The Objects of Her Affection (13 page)

Sophie didn’t move until she heard the stutter of the freight elevator door and the hum and whine of cable. She waited another moment to be sure, then flipped the dead bolt and escaped. She picked up the dog, unlocked Brian’s office door, and found the stroller leaning against his desk, still folded. She pushed the release lever with her thumb and gave the handle a shake, popping the stroller open. Reaching into the basket, she located a zipped compartment under the seats and pulled out one of the foot muffs that were folded inside. Sophie stuffed the dog into the quilted sack, then rolled it up and shoved it back into its pocket. She zipped the compartment shut, pushed the release lever again and collapsed the stroller, trapping the dog deep inside.

She rolled the folded stroller into the hallway and locked Brian’s door. Inhaling deeply through her nose, she savored the adrenaline that was charging through her veins. Ahead of her, the exit sign was rimmed with an exquisite halo of light. The rubbery stroller handle felt plush; the large wheels cushiony. Through the darkness, Sophie was aware of every angle formed where walls met ceiling, where doorjambs met lintels; she was dazzled by the pattern of planes running headlong toward the end of the hallway; she imagined the wall disappearing, and the planes continuing into space, converging in a point that moved infinitely onward.

Downstairs she found Brian sitting on the stairs, cradling Elliot in his arms while Lucy skipped up and down the steps. Sophie apologized, explaining that she had run into a client who had gone on and on about a new project. They left through the west entrance, Elliot asleep on Brian’s shoulder, Lucy holding Sophie’s hand as Sophie wheeled the folded stroller through the crowd to the guard station. The guard fist-bumped Brian, gave Sophie’s diaper bag a quick glance, and wiggled his fingers at Lucy.

On the walk home, Sophie linked her arm through Brian’s and relished the first touch of autumn coolness in the air. She admired the pink and green neon sign in front of Nero’s Pizza; why hadn’t she noticed it before? It was an old one, full of retro charm. She chattered happily about the evening: Lucy’s lantern! Elliot’s romp through the Asian galleries! Could you believe the turnout? And the acrobats—so beautiful, so daring!

In November the ginkgo tree went off like a firecracker, its leaves turning bright yellow, filling the second and third floor front bedrooms with their noisy glow. At the end of their run they fell, practically all at once, like a shower of sparks all over the cars and the sidewalk and the worn marble stoops.

Lucy was four now, and went to preschool every day. Sophie put Elliot, now two, into day care on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Those two mornings were more luxurious, more restorative and liberating, than she imagined any tropical vacation could be. With no one else in the house she was free to wander its rooms at her leisure; free to eat a snack at any moment without explanation; free to sort through the kids’ toys and throw out the rocks, sticks, and headless dolls. She finally installed the porcelain keyhole covers, and touched up the paint where the stroller had marred the vestibule wall. She sat in her reading chair and browsed through shelter magazines, dreaming of marble counters and built-in bookshelves.

They continued to see Keith and Amy. Sophie scrutinized them for signs of marital distress, but couldn’t pick up on anything. One night at their house, Keith had made everyone drinks and left a kitchen cabinet open, and Amy, who had been leaning down to talk to Mathilda, straightened up fast and banged her head on the corner of the cabinet door. She cried out and bent double, clutching her head and groaning while Mathilda laughed. Keith swiftly filled a small bag with ice and guided Amy to a chair, rubbing her back while she rocked in pain. Sophie imagined that if Amy had been harboring any hidden anger toward Keith it would have burst out at that moment, in the form of a sharp remark about the open cabinet door, or at the very least, by brushing his hand away. But Amy accepted his tender ministrations, and after icing her head for a while she came to the table and made a joke about needing a hard hat.

During her time at home Sophie tried to contemplate her career, but found it difficult to focus. She did miss her work, but was filled with resentment toward her field: she had dedicated so much of herself to it, for so many years, and the minute she slowed down it had sped off without her. She knew she could catch up, with hard work and one or two successful projects, but for now she preferred to sulk.

She also resented that when Brian asked her about work she was forced to be evasive and dishonest. If her field were not so impatient, so sexist, she wouldn’t be in this position. “How is that New York project going?” he would ask. And she would answer that it was the perfect client, they were totally understanding of her schedule, and they were keeping her busy with a steady stream of revisions and additions. “That’s fantastic,” he would say, genuinely pleased and probably grateful that she hadn’t gone into a lengthy explanation of the project’s back-end dynamics.

Brian may have been a detective at work—searching for clues and following leads—but at home he seemed blithely content to accept whatever Sophie told him. He failed to notice that she never got client phone calls, never had to work at night or on the weekends. Nor did he notice that even though their bank balance kept dipping close to zero, they always had enough for groceries, and that there were always twenties in Sophie’s wallet when he needed them. Brian was happily absorbed in his own career, whose skyward trajectory seemed limitless. His journal article had been well received; the Milan vase got a small mention in the
Times
; he’d secured a place for the museum in the will of an elderly collector of majolica.

Above all, Brian was caught up in his quest for the missing Saint-Porchaire candlestick. He’d come back from his visit to Madame Viellefond practically trembling with excitement: apparently Wilder’s lover, Sandrine, had passed down several works of art to her family. Madame Viellefond showed him a small Dutch painting that he felt certain was important, although he wasn’t planning to put the Paintings curator on its trail just yet. Sophie knew he was waiting until he’d finished his own plunder of the family treasures; no need to send them scurrying to the appraisers just yet. Madame Viellefond had given him a list of Sandrine’s progeny and he’d written to them all, presumably asking, in the most casual way possible when writing letters in French, whether any of them had seen a fancy candlestick lying around.

Sophie, too, was spending a lot of time thinking about museum-quality antiques. Harry had not been thrilled by the Irish setter. “Nineteenth century?” had been his exasperated response. He’d paid her reluctantly, grumbling that he’d never be able to sell it, but Sophie didn’t really care. Her real payment was the small thrill that trembled in her throat every time she imagined the rest of the objects waiting in the storage room, or recalled those silent, terrifying moments in the dark. She could still taste the strange, exciting rush of fear that felt like the mirror image of desire.

During their usual gin-soaked lunch at the tavern, Harry had an idea. “Let’s pop over to the Met,” he said. “I’ll take you around, show you the good stuff. Yeah?”

“I don’t know, Harry, I need to relieve the sitter.”

“Just give me an hour. I want to show you some of my favorite things, give you a little brushup on sixteenth century versus, say, nineteenth. So the next time you see something at a sidewalk sale, or your grandmother’s china cabinet or whatever, you’ll know what you’re looking at.” Harry laced his fingers together and turned his hands inside out, cracking all ten knuckles.

Sophie stared at him for a moment, turning things over in her mind. “All right,” she said slowly. “To the Met.”

Once they were inside the museum, it became clear that Harry was well acquainted with the labyrinthine floor plan. He led her quickly through the throngs of people crowding the Great Hall and into the moody, churchlike Medieval galleries, eventually emerging into a tapestry-lined gallery of Renaissance art. “Augsburg and Nuremberg,” he said briskly, pulling her toward some display cases filled with gleaming objects made of gold, silver, glass, and shell. “All of this was made for the courts of Northern Europe; the German silversmiths were like the Lagerfelds and Louboutins of their time.” He showed her a drinking vessel in the shape of a stag; a tankard swirling with vines and flowers and topped with a naked putto; a footed cup engraved with pastoral scenes. He drew her eye to the imaginative wit of the decoration, and the natural attitudes of the miniature creatures that sprouted from handles and lids. He pointed out the feats of perspective in the tiny, intricate scenes, and explained repoussé, damascening, fire gilding. For a brief time Harry slipped from behind his droll facade, and surprised Sophie with a level of earnestness she hadn’t thought him capable of.

“You should be a docent!” she teased him.

“Maybe I will someday. As penance for my sins.” He drew her into an English period room lined with dark oak paneling, and pointed out a pair of silver ginger jars in a small case. “See those?” he said. “Seventeenth century, English, cast and chased.” He cracked the knuckle of his forefinger. “Just gorgeous.” He turned to the label. “They belong to someone I know.”

“One of your wanker clients?” Sophie asked. The label read, “Anonymous Loan.”

“One of my dad’s clients. Someone with great taste, but terrible manners.” Harry shook his head.

“Why did he loan these out?”

“With something like this, impeccable provenance, bought at auction for a ridiculous sum, the insurance is ruinous,” Harry said. “But if you loan it to a museum, they pick up the insurance. Of course, some people also do it for the bragging rights, but my man’s a bit more discreet than that. He keeps his best stuff hidden away where no one will ever see it.”

“Who is he?”

“Also, these are English. Normally he’s got more continental taste. But I think he couldn’t resist the workmanship on these.”

“Is he French?”

“You know what we should look at?” Harry brightened. “Storage!”

“How—”

“Follow me.” Harry strode through several small galleries, then led her to a glass elevator that deposited them on a mezzanine in the American wing. “Visible storage!” he announced grandly, as he swept through a pair of doors. “This is just the American stuff—some of it, anyway. You’ve never been in here?”

“Never,” Sophie breathed, her eyes struggling to take in the sight. As far as she could see, acres of simple glass cases were filled with shelf after shelf of tightly packed objects, furniture, and paintings. Along one aisle, Tiffany glass was stacked on stepped shelves like crayons in a box. Down another aisle, ranks of grandfather clocks stood as humorless as palace guards. Paintings were hung in jumbled rows, ornate gilded frames butting up against bare canvas. In another case, empty frames gaped strangely, displaying the utilitarian lattice on which they were hung.

“Museums are like icebergs,” Harry said, standing in front of a floor-to-ceiling pile of chairs. “You only see the top five or ten percent. But some museums are starting to show the work in storage like this—no labels, no precious arrangement. Look over here.” He led her around a corner to a row of cases thickly stocked with hundreds of silver tumblers, creamers, chafing dishes, and flatware. Arranged by type—dozens of identical coffeepots followed by dozens of identical saltcellars—the effect was of an assembly line, or a shelf at Target.

Sophie walked slowly down the aisle, struck by the depreciation of the objects once they were placed in this dizzying, hall-of-mirrors display of accumulation. What could be more anonymous than fifty monogrammed tumblers? Did anyone care where these endless tallies of spoons came from; whose mouths had they been inside?

“It all becomes sort of meaningless, doesn’t it?” she said. “When you see it like this.”

Harry shrugged. “If you collect pie servers, it’s nirvana. You can see every kind of American pie server ever made. But yeah—for the average person, it all sort of bleeds together, doesn’t it?”

“Mmm.” For a moment Sophie had a strange, floating feeling, as if the floor had dropped away, and everything—the silver, the glass, the paintings, herself and Harry—had become mere molecules bobbing about in an invisible and immeasurable puff of air.

***

Sophie became aware of someone looking at her from across the café. She was sitting on a flabby, coffee-stained sofa, waiting for her new friend, a real estate agent named Janice she’d met at a dinner party. But now she found herself locking eyes with Carly, who gave her a small smile and a half wave. Sophie frowned into her mug. She didn’t want her pleasant afternoon interrupted by some kind of confrontation. But now Carly was standing in front of her, and after an awkward moment, she helped herself to the spot Sophie had been saving for Janice.

“Hey,” said Carly. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“No, really—what is going on?”

Sophie had once enjoyed Carly’s bold, entitled directness. Now she found it obnoxious. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why the cold shoulder?”

“You know why.”

“What did you hear? Or see?”

“What do you think?”

Carly pushed air through her nose in exasperation. “If you’re talking about me and Keith, it’s long over. Things got weird really fast…”

“Things got weird the minute you decided to ignore my wishes.” Sophie instantly regretted the phrase “my wishes.”

“Look, I’m sorry about that. But it wasn’t about you.”

Sophie looked into Carly’s face for the first time, surprised by the anger she found there.

“It had nothing to do with you,” Carly continued. “It was between two consenting adults.”

“I don’t think Amy and I were consenting.”

“Why do you keep trying to insert yourself into this situation? You’re not Keith’s wife.”

“But I asked you not to! I was clear! I didn’t want you fucking with our friends!”

“And what about me? Aren’t I your friend? What if this was something I needed?”

Sophie let out a short, hard laugh. “You don’t need that. You don’t need anything. You have everything already. You took someone’s husband, just for kicks, and that’s wrong.”

“Excuse me? How do I have everything?” Carly crossed her arms and leaned her head to one side, apparently expecting an answer.

“You’re kidding me.”

“No, really. How can you, with your husband and your children—these people who
belong
to you, who are
part
of
you—tell me I have everything.”

“That’s not—you have everything else. Oh, please, don’t pretend to be jealous of me.”

Carly narrowed her eyes.

“Anyway,” Sophie continued, flustered, “that’s beside the point. You took Amy’s husband.”

“Come off it. It’s just sex, for Christ’s sake, and I didn’t ‘take’ anyone’s husband. She still has her husband. Nobody got hurt.”

“I did.”

Carly grimaced in confusion. “How?”

“You basically made it clear you don’t give a shit about my feelings.”

Carly rested her forehead on her fingertips, eyes skyward. “Sorry.”

Sophie said nothing.

“Anyway,” Carly continued, more softly, “we all have stuff to resolve.”

“What’s this ‘we’ business?”

Carly snorted.

“No, really. What?” Sophie’s breath shrank in her chest. Heat gathered in her head.

Carly straightened. “Nobody’s perfect, all right? I’ve got issues, you’ve got issues…”

“Excuse me? What
issues
do I have?”

“I don’t know, let’s start with control freak?” Carly pressed her lips together and let her words settle for a moment. “You want to control everyone around you, you want to control me, you want to control yourself—
especially
yourself. I mean, my God. You’ve got everything locked up behind this big, black iron fence, and you won’t let anyone in. Just, you know, as an example.”

Things were sizzling, now, in Sophie’s ears. How dare she? “How dare you?”

“What?”

“You think you know anything about what I have quote-unquote locked up? What’s with this psychoanalysis bullshit? You’re the one we’re talking about. You’re the one with an addiction to stealing people’s husbands.” She must have been getting loud. People were turning their heads and laughing nervously. “Because no one ever gets hurt. Because it’s a
victimless
crime
.” Sophie drew out the phrase, furiously finger-quoting. “Such bullshit. There are victims all around you.”