The List

by Anne Calhoun

  “The medium of paper and ink and art becomes part of the message,” Tilda said. “It conveys something to the recipient, that care was taken with every step of the process. It suggests that the individual takes as much care with her life.”

  “Well said, Matilda.” Andrew lifted his glass in her direction. Tilda didn’t need to look at her mother to know they wore the same expression.

  “Well,” the archaeologist mused after an awkward pause, “did anyone else see the latest Who Do You Think You Are? It’s an historian’s guilty pleasure, I confess.”

  “I’m always astonished people can lose track of their history so thoroughly,” Andrew said. “Imagine not knowing one’s grandfather stood with Richard II, or one’s descended from the Tudors on one’s mother’s side.”

  “I can imagine that quite easily,” Daniel said. “My family doesn’t know our history beyond great-grandparents.”

  “You must admit that history in America is dipping a toe in a paddling pool. But . . . Logan . . . immigration from Ireland after the famine?”

  Tilda glared at Andrew, and got a ghost of a wink in return.

  “That’s right,” Daniel said, giving no sign he was aware of the subtle slight in the question.

  “You know,” the archaeologist said, “that show is a perfect example of the medium influencing the message. The visual impact of the individuals seeing their history unfold, in letters or diaries, or on beaches, adds such verisimilitude to the revelation, as if the human impact makes the story more real.”

  “The medium is the message,” Rupert offered from the other end of the table. “Marshall McLuhan. The method of delivering the ideas shapes the ideas themselves, at the very least, their perception and reception. As anyone who’s attempted to formulate a thoughtful argument whilst appearing on a panel show will note.”

  “Books were the most permanent form of communication,” the archaeologist said. “Electronic information could be lost forever, until endless backups made it impossible to lose anything, including moments we would love to forget. A rant in an airport—”

  “Or an unfortunate tweet—”

  “Our lives are constantly archived and on display. Somehow the most ephemeral of mediums has become the most permanent.”

  “And yet we still appreciate a thank-you card on heavy paper, a handwritten note over a grammatical nightmare of a text. I received one from a student last term in which the entire content of the text consisted of the letters t and u. It feels rather hopeless to expect one’s students to construct an argument engaging ideas ranging the length and breadth of recorded human history when they can’t be bothered to properly capitalize and punctuate their texts.”

  “Do you find many young people are interested in stationery?” Rupert asked Tilda.

  “The ones who find my store,” she said. “I think, underneath it all, they’re looking for something more than paper. They’re searching for beautiful and permanent in a world built on disposable, on upgrades and new features and trends. They’re searching, I believe, for something that matches the depth of their emotions.”

  “And they find it in paper,” her mother said. She’d been watching the conversation flit from one person to another like a badminton birdie in the air.

  “I don’t know what they find,” Tilda said finally. “I facilitate connection, a way to reach out to another person as best they can. Perhaps the permanence is in sustaining the beauty of that moment, the tangible elegance of it all. It fades away, of course. But they’ve had that moment. Can we really hope for more?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Rupert raised his glass. “To a lifetime of moments,” Rupert said with a smile. “To Tilda and Daniel.”

  “To Tilda and Daniel,” everyone echoed.

  The candlelight flickered, casting shadows over the china and silver, the flowers, Daniel’s warm glance, Andrew’s hooded eyes, her mother’s forced smile.

  —

  Dessert was an airy chocolate mousse topped with raspberries. Afterward they moved from the dining room back to the reception room for an after-dinner drink. The conversation lagged eventually and people started to leave. Tilda said good-bye from the reception room, while her mother stood by the door and ushered them into the spring night. The chef was finishing cleaning up in the kitchen.

  “Dinner was lovely. Thank you.”

  “I’m so glad you thought so. You and your young man handled yourselves very well.”

  “We do occasionally go to dinner parties in New York, Mum.”

  “Andrew’s gift was quite nice,” she said. “Rather thoughtful.”

  “It was exactly the kind of thing I’d expect from him,” Tilda said noncommittally. Inappropriate on every level except the obvious.

  Her mother looked at her sharply. “Yes, what were you talking about over the drinks cabinet?”

  “How much we’ve changed,” she said. “Do you want me to stay up with you?”

  “No, darling,” her mother said. “Go on to bed. I’ll just look over tomorrow’s work, fix it in my mind.”

  Her mother’s agent was the last to leave. On her way downstairs to retrieve the deed to the town house, Tilda paused at the top of the stairs when she heard her mother’s voice, midsentence, unusually petulant. “. . . but honestly, Rupert, I didn’t work as I have for the last twenty-five years so my daughter could marry a policeman and keep a shop!”

  “Elizabeth, really, it’s hardly a corner shop in the local high street. Daniel seems very attentive to her. She’s done very well for herself.”

  She turned and tiptoed back to the bedroom, closing the door as quietly as possible. Inside, Daniel was unbuttoning his shirt. “That was interesting,” he said noncommittally.

  Tilda stifled a laugh that threatened to tip over into hysterical. “I apologize for Andrew.”

  Daniel pulled off his shirt and draped it over the back of a chair, then went to work on his shoelaces. “I am aware,” he said, jerking free the knots, “of the English aristocracy’s role in the Irish famine.”

  “As I said, I apologize. He was Mum’s research assistant when I was finishing school, and he’s a bit of a prat.”

  “Does your mother always question your decisions like that?”

  “She questions everyone like that. Rupert deserves a commendation from the queen for putting up with her for twenty years, although the second house in Spain built with his commissions from her book deals and speaking engagements probably eases the sting of her calls,” Tilda said.

  “Your mother’s friend invited me to the Roman excavation under the Bloomberg headquarters tomorrow,” he said.

  “Wonderful,” she said. Her vision swam for a moment, unmoored by candlelight and too much to drink. “I think it’s a closed site, so you’re very lucky. Come here,” she said, and reached for him.

  He crossed the room and kissed her upturned mouth. “You haven’t forgotten about me, have you?” she asked as she slid her palms over muscle and bone. Flesh of my flesh, blood inked on the paper of my bones.

  She was, perhaps, a little drunk.

  “You are unforgettable,” he replied, and hitched her skirt up to the tops of her thighs. “Still ready for me?”

  She nodded. Her dress dropped to the floor along with her panties. Her nipples, still reddened and hot from their earlier play, stiffened when the cool air swirled around them. Daniel hoisted Tilda’s naked body against his, walked backward to the bed, and tumbled onto the duvet. She straddled him, jerking his belt buckle loose, unfastening his fly. He helped, releasing his shaft from his pants. His head thudded back against the bed as she sank down, but then he coiled and twisted and turned her under him.

  It lasted less than a minute. She was so primed each thrust tightened the knots inside her until she snapped, and gasped into his shoulder. He came almost immediately, burying himself deep, his r
elease soundless.

  “I love you,” he murmured into her throat.

  “Love you, too,” she whispered back.

  Nothing felt real. City sounds were different in New York, or in Tokyo, and the unfamiliar room and bed only emphasized that even stillness was different the world over. She lay under him, wondering if her soul would be waiting for her back in New York, or if it were hovering over Cornwall, wondering why she’d left, where she was.

  —

  Daniel hoisted their rolling suitcases into the overhead bin while she unpacked her leather tote. Cashmere wrap for warmth, noise-canceling headphones, tablet loaded with her latest financials to review in case she couldn’t sleep, travel pillow, earplugs, and eye mask because she really should sleep. Barring a mechanical problem, the flight would depart on time.

  “How often did you make this trip?”

  “Before I started talks with Quality? Once a year when I was in school. Two or three times now that I’m out, but I usually see Mum during one of those trips. She’s very busy.”

  “You see your mother once a year.”

  “Perhaps twice if her teaching and speaking schedule allows.” The seat-back pocket wouldn’t hold both her iPad and her headphones case. Frustrated, she bundled her wrap on her lap and unzipped the headphones case. “I could afford one ticket home a year, which I needed to get home for the summer hols. I’d go to Cornwall. It was easier for Mum to come see both of us at once, rather than me trailing after her. After that, I was opening and running the shop.”

  Daniel took the case from her and tucked it in his seat-back pocket behind his bookmarked copy of Parade’s End. “Your mother paid off the mortgage on a town house in the West Village for you but she wouldn’t buy plane tickets home.”

  He wasn’t asking. Daniel’s professorial blazer, Oxford, and jeans weren’t a fashion statement but an expression of his core personality. Her cop with the soul of a professor, entirely too smart to miss nuances of finances in relationships. Whatever romantic images he’d created of Tilda’s boarding school life took on less-nostalgic tones after the dinner party. “She was angry with me for going to school in America,” Tilda said matter-of-factly.

  A truth, one of many surrounding her abrupt decision to accept NYU’s full scholarship. She looked out the window at the rain-smeared tarmac. The baggage handlers shrouded in reflective jackets unloaded bags from a cart onto the conveyor belt, the luggage disappearing into the belly of the 767; if only one could stow away one’s personal baggage so easily. “Quite angry, in fact. I didn’t see her for nearly eighteen months.”

  “NYU’s a pretty good school,” Daniel said, his eyebrows raised.

  “I had a place at Balliol. Mum arranged my tutorials herself.”

  Daniel looked at her. “You didn’t exactly give up a spot at Oxford to go to play the drums in a punk rock band,” he said gently. “I’m just trying to place you. Cornwall makes sense. Cornwall is the geophysical representation of you. Your mother makes sense with the boarding school, but not with Cornwall.”

  “Mum didn’t fit there,” she said. “Simple as that. She loathes Cornwall. She can build an academic career, buy a house in Chelsea, travel all over the world lecturing at the G8 summit or the Milken Institute, but no matter how successful she becomes, she’s still from the same place. The class system is alive and well in England, if a bit less obvious than it used to be. Scratch Mum’s surface and what you find is that shabby little village and that even shabbier little house, and she’s ashamed of it.”

  “You’re not.”

  She remembered watching the sea, unable to tear her eyes from the way it wrinkled and glittered under a cloud-scudded sky, staying awake to watch the moon arc across the waves. “Nan’s from there. I’m from there. How could I possibly be ashamed of where I’m from?”

  “Nan looked after you while your mother finished school,” he said. “Then you went to St Andrews.”

  “Mum said the village school wasn’t providing a proper education. More like they couldn’t keep me in the building. She wants the best and settles for nothing until she has it. It’s ruthless, but I admire that in her.”

  “Single-minded,” he said. “Can your mother afford to give us the town house?”

  “On her salary as a professor? No. On what she makes consulting with the world’s largest corporations to increase their environmental awareness and responsibility? She might be able to buy the block.”

  “Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”

  “Mum is as honest as she is ruthless,” Tilda said with a little smile. “A few years ago she discovered a massive pollution cover-up at one of the companies that hired her. She returned their fees, every penny, plus interest, then published a series of articles in the Guardian exposing the cover-up. Rather than losing business, she raised her rates, and her exclusivity. Bringing in Elizabeth Davies gets you an Oxford don, a plan of attack, and social capital you can’t buy any other way. Her reputation is too hard won to compromise it, or let anyone else tarnish it.”

  He huffed in amusement, rolled onto his back, and covered his eyes with his arm. “You’re your mother’s daughter, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said, after a moment. “I suppose I am.” She forced herself to stop fidgeting with the fringe on her wrap.

  “Not to be rude, but how old is your mother?”

  “Forty-five. She was seventeen when she had me.”

  Daniel didn’t say anything else, just looked at her with that wise, knowing gaze that scared her more than any ledge. She cleared her throat, loosened her seat belt. “I think I’ll work for a bit.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  It took another thirty minutes to load the remaining passengers and bags. In that time Tilda read through her emails, reminded her assistant of the three personal appointments remaining in the week, skimmed the Styles sections in the London Times. When the button dinged and the flight attendant asked them to shut off anything with a switch, she felt calmer. After a short delay as they waited in line to take off, the jet lumbered along the runway and lifted into the air.

  In the air, she was fine.

  “I’m going to have a sleep,” she said.

  Daniel turned on the overhead reading light. She arranged her mask, earplugs, and pillow. In the darkness his hand found hers and squeezed, then held hers while she envisioned the clean precision of black ink on white stationery, drafting her letter to Nan in her head.

  – FIFTEEN –

  February

  As silently as he could in the predawn darkness, Daniel opened the cabinet by the sink and took down a glass, then ran it full of lukewarm tap water and drank. The Can Lake 50 ultramarathon he signed up to run took place in early October in Canandaigua; with a fifty-mile race on the horizon, if he slacked off his training now, he’d push too much too close to the race. Angie had pledged to run the 50K portion and was doing parallel training in Huntington. Normally they met on weekends for long runs, relying on her husband to meet them at waypoints with the energy drinks and bars they needed to get through the final miles.

  On a day like today, gray and cold with clouds like a hangover, it was difficult to imagine the weather on race day. In the Finger Lakes district of upstate New York, it would be cooler, low humidity, and likely sunshine would highlight the fall foliage. But the weather suited Daniel’s mood. Today they were getting in a run before going to a funeral.

  The front door to his parents’ house opened, and Angie stepped onto the braided rug and gently closed the door.

  “Daniel, I really can’t believe she’s not going to make it to the funeral.”

  In deference to their parents, still sleeping upstairs after the emotional wake the night before, Angie’s voice was low, but the tone came through loud and clear. Daniel slid his phone in the pocket of his running pants and zipped the pocket. Angie hadn’t turned on the ha
ll light, but Daniel didn’t need to see her face to tell she was pissed off. In black tights and a fleece top zipped to under her chin, arms crossed, shoulders set, ponytail high on her head, she was the spitting image of her teenage self, wearing her field hockey uniform and furious with Mom for not letting her drive herself to the tournament.

  At the wake last night he’d known he was going to pay for Tilda’s absence when Angie got him alone.

  “She’s got a conference call.”

  “It’s our uncle. Mom’s brother. She’s not coming?” Angie added.

  “Quality wants to explore international venues as well as London. This is huge for her. There’s a conference call scheduled with London and Tokyo at the same time as the funeral,” Daniel said, and zipped up his fleece. “There’s no point in her coming all the way out here when she’ll have to prepare for the call, then miss the funeral to take it.”

  “There’s the lunch afterward,” Angie said.

  “She’ll probably miss that as well. These calls take a couple of hours, and there’s usually a call to Colin afterward, to dissect who said what and who didn’t say what.”

  “Daniel. That’s bullshit and you know it.” His sister rarely swore. Definitely pissed off. “You’re a cop and you make the funerals, the birthday parties, holidays. It’s Uncle Kiernan. He used to take us roller-skating, he helped us build the treehouse. He lived two streets away. Family comes first. Period.”

  “Angie, she met Uncle K once, at Christmas, when she met thirty other members of the family. We’ve been married for six weeks, and she’s beyond busy.”

  Tilda had flown back to London to meet with the acquisitions team at Quality, and impressed the hell out of them. No surprise there. That meeting led to two more business trips, one to Dubai to talk to financiers, and another to Tokyo to research spaces and trends. The Asian market suited Tilda’s business ethos down to the ground. But the travel had thrown off Tilda’s body clock again. She was having a hard time sleeping at night, and staying awake during the day. Early in the morning when he went for a run he often found her in her study, either at her desk, going over proposals, or asleep on the chaise. When he got home late at night, he’d find her there again, working or asleep.