Curious Affairs

by Mary Jane Myers

  Surely God would forgive her if she fudged the question. She assured herself that this situation was only temporary, that it would stop as soon as Jessica got on her feet and Kayla started school. But that was a fib that both she and Scott knew was untrue. They both realized this entanglement would last as long as life.

  Must she make a choice between Scott and Kayla? Perhaps it was time to pull back, to have a conversation with Jessica about “boundaries.” But no, no, the newspeak of therapists was completely wrong. The situation was ideal, as if through divine grace she had found a precious lost thing. And how could she explain the heart of the matter to herself, and to him? This prattling blonde cherub, blood of her blood, filled up a gaping chasm deep in her gut, where a desert wind whistled through, and a stern voice lectured her:

  Alas, it is late, too late for you, Patricia.

  You are old, your womb is barren. There is no hope.

  The ancient times of prophecy and miracles are no more.

  To which a still small voice whispered:

  God has endowed little Kayla with prodigious musical talent.

  You, Patricia, must bequeath your sacred knowledge to her.

  The ancient times of prophecy and miracles

  live on in GaGa’s transcendent piano.

  She nestled closer to Scott and opened her mouth to speak, but he had drifted back to sleep, snoring gently. Tomorrow, with Saint Anthony’s help, she would find the right words.

  The Seraphita Sonata

  MARGARET CRADLED THE RECEIVER of the retro black dial telephone. What a delight to hear Albert’s hello.

  “I’m thrilled to be here. I can’t wait to see you again,” she said.

  “Come over to the Seraphita at four o’clock. You can watch me practice the sonata with James. It rains every afternoon, so make sure you take an umbrella.”

  “And what if you’re not there yet? Where should I wait?”

  “Simply go on in. The doors are never locked. Mildred, poor old thing, trusts the universe.”

  A few hours earlier Margaret had checked into this room at the Black Spruce Inn in Lake Placid, New York. The bed-and-breakfast proved to be a rambling, white-clapboard Victorian house, stuffed with period furniture and paintings. A glassed-in porch chock-a-block with chaise longues was wrapped around its front facade. In an average town the inn would be easy to find. But the mansions here did not advertise much: no mailbox names or numbers, the houses set back on expansive lawns, far from the prying eyes of curious passersby. She found the inn only after circling and backtracking twice.

  The flight from Los Angeles had been torment. The departure time was weather-delayed by four hours, and the plane experienced gut-wrenching turbulence, thumping and diving and shaking from violent thunderstorms. Margaret missed her connecting flight in Newark and overnighted in the terminal, sprawled over two plastic-upholstered chairs at a remote gate where the puddle-jumpers parked, with a motley of stranded passengers. Her sleep had been fitful and her body wracked with joint pain. The short flight to Albany this morning had at least been uneventful. She gobbled down a lavish country breakfast at Grandma’s restaurant near the airport, and as a special treat to throw off the misery of the last twenty-four hours, indulged in homemade apple pie and vanilla ice cream. To her delight the three hour drive in a flimsy subcompact rental car unfolded a landscape of ever more primordial mountains until it seemed she was at the edge of some mythic castellated kingdom.

  The proprietor, a gray-bearded man in his fifties with that harassed look of all B&B owners, had greeted her perfunctorily, and supplied her with a skeleton key for an upstairs bedroom. Apparently the teenage bellhop had called in sick, and so, frowning and panting, the owner lugged her suitcase up the twenty stairs. A thirty-minute soak in the claw-foot tub filled with steaming water and rose-scented bath gel, and a two-hour nap in the four-poster bed revived her. Into her sleep stole a gentle healing dream, the details of which eluded her on waking. She sank into the velvet upholstery of a rosewood armchair and thumbed through a glossy tourist guide. There were photos of the lake, and of wildlife, and rhapsodic descriptions of restaurants. One whole page was devoted to a description and photographs of the giant Cecropia moth, indigenous to this area, and quite a favorite with visitors. And then Albert had telephoned.

  Margaret had hesitated before accepting Albert’s invitation. The trip was expensive. She was using half her personal days off and almost her entire vacation budget. The annual summer arts festival was in progress, and Albert was scheduled to give a recital at the Seraphita Arts Center with his old graduate school friend, James Dolen. Both men were now tenured British literature professors: Albert a Chaucerian, James a specialist in the Lake Poets. Their hobby was chamber music performance: Albert a pianist, James a flutist. Their recital was not part of the regular schedule, those pricey concerts given by famous names. Rather, theirs was a private event underwritten by elite donors. Admission was free, but invitees were expected to contribute generously to the festival. Albert and James had been reimbursed for all travel expenses, and were each lodged in a separate summer lake cottage loaned by wealthy patrons.

  Margaret Stine had known Albert Zimmer for over seven years. They had met at a Christmas extravaganza at the Getty Villa in Malibu. At that time, he had tenure at USC. Soon they were inseparable: classical music concerts and the opera, meals together, long walks he called “constitutionals.” Often he organized impromptu Sunday afternoon chamber music gatherings at his home in Griffith Park, Mozart and Schubert and Brahms, trios and quartets and quintets, he playing his pre-WWI concert grand Stein-way, his friends bringing their bowed string and woodwind instruments. She sat by his side at the piano and turned pages for him, and after the music she served petit fours and jasmine tea and lemonade to the guests.

  She had never met a man who so charmed her, whose mind so harmonized with her own. His move to Teversham village near Cambridge, England three years ago had put six thousand miles between them. Two years previous to that transfer, USC had granted him a sabbatical to lecture as a visiting scholar at Trinity College in Cambridge. The post had resulted in an offer for a full professorship. Elated, Albert accepted. He had given one year notice to USC, sold his LA home and his Steinway, and donated his personal library of three thousand volumes to a small liberal arts college in northern California. Now he was free to start over, to build an entire new life in ideal surroundings.

  After his move, they telephoned and exchanged e-mails and even the occasional old-fashioned letter. She saved printed versions of his e-mails together with his letters in an album tucked away in a drawer scented with lavender. Last summer during a two-week visit to LA, he had stayed with a well-to-do male cousin in Encino and had spent the whole of both weekends with her.

  He had found the B&B for her, only a few short blocks from the arts center. He had noted that “Seraphita” was a reference to an obscure Balzac supernatural novel, not much read today in respectable university circles. The center functioned also as a spiritual forum modeled after the Transcendentalists. She wondered if séances might be held there. He thought possibly so, as the owner, Mrs. Mildred Wright—in her nineties, the widow of a distinguished Yale medievalist—was, in his opinion, extraordinarily daft.

  Somewhere, bells struck the sixteen notes of the Big Ben melody, and then three chimes. If she left now, there would be plenty of time to explore a little, to find the Seraphita. She examined herself in the full-length cherrywood oval cheval mirror. Her oversized floral print tunic was meant to hide the ten pounds she had gained since Albert’s LA visit a year ago. But did the deception work? Wouldn’t he notice? Forty-five was the new thirty, everyone said. Still, it was possible she had toppled over the divide, from desirable coquette into middle-aged frump.

  She set out on the road that fronted the inn. Forty-foot pines lined the road. The conifer needles stirring in the strong breeze resembled the sound of a waterfall. The sun played hide and seek with fluffy cumulus clouds, now pili
ng and darkening in the middle distance to form a thunderhead.

  In less than a half mile, on the left side, a substantial property of several acres was visible. The expanse of unkempt lawn was bounded by a rusted wrought iron fence choked by masses of brambly bushes. Beyond grew a thick grove of blue-green spruce trees, a tangle of new silvery growth and dead brown branches. Patches of white clapboard behind and above these trees gave the impression of a sizable house.

  A dollop of poppy-red caught her eye. A male Cecropia moth, his wings spanning six inches, rested on the top rung of the fence, near a rickety gate. How exciting to spot one on her first stroll outside. The moth’s feathery red antennae oscillated at some lepidopteran microcosmic frequency. Odd that this nocturnal being would linger out here in the daylight. Next to him, a weathered gray sign dangled from the fence. Stenciled in pallid orange were an arrow and the letters S R P IT. This must be the place.

  She undid the rusty latch, and the gate groaned forward. Thunder rolled miles away. A few warm raindrops splattered her hair and dripped down her face. She plunged into the gloom under the canopy of the spruce trees. Someone had once laid out stepping stones that were now overgrown with long slippery grasses. The path skirted a pond engulfed by water lilies, the arched cups of their waxy white flowers floating on thick green scum.

  Just beyond was the porch of the house. She clacked a bronze knocker, the head of a laughing Renaissance humanist, perhaps Boccaccio. No answer. She turned the knob, and the monumental wood door opened silently, as if well-oiled and often used.

  “Halloo. Anybody home?”

  No answer, no sign of life.

  After wiping her feet on a bristly horsehair mat, she crossed the threshold into an entry hall. Spongy pine planks sank beneath her feet. To the right was an enormous whitewashed room. A modern architect had knocked out walls and floors and opened some thirty-five feet of vertical space straight up to a glass skylight. Two ambulatories, their walls lined with books, circled the upper stories at the levels where floors had once been. The rain now pattered steadily on the skylight above and at the windows.

  The room was filled with overstuffed sofas and leather armchairs. A concert grand piano with cabriole legs and a gleaming burled walnut case dominated a near corner. Nearby stood a mahogany cabinet, its top a slab of thick marble, dark green veined with amber. Intrigued, she walked over to examine it. What if someone should see her? They would think she was snooping. Well, let them. She was on vacation, far from the gossip of home. And, after all, Albert had given her permission.

  She sat down on the Persian carpet and turned the gilt knob of the cabinet door. Inside was a stash of musical scores. She riffled through them. On the bottom lay an old book bound in scuffed brown leather. A threadbare blue silk ribbon peeked out. She pulled out the book, closed the cabinet, and plopped down on a sofa. A tug at the ribbon opened the book to a page filled with an old-fashioned cursive handwriting in a violet ink. A date was at the top. Could this be a diary?

  16 June 1888 My darling Julia is coughing blood. Alas, she cannot last the summer. I play the piano for her in the evenings. This storm has broken my heart.

  The drumming of the rain on the skylight and against the windows intensified. Brilliant-white lightning bolts illuminated the gray murkiness of the room. Earsplitting thunder boomed. Southern California never experienced these bravura squalls; she found them harrowing. She set the diary on the floor, and reclined full length on the sofa for what seemed an eternity. Gradually the rain diminished, and the thunder subsided to a distant rumble. She stirred, stretched, and sat upright. No sounds but irregular raindrops in the still house—no clock ticking, no cat purring, no fire crackling. She picked up the diary.

  18 June 1888 Dr. Trudeau has paid a call. There is no hope. I sense her despair. Last night, I played Liszt for her.

  Margaret fancied she heard a piano playing the Liszt Liebestraum in A Flat Major, a lament of unrequited passion. At thirteen she had drilled this piece under the strict tutelage of Mrs. Lazar, all the while dreaming of Gary, a boy in her algebra class. She loved Liszt. Where could the music be coming from? Not from the silent piano in this empty room. She studied her surroundings. At the far end of the room a solarium extended out. Three Adirondack chaise longues, their cedar frames overlaid with blue-striped cushions, were arranged there.

  Alarmed, Margaret realized that a young woman, perhaps twenty years old, reclined on one of these chairs. A white cotton nightdress trimmed with lace fell gracefully over the length of her body. The girl gazed out the rain-spattered windows toward the spruce trees. Slowly she turned her head and looked straight at Margaret. Was it only Margaret’s imagination that the girl’s features seemed to resemble Margaret’s own in Polaroids snapped a quarter century ago? Those photos were stuffed in albums and the color was streaking to yellow and sepia. Margaret had been teased often about her generic sweet-girl-next-door looks, and so too this girl might be classed. But unlike the Margaret of those pictures, she was waxy-pale and emaciated. Her blue eyes glittered with fever, and beads of perspiration glistened on her forehead.

  Who was she? Had she been watching Margaret all this time? How embarrassing, to be caught out as the worst of all human types, a skulk, a sneak, prying into private cupboards and corners. But in some strange way, Margaret intuited that this listless girl did not notice or negatively judge the actions of other people. Even if she had been observing Margaret, there was no animosity in her enervated stare. Margaret decided there was no cause for anxiety.

  The final pianissimo chords of the Liebestraum died out, and then, silence. Margaret got up to approach the girl, to introduce herself and to smooth over the situation. But the body was fading out gradually, the form that had appeared solid dissolving into wavy squiggles. Margaret watched, fascinated. After a minute, only a gossamer mist hovered over the chair.

  Margaret was coming unglued, yet her curiosity propelled her toward the solarium to investigate. The air here felt at least twenty degrees cooler. The pungent smell of mold permeated the area. A hazy blue phosphorescent halo danced around the chair. Had a girl been lying in it? Had the sounds of a piano been real? Of course all these bizarre events must be mere hallucinations, caused by jet lag and exhaustion, and yet this place felt ensorcelled, and these happenings seemed somehow normal and commonplace.

  “There you are.” The familiar tenor voice startled her.

  She spun around. Albert was grinning at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t help nosing around. I know I should have waited in the hall.”

  She walked over and kissed him on the top of his bald head. His height was a full three inches shorter than her five foot seven. Under his arm was a red leather portfolio, which he now deposited on an armchair. He hugged her around her ribs. A scent of rain and conifer clung to his damp turtleneck sweater.

  “Mimi darling, you look marvelous.” His manner was absentminded. He had adopted this pet name within a month of knowing her. They had attended Bohème together. Her little brother, when lisping his first baby words, had called her May-may.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said.

  Albert did not answer. He removed sheet music from the portfolio. He propped open the lid of the piano, adjusted the music desk, and opened the fallboard, all in one seamless movement. Sitting on the bench, he positioned the sheet music.

  “Tomorrow night we play the Reinecke Undine Sonata. Do you know it?”

  “No, but you always surprise everyone with wonderful new things.”

  “German romanticism, all dark forest myths. A water sprite longs for a soul, and marries a mortal knight. But the fates will not allow the union, and it ends badly. Madness and suicide. The piano part has many fast runs—not so easy.”

  “This country reminds me of the Alps. As a girl, I read Heidi over and over. And the lake seems a natural place for water sprites.”

  “Yes, water, water everywhere.”

  He drew his diminutive chest up,
took a deep breath, and poised his pudgy hands a half foot above the ivory keys. And then he plunged full force into the arpeggios of the final movement, swirling over five octaves.

  Margaret stretched out on the sofa, listening. Albert swayed on the bench, as if in a trance. The music ebbed and flowed and filled the room.

  She glanced toward the solarium. Another dollop of poppy-red color. She rose and tiptoed over. A Cecropia moth rested on a window pane, flickering his wings as if in time with the sonata. That faint blue luminescence appeared over the chaise longue, gradually materializing into the figure of the young woman.

  Margaret stepped wide of the figure, walked cautiously back to her sofa, and sat down. She wanted to tell Albert, but dared not disturb him. A moment later the moth fluttered into the room, and landed on the piano top. Albert halted in mid-chord. He jumped up, and pointed an accusing index finger at the moth.

  “Mimi, why is this bat loose? Has it escaped from some belfry?”

  “That’s not a bat, it’s a big moth, bigger than some bats.”

  “For the love of God, I cannot concentrate with creatures attacking me.”

  “He seems harmless enough. He’s vibrating to your sonata.”

  Albert looked toward the solarium. The girl was plainly visible. Margaret braced herself for a third-degree interrogation of who she might be. But Albert did not seem to see the girl.

  He scowled. “I cannot, indeed I will not, play in the company of Jurassic moths. Order it to depart at once.”

  “It’s a male, and he adores your sonata. He might only leave if you stop playing.”

  Albert flounced into an armchair. Here comes one of his lectures, Margaret thought, the habit of half a lifetime spent pontificating to college sophomores from a podium.

  “Mimi, really, I thought you were on my side. How can I possibly play this sonata correctly? There is a time for everything under the sun, and for that matter, under the rain. Now is not the proper time for gargantuan plumose insects.”