The Gilder (16 page)

Zoe glanced at her. “Mom, stop staring. You look really scary when you do that,” she said, pushing past Marina again. “I’m going to be late. What am I going to do about lunch?”

Marina followed on her heels. “Take a couple of dollars from my purse.”

An emphatic honking came from the road. “The bus is here, sweetie.”

“Tell them I’m coming.” Zoe rummaged through a pile of magazines on the coffee table. “I can’t find my French report.”

Marina gave a wave from the front door to encourage the bus driver to be patient. Zoe snatched up some papers, rushed past her mother without looking at her, and jogged down the driveway. Marina waited on the front porch until the bus pulled away, her inaudible “Bye” dissolving in a frosty puff of breath.

At the kitchen window, a fresh mug of coffee in hand, Marina was surprised to see a delicate bloom of frost on the grass in the backyard. So fragile was this lacing of crystals, so tentative this first touch of winter, that the early-morning sun at the front of the house had removed any sign of it. The thought of winter reminded her that she still had the frame to finish, then crate, and ship before her trip. She checked the calendar on the wall next to the phone, where a gold star marked Zoe’s fifteenth birthday on the first day of the month. She’d asked for dinner and a movie with a gang of friends (thankfully, no boys yet) and her first makeup, lip gloss and mascara. How could fifteen years have gone by so quickly? Marina shifted to the end of the month where the word “Florence” was written in red letters across the week following Thanksgiving. She counted the squares with her finger, only fourteen until Turkey Day. Each time she looked at the calendar, her feelings vacillated. One moment she imagined herself happily strolling by the Arno or sipping cappuccino at a sidewalk café, the next she was overwhelmed with a sense of remorse and confusion. If only she’d told Sarah the truth that day Sarah found her holed up in her apartment, red eyed and puffy faced.

It had been three days since the bathtub shoot with Thomas, and from where she lay curled on the bed breathing in the stale scent of her pillow, she could hear Sarah knocking and calling to her

“Marina, what’s going on? Sauro says you haven’t been to work in two days. If you don’t open up, I’m getting the key from the butcher’s shop.”

The knocking stopped and a shadow moved across the kitchen window. Marina wanted to get up, knew she had to, but she couldn’t stop hugging herself. No matter how tightly she squeezed, she couldn’t feel herself wrapped in her own arms.

Sarah banged on the window, her voice shrill. “I’m not kidding, Marina! I’m going to get Marcello’s father!”

From somewhere a sliver of self-preservation prodded Marina into action and shuffled her to the door, where she threw the bolt, then scurried back to her bed. Sarah opened the door and stepped inside, allowing a shaft of white sunlight to slice through the gloomy kitchen and into the living room, almost reaching the bed where she lay. Muffled sounds from the alley sounded at once familiar and alien.

“What is it? Are you sick?”

Marina nodded, hiding her face under one arm. She heard the rustle of Sarah’s skirts and the tinkle of her bangles as she knelt by the bed. The scent of lavender caressed Marina’s cheek as cool fingers found her forehead.

“You don’t feel hot. Let me look at you.” Gently, Sarah moved Marina’s arm away from her face. “You do look a bit rough around the edges.”

Based on how she felt, eyes swollen almost shut from crying, nose red, hair a tangled mess, Marina figured that “a bit rough” was an understatement. Her eyes filled again.

Sarah stood up. “Damn that Thomas! I knew this would happen.”

Marina held her breath, her heart suspended between beats.

“He said everything went really well, that you were fabulous. And now look.” Sarah waved her arms around as if gesturing to an audience. “He let you catch a chill. I’ll bet he had you soaking in that tub for hours and then let you sit around in that cold studio. Honestly!” She reached for Marina. “Come on, sit up. I’ll make you some tea, then I’ll whip up my magic chicken soup and you’ll be over this cold before you know it.”

Marina sat down at the table and pushed Zoe’s breakfast dishes aside as she recalled the agony of letting Sarah think she was sick, growing more morose and guilt-ridden as Sarah nurtured her. Every night she swore to herself that she would confess to Sarah the following day, but when the moment came, the pounding shame and the thought of losing her friend kept her silent. Now she put her head in her hands and tried to gather her thoughts. What had Lydia told her the night before?
Stay calm, everything will be fine. Remember to breathe.
Those had been her parting words before she’d hung up. Marina took a deep breath and let it out slowly, thinking back on their conversation.

“Zoe knows he’s dead, right?”

“Yes, but I told her that he died in a scooter accident before she was born. I can’t change the story now.”

“Why not?”

“She’d hate me, that’s why.”

“She’s never going to hate you. Besides, it’s partly true. The scooter part.”

“I should never have told her that Thomas was her father. I should have made someone up.”

“No, Marina, you were right to tell her. You had to give her some of the truth.”

“I suppose. But I’ve made up so much. All those things I did with Sarah, I told her I did them with Thomas. The picnics up in Fiesole, the walks we took, the meals at Anita’s. I don’t know what else I’ve told her, it’s hard to remember.”

“You were just trying to give her something to hold on to.”

“I know, but it’s gotten so complicated. This conference has stirred everything up. She wants to come with me, for God’s sake!”

“I know this is tough, but it’s going to be fine, trust me. Don’t make yourself crazy. We’ll see you for dinner on Saturday and help you sort this out. Okay?”

The slate floor was frigid through her thin socks. Marina rubbed one foot across the top of the other in an effort to warm them. She took another deep breath. Something smelled sour. Was it the breakfast dishes or was it her? Ever since Zoe’s birth, she had days when, no matter how freshly showered or clothed she was, she couldn’t shake the sense that she smelled, as if she had forgotten to put on deodorant or worn her jeans too long between washes. When she was pregnant, she’d read about the myriad physical changes that came with childbirth, but nowhere had she read anything about odor or, for that matter,
anything
that lingered for fifteen years. She sniffed the air around her, once, twice, then cleared the table, put the milk away, and made her way upstairs.

Before heading for the shower, she stopped in Zoe’s room, where she had permission to open the window and pull back the bedding, nothing more. She crossed the floor gingerly, looking for a patch of carpet, some foothold in the jumble of discarded clothing, magazines, and missing homework. She raised the window, letting in crisp, apple-scented air, then swept back the duvet and, in doing so, bumped the bedside table, sending an avalanche of objects to the floor.

“Shit.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, she bent over to retrieve the items from the floor: a miniature flashlight, half a pack of gum, a plastic cup, an amethyst crystal, and the framed photograph. Marina held the picture for a moment, recalling the day six years earlier when Zoe had found the photograph of Thomas. It had been a rainy Saturday afternoon when, tired of listening to Zoe complain that she was bored, Marina decided they should clean out the attic together.

They’d struggled up the narrow stairs with a heavy wooden stepladder, lifting it up and over the post at the top and onto the runner in the upstairs hall. A few dead spiders fell to the floor in a shower of dust and paint chips as the ladder bumped along the floor.

“Okay, help me open it up, right here under the hatch.”

“Mom, do we have to do this today,” Zoe moaned.

“Stop whining. You said you were bored and had nothing to do. Now you do.”

“I wasn’t that bored.”

“Come on, we’ve already got the ladder up here. It’ll be fun.”

Zoe rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right, Mom, a lot of fun. Cleaning out the attic is just what every kid wants to do on a Saturday.”

Marina started up the ladder, pushed the hatch aside, and felt around for the light switch. “I’ll just hand the stuff down to you. If it’s too heavy, you can come up here and pass it down to me, okay?” Marina disappeared into the attic while Zoe stood at the base of the ladder, her arms crossed in front of her chest. The only sound coming from the attic was the scuffle of Marina’s sneakers on the floorboards as she duck-walked under the low beams, then the sound of boxes being pushed toward the open hatch. Then silence. Suddenly, something soft bounced off Zoe’s head. “Hey!” she shouted in surprise, raising her arms to protect herself as a torrent of stuffed animals showered from the hatch. By the time Marina’s head appeared, Zoe was laughing and hugging a large penguin to her chest.

“Look, Mom. It’s Opus!”

“I see. Do you think we can get rid of any of these?”

“Mom! This is my baby stuff. You can’t get rid of it.” She clutched it tighter.

“We’ll see. Here are two empty boxes. The ones you can part with we’ll give to June for the children’s clinic, the rest we’ll pack away to give to your children some day.”

“I’m not having any children.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, I’m just not.”

“You’re only nine, you might change your mind.”

“I won’t.”

“Well, do it anyway, in case I adopt myself some grandchildren.” Zoe smiled and set about gathering up the toys. Marina returned to her task and periodically handed boxes down to Zoe to be sorted through later. After a while, Zoe called up to her.

“This is boring, Mom, can I come up there?”

“That’s a great idea. My back is killing me and I’ve got a phone call to make. You come up here and move these last few boxes over to the hatch. I’m almost as far as the window at the end.”

The one phone call led to another and then another, and Marina was gone much longer than she had intended. When she reached the upstairs landing, there was no sign of Zoe.

She looked up at the hatch and called, “Sorry I took so long. Are you still up there, Zoe?”

There was no reply. All Marina could hear was the creaking and popping of the cast-iron radiator in the hallway.

“Zoe?”

“I’m here.” Zoe’s voice sounded very far away, as if from another world.

Marina climbed a few rungs of the ladder and looked into the attic gloom. Zoe sat cross-legged at the far end of the attic under a half-round window that looked out toward the river. She was studying a piece of paper.

“Zoe, what are you doing?” Marina asked, climbing the rest of the way into the attic.

“Is this my dad?” Zoe’s voice was small, plaintive.

“What? What is that?” Marina shifted onto her hands and knees and crawled as quickly as she could toward Zoe, her heart pounding. She found Zoe holding two photographs.

“This one says ‘Thomas and Sarah’ on the back. Is it my dad?”

Marina cursed herself. An open box sat beside Zoe and a brown folder lay in her lap. Marina knelt next to her and put a hand on her shoulder as she looked at the black-and-white image of Sarah in her flowing gypsy garb standing with Thomas, who wore khaki shorts and a wrinkled white shirt. He had one camera slung around his neck and the Hasselblad in his hands. Zoe had stumbled upon one of two boxes Marina had packed away after Zoe was born and then promptly forgotten. She was relieved to see that there wasn’t much else in the box other than a few Italian grammar books and some old T-shirts. She scanned the attic but didn’t see the other box. It would turn up eventually, then she’d get rid of both of them once and for all.

“Yes, that’s your father ... and that’s Sarah, my best friend. The one who sends you a birthday present every year.”

“Yeah, the one that’s always months late,” Zoe said quietly.

“Right.” Marina couldn’t tell Zoe the truth about why it always arrived three months late. Instead, she’d turned it into a joke, one they rolled their eyes at each year. “Let’s see the other picture.”

In the second photograph, also black and white and obviously taken on the same day, Sarah and Marina were laughing, their arms around each other’s shoulders, their heads touching.

“You look so young.” Zoe sounded surprised.

“I
was
young,” Marina replied, smiling at Zoe’s incredulity. “I wasn’t always old, you know.”

“Aren’t there any of you and my dad together?” asked Zoe, clearly disappointed.

“I don’t think so, sweetie. Mostly he took the pictures. He didn’t like to pose for them.”

Zoe had asked if she could keep the two photographs, and now, sitting on the bed in Zoe’s room, Marina looked down at the frame where her image lay next to the one of Thomas fiddling with his camera. Zoe had come to her that night and handed her the two leftover images of Sarah that she’d cut from the photographs, and said, “Here, I thought you might want these.”

CHAPTER 10

M
arina ran her hands along the large frame on the workbench, stopping occasionally to caress a high point in the carving, the oil from her fingertips providing the final highlights. It had taken all week to finish. As her fingers led the way, her mind revisited each stage of the repair: the carving, the applications of gesso and clay, the gold leaf, and finally the burnishing. The frame was in the Sansovino style, so named for the sixteenth-century Italian architect and sculptor Jacopo Sansovino, who was known for the complex ornamental detail in his designs. “A bitch to work on but a delight to get lost in,” Josh had often said. Dear, sweet Josh. By some miracle, Marina had saved the business card he’d handed her that day as he was leaving Sauro’s workshop, and when she found herself unemployed and pregnant in New York, she’d screwed up her courage and called him. He and his wife, Clara, who was a conservator of paintings on wood, had taken her under their wings, no questions asked. Josh put her to work gilding, letting her work on various restoration projects until shortly before Zoe’s birth, and he was her biggest supporter when she set up her own gilding studio.