In the living room, we sat on opposite sides of the velvet couch, and I could smell Lucie’s patchouli in the dense fabric. Most meals at Anne’s were hearty meat dishes, and Anne said she had made a beef Wellington, and it was her first try, so anything might come out of the oven. When would Anne arrive at her reason for inviting me? Del had always said that I was too suspicious, that I never believed in the goodness of others. She was right about that, but I had never yet been proven wrong. I leaned into the velvet cushions, comfortable but cautious about what might come next. I kept watching the stairwell, expecting to see William in his beaver-skin hat, or Mary Rae twirling her pretty necklace.
The drinks seemed to sharpen my senses rather than dull them. Since the day in the asylum I’d felt in a fog—even with the boys, I’d been trapped in a dreamlike existence. Now I could see the points of the stag’s antlers on the wall, the dewy moisture of their eyes, the shine of their pelts, as if they might leap from their spots to charge across the oriental carpet. The fire sparked and hissed with Anne’s addition of a new log. She sat back down and gave me a searching look.
“I just want you to know that I’m here, for a little bit longer at least, if you need anything.” She lifted her martini glass from the table where she’d set it and held it toward me for a toast. “To friendship.”
The first step in luring someone in was to offer support. I’d seen the mediums do this at the Spiritualists by the Sea camp. I held my glass up and she tapped hers against it, making a bell-like sound.
“We all know about Del and the baby,” Anne said. “I’m here for her, too.”
Anne was smart enough not to indulge the rumors about Del and William. “That’s very sweet of you,” I said. “Maybe the father will be supportive as well.”
“Randy is trying. But I don’t think your sister is falling for it. She doesn’t seem like she wants a husband.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think she has many good examples.”
Anne set her drink down carefully on the table, and I sensed her friendly facade falling away. She pushed the button on her cigarette box; the music played, and she retrieved the cigarette and lit it. She brushed the ends of her scarf over her shoulder like a swath of hair. William had been her protégé. Was she making it clear that she wouldn’t hear any disparaging comments about him?
“Mary Rae and I had a get-together after she and William broke it off,” Anne said. “We’d grown so close. She was an absolute mess.”
Anne blew smoke to the ceiling. What would she make of the news that William and Mary Rae had reconnected more recently? Was she assessing me—trying to gauge my own level of despair?
“He made his choice,” I said, leaning back into the couch cushion. “I have to accept it.”
Anne reached for her drink and took a sip. “He’s had a difficult life.”
I tried not to correct her usage of the present tense. It unhinged me. Contrary to the last, threatening physical contact I’d had with him, William’s spectral presence was benign, and I’d grown used to imagining him tormented by his love for me.
“He told me about his mother,” I said.
Anne raised her eyebrows. “Did he tell you that his father abused her? That rather than let her divorce him he had her committed to the hospital in Binghamton? I knew his mother. She had a drinking problem.” Anne tipped back her glass and finished her drink. “But honestly, who doesn’t?”
“Why did he drop Mary Rae?” I asked.
She refreshed our glasses and stood with the shaker. “I’m going to check on the Wellington,” she said. “And make more of these. Come with me.”
We went back into the kitchen, and Anne mixed another shaker and poured us new drinks. I told her I’d had enough, and she smiled.
“One martini is never enough.”
I didn’t protest, I simply took another sip, and another. The kitchen grew warm from the stove. I understood why the Milton girls gathered at Anne’s. It felt lovely to be taken care of, to have Anne’s attention, all of it tinged bittersweet. Each moment with her was special, and there wouldn’t be many more times like this, you told yourself. She asked me about my classes, about my own work. We talked for a while in the kitchen. Anne grew tipsy, laughing. She leaned over the stove and the ends of her scarf caught fire and she batted it out expertly with a damp dish towel, as if this kind of thing happened all the time.
My bag with William’s portfolio sat on a chair nearby, and I wondered why Mary Rae’s images were separate from the others, why he hadn’t chosen to print one as a sample.
“Did they have an argument?” I asked. “William and Mary Rae?”
Anne put on oven mitts and leaned over to take out the roast. She stood, took off the mitts, and busied herself with a pot on the stove.
“They had a misunderstanding,” Anne said. “It had to do with his work.”
“The sleeping women.” I tipped the shaker over my glass but it was empty.
I expected Anne to seem curious, to ask what I meant, but she did not. Her face flushed from the heat of the oven. “Yes,” she said, simply.
The series wasn’t a secret to her at all.
“You haven’t heard from him?” she asked me. “Not a word, after all this time?”
We were finally getting to the point. “Have you heard from him?”
Anne faltered. “No, I have not. But I’d only been seeing him with you. He’d stopped coming by. I thought it was too hard for him, with my illness.”