The Gilder (15 page)

Marina didn’t know what to say; her nipples were hard as her breasts lifted from the water.

Thomas stood up. “You look just like marble, like you’re imprisoned in the stone. Your hands look like they belong to someone else, like someone is holding you down.”

Marina slid deeper into the water. “Let’s keep going. Before I turn into a prune.”

Once again wrapped in the robe, Marina sat on the daybed and nestled into the red and gold velvet cushions like a dove in a nest of feathers.

“Hang on a sec and I’ll set up the heater for you,” said Thomas from the darkroom.

“I’m fine, take your time.” Marina tucked her legs up underneath her and closed her eyes. She felt as if she were floating, her body weightless.

“Here you go.” Thomas placed a small gas tank on the floor just outside the circle of chairs. He looked at Marina.

“For a second there, in that robe, with the towel on your head, you looked just like Sarah used to look.”

“Well, don’t get too bossy or I might have to quit modeling for you, too.”

Thomas grinned at her as he snaked a narrow black hose between two chairs and set the heater as near to the daybed as was safe. He turned the valve on the gas tank and flicked a blue plastic lighter in front of the element, bringing the heater to life with a gentle pop. The air around her warmed instantly.

“You get cozy, I’ll finish unloading the film.”

Marina drifted in a haze of wine and warmth as the afternoon drizzle increased to a steady downpour, turning the room from white to lavender, then gray. She imagined Sarah modeling for Thomas, pictured her in the middle of the studio, her alabaster body shimmering, her hair longer than it was now, curling down her back, teasing the curve above her buttocks. Thomas circled her, a camera to his face, then the camera was gone and he was running his hands over Sarah’s body. He said something to her, perhaps told her not to move while he explored with palm and fingertip. In her half-dream state, Marina welcomed the hands, imagining Sarah’s lips on her face, neck, her breasts. She arched her back, inviting the soft hands to her belly, her thighs, and felt herself lifted higher, again and again until she let go, spiraling into blackness.

When Marina woke, the studio was dark. She was naked, tangled in the velvet spread. Her throat was dry. Her head ached. Muted sounds came from the direction of the darkroom. She listened, trying to remember why she was there, what she had done, when suddenly it all came into sharp focus. She clutched at the spread and covered her body, praying it had been a dream. Then she heard footsteps crossing to where she lay.

Thomas stood looking down at her for a moment before he spoke. Marina couldn’t make out his face in the shadows, but his words, though quiet, were final.

“Sarah doesn’t need to know about this.”

Part Two

HUDSON RIVER VALLEY, 1993

CHAPTER 9

T
he night was quiet. From where Marina sat huddled in the armchair in her darkened studio, she could see an occasional set of headlights flickering through the trees. Even the frogs in the pond out back were silent, a sure sign that winter was on its way. After Zoe had stormed out of the studio, Marina took her time finishing the section of the frame she was working on, hoping that Zoe might cool off by dinnertime. Usually, given some space, Zoe recovered from her piques fairly quickly, but lately a wash of sullen moodiness, not unlike the glazes Marina used to dirty a brilliant surface, obscured her daughter’s usual lighthearted and loving personality. Tonight when Marina had returned to the house to make dinner, Zoe had refused to come out of her room, and even the scent of bacon frying for her favorite spaghetti al carbonara failed to lure her downstairs. Later, when Marina knocked on her bedroom door to tell her that she was returning to the studio for a while and that there was food on the stove, Zoe’s response had been to turn her music up a few decibels.

Marina shifted her position under the cashmere throw so that her head rested on the back of the armchair. In the shadows overhead, she could just make out where the slender beams met at the peak of the high ceiling. During the day, with Ella or Etta crooning while she worked, Marina rarely thought about the studio’s previous incarnation as a chapel, which for eighty years had served the farming community, with its white clapboard siding, slate roof, and cupola. Now shrouded in silence, she imagined the hallowed space filled with well-scrubbed folk in neatly mended clothes, sitting in rows of simple pews with hands clasped and heads bowed. After the larger brick church was built in town, the county sold the small chapel, along with the adjacent house and an acre of land, to the first in a long line of absentee owners who never seemed to know what to do with it. Finally, it had come to rest with her parents, who fixed it up as a weekend retreat long before the area became fashionable and “going upstate” was a trendy thing for Manhattanites to do. But by the time she went off to college, her parents had begun to lose interest in the country life, and upon her return from Florence, in spite of their concerns about the safety and sanity of her being pregnant and all alone so far from the city, Marina convinced them to let her move to the property. Eventually, after Zoe was born and Marina’s business was up and running, she worked out an arrangement with them to buy the house over time at a greatly reduced price.

Marina shut her eyes and allowed the silence to close in around her, quieting her mind, granting her a moment’s relief before the problem insisted its way back into her psyche—how was she to deal with Zoe’s questions about her father? She cursed herself for agreeing to speak at the conference in Florence. How naïve she’d been to think that Zoe wouldn’t react to the mere mention of that city, that it wouldn’t bring on a flood of questions, questions she thought had been laid to rest long ago. She pulled the old Bakelite telephone onto her lap and moved her hand back and forth across the cool, hard receiver as if conjuring a genie from a bottle. Lydia would know what to do, she always did, and besides, she was the only one who knew the whole of Marina’s story.

Lydia’s friendship was the windfall that had come with Zoe’s birth. They’d met scarcely an hour after Zoe’s relatively quick (but still painful) entrance into the world as Marina lay in her semiprivate room in the county hospital studying the plaster patch on the ceiling above her bed.

The doctor had told her to rest, but adrenaline continued to pump through her veins, making her legs twitch as her mind scrambled to make sense of this new reality.
A baby.
She had a baby. The patch on the ceiling looked like the profile of a Renaissance man, like so many paintings of that period, with their high brows and thin hooked noses. No, she would not think about Florence. She willed her awareness back to the stillness of the pond she’d learned to visualize in childbirth classes. If only she could lie there indefinitely, floating peacefully on the surface, with no thought to the future—of running a business, creating a home, and raising a child, all of it—alone. In the scramble of the last six months since she’d fled Florence, Marina had not had the time or inclination to connect with old friends or make new ones. She had Rachel, her midwife, who would come daily to help with the baby for the first two weeks, her parents would be up for a couple of days as soon as she gave them the green light, and Josh would want to come and pay homage to “the littlest gilder.” But then what? Her parents might visit more often with the lure of a grandchild, and Josh would certainly be by to drop off frames and have a cup of tea, but that was the extent of her support system. If Josh hadn’t come into Sauro’s that day and given her his card, she wouldn’t even have him. A tear ran along her jaw to her neck. She dragged her focus back to the pond, willing her mind to look neither forward nor back, but within seconds, it drifted again, this time back to that final push, the feeling of the tiny torso, arms, and legs falling out of her like a bundle of giant, overcooked spaghetti—then the words, “It’s a girl.” She was surprised at the overwhelming sense of relief that came with those words—at the very least, she’d be able to relate to this little creature’s anatomy.

“You’re awfully quiet over there. Are you okay?” The voice startled Marina from her reverie. She hadn’t given any thought to the fact that there might be someone on the other side of the curtain that was drawn between the two beds.

“I’m fine.” Marina hesitated. “I didn’t realize there was anyone there. Were you asleep?”

“No, just resting, following orders. I thought I’d give you a little time to yourself.” A rustling of sheets accompanied the voice as the curtain drew back to reveal a massive bouquet of white lilies on the nightstand. A blond head appeared from behind the flowers. “I’m Lydia. Sorry about these flowers. I hope the scent isn’t overpowering. They’re not really the right thing for a shared room, but they’re my favorites.” The woman’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her large brown eyes were set in a round face. She had a crooked mouth that hiked up on one side, giving the effect of perpetual mirth. “Is this your first?”

Marina nodded.

“Me, too. It’s mind-blowing, don’t you think? What did you have?”

“A girl.”

“I had a girl, too. Have you named yours?”

“Her name is Zoe.” The words took Marina’s breath.
Not just a name, a person.

Lydia pushed the flower arrangement out of the way and lay back on her pillows. “Zoe. That’s nice. You don’t often hear that name.” When Marina didn’t say anything, she continued, “For us, it was a toss-up between Lorna and Sasha.”

After a moment, Marina found her voice. “Which did you choose?”

“Sasha.”

“That’s a beautiful name. It makes me think of a Russian princess.”

“Well, maybe she is. June’s father is part Russian. We chose it in his honor.”

Before Marina could ask who June was, the door opened, and a small boy hurled himself onto the side of Lydia’s bed.

Lydia laughed. “Easy, Ben,” she said and pulled him onto her lap, kissing his chubby cheek. Over his head, she looked toward the door, where a petite, dark-haired woman stood with a pink-swaddled bundle in her arms, and said, “June, sweetheart.”

The woman crossed the room, seemingly caught in Lydia’s gaze. When she reached the bed, she whispered in a choked voice, “She’s so beautiful. I can’t believe she looks so much like Ben.”

Lydia whispered into the little boy’s ear, “Look, sweetie, it’s your new baby sister, Sasha.” Ben nodded solemnly. Lydia turned to Marina. “This is my son, Ben, and his mother, June.”

Marina nodded although she didn’t understand at all. If Ben was Lydia’s son, how could June be his mother?

Marina smiled at the memory as she unfolded her legs and repositioned the phone on her lap. After June and Ben left that day, Lydia had explained to Marina how much she and June had wanted children and how difficult it had been to find the right man to donate his sperm. They needed someone they knew well enough to ascertain that he was intelligent, in good health, and of sound mind. But it couldn’t be a friend. It had to be someone willing to give up any claim to or involvement with the child. In the end, they’d settled on an acquaintance of June’s from medical school, a fellow doctor who was conveniently married to his research and had no interest in children. Everything had gone smoothly. June gave birth to Ben, and when he turned three, she and Lydia decided it was the right time for Lydia to get pregnant. Even though sperm banks had become more prevalent and single women were beginning to be considered by adoption agencies, they wanted their children to have the same father if at all possible—which it had been. Marina had never heard of such a thing but was so profoundly touched by Lydia’s story that she burst into tears. Lydia’s attempts to console her were no match for the bitter taste of irony that rose in Marina’s throat. How often during her pregnancy had she fantasized about raising this child with Sarah, about creating a life together?

Marina shook her head, remembering her naïve fantasies about a life with Sarah and the baby, flights of fancy that kept the reality of her lonely predicament at bay and nurtured her denial about what she’d done. In some scenarios she told Sarah about the baby as soon as she realized she was pregnant, and the prospect of a child in her life was enough to lure Sarah away from Thomas. As her fantasy went, sometimes they stayed in Florence and Thomas floated benignly on the periphery of their life; at other times, she imagined them disappearing to a stone farmhouse hidden somewhere in the hills of Tuscany. Alternately, she had fantasized about returning to Florence after her baby was born and using it to lure Sarah back to the States, where they would set up a life somewhere Thomas would never find them. For some reason, perhaps her youth, careening hormones, or stress, her flights of imagination had always been tritely cinematic, down to the hooded cape she wore as she emerged from the shadows holding her child, and the golden glow that surrounded the images of her with Sarah working blissfully in a shared workshop.

Now Marina had the urge to laugh out loud at that girl she’d been so long ago, but the prospect of facing Sarah again after so many years of lies sobered her. She had a fleeting thought about going to Florence without seeing Sarah, but she couldn’t imagine it. Florence without Sarah didn’t exist. First, though, she must deal with Zoe. She lifted the receiver and dialed Lydia’s number as fact and fiction swirled through her mind like eddies in a ferocious tide that threatened to drag her down.

“Mom, come on, let me in. I’m going to be late.”

Marina opened the bathroom door and stood back as Zoe pushed past her with sharp shoulders and jutting chin. That morning she’d been relieved to find Zoe at the kitchen table eating cereal and took it as a good sign in spite of the traces of anger that crackled around her daughter like heat lightning. Now, she stood in the doorway watching Zoe ignore her as she fussed with her hair, and inexplicably, her heart expanded, pushing despair aside for a moment. How she loved this child.