Page 17 of Nantucket Reflections
“That’s why we reached out to you,” Julia said with a smile. “You’re the best!”
Gregor looked like a professor, dressed in tweed and brown shoes, with his curls lush and styled. He cracked several jokes and bounced along beside Charlie and Julia, telling more stories about his life in the art world. Charlie looked both bemused by and curious about him. They were in the midst of a funny discussion about the “found art movement” when Julia saw the CAT mural for the first time. It was the old one—the one from January 2016 that echoed a mother’s love for her child. It was in seeing this, finally, that Julia realized that CAT was a mother. She had to be. And this reminded Julia of something else. Julia knew from the records that Lucia Colombo wasn’t a mother. It had mystified her at the time of learning that, but then she hadn’t thought anything of it, because she’d been too sure that Lucia had to be CAT.
Like Julia, like Greta, like Ella, CAT was a mother. It was probably why her creative voice had spoken to so many people around the world, so many women who’d been ignored by other artists, male artists who hadn’t given much thought to the female experience.
“That’s the old one,” Julia said, interrupting Gregor as they went by.
“Yes,” Gregor said, smiling. “You probably know it was first painted in 2016. It was CAT’s third mural.”
Julia took a photograph of it and pressed her phone to her chest.
After a few minutes at the mural, Gregor guided them the rest of the way to the 2025 mural, which echoed the previous mother-child mural but featured updated flourishes and the same CAT signature. Several nearby onlookers were taking photographs and talking about it. Julia overheard them say it made sense to them that CAT would paint a brand-new mural after three years of silence and would choose to do it in Paris because Paris is the center of the art world. Gregor chuckled to himself.
“What? Why are you laughing?” Julia demanded.
“Nothing. It’s just that every city likes to call itself the center of the art world,” Gregor said. “New York does it. Berlin does it. London does it. Tokyo does it.”
“You don’t think it’s Paris?” Julia asked.
“I think people love labels, but they’re not always applicable,” he said.
Julia smiled. She liked Gregor. He seemed sensible and eager to tell it like it was.
Gregor began to talk about the similarities between the 2016 mural and the 2025 mural. He said that the style was generally the same, almost as if CAT was returning to her roots after the 2018-2022 advancements in style. His eyes twinkled in a way that gave Julia pause.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked.
Gregor laughed. “What do you think I mean by it?”
Julia jerked her head back in surprise. “You don’t think this was made by CAT.”
Gregor raised his shoulders. “It’s just my personal speculation behind it.”
This was terrible, Julia realized, for it meant that she couldn’t fully use his expertise to explain that Lucia Colombo wasn’t CAT because she’d been in Nantucket at the time of this painting. Julia demanded more information from Gregor, asking him why, exactly, the mural wasn’t a CAT original. A few people overheard this and came over to call Gregor a liar.
“It’s obviously CAT,” a guy in his twenties said. “Look at the signature!”
“I have looked at the signature,” Gregor said. “Why don’t you?”
The twenty-somethings squinted at the signature, as did Charlie and Julia. It took forever, but finally, Julia noted marginal differences between this one and the “official” CAT signature.
“But maybe she’s just out of practice?” she suggested.
Gregor raised his shoulders. “Maybe. But it’s my opinion that this is a very, very good copycat.”
Julia remembered what she’d read in the memoir about the slew of copycats during the Tokyo challenge back in 2017. If Lucia Colombo weren’t CAT, she supposed it wouldn’t have been so difficult to write about the copycats in the memoir, as that period of CAT’s career was well-publicized. It was also well-publicized that the Tokyo newspaper had initially decided not to pay CAT, but that there had been such a backlash in the public that they’d been forced to pay her in the end. That had really happened to whoever CAT was. In the memoir, Lucia (or whoever had written the fake memoir) had written about how angry she’d been in a way that felt so painful and believable and real. But any fiction writer could fake that, Julia supposed.
However, it took a very skilled painter to create a believable copycat of CAT.
Even the twenty-somethings here at the mural refused to believe what Gregor said. “That’s her,” one of them said, “and you’re making up lies. It’s pathetic.”
“You don’t want to appreciate a woman for her unique talents,” another of them said, flaring her nostrils.
But Gregor refused to give up on what he believed in. “I’m happy to talk more about this if you stop spewing insults my way,” he said with a soft laugh, a laugh that meant he didn’t mean any harm.
Very suddenly, the clouds that had threatened on high all afternoon broke open, and rain crashed over them, drenching them. Gregor beckoned for Julia and Charlie to follow him into a nearby wine bar, the menu of which Julia peeped, nervous about the prices. Lucky for her, they were reasonable. She didn’t want to tell Gregor how bad off she felt. They grabbed a table in the corner and ordered glasses of wine, hunkered over their elbows, watching as the rain soaked the mural outside. But that paint wasn’t going anywhere.
Julia decided to be open with Gregor about what she needed. She explained about Lucia, about the suspicions that she wasn’t really CAT, about how she’d been in Nantucket at the time of this newest mural. Gregor was thoughtful, listening with his head tilted.
