Heartwood (32 page)

The problem with this waiting period was, her senses seemed to have shut down. She didn’t see colors anymore, she couldn’t really hear music
—La Bohème
to the contrary—and the sensible food she was eating didn’t have any taste. It was only at night in her dreams that her senses came to life—a kaleidoscope of brightly colored images tumbled through her brain, vivid reds following vibrant blues and greens and yellows. And
Theo was there, pain free, and smiling tenderly at her. She knew he was talking to her, although she couldn’t make out the words, but she understood, as one does in dreams, what the message was.
Make it up with Laura
. And she couldn’t.

She and Laura were cordial enough, mostly for Katie’s sake, although they’d made sure that Laura’s brothers didn’t know about the breach either. But they hadn’t spoken in any meaningful way in a year. Iris didn’t know how her daughter was coping with the cruel joke that had been Robby’s death. She didn’t know how much Laura was hurting over the man she’d given up. And she wasn’t going to ask.

The last—and only—time any of that had been mentioned had been on the phone. Laura had said, “I know you’ll be happy to hear that I’ve ended it with Nick,” and she’d hung up. And the truth was, Iris had been happy to hear it. And in the months since, she had been glad that Laura hadn’t changed her mind. Perhaps a better mother would have said,
My darling, Robby is gone and your life must go on. If you have found someone to love, you have my blessing
. Well, she couldn’t do that. The man—Nick—had been Laura’s lover. She had cheated on her husband because of him. If poor Robby hadn’t died so tragically, she would have broken up her marriage for him.

I know Laura is mourning for Robby—for the boy she married and for the father of her child. She’s not a heartless witch running from Robby’s graveside to her lover’s arms. But I still don’t want her to go to that man—not ever
.

I’m not a judgmental woman. Theo always said I was too willing to see the other person’s side in a fight. When the kids were young, I was the soft one. So what is it that makes me so harsh about this one human failing? Infidelity. Cheating. Having a fling. Or the uglier words people throw around these days. Why can’t I understand this
as I understand so much else? It’s been going on since the beginning of human history, good people have succumbed to the power of sex, and it doesn’t make them monsters
.

I know all of this intellectually. But I don’t feel it. In my gut and in my heart—and, yes, damn it, in my soul—I feel that committing adultery is vile. It causes pain, destroys trust and breaks up homes. It damages children unless they are unbelievably strong
.

It damages adults too. It can turn a woman who prides herself on her open mind and gift for compassion into a woman who cannot forgive. God help me, has it done that to me?

Laura said I couldn’t hear what she was trying to say about her marriage because I was afraid she’s like her father. She said I still hadn’t forgiven him. I tried to. And I thought I had. But maybe I haven’t. Maybe that’s what I’m waiting for. To forgive
.

T
he date on the train ticket stub was a year old. Iris sat at her kitchen table, studying the stub, trying to understand what it meant. She’d found it in the jacket Theo had been wearing on the day he died. Normally Laura would have been with her when she started emptying the pockets, but since she and Laura weren’t talking about things that mattered, Iris hadn’t told her daughter that she had finally decided that it was time to go through Theo’s clothes.

She had resisted doing it for a year and she still hadn’t touched his dress shirts with the monogrammed cuffs, or the good English blazers he had worn when he was working at the hospital every day. They were still in the bedroom, because Theo had arranged them in his drawers and in his closet himself, and she couldn’t make herself disturb his handiwork. But her sons had started insisting that she must disturb it—and sift
and sort and discard and donate. Steve had threatened to send Christina to help her if she didn’t.

So she had started small, not with the bedroom closet or the bureau drawers, but with the old jacket Theo had been wearing when she’d found him unconscious at the head of the stairs leading to the cellar. The paramedics had taken the jacket off him and given it to her, and she had stuffed it in the back of the coat closet. It had stayed there, until today when she had taken it out. She had laid it on the kitchen table, and smoothed it out carefully. Then she had gone through the pockets. She’d been hoping for a stray coin, or a glove, anything he might have left. Maybe something with a lingering scent. What she had found was the train ticket stub. When she pulled it out, her first impulse had been to phone Laura. But she didn’t do that anymore.

The train ticket had been used on the day Theo died. For three years after his heart attack, he hadn’t gone into the city unless she was driving him because the trip was too stressful for him. He’d known he was sick, and he’d been very careful not to strain himself. But that day he had gone into New York to do … what? And then he’d come home and he’d gone into the cellar, knowing he’d have to climb back up the steps when he was already exhausted.

Theo had gone into the cellar from time to time, but always when she was home and could stand at the top of the stairs to be sure he was all right. He used the cellar as a storage place for the old patient files he’d kept, because every once in a while the young doctor who had taken over for him would have a question about something that wasn’t in the office records. Then Theo would make his way down to the basement—slowly and carefully—to look up the information. That was what Iris had assumed had happened on the day that he’d had his heart attack.
But now it seemed that might not have been the case. Theo had gone to New York earlier in the day. And he hadn’t told her he was going. Iris stood up, walked to the cellar door, and opened it.

A waft of dank air came at her, and she recoiled instinctively. The cellar was unfinished, and while it was dry enough, it was dirty and dark and full of cobwebs. Theo hadn’t minded it, but she’d always found it creepy and had avoided it.

Someone had closed the cellar door after they took Theo away in the ambulance on that terrible day. She had always assumed it was one of her boys, but she didn’t know for sure. There was a chance that she might have looked down into the gloom of the cellar to try to see what Theo had been doing down there if the door had been open, but because it was closed it had been easy to put the mystery out of her mind. Until now. She started making her way down the staircase that led into the cellar.

The staircase had been built along one wall, and there were railings on both sides of it. There was a good-sized ledge on the wall above the railing, where the kids used to stack their ice skates in the wintertime. Above the ledge was a light switch. In the darkness Iris fumbled along the wall and found the ledge. She moved her hand up to find the light switch. There was something blocking it. It was flat and rectangular and it felt as if it had been wrapped in the kind of heavy brown paper one used for packing things. It had been placed on the ledge and it was leaning against the wall, covering the switch. Iris was sure it hadn’t been there the last time she’d turned on the light.

Taking the package off the ledge wasn’t easy. It wasn’t heavy but it was large and she was slightly off balance because she had to lean back to lift it. When she finally managed to get it down
she had to hold it with one hand and try to hang on to the stair rail with the other. Thankfully, she only had a couple of steps to climb.

In the light of the living room she took a look at her treasure. It had indeed been wrapped in brown paper and there was an address label from a thrift shop in Manhattan stuck to one corner of it.

Bells went off in Iris’s head. There had been a family dinner … she had been so angry at Laura, she remembered … and Katie had been talking about a photograph … no, it was a painting … that looked exactly like Iris. The child had mentioned that she and her mother had seen it in a thrift shop, and Iris had said she must go there and see it for herself. But then Theo had had the heart attack, and she’d forgotten all about it. The thrift shop was on Madison Avenue, she remembered that. Iris looked at the address label on the package she was holding. Madison Avenue. She began tearing off the paper.

When the picture was free of the wrapping she turned it over so she could see it. And almost dropped it in astonishment. She had expected to see a vague likeness of herself—something an imaginative little girl would make into a spooky story. But this was like looking into a mirror! The woman in the picture was elegantly dressed in turn-of-the-century fashion, and her expression was haughty, but there could be no mistaking that nose and mouth, that neck—or most of all, those eyes.

It’s me. I don’t know how or why, but this is a picture of me. Or someone related to me … Mama didn’t have any relatives in this country, so could it have been someone on the Friedman side? But it must have been very expensive to have your portrait painted … none of Papa’s people could have afforded it. And none of them would have spent their money that way, even if they could
.

Theo put it in the basement … he had to be the one who did it, that’s the only way it could have gotten there. He went all the way into the city to get this picture because he knew Katie was right, it did look like me. But how did he know it would? And then he tried to hide it. That’s the only explanation—he put it in the cellar to hide it. From me? He risked his life to do that … he lost his life … but why? What did my husband know?

A memory floated into Iris’s mind of one of those chance meetings she and her mother had with Paul Werner when she was a child. This time when they ran into him, his mother had been with him. The mother had been very sick and they heard that she had died soon after. Anna had been so nervous that day. But then, whenever Paul Werner showed up she was nervous … and different. Afterward, she had lied to Joseph and denied meeting Paul and his mother. Iris had hated Paul for turning her mother into a liar.

Later in her life Iris would come to know Paul as the benefactor who had rescued her family. Her proud husband had been willing to allow Paul to help them … and she had never understood why. She had never known why Theo and Paul had been fond of each other either. Before Paul died, they had been friends … The kind of friends who might tell each other things? Intimate things? Secrets that had been buried deep.

Iris was grasping the picture so tightly that the canvas was buckling. She looked again at the face that was exactly like her own and she thought she might be sick. Every instinct said to throw the damn thing in the trash and never think of it again. But it was too late for that, there was no way to stop thinking about this now. Besides, she had been trying not to think certain things, and blaming herself for certain thoughts, since she was a child. It was time to know the truth.

There was something else Katie had said about the portrait … something about the woman who had donated it to the thrift shop. She had owned a store on Madison Avenue, a high-end boutique … yes, it was where Anna used to buy her clothes. Iris had bought there too. Chez Lea, that was the name of the place. But what was the name of the woman? Iris remembered addressing her as Lea …, but what was her last name? Iris had never known it; she’d been the woman’s customer, not her friend.

But they would know a donor’s full name at the thrift shop. They’d know if she was still alive—she must be in her late seventies by now, if she was—or if the picture had been given to them by an executor of her estate. If she was still alive, they might even know where she lived. It was a place to start anyway. Iris put the picture down and went to the phone to dial Manhattan information.

L
eah Sherman—the manager of the thrift shop
had
known her last name—had sold her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and moved to Riverdale. To a “retirement facility” called The Colony, according to the rather grand person who had answered the phone when Iris called and asked for directions to the place.