by Amelia Wilde
“I see,” Mom says, in this speculative voice like maybe she does see. Maybe her motherly instincts have somehow told her that her daughter had a wicked threesome in a French hotel.
“But I left, and worse than that, I think I let him down. He wanted me to save that library. He never told me that, not with words.” He spanked me with a nonfiction book over the counter, though. “It’s something I felt from him.”
“Wasn’t it his company?” she asks. “He could stop the construction if he wanted.”
There was that story about the horse, though. About Cinnamon. You didn’t throw away a horse because it was wild. You kept it, even when you weren’t sure what to do with it. And then one day someone came along, someone no one expected, to tame her.
That old library lives and breathes as much as any animal. Christopher doesn’t feel that. For all that he genuinely cares about me, he sees the building as a commodity. Real estate.
“I think maybe… finding me was his way of stopping the construction.”
It meant he put his faith in me. There’s a knot in my stomach that says I let him down.
And I let that old library down.
“I didn’t get you into the treatment study.”
“And I didn’t want to do it. I would have, for you, but I didn’t want to.” She would have put herself through the pain of needles and chemicals, because I want her to get better. Does that make me selfish or stupid? Maybe both. Or maybe I’m just a little girl who wants her mother.
“Daddy would have paid for the treatment,” I say, feeling stubborn.
“Yes,” she says, simple and certain. “He would have insisted that I do it, too, even if I didn’t want to. You and he are a lot alike.”
“I don’t know whether that’s a compliment.” On some level I’ve been doing to my mother what Christopher does to me. Using my protection of her as a crutch. She did need me once, the way I needed him to dive in after me and rescue me. But she doesn’t need me to make smoothies or buy butterfly gardens in her name.
“Of course it is. I loved your father.”
“He loved you back.”
“He asked me out, you know. That night at the art gallery. Asked me on a date, like we were young and foolish. I said yes, of course. I could never say no to him.”
My throat burns. No wonder she had thought he wouldn’t leave her out of the will, among many other reasons. And we’ll never get to ask him why he did. Was it a moment of anger toward my mom? Was it a lesson for me? But he didn’t have any answers for me.
“Do you wonder why?” I ask.
“Sometimes. Not much, these days. He was a complicated man. Ambitious. Afraid.”
That makes me look up at her. “Afraid?”
“Afraid that someone was using him for his money. He couldn’t let it go. He never really trusted anyone.” She’s looking into the past now. “He loved me the same way I loved him, without being able to help it. That kind of love, it takes away your control, and he hated that.”
It breaks my heart to think of how different we could have been. If she and Daddy had gone on a date and then another. If they had finally been able to reconcile their love into building a life together. So many possibilities ended the night of that exhibit.
I close my eyes tight. “I think I have to go back.”
It was fear that sent me away from Tanglewood like a scalded cat. But I can’t wait the rest of my life wondering what might have been. Love is outside our control, but we aren’t defined by love. We’re defined by our choices. Our actions. By the willingness to do what’s right even when it’s hard.
I’ve always been hurt that Christopher didn’t fight for us, but how can I walk away without fighting for him? Without fighting for the library? Somehow those two things are the same.
Mom smoothes my hair back. “You always were my warrior. Even in school, with that Medusa painting. Even when it seemed impossible. You never gave up.”
“I gave up this time.” The words are acid in my mouth.
“Nonsense. You came home because you wanted a kale smoothie and a hug. That’s not giving up. That’s taking a break. Everyone needs a break.”
“What if I’m too late?” I’m not thinking of the library crumbling, though I should be. I’m thinking of the look in Sutton’s eyes. I’m thinking of the way he held me like I was something precious, and the way I walked away. He won’t forgive me for that. I don’t blame him.
“Well,” Mom says, her voice half pragmatism, half mystical acceptance of the world and its vagaries. “You might be. But you won’t know unless you try.”
32
Sacrifice
My Uber driver is from Egypt, something he tells me only when he sees the library book I’m reading as we leave the airport. Maybe he thinks I’m getting ready for international travel. “Don’t use a purse,” he says. “Too easy to steal. You want to keep things in your pockets, but deep inside. With buttons or zippers to close them.”
“You seem to know a lot about picking pockets.”
He waves a hand. “Everyone knows a lot. It’s the only way you don’t get robbed. There’s no place on earth with more thieves than Cairo.”
That makes me think of the Thieves Club, the semi-ironic name that four men in Tanglewood gave themselves. Hugo and Sutton. Blue and Christopher. Because every dollar they earn must be taken from somebody else. “Is that why you moved here?”
“It was the killing,” he says frankly. “The stealing I could live with.”
“That seems reasonable.”
“I have two daughters. It was no place for them to grow up.”
Fathers. So protective. There’s a tightness in my throat I don’t want to be there. It’s terrible to be angry at someone who isn’t alive to defend himself. The older I get, the more sure I am that he knew what would happen at that will reading. Maybe he would have changed it if he and Mom had started dating for a while, but at one point he knew he would humiliate her.
He did it to protect me. He knew I would hate him for it and did it anyway.
“Don’t believe anything they tell you,” Abdel says. “They will try to sell you a thousand artifacts in the streets and around the pyramids. Mummified cats, but you open them—only birds and rocks and dirt inside.”
“Why would I want a mummified cat?”
“Ancient scrolls that are made of plastic. Convincing plastic.”
“Okay, I’d like an ancient scroll. I might have fallen for that one.”
“They charge you so much money, that’s why you believe it’s real. That is the irony. If it was cheap to buy, then you would know.”
Abdel takes me to Walmart, because it’s the only place that sells paint at midnight. He accepts cash for waiting in the parking lot and helping me load the supplies into his trunk.
Then we go to the library.
“This place doesn’t look open,” he says, eyeing the dark corners in all directions. “Or safe. This looks like a place you will experience the stealing.”
“Better that than the killing,” I say, moving the gallons of paint to the curb. There’s a lot to do before morning, and I think construction crews start sooner than art gallery exhibits.
He walks toward the driver’s side door. Sighs. Comes back. “I don’t think I should leave you here. Probably you’ll get stabbed and then they’ll take away my Uber license.”
Clear as day I can hear Christopher’s voice telling me I have a death wish.
Maybe I did, back then. It’s not that I wanted to die, but I didn’t really know how to live. There was always money in the way, always something that had to be fought over. Always a struggle to survive.
“I’ll call a friend,” I say because I’m a long time from sitting on a railing alone.
On my phone there’s a long list of contacts. People from Smith College who always knew where the best parties would be. Artists from New York City. Actors in LA. There are only a handful of people in Tanglewood. I’m not going to call t
he newly expectant parents, Bea and Hugo, to the west side in the middle of the night, even if they would come.
Even though I know I can’t call him, that I lost that right, it still hurts to see Sutton’s name. It would be nice to have his steady, capable presence beside me while I do something inadvisable. My finger hovers over his number, not pressing.
And then there’s Christopher, who helped me paint a mural once. I thought I might have fallen in love with him that night, the night he kissed me, but I think it was earlier than that. When he wrote me a letter at my boarding school in Germany.
When he dived into the water after me.
I’m not sure who I am if I’m not the girl hopelessly in love with Christopher Bardot.
Tonight I’m going to find out.
There’s no listing for the Den online. None for Damon Scott, either. Finally I have to call Avery who has connections in the city. She gives me Penny’s number, but there’s no answer. In the end I have to settle for leaving a message and hoping she gets it in time.
And that she’d even want to help if she knew.
Abdel parks with his headlights angled so I can see what I’m doing. He also orders pizza, which is initiative I appreciate in a man. “I didn’t drive you around the city for two hours so you could get murdered,” he says when I tell him to leave. I’m pretty sure I’m going to send his daughters to college. I’ll be past twenty-five when they need the tuition, finally and forever in charge of that damned trust fund.
By the time Penny arrives, I have the eyes painted, which is no small feat considering I’m using a fifty-dollar ladder that had clearly been used and returned before I bought it. It leans up against metal and glass that’s decades old, shaking with every brusque wind. My canvas isn’t a wall, not really. It’s the entire south side of the building. Mostly windows. Some brick.
The eyes are the most important.
Usually that’s true in a portrait, but it’s a million times more true right now.
This Cleopatra isn’t sexy. Isn’t seductive. Unless it turns you on to be with a woman who wants to destroy everything you’ve worked for, which some perverse men probably do.
She’s angry, this one. Determined. Resolute.
They paint her knowing, usually. As if the world is full of puppets she makes dance. I think she knew what she was doing but couldn’t have known the outcome. It’s an act of sacrifice to throw everything you have toward a cause. Part of you has to be sure you’ll lose to even try.
Like the way I know this painting will be demolished at six a.m. There’s going to be a wrecking ball right through Cleopatra’s face. With every stroke of these cheap brushes and clumpy paint, I know it’s the best work I’ve ever done. Art with more than prettiness or pride. Something more important than power.
There’s survival, something every woman has had to look in the face.
And sometimes, sometimes we walk into a fight we know we’re going to lose.
33
#Freethelibrary
There’s a crowd by the time the construction crew shows up. I expect to see Sutton with them, because he’s the one who’s always managed them. It’s Christopher who appears in a suit and sunglasses, looking like he’s already made his mark on the world instead of only beginning. He does not look at all surprised by the crowd that’s assembled around us.
At first it was only Penny who came and Damon who followed her. There were men who came to consult with Damon, and I wondered whether that was a regular thing. Whether people showed up at the Den at all hours to whisper some serious thing and receive a response. Probably. Eventually word got out, and people started coming to watch.
The protest takes on a life of its own.
It has a hashtag before I even think to post on Instagram: #freethelibrary. Local businesses pick up on it, some of them more serious than others.
Because books are worth saving! posts a local coffee shop.
Mention #freethelibrary to get 30% off, posts a vintage clothing store.
Along with a random ad for shoes.
Blinding light glints off dark sunglasses. He might as well be a stranger, this man in a suit. He looks that cold standing in front of me. Nothing like the man who shivered in my arms.
He looks around before speaking, not in any rush to tell me he’s going to destroy this painting. And the library. “Was this a long game?” he asks finally. “You wanted everyone to hate me after the will reading. I think now it’s done.”
“I didn’t twist your arm into buying a historic building, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It’s not.”
My mouth is dry from exhaustion and dehydration and paint fumes. He kissed me once, when I was high on the stuff. It won’t happen again. “This wasn’t about revenge. No. I would have done this for the library. For me.” For Sutton.
“Are you going to chain yourself to the front doors?”
That makes me laugh a little. “I don’t have a death wish. Not anymore.”
He absorbs that for a moment. “Sutton isn’t here.”
“I can see that.” His hair would glint like spun gold in this light. His blue eyes would dance with a thousand things to say. His absence is as loud as a shotgun. “He’s at the office?”
“Not likely. He quit after you left.”
It’s like falling two hundred feet and landing backward in the water. Like having the breath knocked out of me. “What?”
“He didn’t send me his itinerary, but I figured he would be in LA by now.”
“No,” I whisper, because that means I’m too late.
“He can’t exactly pull his money out. Can’t close the barn doors after the horses have been let out, was the way he put it. But he can resign his position. That was him choosing you over money, in case the grand gesture wasn’t clear.”
There’s no air at all in my lungs. No air in the warm morning mist. I’m left to sink and sink, unable to breathe. Unable to think. Sutton did that for me. He left everything—for me.
The grand gesture I always wanted from Christopher… Another man gave it to me. It makes me wonder how much of the world I’ve been ignoring in my tunnel vision. How much of life I’ve been hiding from in pursuit of a man who doesn’t want me as much as I wanted him.
Suddenly I can’t stand to wait a second longer. Whatever threads of love I felt for Christopher Bardot, they fall to the concrete outside the broken library. Gone.
It doesn’t feel like a loss. It feels like being free.
Is Sutton in LA, knocking on my mom’s condo right now?
Except she would have called me. And he would have had time to arrive if he followed me quickly. Maybe he hadn’t come for me, no matter that Christopher thought he would. He might have left for good, the way a sad little boy tried to do with a wild horse a long time ago. There would be no water’s edge to stop him this time.
Christopher studies the painting through his sunglasses. “Cleopatra?”
There’s a hardness to his jaw like it pains him to speak, and as much as I’ve fought him, I can spare him that. This painting won’t be enough to save the library. Nothing will.
“She knows what’s coming,” I say, softly so no one else hears.
He huffs a laugh. “As it turns out, Sutton was right. You do have the skills of diplomacy we need. You can convince people to do anything. Unfortunately you convinced them to hate us.”
I look away and manage a small smile. “And it turns out you were right. It doesn’t matter whether they hate you. You have the deed and a wrecking ball.”
“It didn’t have to be like this,” Christopher says, his jaw tight. There’s a muscle that works. A slight flare of his nostrils. The slightest signs that he’s upset. He had those same signs the day the will was signed, but he would not be swayed then. Not now, either.
Strange, the way I can admire his resolve even as it tears us apart. “It was always like this.”
“You can probably make them riot,” he remarks, his voic
e even. “An angry mob.”
“To break the windows in? To steal the books? A little counter to the purpose.” Besides the breakfast tacos were too delicious. No one could be in a rage after eating breakfast tacos.
“Or they could form a human chain around the building. It would delay construction, if nothing else.”
“And cost you money,” I say, gentle now. “If nothing else.”
“There’s that.”
“I’m not going to do that. I made my point.”
“Which is what?” He looks genuinely lost. It isn’t part of advanced economics theory, what’s happening in the streets tonight. It’s community. History. These are things he doesn’t understand.
“The protest isn’t to stop you. It isn’t even about you, not really. Protest are a voice for people who have been told not to be quiet. It’s the only way we can speak.”
I’m not so different from Mrs. Rosemont. We protest in different ways, through the historical society and connections to city hall. Through a painting and somewhat less lofty friends I’ve made in Tanglewood. Both of us overruled by bribery.
Money has the loudest voice of all.
He finally takes off his sunglasses, revealing eyes that are dark from lack of sleep. It’s been gnawing at him, this act. Even that won’t stop him. That determination of his is going to break more than the building. It’s going to break him, one of these days.
Once upon a time it broke me.
“That’s it? You tell me it’s wrong and then you leave?”
I look back at my Cleopatra with her sad eyes. She looks resolved to her fate. It’s the best art I’ve ever created. Maybe stronger because I knew it would be destroyed.
Medusa had been different. She’d been angry. Christopher had looked at all that fury and understood it. No, he’d felt it too. The hurt she felt had wrapped itself around him until he felt what she did. If he can understand her then maybe he can understand Cleopatra. It’s not rage she feels, though. It’s determination in the face of unbeatable odds.