The Objects of Her Affection (29 page)

Maybe Harry was right: they were all just thieves stealing from thieves. Who could ever know where the mirror had come from in the first place—how often had it been bought, sold, stolen, bestowed, lost, found, treasured, ignored. On the subject of provenance, the mirror was silent. The only truth it could tell was the artistry of its maker, the deftness of his hand, the whimsy of his mind. She slid open the glass cabinet, pulled out the mirror, and turned it over to look at the maker’s mark: a proud W hovering above the head of a fierce lion. “This is mine,” the mark seemed to growl.

“What are you doing?” Becca was standing in the doorway, her mouth puckered with worry. “Put that back!”

“This belongs to someone I know,” Sophie said, clutching the mirror to her belly. “I’m taking it with me.”

“You can’t!” Becca gasped. “Put it back! He’s upstairs now—you have to go.”

“We’re going,” Sophie said, clumsily lifting Elliot out of the chair with her free arm. Becca reached out to grab the mirror, but Sophie held it tight against herself. Elliot whimpered, his arms clamped around her neck. “Stop it, Becca,” Sophie said. Becca was working the fingers of both hands around the edges of the mirror, her face turning red. “He’s going to hear us. Let go.”

“Give it to me. Give it back.”

“No. Becca, listen to me right now. That’s enough.”

“Give it. Give it!”

“Stop it!” Lucy howled. “Stop fighting!”

“Shhh!” Sophie and Becca both hissed. Becca backed away, looking like she wanted to cry. “Get out of here,” she pleaded, holding out her arms, her hands open, spread wide and helpless. “If he sees you, he will literally kill me.”

“Becca, literally means—oh, never mind.” Sophie grabbed Lucy’s hand and led her out of the library into the hallway, urging her down the steps, the mirror digging uncomfortably into her chest as she held it between herself and her son.

“Mommy,” protested Lucy, who, for some reason, still descended the stairs like a toddler: two feet together, one foot down, two feet together.

“We have to hurry,” said Sophie, sorely tempted to try carrying both children. After another moment she released Lucy’s hand, hurried down the stairs, and set Elliot in the entrance hall, then ran back up, two stairs at a time, hoisted Lucy into her arms, and rushed back down, panting, the mirror still clutched in one hand.

“Mommy, my slipper fell off!”

“Don’t worry about your slipper.”

“Becca said I could keep them!”

“She was kidding.”

“No, she
wasn’t
. I want my slipper! My slipper!”

Sophie had the stroller out of the closet; she shoved the mirror into the diaper bag, along with their shoes. She opened the vestibule door and heaved the folded stroller through it. Lucy headed back toward the stairs, but Sophie caught her by the arm.

“I WANT MY SLIPPER!!! IT’S MINE! I GET TO KEEP IT!” screamed Lucy.

“Lucy, hush!”

High above them, a man’s face appeared over the banister. It disappeared, then reappeared as he rounded the staircase from the second floor, stopping to pick up Lucy’s slipper. Sophie stared up at him, choking back her breath, which was rushing out of her chest in hoarse gusts.

Yoshiro Hansei’s skin was dark, his features thick without being fleshy. Short, sparse eyebrows angled upward like accents, but they were so disengaged from his eyes they did nothing to add levity to his expression. A mustache pronged sharply downward around his full, stern lips, which sat atop the sheer cliff of a chin. He finished descending the stairs and offered Lucy the slipper. She snatched it, shooting Sophie a triumphant look.

Sophie swung her diaper bag over the shoulder closest to the front door. “I’m so sorry,” she said, taking Elliot’s hand. “We didn’t mean to disturb you. My kids…we’re friends with Mina and Takashi.”

“Friends?” He said the word curiously.

“We go to Music for Me together.”

“What is that?”

“It’s a music class. For little kids. It’s…awful. Anyway, we just had to use your facilities.” Hansei furrowed his brow. “Becca asked us to leave right away. You know, she is a wonderful nanny. You’re very lucky. Your children are in excellent hands.”

“Thank you.”

“We’re going now.”

“It’s chilly outside. Where are your shoes?”

“In my bag,” said Sophie, yanking the front door open. “We’ll put them on outside. We’re late.” And with that she hauled the stroller down the front steps, threw it open on the sidewalk, strapped both kids into their seats, and set off down the street, her slippers scuffing flimsily over the purplish-gray slabs of slate.

Shadyside Orchards, Sophie had heard, trucked in pumpkins from Maryland and scattered them in their drought-ravaged fields, then charged people to ride out there in a wagon and “pick” them. This was where she drew the line. This year, she decided, they would drive around Bucks County until they found a farm with no haunted corn maze, no pumpkin catapult, no loudspeakers; just a barn and some dirt and a few actual pumpkin plants. Brian had agreed to the plan, possibly seeing in it, as Sophie did, a chance for the four of them to knit something back together in a photogenic context. Brian drove, and since he hated 95 he decided to take Broad Street all the way out of the city—a bleak, halting journey that increased Sophie’s impatience to leave Philadelphia behind. The once-grand avenue led them past the toothless, swaying remains of the Divine Lorraine Hotel and the Metropolitan Opera House, then into the optimistically scrubbed bubble of Temple University, then back into the desolation of North Philadelphia, where every row house window was filled with plywood, trees, or charred black emptiness.

In the backseat Lucy paged through a picture book while Elliot sucked his thumb and looked out the window, watching bricks turn into siding and eventually stone. Sophie followed their progress on a map and tried not to say anything about Brian’s driving. Sophie was an impatient driver, always seeking her advantage, blazing through yellow lights and weaving to the front of every line. When Brian drove, he would leave too much space between himself and the car ahead, or stay in a slow lane while dozens of cars streamed by and Sophie ground her teeth. This time, though, she had resolved to loosen her mental grip on the situation and simply enjoy the scenery, which was gradually improving.

Loosening her grip: this was her assignment for the day. She hadn’t even researched pumpkin-picking spots ahead of time, or planned where they would have lunch. She was happy to make suggestions, based on the map she held on her knees, carefully folded around the area surrounding the northern end of 611, but only if asked. More importantly, she would not turn to Brian and say, “So,” or “I’ve been thinking,” or “Yesterday I looked at a one-bedroom on Mt. Vernon Street.” Today she was letting Brian drive.

Abington. Willow Grove. Horsham. They were passing through places whose names were only familiar to Sophie from traffic reports. Office parks, strip malls, and car dealers stretched alongside 611, interspersed with houses that had trampolines in their front yards. Eventually, after Doylestown, they found themselves in real countryside, and at some point Brian turned off the highway onto a single-lane road. They began rolling through orange-carpeted forests, where cold sunlight stabbed through the last shreds of red and yellow clinging to the branches, and stacked stone walls grew out of the mossy ground and then sank back into it. They passed a few whitewashed houses, wing after added wing rambling along the roadside, but no pumpkin fields—they would have to find some open farmland for that.

Something about the rise and fall of the road, the tight turns and sudden Ys and glimpses of houses set back in the trees, reminded Sophie of a drive she had taken when she was a child. Had it been in Washington? Missouri? She couldn’t remember how old she was, just the delicious lifting of her stomach as the car plunged over each crest, the swing of the curves, the smell of wet bark and decaying leaves. She was in the front seat, probably with no seat belt, Randall on one side of her, the open window on the other. He was driving fast, veering into the other lane on the turns, snapping the huge Chevy Impala out of the way when another car happened along. Sophie could remember the distinct feeling of picking up her fear and tossing it just out of reach, surrendering to the thrill of being entirely in her father’s hands.

Brian was easing their car around the curves now, hugging the shoulder of the narrow road, so when they passed the yard sale Sophie had plenty of time to ask him to stop. She hesitated, though, wanting to let Brian have the idea; she could see him turning his head to scan the jumble of furniture and terra-cotta flowerpots and baby gear. But he didn’t stop, and finally, when they were around the corner and down a small hill, Sophie blurted, “Do you want to check it out?”

“Why, do you?”

“Maybe.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“I didn’t know if you would want to.”

Brian snorted and shook his head, then pulled into the next driveway and turned around. The sale was in the front yard of a small, squared-off clapboard cottage with a front porch and two dormer windows. There was a swing set off to the side, on a part of the lawn that pressed up against the woods. Lucy and Elliot ran straight toward it as soon as they were released from their car seats.

“Do you mind if they play on it?” Sophie asked a gray-haired woman sitting on the front step of the house.

“Not at all,” she answered, in a voice that rasped between the high and low registers. “I got it for my grandkids, but they’re too big for it now. I’m selling some kid stuff over there. Take a look.”

The scene reminded Sophie of pictures she’d seen of a tornado’s aftermath: beds in trees, couches on roofs. Here there were two armoires standing in the unmowed grass, a deeply oiled Larkin’s desk, a collection of Windsor chairs. A patchwork quilt spread on the ground was strewn with rubber-banded bundles of old silverware, some pots and pans, and a toaster oven. Sophie contemplated a partially unrolled Persian rug, wishing she could remember the dimensions of her office. She wasn’t sure what Brian had decided to do about the floor in there. They needed to fix it soon, before the appraiser came through. Joshua Goldmeier had, miraculously, persuaded the bank to let them refinance. Whether the process had been hurried along by the threat of a lawsuit, she couldn’t be sure.

Sophie browsed some moldy paperbacks stacked on a card table, then noticed a silver hand mirror lying next to them. She picked it up. The back and handle were busy with cast daisies and violets; across the glass, a yellowed piece of masking tape said “$1.00.”

Just yesterday, she’d given a slightly older silver mirror to Brian, along with a printout of the mark the Met curator had emailed Harry. She’d also handed him a photocopy of
Perspectiva
Corporum
Regularium
, Jamnitzer’s book, whose title page design was replicated around the mirror’s frame. She’d waited a little while to give it to him, letting the dust settle after the raid and the arrest and the commotion in the papers, waiting until the museum trustees, delighted about the recovery of the museum’s objects, had voted to reinstate him.

“I thought we’d keep this one just between us,” she’d explained. “I didn’t want people finding out you had a Jamnitzer sitting on a cart in your office with no object card.”

“I
wouldn’t
have a Jamnitzer sitting on a cart in my office.”

“But you did.”

He’d laughed it off, dismissed the printouts, complained about the registrar, disputed the mark, and then, finally, lapsed into confused silence.

“Just give this to Michael and tell him you found it in storage,” Sophie told him. “Let him publish it. He can take all the credit. It’ll distract him from his poor little tazza.” Apparently, Michael was irritated that his recovered tazza had been so thoroughly upstaged by the rest of the artwork seized in Hansei’s townhouse. Among the items creating a stir were several stolen paintings, including a large and unusual seascape by Rembrandt.

Sophie eyed the woman on the porch; she was looking toward the road, watching cars drive by. Sophie turned the flowery hand mirror around and around in her hand, weighing it, taking its measurements. She smiled, imagining what Harry would say about it. Poor Harry. He was probably furious about Hansei’s arrest, but he’d get over it.

She looked over to where Brian stood, one forearm across his torso, the other elbow resting on it, his curled knuckles against his lips. He looked up, caught her eye, and beckoned to her. She set the mirror down.

“What do you think of this?” he asked, pointing at a small, rustic wooden bench. “I was thinking it would be nice to have in the—”

“Vestibule. It’s perfect.”

“The kids could sit on it while they put their shoes on. You could keep your shoes under there, too.” Maybe he hadn’t meant it as an invitation, but it came out that way, and she saw his ears flush as he realized it. Sophie cleared her throat and was about to say something about the nice finish on the bench, but Brian put out his arm and pulled her against him, and she curled into his body, pressing her cheek against his chest. In the distance, one of the swings squeaked rhythmically as Lucy pushed her brother. A car drove up, slowed, then sped away with a fading growl. Brian’s heart counted the seconds in its patient, forgiving way.

Sophie made an offer on the bench, the woman counteroffered. Sophie shrugged and started walking away until the woman said, “Fine, take the damn thing.” Then Brian asked if she knew any places to pick pumpkins nearby, and she gave them directions to a farm a few miles down the road. They drove off, but as they emerged from the striped light of the woods into a small valley quilted with fields, they became distracted by the view and missed their turn. Brian veered onto a narrower road which rambled alongside a creek for a while, leading them past an old stone mill with a doggedly turning waterwheel and then, around the next bend, to a red-painted covered bridge.

“Look at that,” Sophie said to the children. “A house we can drive through!” As they rolled through the shadowy hush, then back into the brassy late-afternoon light, she marveled at the forgiveness of the landscape, and the solidity of carefully built structures, and the cautious, edifying pleasure of gratitude.