Visible City (18 page)

“You should bring your kids over. It’s better than having a view of the Macy’s parade,” Leon said.

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

“I don’t like the noise but I don’t mind the construction workers. I pretend they’re not there. Do you think they care what’s going on in here?”

On Claudia’s desk was a small stack of books and a manuscript held together with a rubber band. Pens were laid out like surgical instruments. Tacked up on a bulletin board was an article bearing Claudia’s name, and on the wall above her desk were Post-it notes arranged in rows of varying heights, a jagged skyline of ideas. Along the windowsill were the glass bottles she’d seen in Claudia’s office long ago. They were bright blue or green, some small enough to cradle in the palm of a hand, others tall and thin, closer to wine bottles or vases.

Nina couldn’t keep her hands to herself. She touched the pile of typed pages and one of the glass bottles. She felt a stir of longing for her job. She might not have loved the work, but she missed the feeling of escape on Monday mornings when she’d arrived at her office. She missed knowing she was good at what she did. If she’d pushed past these demanding years, something more fulfilling might have awaited her in the future. The problem that once had no name now had many names but still no solution. Already the kids seemed older. After numerous attempts, she’d finally stopped nursing Lily. With the end of summer, Max had started back at nursery school; in a few years Lily would be doing the same. And then what? Life is long, the advice givers would say, offering cheerful reminders that she could indeed have it all, just not at the same time. True, perhaps, on both counts, but it meant little now, standing in Claudia’s office.

“What’s Claudia working on?” Nina asked.

“A book about John La Farge,” Leon said. “Don’t worry, most people haven’t heard of him. He was a nineteenth-century stained-glass maker. Even I don’t know much more than that.”

“Does she let you read it?”

“We have very different interests. And she doesn’t want anyone to read it in an unfinished state. Lately she’s convinced herself that she’s going to unearth a long-lost window, but I can’t help wondering what she’s really looking for. I wouldn’t say this to her, but I don’t think she wants to finish the book. She wouldn’t know what to do without it.”

“How did you and Claudia meet?” Nina asked.

“It’s a funny story, but Claudia hates it. She gets mad at me whenever I tell it—she thinks it makes us both look bad. We were both in school in Boston and had lots of friends in common, so we ran into each other from time to time. Or so she claims. I never remembered meeting her. When our friends introduced us at a party, I thought I was meeting her for the first time. As you well know, she’s terrible with faces, but apparently I’m just as bad.”

“Was she interested in you from the start?” she asked.

“Yes, but it took a lot to get her to admit that. She was offended that I hadn’t remembered her. What about you and your husband? I hope you have a happier story.”

“We met in law school. We were on
Law Review
together. We were both hard-working and ambitious. We used to pull all-nighters together, footnoting. It’s very romantic.”

“You were on
Law Review
? Very impressive.”

“It feels like a lifetime ago. If you had told me then that I wouldn’t be working, I’d have laughed.”

“Welcome to adulthood. What you thought it was going to be like has nothing to do with anything,” he said, and turned away. “We should probably go. Claudia is very protective of her office. Emma and I used to joke that she’d instinctively know if one of us ever ventured in to borrow a pen or use her printer. I shouldn’t complain. I feel the same way about my car. If Claudia or Emma were ever to use it, I’d feel like they were invading my inner universe.”

His discomfort initiated hers, and Nina followed him back to the living room where they stood next to the windows, between the shelves of books. She saw Claudia’s name on the book about the history of stained glass which she’d come across online. When she flipped to the back cover, she saw a photograph of Claudia, although it was taken so long ago that she resembled Emma more than herself.

“Do you ever close the curtains?” she asked.

“Why? Are you afraid we’re watching you now?”

“I was just wondering.”

“Tell me, really. What have you seen?” he asked.

“I used to love seeing you and Claudia on the couch. Once I saw you dancing and I kept watching to see if you were ever going to do it again.”

“You must really have us under constant surveillance.”

“Why don’t I see you on the couch anymore?” Nina asked.

“We’ve been busy. With Emma here, there have been few free moments.”

“She told me she was moving back in with Steven, at least for now.”

“She is, in theory. I’m not sure whether I should consider this a victory, but I convinced her to give it another chance before she makes any decisions. I’ve been spending so much time talking to her, giving advice as if I really know what’s best. Who knows? Maybe my advice was self-interested. Maybe all I wanted was to have quiet nights again.”

“I used to imagine what you and Claudia were saying to each other,” Nina said.

“I wonder why you’re so interested in watching us,” he said.

“Every night, when I was home alone, I saw the two of you and you looked so content.”

“And what about you? How content were you?” he asked.

“Are you going to teach me about the concept of projection?” she asked.

“Isn’t that what every good voyeur learns? Things aren’t always what they seem.”

“So how are they really?” she asked.

“Aren’t you curious,” he said.

“And aren’t you evasive,” she said, and couldn’t hold back a smile.

“You too,” he said, matching her smile. “What are you hiding from? What if you didn’t look into other people’s lives?”

“What would I do instead?” she asked.

They looked at each other and waited. One moment passed. Then another, and neither of them spoke. He lightly touched her arm, a small gesture that ricocheted through her body. His voice was suddenly softer, almost unrecognizable.

“That depends on what you want,” he said.

She was emptied of words. She was not the kind of person who would ever do this, and yet. She was not someone who had ever contemplated leaving the path laid out for her. Having marveled at stories about people who with one great move, one rash act, dynamited their lives, she’d always thought they were of a different breed from her. But she understood them better now. They too had told themselves that they were entitled to their thoughts, the estates inside their heads places where they were allowed to roam. They too wandered off their prescribed paths, taking small, barely noticeable steps, not looking back until they were too far gone.

She studied his hand, the air between them so thick it was hard to breathe. She was not doing this and yet her hand was grazing his, permission and invitation at once. Exquisitely aware of her body, every inch of physical presence, her fingers interlaced with his.

She should turn back. She should bolt right now. She should, she should. But she wanted to slay whatever came after those words. Her body came free from her mind, then his arms were around her, and he was kissing her. His hands roamed her body, entangled in her hair, down her legs. She was not doing this, yet her shirt was coming off, then his was as well. Her bare skin against his, her hands came to life as well, traveling his chest, his back, his face.

She had thought she could step closer to the edge and pull herself back. She had thought that she could live safely inside the confines of her mind. But if this was so, why was she pulling him down onto the couch? This should be the moment when she remembered who she really was. She should feel the unstoppable urge to return home, to where she was supposed to be. Her own apartment was suddenly far away; she could no longer see into the distant life taking place inside that small square.

Only this moment, only this now. The wrestling, doubting, yearning part of herself would not stay hidden any longer. Leon’s face was just above her, his chest upon her. She felt the shock of a new body. This other person whom she had watched from afar, whom she had constructed in her mind, was not behind a pane of glass but here, in life.

The potential for quiet had returned, yet all they did was talk about Emma. Even in her absence, she overtook their nights.

“Do you know what’s really going on between her and Steven? Do you know why she wants to drop out of school? Do you think she even knows why herself?” Claudia asked as she and Leon sat on the couch.

“Why are you so convinced it’s the wrong decision?” Leon asked.

“I’m just trying to understand. She won’t tell me anything.”

“Maybe she’ll be happier,” he offered.

Claudia chafed at his words. Was happiness the currency in which work, in which life for that matter, was to be measured? It was a concept so abstract that it was irrelevant, the province of wishful, impossible fantasy. She remembered something La Farge had said when he completed one of his North Easton masterpieces: “I have finished the Ames window and have suffered much for it.” She had always assumed that Emma knew what it was to be in love with an idea. She thought Emma understood that the frustration was inseparable from the pleasure.

“She’s still undecided. All we can do is let her figure this out on her own,” Leon said.

“That’s what you always say,” Claudia said, as Leon got off the couch and looked out the window. She had no idea what he was looking at, no idea what would draw his attention. Studying his face, she couldn’t stand what she saw. Though she didn’t know its source, she knew him well enough to see it. A new glint in his eye. A smile on his face while he was lost in thought. The unforgivable signs of his own private happiness.

Leaving Leon in the living room, Claudia went to her office. All those years in which she’d given up so much in order to be available. All those years in which she’d taken such pleasure in the fact that she and Emma were so similar. To look at her daughter was to see not a separate entity but a part of herself reflected back. She couldn’t help but take Emma’s plan to drop out of school personally. She saw it as a rejection not just of what she had wanted for her daughter but of who she was.

There was no one to share this with, so she did what Leon had so easily done: closed the door to her office and banished her family from her mind. She was reminded of something she’d long known to be true but came back to her now with the force of revelation: you always needed a place to claim as your own, and her work was the sole thing she had, as surely as if it were a small cabin in a quiet woods.

At her desk, Claudia read and ate a piece of cake she’d brought from Georgia’s. In the privacy of her office, she consumed it without stopping. She hadn’t wanted to sit in the café, not after she’d walked in that morning and saw a
Times
article taped to the front door.

The article, on the front page of the Metro section, was titled “In Neighborhood Café, a Clash About Noisy Children.” There were two pictures accompanying the article, one of a mother, her mouth open in conversation with her kids, the other of Claudia bent over her laptop. “Is there no place in this city where quiet still exists?” Claudia was quoted as saying, and the article gave her name and identified her as an art historian who frequented the café.

When a reporter had approached her one day as she was working there, she had still wanted to lash out at those mothers. But now she no longer felt like shushing anyone. If she could call that reporter back, she would tell her how it felt to have a daughter treat you as though you’d done everything wrong. If she had one more chance to talk with those mothers, she would warn them that one day they would look at their children and wonder who they really were.

The only consolation was her newly published article. Though there wasn’t the bright light of fame that other areas of research might attract—no one would ever stop her on the street to say they’d read her piece—she was no longer working entirely in the shadows. She received notes from several former colleagues and was invited to speak at the Society of Architectural Historians’ annual meeting, at a session on new discoveries in Victorian decorative arts. A graduate student in Texas e-mailed her about his work on the relationship between La Farge and the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

She checked her e-mail, wanting more e-mails, more response. She Googled Maurice again, searching for him in vain. It wasn’t too much, was it, to long for someone who was equally captivated by the ideas she cared so much about?

She checked her e-mail again. She drew in her breath. Not Maurice but something else.

“We wonder if we have something in our basement that would be of interest to you,” the message read.

A curator who had worked on the restoration of a church outside of Boston, which housed La Farge’s
Rebecca at the Well,
had discovered a disassembled stained-glass window. It had been taken apart in panels and stored in wood boxes in the basement though no one knew how long it had been there.