by Kate Hilton
“That,” I said, “is a tragedy. You’re in New York!”
“All I’ve seen of New York is the inside of my law firm, the library, and a bunch of restaurants.”
“You do need saving,” I said. “Bookstore tomorrow it is.”
He beamed. “It’s already the best part of my week,” he said. He shook his head. “Conveyancing. Apparently, people do this for a living.”
“Once you pass the exam, you never have to think about it again, right?”
“If I do, I’ll have made some very poor decisions,” he said.
“The only way out is through,” I tell him. “My dad used to say that, and he was a lawyer.” I stood up. “Back to work.”
I walked back to my own table and stared at my screen. I found myself thinking about my favourite bookstores, wondering where to take Matt. There was the bookstore near campus with the carved ceiling, which had a great panini place around the corner where we could eat afterwards; or the one with the rare first editions, near the park with the huge chestnut trees where we could take a walk; or the one that played old Edith Piaf recordings and had a tiny bakery next door.
What could be more innocent than a trip to a bookstore? I closed the screen and rubbed my eyes. I rummaged in my bag and extracted a pad of lined paper. I had been experimenting with journaling, automatic writing, and various other forms of procrastination, which were supposed to dislodge my creativity from wherever it was blocked. The results were predictably dreadful, except with respect to my cursive, which was much improved.
My cellphone rang.
“Hello, darling,” said Hugh. “How’s it going today?”
“Great,” I told him. “This section is coming along nicely.”
“You see?” he said. “I told you that all you needed to do was to glue yourself to the seat and it would come. I’m so proud of you.” I had, in a moment of intimacy that I now regretted, confided in Hugh that I was working on Cultivating Discipline, and I was finding the ground surprising hard and stony. Hugh had taken to calling me every day around this time, to boost my spirits and my resolve. I hated it.
“Thanks,” I said. His pride made me squeamish. My career was important to him, more important, I was beginning to understand, than it was to me. And in lying to him about my progress and pretending to appreciate his calls, I understood, too, that I was protecting him from small-scale disappointments; it was all I had to offer.
“See you at dinner, then,” he said. “I’m cooking that lentil and chickpea casserole you love. A reward for all your hard work.”
“Wonderful,” I said.
“I love you,” said Hugh.
“Me too,” I said. I disconnected the phone and put my head down on the table. Hugh exhausted me.
We had been married for less than a year.
Start as you intend to finish: another one of my dad’s pearls of wisdom. Had I? It had been Hugh’s idea to get married to make up for all the secrecy early on in our relationship. I would have been happy to live together in a more public way, but he was overcompensating. He wanted to celebrate us, he said. It felt like less of a celebration to me than a performance, and no one had given me the script. Hugh spoke obliquely about every marriage having an adjustment period, and I hoped fervently that he was correct. I was inclined to defer to his views on diagnosis. He had been my teacher, after all, and I tended to accept most of his opinions, supported as they generally were by well-researched footnotes. And, in any event, I didn’t have an alternative theory.
I sat back up. Matt was looking over at me with concern. He mouthed the words Are you okay? and I nodded and waved him back to work. He was hard at it, two books open at once, and a stack of cue cards that he was scribbling on when he wasn’t attacking his keyboard, and I could feel his energy sparking across the room; it was bracing. I thought, He has the most perfect wrists of any man I have ever seen.
I could remember, and it troubled me to do so, that there had been a time when Hugh’s wrists made me weak with desire. I had sat, once, across a desk from him, watching him read an essay, and been transfixed by the sight of his wrist, the crisp cotton of his cuff, and the black strap of his watch. I remembered kissing him, the first time we had sex, right at the pulse point, where the buckle had left an imprint on his skin, and I remembered the shiver that went through him, and through me.
What I realized that day in the café, writing the book I would never publish and thinking about the man I would leave, and the man I would leave with, was that we don’t understand memory at all. We believe that shared memories bind us together, when, in fact, they have the destructive power of the worm in the apple. When I thought of the early days of my affair with Hugh, for example, I could recall the dawning awareness of my ability to unsettle him, the crystallizing knowledge that we would end up in bed together, sooner rather than later, and that it would be very, very good when we did. I could appreciate that I had once felt that way, could reconstruct it intellectually, but I couldn’t feel it again.
That’s our first mistake, of course: the idea that any of our decisions are truly rational. Shear the emotions away and any choice looks peculiar at best. And then there’s our second mistake: believing that memories are shared at all. We know that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, that everyone sees the world through a filter as unique as a snowflake, that the colour receptors in our eyes process blue in such a way that we see separate skies when we stand next to each other and look heavenward. But still, we can’t quite believe it.
The sad fact is that the past, perhaps especially our own past, is mysterious. Lodged in the present, you move further away each day from the reasons why you took this path or that one. And you’re left with only the story you’ve told yourself, the one with perfect lighting and a flattering angle. The one that even you know doesn’t really look like you.
{CHAPTER 7}
Thursday, July 13, 2017
I wake up to the sound of the front door opening. I think about people who have keys. Have I missed a day? Is it Friday, which would make it the housekeeper? Has my mother officially lost her mind and driven down here to force me up to the cottage? Have I overslept so much that Peter has come to make sure I’m still alive?
This last seems most likely, so I call, “Peter?”
“That’s a bad sign,” says Matt, walking into the bedroom.
“Oh,” I say. “It’s you. What are you doing here?”
“That’s even worse,” says Matt.
“No,” I say. “Sorry. I’m half-asleep.” I smile at him. “Let’s start again.” I open my arms, and he comes over to me cautiously. I pull him into a hug, holding on tight. “I’m so glad to see you, you have no idea,” I say. “But really, what are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be in the air right now.”
“I was,” he says, into my hair. “The meeting finished early, and I’d had enough, and I was able to switch seats to the earlier flight. It only cost a small fortune.”
“Worth every penny,” I say. “Let me look at you.” I lean away, hands on his shoulders. He reaches up, wraps his hands around mine, and levers them straight up until I lose my balance and flop backwards onto the bed. Matt rests on his elbows above me, his face close to mine.
“Aren’t you tired?” I ask.
“Can’t give in to jet lag,” he says. “Best thing is to stay awake.”
“Can I help?”
“I hope so,” he says, and kisses me, a question.
I rest my hands on his waist for a moment, and then glide them up to his shoulders and down again, an answer. He deepens the kiss.
Later, with my head on his shoulder, I say, “Your heart is racing.”
He says, “Does Peter have a key to our house?”
I sit up. “We don’t really know the neighbours, and it made sense, with you away so much, for him to have one. Just in case.”
“In case of what?” says Matt. “I don’t think Peter would water the plants, if we had any plants.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “If I were sick or something.”
“I would discuss it with you before giving a key to anyone,” says Matt.
“I should have,” I say. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“I’d like you to ask for it back.”
“Do you have any idea how awkward that conversation would be?” I say. “Why would you care one way or the other?”
“Because I don’t feel comfortable with your boss having access to our home,” says Matt. “I don’t like him enough for that, and I don’t want him here.”
“What do you mean, you don’t like him? You’ve never said that before.”
“I’m saying it now.”
I look away, catch a glimpse of the bedside clock, feel my chest seize with stress. “Jesus Christ,” I say. “It’s after nine. Why didn’t the alarm go off ?”
“Search me,” says Matt.
“I had a meeting first thing this morning,” I say.
“If Peter needed you that badly, he could have come to get you. He does have a key,” says Matt.
“For God’s sake,” I say, rolling off the bed, crossing the room, and closing the bathroom door behind me with some force. I rush through the shower, run a comb through my hair, and pull it into a damp ponytail. I throw on a simple summer dress and some sandals and sprint downstairs.
Matt is making coffee in the kitchen, rumpled and adorable. He meets my eye, unapologetic. “I’m still annoyed with you,” I say.
“And I’m still annoyed with you,” he says. “But I love you anyway.”
I sigh. “I love you too,” I say. “I’ll see you tonight.”
At the office, Bonnie puts up a hand as I slink by her desk. “He’s been asking for you,” she says.
I pivot, and take the few steps to Peter’s door, knocking as I open it. “Wait,” says Bonnie. “He’s in a meeting.”
But I’ve already stepped through the doorway as I process that Peter is sitting on his sofa right next to a woman. They both turn.
“Avery,” says Peter, rising. “Nice of you to drop by.”
“Yes,” I say. “Sorry about that. Matt arrived home early from Paris. I couldn’t rush off without saying hello.”
“No problem,” says Peter. “You’ve got to tend the home fires every now and again.” He turns to the woman, who stands. She is small and tidy, in a crisp new suit. “Melanie, meet Avery Graham, my chief of staff. She’s the brains behind this operation. Avery, this is Melanie. She’s a law student. She’s going to be our intern for the rest of the summer.”
Melanie steps forward, holds out a hand. “It’s such a pleasure to meet you,” she says. “This is a dream job for me.”
I shake her hand, and shift my gaze to Peter. “I didn’t realize we’d posted for an intern,” I say.
“We didn’t,” says Peter. “But when I met Melanie at the event in Judy Mendelson’s ward last week, and she asked about opportunities in our office, I realized that she’d be a perfect fit around here. And we could use some extra hands on the waterfront file.”
“Terrific,” I say. “Peter, could I have a word?”
“Sure,” he says. “Melanie, why don’t you head out to Bonnie’s desk and ask her for the briefing notes for today’s meeting.”
“Right away,” says Melanie. “And again, Mr. Mayor, let me say what an honour it is to be part of the team.”
“Peter,” he says. “Call me Peter.”
“Thank you, Mr. . . . Peter,” she says, stepping out and closing the door behind her.
“There are already a lot of hands on the waterfront file, Peter,” I say.
“What’s the issue?” says Peter.
“We’re taking hits from all sides, we’ve got the Wozniaks out for blood, and we’re giving someone we don’t know access to the inner sanctum. I don’t like it.”
“Melanie’s the top of her class. She’s exceptionally bright and personable. She deserves the chance to prove herself. I gave that to you, if you recall. And she reminds me of you. Haven’t you been saying for months that we need to clone you?”
“You’d known me for twenty years when you hired me, Peter,” I say. “She’s an unknown quantity, however talented, and we’re exposed.”
“Unclench, Avery,” says Peter. “We’re not trusting her with our state secrets just yet. Take her to your meeting with Jim Crawford. After that, if your instinct is that we should keep her out of the fray, we’ll get one of your staffers to supervise her for the rest of the summer, and we’ll give her a stack of research memos to write on best practices in waste management or bike lanes. But give her a chance before you rule her out, okay?”
“Fine.”
“How’s Matt, by the way?” asks Peter. “Working hard, as always?”
“He’s perfect, as always.”
“Good guy,” says Peter. “The four of us should have dinner soon.”
“That would be nice,” I say. Peter suggests this every so often and it never happens.
“I’ll have Bonnie set it up,” says Peter. “When’s the meeting with Crawford?”
“I need to get going,” I say.
“Off you go, then,” says Peter. “You wouldn’t want to be late for our artist friends.”
“God forbid,” I say.
Melanie and I pull up in front of a large warehouse on the west edge of the waterfront. It takes some effort, but we find an unlocked door that seems to be the entrance; at least, it is where the demolition notices are posted. Inside is a long, wide hallway, utterly deserted, with no sign of a central office.
“Do we have a unit number?” I ask.
“I’m so sorry,” Melanie says, flushing. “I didn’t think to ask Bonnie for one.”
“Lesson one,” I tell her. “Never assume that people will give you all the information you need.” If I’d chosen Melanie myself, I’d probably confess to her that I’m still learning this lesson. But having had mentorship thrust upon me, I don’t.
“Should we knock on doors and see if anyone can tell us where Jim Crawford is?” she asks. “Or do you want me to call the office?”
“Give it a minute,” I say, and sure enough, we hear the sound of rapid footsteps. A woman appears at the end of the hallway, waving.
“Are you from the mayor’s office?” she calls.
“Yes,” I call back.
The woman breaks into a run. By the time she reaches us, she is out of breath and flustered.
“I’m Marla Kraft,” she says. “I’ll take you to Jim.”
“Take your time,” I say. “We’re not in a huge rush.”
“No, no,” she says. “He wants to see you right away.”
If Marla Kraft were one of the extras in the movie of my life, she would be the Magician’s Assistant: long, very curly hair with more grey than brown, an abundance of draped layers and patterns, scarf over caftan over loose pants, purple eyeshadow that must be the product of a mid-eighties colours analysis. Marla is a Summer, obviously.
She leads us down the hallway and up a staircase to the second floor. “My studio is here, next door to Jim’s. He’s in the middle of a major commission, so I’m helping him with some of the ArtCo administration.”
“That’s kind of you,” I say.
“We’re like a family here, really,” she says. “Everyone needs to pitch in.”
She knocks on a door that is covered in stickers, and opens it. I register a few of the slogans as we are ushered in: “The Only Good War Is a Class War,” “Occupy,” “Democracy Is Nice but Revolution Gets Shit Done.”
“Jim,” she says, “I have our visitors from the mayor’s office.”
The man doesn’t turn right away. He’s holding a can of spray paint in his left hand. He’s wearing coveralls, a long braid down his back. There’s something familiar about the braid, I think, and then he spins and I realize immediately who he is.
Jim Crawford is the Bandwagon Objector.
“And so,” he says. “The mayo
r’s office comes slumming.”
“Mr. Crawford,” I say. “How nice to see you.” Have we met before? I don’t think so, but I’m not going to risk a “nice to meet you.” “Thank you for alerting us to your concerns. The mayor would like to know more about them.”
“Not enough to come himself, I see,” he says.
“I apologize,” I say. “I should have introduced myself. I’m Avery Graham, the mayor’s chief of staff. This is Melanie . . .”
“Christie,” says Melanie.
“Christie,” I say. “Melanie is a law student who is assisting us in our office this summer. I hope you don’t mind having her participate in this meeting.”
“Not at all,” says Jim. “Students change the world more often than anyone else. Be welcome, Melanie.”
“Thank you,” says Melanie, beaming.
“Mayor Haines wanted me to tell you that he regrets not being able to attend this meeting personally, and that he is anxious to understand and address the issues that you have with the development,” I say. “Shall we get started?”
I look around but see only one stool.
“I’ll get some chairs from my studio,” says Marla. “Back in a jiffy.” She races to the door and out into the hallway.
While she’s gone, I wander over to the canvas. “I understand you have a commission,” I say.
“That’s right,” he says. “For one of America’s signature cultural icons.”
“Which one?”
“California Comix.”
“Oh, well done,” I say. “Congratulations.” I have no idea why I should be impressed by this, never having heard of California Comix, but I have become a real proficient when it comes to polite social dishonesty.
“The oldest comic book store in . . . is it North America?” asks Melanie.
“In the world, actually,” says the Bandwagon Objector.
“Incredible!” says Melanie. She moves closer to the artwork. “I love this,” she says. “It’s so Tim Burton meets Banksy.”
“Exactly,” says Jim. “Good eye.” He looks at me. “People always underestimate youth.”
I can sort of see where Melanie is coming from. The piece is a gigantic spray-painted portrait of a boy who bears more than a passing resemblance to Edward Scissorhands, without the scissor hands.