Dad starts to laugh but it gets stuck in his throat and turns into a cough. “There,” he says, pummeling his chest with his fist until he’s surrounded by an aura of putty dust, “there’s your example for you, Robbie boy, wear your mask while working with this stuff if you don’t want to end up a broken-down old man like me.”
“You look pretty good, Mr. McKay, for a man your age.”
“Mebbe for a hundred-year-old man,” Dad grumbles, turning back on his ladder. I can tell he’s pleased, though. He’s vain about his appearance, my sixty-year-old dad, about his full head of hair that’s still more black than gray—at least when it’s not covered with putty dust—his good teeth and his arm and chest muscles still strong from a lifetime of lifting and installing heavy plate-glass windows. I only wish he’d take as much care of his insides as he does his outer appearance: he still isn’t wearing the mask. “Which is how old I feel when someone calls me Mr. McKay. Call me Gil, son.”
“Okay, Gil,” Robbie replies, “did you really know Augustus Penrose?”
“Sure did. Now there was a man old as Methuselah. He was already in his eighties when I started cutting glass in his studio, but he still put in a full day of work. If he didn’t like how you were doing something he’d take the cutter right out of your hand and do it himself. Going on ninety and his hands were steady as bedrock. Cool, too. He could stand next to a twenty-five-hundred-degree furnace and not break a sweat. Man had ice water in his veins.…”
“Robbie, maybe you ought to go outside and help Ernesto—” I start to suggest, anxious over what colorful Gus Penrose story my father might launch into, but Ernesto comes in through the side door at just that moment to tell us that he’s managed to free all the exterior putty in the time it’s taken the three of us to scrape out the interior putty. He’s already got the wirecutters in his hand and is ready to cut the tie wires from the saddle bars supporting the window. I hold up my hand with five fingers splayed. “Give us five minutes,” I tell him.
“Are we clear?” I ask my father and Robbie. Dad runs his chisel around the top and right-hand side of the window, Robbie checks the left-hand side and I swipe the shallow bottom groove with my gloved hand. All clear. I give Ernesto the thumbs up and he proceeds to cut the tie wires. The window shivers slightly with each cut and I look up at the Lady’s face to check for any panes coming loose. That would be the hardest glass to replace—the finely painted portrait of Eugenie—or is it, as Christine suggested in her lecture yesterday, Eugenie’s sister, Clare? The mad sister. For the first time today I look at the window not as a set of technical problems—of cracks and deteriorating lead came, bowing and crizzling—but as a portrait. The Lady’s yellow hair spills over her shoulders more wildly than I recalled. Her left hand grasps a hank of the abundant tresses almost as if she were pulling her own hair. I’ve never noticed how firm that grip looks and now—with the window shaking in its setting—I have the impression that she’s trying to clutch onto something. She does look a bit mad—or at least desperate.
When the wires are all cut we all prepare to slide the window into the deeper slot on the right side. She sticks at first, then makes a grating sound like a soft moan which, when the glass clears the left groove and Ernesto carefully tilts the window into the room and we lift her out of her stone setting, turns into a long sigh as a gust of warm air snakes in under her robes. I almost imagine that I hear her skirts rustling—and then I see that it’s just some old newspaper that must have been stuffed in the grooves and sealed in the putty fluttering down to the floor. I let out my own breath as the three men lay her down gently on a plywood pallet and stoop to gather the shredded paper.
“We’ll clean that up,” my dad says. “Don’t you have to pick up Bea from school?”
I look down at my watch and am amazed to see it’s almost three. It’s taken seven hours to release the Lady. “Damn, I don’t even have time to go home and take a shower. I promised Bea I’d take her shopping …”
I look down at my clothes, which are covered with a fine dust that is mostly putty but also some lead from the decaying cames. I’m always lecturing the guys on washing up after handling lead. If you don’t want to end up brain-dead by forty.
“Use the showers down by the gym,” Ernesto suggests. “Don’t you keep a locker there for when you go swimming?”
One of the perks of teaching a stained-glass class here at night is that I get to use the campus pool. “Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ve got some exercise clothes in the car. Can you guys handle the rest of this?”
Ernesto and my dad exchange an amused look. Robbie is already sweeping the dust off the floor. I start to toss the papers in my hand into a loose garbage bag when I notice that in among the shredded newspapers are heavy cream-colored sheets folded into quarters. I unfold one and hold it in the light that’s now flooding through the gaping hole in the wall. The light’s almost too bright—bleaching the old paper clean—but I can just make out fine pencil lines, a sketch of a face, and an intricate tiny script running along the edge of the paper like a mouse scurrying along the rim of a baseboard.
“Look at these,” I say, holding the pages out to the men.
“Looks like discarded sketches for the window—got jammed in with the putty—saw something like it in that window we did down in Irvington,” Ernesto says.
“Might be a message,” my dad says.
“A message?” I ask. My dad doesn’t usually wax so mystical.
“From the previous craftsman,” he explains, “to the restorer. Which would be you, Junebug. Medieval craftsmen did it all the time. Notes on how and when the glass was made, what kind of caming was used. Then when the window was restored they’d stuff some notes in on what they did so the next restorer would know what was original, what was restored.”
“So these could be notes from Augustus Penrose, or Eugenie …” I gather up all the cream-colored sheets, counting twelve in all. Because they’re covered in lead and putty dust I seal them in a garbage bag.
“Or just trash,” my dad finishes my sentence for me.
“I’ll have a look at them later,” I say, checking my watch again. “If you guys can really handle the rest …”
“Go!” the three men shout at me.
So I do. Halfway down the hall, though, I turn back to look at where the window was. Through the stone arch I can see the Hudson and the long, sloping ridges of the Hudson Highlands. For a moment I wonder why anyone would ever want to hide that view with colored glass, but then, I remind myself as I turn away, I’d be out of a job if they didn’t.
I STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MAIN QUAD AND CALL BEA ON MY CELL PHONE TO TELL her I’m running late. She says no problem, she’ll head down to the gym and work out on the rowing machines. At her age I would have spent the spare time out in the woods behind the track smoking Marlboros with Carl Ventimiglio, the juvenile delinquent I dated my last two years in high school.
Old Gym—so called since the college built a multimillion-dollar field house on the edge of campus—is deserted. Finals ended last week and most of the students have already packed up and left for home. The pool, though, has been kept open for faculty members still finishing their grades. I run into Umberto Da Silva, my old Dante professor, who’s now assistant to the president, on the steps coming up from the basement, his thin gray hair combed in damp strands across his forehead, his usual pipe tobacco and licorice mint smell mixed with chlorine.
“Ciao Bella,” he says, leaning toward me to give me the traditional European kiss on both cheeks. I hold up a hand to wave him off.
“I’m covered with lead dust, Professore,” I explain. He purses his lips and blows out a puff of air—puh!—a dismissive sound as if to say, what’s a little lead poisoning between friends, but still I keep my distance.
“So you have taken the Lady away,” he says. “She went willingly?”
I laugh. “Like Blanche DuBois on the arm of her gentleman caller.”
“Bene. After Ch
ristine’s lecture yesterday I dreamed bad dreams of her all night.” Of Christine, I wonder, or the Lady? But Umberto is already raising a hand to signal his departure—a gesture that is at once elegant and imperious: Augustus saluting the centurions. The professor comes from an old Italian family—like my mother—which is, I believe, the source of his fondness for me.
“Ciao Professore,” I say, resisting an impulse to high-five his raised hand. “If you miss the Lady come down to the studio to visit—we’d both appreciate the company.”
The women’s locker room is cold and empty. I strip off my powdery clothes and seal them in the same garbage bag that holds the cream-colored pages. The shower floor is so cold on my bare feet that I decide, after rinsing off, to hop in the sauna for five minutes just to warm up and bake some of the soreness out of my neck and shoulders. Seven hours of chiseling and craning to look up at the window have taken their toll on my back. I stretch out on the hot wood of the top shelf and close my eyes. Splotches of bright color float across the inside of my eyelids—bright citrine yellow, ruby red, cobalt blue—lozenges of bright jewels, all the colors in the window I’ve spent the day removing. When I hear the click of the door and open my eyes to see who’s come in all I can see are sunbursts of color hovering ghostlike in the dimness of the sauna.
“Oh, Juno, there you are. I wanted to have a word with you.” It’s Fay, Gavin’s assistant, acting for all the world as if she’d found me in the president’s waiting room instead of naked and sweating on a slab. I adjust my towel, which was not made to cover a five-foot-eleven-inch woman, and sit up. Fay, I notice, is wearing the kind of terry wrap that buttons at the side, the elastic puckering over her flat chest. Her fine silver hair—which I’ve only ever seen folded and clipped to the back of her head—is combed back wet from her high forehead, so thin in places I can see the shape of her skull.
She sits sideways on the bottom shelf, leans against the wall, and stretches her legs out in front of her. “Have you spoken to your friend Christine today?”
“No, I’ve been in the library all day.…”
“Because there are several pages missing from archival material she borrowed.”
I wipe away the sweat beading up on my forehand and wonder if Fay turned up the thermostat control when she came in.
“You mean from Eugenie Penrose’s notebook? Christine said you were copying it—”
“Well, I can’t copy what I don’t have, can I? Personally, I don’t see why she was given the original source material in the first place and now look what’s happened.”
“I’m sure Christine would never be careless with a rare document. Are you sure the missing pages were there when she took the journal?” I’m thinking of the pages in the bottom of the garbage bag in my gym locker. For all I know they’re the missing pages, torn out from Eugenie’s notebook years ago. I’m afraid, though, that if I mention them to Fay she’ll confiscate them immediately. “Are you sure that Eugenie’s notebook was completely intact when you gave it to Christine?”
Fay purses her lips and rakes a hand through her hair, leaving whitish trenches where the scalp shows through. “Unfortunately a full inventory has never been made of this material,” Fay admits, “but I’m almost certain there were pages there that are missing now. You know what I think?” Fay leans forward, her thin shoulders hunched so that her towel gapes open and I’m treated to a view of her flat sternum. Before I can look away I notice a strip of pearly white skin—scar tissue—snaking across her chest. A mastectomy? I close my eyes and a vision of my mother’s scarred chest after she came home from the hospital blooms in the darkness. I open my eyes, preferring Fay’s censorious face to that vision. She’s holding a hand to her chest now as if she’s testifying at a Bible meeting.
“I think she’s planning to write a book about Eugenie Penrose, and she doesn’t want anyone else scooping her research. All that nonsense about Eugenie’s sister, Clare, and awakening from the shadows. What do you think she meant by that? It was the oddest lecture I’ve ever heard at the college. It made me wonder if she’d come a bit unhinged. Wasn’t she in a rehab clinic a few years ago for substance abuse?”
“She had a little drinking problem, that’s all, but she’s completely over that—”
“And wasn’t she hospitalized during her senior year for a drug overdose?”
“That was an accident,” I say a little too quickly. “She was taking pain pills after she broke her leg skiing spring break and she just messed up on the dosage.” At least that’s what we’d told people had happened. What had really happened was that Neil had dared Christine to climb up the tower of the library. We’d all been high on mushrooms, and Christine had fallen and broken her leg and cracked three ribs.
“You forget that I worked in the infirmary back then. I overheard the head nurse say she had taken over thirty Darvon—that’s no accident. When she came into Mr. Penrose’s office Sunday morning before the lecture she seemed quite agitated and she asked me for a glass of water so she could take a pill. She had one of those pill-sorters and it was stocked! And Mr. Penrose seemed concerned about her after the lecture. He asked me to place a call to her office this morning but she wasn’t in. Don’t you think she seemed depressed?”
I slip down off the shelf, holding my towel tightly over my chest. I’d like to deny it, but then I remember Christine’s expression when I last saw her through the train window. And the lecture was a bit odd—all that preoccupation with madness and doom. And even though Fay is a bit officious for my taste, no one cares more about the fate of the college.
“I think she was probably just under a lot of pressure getting her lecture ready,” I answer, turning my back to the door so that I can back out without exposing my towel’s limitations. The sight of Fay’s hand splayed over her chest makes me wince with the memory of her scar. “But I’ll call her tonight to see how she’s doing and I’ll ask her about the missing notebook pages. I’m sure if she kept any pages it was an accident.”
BY THE TIME BEA AND I GET HOME, THOUGH, IT’S TOO LATE TO CALL. WHEN I PICKED her up, Bea had hesitatingly expressed interest in a North Face backpack that she’d seen at the outlet store in Harriman two weeks ago when she’d gone there with her friend Melissa and Melissa’s mother, Lisa. When they’d dropped Bea off I’d noticed the back of the Ford Escort crammed with bags from Coach and Burberry’s and Diesel and felt a pang remembering the twenty-dollar bill I’d given Bea for the trip. Of course Bea had expressed total indifference to Melissa and Lisa’s purchases. While most of the moms I know in Rosedale have spent their daughters’ high school years fending off requests for Kate Spade bags I usually have to corral Bea into trading one set of worn Nikes and Levi’s for another. She’s always claimed complete disinterest in the trappings of high fashion but I also suspect she absorbed early on the true state of our financial circumstances (she knows, for instance, that the only money I’ve ever taken from Neil’s family has been put into a college trust for her) and made a pact with herself (Bea’s always making pacts with herself) never to strain them. So whenever she does mention an interest in a material good I try to satisfy it. Besides, I’ve only got another week of her before she’ll be gone for eight weeks—the longest we’ve ever been apart.
After getting her the backpack and a fleece jacket at North Face I take her to an Italian restaurant on Route 9 and we linger over our cappuccinos and Italian cheesecake. How often do you get to linger with your fifteen-year-old? Especially one like Bea, who’s in accelerated motion from the minute she opens her eyes in the morning to the moment she crashes—usually with her kayaking gear still on—on the floor of her bedroom. We talk about the rivers she’ll be rafting on, she tells me a story that Kyle told her about rafting down the Yampa River in Colorado (he’s told me the story already but I act like I’m hearing it for the first time), and I try to pretend that the idea of my daughter whipping down a chute of churning water and sharp rocks doesn’t fill me with dread. Driving home, I’m cong
ratulating myself on the good job I did hiding my fears when Bea’s sleepy voice startles me from the passenger side of the car.
“Someone told me in school today that Aunt Christine talked about that insane asylum up near Poughkeepsie during her lecture. Isn’t it where Dad is?”
“Who at your school knew about the lecture?” I ask.
“Denise Levitan. Her mother was in your year at Penrose. Did you know her?”
I shake my head, but then sneaking a look at Bea out of the corner of my eye, see she’s not looking at me. She’s closed her eyes and I realize she’s giving me a chance not to answer.
“Yes,” I say, “Neil was at Briarwood, but I don’t know for sure if he’s still there. Since your grandma Essie died I haven’t had any updates and that’s … what? Almost three years ago.”
“Oh.” That’s all she says. Then she lifts her hand to a curl of hair at her temple and begins twirling it around her finger. The same gesture she’d made as a baby when she was soothing herself to sleep.
“Do you want me to find out if he’s still there?” I ask, my voice suddenly hoarse. The sound it makes in my throat reminds me of the moaning sound the Lady window made today when it scraped against its stone setting.
“I don’t know … yeah, I mean I’d like to know where he is at least. Do you think he might have gotten … better? We learned in Health about all these new drugs they use for mood disorders. Maybe one of those would work for him.”
I imagine Bea studiously copying down pharmaceutical names in her spiral notebook and making a pact with herself to bring up the subject with me. “I’ll call your aunt Sarah tomorrow and ask her,” I tell Bea. “I’ll see what I can find out before you leave.”
It’s eleven when we get back to the loft. Bea heads straight for her room, but I sit out on the roof for a while, staring at the lights on the train tracks and the dark water of the river beyond them. Across the river the hills where Penrose had built his grand estate are dark, thanks to the fact that Penrose specified in his will that the property couldn’t be developed.