The Objects of Her Affection (9 page)

“Well, to put it bluntly, that other one’s a masterpiece. Really unusual to see all those little figures, so finely detailed and naturalistic, with piercework, chasing…and of course, it’s a big name. This one’s a bit thick, really; everything’s very heavy, rounded, stylized.” He turned the tray over and pointed to one of the feet. “You’ve got a repair here; it’s been welded back on. And the whole thing’s been polished half to death.” He leaned in and spoke from one side of his mouth. “I don’t really like this one, to be honest. You could do better.”

Sophie laughed, and handed it back. “Not much of a salesman, are you?”

He sighed and pressed his index finger into his palm. “Terrible.”

“Well, I can’t afford anything in here anyway,” she said, taking one of his cards from a dainty holder on the secretary.

“That’s all right,” he said. “You can come browsing any time. My name’s Harry, by the way.” He held out his hand.

“Sophie.”

“Sophie. Sophia. Wisdom! I like it. I’ll see you soon, then?”

“Maybe.”

***

On the train home, Sophie tried to dodge thoughts of Craig and his fat thumbs, dwelling instead on the glimmering, finely wrought world she’d discovered inside Harry’s shop. But her anxieties about work, money, and the mortgage kept intruding on her reverie. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, trying to breathe deeply.

In the far reaches of her mind, there was an idea signaling her through the fog. She tried to ignore it, but there was a swift current pushing her toward the beam, which swelled and receded in the darkness like something breathing. It was an illusion, she told herself; the idea was foolish, dangerous. But it was also mesmerizing, and the more she stared at it, the brighter the world around her seemed to become. She studied the idea for a while, passing the time behind her closed eyes while the real world rushed by outside the window.

When she got home Sophie found Brian sitting at the table with the two kids, who seemed to have just finished dipping their faces in bowls of yogurt.

“Mommy, we’re having yogurt for dinner!” announced Lucy, waving her yogurty spoon in the air, sprinkling her hair with white specks.

“Yaaaah!” agreed Elliot, imitating his sister’s spoon-waving technique.

“What’s for dessert?” Sophie asked, kicking off her shoes. “Ice cream?”

“You and I are having beef burgundy,” Brian said.

“Did you go to Music for Me?”

“God no. I’d rather gouge my eyes out.”

“But Brian—”

“Mommy, Daddy let me watch TV this afternoon, and I wanted to watch the
Supreme
Dream
Girls
,” Lucy said. “He said no, but then I threw a fit and he said okay. I like Daring Darla the best.” She scraped some yogurt off her nose with her spoon.

“Brian, I thought we decided the
Supreme
Dream
Girls
were too S-L-U-T-T-Y.”

“I had to write some emails, and she was being a P-A-I-N I-N T-H-E B-U-T-T.”

“Yeah, well, T-O-U-G-H S-H-I-T.”

“Stop spelling! Stop spelling!” Lucy cried.

“Look,” Brian said. “I did what I had to do. She wouldn’t take a nap.”

“She didn’t sleep? Oh my God.”

“Everyone’s fine,” Brian said.

“We’re great!” Lucy said.

Sophie sighed and sank into a chair at the table, reaching for the yogurt container and a spoon. “I can’t believe you let her watch TV instead of napping. Brian, seriously.”

“How’d the briefing go?”

“Fine,” she said, hating the way Brian always managed to slip out from under her aggressions, smoothly avoiding a fight when a fight was exactly what she needed. This was how her life had begun to feel recently—reaching out for something solid, something that would make her feel alive, but grabbing air. “It went great.”

She paused, revisiting her daydream on the train. “I need to go back up there in a few days to work out my estimate,” she said, slowly scraping out the last of the yogurt with her spoon.

“Is it a big job?”

“I hope so. It might turn out to be small, though. I’ll find out for sure when I go back.”

The next train ride to New York felt less triumphant. At the station Sophie had bought some magazines, anticipating the pleasures of solitude when she was once again seated on the train, but she found herself unable to focus on them. She stared out the window of the slow-moving, midmorning Clocker, watching the weedy remains of Philadelphia’s industrial past roll by: crumbling brick factory buildings, rusted trestles, ravines filled with strollers, shopping carts, and the occasional tent. She felt guilty about the unreimbursable train ticket and the extra hours of babysitting, and of course Brian—she didn’t even want to think about Brian.

Draped over the guilt like a scratchy wool blanket, though, was anxiety: What if the mirror turned out to be worthless? What if Harry laughed her out of his shop? What if he knew exactly what the mirror was, and where it came from? She leaned her head back against her seat and closed her eyes. She needed to stay focused on the facts: The mirror was good enough to be in a museum, even if it wasn’t good enough to be on display. There was no possible way for Harry to know where it came from. So far, no one had noticed it was missing. The sooner she got it out of her house, the better.

The Art and Antique Center provided a chilly refuge from the fug of sewer smells, exhaust, and hot dog steam that had trailed her across Midtown. Once inside, Sophie hurried upstairs and stopped outside the window of McGeorge & Fils. Unlike the other day, the door was closed. Through the window she could see Harry talking with an elegantly dressed couple in their sixties. Gone was Harry’s expansive air; today he appeared soberly thoughtful, nodding and narrowing his eyes as he listened to his clients. Sophie turned away, wondering what to do. She couldn’t change her mind now; she’d come all this way. Nor could she intrude on this intimate, burnished scene of gravitas and wealth. She glanced back through the window, and this time Harry caught her eye. He acknowledged her with the faintest lift of his chin. In an agony of indecision, Sophie stepped back, turned to flee, then circled around and yanked open the door.

“…the valuations are absurd, you know; I don’t know who they think they’re fooling.” The older man spoke with the low, plummy intonations of East Coast wealth: not quite British, but just around the linguistic corner.

“Quite right,” murmured Harry.

“But you’ve got to deal with them. Lord knows we can’t go to Christie’s at this point.”

“Oh, no, no.”

Sophie picked up a creamer from a tea set, and turned it over. The hinged lid flopped open unexpectedly; she jumped and abruptly righted it with a loud clang. She returned it delicately to its tray.

“Well, old man, I’ll let you get back to work.”

“Thank you
so
much for stopping by,” said Harry, shaking his hand. “Madame. Always lovely to see you both. Give my love to Sarah.”

“Of course, of course.”

Sophie was unnerved by the way Harry was acting. She realized she’d been looking forward to his charming banter. She didn’t get a lot of charm in her life these days, much less banter. But this version of Harry was as stiff as a British upper lip.

Having escorted the couple out, Harry appeared at her elbow.

“Wankers.”

“Excuse me?”

“Bloody wankers!” he said, gesturing toward the door with his head. “Horribly stuck-up. Painfully boring. God! Kill me now.”

Sophie laughed. “Isn’t that your core customer?”

“Of course, you’re right.” He sighed heavily. “But they never buy anything, that lot. They just come in to air their grievances about Sotheby’s and tell me how much they miss my dad.”

“Was this your father’s shop?”

“It was, yeah. I am
le
fils
. Dad’s been gone a year now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Horrible man. Used to throw saltcellars at my head.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway. You’re not here to buy anything, are you? Let’s go to lunch! I fancy a martini.”

He took her to a mahogany-paneled tavern on Fifty-Eighth Street. It was the middle of the day, but inside it was dark, with tiny lamps puddling warm light on the walnut tables. They sat in a booth in the back and ordered truffled cheese fries, duck sliders, and Bombay martinis. Harry spent most of the meal telling long, rambling stories about his disastrous upbringing, his brother’s defection to Australia, and his lover Jeffrey’s penchant for bad electronica.

“You know—vvvpp vvvpp vvvpp vvvpp. He buys it in the subway. God-awful stuff. Thank you.” Two more martinis had appeared.

“This is terrible!” Sophie exclaimed. “I’ve got to relieve the babysitter. I can’t go back like this.”

“Sure you can! Parenting’s much easier when you’re drunk. Just ask my mother.”

“Stop it.”

“It’s true!” Harry slurped his drink. “I don’t know how she would’ve survived motherhood without being thoroughly embalmed. Don’t look so shocked. I take it your parents are perfect?”

“No, they weren’t.”

“Past tense?”

Sophie ate an olive, chewing slowly. “My father died in a plane crash when I was eighteen, and after that my mother kind of went missing.”

Harry cracked his knuckles under the table. “Sorry. How awful. I didn’t mean to—”

“No, it’s fine, I mean…” She shouldn’t have been so specific.

“So you’ve got kids?” Harry asked brightly. “What’re their names?”

“Lucy and Elliot. One’s three, one’s a year and a half.”

“Pictures?”

“But of course.” Sophie pulled some photos out of her wallet.

“He’s cute. And she certainly looks like she can take care of herself.”

“What do you mean by that?” Sophie asked, a little too sharply.

“Nothing, really. Just that she looks bright. Self-sufficient. Like her mum.”

“Oh, well. I’m not so great at taking care of myself, to tell you the truth.” She took a steely sip. “I should get back.”

“What. You had a meeting today, right? Tell the nanny it went long.”

“Actually, no. No meeting. I came to see you.”

“
Moi?
So you
did
want to buy something. Second thoughts about that Vander tray?”

“God, no.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“I wanted to show you something, actually.” She pulled the wad of grocery bags out of her purse. The martinis were making this easier than expected. “Maybe you can tell me what it is. I picked it up at a sidewalk sale for next to nothing.”

“I see. And you’re hoping it’ll put your kids through college, that it?”

“Actually, there’s this island I’ve got my eye on.”

“Right! Education’s overrated. OK, let’s have a look.” Harry peeled the bags away and put the mirror on the table in front of him. He pulled a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. “Oh, all right.”

“What?”

Harry picked up the mirror, held it close to his face, turned it over, angled it to catch the light. “That’s a nice little piece.”

“I thought so.”

Harry stopped turning the mirror and gave her a sharp look over the top of his glasses. “Yeah? What d’you know about it? Any idea whose it was?”

Sophie gathered the grocery bags and balled them up in her hands. “I know enough,” she said finally. “What I want to know is, what do
you
know about it?”

Harry blew out a puff of air, his bottom lip protruding. “Well…I haven’t seen many things like it. I’d need to do a bit of research, maybe show it around…”

“No, that’s all right. I just thought you might be able to tell me something, but if you can’t…”

“Well, here’s what I can tell you.” Harry set the mirror on the table and drummed his fingers lightly on either side of it. “It’s a nice antique. Good condition. It’s got a mark, which I don’t recognize right off the bat. With a little gentle cleaning it’d make a nice wedding gift, a nice decorative accent, you know. I have clients who like this sort of thing.”

Sophie crossed her arms.

“If I had to offer you something right here,” he continued, “without further research, but seeing what a beautiful piece it is—and it really is very, very nice—I’d say I could do, oh, how about a thousand. And by the way, my father is now doing pirouettes in his grave.”

Sophie sat unmoving, staring at Harry, making stacks in her mind: things she knew, things he knew, things she knew he didn’t know. Among them, the fact that she’d heard detailed accounts of exactly this sort of negotiation with exactly this sort of dealer. Also: his upper lip was glazed with sweat. “You know, I think maybe I’ll just hang on to it.” Sophie reached for the mirror.

Harry threw himself against the back of the booth, raised his hands in the air. “What can I do, without any research? At the very least I need to look up the mark. Can I snap a photo, get back to you later?”

“No! No photos. I think, actually, that’s all right,” she said, bundling the mirror back in the plastic bags. “I’m not really interested in selling. Thanks for looking at it.” She tipped the last drops of gin into her mouth.

Harry took off his glasses and looked at Sophie for a minute, tapping them against his top lip.

“Right. Perhaps I came in a little low.”

“A
little
! I realize you barely know me, but please don’t take me for an idiot.”

“Look, let’s pop around to the shop, talk some real numbers. I’ll write you a check and you can be on your way.”

He was trying to get her onto his territory, and Sophie was content to let him think this would work. Ultimately, though, she knew she held the greatest advantage, which was ambivalence. The longer she engaged in this unseemly negotiation, the more uncomfortable she was with the entire idea. If Harry wasn’t going to make it worth her while, she would just have to dispose of the mirror some other way.

“Fine,” she said, folding her napkin into a perfect square and centering her martini glass on top of it. “Let’s see what you can do.”

***

The cash was a problem. She’d told Harry she couldn’t take a check (“for tax reasons”), so he’d paid her out of an old-fashioned-looking safe in the back of his office. The money didn’t take up that much space—the stack fit neatly into one of the smaller Adobe software packages on her office shelf. The problem was the denomination. Sophie and Brian were not hundred-dollar-bill kinds of people; she usually kept her wallet stocked with twenties from the cash machine. Brian, in turn, used her wallet as his personal ATM, since he could never remember to get his own cash. She knew he would find it odd to come across wads of hundreds in her purse.

She tried to remember to take a couple of the bills with her every time she went to the grocery store, but while she was getting good at remembering to bring her reusable cloth bags, she almost always forgot the hundreds. So she would end up putting the groceries on her credit card, whose balance, since the beginning of summer, had been growing at a steady pace.

She considered getting some money orders at the post office and using them to pay her bills, but she didn’t like the paper trail this would generate. Finally she took the hundreds to the bank and had them changed to twenties. She tried to act casual, passing the bundle through the window as if she did this every day, but she was painfully aware of the cameras staring at her and the people in line shifting their feet while the teller counted and recounted the hundreds, then counted and recounted the twenties. As each twenty was peeled off the pile, Sophie felt the charges stacking up against her. One count of art theft. One count of selling stolen property across state lines. One count of husband endangerment. One count of dishonesty. One count of trusting someone she barely knew. One count of being the world’s most irresponsible mother.

Sophie rushed home with her envelopes full of cash and hid them inside her software packages. There was enough in the bank to make the new mortgage payment and pay a few bills; the rest of their expenses would have to be paid out of this stash. By the time it was gone, she reasoned, work would pick up again. It would have to.

Of course, it was summer—a time when everything, including website development, tended to slow down. So instead of writing code, Sophie spent her days taking Lucy and Elliot to the public pool, five blocks up. This meant smearing them with thick white sunscreen from head to toe: a greasy, squirmy process that seemed to take hours, their small bodies covered in surprisingly vast quantities of skin. Then she would stroll them up the pulsating sidewalk, trying to stay in the quickly narrowing strip of shade on the east side of the street. It wasn’t a steep hill, but it was a hill, and after about ten minutes there would be a drop of sweat clinging to the end of her nose, and she would feel that at any moment the double stroller was going to roll backward and crush her into the concrete like a wad of gum.

The pool was a rectangular hole punched in a field of concrete, heartlessly devoid of shade, chairs, or grass. By ten o’clock, though, it was already boiling over with neighborhood kids. After spreading out towels, stowing clothes and shoes, and touching up sunscreen, Sophie would stake out a corner in the shallow end and hold on to Elliot’s slippery body while Lucy splashed and played nearby. Still breathless from her exertion, still sweating, Sophie longed to melt into the blue water, pushing off against the wall and shooting across the pool, her body nothing but a shadow, bursting out at the other end, grateful, at last, for a gasp of air and sunshine. But she could not take her eyes off the children for an instant, could not move beyond arm’s reach. Everyone knew what happened when you did that.

An hour and a half later she would reverse the process: peeling off the wet swim diaper, pulling on sun-baked clothes, letting herself be yanked down the hill by the stroller, the shade scrubbed away from the glaring sidewalk, the kids irritable, emptied out of anticipation. Every time they did this, Sophie wondered if there was any net benefit of going to the pool at all.

Personally, she would have been happy to spend the rest of the summer at home, in the rattling cool of the air conditioner, finishing up some home improvement projects. She’d found a collection of porcelain keyhole covers, and she needed to screw them on to all the doors. She also wanted to strip the paint off the decorative heating vents, and add some bronze sash pulls to the window frames. But the kids never left her alone long enough to accomplish anything. After about twenty minutes they would tire of their toys and markers, and focus their full attention on the only other living, breathing, and thus potentially interesting presence in the house. They wanted her to read to them. They wanted her to play with them. They begged her to become a queen, a horse, a puppeteer. She would oblige them for a little while, forcing herself to be fun when she didn’t feel fun, finally decreeing that they were now going to play “sick mommy,” a game in which she lay on the couch in a dead faint while Lucy ministered to her and Elliot draped himself over her hot torso, occasionally touching her lips with utmost care and whispering, “Shhh, sick.”