Pug Hill (18 page)

“Balthazar,” he says proudly.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Amy says without turning around to face him, “I didn’t realize we were in a time warp and all of a sudden it’s 1999. Balthy,
please.”

“What? It’s hard to get into!”

We head out into the street and say quick good-byes, heading this way and that, spreading out into the night. I walk a block or two toward Union Square and then stop. I reach out my arm and hail a cab; it is, conveniently for me I think, too late for the train.

The phone is ringing.

As I may have mentioned, I am not quite the fan of the ringing phone. I am even less of a fan of the ringing phone when it rings and wakes me up on a Saturday morning. I open one eye, look over at the clock: nine-fifteen again, exactly. Definitely there is the possibility of being depressed, even though, strangely for much of Friday I felt buoyant at work. Perhaps all the relaxation exercises that I may have prematurely counted as useless, have somehow, secretly, seeped into to my psyche.

The phone keeps ringing. It could be Pamela calling to see if I minded that she left me alone at the bar at ’Cesca last night, on one of my first nights out on the town as a newly single woman. Actually, I kind of did mind that she left me there, left with the guy dressed all in black, the guy who I thought, with the black shirt and the black pants and the black belt and the black shoes, reminded me so much of the old Mike Myers skit on Saturday Night Live, “Sprockets.”

“Now is the time on Sprockets ven ve dahnce!” is what I’d said to Pamela when she said she thought he was looking our way. She hadn’t laughed. Instead, she’d gone to talk to him on her own, and they had left together a short while later. She had waved coquettishly to me on her way out, and I’d wished that being single didn’t mean you had to have single girls’ nights out with friends like Pamela.

Rather than pick up the phone to hear Pamela tell me that being single can be fantastic if only I’d embrace it and not call potential suitors Sprockets, I let the machine pick up. I picture Pamela and the Sprocket, hear Mike Myers saying, “Do you want to touch my monkey? Touch him!” in my mind. I always prefer to screen, right now is no exception.

I listen as my machine clicks over to record mode, and then, through the speaker, “Hope, it’s you mother. Are you there?”

I stare at the phone, right there. I weigh my options. I sink down deeper into my pillow.

“Okay,” she continues. “I’m just calling to tell you, under no circumstances are you to mention the tent to your father. Your father is very upset about the tent, and I really don’t want it discussed,” she says sternly, and then brighter, much more full of cheer, “Talk to you soon, look forward to seeing you.”

I have no idea, no idea at all, what she is talking about with the tent. I assume it is, as so many things are, Darcy-related. I sit up in bed.

“Hello! Hello! Hello!” I say a few times, to no one, to be sure there is no sleeping sound in my voice. I want to know what this is about: the tent. As I turn to grab the phone, begin dialing my parents’ number, I think it’s a good thing that I’m such a dog person—the way curiosity always kills cats and all. Mom doesn’t answer, Dad does.

“Hi, Hopey,” he says, “What’s up?”

“Oh nothing, just calling to say hi,” I say. We exchange pleasantries, work is good, arrangements for the party are good, everyone’s looking forward to the party, and then, just as I am about to switch gears, to ask to talk to Mom, Dad says, “While I have you on the phone, do you know anything about L.L. Bean donating money to pro-life causes?”

“Uh, no, I don’t.” I don’t ask why. I may have arrived at my ripe age of thirty-one (or thirty-two depending on whom you ask) with the feeling that I have not learned as much as I should have along the way, but I have learned enough to know that if Mom just called and said not to talk about a tent, then a sentence that includes L.L. Bean could very well lead to a conversation I was just told to not have.

“Well, see ...” I listen to Dad exhale, get ready to explain something. “C.P. doesn’t want to sleep in the house when they come for the party, he wants to sleep outside in a tent.”

Oh,
I think,
no.

“A tent?”

“Yes, and I was going to buy them a tent to sleep in.”

“You’re
buying them a tent
?
”

“Yes, but Darcy says C.P. will only sleep in tents whose manufacturers he doesn’t find objectionable.”

I want to say, then C.P. shouldn’t come at all. I want to say that Darcy isn’t really going to join a commune, and that even though Dad is the type of dad who strives to see the good in everything, who strives to fix everything that isn’t good, buying Darcy and C.P. a tent isn’t going to fix anything.

“Um, you could try REI,” I say instead of anything else. “REI? They sell tents?” Right after the word
sell,
I hear another connection pick up somewhere else in the house.

“Hope!”
my mother shouts, aghast.

“What?!”
I shout back.

“I thought we talked about not talking about the tent!”

“Uh,” I stutter and while it indeed would be logical to say that we haven’t
technically
discussed not talking about the tent, I know it will not help. “Uh, yes, but—”

“Caroline, why did you tell Hope not to talk about the tent?”

“Because it upsets you and it upsets Hope!” my mother shoots back, and I guess, yes, she’s right. It does upset me, all of it, and I’m kind of touched right now actually that she sees it this way.

“Well, Caroline, it’s upsetting!” Dad yells through the phone. “But we have to deal with it! We have to deal with it as a family! We need to address it! We need to FIND A SOLUTION!”

“I’M TAKING HER TO CANYON RANCH! THAT IS A SOLUTION! INDULGING C.P. IN A NON-OBJECTIONABLE TENT IS NOT A SOLUTION!”

“CAROLINE! STOP SHOUTING!”

“I’M NOT SHOUTING!”

“Uh, Mom? Dad?”

“WHAT?” they both shout at me simultaneously, in sync at least on something.

“I have to go actually, I’m going to be late for work.”

“But it’s Saturday,” my mom offers. It is now, I’m sure of it, her deepest desire to keep me on the phone to discuss with me why I felt it was necessary to bring up the tent when she specifically told me not to. Her second deepest desire is to not listen to me at all when I explain that I didn’t. “I know, but I’m actually behind on a few things and need to catch up. But I’ll call you both later.”

“Okay, then, bye Hope,” says my father, remarkably mellowed.

“Bye!” I say as breezily, and as quickly as possible, and hang up.

I stare at the phone in its charger, and for a moment, I contemplate calling Darcy up in California and talking to her myself about the commune. I just want to tell her that all she has to do is say it’s not true. But Darcy and I don’t really jive ever, not in any way that is productive, and if she does wind up going to a commune, I don’t want to be the one who called and pushed her over the edge. I want so many things, but what I want right now is not to feel like the whole world is only an exercise in powerlessness.

“I hope everything is okay, at least as okay as I want to believe that it is,” I say this out loud. I’m saying this, I know, to Darcy. I wonder if C.P. is really as Zen, as connected with the universe, as he says he is. I want to believe that if he is, maybe somewhere, in a tent whose manufacturers he does not find objectionable, he hears me. I hope he does. I hope he gives Darcy my message.

I look at my pillow, I want to sink back into it, pull the covers up high over my head. I wonder if the
Law & Order
I saved—the one with the Zoloft commercial—is still on my list of saved programs, or if it’s shuffled off yet. I think of the day stretching out in front of me. Not surprisingly, going to paint pottery at the place on Amsterdam loses a significant amount of appeal when its suggestion is not merely a way to antagonize Evan. I head for the shower and realize it’s true what I said: there are some things I need to catch up on. And some of those things even have to do with work. Going to work, I decide, dealing with the Rothko’s problems, and not my own, is nothing right now, if not a very good idea.

 

 

I walk slowly through the silent hallways of the Met, and just for a moment everything is so peaceful, like it used to be, before there was Elliot, before Patsy Cline kept piping up, belting out “Crazy” in the background.

I walk into the Conservation Studio, and while the silence is still there, the peace is gone. Elliot is here. Annoyance flares inside me, but there is, in certain situations—in this situation in particular—some merit in being annoyed. Being annoyed at the sight of Elliot could be a very good sign; it is an improvement to say the least on the usual rendered speechless, melting of my heart that takes place.

“Hi, Elliot,” I say, as I walk to my station and begin sorting immediately through my can of brushes, looking for the one I was using at the end of yesterday; it was working so well.

“Hey, Hope,” Elliot says, he even looks up halfway and smiles, which of course makes my stomach flip over.

Patsy Cline isn’t playing in the background anymore. Suddenly, the song has changed. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are singing now, singing the first lines of the song, “Otherside.”
How long? How long?
I’ve always liked to believe that the music that always plays in my mind has a point, and I think:
How long, indeed.
I mean, really, how long can this go on? And worse than that, with me being single and all, how long, if it doesn’t get better, until it just gets worse? How long until I’m not just staring across the room at Elliot, how long until I’m more desperate, brazen even? How long until I am up and off my stool, charging across the Conservation Studio and lunging at his penis?
My, God.
I shake my head, it is the only way I can think of to make the Red Hot Chili Peppers song stop playing. It works. The music stops. I angle my easel and my stool away, and find the brush that I want.

Thankfully an hour, maybe longer goes by, and I’m able to concentrate only on the picking, the tiny painting of red dots onto the red section of the Rothko.

“Hello, Elliot, and hello, Hope.” Sergei’s deep voice bounces off the ceiling, off the walls, as he strides purposefully into the room, past us, and over to the canvas stretchers.
Why is Sergei here? Is Sergei here all the time on Saturdays with Elliot?
Am

I the only one who generally does not come in on the weekends? I always thought no one ever came in on the weekends; well, I guess I assumed Elliot did, because on top of being the object of my endless fascination, he also does seem to have a bit of an obsessive-compulsive disorder lately when it comes to whipping through his Old Master landscapes. Landscapes, though, they are so much easier to restore. You can hide so much among trees and leaves and blades of grass. You can’t hide anything on a Rothko. With a Rothko, with the broad areas of color, everything you do is out there for the world to see. You can’t make any mistakes; you can’t hide anything at all.

I remind myself that Paintings Conservation is very much not a race, and that it doesn’t matter one bit that Elliot must have finished three Old Master landscapes in the time that I’ve been laboring over the red section of my Rothko.
Unless of course, it does?
How sad really would it be if one of the great prides of my life, that I am diligent and studious and hardworking in my career, turns out not to be true?

They can’t be here all the time; there must be something special going on. I put down my brush. Then I pick it up and decide to carry it with me. Perhaps I’m just going to wash my brush and not really on a stealth fact-finding mission. I walk over to Sergei. He’s much farther away than Elliot, but he is safer. If any of my fears in fact turn out to be true, there isn’t any chance at all I will lunge and grab at Sergei’s penis.
My God,
I think again.
Has it really come to this?

“Sergei?” I say, sidling over. Generally, just so you know, I don’t usually sidle.

“Yes?” he says looking up from the back of a canvas he has just laid out across the large table.

“Why is everyone here?” It sounds stupid as I say it, and I am glad I chose Sergei rather than Elliot as an informational source. “I mean, I know why I’m here. I’m having trouble with the Rothko, but are you and Elliot always here on Saturdays?”

“Elliot,” he says with a nod in Elliot’s direction, “who knows about him? That one loves to work. No, I am not usually here on Saturday. I’m here,” he says a little sheepishly, “because of the news about May.”

“What news about May?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“No.”

“It is hunch, she has not told us anything officially, of course, and well I guess that’s clear because then you would have heard, of course.”
Yeah,
I think,
of course,
and Sergei continues. “But the word is that she is taking a sabbatical for a year. While she’s gone, one would think she will put one of us in charge.”

“A promotion?” I ask softly.

“Yes,” he says, and we both nod seriously.
Promotion
isn’t a word often heard in Paintings Conservation at the Met. It takes so long to get here, and it’s such a good job to have, that no one ever leaves. Even if it would be just for a year, a promotion would be a pretty big deal.

“Wow, well thanks for telling me.” I turn and slink slowly back to my desk to let the news sink in. I’m upset of course that I didn’t know. I bemoan ever so briefly the pitfalls that inevitably pop up when you spend so much time in the background, the background even of your own life.

I think about the promotion and I think how each one of us is a contender. This morning it appears, pretty blatantly, that maybe Elliot is bucking for a promotion. He is always the first person here, and he is always the last person to leave. It occurs to me again how that even though Paintings Conservation isn’t a race, he
has
gotten through three Old Master landscapes in the time it has taken me to basically just get started on the Rothko. But, on that, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: going over the contemporary problems, the problems of today, can be a lot harder than the problems of the past. I flip through my brushes until I find the smallest one. I sit back and stare, and try again to focus. I try to remember where I was when I left off.