Daedalia is a serialized novel, with a new chapter released every Monday morning. The story is designed to unfold slowly, the days in between, a space for it to settle into your imagination. Each chapter is a 10–15 minute read/listen. Check out the Table of Contents if you want to jump to a specific chapter. Want something to binge while you wait? Three novels, complete with audio narration are ready for you to dive in.
Previously…
Marabelle recounted her mother’s growing obsession with Gaines’s technology, and the five years her parents spent building Kelly’s labyrinth out of materials the world had discarded on the concrete acre. At its center, Kelly told her the work would be finished only when people started showing up, and that Marabelle couldn’t see the magic because she was the magic. The two of them walked out together by starlight.
“You know this thing you want is a fantasy, right? He’ll never in a million years do it.”
Greta sat across from my father. In her account to me, it was late afternoon and they were sitting in a hippie-chic café in Mill Valley, waiting for Trevor Gaines.
“Maybe not. But it doesn’t really matter to me at this point,” he said. He stirred some more cream into his coffee and didn’t look up. “She’s dying, Greta. What Gaines decides to do or not do doesn’t make any difference now.”
“That’s bullshit. It matters now more than ever.”
“Look, I just want to finish this so I can get back to her. Where the hell is he? He was supposed to be here thirty minutes ago.”
“He likes to make people wait,” she said.
“I used to do that.”
“I know. I’m the one who taught you. He’ll be here.”
“Or he won’t because he’s moved on to another hobby. How did he sound on the phone?”
“Like a boy who’s getting his first bicycle.” Greta smiled and nodded out the window. “Speak of the devil and the devil appears.”
Gaines was crossing the parking lot, the sun glinting off of his smart glasses and freshly shaven head. She fingered the edges of the crisp stack of pages poking out of a leather folio. She had brokered deals for ten times the amount printed on page six, section 4, bullet B of this contract, but she was never more unsure of herself walking into a negotiation. She had expected to have weeks of back and forth with Gaines’s attorneys, but the man had just wanted to meet. He hadn’t even inquired about the price. But that was not surprising. She met Lefty’s gaze and held it, then rose to her feet and turned up the wattage of her nervous smile as Gaines walked through the door.
She had barely slept the night before. Maybe it was just that she was getting too old for this game, or maybe it was because there was so much riding on the deal. In the time she had been allowed inside the Daedalia circle of trust, she had come to love Kelly as much as she loved Lefty. The woman was a force, and it was so painful to watch that strength diminish with the illness. The commission, her last great work, was unconventional, unwieldy, and definitely both more and less than Gaines had bargained for. It was a fucking acre of land in the middle of the desert. It couldn’t be hung on a wall. It couldn’t be preserved. To erect a shelter around it would completely destroy the piece because it was part of the land and the sky. How Gaines would react to it was anyone’s guess. Upon first walking through it, Greta had felt nothing but rising anxiety and irritation. By the time she reached the center, she was furious, drenched in sweat, and out of breath. Then a calm settled into her, a coolness. For a moment she was inside the memory of waking in the morning, covered in dew after sleeping on the ground under the stars with her best friend in high school. Greta had sat on the long stone bench and wept for an hour, unsure of whether she was coming apart or being made whole. She would tell others that it was the most profoundly spiritual moment of her life.
So there was the Daedalia magic in the installation, but it was a different kind of magic. Unlike her paintings, this was a living monument to the contradiction of human existence. It was a walled, symmetrical structure set upon a grid, but the walls were almost a living, organic structure, a chaotic composition of trash, debris, and found objects that allowed the wind and filtered light to pass through. It was not built to last. It would not be the statue of David. It would erode and crumble back into the earth just as the artist herself was.
She kissed Gaines on the cheek when he reached their table. He shook Lefty’s hand then sat in the chair next to Greta, facing him.
“So…” he said, leaning in. “It’s finished now? I can finally see it?”
“Yeah, it’s done,” Lefty said.
“Well, what are we waiting for? Don’t you think I’ve waited long enough?”
“It’s worth the wait. This is like no other work of hers. She’s only ever done one other installation.”
The instant change in Gaines’s demeanor was almost comical to Greta. He looked like a child who was just told there would be ice cream but that it was kale-flavored.
“Look, I have money, but I can’t buy Times Square or a city block in downtown Chicago.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Lefty said. “It’s on a piece of land that you’ll own.”
Gaines relaxed and leaned back in his chair. He fidgeted with the key fob for what was surely one of his ridiculous sports cars. Greta was ready to be done with him.
“All the details are here.”
She pushed the folio across to him. He glanced down at it but didn’t move to open it.
“Why don’t you just tell me the terms. My lawyers can review all the details. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s fine. I want to know about the piece.”
“There’s no way to describe it,” Lefty said.
His voice had changed. There was a thinness to it that caused Greta concern. He couldn’t break down here. Under the table, she placed her fingertips on his knee.
“It’s true,” she said. “It’s a full-body experience. Like nothing else that’s come before or ever will again.”
She regretted this last statement and almost winced. She had to remember the stakes, but her instinct to close was not something she was even conscious of anymore. Gaines pulled the folio to him and flipped open the cover. He began to read. He flipped through the preamble clauses, nibbling around the edges until he reached the meat where he began to chew. Sitting beside him, Greta could see the muscle in his clenched jaw working. After a couple of minutes, he flipped ahead to the final pages.
The contract was a work of art. She and Lefty had spent two years crafting it, though much of it had fallen to her in the back half as Lefty’s attention was all on his dying wife. The deal was unlike any Greta had ever brokered. Those contracts were always a mere formality — a boring box to be checked. But this one was the beginning of a grand reveal, and she could see in Gaines’s face that he was beginning to see the shape of what lay beneath the silken cloth.
“This was never on the table,” he said, looking up to meet Lefty’s gaze. “I’m not giving them up. You can name your price, but the panels are not part of the deal.”
Greta’s stomach tightened and her face flushed. It was falling apart. She couldn’t read Lefty’s expression. He was not himself. He would not break into his easy smile and open the negotiation. She was about to jump in when he spoke.
“That’s fine. It’s a decision you’ll have to live with. But everything else is non-negotiable.”
Gaines looked back down at the pages and flipped back through them.
“So, ten million in cash for the property, which is…” He flipped back a page. “…somewhere in New Mexico. And the piece cannot be moved, reconfigured, or changed in any way. And I have to buy this thing sight unseen. Oh, and no take backsies.”
Gaines chuckled and closed the folio.
“Did your artist write this fucking thing because it’s filled with magical thinking? Who accepts a deal like this? Do you know how valuable my time is?”
“Look, we can work something out…” Greta said.
“No, Greta. It’s fine. He was never meant to own this. We can go.”
I imagine my father rising to his full height and extending his hand and Gaines just deflating there like a gassy balloon. But I can’t say. I only have Greta’s account of the event. What is true is that no contract was signed that day in the café. Lefty did walk away, and Greta chased after him.
The next day Lefty got a call from Gaines’s lead counsel, who said he would be sending over a marked-up draft. The key changes to the contract were:
The “panels” were the property of Trevor Gaines and what he would or would not do with them was at his sole discretion.
Any attempt by the broker to make this public knowledge would be seen as an act of aggression and be met with a swift and overwhelmingly punitive defense.
Mr. Gaines would pay 50% above the asking price for the property in New Mexico, which presumably housed Daedalia’s final work.
Mr. Gaines would take possession of the property immediately.
These terms would expire in 24 hours.
Greta shared this document with me on a bright morning in another café, this time in New York City.
“I was so proud of your father for walking away from that prick. But I was even more proud when he let the twenty-four-hour period expire without so much as a word. Of course, this pride is in hindsight. I had pleaded with him to take the deal.”
“He knew what he was doing, I guess,” I said.
“Perhaps he did. But I also think he was at a point where he really didn’t care. Trevor Gaines did not loom large in his mind.”
“And Trevor Gaines did not like this. I’m sure.”
“No, he didn’t. But eventually, he came back with his tail between his legs. It took a week, and we had given up. I was so pissed at your dad that I almost didn’t pick up the phone when he called to tell me that the contract was signed and Gaines would be arriving the next day.”
“So he signed the original contract?” I asked.
“No, he signed a revised version. But this one with a clause stating that the panels would be donated in the event of his death.”
“So he spent $20 million on a property with a house he’d never be able to live in because it was deeded to Maria and her family. That seems crazy.”
“That was your mother’s condition and your father wouldn’t budge on it. I’m sure Gaines didn’t like that counter, but by that point he was desperate.”
“Maybe, but it’s more likely he saw it as a minor pothole that money could easily fix in the future.”
We talked for another hour. She told me about her restless retirement in Florida, and her quiet mortification about becoming a cliché. She said she never imagined getting old and advised me not to do it. I promised I would try. The subtext of every question she asked was about my father, though she never actually asked about him. I volunteered that he was in good health, but had become a recluse. He had his routine back in Black Mountain.
She said she understood. How could anyone recover from the loss of a great love, especially one who created art that had changed the world? On the sidewalk outside, after she hugged me, I could see her eyes were welling with tears. Maybe it was the biting cold of late November, but I sensed it was more.
“Can I ask why you’re interested in all of this now?”
I shrugged in response. She stared at me for a long time, holding my hands. I think she wanted to add a thousand more escape clauses to our conversation. I was nearing the end of the research I hadn’t been doing for the book I was never going to write, and maybe she sensed that. She smiled, but it was the version where the corners of her mouth turned down slightly.
“Please be kind to us,” she said, finally. “Whatever you decide to do with all this will outlive us all. Just like your mother’s work.”
I thought about this on the walk back to my apartment. There was a long-delayed lunch with my publisher on the calendar for the next day. If I told him the subject of the mysterious book that had been living in my head for more than a year, there would be no turning back. My publisher would have one of two reactions, and neither offered the safe, quiet path my other books had taken. As the broker of the deal, Greta stood to lose everything, and my father was right next to her, standing at the center of the blast radius of a public confrontation with Trevor Gaines. There was no doubt that my book would leave a crater. The question was whether that crater would be a mere divot compared to the revealing of Daedalia’s identity to the world.
How had I backed myself into writing this story? I was a novelist, not a biographer. How would it even work? The fear sharpened both my focus and my resolve. It was a high-wire act of Daedalia proportions, and maybe that’s why I decided I would do it.
The prose was starting to queue up outside my door like an angry mob wanting to be let in. I’d never thought so much about a story without committing a single word to the page. I had to open up and start writing, or I might have lost my mind.
That day I understood that if I published this book, I wouldn’t just be taking away the fantasy of Daedalia for millions of people, I would be having to share my mother once again. I’d had to share her my entire life. Would her work endure the revelation that it wasn’t some mystical witch who conjured it, but a reclusive woman who sometimes binged reality TV and made lopsided birthday cakes?
The exhibition that opened the year before at MoMA would have to be completely reconsidered. Would Kelly Mudd just be added as a footnote at the end of the hall on a small placard? Was the queue of tourists waiting each day to walk through the museum more important than the queue of words in my head waiting to be written — more important than my mother finally being seen?
There were more questions than answers. And that’s always the best time to start writing a book.
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