by Triss Stein
I woke when I heard Chris’ backpack hit the floor downstairs.
“Chris?” I was confused. How long had I slept? “I’m up here, honey.”
She came clattering up the stairs and into the dark room, flipping on the light as she did. She opened one of the built-in shutters, too, folding it back into its slot, but the light from outside was dim.
“Chris? Is it night? How late is it?”
“Nope, it’s dark because it’s pouring again. But it is dinnertime. Aren’t you getting up?’
“Oh. Sure. Let me go splash some water on my face.” I hugged her as I went past. “I am so glad you’re here.”
She hugged back briefly, in that teenage way of not wanting to show she needed one.
I returned with my eyes wide open and my brain almost back on. “Ok. Let’s warm up some chicken soup for supper and then tell me what’s going on.”
It was canned soup with leftover supermarket barbecue chicken added—I have no time for making homemade soups—but the comforting smells filled the kitchen anyway.
“Is there news from Alex?”
“No.”
“Or Natalya?”
She shook her head. “That assembly at school tomorrow? I guess they’ll tell us more then.”
To each of the two steaming bowls on the kitchen counter, I added a fluffy dumpling, a matzo ball—right out of the freezer, but filling and familiar. We ate in silence. I could tell Chris wanted to talk, and I waited.
“What was it like?” She was looking into her soup bowl, chasing down a slice of carrot. “I want to know what it’s like for Alex.”
My mom “Danger” light went on. This felt like thin ice.
“What do you mean?”
“Mom, you know. When my own father…”
She doesn’t remember. She was three. We were too young to have a baby, too poor, and too stupid to be anything but happy. She was a honeymoon baby and I was twenty-four when he was killed.
If she was asking, I had to answer her. It had been a long time since she asked me. Much as I wanted to run far away, maybe we were both ready. Anyway, ready or not, I had to answer her.
“He was a firefighter, a dangerous job. We talked about that when he started, but he loved being active and we knew a desk job just was not for him. Then he went and died so stupidly, hit by a drunk driver while he was riding his bike.”
Chris nodded. She knew this part.
“I remember, it was a beautiful day, and I said, ‘Sure, go for a ride. Enjoy your day off.’ Later, I felt like ‘how could the sun still be shining?’”
“Mom, we don’t have to, if you can’t…”
“I’m okay.” If I wasn’t I had to be a mom now and fake it. “The police came to the door and told me there was an accident. I kind of fell apart and I remember being embarrassed, but they were used to that. My friend down the hall came for you and they took me to the hospital. And they didn’t tell me, but from the way they looked, I guessed he was already gone, and I was right. I saw him, and touched him but it…it wasn’t him.”
I had to stop.
“And then?”
“You know, after that it’s kind of a blur. Soon his parents were there, and my parents, and I went back to Grandma and Grandpa’s house with them. Really, I was in shock for a long time. You know I wasn’t even ten years older than you are now.”
Chris was silent for a long time before the next question. “Where was I?”
“Someone brought you over there. They had a bed for you in their house, and we just stayed for a while. Quite a while.”
“It’s different for Alex, I guess. I mean he knows everything that’s happening. I don’t even remember when I had a father. Did I even know something happened?”
“Yes and no. We could not really explain it to you, but you knew everything was different, and you had your tantrums. You knew your daddy wasn’t there and you didn’t understand where he had gone.”
I could not tell her about the times, when I thought I would actually, literally, die of the grief. And how, when she was an inconsolable three-year-old wailing, “I want Daddy! I want Daddy!” I did not know how I could go on.
Another long silence, and then, “That will be something I will always share with Alex, isn’t it? Missing fathers?”
I held her hands for both our sakes. “You might want to think about how to be a good friend right now.”
She nodded, withdrew her hands, and went upstairs without another word.
Me, I was exhausted both physically and mentally. This day felt endless. Yet my mind was jumping all over, and I found myself wandering from living room to kitchen, peering into the refrigerator and then closing it, picking up the phone and putting it down again. I had twelve people on speed dial; I didn’t feel like talking to any of them. I didn’t know what I wanted.
My restless eyes fell on the daypack I carry to work and school, then on the books about Tiffany I had been given that afternoon. Funny how long ago it seemed now. Not so funny, really.
Sometimes, when nothing else makes sense, work is the anchor. I had to learn that lesson a long time ago, so I pulled out the books and notebooks and curled up on the couch, prepared to spend an hour or two tightly focused on learning something new about Tiffany. It didn’t matter what—anything that would be, one, useful for my work and, two, not at all related to my real life. I would work for an hour, clear my head, and with luck, unwind enough to fall asleep.
Instead, I got lost in Tiffany’s time and place, turn-of-the-last-century New York, when a woman daring to take part in the new bicycling craze had to manage ankle-length skirts, when the opening of the first subway line had the entire city excited, and young Teddy Roosevelt was running for governor. Women still couldn’t vote, and yet, I learned, there was a whole team of women working for Tiffany, living independently and making art. They were the “New Women” of a century ago. I couldn’t stop reading and I couldn’t wait to dig into our just-found collection of letters to see if the previously unknown Maude Cooper was one of them.
Hours later, I woke up on the couch, facedown on the open books and my head full of glowing stained-glass flowers and young women in Gibson Girl shirtwaists and enormous hats trimmed with glowing flowers and feathers. But in my dreams, they all seemed to be walking around a glowing stained-glass cemetery.
Chris was gently shaking me.
“Wake up. Why are you here? “
“Why are you here? Middle of the night? Why are you up?”
Her face was white in the lamplight.
“It’s almost morning. Alex sent a note to all his friends.”
She handed me the phone. The message wasn’t in text-speak but written out.
“Up all night. Can’t sleep. Dad shot. We found him on our lawn yesterday AM.”
I dropped the phone as if it burned. I could not make my mind process this horrifying piece of news. I grew up around cops, and anyone who’s ever watched a cop show on TV would have the same thought: This looks like an ugly message from some very ugly people. How could that possibly be about Dima, who was the nicest man and a straight arrow if there ever was one?
What could I possibly say to Chris about this? Nothing this evil had ever touched her life. Then I saw she was not looking to me. She was madly texting, so her friends were up, too, looking to each other for some measure of comfort.
Gray light was reaching into the house, so it was already dawn. No point in going back to bed. I made a pot of coffee and even poured a mug for Chris. This was no ordinary morning. I found pancake mix way in the back of a cupboard and threw together a stack of them.
She was ready for school early instead of the usual mad rush, and Melanie stopped by to walk to the subway together. I was awake now, and two mugs of coffee insured I would not go back to sleep. I might as well go to work early too.
&nb
sp; ***
Before I left home I had an e-mail from a Ryan Ames with the subject line “Dr. Thomas Flint assistant.” I briefly considered a quick delete, followed by a claim that it had never arrived. I did not want to deal with any of this today.
Nope, I knew I had to be a grown-up.
It said “Professor Flint wants us to meet as soon as possible to begin working on the information you discussed. I will be at the museum at noon sharp today.”
Oh, I could hardly wait. He sounded as arrogant as his boss. What if I did not work that day? What if I had other plans? Or—heaven forbid—other responsibilities?
He was there on the museum steps when I went down to look for him. From inside the long hall, he actually looked kind of scary, not in Flint’s “I know everything, you peasant,” style, but more in an “avoid him late at night on a dark street” style. He was tall and thin, with a long black raincoat heavily decorated with looping chains. Part of his head was shaved and tattooed and I flinched just thinking of the pain involved. Not only would I avoid him on a dark street, I certainly would not want my daughter to know him.
Then I opened the door and he said hello in a voice that was scarcely louder than a whisper. It was extra muted because he was looking at the ground. When he looked up I was surprised to see the timid expression in his eyes. I couldn’t match it with either his boss’ arrogance or the macho swagger of his own appearance. He looked exactly like a child who hoped you would like him but wasn’t expecting you to.
I smiled and he smiled back. He looked relieved. Let’s say I was confused. I hid it well by escorting him into my tiny cubicle and clearing some books stacked on the one extra chair.
“I understand that you are Dr. Flint’s assistant, but what does that mean, exactly? And did he tell you what he expects you to do here?” My computer powered on and I added, “Ah, let’s see if he sent me anything. He said he would.”
“I sent it. He doesn’t know how to use e-mail. He dictated it.”
Two pages of crisp directive, laying out all our tasks until Flint returned. He suspected Maude Cooper might be a previously unknown “Tiffany girl,” one of the girls who worked in Tiffany’s all-female design studio. His ultimate goal would be to determine how much new information her papers held, if any, and what their scholarly value could be. He conceded there might be some monetary value, too, but that did not seem to interest him very much.
Our assignment, young Ryan’s and mine, was to aid him in this by doing pretty much just what I would have done anyway: organize, record, and describe the jumbled contents of the boxes, then start the research to see what we could learn about it. He included a list of sources to consult. Because no one here at the museum with its fine library would have known enough to do that.
“That’s what he said, word for word. My job is to do anything Dr. Flint needs done. Mainly I do his computer tech work, write up his notes, organize his paperwork, but I do everything—bring his coffee, get his dry cleaning, pick up airline tickets.” He turned pink. “I know how it sounds, but I’m not just a gofer.”
“Oh, I know, I know. I started here as an intern myself, possible the oldest they ever had, and I’m still only a very junior part-timer. But—” I paused, trying to ask the obvious without being obvious. “Are you—um—very interested in Tiffany? Or period decorative art in general? I mean…”
He said with great dignity, “I am a third-year painting student at Pratt. I can appreciate all forms of art.” Then he smiled a little sheepishly. “But no, my goal is to become the next Dave McKean.” He saw my blank face, and explained, “He does dark, scary, beautiful art. He’s illustrated Neal Gaiman’s books. He’s the best in two generations.” He turned a little pink again. “Or ever, really. Yes, I would say ever. He’s my idol.”
He added hastily, “Dr. Flint didn’t hire me for my art but for my tech skills. I’m his tame geek. But he doesn’t know I’m interested in graphic art. Please don’t mention it?”
“I see,” I said, though I didn’t, really. Then I imagined Dr. Flint with a comic book—pardon me, a graphic novel—in his hands, and I did see it, quite clearly.
After I retrieved the cartons from their place under lock and key, we dug in and found a haphazard mess. No need to keep the contents in original order as there clearly was none. We spread out at a worktable, dividing the contents by type for starters: one pile for letters, one pile for art, and one pile for “whatever.” The couple of books that looked like diaries were set aside on their own.
Ryan had a template already set up on his laptop and could type a lot faster than I could, so I dictated content and he keyed away. His questions were right on the mark and I was beginning to see why Flint hired him.
It took most of the morning just to list the letters in the first box. When I led him into the staff room for a coffee break, I said, “I just have to ask. How the heck did you and Flint get together? I don’t mean to be nosy…”
He ducked his head. “I guess we are an odd couple. Actually Dr. Flint says it all the time. Sometimes I think he is laughing at me.”
That seemed more than likely.
I handed him coffee, watched him pour in four packets of sugar and passed him my personal supply of cookies. He inhaled three, making me wonder if he’d any breakfast, before he went on. “I was working for the computer lab at Pratt and Flint begged my boss to send him someone to fix a computer problem in a hurry. He isn’t a Pratt professor but I guess he had some pull.”
“I gather you succeeded.”
He looked at me with his very first hint of humor. “He’d accidentally closed a screen and thought he’d lost his whole manuscript. Turned out his last assistant—actually, his last three—had quit suddenly, he had a deadline, and was in complete panic.” He shook his head. “Brilliant man but barely knows how to turn his computer on. Pathetic in this day and age. Who uses file cards for notes?”
“Now I see what you mean by ‘tame geek!’ You’re his own personal tech support department?”
“Kind of. He was just convinced that I was a genius and offered to overlook what he calls my inappropriate sense of style.”
“He didn’t say that!”
“Yes, he did. Why not?” He didn’t seem offended. “He says I don’t look scholarly or like a gentleman. I guess before me he had a few girls in pearls working for him, but they didn’t like doing his errands and they didn’t need the money. I do. I mean, I need the money and, you know, I can deal with the rest.” He flushed. “I’m learning a lot about, um, how to conduct myself. I can see it makes a difference in his work, you know, how people think of him. And even how to dress right.”
He said it with a straight face, and not a hint of irony. I struggled to keep a straight face of my own, wondering how he had looked before becoming acquainted with the suave Dr. Flint.
We went back to work. Ryan went to discuss scanner capabilities so he could create a digital record of the art, while I began to read the letters. I told myself it was a quick overview for now. I was not going to waste a lot of time today getting sucked into reading them in detail.
Of course I got sucked in. How could I not?
She was a lively letter writer, obviously thrilled to be in New York, and writing so often to her mother and sister back in Illinois it would take us days to read them all. We would have to try to piece together her history, because she did not need to include the background details for her letters home. Instead, she seemed determined to take her mother and sisters along on her adventures.
A note to myself in parentheses—if she sent the letters to her family in Illinois how did they end up in a house in Brooklyn? Find out.
She wrote all about her boardinghouse and included sketches of her fellow boarders, telling her sister how much fun it was to be surrounded by such creative and sociable people and assuring her mother how very respectable they all were, how high the h
ousekeeping standards were, and that the promised “excellent daily breakfast and dinner” were really provided. She included a sample menu.
She told them about seeing the great Maude Adams in Peter Pan, including a charming sketch in colored pencil of her costume, and joked about making Maude Cooper as famous a name someday. She saw the “divine” Madam Schuman-Heinke in Das Rheingold, in company with a crowd from the boardinghouse. She wrote to her sister—but not to her mother!—about using a long, sharp hatpin to discourage a “masher” on the streetcar. She began a painting class at the Art Students League and was happy to be back among the easels and oils.
She was in awe of Clara Driscoll, who ran the all-female design studio and declared Driscoll to be her idol, the person she aspired to become. She described her early assignments, cutting glass for small projects, and the joy of using her Art Institute training, and sent watercolor sketches that looked like familiar Tiffany designs. She confessed her passionate desire for her talent to be recognized.
Her world itself was different in every detail from mine. The Wright brothers would not take to the sky for a few more years, penicillin was decades in the future, and the city pollution problem was created by the vast number of horses on the street. Only half the states had child labor laws. A lady began dressing by lacing up her corset and adding layers of petticoats.
And yet, she did not seem so different from me. She was a young woman making her way in the world. I knew her. I could not wait to read more and know her better.
Absorbed as I was, at the back of my mind I was always thinking about Dima, Natalya, Alex, and about all the people who knew them at Chris’ school. What was happening there today? Could I find a moment to sneak away and meet Chris at lunchtime or the end of the school day?
***
In the end, Chris came to me, dropping in after an early dismissal. She shook her head. “We had an assembly. I told you we would. Middle- and upper-school. I guess the little ones had their own. Herbert talked and talked, like always.”