Opening the rolltop desk, she finds it has small docketed drawers. “Letters Unanswered,” “Letters to Keep,” “Postage,” “Photographs,” “Addresses” and so on. She removes the tickets one by one, turns them over, and creates her own labels: “Glues,” “Nickel Silver Wire,” “Tying Wire,” “Pins,” “Ferrules,” “Brass Runners,” “Wire Cutters,” “Hinges,” “Tips.” It’s satisfying to drop each item into its proper drawer. Jane piles an assortment of steel ribs and canopy fabric atop the desk chair and the side tables nearby. She leaves her sewing machine on the floor for the time being, then washes her hands in the gigantic gold-tiled bathroom.
The last things Jane removes from her crates are five large framed photographs, four of them taken by Aunt Magnolia and one by a colleague. A rose-colored anglerfish in Indonesia with skin filaments that make it look like it’s carrying a forest on its back. The big, dark eyes of a Humboldt squid in Peru. An underwater photo of falling frogs in Belize, their arms and legs grasping at the water for purchase, their eyes panicked. A Canadian polar bear, happily suspended underwater, resting, untroubled by the cold.
These photos had required great patience and serendipity. Aunt Magnolia had never done anything that would scare the animals; she hadn’t pursued them or tried to manipulate them. Mostly, she’d waited. She’d been a spy of the underwater world, where things are silent and slow.
She’d loved the freezing, polar underwater landscapes best. The strangeness, the harshness, the sense of isolation. She’d written under the polar bear photo in scratchy pencil, “Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear!”
Finally, there was a photograph of Aunt Magnolia herself, standing, in scuba gear, on a New Zealand seafloor, touching the nose of an enormous southern right whale who peered at her with quiet dignity. Aunt Magnolia had been so encouraged by her visit to New Zealand, where the sea life is fiercely protected by law. “It gives me hope for the world,” she’d said. She’d been that way. Hopeful. Aunt Magnolia had believed there was a point.
Jane takes a few paintings off the walls to make room for Aunt Magnolia. Once she’s hung the final photograph, she hears the radiator clang in a lonely, “pay attention to me” way. It’s a sad sound, but cozy too. Jane is content with what she’s made of this room. Maybe, she thinks, good things will come of this odd adventure after all.
She has one work in progress. It’s almost done, only needs the appropriate ferrule to crown it and a tie and button to hold it closed. It’s an alternating blue and violet pagoda umbrella with a red shaft and handle. The pagoda-shaped canopy had presented a satisfying challenge, but the result feels fussy and over-the-top.
“Honestly, I kind of hate it,” she tells Jasper, opening it for him. “And the colors don’t suit you,” she says as he walks under the canopy. “The red in your brown clashes with its reds. Oh dear. Dreadful.”
Jasper seems depressed.
“It’s not you, Jasper,” says Jane. “There are reds that suit you dazzlingly. Here.” She wades through umbrellas to fetch the brown-rose-copper satin that’s still drying from its earlier use. “Sit under this one. Beautiful,” she says with a rush of pleasure as she appraises the effect. “I could have made that one just for you.” She reaches for her phone. “Should I take a picture?”
Jane’s afternoon is contentedly spent photographing Jasper under every umbrella that suits him, finishing up the pagoda piece, and allowing ideas for the next umbrella to bump against her thoughts.
*
Jane is lying on her back on the rug in the morning room, thinking about umbrella-shaped things for inspiration, when Ivy comes to collect her for dinner. Mushrooms, lampshades, jellyfish. Bells? Mixing bowls. Tulips. The tapping on her outer door finally reaches her consciousness. “Come in!” she yells.
Ivy enters the morning room, a warm, tall rush of red that pushes itself into Jane’s umbrella thoughts. What would an Ivy umbrella look like?
Ivy stops in astonishment, surveying the room. “Holy crap,” she says. “Why do you have so many umbrellas?”
“I make them,” Jane says from the floor. “Don’t ask me why.”
“Maybe because they’re awesome?” she says, stepping into the umbrella landscape, moving among them, looking closer.
Jane sits up, straightens her shirt, and peers around the room, trying to imagine it through Ivy’s eyes.
Ivy crouches down and reaches a finger to touch Jane’s bird’s egg umbrella, which is oblong and pale blue, with irregular brown spots. The oblong shaping of it had been a nightmarish task, because the ribs had needed to differ in length and shape while it was open, but lie flat and neat while closed. There’d been a moment when Jane had wanted to break the whole damn thing over her knee. She’s glad she didn’t. This is one of her better umbrellas.
Ivy is running a finger along the open edge of the canopy, with a touch so gentle and tentative that Jane can feel it, like a hum under her skin.
“Can you tell what it is?” Jane asks.
“Of course,” says Ivy. “It’s a bird’s egg.”
Jane’s happiness is complete.
“It’s dinnertime for the family and guests,” Ivy adds. “That means you.”
*
“Aye aye, Captain Polepants,” Ivy says as she leads Jane down the corridor, past the polar bear.
“Is he military, then?”
“I don’t really remember,” says Ivy, “but I think we pretended he was a polar explorer who would bring his discoveries back to the queen.”
“Who was the queen?”
“Not me,” says Ivy.
She leads Jane down the stairs to the receiving hall, then into the single most enormous room Jane has ever seen inside a private house. “What is this?” Jane asks, trying not to squeak. “The throne room?”
Ivy makes a little heh sound and says, “The ballroom. But now you’ve got me trying to decide which room Octavian would choose as his throne room. Probably the library.”
Jane is barely listening. Deep and high-ceilinged, the ballroom shines with burnished dark mahogany wood. “The Thrashes have balls?”
“The galas are basically balls,” Ivy says. “People dressing up and dancing waltzes in fancy rooms, et cetera.” Then she leads Jane through a doorway into another long room, bright with chandeliers and containing a table that could seat thirty. Four people, two men and two women, are assembled at the far end, their voices sharp, cutting across one another. Kiran isn’t there.
As Ivy leads Jane toward them, Jane asks, “Will you eat with us?”
“No,” says Ivy. “I eat in the kitchen.” But she seems to interpret something in Jane’s expression, something Jane herself probably couldn’t articulate, for she takes Jane’s arm above the elbow and squeezes it, then touches one of the empty chairs so Jane will know the right place to sit. Then, flashing her another small, wicked grin, she pushes through a swinging door beyond the table.
Jane sits down. No one seems to notice her. She tries to blend in and absorb the rapid-fire conversation, which appears to be an argument about a family they all know personally.
“You don’t seriously think they did something bad to their own kids?” says an English-sounding black woman who has a heart-shaped face and short, curly dark hair. A shimmering star sits in each of her earlobes, maybe made of tiny, sparkling diamonds? She’s next to Philip Okada, the germophobe from the attic. She’s wearing a lot of foundation and eye shadow.
“No, I’m only saying they’ve clearly flipped out,” says the other woman, white, rosy-cheeked, with honey-brown hair and two rows of pearls at her throat. She’s got an American accent and a deep voice. “People do unpredictable, bad things when they flip out, so how can we know what they’ve done, really?”
“Is that a medical term?” Philip Okada asks her, teasing. “To ‘flip out’?”
“Philip,” says the pearl-necklace lady forcefully. “The Panzavecchias are our friends. They left their lab one day and held up a bank. Why would they choose to do that?”
“Well,” says the star-earring lady beside Philip, “you’ve heard the rumors about Giuseppe’s gambling problem and the Mafia.”
“Okay, but have any of you ever known Giuseppe Panzavecchia to so much as bet on a dog race?” says pearl necklace.