I can get through this glass, I know I can!”), I am a bit gloomy. Not to say down­cast. And it real­ly isn’t fair to John.

You see, he kind­ly took me all the way to Not­ting Hill today to see a show at a gallery that our friend Vin­cent had tak­en him to, when they had lunch at the trendy Ottolenghi last week. John came burst­ing into my study when he got back from show, say­ing, “It’s all stuff you would have shown at your gallery. Text, parts of books, obses­sive and repet­i­tive. You would love it.” So this after­noon, to avoid the clean­ing lady and stave off the sleepi­ness that accom­pa­nies Mon­days, we jumped in Emmy and head­ed up north, to Eng­land & Co., a sim­ple, white cube (sor­ry, Jay Jopling) of a gallery in West­bourne Grove, sort of the high street of Not­ting Hill. Of course, ever since the film, the neigh­bor­hood has been over­run with an equal num­ber of a) cool peo­ple, and b) peo­ple look­ing for cool peo­ple. OK, OK, I saw Jodie Kidd in Fresh and Wild. But I was­n’t look­ing for her. Any­way, we opened the enor­mous glass door of the gallery and went in, and I was tak­en over by a grad­ual, invid­i­ous sort of ache in the pit of my stom­ach that, ana­lyzed, turned out to be one part nos­tal­gia, one part envy, and one part shame. How could I not have made my gallery work? I had, if I do say so myself, a great eye, a ready pen, a gre­gar­i­ous sort of will­ing­ness to talk to any­body who came in, and a sur­pris­ing­ly good sales pat­ter. What hap­pened? How did my lit­tle tod­dler gallery not make it to its third birth­day intact? I’ll tell you how. Eight thou­sand dol­lars a month in rent.

Still, it did­n’t seem right. I have been so intent on not think­ing about it, plus frankly pret­ty freakin’ busy, that I have not prop­er­ly put the mat­ter to rest. I loved it. When it was good, it was so good. Like when I sold the Miri­am Schapiro paint­ing to Steve Wynn, or the Sarah Webb sculp­ture to Edward Albee, or the David Hen­der­son and the Scott Reeds, and the Fran Siegel, all in one day to Howard Lut­nick. But prob­a­bly even more emblem­at­ic of the gallery and the fun we had were all the sales of Mako­to Fujimu­ra paint­ings to my dear upstairs neigh­bor Mered­ith. Every time she had some­thing to cel­e­brate, she bought a paint­ing, but even more impor­tant, she told me that the paint­ings were there to com­fort her when her hus­band died.

There was the fun of get­ting reviews, and the theft of the Lisa Capone sculp­ture that Avery and I tracked down and sent the police to get back for us! And all the open­ings. Michael Myers man­aged to bring the entire cast of “The Sopra­nos” to his! And it was always such fun to open the door in the morn­ings and walk in and feel that it was all MINE. My project, my busi­ness, the place in the neigh­bor­hood where every­body came to exchange gos­sip, wor­ry that the war in Iraq would start, com­mis­er­ate on play­dates gone wrong, walk around the show and say what was the favorite piece, look up and won­der if the per­son who just walked in was the review­er for the Times, or Art in Amer­i­ca. And all the lunch­es out with Milt Esterow, the head of Art in Amer­i­ca, where he vir­tu­al­ly pat­ted me on the head and said, “Don’t let the bul­lies get you down.” And the fun of hav­ing my assis­tant phys­i­cal­ly sit me down, answer the phone and deal with all the vis­i­tors, for that one hour a month when I sim­ply had to pro­duce 500 words of wis­dom to describe the upcom­ing show. And Erin, my part­ner in crime, rub­bing her hands togeth­er when a par­tic­u­lar­ly hot sale went through, say­ing, “We’re cook­ing with gas!” And Avery and her lit­tle friends climb­ing the lad­der to sit in the lit­tle car­pet­ed attic on top of the bath­room. “Is that a prop­er ceil­ing, or could they come tum­bling down into the sink?” some­one asked once, and we nev­er real­ly knew the answer.

And the dis­as­ters! The $125,000 paint­ing that arrived from the artist’s stu­dio cov­ered in tox­ic black mold: with the poten­tial buy­er arriv­ing in three days to see it. Best of all was the peo­ple: all the bril­liant artists, the hap­py buy­ers, the acer­bic review­ers, the wan­na-be artists (one of whom, nev­er to be for­got­ten, who paint­ed with a mix­ture of her own breast milk and human ash­es), and the art-school elec­tri­cians, installers, painters, car­pen­ters and assis­tants who came and went, telling their sto­ries, doing their jobs, and drift­ing out again, to turn up at an open­ing, or on a Sat­ur­day after­noon with their babies and dogs, to chat and show off where they had worked.

Ah, well, the fact remains that I was a tru­ly chal­lenged busi­ness own­er. I hat­ed deal­ing with the insur­ance, the phone, the land­lord, the util­i­ties, the leak, the mold, the bro­ken front-door key. And one can­not run a suc­cess­ful busi­ness in New York City with one’s head stuck in one’s PhD. John and I often think that if he had quit his job then, like he has done now, we could have run the busi­ness together.

What? Did­n’t I tell you? Yes, John has quit his job. I know, I know, that’s why we moved, for The Job. Except that what was dan­gled out in front of him, a real­ly won­der­ful pro­mo­tion, was giv­en to The Oth­er Guy. So while all the pow­ers-that-be at Reuters scram­bled to offer John this oth­er job, or that oth­er job, at the end of the day he felt it was the right time to quit. Every­one at school pick­up keeps ask­ing with either anx­i­ety, dis­be­lief, or patent envy, “Are you slav­ing away to find some­thing else? Some­thing else will present itself…” and the answer is always, “No, not real­ly.” He is what he terms a Ser­i­al Quit­ter, since he left Mer­rill Lynch and stayed home for a long time when Avery was two, and then again before he went to Reuters he stayed home for nine months. He likes it! And thank­ful­ly he can do it. So I sud­den­ly have not only com­pa­ny at home, but some­one who actu­al­ly LIKES get­ting up at 7 in the morn­ing (or has already been up for an hour and a half), some­one who emp­ties the dish­wash­er, makes beds, rewires lamps and car­ries heavy gro­ceries. Of course the flip­side of all this glo­ry, bless his heart, is that I also have some­one who lis­tens in on my phone con­ver­sa­tions and reminds me when the milk is going to go off. Well, every sil­ver lining.

Seri­ous­ly, though, we’re hav­ing a great time. I have been instruct­ed not to wor­ry about any­thing, and just to enjoy hav­ing him around since it won’t last for­ev­er. Already head­hunters are call­ing. One day, just to rat­tle my cage, he said, “How do you feel about Day­ton?” I retort­ed that unless it was a lit­tle-known but very con­ve­nient sub­urb of Lon­don, I was­n’t buying.

Any­way, Not­ting Hill is adorable. I can see why movies are set there and all the A‑list celebri­ties live there. Of course I can also see why prop­er­ty val­ues are so astro­nom­i­cal. I would­n’t be able to shop at Fresh and Wild for very long. And the show at Eng­land & Co. real­ly was exact­ly my cup of tea. It’s called “Lit­er­ary Con­structs” and fea­tures a num­ber of Eng­lish artists, promi­nent among them Chris Ken­ny, who takes snip­pets of “found” text and recon­structs sto­ries out of them, pin­ning them to a piece of paper so the shad­ows form as much of the piece as the text itself. Sim­ply gor­geous. One of the best pieces was all phras­es to do with food, and I would have bought it instant­ly, but it was sold already, darn. Phras­es like “an insuf­fi­cient quan­ti­ty of cod” and “choco­late­ly essence of child­hood,” or some­thing like that, stood out. Wit­ty and clever, but also visu­al­ly very spare and aus­tere. Loved it. I had a nice talk with the own­er, Jane Eng­land, about my expe­ri­ences, the cut­throat New York art world, the pres­sures of run­ning a gallery. She summed up her job in one phrase: “It’s relent­less.” How well I remem­ber it.

Fresh and Wild was offer­ing sam­ples of fresh gua­camole, which inspired me to come home and try to make it myself. You know me: if it’s edi­ble and con­tains an avo­ca­do, I will eat it. It turned out real­ly well.

Gua­camole

1 large, per­fect­ly ripe Hass avocado
3 tbsps sour cream
juice of 1 lime
pinch of cayenne pepper
1 tbsp chopped cilantro
3 tbsps fine­ly chopped red onion
salt and pep­per to taste

Mix all the ingre­di­ents in a bowl and either eat it right away, or cov­er it with cling­film that touch­es the sur­face, so it does not brown. With this I had some slight­ly stale cia­bat­ta from yes­ter­day, a lit­tle pile of red pep­per bites, and anoth­er lit­tle pile of halved baby toma­toes. A bite of each, all at the same time, was heav­en. I think next time I would mix the pep­pers in, but keep the toma­toes sep­a­rate since I did­n’t want toma­to juice in the gua­camole. I won­der how it would be with chick­peas added? Per­haps it’s best not to cross the great gua­camole-hum­mous divide. Let them stand on their indi­vid­ual merits.

Avery’s come home with a cer­tifi­cate pro­claim­ing that she had won the Gold Lev­el of the Pri­ma­ry Math­e­mat­ics Chal­lenge. Now, you’d think she’d be excit­ed, even proud. But no. Sat­ur­day morn­ing my phone rings and it’s Grace’s moth­er Janine. “Con­grat­u­la­tions to your lit­tle girl, Kris­ten. Well done on the maths chal­lenge, Gold Lev­el indeed!” “Uh, what do you mean?” “Well, it’s in the Fri­day newslet­ter!” Which Avery did not even show me. Queried on this point, she heaved a sort of pre-ado­les­cent sigh and said, “It’s not real gold. It’s just card­board.” Oh dear, the need for bling starts young.