Twenty-five
The obsessions will get you every time when they’re not human—and sometimes, Sara thought, when they are.
She flipped off the small tape recorder with the remarks she had made to herself that morning immediately after Eleanor Holmes had left her office. Eleanor was a thirty-two-year-old woman with an eating disorder who was only now beginning to struggle with the fact that when she was eight she’d spent a full day alone at a New York State Thruway rest area because neither of her divorced parents was willing to cave in to the other and go pick her up. Her father had left her there a day early and just presumed that her mother would drop everything and come get her: Mom hadn’t. Mom had refused to be bullied by her ex-husband and wouldn’t change her plans. It was a game of chicken, and one result was that little Eleanor had lived on whopping plates of nachos in cheese sauce that day, because she was afraid she would be abducted if she left the rest area’s snack shop and cafeteria. The woman believed now—and Sara thought there was some truth to this—that this was why she had become a compulsive eater and tried to use food to reduce anxiety and stress.
Sara closed her eyes. Upstairs she presumed that Willow was sleeping as deeply as Patrick, while John was . . .
John was probably staring at the pages in his book in bed. She’d noticed lately that it took him long minutes to turn the pages in whatever novel or history he was reading. When she’d first noticed the trend in their bed two or three weeks ago, she had presumed he had fallen asleep and that was why he had been on, say, page 216 for fifteen minutes. But then she’d realized that his eyes were open, staring aimlessly at the wallpaper or the window—a blank screen, inevitably, because the shades would be drawn—or simply the foot of their bed.
She hadn’t spoken to Spencer since they’d left New Hampshire five weeks ago, and she knew John hadn’t, either. This was yet another source of torment for her poor husband. It was a wonder he hadn’t become a compulsive eater himself. (Instead, alas, he’d simply lost almost all of his appetite.) She tried to imagine how the brothers-in-laws’ feud—though it was actually a pretty one-sided squabble since John wanted desperately to be on speaking terms with Spencer—would play itself out. She had to believe that the next time they saw each other would not be in five or ten or fifteen years. This lawsuit would have to bring them together at some point, wouldn’t it? And what about Christmas in three months or the Seton New England Boot Camp next summer? The McCulloughs actually didn’t visit them all that often in Vermont, largely because when they came north everyone gathered at Nan’s place in New Hampshire, but Sara and Willow and John had a long history of seeing the McCulloughs in Manhattan. Willow loved New York City, and the three of them went there at least twice a year and stayed at Nan’s. They’d see lots of Catherine and Charlotte and—when he was in town—Spencer.
Still, Sara guessed that it was possible with a man as stubborn as Spencer that he’d find a way never to speak to her husband again. It was, of course, ridiculous. Childish and ridiculous. And it was only making things worse.
She was about to head upstairs herself and get ready for bed, when she heard a knock so soft on the living room door that she knew instantly it was Willow. The girl was awake, after all.
“Come in,” she said, just loud enough to be heard through the door.
Willow’s bangs were falling across her eyes, and she was squinting against the light in the living room. Though it was only the middle of September, it had been chilly the last couple of days and the girl had started to wear her winter nightgown, a red and white Lanz which last year had dragged on the floor but now, Sara noticed, didn’t even reach her daughter’s small ankles.
“Are you having trouble sleeping?” she asked, as Willow moved with the awkward gait of a sleepwalker over to the plush armchair in which she was sitting, and perched herself on the wide armrest.
“A little. But that’s not why I came down.”
“Go ahead.”
“I think I know what I want to do for my birthday.”
“Oh, good. Tell me.”
“Today in art class Ms. Seeley was telling us about the Cloisters—in New York City. Have you ever been there?”
She shook her head. “Believe it or not, I haven’t. I should have by now, I know. Certainly your father has. Probably any number of times.”
“She was showing us slides of the statues and paintings they have there, and the way the light moves in the stone hallways, and all these gold goblets and candlesticks that are works of art themselves. Everything’s from the Middle Ages, you know. I’d like to go there for my birthday.”
She was pleased that Willow wanted to see a museum on her birthday, but she was also realistic enough to understand that her daughter knew well that any trip to Manhattan would include far more than a visit to a museum. There would be dinner at a restaurant sufficiently fancy to allow Willow to wear one of her dresses she loved that were far too elegant for Vermont, perhaps lunch at a more rowdy venue such as the Hard Rock Cafe, shopping at the great palaces of consumption—Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s—and a detour to a downtown boutique (almost certainly Alice Underground) that would have exactly the sorts of hip, inappropriate children’s clothes you couldn’t find in Vermont but every girl wanted on her eleventh birthday.
“We can do that,” she said, and instantly she began to outline the logistics of the trip in her mind. Today was Tuesday, the fourteenth. Willow’s birthday was the twenty-seventh—a Monday. “Your grandmother will be back in the city by your birthday. I think, as a matter of fact, she’s being driven home in a couple of days. This Thursday, maybe. So we could go either the weekend before your birthday—drive down on Friday, the twenty-fourth—or the weekend after. That first weekend in October. We can check with Daddy and see if one of those weekends is better for him than the other.”
“The thing is . . .”
“Yes?”
“We’d need to go this weekend—if we decide to do this for my birthday.”
“This weekend? Why?”
“Ms. Seeley—she grew up in New York City, you know . . .”
“Yes, I know,” she said, smiling when her daughter paused in midsentence. Grace Seeley, the school’s art teacher, was a statuesque blond no older than twenty-five or twenty-six with a small blue stone in the side of her nose. She regaled her students in the weekly art class with her tales of art school in Manhattan and the strange and wondrous things people did there that they considered . . . art. This was Seeley’s second year in Willow’s school, and the girls, especially Willow, adored her.
“She said this is the Saturday that the Cloisters and the park right next to it—Fort something—is having a medieval harvest festival. They do it every year, and it’s only this one Saturday. That’s it. But she said it’s really cool: It feels like you’re living in the Middle Ages, except there are always a few people who forget to turn off their cell phones.”
“So you want to go this weekend?”
“If we can . . .”
“This is awfully spontaneous. And your father and I are many things, but we’re not exactly spontaneous people.”
“I know.”
She looked at the girl, saw—despite her drowsy eyes—her consuming interest in the idea.
“But you really want to go to this harvest festival, don’t you?”
“I do. I’ve been imagining it all day.”
She, too, had been thinking about Manhattan just before Willow had come downstairs. She didn’t believe this was a sign precisely, but she had the amused suspicion it was something more than a coincidence: an indication, perhaps, of her and her daughter’s connectedness.
Moreover, she recalled that no one had done a whole lot for Charlotte’s birthday at the end of August—she had ordered online a CD of some musical and had the company tape one of those ten- or eleven-word greetings to the wrapped disc—and if they went to Manhattan this weekend, the two girls could do something special together. A sort of joint birthday celebration. Certainly they could invite Charlotte to join them for the day at the Cloisters. She liked that idea. Even if their fathers weren’t speaking—perhaps because their fathers weren’t speaking—it was important to do all that they could to give the girls opportunities to see each other. And while she knew that Spencer didn’t want to see John, it was always possible that with her husband in the city he’d have to. They could all descend on the McCulloughs’ apartment when they picked up Charlotte—assuming she wanted to go with them to the Cloisters—and she couldn’t imagine Spencer hiding in the bedroom. Maybe they’d even get there a little early, so he couldn’t sneak out before they arrived to see his physical therapist or run errands or torment the keepers of some nearby fur vault.
She saw in her mind the awkwardness that would infuse any encounter between the two men, and she sighed. It would be pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. The male stripped of any semblance of social grace. It would be embarrassing for anyone who had the misfortune of witnessing the small spectacle.
Then again, she guessed she was kidding herself if she honestly believed there was any chance at all that Spencer would tolerate her husband’s presence long enough for embarrassment to become a dominant sensation. Her family might visit Manhattan this weekend, but the only McCulloughs they would see would be Catherine and Charlotte.
“Do you think we can go?” Willow was pressing her now.
“Okay, sure, if that’s what you really would like. Maybe we can celebrate your and Charlotte’s birthdays together. I know your aunt Catherine didn’t have a chance this year to do a whole lot for your cousin. We’ll see what your father has on his schedule, just to make sure it’s okay. What do you have at school on Friday afternoons this year? Just gym and library, right?”
Willow nodded.
“Well, then. If it’s okay with your father, we could pick you up at school at lunchtime and then go straight to the city. We could be at your grandmother’s in time for dinner. How does that sound?”
“That sounds great, thank you! Thank you so much!”
“You’re welcome. It’ll be fun.” She slipped her small tape recorder and her notes into the attaché on the floor beside her, and rose from her chair. She shook out her leg which had fallen asleep and said, “Now let’s get you back into bed. Do your sheets need to be tucked in again?”
The child nodded, hopped off the armrest with the grace of a gymnast, and then ran up the stairs to her bedroom.
AS WILLOW FELL ASLEEP that night she thought of the slide of what she believed Ms. Seeley had called a reliquary shrine: a gold box with blue enamel, angels in the corners, and a little statue of the Virgin Mary as the knob to open the lid. The box sat on what looked like a dollhouse-sized stage, with a tiny wall of stained glass behind it. She wondered what people stored in such a beautiful box. She’d have to ask someone at the Cloisters on Saturday.
She was looking forward to visiting the place, but the truth was that it wasn’t something she would normally have wanted to do on her birthday. It was simply an excuse to get her parents to take her to New York City sooner rather than later so she could see Charlotte. The idea had first started to form in her mind when Ms. Seeley had mentioned that the harvest festival only lasted a single day, and that day was this coming Saturday. She still didn’t know quite what she would accomplish with her cousin, but she wanted to see her before they faced their depositions. She wasn’t making much headway getting resolution on what she would say—on what they would say—over the phone, and she thought she might make more progress if they spoke face to face. Sometimes she could get her way with Charlotte when they were together. She thought it was possible that her cousin appeased her because she was younger and the older girl wanted to be magnanimous, but Willow didn’t care: She didn’t want to lie at the deposition if there was any way she could avoid it.
She wondered what Charlotte would say when she told her she was coming to New York this weekend. She liked her mom’s idea that she and her cousin might celebrate their birthdays together. It might be a little strange with her father and Uncle Spencer not talking to each other, but they’d work it out. They were grown-ups. Besides, that was their problem. Not hers. With that deposition looming, she had enough to figure out on her own.