And it’s the same today. I keep hearing the sound of my voice mixed with Josiah’s, mixed with the bass and the violin, all of it winding together, smooth and rich and original. That sound tickles the composition I’ve been working on for months, sails into it like ribbons of rainbow light. Yellow underlining those notes, purple swirling around the lower register, lending it value.
When the cleaning is finished, I start the soup. Often, I play music, but today I don’t want to interfere with the music in my mind, so I hum to myself, capturing a phrase here, another there.
I strip a rotisserie chicken, putting the meat into a bowl to be chopped. The skin and bones go into a heavy pot, one of only three in the kitchen, all of them very dusty before I got started. I roughly chop onions and carrots and celery and toss them on top of the carcass; add whole peppercorns and a few cloves, fresh rosemary and thyme, and salt; and turn the flame to low.
The actions, easy and familiar, calm me. It’s been a while since I had a kitchen to cook in, the last one belonging to the boyfriend who kicked me out a couple of months ago after a spectacular fight. I didn’t like him that much anyway but convinced myself his flaws were bearable, given that he was a music exec who could get my album made.
And he did. Turned out he wasn’t all that enchanted with me once it flopped.
The lockout, however, was extreme and humiliating, and he meant it to be both. I arrived home to find my meager belongings outside the gate with a sign over them that said, FREE.
Luckily, it was a neighborhood where no one needed free anything. I stuffed everything into my bag, shaking the dirt off delicate blouses and panties, my hands trembling with humiliation and a sense of being really stupid.
What I think now, chopping thyme finely, is that we were using each other. I wanted the record deal. He wanted a young woman on his arm. It was never love for either of us.
I’m not sure it’s ever been love for me, ever. I think of the way Gloria looked when she spoke about Isaak, and that’s never been how I felt. Relationships have always been surface, secondary to my relationship to my music. It always felt like men were the enemy on some level, that if I let them in, I’d lose . . . something. The music. Myself.
Where did I pick up such a destructive idea? My mother, most likely. She didn’t want a man in her life. I never saw Gloria get caught up in a relationship either. And Sam—well, Sam has other issues. She can’t let anyone in.
I look out the window toward the river. A tugboat pulls a barge through the water. A plane circles low, coming in for a landing at LaGuardia. I can see lights on in the cabin windows and wonder if someone is looking down to my window. I wonder if that’s going to be Gloria, flying away. It cracks my heart open to think of it, and my anxiety starts to ramp up again.
Be here now. The green scent of parsley beneath my knife fills the air, and I taste a leaf meditatively.
I need to be here now. In this space. Working on this music.
Josiah’s low voice moves through my body, rousing a sensation that’s almost sexual and yet both more and less. I close my eyes, let the music rise, let what I feel move in me however it likes. I taste the buttery bass of Josiah’s voice across my tongue, catch the flavor of the violin, the bass, and my own voice sweetening it all.
A chord plays, slides over my skin, into my belly, as vivid as a touch.
I have no idea how long I stand there suspended in the sound, the power, but it’s a long while, a long time of making love to the music in me, a long time lost in the beauty of that.
When I open my eyes, I laugh. What is this?
As if it’s been waiting for me to notice, a new measure of music surfaces, layered and magical, and it has more than just violin and voice. I hear a recorder and a low swell of bass guitar or maybe bass violin. For a moment, I stare out the window, listening, my hands still on the knife, enchanted.
Urgently, I pour water over the carcass and spices and aromatics in the pan, wash my hands, and carry my violin into the music room. In one of the drawers of an antique desk, there are pads of manuscript paper, and I slap one down on the desk, pick up the violin, and begin to reel in the notes in my head, getting lost in the melody and the sounds and the possibilities.
Happy.
When everything is ready, I call Sam. “When are they going to let you out?”
“I just have to wait for the official paperwork. I’m starting to worry that it won’t be until tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there in a little while, then, bring you some good food. Do you want a book or anything? Some magazines?”
“No. I just want to get out of here.”
“I know.” I can’t think of what else to say, except, “Everything is ready for you here.”
“I don’t want to go to the apartment. I want to go to my own home. My own bed.”
I nod, chewing my lip. “Maybe it’ll just be for one night. You’re getting well really fast.”
“Why don’t they just let me get well enough to go home here?”
It stings. “You’d rather be in the hospital than be with us?”
“Not that. Don’t misinterpret my words. I just want to be home.”
She’s sick, I tell myself, and she’s not one to mince words on her best days, but she’s been so much kinder since she’s been sick that I am stung by her surliness. “Okay,” I say in a mild voice. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Don’t get that hurt tone,” she says with fierce irritation. “This is not actually about you at all, Willow.”
I think about the soup on the stove, the fresh linens, and I feel like an idiot for, once again, thinking we would have a normal relationship. “I’m not hurt,” I say. “Sounds like you want to be alone, so I’m going to give you some space—”
“Oh my God! Will you stop with the California speak? You can come over if you want, or stay home if you’d rather, but you don’t have to make it all peace and love and groovy.”
I’m standing in the thickening gloom of the parlor, feeling something hot and prickly in my throat, between my ribs. Words, incoherent and tangled, can’t make their way to my tongue. “Call me if you need me, Sam.”
When I hang up, I stand there stinging, feeling four years old, or seven, or twelve, at the mercy of my sister’s sharp tongue. Oh, stop being such a baby! I was only teasing!
Why do I even keep trying? She is so mean, and she obviously doesn’t like a single thing about me. And yet I keep trying and trying and trying.
Obviously I can’t abandon her when she’s sick and lost and having so much trouble, but one of these days, I promise myself, one of these days, I’m going to stop being her punching bag.
Taking a deep breath, I raise my hands over my head and go through a sun salutation, clearing bad energy, letting good in. Breathe out anger; breathe in love. I do one, two, three and by number four have started to believe. By six, I’m a lot better.
On number nine, I hear Gloria come in.
I meet her in the foyer. She looks worn and drawn as she hangs up her coat. “It smells wonderful in here, sweetheart. What are you cooking?”
Without knowing I’m going to say it, I blurt out, “We need to get the paintings somewhere safe.”
She sighs and tosses hair out of her eyes. “I need a drink. Let’s go to the parlor.”
I trail her into the old-fashioned room, sit while she pours a measure of whiskey into a crystal glass. This is all Gloria, never something my mother did. I don’t think she drank much at all. “Do you want something?” she asks.
“No, I have a lot to do. So do you, actually.”
She sinks in her favorite chair, the cozy Grandmother chair with rose chintz next to a glass-topped table with a good lamp. I know that it looks through the window to the rooftop garden. She takes a sip and stares into the distance. I’ve never seen her look so tired. It scares the hell out of me.
I feel a sense of urgency and stand. “Come with me. Bring your drink.”
She follows me
down the hall to the spare bedroom, where I’ve stacked up the paintings I hid. “I looked up how to get them out of their frames.” I gesture at the small layer of canvases on the bed.
“Wait.” She takes her phone out of her bra. “Turn your phone off.”
“What? You think they’re listening?”
“I think they can listen, and I’d rather not give my thoughts away.”
“Okay.” I take my phone from my back pocket and turn it off. “I thought I could take them to Sam’s place when I pick up her clothes. Tuck them under the mattress.”
For a moment, Gloria looks at them. Then nods. “If you need money, they’ll be worth a fortune after all of this.” She pulls the little girl out of the stack. “Don’t sell this one.”
“You sound like you won’t be here. You’re only seventy-four, G.”
“Just letting you know,” she says mildly.
I stare at her for a long moment. “What’s going on? Why are you talking like I’ll never see you again?”
“Willow, there’s no way to predict any of this. I’m in a lot of trouble.”
I start to roll them up, all in a stack. “I don’t understand why you’d be in trouble. You didn’t forge the art.”
“I carried it. I sold it.”
I blink, stunned. This is worse than I imagined. But still. “Isn’t there a statute of limitations on a crime like that?”
She spreads her hand. “Maybe? I don’t know. They’re very aggressively prosecuting the woman in Amsterdam, the British Air flight attendant. I looked it up, and it’s not good.”
“Did you know her?”
“No.” She’s gazing backward in time. “I knew there were other women in his life.”
“Were there other men in yours?”
She looks up, amusement on her mouth. “Yes. None of them were Isaak, but we didn’t have an exclusive relationship. I wanted it that way.”
“You did?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. I didn’t want to get married, and back then, that’s what happened. You got serious, and then you got married, and then you found yourself with a bunch of kids and no way to fly.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t want that life.”
“You did it when my mom died. And we weren’t even your kids.”
She leans forward, brushes her palm over my cheek. “I loved you. I wanted to do it then. I was a lot older.” She swirls the liquor in her glass, looks up at me. “I chose you. Both of you. I should have done it sooner.”
I touch my eyebrow and realize what I’ve done. “Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know, Willow. It’s tricky, with an addict. She would do all right for a while, a month or two or three, and I’d think she was fine. I mean, I didn’t think I could just swoop in and live in her house and take care of you girls.”
“What if you had?”
Her smile is sad, but she meets my eyes. “I’ve asked myself that question a million times.”
It’s dark outside the windows, and I can’t sit here with this much sorrow in my belly, so I gather the paintings. “It’s all water under the bridge now. Thanks for coming when you did.”
“I love you, Willow. You are the daughter I never had.”
“Just me?”
“No, of course not. Sam was older, more resistant. But both of you.”
“It doesn’t seem like she loved our mother at all, though.”
“Oh, no. That’s not true at all. She adored her.”
I narrow my eyes, trying to think of one time I remember Sam showing affection or love toward our mother. Granted, I was only nine when she died, but I can’t think of anything but fights and Sam’s sharp tongue and slammed doors and fury. “If you say so.”
“When Sam was small, your mother was married, calmer. Clean. She didn’t do any heroin for several years. She and Sam were a team, mommy and baby.”
The vision of it nearly breaks me in half, little Sam in my mother’s lap, laughing, playing, cuddling. “Poor Sam.” I hug Gloria. “What are you going to do?”
A ripple of resistance moves in her body, and then she tells a truth. “Right now, I’m going to take a bath. And you should check on your sister.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Gloria
I’ve just dabbed oil into my skin when the buzzer rings. My heart freezes, and for a long moment, I don’t even move.
Here it is.
Before I answer, I shimmy out of my robe and into a nice pair of underwear and one of my better bras and a comfortable pair of slacks and a sweater in case I have to wear them for a while. I find socks, too, in case my feet will be cold. I imagine jail to be all concrete. Freezing.
The buzzer rings a second time, with more urgency, it seems. “Yes?” I answer.
“I’m so sorry, Ms. Rose,” says one of the new guys. I can see his face, too thin with a prominent chin, but I can’t seem to remember his name. Jason, Jacob, Jared. One of those nineties names. “The FBI is here with a search warrant.”
A cold wash of relief moves through me. Not an arrest, then. At least not yet. Or can they arrest me right on the spot if they find something incriminating?
“Hold on, I’m getting dressed,” I say, then dial my lawyer.
He picks up. “Gloria. What’s up?”
So casual, I think, as if we’re going to talk about the weather. When did everyone start talking like surfers? “The FBI is downstairs with a search warrant. What should I do? Am I going to get arrested?”
“Doubtful. Just be cooperative and don’t lie, but don’t volunteer anything. I’m in Long Island City on another case, so they’ll be done by the time I can get there, but call me the second they leave.”
I nod, pressing a palm to my roiling belly. “All right. Thank you.” I hang up and pick up the house phone. “Okay. Send them up,” I say calmly. My hands are shaking. I look around the foyer, and there’s nothing here to worry about. Willow has taken everything with her in a backpack. The depth of my relief runs down my spine with cold fingers. So smart, my Willow.
Agent Balakrishna leads a pack of two women and a man. They’re all insanely young, not a single one past thirty-five, with blank expressions and hands folded. “Ms. Rose,” he says, holding up a warrant. “We’re here to search your apartment for possible art forgeries and other stolen contraband.”
My stomach gurgles, which I hope they can’t hear. “Come in. I do hope you won’t make a big mess the way they do on TV.”
“That should not be necessary,” he says, and I do think he means it. “Will you step out of the way and allow us to do our duty, please, ma’am?”
I gesture toward the parlor, where I just spoke at length with Willow about hiding everything. “I’ll be in there.”
I don’t dare have another drink, for fear of making a misstep, but I sit in my chair and listen to them going through the rooms, through closets, drawers. I can see down the hall, and several paintings are taken into the foyer, but from this distance I can’t make out what they are. The team is efficient, calm, businesslike.
I’m going to need a new phone when I leave, I think absently, and when the phone is back online, I open my Insta, the first thing I do anytime I pick it up. There are 831 comments on the begonia series and 24,907 likes. I scroll through some of them.
The light! I wish I had your eye!
I’ve grown some rhizomes but never from seed. Bravo.
You inspire me!
I love your greenhouse, and I asked my son to help me build one. He’s coming over later today to measure!
That one makes me smile, and I give it a heart, but I also open the reply box and tap out, That’s wonderful! Please post a photo when you get it going!
My heart plummets once again, because where will she post? Here to this account I’ll never be able to use again?
I’m shaky and look toward the noises the agents are making.
How could the universe be so very cruel as to take all this now, when I mind so much? When I’ve final
ly found a life that means something? I’ve always loved the girls, but they were not my life, the meaning of everything. We’re supposed to feel that way about our children, as women, but how many of us really do? Love, yes, love madly, kill to protect.
But childhood is fleeting. A relationship with a child is a rich and rewarding thing, but it is a relationship and therefore simply a part of a person’s life, not the whole.
With my Instagram, I discovered a way to be useful. Helpful. I know I’m helping other women with this account—maybe even some men—inspiring them, like the woman with the greenhouse, to do things they haven’t articulated, or maybe haven’t had the courage to claim. I’m telling them all that it’s perfectly reasonable to expect to have a full, interesting, exciting life after seventy.
I will be letting them down, along with Willow, Sam, my friends, and, most of all, myself.
But no whining. I click the phone to dark and fold my arms over my knees. This is all my own doing.
Balakrishna carries something out of the dining room, a fairly large painting, and places it with the others the agents have brought out. They can’t mean to take them out of here in their frames, can they? I stand up and walk briskly into the doorway of the foyer. “Why are you taking these?”
“I believe several of them are forgeries, actually.” He lifts his chin, and I see that beneath the appearance of softness is a spine of titanium, and he takes his job seriously. “They will need to be authenticated.”
The one he holds is a piece Billie bought on tour in the early eighties, one of the first paintings she picked up after buying the apartment. It’s not anything I ever paid much attention to, a minor painting by an artist I don’t care much about. Another one, propped up in the chair, is a drawing by Duncan Grant, the Bloomsbury artist. “That one is not a forgery,” I say definitely. “I bought it myself, in a fierce auction.”
He gives me a bland look. “It will be authenticated.”
“Please be careful with it.”
Write My Name Across the Sky Page 22
