The Objects of Her Affection (12 page)

“What?”

“Do you know how much this thing cost? I’m not leaving it here.”

“Where do you want to put it?”

“Your office?”

“Really?” Brian paused, then handed Elliot to Sophie. “Okay, you take the kids upstairs. I’ll take the stroller, and then I’ll find you.”

“I can take it,” she offered.

“Then we’d all have to go. Ted’s still up there.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, let me fold it up so it’s easier to get through doors.” Sophie collapsed the stroller with a swift click of the release lever and jerk of the handle, and Brian wheeled it away through the crowd.

Sophie led the kids up to the Great Stair Hall, which was vibrating with the clamor of children and the twang of Chinese music. Elliot fastened himself to Sophie’s leg and Lucy looked around anxiously, fingers in her mouth. The stairs had been turned into stadium seating for the acrobatic performance, which was taking place in front of the main entrance. Along the sides of the hall, craft stations were choked with children busy scribbling, cutting, and pasting. The food tables were upstairs on the balcony, but Sophie couldn’t imagine navigating the crowded, dizzying staircase with her two nervous bundles. “Let’s sit down,” she finally suggested, finding a spot near the bottom of the stair. “We’ll wait for Daddy here.”

When Brian returned from his office and joined them on the steps, Elliot scrambled into his lap. The acrobats were like brightly colored rubber bands being shot across the room, piling on top of each other in endless combinations, stepping on each others’ knees, shoulders, and heads and smiling broadly the whole time. Elliot bounced appreciatively, and Lucy pointed at one of the spangled girl acrobats and cried, “That’s me! I’m her!”

After the performance they climbed the stairs to the mezzanine, where they sat around a small table with a red tablecloth and ate egg rolls and lo mein. Lucy wielded her chopsticks like knitting needles, carefully lifting noodles to her mouth one at a time. Brian fed Elliot by lowering the wiggling strands into his grasping mouth like a mother bird. Sophie watched them with her chin in her hand. “If we ever went to China, we’d starve to death.”

Brian snorted and put the rest of the noodles in front of Elliot so he could eat them with his hands. At the table next to theirs, a redheaded girl about Lucy’s age was objecting strenuously to the noodles her mother had placed in front of her. She pushed them away and her mother, smiling and cajoling in a low voice, pushed them back. “Uh oh,” said Sophie under her breath as the mother pushed the noodles toward the girl one too many times. The girl grabbed the plate and Frisbeed it in the direction of one of the Baroque Rubens tapestries hanging on the wall. A sleepy-looking guard, who happened to be standing to the left of the tapestry at the entrance to the Medieval galleries, casually reached out one long arm and caught the plate, a fraction of a second before East met West with a greasy splat.

Brian and Sophie quickly averted their eyes from the horrified mother and bent over their plates. Brian choked on his egg roll, his eyes clenched shut against a wellspring of laughter, and the sight of his reddening face made Sophie convulse with silent mirth.

“What’s so funny?” demanded Lucy in a loud voice.

“Nothing!” Sophie hissed. “We’re just happy you’re eating your noodles.” And then they were off again, helplessly passing the disease of inappropriate laughter back and forth, no longer sure what they were even laughing about. Finally they shuddered to a stop, and Sophie collapsed against her chair feeling warm and almost postcoital.

“Let’s go make some stuff,” she said. “Lucy, do you want to make some stuff?”

“Make stuff NOWWWWWWW!” sang Lucy operatically.

They found their way to the Asian Art galleries, where Lucy barged through the crowd to the paper lantern–making table. Sophie and Brian followed, but before they could join her Elliot slipped away and ran in the other direction. “Stay with Lucy,” Sophie called to Brian. She followed Elliot, who barely slowed as he ran through the dark and looming Chinese temple, past rooms of furniture and vases and a wheeled dog cage, and finally into the Japanese period room. She let him stay a few steps ahead of her, enjoying his moment of discovery as he crossed the threshold and came to a halt, disoriented. They had emerged from the shadowy galleries into a sunny garden whose stone paths were lined with leafy bamboo. The paths framed a ceremonial teahouse and Buddhist temple: two rustic buildings of cypress, pine, and plaster. The teahouse formed an L around a simple dirt courtyard, while the temple was surrounded by a bed of wood mulch; above its simple square frame, a tiled roof swooped into a cloudless blue sky. Elliot ran delightedly along the paths, seemingly untroubled by the surreal scene. Sophie wondered if he understood instinctively that it was not daytime, and they were not outside; or if he thought he had indeed exited the building into the sunshine, and simply accepted the strangeness of the situation the way he embraced strangeness every day of his life.

“Stay on the path, Elliot,” she called, as she studied one of the labels on the wall. The building in front of her was named the “Temple of the Attainment of Happiness.” Through its square doorway she could see a large, lacquered Buddha, resplendent with gold leaf and draped in an elaborately carved robe, sitting serenely atop a garlanded base. Arrayed around him was a collection of smaller sculptures and brass devotional objects. The Buddha had definitely mastered attainment, Sophie decided, but was he happy? Perched there in his little house, among his shiny knickknacks, he actually looked kind of lonely.

Elliot crashed into her leg, breathless from his romp through the galleries. He raised his hands in the air and Sophie lifted him onto her hip. “Let’s go find Daddy,” she said, and Elliot squirmed in excitement.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”

She exited the gallery and almost bumped into Marjorie, who was walking with a tall woman in a seersucker pantsuit. “Marjorie!”

“Hello.” Marjorie was holding a cardboard box filled with construction paper and Magic Markers; she raised a knee to support the box for a moment. “Sophie, this is my friend Helen. She volunteers at the Met—in the registrar.”

Sophie shifted Elliot to her other side so she could offer her hand. Helen’s grip was surprisingly strong.

“Sophie’s married to Brian Porter, our ceramics curator. He’s quite the rising star, even if he’s not the world’s most organized person.”

“I’ve heard of him,” Helen said in a deep voice.

“Helen was just telling me how different things are at the Met,” Marjorie said. “It sounds like another world.”

“New York is where the big money lives.” Sophie smiled. “And the big budgets.”

“Mmm,” said Marjorie. “Sophie is a stay-at-home mom,” she said to Helen, nodding at Elliot.

Sophie was almost too surprised by this to respond. “Actually, I—”

“Good for you,” intoned Helen.

“I
work
,” Sophie said.

“Of course you do,” Marjorie said. “The most important work isn’t always paid, right, Helen?” They smirked knowingly at each other. “I’ve got to put this box down,” Marjorie said. “I’ll see you later, Sophie.”

“I write code,” Sophie said to their retreating backs. But they didn’t hear.

Sophie put Elliot down and led him back into the shadowy galleries. She knew Brian never talked about her work, but couldn’t he at least let people know she
did
work? Was that so hard? And Marjorie—pretending to put Sophie on some kind of homemaker pedestal while reserving her true admiration for Brian; it was disgusting. Sophie had talents; Marjorie had no idea what kind of talents she had. No idea!

She finally found Brian at a scroll-making station downstairs, where he was helping Lucy practice calligraphy with a long-bristled brush. Lucy was seated on his lap, and he was murmuring into her ear as she carefully daubed black ink onto a piece of rice paper. Something he said made Lucy laugh, and she twisted around to squeeze his nose. Brian feigned outrage, which made her laugh even more. A smudge of glitter sparkled on his cheek.

“Having fun?” asked Sophie, trying to sound brighter than she felt.

“Show Mommy what we made!” demanded Lucy, and Brian held up a painted lantern encrusted with glitter and plastic jewels. “The jewels aren’t real, but they are very beautiful anyway,” Lucy explained. “Daddy said he would talk to them about getting real jewels next time.”

“Now we’re writing Chinese poetry,” Brian said. “Well, Lucy is. I don’t know Chinese.”

“I do!” said Lucy.

Elliot leaned out of Sophie’s arms, reaching for Brian. Brian moved Lucy onto the bench beside him and took Elliot into his lap. “He looks tired,” he said.

“Yeah, I think he’s ready,” Sophie said. She thought a moment. “Why don’t I go get the stroller.”

“I need to get it.”

“You’re having a good time. Hang out with them a little longer.”

“Yeah, but you know you’re not supposed—”

“Daddy, you make one,” Lucy said. “I’ll teach you. Here’s your brush.”

Sophie nudged him. “Come on. Look how good they’re being. Enjoy this.”

Brian kissed Elliot on the head and reached into his pocket. “Do not tell anyone,” he said, handing Sophie his keys. “I could get fired.”

***

Upstairs, the offices were dark and hushed. Sophie squinted down the hallway, which was dimly lit by two faintly buzzing exit signs. The carts were no longer lined up next to the water cooler. She found the door to the storage room and jangled through Brian’s keys, trying each one in the lock with shaking fingers, until finally the knob turned and she pushed through the heavy door. As it swung shut behind her, she turned on the lights and surveyed the scene. Six or seven carts were jumbled in the front of the room, blocking access to the storage shelves, half of which were empty, save for a coffee cup stained with a dark pink lipstick mark. The rest of the shelves were still dense with objects. Sophie knew she had to move fast, or Brian would come looking for her, or worse, Marjorie would come back upstairs. She also wanted to get to the shelves beyond the carts, where she would find the pieces that were still untouched and unexamined—the ones least likely to be missed.

Sophie tried to squeeze between the carts, but they were jammed into the tight space, and no matter how tall and thin she tried to make herself, her thighs stubbornly refused to get through. As she jostled the carts, something fell over with a clang. She backed up, heaved the door open, and pulled one of the carts into the hallway while holding the door with her foot. The cart was heavy and hard to steer, and as she wrestled with it, a ewer tipped over the edge; she reached out and caught it before it hit the floor. She parked the cart next to the doorway, then paused for a second to listen. Silence.

Back in the storage room she pushed through the remaining carts and hurried down the narrow alley between two of the tall steel shelving units. Objects offered themselves up on every side: vases and urns, crosses and clocks, bowls and boxes, chalices and goblets. She paused in front of a huge footed silver monstrosity, an assemblage of lacy bowls held aloft by curling vines, the whole thing dripping with tiny bells and flowery garlands. Too big.

On the shelf below, a silver and glass decanter caught her eye, but the scrolls and flowers decorating its base seemed too fat and clumsy. Next to it sat a squat, plain tankard with little embellishment aside from an etched coat of arms on the front; Harry would probably find it “unassuming.” And anyway, wasn’t she supposed to be looking for something from the Renaissance? Realizing she should have done some basic research before coming, she thought back to her art history elective. Leonardo da Vinci…humanism…the Sistine Chapel…statues of gorgeous naked men. That class had ruined her grade point average, she remembered now. She should have studied harder.

She moved down the shelf, angling her neck to get a view of the pieces pushed back in the shadows. Minutes were passing like slippery fish through her fingers. She reached for a strange, lumpy shape hidden behind a set of tumblers. Pulling it out, she saw that it had four legs, and a head that was lowered submissively, with long ears and a low-slung tail. It was an Irish setter, complete with a coppery coat of tarnish. Its fur rippled over its muscled flanks, and its legs were feathered with short, curled tufts. About a foot long, it felt heavy and solid in her hand. It reminded Sophie of her neighbor’s Irish setter, Jeremy, when they’d lived in California. He’d always greeted Sophie by standing on his hind legs and putting his front paws on her shoulders. This one was more guarded, though, with a hint of wildness in its wary eyes and half-crouching stance. It looked like a biter.

Gripping the dog around its middle, Sophie pushed through the carts and pulled open the door. She tried bringing the cart from the hallway through the door with one hand, but it was too heavy. She set the dog on the hallway floor against the wall, and yanked the cart into the storage room, the door shutting behind her. She did her best to reproduce the original logjam of carts, jostling them back and forth with much rattling and clanking. Finally she turned and reached for the doorknob, then stopped, blood flooding her head, her heart straining as if it had been grabbed and squeezed hard.

The faint click of the department’s steel door latch, barely audible from the end of the hall, was followed by a languid squeal of hinges and a decisive thunk. Sophie’s finger flew to the light switch and turned it off; she winced at the click. She waited in the darkness, her head buzzing, her arms feeling strangely disconnected from her body as they hovered at her sides. A sharp metallic taste flooded her mouth. She heard the muffled rattle of keys going into a pocket; the mutter of a walkie-talkie; the quick tap of doorknobs encountering locked latches. Sophie carefully backed away from the light switch, past the doorknob to the hinges. She imagined the dog crouched just outside the door, its head low, eyes on the intruder. She hoped its dull brown body was melting into the shadows. She hoped…

The doorknob turned and the door pushed open slightly; she swiveled her shoulder an inch to the right to avoid touching it, biting back her breath. The walkie-talkie clicked and whispered while its owner paused in the darkness. A hand pushed the door open wider, a foot braced it, another hand flicked on the light. A rustle of jacket sleeve as fingers dialed down the walkie-talkie. Silence. Then a single, disapproving click of the tongue, and a brusque sweep over the light switch. The door slammed shut. A key turned in the lock.