In 2014, one of the plaster rosettes fell from the ceiling of the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library and shattered on the floor. When the city decided to inspect it, they also inspected the ceiling in the adjacent Blass Catalog Room. The ornate plasterwork of that ceiling was touched up and tested for weight and strength. The 1911 James Wall Finn trompe l’oeil mural of the sky on canvas, however, couldn’t be restored because it was too fragile. Instead, my father spent nearly a year re-creating the image on canvas that would be set in place on the ceiling, and could be easily removed for touch-ups in the future.
When the canvases were being installed in 2016, he was there directing the operation. Because he was a perfectionist, he insisted on climbing up a ladder to illustrate how the edge of the canvas had to align, flush, with the gilded satyrs and cherubs of the carving that framed it.
That same day, I was in East Hampton, at the second home of a woman who was auctioning off a Matisse with Sotheby’s. Our protocol required someone from the auction house to be present when a piece was transported, and since I had just been promoted to a junior specialist in Imp Mod, I was given the assignment. It was mindless work. I would take a company car to the site, meet the shipping company there, and before it was packed up I’d use a printed copy of the painting to mark down any scratches or peels or imperfections. I’d oversee the careful packing of the piece, watch it get loaded into a truck, and then I would get back into my company car and return to the office.
The job, however, was not going according to plan. Although our client had said her housekeeper would be expecting us, her husband was also home. He’d had no idea that his wife was selling the Matisse, and he didn’t want to. He kept insisting that I show him the contract, and when I did, he told me he was going to call his lawyer, and I suggested he should maybe call his wife instead.
The whole time, my phone was buzzing in my pocket.
When I finally answered, the number was not one I recognized.
Is this Diana O’Toole?
I’m Margaret Wu, I’m a doctor at Mount Sinai …
I’m afraid your father’s been in an accident.
I walked out of the house in the Hamptons, dazed, completely oblivious to the man still on the phone with his lawyer and the movers awaiting my approval to wrap up the painting. I got into the company car and directed the driver to take me to Mount Sinai. I called Finn, whom I’d been dating for several months, and he said he’d meet me there.
My father had fallen off a ladder and struck his head. He was hemorrhaging in his brain, and had been taken directly into surgery. I wanted to be there holding his hand; I wanted to tell him it was going to be all right. I wanted my face to be the first thing he saw in the recovery room.
The traffic on Long Island was, as usual, a disaster. As I cried in the backseat of the company car, I bargained with a higher power. I will give You anything, I swore, if You get me to the hospital before my father wakes up.
Finn stood up as soon as I walked through the sliding glass doors, and I knew. I could tell from the look on his face and the speed with which he wrapped his arms around me. There was nothing you could have done, he whispered.
That was how I learned that the world changes between heartbeats; that life is never an absolute, but always a wager.
I was allowed to see my father’s body. Some kind soul had wrapped gauze around his head. He looked like he was asleep, but when I touched his hand, it was cold, like a marble bench in winter that you will not linger on, no matter how weary you might be. I thought of how his heart must have caught when he lost his footing. I wondered if the last thing he saw was his own sky.
Finn held my hand tight as I signed paperwork, blinked at questions about funeral homes, answered in a daze. Finally, a nurse gave me a plastic bag with the hospital logo on it. Inside was my father’s wallet, his reading glasses, his wedding ring. Identity, insight, heart: the only things we leave behind.
In the taxi on the way home, Finn kept one arm anchored around me while I clutched the bag to my chest. I reached into my purse for my phone and scrolled to the last text my father had sent me, two days ago. Are you busy?
I had not answered. Because I was busy. Because I was going to his place for dinner that weekend. Because he often decided he wanted to chat in the middle of business hours, when I couldn’t. Because there were any number of items on my to-do list that took precedence.
Because I never thought that I’d run out of time to respond. The story of our life was a run-on sentence, not a parenthetical.
Are you busy?