by Sonya Cobb
“Sophie,” she said. “Brian’s—”
“Sophie. Hi. I just got back.”
“I see that.”
“Excuse my language. But as you can see, things have fucking fallen apart around here.” Ted cringed.
“Sorry to hear that,” said Sophie, hoisting the cooler up and cradling it against her belly. “Well, we’ll get out of your way.”
In Brian’s office she ate her sandwich while Brian whispered about the maelstrom that had struck upon Michael’s return. “Poor Marjorie’s been taking the brunt of it. He actually accused her of stealing some things.”
“What?”
“I know, it’s ridiculous. There are so many cards without objects, and it’s been that way since…I don’t know. The thirties?”
Sophie chewed a bite of baguette, unable to swallow. “Poor Marjorie…that’s really unfair.”
“Yeah. He’ll calm down eventually. Michael’s just a control freak.”
“Is he going to…report her?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, I hope not. I don’t know what he would be able to report. And then we’d all be screwed, for letting things get so bad with our inventory.”
“You think you guys would get blamed?”
“Absolutely. I mean, remember those carts that were in my office? That never should’ve happened. I had all kinds of people in and out of here. Thank God there wasn’t anything really important on them.”
“Anyway, you guys wouldn’t have had something important just sitting in storage, right? With no object card? Don’t you keep track of the good stuff?”
Brian massaged his forehead. “We try. But with the turnover we’ve had, it’s hard to know what’s been studied and what’s been just stuck on a shelf without a second thought. That’s why I wanted to wait for Michael before we started shipping everything out. I wanted him to go through it all.” He rubbed his eyes. “I should’ve put my foot down.”
Sophie sipped her water. “Don’t you want your sandwich?”
“I have zero appetite. Sorry. It was nice of you—I mean, it’s a beautiful sandwich. My God, you practically cooked.”
“I know!”
Ted appeared in the doorway. “Brian, do you have a moment?”
“You finish eating,” Brian told her. “I’ll be right back.”
But instead of waiting, Sophie tossed the rest of her lunch in the trash, took the empty cooler, and let herself out through the department door. Walking past the tapestries to the Great Stair, she found the silence of the near-empty museum oppressively lonesome. She changed direction and headed toward the vast front window, which was swathed in white floor-to-ceiling curtains. She slipped behind the curtains, set the cooler on the floor, and stood admiring the view of the city skyline, which shone under the cold blue sky. Cars swirled around Eakins Oval; joggers bounced in place at stoplights; a helicopter paced the sky over the Vine Street Expressway. Sophie felt very still. She was aware that everything had changed, that she was being nudged off her track, but for the moment she had not decided what new direction she would take.
Behind her, she heard Brian’s voice calling her name. Standing behind one of the fat columns flanking the window, she peeked through the curtain and saw him leaning over the balcony rail, searching the Great Hall. He hurried to the stairs and ran down them while she remained motionless behind the curtain. A few minutes later he returned, climbing the steps two at a time, and disappeared into a side gallery. She heard a door slam.
Sophie waited. Two young employees carrying file boxes emerged from another gallery and walked to the balcony elevator, then disappeared behind its tall bronze doors.
Silence.
She waited a little longer, her heart calm in her chest. In front of her an enormous gray-and-white Calder mobile spun serenely over the Great Stair Hall. A car honked outside and the helicopter sputtered in the sky, but inside there was no sign of life; all the curators, art handlers, conservators, volunteers, and assistants were hidden away in their offices behind the museum’s proscenium. Sophie picked up the cooler, slipped from behind the curtain, and walked slowly toward the stairs. It was over. Michael was back; he would take care of the objects. It was time to resume her life as an unwanted freelancer, playground bench warmer, fish-stick dispenser. They would sell the house at a loss. With no down payment, they’d have to rent something. A place in the suburbs with low ceilings, louvered windows, hollow-core doors. A place that would offer no solace when Brian was out of town; a place far from their friends, far from their new life. In a place like that, she imagined, she could almost evaporate, disappear, with nothing at all to tether her to the earth.
Sophie veered away from the stairs and walked into the European Art wing. She moved slowly through a series of doorways, passing period rooms whose entrances were blocked by iron railings. Navigating this dense network of galleries had always felt frustrating to Sophie, who found it hard to remember which rooms she had visited and how to get back to where she’d started. The mix of ceramics, bronzes, furniture, chandeliers, and paintings was overwhelming if she tried to cover too much ground at once, and the many styles of period rooms, from a gilded Parisian salon to a wood-paneled English lodge, left her disoriented. This time, however, she was grateful for the wing’s many twists and turns: a person could disappear forever in here. There were no guards or cameras to find her.
She quickened her step, scanning the objects sitting on mantels, consoles, and side tables: they looked back at her silently, almost indulgently. She turned off into a series of smaller galleries, peeking into a mirrored French drawing room, then the sitting room of an English country manor. She took note of an ornate mantel clock, some rough pewter tableware, an endless variety of ceramics. A pair of reddish-brown vases looked like something you could get at IKEA: simple, monochromatic, completely modern. The label read “Tang Dynasty, 618–902.”
In another gallery she came across a display of finely wrought silver miniatures: dozens of doll-size coffeepots, candlesticks, baskets, and chalices. If they hadn’t been under Plexiglas, Sophie would have gladly swept the entire tinkling collection into her cooler.
Bent in front of the display, she became aware of a distant vibration in the air, which gradually coalesced into a sound, then a realization: footsteps. Sophie straightened and slid to the wall by the door, listening. The steps grew muffled as they passed into a further gallery; then they stopped. There was a dull metallic clank, then the footsteps reversed. Sophie moved closer to the doorway, edged her face to the jamb, and peeked out. She had a view of the next three rooms through a series of nesting doorways. A figure suddenly crossed one of the openings, startling her: it was a man in blue coveralls carrying a metal ladder.
Sophie pulled her flats off her feet and put them into her coat pockets. She quickly turned the corner and hurried through a side door, putting distance between herself and the worker, who was headed, she thought, toward the galleries along the exterior wall. She crept toward the other side of the wing, slipping a little in her tights, carefully skirting rooms with creaky parquet floors.
Suddenly, the screech of the ladder being opened tore through the silence, sounding closer than it should. Sophie ducked through a small door and found herself in a strange, claustrophobic nook. To one side of the doorway was a dark pocket of space just large enough for her to stand in, her back against the wall. The other side of the alcove opened into a small period room, the entrance blocked by a wood and Plexiglas barrier. From her hiding place Sophie could just make out the title on the room’s label: “Het Scheepje (The Little Ship).”
Lit by a pair of tall exterior windows, soft with shadows and filled with heavy black furniture, the room seemed to come straight from a Dutch painting. A few simple metal objects had been placed on a cloth-covered table near the window, where they caught the light and gently held it. In one corner a brass birdcage hung from the
heavily beamed ceiling; on the opposite wall, blue and white tiles surrounded an iron fireplace screen, flanked by stone columns supporting a carved wood mantel, on which was propped a series of blue and white plates. Between the two windows a heavy black sideboard loomed, its ebony-inlaid surface busy with carved figures. Sitting on top of the sideboard, under a massive cornice supported by elaborate pillars, gleamed a silver footed bowl.
Sophie fixed her gaze on the bowl, admiring the way its embossing caught the window light with such clarity, like a stroke of white impasto ringing through the darkness. The shallow dish perched lightly atop a fluted stem, which bulged in the middle and resolved in a gracefully spreading foot. Its delicate proportions were a welcome contrast to the dark, plodding wood, iron, and brass that filled the room.
Waiting in her dark corner, listening to the creaks and clanks of the maintenance man’s work, Sophie felt herself pushing away from shore and embarking on a different sort of journey: one that was simultaneously more deliberate and less certain. Somewhere in the back of her mind something bothersome flapped in the wind, distracting her from the darkness that was luring her into its velvety depths. She turned away from it, allowing the noise to recede from her consciousness, blocking the loose canvas flap, which lashed a long tail of rope, from her mind’s line of sight. She eased the cooler to the floor between her legs and pulled a pair of winter gloves from her pockets. A few rooms over, the ladder shrieked shut. Footsteps thudded quickly toward the exit.
It wasn’t difficult to climb over the barrier, which was just over waist-high. Climbing back over it with the bowl in her hand was trickier but she managed, resting her torso on the wood frame and swinging her legs over, careful not to kick the label stand. The bowl almost didn’t fit in the cooler, but she set it at an angle, and the cooler’s pitched lid just cleared it.
She stopped right inside the wing’s entrance, slipping her shoes back on and peeking out at the balcony. Her heart had finally revved up, and the strange metallic taste once again glazed her tongue. She gripped the cooler in her moist, gloved hand and willed herself to step out into the wide, exposed balcony, walking casually, swinging the cooler with the relaxed air of a wife who has just enjoyed an intimate lunch with her husband. Jauntily descending the Great Stair, she saw a figure emerge from a hallway on the first floor, headed her way. The woman looked familiar: Sophie had met her at many parties. Nancy? Ann? Their paths crossed on the bottom stair.
“Hi, Sophie!” said the woman. (Tammy—wasn’t it Tammy?) “Visiting Brian?”
Sophie held up the cooler. “Yeah, I brought him some lunch.”
“Lucky guy. How are the kids?”
“They’re doing great. Growing like weeds. I’m actually on my way to pick them up at day care.”
“Okay, well, enjoy!”
“Bye!”
Tammy seemed so nice. Why didn’t they ever invite her for dinner? What was her husband’s name? Bill?
Sophie hummed to herself as she jogged down another set of stairs to the employees’ entrance, and pushed through the door into the cold winter sunshine.
***
“You can’t pull that kind of stuff, Sophie,” said Brian that night as he spooned pasta onto the kids’ plastic plates. “You should’ve waited for me to come back and escort you out.”
“Sorry—you just looked so preoccupied. I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Yeah, well, Tammy Brewer said she saw you. Made a point of coming to the offices to mention it.”
“What the hell business is it of hers?”
“And no more food in the offices. Now that Michael’s back, Ted’s playing everything by the book. He’s reasserting his authority. So…” Brian swept his hand through the air. “No more rule bending.”
“Got it. Can I have some of that wine?” She was thinking about the cooler, which she had carelessly left in the middle of the basement floor, the bowl still inside. She was getting too cavalier. “What’s going on with Marjorie?”
“It was pointed out to Michael that several of the so-called missing objects were actually locked in a cabinet in his office, and that he hadn’t made note of it on the object cards.”
“What were they doing there?”
“I don’t know—overflow from the storage room, I guess? Usually we’re supposed to use those cabinets for small things we’re studying or writing about; it’s meant to be temporary.”
“So Marjorie’s off the hook.”
“For now. He’s still pretty pissed, and storage is still a mess, but now he’s spreading the blame around. Apparently I was Marjorie’s direct supervisor while he was gone, and so I am being blamed for letting a volunteer touch the objects.”
“Oh, please. Didn’t she work for the registrar at Atwater Kent?”
“As a secretary.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, Ted’s determined not to let any of this get out. If our committee got wind of any of this…or the head of collections…well. But that’s not going to happen. Now Ted and Michael are working their asses off to get it all sorted and out of our hands.”
“And what about you?”
Brian shrugged. “It’s never been my problem, I’m not about to get involved now. Silver and crystal—”
“Not my domain,” Sophie finished for him. “Lucky you.”
The next day she called Harry, but he’d gone to England to visit his family. “The annual pilgrimage,” he explained over the phone. “Just making sure I don’t get written out of the will. What’s happening in Philadelphia?”
Sophie told him about her confrontation with Carly, but Harry seemed distracted and impatient. “Fuck her,” was all he had to contribute. Then, “Well, do you have anything for me?”
Sophie was taken aback; this was not the Harry who was always so surprised and delighted by her offerings. She hesitated, unsure how to navigate the shift in tone.
“Hello?”
“I…might.”
“Good. I’ll have a look when I get back to New York.”
“Okaaaaay…” For the first time in a while, Sophie felt a twinge of nervousness. This was not how things were supposed to go. She wasn’t a mule. “I’ll try to hang on to it for you,” she said. “If I don’t find someone else who’s interested.”
Harry snorted. “Well, well! Listen, love. Be careful. Most dealers won’t be as casual about provenance as I have been.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ve been very generous with you, darling. You go elsewhere, you might not find people who are this…friendly. And then I’m afraid you’ll be on your own.”
Sophie frowned at the phone. Where was Harry going with this?
“Anyway,” he continued, much more cheerily, “I’m off to dinner with this pack of miscreants that keeps insisting it’s related to me. I hope your Christmas is better than mine. See you soon, love.”
“See you soon. Harry.”
Sophie hung up, Harry’s tone clinging to her like a sticky residue. The bald greed, the thinly veiled threat—where was this coming from? He knew, yes…of course he knew there was something…not quite right about the source of the objects. So far he’d been polite enough to avoid mentioning it. But it hadn’t occurred to her until now that Harry might be more aware of what she was doing than she was.
***
After dropping off the kids at day care the next morning, Sophie pushed the empty stroller through the gray chill of Center City, staring glumly into store windows. There was no way she could make a mortgage payment after buying gifts for the kids—remarkably expensive gifts that had been listed with great urgency by Lucy, dictating to Sophie, who then mailed the requests to the North Pole, complicit in her own undoing. Of course Santa would bring them the Playmobil palace and the Brio train set. Sophie would not, for anything in the world, miss that Christmas morning moment when
the children saw their dreams come true, just like that, for the asking. Then there were the plane tickets to Cincinnati. They’d be spending the holiday with Brian’s sister, Debbie, and her family; she had to buy gifts for them, too.
Sophie paused in Rittenhouse Square, as she often did on her way home, with a cup of coffee and muffin. Here in this meandering refuge from the city grid, squirrels seemed to be the only ones in a hurry. Even on a chilly day the benches were crowded with members of the slower class: retirees, students, mothers, drunks. Sophie found an empty seat on the main path and unwrapped her muffin. The argument with Carly was still bothering her. That she would even pretend to be jealous of Sophie’s life was absurd; Carly had always been perfectly content with her single, childless existence. Now all of a sudden she was lonely? Wasn’t that just an excuse for bad behavior?
And then deflecting the blame by bringing up Sophie’s supposed issues. Okay, she wasn’t blind—Sophie could see her own hypocrisy, but Carly couldn’t see it, could she? It was Sophie’s own fault that the argument kept coming back to poke her in the ribs, like a wayward underwire. She reminded herself that Carly’s affairs were destructive—to marriages and friendships. Sophie’s little habit affected no one, it was temporary, and there were good reasons for it.
A pregnant woman walked by, then another. There was probably a Lamaze class across the square. She watched the bellies pass, idly inventorying the types: high and proud, wide and spreading, pointed, lopsided. She remembered when she had first started to show, feeling like a fat peony bud, clenched tight and shiny around her secret beauty. As her belly swelled, so had her sense of importance. It was saintly work, putting a heavy child, literally, before yourself, sharing every meal, breath, and heartbeat. The world had been eager to grant her special status, quick with chairs and glasses of water. The cruel joke, of course, was that the heroic work actually came later, when the hormonal buzz had faded and her belly had crumpled, when she was heaving the double stroller around—then where were the chairs and glasses of water? But that, she supposed, was when the rewards of motherhood became more private and hard-won. When the kids showed flashes of intelligence and good sense. When she watched her son reach out to a goat at the petting zoo, his head cocked with curiosity, his hand descending gently onto a flank, where others might grab or pull, his gesture filled with pure kindness.
