“Thank you.” Naomi drank from the crystal-cut glass she was handed, dutifully. It was so, her head had been aching since before the plane had landed.
Madelena led her into a large, light-filled living room—floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a remarkable vista of rooftops, spires, streets, small patches of snowy parkland. “That’s the Hudson River—that blue haze at the horizon. And over there, just visible from this window, the arch at Washington Square Park.” Naomi stared but did not see—wasn’t sure what she was seeing.
“It’s so beautiful . . .”
“From a height, yes. ‘Distance enhances.’”
On the walls of the living room were large canvases that looked waterstained. Pale-pastel abstract paintings in (seeming) mimicry of the sky. Elegant contemporary furnishings, a rough-textured eggshell-colored rug on a polished hardwood floor. On a table, an antique stringed instrument. Sculpted figures, white marble heads. The living room opened into a dining room in which there was a long mahogany table, large enough to seat ten or twelve people; at the farther end were just two place mats set across from each other, with neatly folded colorful cloth napkins.
Naomi was naively touched. Thinking that her grandmother had set the table in readiness for her.
She recalled that, long ago when she’d been a young child, her parents had often had friends for dinner, friends and their children, informally, crowded around a table half the size of this table and with nothing of its formal elegance. These dinners had been boisterous, fun. It was true as people said—Gus Voorhees made you laugh. You would not have guessed how intense and often anxious the man was, for he delighted in making others laugh. The adults had drunk wine, beer—they’d quarreled about politics—they’d traded stories about their jobs, their bosses—they’d told jokes. Gus had not been reticent. But he had not dominated—usually.
Eventually at these protracted dinners the children had drifted away to watch TV or, if they were younger, to be put to bed by their mothers. She could not recall if she’d been one of these young children, or if she’d always been older, and spared the humiliation of being put to bed.
She wiped at her eyes. She had not thought of these dinners in some time. In Detroit, in Grand Rapids—of course, in Ann Arbor—but there had been few boisterous dinners in the rented house on Salt Hill Road, in rural Huron County, where (she saw now) things had begun to deteriorate in the life of their family.
On Madelena’s dining room table was an elaborately designed wrought iron candelabra bearing a half-dozen slender candles, each of a different height, and color; each candleholder was lavishly encrusted with wax, like something sculpted. Naomi remembered that her parents had had a similar candelabra, slightly smaller, very striking, but impractical; it was usually kept on a sideboard, unused. She wondered now if it had been a gift, an impractical gift, from Madelena Kein.
“It’s from Mexico. The candelabra. Does it look familiar?”—Madelena regarded her with bemused eyes.
Naomi wondered where her parents’ candelabra was now. What had Jenna done with the household furnishings? Put them in storage, sold or gave them away . . .
“And how has your mother been, Naomi?”
“I think—my mother has been well . . .”
“Jenna isn’t in Ann Arbor any longer, I’ve heard?”
“Yes. I mean—no. She’s in Bennington, Vermont.”
How halting, Naomi’s speech. And why did she think it was necessary to add “Vermont”—as if Madelena would not know where Bennington was.
“She’s grieving, Naomi. It doesn’t end.”
Was Madelena defending Jenna? But why would Madelena suppose that Jenna needed to be defended, to her daughter?
“Are you in touch with her—with Mom?”
“In a way. No and yes. Not obviously.”
Naomi would consider this elusive remark, at length.
Madelena told Naomi that she’d planned several outings for them during Naomi’s visit—to the Metropolitan Opera, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to the Neue Galerie, to Lincoln Center for the New York City Ballet —but she would be away from the apartment for much of the day most days, at the university; she would be away some evenings as well—“You’ll be on your own. As much as you wish. Or, if things work out, you can accompany me.”
If things work out. What did that mean?
“Life is not inevitably more complicated in New York City than in the Midwest but for those who thrive on complications, this is our city.”
Madelena led Naomi along a narrow corridor into a sparely furnished white-walled room flooded with waning afternoon light.
On a sleek white plastic desk in this room Madelena had laid several pages of the New York Times listing museum exhibits, concerts, plays, films, lectures and poetry readings for the upcoming week. Beside some of the listings, a red check.
“Feel free to add anything of your own that you’d like to see, and if we have time, we will. This is a ‘holiday’ for me, too.”