The Seduction of Water (23 page)

Jack has come up behind me and touches my arm. As I noticed downstairs, his touch leaves me cold. “I’m seeing someone else,” I say, turning around to face him. “Or, well, I was. I don’t know if we still are. I was going to tell you.”

Jack steps back from me and sinks down onto the edge of the bed. “This is information I would have appreciated having before driving across two states to come here.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. I look around the room. I notice that there’s a basket of fruit and a bottle of wine cooling in the ice bucket on the bureau. Courtesy of Ramon and Paloma, no doubt. There’s even a vase of freshly cut roses on the night table. I walk over to smell them and then sit down on the bed next to Jack. I touch his hand and I’m relieved when he doesn’t pull it away. “You’ve got to admit, though, they’re two skinny states.”

When I leave Jack’s room I take the main stairs down. Curiously, I don’t feel as bad as I should. I’ve probably ruined both relationships, but I feel lighter than I did this morning. Maybe it’s the relief of having told Jack about Aidan. Maybe that end-of-summer melancholy just means it’s time to let go of the things you didn’t get around to doing.

On the second floor I notice that the door to Joseph’s suite is open and that Aidan is standing in the middle of the room holding a painting up to the light coming through the window. I come into the room and stand next to him and admire the painting: a dawn sky without boundaries of horizon, colossal clouds tinged pink and orange expanding into limitless distance. I steal a glance at Aidan and see in his eyes an expression of longing that makes me ache to have him look at me like that—only what he seems to be longing for is to dive into the fathomless blue sky of the painting.

“Are you taking that to the Gold Parlor for the afternoon lecture?” I ask.

“No, I thought I’d hop in the old Volvo and take it down to Soho to see what I could get for it,” he says, rolling his eyes at me.

“Aidan,” I say, lowering my voice to a whisper, “do you think it’s really such a good idea to make those kinds of jokes?”

“You mean considering my disreputable past? No, I suppose not, but don’t think I’m the only one tallying up the value of these overgrown postcards. One of the curators just told me that a painting by this same guy sold for half a million at auction last month. I don’t see why they couldn’t have just made do with slides. At least they’d be lighter.” He shifts the heavy frame in his hands so that the sky skews sideways.

“I think Mr. Kron wanted to give the Arts Festival greater credibility . . .”

“I think he’s showing off his connections in the art world . . . anyway, if there’s nothing more, I’d better get this down to the Gold Parlor.”

I want to tell Aidan that things aren’t going well with Jack—that we might not end up together after this week—but that seems too much like stringing him along. Still, I hold him there, trying to think of something to say that will end this chilliness between us—that had seemed to be thawing earlier on the terrace before Jack showed up.

“Jack’s staying on the fifth floor,” I say lamely, maybe so he’ll at least know that Jack’s not staying in my room.

“Yes, I know, Iris. Did he like his roses? Joseph asked me especially to cut them for him.”

“Oh, God, Aidan, I’m sorry . . .”

I move toward him to touch his arm, but he turns away from me, toward the hall door, and freezes. I look that way and see that Phoebe Nix is standing in the doorway watching us. She’s wearing one of those straight, shapeless dresses she favors—this one the color and texture of overcooked oatmeal—and backless snakeskin mules that slap on the carpet as she steps into the room. She pauses for a moment in front of the open door to the closet and turns to Aidan.

“There you are,” she says, “we’re waiting for that painting in the Gold Parlor. So this is where the paintings are stored . . . I didn’t realize this door led to a closet.”

She steps toward the closet, but Aidan steps in between her and the open door. “Sorry, Miss Nix, Mr. Kron specifically requested that no one but me and Joseph have access to the paintings.”

Leaning the sky painting against the wall, he closes and locks the closet door.

Phoebe shrugs. “That’s fine with me . . . as long as you deliver the paintings promptly. You’d better go on down with that one . . . if Miss Greenfeder is done with you, that is.” Phoebe smiles slyly on that last part and I can’t help but think she chose her words purposefully.

“Aye,” Aidan says, giving me one last look, “I think Miss Greenfeder’s done with me.” He leaves the room without looking at me.

“I want to speak with you later, Aidan,” I say to his back, wishing the words sounded less like an employer’s reprimand and more like a lover’s apology. I’d follow him but Phoebe has planted herself in front of me, arms wrapped around her thin waist, tapping the back of her shoe against her bare heel until Aidan is out of earshot.

“Can I help you with something, Phoebe?”

“My uncle says you were asking him questions about the Crown jewel theft. I wanted to know if you plan to write about that in your book.”

I glance at the hall to the bedroom and wonder if Joseph’s still outside in the garden or in there where he could hear our conversation. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe he already knows I’ve broken my promise not to ask questions about the robbery.

“Joseph’s in the garden,” Phoebe, as if reading my thoughts, says. “I didn’t tell him that you’d talked to Harry, if that’s what you’re worried about. I think the less said about that particular piece of history the better. It doesn’t have anything to do with your mother’s story. I don’t see why you’re bothering with it.”

“I think it might,” I say. “My mother traveled up here with a friend who worked at the Crown—it was her brother who robbed the safe—”

“Yes, the McGlynns. I know all about them. A couple of two-bit thieves. The brother had the nerve to say at the trial that my mother offered him money to steal her own jewelry. Of course no one believed him, but the press had a field day anyway—they said that at the very least my mother had flaunted the Kron family jewels in a way that invited the crime. They made up stories about my mother using drugs because, of course, that’s what female writers do. My mother was only twenty-one years old at the time, but the press persisted in calling her ‘childless’ as if only a depraved, addict sex fiend would prefer writing to baking cookies and having babies. When my mother finally decided to have a child, she was criticized for having one so late.”

“Phoebe, I think it’s awful your mother was treated that way, but maybe my mother was affected by that robbery as well—it must have meant something to her for her to name her fictional world after the McGlynns. And then she was registered as John McGlynn’s wife when she died—maybe she just used the name because she didn’t want anyone to recognize her or maybe she was actually meeting him there.”

“Is that what Joseph told you—that your mother went to the Dreamland Hotel to meet John McGlynn? Somehow I doubt he’s told you anything—he’s not exactly the most talkative guy in the world.” There’s a mocking edge to her voice that irritates me. I should, of course, tell her that it’s none of her business what Joseph did or didn’t tell me, but her assumption—correct in this case—that he wouldn’t confide in me rankles.

“Joseph may be reluctant to blab about my mother, but she is my mother, and I think if I really wanted to know something he would tell me—eventually.”

Although she has held herself very still throughout her speech a blue vein pulses at her temple and little half moons of perspiration have darkened the armholes of her shift. She spins the engraved wedding band around and around her thumb.

“You mean he hasn’t told you anything yet, but you think he will. Maybe you should leave well enough alone. There could be some things you might not like to see printed about your mother.”

I shake my head. “No. I’m not interested in presenting my mother as a saint or as some icon of suppressed creativity or a victim of patriarchy or anything other than what she really was.”

Phoebe smiles. “Aren’t you? Haven’t you lived your whole life based on what you thought you knew about your mother’s story? No marriage. No children. You’ve stayed away from the hotel until now. You’ve avoided everything you thought killed her—just like I’ve avoided everything that I thought killed my mother. Well, what if the story turned out to be different? What would you think about the choices you’ve made then?”

I suppose she thinks she’s found the perfect threat. Honestly, I can see the truth in what she is saying, but having just come from ruining two romances in one day I can’t imagine that there are too many other bad choices left to regret.

“I guess we all have to live with the consequences of our choices,” I say.

She doesn’t say anything right away. She looks away from me, out the window toward the distant view of mountains. The light falls on her face, on her fine, colorless hair that shimmers like water, and on her translucent skin. She’s so thin that the light seems to eat away at her body. I remind myself that she never really knew her mother, and so her need to protect her image of her mother might be greater than mine, but just when I’m softening toward her—after all, I’m defending my right to write a book I’ve all but given up on—she turns back to me.

“I don’t think you’ll feel that way,” she says, “when you see what those consequences are.” Then she walks out of the room, slowly, the slap of leather against flesh audible long after she has gone.

Chapter Twenty-three

THE NET OF TEARS

And so I took one step, and then another, toward the Palace of Two Moons, every step burning the soles of my feet—the skin there new and raw—so unsteady on my new legs I had to touch the tree trunks on either side of me for balance. At first the trees frightened me, they seemed to close in around me, closer with every step I took into the forest—but then I could hear them whispering to me. Their shade cooled me, their pollen drifted down over me and clothed my nakedness. Looking up at the sunlight slanting down between their boughs was like being at the bottom of the ocean looking up toward the stars. The wind that moved their branches was like the currents we follow at ebb tide.

I saw why Naoise thought he had come home. This forest was like the sea beneath our Tirra Glynn, where we lived before the serpent’s pearl was broken into a million shards. I remembered then what had happened to Connachar, how the slivers of pearl had worked their way beneath his skin and gathered around his heart. Looking down I saw the green silt breeding on my skin, spinning itself into silk.

By the time I walked out of the woods I was clothed in an emerald gown, light as the wind that moves through the trees, green as the sea.

The Arts Festival is not only a resounding success, it is also a godsend to me, keeping me far too busy to deal with Jack or Aidan. Jack too is soon swept up in the lectures, seminars, and cocktail parties. Although he said he was tired of talking about art I spy him in small groups making those large sweeping gestures—as if he were painting the air—that I know he makes when he’s talking about his work. I also spy a smaller gesture—the exchange of business cards with gallery owners and art critics and public television art show hosts—that bodes well for Jack’s career. I’m glad that he’ll get something out of this week.

Jack’s not the only one moved by the talk of art. One evening in the middle of the week I go over to the staff dormitory in the North Wing to discuss an accounting discrepancy with Sophie. When I get to her apartment door, though, I’m arrested by an unfamiliar smell in the corridor. I pause at her door, which is partially ajar. A radio is playing softly—I recognize the Albany NPR station by its classical program and the static blurring its edges—but I can hear a faint rasp, which for a second I fear is my aunt gasping for breath. Then I recognize the smell: turpentine. I move back a step to see through the three inches of open door—with as much caution as if I had come across a wild pheasant in the woods—and watch as my aunt spreads color across an overcast sky above dark mountains. She’s painting a rainstorm over the mountains behind the hotel. The rasping noise is the sound her brush makes dragging the rain down from the sky. For each stroke she steps toward the canvas and then steps back to look at what she’s done. She looks like a young girl practicing a dance step with an invisible partner. I back away quietly; the accounting discrepancy can wait.

On the second to last day of the festival, Joseph judges the Folly contest, awarding Gretchen Lu and Mark Silverstein first prize for their collaborative entry—a gazebo called “Wing.” Joseph has discarded his crutches for the event. He stands in the arch of Brier Rose, ramrod straight, addressing the little group of art students who have formed a half ring around him. The other conference attendees, the curators, gallery owners, and critics, stand in an outer ring, but it’s really the art students he speaks to.

“When I first came here the world I came from had been destroyed, but for a Jew this was nothing new. The Talmud tells us that in the beginning the light of the world was held in beautiful vessels—” Joseph cups his hands in front of his chest as if holding an invisible volleyball. “—but greed and evil shattered the vessels—” Joseph reaches his arms out to the half circle, his fingers splaying as if releasing a handful of confetti, but his hands are empty. “—into a million pieces. It’s our job to find these pieces and put the vessels back together.
Tikkun olam.
Healing the world. However you find to do it—planting a flower, teaching a child, painting a picture, or carving out a little house and bench for a tired old man to sit in—” Here Joseph signals for Aidan to draw the white sheet away from the new gazebo. “—you are putting a piece of the world back together again, creating a vessel to hold the light of the world.”

We all look then toward the new gazebo—the new
chuppa
. The roof, made of overlapping cedar shakes carved to look like feathers, undulates over a single long bench. On either end of the bench stand carved swans, their long necks curving up to form armrests. The whole thing looks like it’s poised to take flight.

Harry Kron, who’s been standing on the edge of the crowd, comes forward to present Gretchen and Mark with their award money. The crowd shifts away from Brier Rose toward Wing and I notice that Joseph is slumping against the arch. I go over to him, but Natalie Baehr gets there first and helps him to sit down on the bench. I’m alarmed at how white his face is.

“I think we’d better get you upstairs,” I say to Joseph. “It’s so hot out here.”

“I’d like to sit in the garden a while longer,” he says, “but don’t worry,
shayna maidela,
I know you have your hands full with the big party tonight. Natalie will take care of me and there’s that nice Italian boy who’ll help me back up to my room.”

I turn and see Gordon del Sarto coming across the lawn. I know he’s doing his big lecture tonight so I’m surprised he’s not in the library fussing with his slides. He steps into the gazebo and sits down on the bench across from Joseph, next to Natalie.

“Did you bring it?” Natalie asks as soon as he sits down.

Gordon takes a green flannel pouch out of the pocket of his seersucker jacket. “The buyer at Barney’s was loath to part with it. I had to promise you’d make another one for her.”

“Barney’s?” I repeat. I’m confused enough by the fact that Gordon and Natalie seem to know each other.

Gordon nods. “I had some dealings with the jewelry buyer there during our last auction. When Joseph told me about Natalie’s work I knew she’d be interested and she was. She’s commissioned a line from Natalie, but the real surprise came when I saw . . .” Gordon stops because Natalie is nudging him in the ribs.

“You’re ruining the surprise,” she says, taking the flannel pouch out of Gordon’s hands. She hands it to me. “Here, I wanted you to have this, Professor Greenfeder. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t read your story.”

I tip the soft pouch over and a cascade of bright stones falls into my hand like water falling into a pool. Even though I know it’s only made of glass and copper wire, I feel as if I’ve been given a Tiffany tiara.

“Oh, Natalie,” I say, holding the strands up in the light so that the cut glass sends rainbows spinning around the gazebo. “You’ve given me my mother’s necklace!”

I head up to my room soon after to change for Gordon’s lecture. I have to dress now for the ball afterward since I won’t have time in between. On the way up I pause on the second-floor landing to look at the large window that overlooks the terrace. Harry has ordered the chandelier that hangs above the window to be lowered into its center so that it will be visible from the terrace. It’s part of an array of lighting effects for tonight, including floodlights to light up the hotel’s facade and fireworks for after dinner. This particular chandelier was never electrified and my mother was always too afraid of fire to use it, but Harry has had it refurbished with candles. Paloma Rivera and two other maids have been cleaning the cut-glass pieces in vinegar since early morning. Each crystal drop shines in the last bit of sunlight. I can’t wait to see what it looks like all lit up from the terrace tonight.

In my room I take a long bath. I use the new lilac-scented bath gel that arrived this week—along with tiny lavender bottles of shampoo and body lotion—all stamped in gold with the Crown Hotels logo. Then I stand in front of my closet in one of the new oversized bath towels with its Crown monogram, wondering what to wear. I’ve worn almost every dress my mother owned this summer, some so often that they no longer smell of cedar, but of my perfume and, if I press my face into the cloth, Aidan. I flick through them, the linen suits and chiffon cocktail dresses, the A-line shifts and cotton piqué sundresses, their delicate fabrics whispering against one another, their shapes belling out with air as I push their hangers along the rod, so that each one seems briefly animate, briefly embodied with my mother’s form. My mother balanced on the edge of a chair in the lounge as she told a guest she’d given up writing, my mother’s silhouette half glimpsed inside a gazebo with a man whose features I can’t make out, my mother walking the halls with outstretched hands, fingertips patting the walls for hidden sparks, fingertips tapping against the walls as if she were typing on the plaster. It’s all I’ve been able to remember of my mother from that last summer and I fear, now that this summer is coming to an end, all that I’ll ever know of her.

I come to the last dress in the closet, still sealed in its cloth dress bag embossed with the name of the store where it was bought. Bergdorf Goodman, Fifth Avenue, New York. Pretty fancy for my mother, I think while unbuttoning the muslin bag; she usually bought knockoffs or had a dressmaker run up cheap copies of dresses she marked in the fashion magazines. When I push my hand inside the bag the dress inside slides off its hanger and slithers to the floor, a puddle of green silk around my ankles. I pick it up gingerly by its sheer chiffon straps and look for a zipper, which turns out to be cleverly concealed along a side seam.

At first when I slip the dress over my head I think it’s not going to fit. It seems smaller than my mother’s other dresses and for a moment while I’m trapped inside the narrow column of silk, breathing in its sweet perfume—not my mother’s perfume, I notice—I feel panicky, but then the fabric slides down over my hips, swooshes sideways across my thighs, and flares out over my ankles. I turn to look in the mirror and see myself transformed. The green satin, cut on the bias, skims over every curve like water hugging a rock. A green chiffon swag drapes from the shoulders and pools at the small of my back. Twisting my hand around to the back I can feel that small weights have been sewn into the fabric to make it drape like this. The only thing wrong is the neckline, which is so low that my throat looks bare and exposed. Then I remember Natalie’s present. Noticing that I’m running late, I quickly pin my hair up and then fasten the necklace around my throat. It’s perfect, glittering but light, the green glass teardrop the exact same shade as the dress.

I walk down the stairs—a dress like this deserves a long, slow entrance—savoring the swoosh of silk against my legs and the vaporish figure reflected in the darkened windowpanes that accompanies me. As I approach the second-floor landing the figure melts into a blaze of candlelight from the chandelier. Gordon del Sarto, just coming out of Joseph’s suite with a small painting tucked under his arm, looks up at me and gasps.

“Iris, you look absolutely stunning. What an amazing dress. Who made it?”

I shrug my shoulders, which makes the little weights in the chiffon swag shiver against my back. “I have no idea. It was my mother’s.”

“May I?” Gordon asks, turning me around before I can answer and dipping his fingers down the back of my dress. I hardly have time to feel shocked or embarrassed. “Just as I thought,” he says, tucking the tag back under the chiffon swag. “Balenciaga. I saw one like it at the Met’s costume institute last year. This is very valuable, you know.”

“Really? I can’t imagine how my mother came by it . . .” Then I realize that the dress must have been left behind by a guest, like the fake pearls my mother always wore, and knowing that makes the satin feel suddenly oily against my skin. “Maybe I shouldn’t wear it then . . . I mean, if it’s really a museum piece . . .”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” someone says from behind me. I turn and see that it’s Aidan. He must have been right behind me on the stairs. I hardly recognize him in his tuxedo and I remember now that Harry had suggested at the last staff meeting that he rent one for this event. “What’s the use of a dress like that if it can’t be worn by a beautiful woman?”

“Exactly,” Gordon agrees, “it suits you. And Natalie’s necklace is perfect for it. And you can’t take that off because of the surprise.”

I give Gordon a puzzled look.

“You’ll see at my lecture, which we’ll be late for if we don’t go down now. Shall we?” Gordon offers me his arm. I turn to Aidan to see if he wants to escort me downstairs, but he’s got both hands in the pockets of his tux.

“You go ahead,” he says, “there’s something I’ve got to take care of.”

When we enter the library I still have my hand on Gordon’s arm and I see Phoebe’s eyes widen at the sight of us. Oh well, I think, she certainly went out of her way to tell me she and Gordon weren’t dating. Harry also seems startled to see Gordon and me together and I remember that Phoebe told me that her uncle was under the impression that she and Gordon were involved. Does he think now that I’m stealing his niece’s boyfriend? He certainly seems a little cooler to me. I’d expected that Harry, of all people, would comment on my dress, but he doesn’t. He asks me if I’ve checked on whether the fireworks have been set up on the ledge below the terrace. When I admit I haven’t, he looks annoyed and excuses himself to take care of it.

I think to follow him, but then Jack comes in talking to Natalie Baehr, and they both simultaneously wolf-whistle at my dress. Gretchen Lu and Mark Silverstein follow and they also make a fuss over me. By the time everyone finishes complimenting me I feel more self-conscious than flattered and it’s time for the lecture to begin. I take a seat near the open French doors, hoping to catch a breeze from the courtyard. It’s a stifling night and I’m beginning to sweat under the heavy silk.

“Our story begins not in the war-torn Europe of six decades ago, but nearly six centuries in the past, in quattrocento Italy . . .”