The Seduction of Water

by Carol Goodman

  I certainly can’t complain about Joseph’s replacements—Ian and Clarissa, a young couple, recently graduated from Cornell. And I’m happy to see Aidan released from manual drudgery and promoted to special-events coordinator. True, his new responsibilities require that we learn to spend ten minutes alone together without falling into bed. Aidan surprises me, though, with a level of seriousness I’ve never seen before. He’s determined to make the Arts Festival a success. He’s even stopped making fun of Sir Harry.

  “So all you needed was to be dubbed yourself and you abandon all plans for the serf uprising,” I tease him one afternoon while we’re going over the guest lists in the library. We’re sitting on the couch at the back of the room and I can’t help but remember the night of Gordon del Sarto’s lecture. I already searched the cushions for my lost master key but when I couldn’t find it I made a duplicate from Paloma’s and gave it up for lost.

  “Aye, I’ve joined the oppressor. This is what comes of the sleeping with the upper class.”

  I slip my foot out of my loafer and run my toes up under his pant leg. “I see. You’ve used me to claw your way up to special-events coordinator. Next you’ll be after my job.”

  “Maybe when you’ve gotten one of those six-figure contracts for your book you won’t want it anymore. You’ll leave me up here with no one but Joseph for company.”

  “Don’t forget Joseph’s new bevy of art students. Maybe Natalie will keep you company.”

  It’s farther than I meant to go and we both know it. After glancing toward the courtyard (I notice that lately he’s become the more cautious one) he slides closer to me on the couch and leans his leg against mine.

  “I told you I just asked for her number that night.” He shifts his weight and my skirt rides up a little. A draft of cool, damp air from the fountain in the courtyard wafts in and makes me shiver. “But I never used it.”

  I sigh, a little bit because we’ve had this conversation half a dozen times already, a little bit because it will be hours before we can really be alone. “Forget it, Aidan, I didn’t mean anything by it. Besides,” I say, wriggling my knee against his, “I think I’m more jealous of how much time she’s spending with Joseph.”

  I see his brow furrow and can feel his leg tense against mine. “Jesus,” I say, more irritably than I mean to, “it was a joke, Aidan.”

  “I know. It’s not that, although I do wonder why it’s so vital to you that you prove you’re not jealous of me. Is it because you mean us to have the sort of ‘unconventional’ relationship that you and Jack have . . .”

  “That was Jack’s choice as much as mine, because he’s an artist . . .”

  “And I’m just a working stiff . . .” He stops and we both hear, above the murmur of water from the fountain, voices.

  “You know that’s not what I meant,” I hiss, shifting a few inches away from him. “Jack didn’t want more from me. He kept me at arm’s length.”

  “And if he didn’t keep you at arm’s length? If he suddenly wanted more?”

  The voices have come closer and I recognize them as belonging to the Eden sisters. I lean forward and draw Aidan’s clipboard nearer so the Eden sisters will think we’re busy and leave us alone. “It doesn’t matter, Aidan, I would tell him it’s too late. I told you that I’ll talk to him as soon as his residency is over in September.” I wave to the Eden sisters and to the stacks of folders on the table to indicate that Aidan and I are busy. Minerva returns the wave and starts toward us, but Alice pulls her back and steers her into the adjoining Gold Parlor. I turn back to Aidan, edging myself closer to him, but he’s moved a good foot away from me and dumped a pile of folders between us.

  “I can’t have this conversation with him when he calls me from the pay phone at the artists’ colony. And I can’t tell him in a letter. Jack is too visual. I owe him an explanation in person.”

  “Well, you’ll get your chance soon enough,” he says, flipping open the top folder, which contains the registration form we’ve sent out to artists’ groups. “He sent in his registration card for the Arts Festival a week ago. I was wondering when you were going to get around to letting me know.”

  It’s no use after that trying to explain to Aidan that I didn’t know about Jack’s plans. I can hardly believe it myself. The last time I spoke to Jack he said he felt his work was going so well he was afraid to disrupt the flow by leaving for a weekend. It had been hard not to let on how relieved I was—not only because I could put off telling him about Aidan and avoid the possibility of their meeting, but also because it confirmed everything I’ve come to feel about the relationship.

  It’s the kind of explanation, though, I’ve always been leery of: I knew all along something was wrong, but I didn’t admit it until I found myself falling in love with someone new. How convenient. So what if I can see now what a halfway, stinting sort of love I’ve had with Jack all these years, how he’s used—okay, we’ve both used—the excuse of art to keep our distances? If it was really over, couldn’t I have known that without sleeping with a twenty-nine-year-old? What if the situation were reversed? What if he told me he’d realized our relationship was over because he’d started sleeping with some younger woman? Maybe, it suddenly occurs to me, that is what he’s coming here to tell me.

  The wave of physical pain I have at that thought belies everything I’ve been trying to convince myself of about Jack. It’s far worse than any jealousy I’ve had over Aidan and Natalie Baehr.

  Although I know that the art colony has strict rules against calls between nine A.M. and four P.M. I decide to call anyway. Only not from the hotel. The fact that Jack has to talk to me from a pay phone is only half the reason I haven’t wanted to tell him about Aidan over the phone—it’s also because I know from experience how easy it is to listen in on calls at the hotel.

  I stop by the desk to tell Ramon that I’ve got to drive to the printer in Poughkeepsie because there’s a last-minute change in the program for the Arts Festival. I tell him I’ll be back by dinner and ask him to proofread the menu for me. I take the keys for the old Volvo—replaced this summer by a fleet of purple mini vans sporting the Crown Hotels logo—from the office and wave at Janine as she listens intently to her headset.

  The Volvo feels as if it’s soaked up all the heat of the summer and the upholstery is as cracked as the dirt path leading down to the parking lot, but still I feel like a teenager in her dad’s convertible. I roll down the windows to breathe in the piney air. Instead I smell hot tar and dust. The pines on the edge of the road have a seared look, their needles glinting copper in the relentless sun. Something else bothers me as I drive down the mountain, but I can’t put my finger on it until I get to the bottom. I stop the car at the new sign for the hotel, switch off the engine and listen. All I hear is the rustle of dry pine needles, a sound like brooms sweeping a wooden floor. I can’t hear the creek.

  I start up the car again and head toward the river. There’s a pay phone at the Agway but now that I’m driving away from the hotel the motion feels too good to stop. The river is widening in my windshield, growing from the thin pencil line I see from the hotel into a wide expanse of thirst-quenching blue. The bridge and the hills on the other side—a view I’ve stared at all summer long—bulk and take on substance. It’s like I’ve been living in a two-dimensional drawing all these weeks and now I’ve stepped off the page into real life.

  Ascending the arc of the bridge I have a sudden urge to follow the river all the way back to the city. No wonder I’ve always avoided working at the hotel. My suspicions that it was a trap have been borne out.

  Across the bridge, I turn south on Route 9, not really thinking through how far I plan to go—just enjoying the sensation of traveling. I wonder if this is how my mother felt that night Joseph drove her across the river to take the train to the city, that she was finally casting off the burden of the hotel—of me and my father—to start a new life.

  I think of the scene in her book when the selkies sh
ed their skins at the place in the river where the water turns from salt to fresh. The Hudson is tidal up until Rip Van Winkle, which is where you used to have to change trains to continue north and where my mother saw that woman throw herself under a train. I’ve always thought that the selkie story meant for her the transformation that occurred to her when she left the city and came to the hotel, but when the selkie sheds her skin the thing she becomes isn’t her true self either. She always longs to return to the sea, to slip into her old skin. The selkies in my mother’s book can’t go back because of some lost necklace—the net of tears. What if, for my mother, the net of tears wasn’t a lost thing, but a lost person without whose love she was not her true self?

  What if running away with Peter Kron meant returning to her true self?

  I’ve been driving so lost in thought I haven’t kept track of where I am. I notice that the river has widened and when I see a sign for the Rip Van Winkle Correctional Facility I can hardly believe how far I’ve come. I remember the reason for my trip: to call Jack and find out why he’s coming, but I still don’t know what to tell him about Aidan. I wonder how my mother could have been so sure when she left us that she was leaving for the right person.

  I see a diner on the right—a vintage chrome Airstream that looks just the place from which to call Jack—and pull over. True to my expectations, it’s got a real phone booth with a worn wooden seat and a door that closes and switches on an overhead light. I dial the number, charging the call to my credit card, and prepare to do battle with the Cerberus of the colony—the receptionist.

  “Yes, I know the hours between nine and four are reserved for ‘creative output,’ ” I tell her, “but this is an emergency.”

  “Well, then, I’ll send someone to his studio,” she replies in a clipped voice that clearly says philistine and enemy of the arts. I think of all the writing I’ve failed to do this summer and wonder if I’d work better in such guarded isolation. I’d probably end up crocheting a doily for my laptop and watching squirrels all day long.

  I wait for fifteen minutes. I imagine Jack wrenched away from a moment of creative inspiration, wiping his paint-smeared hands on his jeans, and trudging through the woods to find out what emergency has befallen me. How am I supposed to tell him that the emergency is that I’m sleeping with a younger man but I’m still racked with jealousy at the idea that he may also be having an affair?

  When I hear his voice come on the line all I can think of is how much I’ve missed him.

  “What’s happened, Iris? Are you all right?”

  “I saw your registration form for the Arts Festival and I didn’t know what to make of it. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  He lets out an exasperated sigh and I think he’s going to yell at me for pulling him away from his work.

  “I asked that man at the desk if you’d see it and he said he didn’t think so because there was a new special-events coordinator, so I spoke with him and specifically asked him not to let you see it. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “You spoke with Aidan?” What had Aidan said? I was wondering when you would get around to letting me know. But he’d known all along that Jack meant to surprise me.

  “Was that his name? I thought he understood that I wanted to surprise you.”

  “But why? Did you have something important to tell me?”

  “Oh, Iris, I don’t know. I’ve just been feeling bad about how this summer has worked out.”

  “I thought the painting was going well.”

  “It’s not that. I’ve missed you and I’ve realized how grudging I’ve been with my time. I thought if I surprised you by coming to the hotel for a whole week it would make up a little for how I’ve neglected you. To tell you the truth, I’ve been a little worried.”

  “Worried about what?” I ask, trying not to sound as guilty and nervous as I feel.

  “That I’ve lost you. That you won’t come back to the city in the fall.”

  “Why wouldn’t I come back?”

  “Because you’ll want to stay on at the hotel. I know how much it’s always meant to you, so I wanted to tell you—damn, Iris, this isn’t how I meant to tell you—that if you want to stay at the hotel I’d come too.”

  “You mean you’d consider living up here?”

  “Why not? I think I’ve had enough of the city. We could find a little house near the hotel, maybe with a barn I could use as a studio. You’ve said often enough that real estate is cheap up there.”

  “Jack, I don’t know what to say. This is all so sudden.”

  “Don’t say anything right now. I’ve got to go anyway—the receptionist is glaring at me from the other office. We’ll talk about it when I’m up there. It’s still okay, isn’t it? I mean, you don’t mind me coming?”

  What can I say? Jack and I have been together for ten years. I owe him more than a summary dismissal from a diner pay phone. And if he’s really ready for us to live together, am I ready to say good-bye?

  “Of course I don’t mind you coming. I think there’s a lot we have to talk about.” That’s the best I can do, the only hint I give him that everything’s not right. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth that the diner’s stale coffee and greasy eggs and homefries only make worse. Still, I stay for an extra cup of coffee, dreading the return trip and facing Aidan. At the cashier I dawdle over the postcards and souvenir mugs—thick, cream-colored ones with a blue drawing of the Acropolis—and even buy a postcard because it’s occurred to me that this might be the diner where Ramon used to work. Just south of Peekskill on Route 9, he always said. Besides, now I’ll have something to show for this long, fruitless trip. Then, finally, because I can’t put it off any longer, I leave and head north.

  I make one more stop before going back to the hotel. Thinking about the section in my mother’s book when the selkies shed their skins has reminded me of the woman my mother saw die at the Rip Van Winkle station. I haven’t had a chance to follow up on it since I’ve been up here. It didn’t seem as important when I’d hoped I would find my mother’s lost manuscript, but now that the summer is almost over I have to face the possibility I’ll never find it—or even that Hedda was wrong and there was no third book. In that case, I’ll need another approach if I still plan to write a book about my mother. Aside from the unsubstantiated possibility that my mother was having an affair, the only solid piece of information I’ve gleaned all summer is that my mother saw a girl named Rose McGlynn die on the train tracks the day she left the city. Maybe if I can find out more about Rose McGlynn I can figure out why she was important enough that my mother named her fantasy world after her.

  I don’t really think the Poughkeepsie Journal will tell me much more than the New York Times, but there’s always a chance that the story would have drawn more local attention up here. The receptionist at the newspaper office directs me to the microfiche room where back issues of the paper are stored. I take out the loop for 1949 and scroll toward June 22, operating the machine much more confidently than back in May. When I find the story I see that it’s much longer than the Times version. I copy it and then, because there is no Rose Reading Room to repair to, read it under the flickering fluorescent lights.

  “Tragedy at Rip Van Winkle—Woman Visiting Inmate at Prison Killed in Train Accident,” the headline reads. I blink at the small, blurred type. The Times article hadn’t said anything about the girl visiting an inmate at the prison. According to the unnamed “friend” in that article (whom I suspect is my mother), Rose McGlynn had been traveling north from the city to look for hotel work.

  “The last person to see Rose McGlynn of Brooklyn, NY, was her brother John McGlynn, an inmate of Rip Van Winkle Prison. Just minutes after visiting her brother, who is serving a twenty-year sentence for grand theft, Rose McGlynn threw herself beneath the wheels of the train that would have taken her home, leaving behind on the platform a worn carpet bag and a multitude of unanswered questions. Perhaps she couldn’t face the trip home alone.”


  If the story wasn’t so sad I would laugh at the florid prose. Plus the Times said she was killed by the northbound train, not the southbound one. Who knows how much else this reporter—Elspeth McCrory, I see by the byline—got wrong. Still, she couldn’t have completely made up the part about the brother in prison.

  “The demise of this wild Irish Rose—” Oh, come on, Elspeth! “—was the culmination of a life full of tragedy, much of which was revealed during her brother’s trial when Rose McGlynn herself related the sad story of their childhood in a special plea for leniency in her brother’s behalf.” Elspeth McCrory went on to summarize the details of that “life full of tragedy.” The McGlynn children lost their mother when Rose was seventeen and John was fourteen, the eldest of three brothers. Their father, unable to care for the younger children, gave the boys over into state care—to St. Christopher’s Home for Boys in downtown Brooklyn. One of the boys had died there; the other two had, one after another, fallen into a life of petty crime. Rose McGlynn, who had gone to live with relatives in Coney Island, was a familiar sight in the Brooklyn courthouses where she’d plead for leniency on behalf of one brother or another. (How, I wondered, had Elspeth McCrory gotten all this background story just one day after the train accident?) She was particularly attached to John, and so one could imagine her grief when he was caught and convicted for robbing the hotel safe where Rose worked.

  I read this last part over again. According to Hedda, my mother had worked at the Crown Hotel. It made sense that the friend she traveled north with had worked at the same hotel. And as it turns out, she did.

  Elspeth McCrory had gone on to breathlessly describe the “Crown Jewel Heist” of over two million dollars’ worth of precious gems kept in the Crown Hotel safe as well as several costly items stolen from guest rooms. Some of the most valuable items belonged to the famous poet—and sister-in-law of the hotel’s owner—Vera Nix. Vera Nix’s testimony in the trial had been instrumental in convicting Mr. McGlynn.