So there was a young man sitting against the wall when she came in, knees up, but she could tell nothing more about him because she couldn’t look at him just yet.
Geraldine shut the door behind her. She was already holding a paintbrush. Something about her face reminded Petra of the afternoon Edith had called; there was that sharp, shadowed look to it. “Good afternoon, Petra.”
“Good afternoon,” Petra replied.
Geraldine drifted back toward her easel. Petra’s portrait leaned against the legs of it; a rather docile landscape sat at the work area.
“I thought perhaps we could read some John Masefield today.” Geraldine dabbed an impossibly small dab of blue on the end of her brush, the motion delicate as a queen dabbing a napkin to her lips. “ ‘I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky—’ Well suited to this sort of drab day, I think.”
She didn’t say anything about the young man. This was so rudely unlike her that Petra doubted her own vision: perhaps he wasn’t there after all. Perhaps he really was a coat or an easel or a shadow.
Petra risked another glance at him.
He sat alongside the wall, head hung down, earbuds in, brown hair combed over in a rather old-fashioned way. He was in a tweed vest and nice pants and wore very long leather shoes. He looked like a young William B. Yeats come from the past. He didn’t look at Petra at all, and she suspected he was one of those lofty, handsome young men with the sorts of smiles that were mostly always directed at themselves if they bothered to smile at all. This made Petra amorphously angry at him. She wanted to ask what he was even doing there, but she knew Geraldine would find such a question rude, so she just swallowed her annoyance.
So instead she found herself pretending all was normal as she recited John Masefield out of one of Geraldine’s faded old volumes, and as she drank tea as Geraldine dabbed dark promises on the bottom of the clouds in her landscape, and as she sat on the chaise and posed for her own portrait. All the while she was infinitely aware that the young man had not moved and that Geraldine was not making any allowances to include him in any of their activities.
It really was possible that he was not real. (O Spirit of the storm / Thy lightning sleeps in its sheath!) Petra simply couldn’t think of any other explanation for Geraldine’s impolite disinterest in his existence. Even dramatic Petra was having a hard time inventing imaginary histories for him.
Geraldine didn’t so much as acknowledge him until the end of their time. She put down her brush and then—ever so briefly—glanced to the young man and away. It was abruptly clear that Geraldine was ignoring his presence, as sniffy and condescending as she’d ever been.
“What a lovely afternoon,” Geraldine said coolly. “Thank you for coming, as always, Petra.”
“I’m bringing Emerson to read tomorrow,” Petra warned. She tried not to look at the young man, but she did, just in time for him to dart his eyes up at her and away. He ducked his head again.
“Excellent,” Geraldine said. “That will be wonderful.”
Petra left. He stayed.
• • •
Three days. He was there three days, and Geraldine didn’t acknowledge him. He never spoke to them, either, just sat there with his earbuds in, wearing the same impeccable vest and pants.
Petra was going to break. She was going to bring in poetry about houseguests or strange men or pointy leather shoes or repressed silence and she would force an answer. She would march up to him and demand to know if he was a new piece of furniture. She would make a fuss.
Instead, she met with Marla.
“There’s a problem,” Marla asked, but she didn’t use a question mark. The winter wind clawed at her hair, but it stayed on. “What is it?” Oh, there was the question mark.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but who is that guy?”
“Guy?”
“In the apartment.”
Marla’s body went on high alert. There were not very many animals in the city, but once Petra had seen a cat that had been hit by a car on a side street. It remained there for several days, long enough to go completely stiff, with its limbs pointing out in a way that proved conclusively that it was no longer among the living.
Marla’s posture suggested she was no longer among the living.
This prodded at the dramatic side of Petra, finally. Maybe he was … Geraldine’s concubine. Or maybe he was a younger brother of Marla and Frances and Edith, estranged for years and now returned to Geraldine. Maybe —
“Is he—how did—tell me the situation.”
“There’s just a guy there, and has been, and Geraldine seems to be ignoring him. I didn’t mean to be nosy, it just seemed peculiar.”
Marla released an angry sigh, breath through a bull’s nostrils. “Well, this is just too bad! When Edith finds out—so typical.” She got herself back together. “I’m sorry for the discomfort. We’ll take care of it. Are you headed up now?”
“Yes. Are you—”
“No. No, I need to talk to Edith. Tell Geraldine to expect my call.”
• • •
On the fourth day, the clouds finally burst in the apartment.
Geraldine let Petra in from the stairwell. She was getting fairly good at the journey; she only took a moment to collect herself. In that moment, her gaze fell upon the young man’s long and pointy shoes. They were in precisely the same place they had been for the past three days. Perhaps, Petra thought, the young man had climbed the stairs and then been too exhausted to ever imagine moving again.
“I apologize for my rudeness,” Geraldine said. “I was quite upset with someone else, and I took it out on Daniel here. Daniel, will you come join us?”
Daniel—he was still there! In the same clothing! He had a name! Geraldine was looking right at him!—lifted his head to gaze at them. Petra was able to study him long enough that she should have been able to pin his age to a decade, but she could not. He was young looking, with prematurely sunken cheeks and half-closed eyes that seemed biologically fashioned for expressing disinterest. His hands were enormous, with knobby joints. A styrofoam takeout box sat on the floor beside him. He was comely enough that Petra was proud of herself for not blushing immediately.
His eyes skipped over Geraldine to Petra. She couldn’t begin to interpret his expression; she didn’t know if she’d seen it before.
Then Daniel scowled and dropped his chin again, pressing one earbud more securely in place.
“Perhaps later,” Geraldine said.
They tried to carry on as usual. Geraldine was nearly done with Petra’s portrait. It looked done to Petra—she had been transformed into a faintly smiling lady holding a book of faintly fancy words—but Geraldine fussed over highlights on strands of hair and texture in the weave of Petra’s collar. She seemed distracted—no, unfocused. Like Petra at school when she hadn’t slept well. She barely commented on Petra’s reading, even though Petra had spent rather a lot of time finding some context for Ezra Pound, who was even more singularly unkind than Petra had first imagined.
Daniel remained where he was.
When the taxi came, Geraldine sighed. “I’m terribly sorry, Petra, but could you show yourself out? I think I’ll lie down now.”
At first Petra thought she had heard her wrong.
Lie down? What was this madness? Geraldine was not an old woman; she did not lie down; she did not nap; she did not get so tired that she could not even walk Petra to the door.
Show yourself out.
Petra could. She could certainly show herself out. But why? Why was she showing herself out?
But she did. On the way out, she stopped by Daniel. She blamed him for this disruption to their schedule and for Geraldine’s distraction and, at the most basic level, for Geraldine having to lie down. Standing there, with the toes of her shoes a millimeter away from his fancy shoes, she considered multiple ways to express her thoughts.
Finally, he said, “Look, I don’t want to talk to you.”
This was so suddenly unpleasant that Petra felt her lips part. Her surprise needed a path for escape. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t want to get to know you, and you don’t want to get to know me. So I don’t see the point in talking.”
Petra’s ears burned, but only a little. She used Geraldine’s crisp voice to say, “How do you know I don’t want to get to know you?”
“Oh please,” he muttered dismissively. “People like you don’t want to know guys like me.”
“What?”
“Just talk at me and try to straighten me out, or whatever. So just leave me alone. I’ll be out of here soon enough.”
Petra’s mouth needed to open a little wider to let a bit more surprise out. People like who? Lump people? “You’re being singularly unkind. I’m not going to fight with you. But if I find out you’ve done anything to upset Geraldine, I’ll be unkind.”
Now he looked surprised—his surprise escaped in the space between his eyes and his eyebrows—and didn’t reply when she said, “Good evening!”
She left. He stayed.
• • •
On Wednesday, Edith asked Petra to not come in to Geraldine’s—a therapist was coming to see Geraldine and that was the only time he had available on short notice.
What sort of therapist? asked Petra’s brain. “Sure,” said Petra’s mouth. She had prepared a lengthy reading on war and poppies to lift Geraldine’s spirits. And she had bought her a Christmas present. She didn’t know if Geraldine celebrated Christmas, but she knew she’d appreciate the gesture. “Tomorrow’s fine, though, right?”
“Right, of course,” Edith said. “Geraldine would be so upset to lose more than a day with you.”
Petra was going to leave it at that, but she had a thought, and she knew how to say it, so she asked, “Can I be of any help? As far as the therapist goes?”
Edith brightened at the question. “You are so kind! No, we’ve all heard good things about Mr. Goodminster. He’ll perk Geraldine right up. He says he knows just how to make her regain her enthusiasm for eating. He hopes it might only take one session.”
Eating! Enthusiasm! At least this made sense. Petra supposed Geraldine’s newfound fatigue wasn’t really Daniel’s fault, then, but she was still annoyed with him.
“I could make her something,” Petra said, even though she was only sure how to boil eggs. She could learn. Or she could find something; Brooklyn was full of delicious things. Geraldine would surely like something fiddly and beautiful.
Edith replied, “Oh, I don’t think that would do any good. She’s a very fussy eater.”
Now that Petra thought about it, she’d never seen Geraldine eat anything at all.
• • •
To distract herself from her aching knees on the trek up to Geraldine’s apartment, Petra sometimes played make-believe with herself as she climbed. One of her favorites was to imagine that it was snowing inside the stairwell. With each foot she placed on the stair, she imagined flakes gently beginning to dust the concrete and then pile in the corners and then, finally, drift over all of the stairs. By the time she got to the top of the stairs, she could imagine that she might be able to sled down after the session was over.
She knocked. Geraldine opened the door; Petra examined her for signs of feebleness.
“I’ll get you tea,” Geraldine said. Did she look more hollow-eyed?
As Petra sloughed her coat, she saw that Daniel was still there. His MP3 player was shunted to the side, the earbuds coiled into a tense noose beside it. Possibly the battery had died. He made a great show of not looking at Petra as she passed by him, but it was obvious that he could hear her footsteps. It was obvious, too, once Petra began reading, that he found it more difficult to ignore them. Petra could feel his attention on them as she read Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium” and while she and Geraldine chatted about the book The Golden Bough. She saw his finger jittering against the floor in time with a rousing round of Rachmaninoff from the gramophone.
She felt his eyes as she gave Geraldine her Christmas present, a copper globe. Only the continents were formed of solid pieces of metal; the ocean was criss-crossed with thin metal wires holding the land aloft. It was intricate and fussy and Geraldine made an enormous show of adoring it.
“I didn’t realize it was Christmas,” Geraldine said. “I thought it had already gone by.”
“It’s the nineteenth,” Petra replied, but Geraldine didn’t seem interested in the date. It was hard to tell if this was because of her new vagueness, or because she had never been interested in time. If this was because Geraldine wasn’t eating, Petra was eager for Geraldine to resume eating at once. She asked, “Do you like Mr. Goodminster?”
Geraldine turned her rings around and around. “He’s pleasant enough.”
Daniel snorted from his post by the wall. Geraldine looked in his direction, expression cool and polite. To Petra, she said, “He means well, even if he doesn’t really understand me.”
Petra asked the same thing she’d asked Edith. “Can I be of any help?”
“You’re already a help,” Geraldine said. The taxi was there; her head tilted sharply to the window. “You are a lovely gift, Petra. I’m going to go lie down. I’ll see you tomorrow. Thank you for everything.”
As Petra left, Daniel muttered, “This place is a madhouse.”
• • •
It took three sessions before Petra met Mr. Goodminster. They ran into each other outside the apartment building, him coming out of the stairwell, her heading in. The timing wasn’t exactly coincidental; Petra had assumed that his sessions lasted an hour, and so she lurked across the road in the bus shelter, glancing from her phone to the door until she saw the door crack. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting from the therapist, but it wasn’t this: a slight man with a long braid down his back and a quilted jacket and moccasins. He looked like he should be selling psychic readings. He did not look like an expert. Petra was both relieved and angry.
She grabbed her bag to her and marched across the street.
“Hello,” she said, “I’m Petra. You must be Mr. Goodminster.” She held out her hand so that he had to shake as well. He had a noncommittal handshake; his fingers seemed to squeeze out of hers like toothpaste from a tube when she tried to get a better grip.
“Oh, I am, I am.”
“I’m Geraldine’s companion,” Petra said, trying to sound brisk. “How did the session go?”
“I’m not at, uh, leisure, to uh, discuss patient? Confidential? Privilege?”
“I’m very committed to her health,” Petra insisted. “I could help.”
Mr. Goodminster peered at her. “Oh, right. Sure. Well, just keep coming. She looks forward to your visits like no other.”
Petra was annoyed by this answer. She could have been having a visit with Geraldine this afternoon if not for his useless session. “Well, those aren’t going to stop.”
“Good, good. Good. Good.”
“I thought,” Petra persisted, “Edith said you might get this fixed in one session.”
He blinked as if Petra had thrown acid in his face. “I thought she might respond to, ah, less persuasive methods. I’ve moved to the next step. Wait—wait, are you going up now?”
This was because he saw Petra’s hand on the door handle. She had taken the fifteen seconds before her last sentence and the fifteen seconds during his to gain some perspective, and she’d decided she was going to go see Geraldine. Not as a job. As a friend.
“Yes,” Petra said.
“Oh, that’s very not—that shouldn’t probably—”
Petra drew herself up into oratory Petra and eyed him. She waited for him to finish telling her why it was a bad idea, but either client confidentiality or fear of Petra stopped him. His ears went red, and Petra suddenly felt very bad for being brisk at him. She was unused to being on this side of the blushing table. Taking his hand, she clasped it with both of hers, like Geraldine had done on the first day they met.
> “Don’t worry,” Petra said. “I won’t stay long.”
• • •
Stairs. Done. Petra wasn’t even out of breath; she was triumphant.
Geraldine opened the door at her knock. Her face in the crack of the door was delighted and surprised. “Petra! My love. Do come in.”
Petra did come in. She kissed Geraldine on the cheek. Geraldine had first done it to her the week previously, and it had been such a delightful and polite gesture that Petra had adopted it at once.
“I thought Mr. Goodminster had stolen today from us,” Geraldine said.
“I won’t stay long,” Petra replied quickly, warmed by Geraldine’s affection. “I just wanted to visit for a moment.”
“Oh, do stay long,” Geraldine insisted. “What a pleasant surprise. You look so lovely today! Perhaps we should start a new portrait of you.”
Petra shucked her coat. She shot Daniel a dirty look—he was already looking at them with his mouth twisted, a new takeout box beside him—and then hung her coat on the rack behind the door. “I like the one you’re doing now.”
“Oh, yes, but you’re brighter now,” Geraldine said. “Are we reading first today? I’ll get you a cup of tea.”
“Does Daniel want one too?” Petra asked.
Daniel’s chin jerked up at the sound of his name. He scowled at Geraldine. “Daniel doesn’t want a cup of tea. Daniel wants what he came for. Daniel wants this to be over with! Come on, you old beast!”
Petra’s mouth hung open.
Geraldine’s face was stricken. In a breath she had reassembled and composed it, but the previous expression was still branded in Petra’s mind.
Daniel leaped to his feet. Petra had not realized the full extent of his immobility until he was mobile, because the tallness of him seemed like the most incredible thing, like watching a sapling grow in fast-forward. He was much older than Petra had remembered, too, and suddenly utterly unfamiliar. Somehow her mind had rendered him harmless, but now that he was standing, towering over them both, she realized suddenly that he was a stranger. He was brandishing something, too—it took Petra a long moment to realize that it was a small, unmarked spray bottle.
The Anatomy of Curiosity Page 6