The Drowning Tree

by Carol Goodman

  “I’m afraid that wasn’t Neil’s weakness …” I look over DeeDee’s shoulder to see if there’s someone—anyone—to distract her attention from me, but the only gaze I meet is the lascivious leer of a Raphaelesque Triton pursuing a naked sea nymph. Explaining what happened to Bea’s father is not my favorite topic and in the interest of protecting Bea’s privacy I’ve been known to lie about his whereabouts, but when I look back at DeeDee I can see from the wash of red—crimson as the hematite paint in the Lady window—creeping over DeeDee’s tanned skin that she has remembered what happened to Neil.

  “Oh my God!” she says squeezing my arm. “I completely forgot. I heard at our fifth reunion that he’d ended up in a mental hospital. In fact, wasn’t it the one Christine just mentioned in her lecture—the Briarwood Insane Asylum? The same one that Eugenie Penrose’s poor sister went to?”

  Went to, I think, as if we’re talking about where they went to college. Of course, Briarwood is one of those institutions—like MacLean or Austin-Riggs—so exclusive that it has almost the same cachet as a prestigious college or social club.

  “Yes,” I admit, desperately trying to signal to Christine to come to my rescue. “Only now it’s called the Briarwood Institute for Mental Health. They dropped the ‘Insane Asylum’ part years ago. As far as I know he’s still there.”

  DeeDee takes a quick look behind her—as if afraid that someone is about to seize her and force her into a mental institution—and sidles a step closer to me. “That’s okay,” she says, patting my hand, “at least you don’t have to deal with visitation.”

  “NO, SHE DIDN’T ACTUALLY SAY THAT!”

  “I swear on my honor as a Penrose Girl, that’s what she said. I was tempted to mention that given Neil’s delusions I might have to deal with astral visitation.”

  Christine stops—we’ve been walking briskly away from the library toward my car—drops the overstuffed messenger bag she’s carrying and grabs my hand. The last rays of the sun have laid a pattern like the spokes of a wheel across the smooth green lawn. Outside of their light the night is growing cold, but inside this last patch of sun I feel a warmth that comes more from the pressure of Christine’s hand than from the sun’s heat. The distance I’d felt from her during these last six months seems to evaporate, like fog burning away in the morning light.

  “I’m so sorry, Juno, it’s my fault. This never would have come up if I hadn’t mentioned the asylum in my lecture.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Christine, why do you think I avoided the reunion? That’s all anyone could talk about at our fifth and I knew someone would eventually bring it up. It’s not that I mind for myself so much, but the story has faded enough in the town that Bea rarely has to hear about it. I didn’t want my presence at the reunion to revive talk about it.”

  Christine reshoulders her bag, flips up the collar of her thin leather jacket, and shivers. “Still, I should have told you what I found out about Clare Barovier. I tried not to dwell on it …”

  “Yes, I noticed you cut short your talk on hereditary insanity. But honestly you didn’t have to worry. No one could be saner than Beatrice.”

  “I know that, Juno.”

  “Look, it’s okay. We ought to get you something to eat before you have to go back to the city. We could stop at Gal’s and get you an amaretto cappuccino.”

  Christine smiles, pleased, I think, that I remember her favorite (nonalcoholic) beverage from college, but then the smile abruptly vanishes. “No … we’ll end up running into people from the reunion and I wanted a chance to talk to you alone. Besides, I’m dying to see what you’ve done with the glass factory. I think it’s amazing you’re actually living there.”

  Anyone else would think living with your teenaged daughter in an old abandoned factory was sheer lunacy—and certainly I’ve heard that opinion voiced often enough—but it’s clear from her tone that Christine is impressed. As I turn away from her to walk to the car, stepping out of the sun, I still feel warm, only now it’s from the pleasure of her approbation.

  BY THE TIME WE GET DOWN TO THE WATERFRONT THE SUN HAS DROPPED BELOW THE line of mountains on the other side of the river. Still, when I unlock the factory door there is enough residual light coming through the windows and skylight on the western wall that I don’t need to turn on the overhead lights. In fact, it’s brighter in here than outside.

  “What amazing light,” Christine says, crossing the empty space with her arms held out as if to embrace the space. Her boot heels click against the wide maple planks and echo in the high-ceilinged room. “Are these the original windows?”

  “Except for the panes I’ve had to replace. Most of the broken windows were on the north side, which faces the train station parking lot. It used to be a sort of Rosedale High rite of passage to see who could smash the highest panes. Fortunately these windows front the Metro-North tracks; only the really stupid kids braved the tracks to get a shot at the windows and even then you can’t really get far enough back to reach them.”

  Christine pivots on a tapered heel, and raises an eyebrow. “And you would know that because …”

  “Let’s just say that I told Mr. Penrose the window repair would be on me.”

  “So you’re leasing this from Gavin?”

  “Uh-huh. It’s one of the few properties Augustus Penrose didn’t give away to the college or some other socially worthy cause. I don’t think industrial real estate is really Gavin’s thing. He’d have unloaded this property years ago if he’d had a buyer. Now, though, it’s becoming popular to turn these old factories into art spaces …”

  “Like MASSMoCA in North Adams?”

  “Right, and Dia is converting a factory up in Beacon into a museum … anyway, suddenly Gavin’s interested in the space again. What I’m hoping is that instead of turning it into a cheesecake factory with cheap souvenir stores we can get some gallery space and studios for working artists. Actually, I thought you might be able to help me with the proposal to ArtHudson … Gavin’s on the board and you seem to have his ear.”

  Christine turns on her heel so that she’s facing the windows again. “Actually I could do with some cheesecake at the moment,” she says. “Where’s that food you promised?”

  “Right this way.”

  As soon as I open the door to the courtyard both dogs bound in, their nails scrabbling on the polished wood floor. They lap the room, their long dainty necks stretched out sniffing the air, and then come to rest against my hip, eyeing Christine with suspicion.

  “Hey, you didn’t tell me you got dogs.”

  Actually I did, but I don’t remind Christine of that. Clearly all she’s been able to think about the last few months has been the Lady window.

  “Bea’s been hounding me—pun intended—for a dog since she could talk, but we couldn’t have one in the apartment over my dad’s garage. We got these two from Greyhound Rescue three months ago.”

  “They’re beautiful. What are their names?”

  “Paolo and Francesca.”

  “Oh, are they Italian greyhounds?” Christine asks, smiling.

  “No, just regular, overworked racing Greyhounds. Watch them for a minute and you’ll see where they get their names.” I nudge them off my hip and they do another circle around the room, Francesca on the outside, Paolo leaning into her in the tight curves.

  It takes Christine a few minutes to remember the line from our junior year Dante seminar. “… these two that move together and seem to be so light upon the wind. That’s how Dante describes Paolo and Francesca when he first sees them in the second circle of hell.”

  “Brava! Professor Da Silva would be proud—remember how much he loved that line?”

  Christine tilts her head at me. It strikes me that with her pale coloring and long neck she looks a little like the greyhounds. “I remember it was Neil’s favorite line, too …”

  Although Penrose is a woman’s college, Neil, a junior at Columbia, had petitioned the college for special permission to sit i
n on Umberto Da Silva’s famous Dante seminar as an exchange student.

  I look away from Christine’s inquiring gaze into Francesca’s adoring one. Paolo has his eyes closed, his head resting on Francesca’s neck.

  “The Greyhound Rescue lady told us they stay so close together because they were crated in a cage so small they couldn’t both lie down. She thought they took turns leaning against each other for rest, and she wouldn’t let me take one without the other. After that story I was lucky to get Bea out of there with only two rescued greyhounds.”

  “Talk about the ninth circle of hell,” Christine says, still giving me that quizzical look, which I ignore by leading her through the courtyard, stopping to unlock the metal gate to the north wing of the factory. She wanders through the weeds and stops at the door to the east wing.

  “What’s that noise? It sounds like a wind tunnel,” she asks while I wrestle with the rusted lock.

  “The glass furnaces,” I tell her. “We’ve got two glass blowers renting space. Ernesto Marquez, who also does window removal and installation for me, and a woman named Marina who trained at the Corning Museum and is exhibiting in Venice right now. She does amazing work.”

  “Isn’t it a fire hazard to keep a furnace like that burning?”

  “That’s why all the hot glass work is kept in that wing. Notice that it’s not joined to the other wings. It’s a completely fireproof building made of concrete and steel—it’s where the Penrose studios made the glass for his windows.”

  “Yes, now that I think of it, Eugenie talks about the furnaces in her journals—she compares them to the fires of hell. I don’t think she liked that part of Augustus’s work. She preferred the tapestry and pottery studios.”

  “Well, it was all here—like a medieval crafts workshop—that was Augustus Penrose’s ideal. It’s rare for a stained-glass studio to make its own glass, but Tiffany did and so did Penrose so I figured, why not McKay Glass?”

  I’ve finally gotten the door open and wave Christine into my studio. “Our apartment is just up here,” I say, steering her toward the wroughtiron spiral stairs. “Let me get you something to eat before you have to get on the train …” But Christine has paused in front of the drawing on white vellum that covers the two-story-high wall opposite the stairs. It’s a wax rubbing of the Lady window that we’ll use as a guide for releading the window after it’s been taken down.

  “Are all those cracks places where the lead is broken?”

  “Uh-huh,” I say heading up the stairs, “this restoration is coming none too soon. Lead can start deteriorating after seventy years and the window is eighty years old.…” I pause at the top of the stairs to grab a bottle of Pellegrino water, half a loaf of sourdough bread, some fresh mozzarella my father brought me back from Poughkeepsie last week, and a jar of olives. Christine is still dawdling, halfway up the stairs, looking down at the studio. “But I keep forgetting,” I yell down at her, “you’re the expert on the window now. I bet your lecture convinced a lot of people to contribute to the restoration fund.”

  “But I wouldn’t have even done the lecture if you hadn’t steered me toward studying the window—or convinced me to apply for that grant …” She stops as she comes up the stairs and sees my expression—the same one she gives me when I try to thank her for the many times she’s saved my life. “Anyway, I just reminded them they had an important piece of Arts and Crafts stained glass that they were letting rot—you told them what they had to do to save it. And you’re the one who will save it—look at this place.” She sweeps her hand over the view of the studio laid out below us. “Juno, I’m so impressed. You’ve re-created Augustus Penrose’s dream of the medieval workshop!”

  I’ve got to admit the place looks pretty good from up here. I’ve gotten the guys to clear up most of the smaller restorations—a few fanlights for houses up on the Heights, some lancets for a Presbyterian church down in Tarrytown—to make way for the Lady window. My dad has built a new light table and installed a wall of vertical shelves to hold the sheets of colored glass that Ernesto and my father have painstakingly blown to match the colors originally used in the window so we’ll be able to replace any broken panes.

  “I don’t know about a medieval workshop. All I did was expand my dad’s business.…”

  “No affront to your dad, Juno, but he was repairing broken storefronts on Main Street and installing storm windows up on the Heights. You’re really creating art here … did you do these?” She’s moved now to the panels set into the French doors. I use the opportunity to open them and wave her out onto the rooftop garden, but only Paolo and Francesca respond to my hand gestures by sauntering side by side out onto the tarpaper roof.

  “A little project I did with Bea before giving up on the idea that she had any interest in working with glass,” I say, giving the glass panels a rueful look. The truth is I’d had to finish them myself while Bea made one excuse after another to get outside on the river.

  “Well, they’re beautiful.” Christine traces with one finger the pattern of vine and leaf. “They look like real vines climbing up the outside of the building.…” She looks up, following the vine pattern up to the skylight. She looks away and then back again, noticing what it usually takes people a few times to notice. It looks, at first glance, as if the vines are growing over the metal frame of the skylight, but actually, the pattern of vine and leaf is one I’ve set into the glass panes.

  “Wow, you did those, too? I like it even better than the piece you had at Urban Glass last year …” Looking back down, Christine notices that I’m awkwardly balancing the water bottle and glasses in my right hand, the bread and cheese in my left. “Here, let me take those …”

  We put the food and water down on an old wicker table and I upend a lawn chair to brush away the soot that finds its way up from the Metro-North tracks. I offer to get a towel for her to sit on but Christine waves away the idea and sinks into the torn vinyl webbing, consigning her Prada dress to industrial grit and her expensive leather bag to the sooty tarpaper roof. I bend down to pick up the bag—I remember when she brought it back from Italy and showed me its fancy silk lining embossed with the logo of a trendy Italian luggage designer—but she waves me off, saying, “I have something in there I want to show you.” Instead of taking anything out, though, she crosses her long slim legs, the leather of her boots making a sticky sound like a tape pulling off glass, and sighs at the view.

  “Incredible—you’d pay a million dollars for a view like this on the West Side of Manhattan.”

  It is my favorite hour of the day—the stained-glass hour, I can’t help but think of it as, when the sky cools down to an opalescent glaze and the trees darken into traceries of lead. I sit down on a rusted metal chair and pour the sparkling water into long-stemmed glasses, admiring how the bubbles turn into a faceted gem in the ruby red bowl of the goblet. I’ve never seen anyone do cut glass the way Ernesto does—as intricate as Waterford, but as delicate as Orrefors. They transform plain water into some exotic elixir—which is just the effect I was after. Since Christine gave up drinking I’ve tried to make a point of serving her nonalcoholic beverages in this ceremonial fashion.

  Christine holds her glass up to the dark line of hills across the river as if saluting the last light lingering in the distant Catskills. A ray catches the glass, traveling through the red glass and casting a red stain on Christine’s hand, like a bracelet of rubies dripping off her delicate wrist.

  “Here’s to the Lady in the Window,” I say, leaning forward to strike the rim of my glass against hers. The chime they make is still resonating in the air when I sip my water. “The lecture was a success and now the window will be restored in time for the college’s centennial celebration in the fall. You’ll come back, won’t you?”

  Christine sets her glass down on the table and tears off a piece of bread. “If they’ll have me. I have a feeling my talk wasn’t quite what Gavin Penrose expected. He knew I was going to identify the subject of the window
as ‘The Lady of Shalott’ but I don’t think he was happy about me bringing up Eugenie’s sister, Clare.”

  “The research you did was amazing. I never even knew that Eugenie had a sister. How did you find out about her?”

  “My aunt Amy told me about this woman Clare Barovier who had spent her whole life in Briarwood and I recognized the name as Eugenie’s maiden name. Then I went over to Briarwood and did a little digging around—” Christine smiles mischievously. From my past experiences with Christine I know that “digging around” could mean just about anything, including actual digging. Once, when she was doing a paper on landscape design she sneaked into the formal rose gardens next to Forest Hall and dug up one of the borders to prove that the garden had originally been laid out according to a knot design copied from a fifteenth-century gardening book. The college trustees wanted her expelled, but when her paper was published in Architectural Digest they thought better of it. “—I thought Gavin would be interested in what I found out but I guess no one wants to be reminded of their crazy relatives … shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …”

  “It’s okay, Christine, you don’t have to tiptoe around the subject.” I wonder if this is why Christine’s been so distant these last few months. Was she afraid that her discovery of Eugenie’s crazy sister would remind me too painfully of Neil? “Of course I worry about Bea inheriting Neil’s instability, but so far she doesn’t seem at all like him. She’s the most levelheaded kid I’ve ever met.”

  “You’ve done a remarkable job raising her.”

  “Bea’s amazing, but I’m not sure I can take credit for that. You remember what I was like after what happened with Neil—there were days when I was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed. I used to wake up and find Bea sitting on the foot of my bed pretending to read to herself. If you hadn’t come and stayed with us I might never have gotten out of bed. After that I was so busy working for my dad during the day and going to night school that I had hardly any time for her. I look at her now—she’s not afraid of anything, she hardly seems to need anything or anyone—and I don’t know whether to be grateful for her independence or guilty that’s she’s had to be so strong to grow up with me.”