The Drowning Tree (36 page)

A
S IF TO SUBSTANTIATE MY LIE TO MY FATHER
, I
FIND
P
ORTIA SLUMPED OVER A
stack of papers that I deduce from the pained expression on her face can only be financial aid forms. Annemarie is standing behind her polishing the cappuccino maker. She’s rubbing so hard it’s as if she believed the copper machine was a magic lantern that might produce enough money to send Portia to Penrose.

“You mean because we own our own house you’re not eligible for certain kinds of aid?” she’s asking as I come in.

“They assume we could borrow on the house—”

“Well, then, we’ll borrow on the house.”

“No, Mama, you worked so long to pay off the mortgage. We’ll think of something else. Here’s Aunt Juno; she’ll have an idea.”

Annemarie turns around and both women look at me with the same kind of beseeching gaze the dogs gave me when I tied them up on the porch outside.

“Let me take a look at those,” I offer even though I seriously doubt I’ll be able to find some hidden source of money in the labyrinth of financial language. Annemarie comes around the counter and bustles me over to a table while telling Portia to get me coffee and biscotti and whatever else I want.
Some panini? A little minestrone?

I take an almond biscotti and an amaretto cappuccino and turn to the forms. A half an hour and two refills later I’ve managed to scare up a few extra hundred dollars and thought of a few scholarship suggestions—she’s already gotten one from the Rotary Club and one from the Sons of Columbus—but it’s clear that she’s still thousands short of making even the first semester’s tuition.

“I think we can clear about five thousand dollars if we take on more catering jobs this summer. We’ve gotten three calls already from people who were at Gavin Penrose’s engagement party. Thanks for helping with the cake, by the way. When I got back here I discovered that the power was out so I had to move all the perishables to our refrigerator at home.”

“No problem. Everyone loved the cake—” Instead of remembering Annemarie’s lovely cake, though, I suddenly see the bleeding cake of my dreams. “Has Gavin Penrose paid up your bill yet?” I ask, trying to drive the image from my mind. “Portia told me he owed you for two jobs.”

“Three including last night,” Annemarie says. She nods at Portia—which Portia takes as a cue to go back to the counter—and then she looks back at me and, lowering her voice, asks, “Why? Have you heard of any problems with other people getting paid?”

I think of the phone call I overheard between Gavin and Dominic Minelli. Although I can hardly tell Annemarie that I’ve been eavesdropping on private conversations I feel I have to give her some warning. I take a look around to see who’s in the cafe, but it’s mostly old Italian-American men. The lunch crowd from the Heights hasn’t turned up yet. Only two women customers in casual khakis and T-shirts, but expensive-looking loafers and handbags, are having salads on the other side of the room too far away to overhear.

“Look, I don’t know anything for sure, but why don’t you ask Ray’s uncle, Dom, if he knows anything, okay? And maybe you should ask for cash up front for any other jobs for him.” I look over toward the two women in khakis to let Annemarie know why I’m not pronouncing Gavin’s name. “Are you doing their wedding?”

“Yes, in August. I could ask for a fifty percent deposit, but if I get him angry he might tell his friends that he wasn’t happy with us …” Annemarie shrugs her elegant shoulders and rolls her eyes heavenward as if to indicate the disapproval that might emanate from the celestial beings on high. It’s ridiculous, I think, as if we were medieval serfs living at the whim and pleasure of the landed gentry. I know it’s not
that
bad, but it’s true that many of the town’s businesses—Gal’s and Minelli and Sons and McKay Glass—are dependent on the money and goodwill of the people who live in the Heights, on people like Gavin Penrose.

“I’ll see if I can find out anything else. Meanwhile, why don’t you try dealing directly with Joan Shelley? I’m pretty sure
she’s
loaded.”

Annemarie gives my hand a squeeze and tells me to wait a moment—she’ll get me some food for lunch. Do I want anything else?

“Well, I am making dinner for a friend tonight. Could I buy one of your tiramisu cakes?”

“Buy? After all your help,
cara?
Don’t insult me.”

Annemarie disappears into the kitchen and I finish my coffee. A group of young women come in wearing the same khakis-loafers-Louis-Vuitton-handbag uniform as the first pair and take the table next to me. They talk about the relative merits of several nursery schools and the competition to get into the best ones. Portia comes over and they order salads
with dressing on the side
and mineral water
with extra lemon
, slowly pronouncing their special requests as if Portia were a deaf-mute. After they order the conversation turns to nannies. One woman mentions that she’s had to fire hers because she wanted a month off to go home to Jamaica to visit her children.

“I’ve been a corporate lawyer for twelve years and I only get two weeks off,” she says.

By the time Annemarie comes back with two shopping bags full of food I’m wondering if it’s really so important that Bea finish out high
school in Rosedale. I’ve stuck it out here for all these years, first because of my dad, and then because of the good schools and, I suppose, a sense of nostalgia, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s really such a healthy environment.

IN ADDITION TO SANDWICHES, COFFEES, AND PASTRIES
FOR THE GUYS
, A
NNEMARIE
has given me enough food to serve an elegant dinner for a party of twelve. Salad, thinly sliced prosciutto, a whole melon, fresh mozzarella, a huge chunk of imported parmesan, hand-rolled spaghetti, a loaf of sour dough, and a tiramisu cake. I unpack it all into the refrigerator and spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning the loft. Before my father can get too nosy our daily thundershower rolls in with such fury that it knocks the power out.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right here all alone in the dark?” my father asks before leaving.

“I’ve got plenty of candles,” I tell him.

When they’ve finally gone I light the candles. I’ve got dozens from the crafts shows I used to sell at—hand-dipped tapers and scented votives, enormous squat pillars and ones shaped like flowers that float in water. When I finish lighting them all the loft with its high-pitched roof looks like a cathedral—the panes in the skylight misted over by the rain, the pattern of interlaced vines and leaves in the glass a dark tracery of shadows.

I slice the honeydew into thin crescents that I fan out on a willowware platter and then drape with a sheer layer of pink prosciutto. I go out onto the roof and pick some tomatoes and basil and make another platter with the fresh mozzarella. Then I pour a glass of wine and, taking one of the votive candles with me, go into the bathroom and fill up the tub.

It’s not until I step in that I remember that the hot water heater is electric. The water isn’t exactly frigid—there must have been some hot water left in the tank—but it’s cool enough to shock me. Still, I’m sweaty from all that cleaning so I force myself in and once I’m in it feels kind of good. I dip my head back until the water touches my forehead and my hair fans out behind me—I can make out a dim reflection of myself in the misty skylight above me—and it reminds me of Millais’s painting of
drowned Ophelia. All I need are flowers. Then I remember Christine’s experiment to see how long she could stay in a tub filled with cold water and instantly I feel the chill of the water seeping into my bones—an insistent pressure pushing all the warmth out of my veins. I pull myself out of the tub and grab the towel hanging next to the bathroom mirror, where I meet my own gaze. The face that looks back at me in the candlelit half light is drained of blood, lips blue, eyes cavernous—the face of someone drowning. “What in the world are you thinking?” I ask myself for the second time today. “What do you think you’re doing?”

A
FTER THAT
I
PUT ON JEANS AND A
T-SHIRT—NOT THE GAUZY LITTLE SUMMER DRESS
I’d laid out on my bed—and blow out about half the candles. I pour my glass of wine down the drain. My cold bath has done nothing for my tangled mess of hair, but at least it’s cleared my head.

I’m making dinner for my ex-husband, I say to myself as I chop onions and lay bacon strips in the cast-iron skillet—my daughter’s father. Lots of divorced women I know have amicable relationships with their exes. It’ll be good for Bea to see that we get along—but that’s it. It would not be good for Bea for me to become romantically involved with an ex-mental patient—the man who tried to drown us both fourteen years ago.

The buzzer from the front door sounds when the last of the bacon is fried. I turn off the burner, wipe my hands on the back of my jeans, and head down to the front door, taking with me the faint smell of onions and bacon through the factory, past the doors to the furnaces where Penrose’s iridescent glass used to be blown, past the rooms where the stained-glass windows were assembled and the loading docks where the crated windows once waited to be taken down to the city by train. Sometimes when I imagine the factory in full swing it’s hard to understand why it couldn’t be like that again.

When I open the door no one’s there. I’d forgotten to mention that it takes about five minutes for me to get down from the loft to the front entrance, but surely Neil wouldn’t just leave. I step out into the wet street—the rain’s stopped, but water is still running in the gutters, and the air is saturated with moisture—and look right and left. There’s an old VW Bug
with a sticker for Greenpeace on it that I suspect is Neil’s, but it’s empty. I’m going back in when I hear a voice from above.

“Vito’s is brief,” the voice says in a deep, rumbly bass, “but Art’s is longer.”

He’s sitting on the ledge beneath the inscription, about fifteen feet above the sidewalk, dangling his legs over the side. I can see the soles of his red canvas high-tops.

“So who would you rather date?”

“Very funny. You never were very good at Latin.”

“No, I’m far better at the Romance languages.” He turns around and starts climbing down, his fingers finding handholds between the old, cracked bricks until he’s five or six feet off the ground. Then he pushes off the wall and lands, knees slightly bent, light as a cat by my side. He’s got all his grace back. The last time I saw him at Briarwood—thirteen years ago—he was so dosed up on lithium he could barely walk down the hall without falling on his face.

“Hey,” he says, shaking brick dust off his hands, “I like your place so far.”

“Well, do you want to go in the traditional route,” I ask, indicating the door, “or are you planning to scale the battlements?”

“Not if the lady of the keep is willing to let down the drawbridge.” He sweeps down into a deep bow with a flourish of his hand and I try to keep from laughing.

“It’s hardly a castle, but wipe your feet,” I say walking in ahead of him. “These floor are hell to clean.”

I can hear him stop behind me at just the same spot where Christine paused when I brought her here—in the middle of the room in front of the wall of windows facing west. The sky is still overcast out on the street, but to the west a thin band of sunlight has appeared above the hills, enough to light up the heavy blue-gray clouds as if from inside. Furrowed with bands of copper, they look like another set of ridges above the Hudson Highlands. When I turn to Neil I see that his face is bathed in that eerie after-rain glow.

“It’s as if the room were a vessel to hold the light,” he says. “It should be a museum.”

“Penrose wanted only natural light in his studios and workshops. Come on, I’ll show you the rest.”

When I open the door to the annex the dogs are waiting there. They take one look at Neil and lift up their long, thin noses and howl.

“They’re a little skittish,” I explain, although truthfully I’ve never heard them howl before. “They were trained to race and kept in these awful cramped crates. They’re still not used to being loose.”

“Yeah, I know how they feel.” Neil puts out his hand, palm up and the dogs stretch their long necks toward him without taking a step forward. He scratches Francesca behind the ear and she leans her whole head into his hand, rolling her eyes back. Paolo still eyes him suspiciously.

“Something smells great,” Neil says.

“I’m making spaghetti carbonara. I hope you haven’t become a vegetarian.”

“Nope, still a meat eater … is this your studio?”

“This is McKay Glass. I’d show you the Lady window but the power is out so I can’t turn on the light table.” Neil doesn’t seem interested in the window, though; he’s squinting at the spiral staircase and looking up at the skylights in the loft above as if trying to remember something. “Hey, didn’t we break in here once?”

“I was wondering if you’d remember.” Neil and I—and sometimes Christine—had broken into several old abandoned mansions along the Hudson and a couple of old warehouses and factories. It was a sort of hobby of Neil’s. We’d seen far more spectacular places—ruined ballrooms with grass growing up in between the marble floors and indoor pools turned into underground lakes—than this little factory and so I’d thought he might have forgotten it. “We didn’t get far and this area looked different. It was originally Penrose’s private office and studio, but then it was used for storage after his death—”