The Cloisters, page 13
I knew where that instinct had come from, that insistence that the outlandish was worthwhile. It had germinated at my kitchen table in Washington, across scraps of paper and bits of language, across the pads of paper my father and I often filled together. Although sometimes, he worked alone. It was that instinct that had led me here, had led me in everything I did. Always. I was beginning to realize it when he died, but some of my belief had gone with him. Only now was it beginning to return. Patrick wasn’t wrong that I believed more than Rachel. Because perhaps one needed a little magic to make a narrow childhood more bearable.
Down at Ketch Rare Books and Antiques, we discovered the scene had not changed. If anything, it seemed that the antique bottles and books had grown in quantity, multiplied in the intervening time, as if they had copulated in the dark.
Despite having buzzed us through the gate, Stephen wasn’t in the main room. Patrick rang a bell on his desk, the echo of which I could hear in the upstairs room.
I pulled out a first edition of Émile Zola and sat in one of the free chairs to wait, opening the pages to where the first few lines of French began. Patrick browsed the shelves, waiting for Stephen, until he came around to where I sat, and placed a hand on the back of my chair, his body angled into my space.
“Ah,” he said, looking down at the text in my lap. “ ‘If you shut up the truth and bury it underground, it will but grow.’ Zola.”
I looked up at him and felt, for a moment, very young. As if I were looking up at my father as he leaned over my translation, checking that I had chosen the correct cases. The image so startling, it moved me to close the book, to stand up, to put some distance between myself and Patrick. Something that was maddeningly difficult in Stephen’s shop.
“You know,” he said, turning in a circle to take it all in—the rare books, the jewelry, the paintings. “We’ll find it. Eventually, we’ll find it. The deck, the document. The truth. The thing that will unlock it for us. We’ll find it.”
There was something in his voice, a pushing thinness that belied what every researcher knew: the thing may no longer exist. That was the reality of an archive—they were always incomplete despite their depth, made up, as they were, of fragments.
“Always a believer,” said Stephen from the end of the room. He had entered through the back door and now pawed through the papers on his desk until he came across a thick packet that he passed to Patrick, who absently handed it off to me.
“I have a few other things you might like to see?” Stephen said to Patrick, inclining his head toward the door. When I went to follow, Patrick held up a hand.
“We’ll only be a few minutes.”
I returned to my seat among the antiques, the packet in my lap, the image of Patrick standing above me morphing into an image of my father standing above me replayed in my mind. After more than a few minutes had passed, it was clear that they would be longer, and looking for a distraction, I stood and began to pick up objects and guess their age, their value, before consulting their tags. I did this until it felt like the only thing left in the shop I hadn’t examined was the packet Patrick had handed to me. I lifted it up in the dim light and looked at its closure. It was just a fold, one that I was quickly able to slide my finger beneath and shake the contents out into the palm of my hand. There were three cards: two pips and the Major Arcana card the Popess.
I set down the two pips and flipped over the Popess card to examine its back. It revealed not just stars against a blue sky, but delicate gold lines that connected the stars—constellations. There was Scorpio and Libra, the Pleiades and Cancer, as well as twinkling motes of gold leaf suspended above an outline of the earth, the world as black and unseeing as the night. I looked down at the card in my hand and felt its stiffness with my fingers.
I flexed it instinctively, just a test, to feel what Rachel and I had talked about, the strange stiffness of the cards, and as I did so, I felt one of the edges pop. At the top right corner, something had pulled away from the delicate blue and gold backing of the card, a piece of paper. And there, underneath, I could see something unusual—a strand of hair blowing against a pale blue and pink landscape. I wedged my nail gently into the gap and watched as the stiff card of the Popess fell away entirely, revealing a different card—the Huntress, Diana. Recognizable because of the bow she carried in one hand and the moon diadem on her head. Across from her, a stag drank from a pond. Above her, putti held a collection of arrows, and the constellation of Cancer—the astrological sign associated with the moon—hung in the sky.
The false front, I realized, had been held in place by a dab of flour and water in each corner, a drying substance that flaked off when I brushed it, gently, with the pad of my finger. The card I had revealed was lyrical and dramatic in its execution. Its color pale but saturated, the imagery diverse and arcane. But a word—trixcaccia—written on the card was indecipherable to me. Not because of the lettering, but because of the language. It was almost recognizable: a Neapolitan-Latin hybrid perhaps, that had an air of the familiar.
The card I held in my hand had the uncanny character some works of art have, the ability to draw you in, an absorptive quality. The first time I’d experienced anything like it was actually with a reproduction. A careful copy of Botticelli’s fresco of the graces that is housed at the Louvre, but that had been copied, in painstaking detail, for an exhibition in Seattle. I could have looked at that fresco for the entire day, its graceful figures and washed-out colors. The card in my hand had the same quality, as if I were falling into it, a pool of beauty.
The sound of footsteps from upstairs brought me back to the present, and I quickly set about getting the false front to re-adhere to the card I had revealed underneath. I stopped short of wetting the flour again for fear that I might damage the paint, but there was no way to reunite the two. In the moments that followed, it never crossed my mind to return the card to the packet, or share my discovery with Patrick. Instead, I pulled out my bag and emptied everything from my wallet—all cards, coins, dollars, anything that might scratch the surface of the card—and then, I zipped the card inside.
As I set my bag back on the floor and reopened the copy of Zola I had been reading, now to a random page a little ways in, the door at the end of the room opened and Patrick and Stephen came in, still in close conference.
“You’ll let me know if you hear of anything else?” said Patrick.
“Of course, of course,” said Stephen. “You’ll be the first one I call.”
I watched Patrick hand over a thick envelope and Stephen pass him a slip of paper.
“Don’t keep that,” he said. “Best not to have receipts in easy reach if anyone has questions. But I realize you might want something for right now.”
Patrick nodded, and having walked back to where I was sitting, handed me the receipt and reached for the packet.
I looked at it and read: three tarot cards. I slipped it into my purse, wondering how long I might have before Patrick realized there were only two in the envelope.
* * *
For the rest of the day I feared Patrick would notice the card’s absence. Sitting in the library, I tried, unsuccessfully, to push away the fear of him coming out and demanding to know where it was, the card, the discovery. I found it impossible to focus, and even when I walked through the gardens and tried to force myself to breathe, the smell of lavender and the brush of the grasses against my skin could not calm me.
Rachel joined me at the edge of the Bonnefont Cloister.
“What happened downtown?” she said, shaking out a cigarette and lighting it, her movements quick and sharp.
“Nothing,” I said. “We picked up a few more cards.”
“And that’s all?”
“That’s all.” I wasn’t ready to tell Rachel, tell anyone, what I had discovered, but I could feel in her questioning something urgent, something that made my skin feel tight and my face flush.
“Okay.” She paused to exhale a stream of smoke. “Because he’s in there on the phone, and he sounds furious.”
What could I say? That the thing Patrick was angry about was sitting only a few feet from his office, tucked safely into my bag. No. And so, not wanting to reveal my secret, I said the one thing Rachel and I had been leaving unspoken between us, though we both had observed it.
“He’s been so on edge, so desperate to make this work, to have something ready for the Morgan. Do you think, maybe, it’s all beginning to get to him? The fact we’ve found so little? The fact it seems like nothing is there?”
Rachel looked at me from the corner of her eye, just a glance, and nodded.
“What do you think about getting out of here for the weekend?” she said. “I think we should go together.”
I had wanted to spend the weekend with the card, alone. To maybe have that dinner with Leo. But she continued:
“The Morgan symposium starts on Monday. That gives us almost three days if we leave today. Can you leave today?”
“Where did you want to go?” I asked.
“Long Lake,” she said. “To the camp.”
I had never heard the term camp used to describe anything other than places where children learned the basic skills of archery and spent slow afternoons making friendship bracelets, but I was certain Rachel was referring to something else entirely.
“Yes,” I said. “And Patrick?”
“I’ll tell him. I’ll go tell him right now. Just pack a few things for the weekend and meet me at my apartment. I’ll text you the address.”
“Right now?”
“Unless you want to stay and see how this all plays out?”
She was right. I pulled out my phone and texted Leo—rain check?—even though he had yet to follow up about his passing invite. Briefly, I watched the three gray dots bounce on my screen, but I didn’t wait for his response. I needed to put some distance between Patrick and myself. If the card was a life raft, I knew there would not be room for all three of us.
* * *
That I expected we might drive to the Adirondacks showed how little I understood about Rachel’s wealth. When I met her in front of her building, a car was already waiting for us. Her doorman carried a neat, cream leather bag behind her and placed it ceremoniously in the trunk, next to my backpack into which I had shoved two paperback novels and my computer. It was, although I wouldn’t admit it to her, the first time I had gone on a girls’ trip or slept over since elementary school.
We were deposited at a heliport along the West Side Highway, where another porter collected our luggage and stowed it before the blades of the helicopter began to beat rhythmically. I assumed we would take it all the way upstate, but when I mentioned this to Rachel, she laughed and said into her headset, It doesn’t have that kind of range. When the pilot turned around and grinned at me, I did my best not to let the embarrassment spread from my cheeks to my neck and chest.
After landing at a Long Island floatplane center, we boarded a yellow plane with two large pontoons and relatively small wings. Two small props would power us all the way to Long Lake as the sun set. Rachel expertly hauled herself into the back seat and was already buckling her seat belt when I took my first, tentative step aboard. The pilot handed me a pair of headphones and offered me a thumbs-up. It was the smallest plane I had ever been on. Once my headphones were on, I heard the pilot say to Rachel, Our time in flight will be approximately two hours and fifteen minutes. Only a few minutes later, we were in the air; gradually, the skyscrapers of Manhattan receded behind us into the haze.
As we flew, the pilot would occasionally call out landmarks—the wide, flowing Hudson, the swell of the Catskills, the racetrack at Saratoga, Lake George, twice home of the winter Olympics—until the channel became quiet while he piloted us down onto a dark patch of earth that turned out not to be land at all but the inky expanse of Long Lake. I had imagined, during the flight, what Rachel’s camp might look like, but I was ill equipped to understand the reality.
Our pilot motored some distance until the house came into view, its dock lit by bright white lights that jutted into the lake; they were the only lights for miles. On the dock, a man gestured with a green wand until the floatplane was fully snug up against the dock; the door opened and we disembarked. Rachel hugged the man, and although I could see her lips moving, I couldn’t hear what she was saying.
The floatplane pilot tapped me on the arm and gestured for me to take off the headphones. When I did, the sounds around me came roaring back, and I was surprised to feel my arms blooming with goose bumps as I registered a chill in the air. Since moving to New York, I had yet to experience a truly cold summer night. Usually I slept without covers, my window unit always out of service.
As our bags were unloaded, I looked toward the house. Two chimneys with crenellated tops, black against the dark sky, graced either end. Lights were on inside, and I could just make out the curves of the veranda that wrapped all the way around the structure, the delicacy of the trim; here and there, a chandelier was visible through the windows. I couldn’t understand why it would be called a camp; it was a manse with a complex of matching outbuildings and boathouse. Everything so clearly historic that the light that came through the float glass windows was tinted and watery. We made our way down the dock and up a sloping lawn, and as we got closer, taxidermies of deer came into focus on the walls and above the mantels of the home; there were antlers everywhere.
When Rachel stepped onto the stairs that led to the front door, there was a heavy creaking, and I could see, even in the thin light, the thickness and width of the boards that had been used to construct the house. Rachel didn’t pause at the front door, but blew through into a living room that was paneled, floor to ceiling, with clear lacquered pine. The small, delicate strips of wood were polished to such a shine that being in the room was like being inside a tree—it even smelled of pine pitch and campfire smoke.
Everywhere there were shelves bursting with books: foxed paperback copies of The War Between the Tates and Valley of the Dolls, clothbound copies of Zane Grey novels, old boxes of checkers and board games whose corners were worn with use. There were couches that sagged in the middle, only a little, and thick cashmere throws on each one. Everything casual, but only in the most studied way of the monied class.
“Rachel?” I heard a woman call from what turned out to be the kitchen.
If the rest of the house was decidedly historic, then the kitchen was radically modern. A butcher block island and ten-burner stove anchored the space. There were peonies in various states of bloom in vases on the breakfast table and windowsill, bowls overflowing with bananas and onions, and the delicious smell of lemon and peaches.
An older woman with steel-gray hair and a pleasant thickness embraced Rachel in a hug.
“The flight was okay?”
Rachel nodded and settled onto a stool at the counter.
“And Jack got your bags?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’m Ann,” I said, holding out a hand, but she batted my hand aside and wrapped me in her arms.
“I’m so excited you two are here. The house used to be busy all summer, but it’s slower these days.” She looked at Rachel and patted her hand. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.”
But Rachel waved her off. “It’s been a long time, Margaret, since the house was like that.”
“Some things never get easier.”
We sat in silence for a beat before Margaret said, “Well, I prepared a few things for you in the fridge. But I assume you can fend for yourself. We can get more from the market if you want, but Jack won’t be going into town until tomorrow afternoon.”
“Thank you, Margaret. I don’t think we need anything else.”
“I’ll be off for the night then.” She slipped out of the apron she was wearing and circled back around the island to give Rachel another hug and leave a solicitous hand on my shoulder.
“You know where we are.”
After she was gone, I said, “I thought that was your mother.”
Rachel shook her head. “Margaret. Our caretaker. She’s worked here as long as I can remember. Come on,” she said, getting up from her stool. “I want to show you your room.”
Rachel led me through the front foyer and up an arcing staircase with a heavy pine banister to the second floor. The hallway ceiling was curved and made of the same pine that decorated the rest of the house; it crested overhead, like a wave. Rachel took me as far as the third door to the left and opened it.
“There isn’t anyone else up here except us. There’s a matching staircase and wing of rooms on the west side of the house, too, but they’re only used when there are big parties at the house, or we have a lot of guests.”
I memorized every detail: the way the pine paneling nested together, the way the brass switch plates were polished, the fact there were fresh flowers in every room and most hallways. I’d never stayed anywhere as nice as Rachel’s house at Long Lake, neither a hotel nor someone’s home, and I found myself struck by how casually Rachel moved through a space I was desperate to savor.
Rachel stood inside the room, which had a four-poster bed and a brick fireplace, a bank of windows and a glass door that opened onto a second-story deck. Outside, the area around the house was completely dark except for the sliver of moon, hung low, that lit the lake.
“It’s quiet up here. Not like the Hamptons or Long Island,” she said. “Really quiet. And dark. Intimate. And up here, no one asks any questions about who your parents are or where your house is. The house belonged to my maternal great-great-grandparents,” she said by way of explanation. “Back when no one wanted to go to the Hamptons and everyone came up here. They built it in 1903. My grandfather liked to sail the little boats on the lake. Every year there’s a regatta. It’s named after him: the Henning Summer Regatta.”
I had seen the little boats at the end of the dock when we arrived, their white hulls gleaming in the reflected moonlight as they hung in the boathouse.
