“Do you think that will happen?”
“Sure I do. The only authority she has to go on is religious authority. I don’t see her as being able to overcome that. And I’m afraid that they’ll convince her to leave her job, and that somehow she’ll start believing that she’s a bad wife for not wanting to stay home and have more kids while he runs around on her. And as smart and feisty as she is, there’s just so much pressure on her.”
“You have to hope for the best. I know it’s a bad situation, but she’ll do what’s right for her and the baby. Besides, it’s not like this for her.” He pointed to the text.
“I’m not so sure about that,” I sighed. “In a way, it is.”
21
The fact that our office was unlocked the next morning when I arrived meant that Aviva was already at her desk. I dropped my bag on the floor next to my chair and peered around the cubicle wall.
“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”
She turned in her chair to face me. Her eyes were tired, and her normally rosy complexion was pale, with even darker shadows under her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Jill,” she said. “I just couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone.”
I walked around the wall and took a seat in the guest chair. “Tell anyone what?”
“That I took him back.”
I shook my head. “That’s your business, Aviva. You shouldn’t have to feel like you owe anyone an explanation.”
“I know,” she said, “but I told you what was going on. I guess I was just scared of your reaction. I know you’re probably disappointed, that you think I should have stood up for myself.” Her voice sounded angry. “But that’s not what it’s about. This is about my family, my baby. I have to do what’s right for them.” She sounded like she was reciting words from a script.
“Aviva,” I said, “I trust you. You know how to make tough decisions. I’ve seen you make difficult decisions every day, and you’ve never let anyone down. What I think isn’t important. I know you would do anything for your baby, you’d learn to live with anything if it meant you were doing what you thought best.”
She looked at me. I could see the suspicion in her eyes. “Come off it, Jill,” she said angrily. “You know you don’t mean that. Don’t give me platitudes about doing what’s best for my baby when you think I should leave him.”
“Hey, listen,” I said, finally getting annoyed. “Don’t get all over me just because you’re upset about what’s going on. Take him back, kick him out, whatever – just be true to yourself, and what you want – or pretend that you’re doing what you want; it doesn’t really matter – you’re the one who has to live with the consequences. And if you can live with them, that’s fine. But you’re the one who’s saying that you have to do what’s right for your family. If you don’t really feel that way, I can understand that - but don’t take it out on me.”
She looked at me, miserable. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be taking this out on you. Last night was,” she stopped speaking for a moment, “very difficult.”
“I can’t even imagine. I’m so sorry that I called and interrupted you.”
“Don’t feel bad. I asked you to call. I didn’t think he’d be back so soon. I figured it would be another day or two.”
“Well, with the baby coming any day now,” I said, “I can understand that he’d want to be back before it happens.”
She nodded. “That’s what the rabbi said he should do.”
“At least he listens to someone,” I said.
“It’s ironic. He thinks I should be listening to the rabbi as well. And the rabbi says I would be a better wife if I didn’t spend my days here, with people who aren’t religious. In fact, Jacob gave me a very hard time about you calling me last night. He thinks all of my ‘secular’ friends, as he calls them, are urging me to ask him for a divorce.”
“What about his secular friend?” I asked, sarcasm in my voice.
“The rabbi spoke with him about her, too,” she replied. “Somehow he managed to convince Jacob that no matter how he may feel about her, leaving your nine-months-pregnant wife is a really bad thing. Scared him with hellfire and brimstone, probably.”
“I thought we didn’t believe in hellfire and brimstone.”
“Well, there’s the whole concept of sin and atonement, which can be pretty effective. Especially coming from Jacob’s rabbi. The guy is like ninety years old, long white beard. Pretty much what you’d imagine God to look like. Even his eyebrows are judgmental.”
“Go figure,” I said.
“Anyway, the rabbi convinced him to come home, and then he told both of us that we needed to give this another try. But I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what I want to do.”
I looked at her tired face, and softened my tone. “Aviva, you’ll get through this. Get through having the baby, and then decide what you want to do.”
“Just like a Jewish Scarlett O’Hara,” she said. “’I’ll think about it tomorrow.’”
“’Because after all,’” I finished, “’tomorrow is another day.’”
She chuckled a little. “Anyway, I did get the message last night. He told me that you found what we were looking for.”
“We did,” I said. “The rose was there. Very old, very fragile. I didn’t even try to take it out of the book. I was afraid that it would disintegrate.”
“Better to wait until you bring it back here. We can take it out with tweezers, get it into a case, make sure we have someplace climate controlled to store it.”
“Good idea,” I said. I glanced up at the clock. “It’s getting late. We’d better get ready for the meeting.”
She sighed. “One thing I have to tell you,” she said. “I didn’t make it easy for Jacob when he came back, in spite of the rabbi’s entreaties to me to create an atmosphere of shalom bayit –peace in the home. My husband’s raging affair is no match for my raging anger – or raging hormones, for that matter.”
I laughed. “I don’t know how you can joke about this.”
“You know how it is,” Aviva said, as we gathered our notes and headed for the conference room. “If you didn’t know how to laugh, you’d do nothing but cry.”
It was another long day at work.
Around noon, Robert, Aviva and I received an email from Larry in Berlin. Although he was scheduled to be back within the next few days, he wanted to let us know as soon as possible that some of the new exhibition’s artifacts would be arriving ahead of schedule. But the worse news was the exhibition’s original curator, who hailed from one of our counterpart museums in Europe, had informed Larry that we needed to change the schedule, so everything would be moving up by a week.
Thus, the team was scrambling to make sure we had the new installation plans ready to go when Larry got back. This meant making sure we had our bids done for outside vendors and consultants, and that the painters and fabricators were booked for new dates and times. We also had to make sure our vaults were ready to receive the artifacts that would be coming to us on loan from other institutions.
All of this, with the added pressure of a new schedule, meant that Aviva, Robert and I had no time to discuss the manuscript any further. I managed to find a minute during the day to check my mailbox for another letter, but nothing had arrived. Around three thirty, I called Michael to let him know I would be home even later than usual. A few minutes later, I heard Aviva’s voice from behind the wall of the cubicle, arguing in hushed tones with Jacob about when she’d be leaving.
We assembled the team late in the afternoon, after we confirmed new dates with the painters and fabricators. Together, we started to build the models and lay the blueprints and sample labels out in the conference room, so that everything would be ready for the presentation when Larry returned. The assistant registrars were working frantically, making sure that the artifacts from our own collection were already catalogued and slated for positioning in the new exhibition. This would enable us to clear the dec
ks for the new items arriving from Europe over the course of the next couple of weeks.
Aviva left, exhausted, at six. The two exhibition assistants, Fern and Sandy, and Robert and I ordered in pizza and kept on working until nine thirty. Finally, having decided that we could do no more until the next morning, we put on our coats, walked across Battery Place to the RitzCarlton, hailed a couple of cabs, and headed home.
Because of traffic on the West Side – we hit the West Forties right around the same time the Knicks game was letting out of the Garden - I didn’t get home until after ten. I trudged up the stairs to our apartment and unlocked the door.
“Where’s my dinner?” I shouted as I walked in.
Michael called out from the bedroom. “You going Roper on me?”
I laughed. “What’s going on? How was your day?”
“Shitty,” he said, walking into the hall. “Rough day today. More budget cuts coming down. We had to let four people go.”
“I’m so sorry. That can’t have been fun.”
“It wasn’t.”
He looked upset, as he stood in the hallway wearing a dark blue tshirt and jeans. I took off my coat and hung it up. Then I walked over to him and put my arms around him, and he lowered his face into my hair. We held each other for a moment or two longer than we usually did.
“I know people usually expect the not-for-profit world to be a kinder, gentler place. But it’s not.”
“No, it isn’t,” he agreed. “Not where the bottom line is concerned.”
“What happens now?”
“You know, the usual. Everyone takes on more work. The development staff gets reshuffled. New strategic planning process takes place. Hopefully, they raise more money next fiscal year. Same old song and dance. Life goes on.”
“Sounds familiar,” I said. “Like every other non-profit I know.”
He followed me into the kitchen and watched as I opened the fridge and rummaged around, looking for a snack that I could eat this late that wouldn’t give me total indigestion.
“Did you have dinner?” I asked him.
“Yeah, I brought home pizza,” he said. “There’s a couple of slices in there for you.”
“Already had pizza,” I said. “We ordered in.”
He grinned. “Great minds think alike.”
“This’ll work,” I said, as I took a container of cherry-vanilla yogurt from the shelf and closed the refrigerator door. Then I pulled a drawer open and took out a spoon.
I walked into the living room and settled myself on the couch, taking a pillow from the middle of the cushions and wedging it under my arm.
“How was your day?” he said, sitting down next to me.
“Crap-tastic,” I answered cheerfully, stirring my yogurt. “Started out getting attacked by Aviva and ended with an unfinished presentation.”
He looked puzzled. “What’s up with Aviva?”
“Pretty much what I imagined. Worst case scenario.”
“She took him back?”
I nodded. “And he’s blaming her job for their problems. I overheard them fighting today about what time she’d be home from work.”
“Maybe he’s got a point,” Michael said. “She’s about to have a baby. And it seems to me as if we’ve just seen so much bad husband stuff going on in the manuscript that you’re expecting life to imitate art.”
“Ah,” I smiled, “but you forget, that manuscript is supposedly nonfiction. So I’d say it was more like life imitating life.”
“Maybe so,” he said. “By the way, your grandmother left a message earlier.”
“She did?” I said. “Perhaps détente is going into effect, then.”
“Maybe,” he said cautiously. “Should I play it for you?”
“Sure.”
He walked over to the machine and pressed the button. “Hello, Jill,” the familiar voice said. “I’m sure you’re very busy, but please call me when you have a moment. I don’t want to bother you at work.” There was a pause. “And whoever you are, Jill’s boyfriend, if you’re listening to this message – well, hello to you, too.”
I wondered exactly what she meant as the message clicked off. “It’s too late to call her back,” I said.
“Hey,” Michael said, “at least she acknowledged that I exist.”
“I wouldn’t think it’s necessarily a good thing. It’s just another thing for her to complain about, another item for the guilt trip. I mean, just listen to her. ‘I don’t want to bother you at work. I know you’re busy.’”
“Maybe she really doesn’t want to bother you at work. Listen, sometimes I don’t want to bother you at work.”
“I know,” I said. “but I’m still angry at her.”
“Listen, there’s no point in you being angry.” Michael said. “She’s the way she is, she’s probably not going to change. That much we know. But the fact that she even acknowledged that we’re together, you have to think of it as a step in the right direction. Besides, we both had bad days at work, we’re both affected by this thing with your grandmother. But you might want to think about things differently – maybe she’s coming around.”
“Please, Michael. I don’t need a lecture tonight.” I spooned the last of the yogurt out of the container. “I just want to watch TV and go to bed.”
“What about the manuscript?” he asked.
“What about it?”
“We don’t have too much further to go,” Michael said. “I know you’re tired, but I was wondering if you wanted to finish it tonight.”
His voice sounded hopeful. And he was right. I was exhausted. I was worried about Aviva, worried about work, and all I really felt like doing was going to bed, reading for five minutes, and falling asleep.
But Michael had such a bad day, I thought. And it wasn’t his fault I got home so late. Besides, I thought, I couldn’t keep the manuscript at home forever. It was time for me to bring it back to the museum. I looked at him and tried to smile. I didn’t have the heart to tell him no.
We prepared the apartment carefully. It was almost as if we knew it was the last night, the last time that we would have the manuscript in our possession. We laid the paper over the table, and put on our gloves in silence. Then Michael unlocked the case, opened it, and removed the manuscript from the packing materials.
He laid the book on the table before me as tenderly as if he were placing a sleeping infant into a crib. I adjusted my glasses, pushing them up on to the bridge of my nose with my fingertip. Then I opened the book, gingerly touching the thick brown binding, softly turning each delicate parchment page.
When we got to the pages where we had left off, it appeared as if the texture of the paper changed once again. The words looked as if they had been scrawled in haste, the black ink flying like a flock of startled birds across the paper. I looked at the pages in some surprise.
“It’s different,” I said to Michael. “It’s Margaret’s handwriting, but it doesn’t look like a diary entry. It looks like a letter.”
My dearest Daniel ~
I hath sent this to thee to be delivered by my sister, Cecily. I know that I cannot come to see thee myself, ever again.
When I arrived at home after seeing thee, William took me roughly by the arm and dragged me as a punished dog to my chamber. He closed the door behind us and in a sudden fury, struck me across the face. I fell to the floor with a cry.
- I hath long suspected thee of treachery, he shouted. Thou art a sinful woman, a disobedient wife.
I pulled myself up from the floor, and all at once the door opened. It was my sister Cecily, her face glowing with fury like an angel. She hurried into the room, and helped me up and onto a stool, and then with her handkerchief dabbed the blood from the cut at the corner of my eye, where William’s fist had struck me. Then she crossed the floor to where William stood. – Thou hath done enough, she said in a voice low with menace. Now leave.
- Thou shalt not come between husband and wife, William growled at her. This is not a
matter for thy interference.
- If thou strikest my sister again, Cecily said, and if thou doth not leave us in peace, I shall reveal thy doings to whoever shall listen. I shall bring shame and loathing upon thee, William Roper. For I will relate thy penchant for false seduction; I will tell of how thou hast ruined me, how thou hath tempted me with wine and false promises, and how unbeknownst to me, and against my judgment, thou hath taken my maidenhood from me. I have no shame any longer; I seek only thy destruction, and I shall bring it about.
His face paled like a child confronted by an angry mother. And then, in a moment, he recovered his composure. – Then all of the world shall know thee as a ruined slut, he said tauntingly.
- They shall not, she rejoined. – For I shall name thee to the King and his authorities as the man that hath raped me.
He paled again, this time looking defeated. – I shall leave thee alone now, he said. But think carefully of the shame thou shalt bring upon thy house if thou wouldst bring shame on me. The charge of rape shall stick to thee as well, Cecily, for no man would have thee if he knew. Thou mayest tell of my doings, he said, but thou wouldst also destroy the house of More; thy father’s name would rot in the gutter along with thine, he said, with a treacherous smile.
-And as for thee, Wife, he said with a sneer. I know of thy doings as well. I know that thou hast consorted with the Jew, and only God Himself will see fit to bring thy punishment upon thee. Already I see the signs of the curse that holds thee in its grip, he said, pointing to my pale skin and fatigued eyes, now bruised and bloody with the signs of William’s brutality.
-But they friend the Jew is not long for this world, William said. –The King suspects him of treachery, of helping thy father undermine the throne by supplying him with the texts for his treasonous study.
- My father has no texts, I shouted at William. It is all a falsehood, concocted by thee in order to gain my father’s worldly goods and his power among righteous men.
-Thy father hath no power, William laughed bitterly. – He hath been blinded by his love of God, like thy friend the Jew. And now thy father will die of his folly, William said, and thy friend as well.
The Bookseller's Sonnets Page 24
