The Objects of Her Affection (27 page)

Marjorie waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, no, I’m sure that’s—”

“They care about drugs, they care about kidnapped children.” She lowered her voice. “Pornography. But art is very low on the list of priorities.” Sophie paused, sending a silent apology to Agent Chandler. “They’ve had many opportunities to find this collector and recover our objects, but do you honestly think they’re putting their best people on the case? I have given them so much information. So many leads. And nothing.”

Marjorie pursed her lips. “Well, I have to say I was shocked by the light sentence they gave that British dealer. It’s true that people have no appreciation. No appreciation at all.”

Sophie nodded solemnly. “And like you’ve always said, sometimes you have to take things into your own hands. Otherwise nothing will get done.” She pulled a small piece of paper out of her pocket and slid it across the table.

“Here’s an accession number. I need to get in touch with the donor. Ask Helen for his name and address,” Sophie said. “That’s all I need.”

***

Harry had been moved to a low-security federal prison in a town called White Deer, Pennsylvania. Sophie drove up to see him on one of those clear fall days that made the world seem freshly washed and dried on a line, green leaves still mixed in with the yellow and red, barns standing neat and square against billowing hills. Harry tried to pretend he wasn’t happy to see her.

“I’m kind of busy,” he said. “Those pot holders aren’t going to make themselves.”

“You look good, Harry.” He’d filled out a bit, his eyes less sunken and dull, his cheekbones less sharp.

“Thanks. You know what they say. Khaki is the new khaki.”

On the drive up, Sophie had debated whether to tell him about her visit to Sergei. Seeing him now, looking more like his old self despite the shapeless polyester clothes, she decided not to embarrass him. Instead she chatted about Philadelphia, Carly’s condo, her work. Harry complained about prison food and prison furniture and prison lighting, but he also said he was getting daily letters from Jeffrey, who’d decided he enjoyed the romantic possibilities of Harry’s incarceration. “Did you know California just approved same-sex conjugal visits?” he exclaimed. “I need to put in for a transfer. This is not the sexual wonderland I was led to expect.”

“So that’s why you were so intent on going to prison.”

“Ha.”

“Harry,” Sophie said then, reaching across the table to take his hand. “You can still talk, you know. They can probably clear the charges. You could go legit, get your shop back up and running, maybe start fresh in a different location. Get back together with Jeffrey? Wouldn’t you be happier?”

Harry pulled his hand away, turned somber. “No.”

“Goddamn it, Harry.” Sophie threw herself back in her chair, crossing her arms. He was like Elliot, refusing to listen. When would he learn that she knew what was best for him? She was so tired of all the manipulation.

“Yoshiro Hansei,” she said.

Harry cracked his knuckles, looked around.

“Nineteen Gramercy Park South?” Sophie watched Harry’s jaw work back and forth. “It’s him, isn’t it—I can tell!” She laughed, then slapped a hand over her mouth.

“Just—” Harry held up his palm. “Where are you going with this.”

“Your collector—your precious client. I’m giving you a chance to be the one who takes him down. A chance to get out of here. Call Chandler, tell him about Hansei.” She paused. “Or I will.”

“Sophie, I can’t. I can’t do that to one of my biggest clients. I’d never do business again. And my dad—it would kill him. I mean, you know what I mean.”

“Oh, Harry, cut that out. Your father is
dead
, all right? This is your chance to start fresh, turn your life around, let go of the shame.”

“Shame?” Harry laughed. “You think I’m ashamed?” He rolled his eyes dramatically. “Look around yourself. You think the museum pays a fair price for everything they acquire? They pay what they think they can get away with—even if it’s highway robbery. And what about all that art that turned up on the market after 1945. You think the museums sat on their hands, saying, ‘Oh, no, that would make us feel ashamed’?”

“They’re giving that stuff back.”

“When they’re made to. My point is, everybody’s on the take, Sophie. Banks. The bloody government. Your friend who likes other people’s husbands. How are you supposed to survive in a world like that, if you’re not taking the opportunities that present themselves?”

“I tried that. It didn’t work out so well.”

“You didn’t exactly distinguish yourself as a thief. Rule number one: thou shalt not snitch.”

“Okay, okay.” Sophie felt confused. She’d expected Harry to congratulate her on her detective work, realize he had no choice but to roll over on Hansei, then thank her for escorting him onto the path to righteousness. “Look,” she said slowly, “all I really want is to get that mirror back. The museum didn’t realize they had it; if I can get it back to Brian, he can return it to the department without anyone noticing. It’s not enough, but it’s something. I need to do something.”

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t get it for you. My schedule’s full for the next thirty months.”

Sophie sighed, tapping her foot. “Does Hansei keep the stuff at his house?”

“Most of it, yes.”

“Does he use a cleaning service? Or I don’t know—an IT consultant?”

“I have no bleeding idea, Sophie. I’ve only been to his house once, and it was like Fort Knox. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you can’t get in there.”

She thought a minute. “What about kids? Does he have kids?”

Harry pressed his knuckles into his palm. “Yeah. Two little ones, like yours. No mum around, just a nanny.”

“Perfect. Do you know their names?”

“Jesus, I can’t even remember the names of my brother’s kids.”

“That’s all right. It’s good, it’s a start. Thank you, Harry.”

“Look, Sophie, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but please don’t screw things up for me, all right? You’re making me nervous.”

“Don’t worry. I have a talent—remember?”

Harry bit his lip, then leaned forward. “Just promise you’ll be careful. I don’t want this coming back to me, but I also don’t want anything happening to you.”

“Why, Harry, that’s so sweet.”

“Yeah, well.” He gave her a sly smile. “Maybe when I get out we can have another go. Like old times. What do you say, love?”

“Oh my God, Harry. Good-bye.”

“Be safe, Sophie.”

“I’ll try.”

Sophie’s rear was freezing, but she willed herself to stay a little longer on the brownstone stoop. In five minutes, she decided, she could have her sandwich. She’d eat slowly, to take up time.

She’d been sitting on this stoop, and others like it, all morning, because the gates on all four sides of Gramercy Park were locked. Inside the iron fence she could see thick black tree trunks and long branches crouching over some comfortable-looking wooden benches. A gardener gathered fallen leaves from the tops of some carefully pruned boxwoods, but otherwise the park was empty. She wondered what time it was supposed to open.

She stole another glance at the brick house on the corner of Twentieth and Irving. It was, she’d decided, the most beautiful house in New York, with its stately air of restraint, its massive proportions tempered by a soberly geometric facade. Four rows of neatly trimmed windows marched up the brick walls, crowned by a string of sturdy corbels. Above the cornice a row of hooded dormer windows peeked out of a slate mansard roof, interspersed with three proud chimneys. The roofline was crested with lacy ironwork, and above the ironwork, like flames leaping into the sky, Sophie could see the red-leafed branches of some large trees growing in a rooftop garden.

So far she hadn’t seen anyone coming or going from the house. For all she knew, the Hanseis were on vacation and she was sitting there for nothing. She looked at her watch and pulled out her sandwich, then noticed a squat woman in a barn jacket unlocking one of the gates to the park. Sophie hurried across the street.

“Sorry,” said the woman, giving Sophie a sharp look. “It’s a private park. Only residents have keys.”

Sophie laughed in surprise. “Oh! Do you mind if I follow you in? I just want to sit and eat my lunch.” She lifted the sandwich in explanation.

“Sorry,” the woman said again, closing the gate and locking it behind her. “It’s against the rules. And anyway, there’s no food allowed.”

Sophie let the bag drop, feeling her listless mood sink lower. This was why she’d never wanted to live in New York. This right here: this gorgeously manicured park, with its gilded ceiling of autumn leaves, its plush grass carpets unstained by orange peels or wayward napkins, proudly on display yet impenetrable to all but a select few. In this city, you always lived with your face pressed up against someone else’s window.

Sophie returned to the stoop and ate her sandwich quickly, half expecting the woman in the barn jacket to appear and shoo her away. Brian had always said that someday he would like to work at the Met, but Sophie had never encouraged him to act on those fantasies. They would never be able to afford a decent amount of space in Manhattan, and she knew that adding a commute to Brian’s life would result in the working parent’s nightmare: getting home every night after the kids’ bedtime. Of course, considering everything that had happened, a job at the Met was probably no longer within the realm of possibility.

The sandwich gone, Sophie rubbed her hands together and considered walking to a coffee shop to warm up. That thought led to thoughts of walking to Park Avenue and catching a cab to the train station. Her fact-finding mission had begun to feel more like impotent loitering, and anyway, she wasn’t sure what facts she was expecting to find. It would be easier to just go home and call Agent Chandler.

Still, her mind kept turning back to the mirror. Nobody knew it was missing; nobody even knew it existed. It was right there, within those brick walls. She felt an intense need to hold it in her hands again, to slip it back into the museum, as if it could reverse time and events. She couldn’t retreat to the carpeted hush of Carly’s apartment without trying something. Anything.

She stood up. She’d just ring the doorbell, ask to use the bathroom; she could improvise from there. She strode toward Irving Place and stood at the corner waiting for the light to change, her sights set on the imposing double doors flanked by curved brass handrails. Then, from the corner of her eye, she noticed some movement on the Twentieth Street side of the house. A mass of frizzy curls was slowly coming up a small stairway that led from a basement entrance, dragging something heavy. The curls belonged to a young woman; she was pulling a wide double stroller. She left it on the sidewalk, then descended the stairs again, reappearing with two small, black-haired children, whom she strapped into the stroller with practiced efficiency.

Sophie waited until the woman had pushed the stroller past her up Twentieth Street, then turned and followed. They walked to Park Avenue, turned right, then left onto Twenty-First Street. It took some effort to stay behind the woman, who was slowed by the weight she was pushing, but Sophie matched her pace, trying to look like she was taking a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood. Finally the woman stopped in front of a limestone apartment building with a shop window on the first floor, and bent down to unstrap the kids. Sophie ambled past, reading the bright red awning with an inward groan.

Music for Me.

***

1.
I’m sure you got word about the conviction. We’ll see what happens with sentencing; I heard they want Michael to testify at the hearing. I hope you’ll be able to go back to work soon.

2.
Goldmeier wants to get together next week to go over our legal options. Can you come see him on your lunch hour? Say, Tuesday?

3.
Carly thinks she found me an investor to help get my database idea off the ground. I’m meeting with him next week to show him some wireframes, and go over my business plan. I’m pretty nervous/excited about that.

4.
If it’s all right with you, I’d like to take the kids to New York on Thursday. I’ve been missing them, and I thought it would be fun to go to the Museum of Natural History. Elliot’s into dinosaurs these days.

5.
I miss you. I want to make things right. I’m trying.

This time, when she handed the notebook to Brian on the doorstep, once the kids had run inside, he sighed and let his arm drop heavily. “Thanks.”

“What?”

He looked sideways and up, into the ginkgo tree, then let his gaze fall back to the sidewalk. “Nothing. I’ll see you in a few days.”

“Seriously, Brian.”

Brian held out the notebook as if it were incriminating evidence. “This is nice and all, but don’t you ever think it would be good to, you know—”

“What?”

“Talk?”

“Talk!” Sophie laughed. “You never want to talk.”

“No,
you
never want to talk.”

Sophie jerked her head back with a furrowed squint. “I want to talk. I love talking.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. I love it. This right here, what we’re doing right now, I love it.”

“Okay then.”

“What?”

“Let’s…” Brian waved the notebook around in circles.

“What, out here?”

Brian shrugged and pushed the front door open. Sophie brushed past him into the living room, where she sat, like a guest, on the edge of the sofa. Brian sank into one of the armchairs across from her.

“So what do you want to talk about?” she asked him, a smile escaping, momentarily, from her tense lips.

“Very funny.”

“Let’s hear it then. You hate me.”

“Christ.” Brian rubbed his mouth. “Okay, a little. But no, not hate, really, just…what the hell, Sophie? How could you do this to the people you—supposedly—love?”

“I don’t know.” Sophie bent forward, tucking her hands between her belly and her thighs. She realized this was the first time Brian had asked her, point-blank, to explain herself. She also realized she hadn’t prepared an answer. “I guess…I thought, I don’t know. This house was the key to everything. I thought it would keep me from becoming someone I didn’t want to be.” She paused. “Someone like my mother.” Brian was looking at her with his usual nonexpressive expression. “I thought it would give our kids a better life. And when it looked like it was going to be taken away, I couldn’t think about anything else. I was fixated on the house.” She straightened up, avoiding Brian’s gaze. “The wrong thing.” She was still holding back…still tightly wrapped around her darkest secret—the thing that “filled the hole,” as Harry put it.

“I just feel like we could’ve avoided all this if you had included me,” Brian said. “If you’d told me what was going on. If you’d asked for help. Now I feel like an idiot.”

“I’m so, so sorry.” Sophie wanted to reach out to him, but she didn’t. “I was trying to protect you. I was trying to just take care of things, to fix things so you wouldn’t have to worry.” Brian pulled the corner of his mouth ever so slightly to one side. “And okay, yes, I was ashamed,” Sophie continued. “I didn’t want you to know how royally I’d screwed up. It’s not easy, you know. Being married to Mr. Perfect. While my career falls apart. While my life turns into something I wasn’t ready for. Always feeding someone, cleaning up after someone, carrying someone, wishing someone would carry me for a change, wishing I could just do some work—
my
work, the work I’m actually good at. Blah blah blah, the oldest story in the book. Everybody goes through it, but I’m the only one who used it as an excuse to sabotage my entire life.” She hiccupped, and tears came in a gush—dammit! Again with the tears! But her frustration only made them come harder, and soon she was sobbing into her hands.

“Mommy?” Lucy and Elliot were standing in front of her, identical worried expressions on their faces. Lucy patted her knee. “Are you okay, Mommy?”

“Oh, Lucy,” Sophie cried. “Elliot. I’m okay. I’m sorry, don’t worry. I’m just having a bad day.” She pulled them onto the couch, kissing their heads and breathing in their salty-sweet scent. The weight of them against her, the clambering jabs of elbows and knees, the heat of their high-pitched breath against her neck—it was what she needed; it was what she’d always needed. She’d been so focused on the giving, she’d completely forgotten about the taking. She looked over the children’s heads at Brian, who seemed almost on the verge of a smile. “I hope you know how much I love you,” she said. “I hope you all know.”

***

Taking the kids to New York on the train by herself was doable; taking the stroller along with them was another story. In Philadelphia, at least, a redcap let her take an elevator to the train platform, but then she had to put the kids on the train ahead of her, ordering them to stand motionless by the door while she fought her way through boarding passengers to retrieve the folded stroller from the platform and hoist it into the narrow luggage compartment at the front of the car. In New York the elevator wasn’t working, so she had to hold Elliot in one arm and the stroller in the other, leaving Lucy to fend for herself as they rode the narrow, crowded escalator up into the station. Taking the subway uptown, she realized, was not an option, given the obstacle course of turnstiles and stairs. So they stood in the Eighth Avenue cab line for twenty minutes, Elliot strapped into his seat against his will, unmoved by promises of dinosaurs, Lucy dancing all over the sidewalk, touching everything.

The three of them relaxed once they arrived at the American Museum of Natural History, a stroller-friendly haven busy with children in various stages of joy, exhaustion, and outrage. They wandered through the dinosaur halls, where Sophie did her best to read some of the labels, causing Lucy and Elliot, bristling with impatience, to abandon the stroller and run ahead, rushing through the Eocene, Cretaceous, and Jurassic periods with the impetuousness of creatures who have only been on Earth for five and three years.

After lunch, Sophie announced that she had a surprise for them: they were going to Music for Me! In New York! But the kids received this astonishing news with mere shrugs, probably imagining, quite reasonably, that New York and Philadelphia were part of the same vast metropolis, and that it was perfectly normal to find Barnes and Noble, the Lego store, and Music for Me just around the next corner.

She’d signed them up for the same early-afternoon session she’d seen Hansei’s nanny go to: Rhythm Makes Me Happy! Sophie had often taken the kids to Rhythm Makes Me Happy! in Philadelphia, but she’d never personally experienced actual happiness during the class—just irritation, existential angst, and a rhythmically pounding headache.

She had the cab drop them a few blocks north of Twenty-First Street, then walked the kids the rest of the way in the stroller. When they arrived she could see the curly-haired nanny with her two small charges already inside, sitting on the rug. Sophie hurriedly parked the stroller, then ushered Lucy and Elliot toward the spot just next to them. As the teacher began strumming the familiar tune to “Good Morning, Farmer George,” Sophie grabbed a maraca and began shaking it with brio, singing the words she could—and probably, on occasion, did—sing in her sleep. Lucy and Elliot, inspired by her sudden enthusiasm, sang and clapped loudly; Lucy even twirled around a few times in the center of the circle.

Afterward, Sophie followed the nanny outside and popped open her stroller next to hers. “That was so fun,” she exclaimed. “Your kids have great rhythm.”

The nanny looked up with surprise, her face pillowy with youth. “Oh, they’re not my kids,” she laughed. “I’m just the nanny. But thanks, I guess.”

“Have you guys been coming to this class for a while?”

“Oh, sure. Well, they’ve been coming since last year. But I literally grew up coming to Music for Me. My mom used to bring me and my sister. My sister didn’t like it, though, so my mom would leave her in front of the TV and bring me because if I didn’t get to go she said I would literally drive her nuts.”

Sophie smiled at her, a little dazed by this flood of information, then bent down to greet the two children in their stroller. “Did you like that class? Was it fun?” The girl nodded solemnly, but the boy squirmed and turned his face away. “This is Lucy and Elliot,” Sophie said, turning her stroller to bring the kids face-to-face. “They’re about your age, I think.”

“This is Mina and Takashi. Say hi, guys.” The four kids looked blankly at each other. “They don’t spend a lot of time with other kids,” said the nanny. “That’s why I’ve been bringing them here. They don’t go to preschool or anything. Their dad’s kind of a control freak. I mean, I don’t mean that in a negative way or anything, he’s great, but sometimes, you know, I think kids need to socialize a little. I try to keep them entertained and all, but I’m probably pretty boring. To a four-year-old.”