Rare Objects (34 page)

I stared at his empty hands. “Thank you for seeing me, Father.”

He said nothing. Instead, he waited.

Father Grady had years of practice in waiting behind him. He knew, perhaps better than any man in Boston, the art of silence. In a congregation full of first- and second-generation Irish immigrants, people uniquely skilled in the lavish use of language, he'd learned to navigate all manner of domestic, political, and spiritual
crises by carefully rationing his words. He knew better than to argue, debate, cajole, or sympathize; any conversation was likely to muddy the waters of clear, calm reflection. Quiet unnerved his people, disarmed them. It forced them into that uncomfortable empty space where only God would go and where humor, charm, and intellect were of no use.

I looked down at the pattern on the rug, well worn and faded by sunlight.

“Things aren't going very well,” I admitted after a while.

Still another minute passed before I added, “My mother, she thinks I've lost my way. That I drink too much, go out too often. I guess she's right.”

Just saying it out loud seemed to open the floodgates. Taking a handkerchief from my handbag, I dabbed tears from my cheeks. “I've done things, things I regret, things I don't want to think about. . . . I've tried to change, Father. I've tried to be different. I've done everything I can think of—gone to different places, had different jobs, gotten new friends, but I'm still lost.”

“One often meets one's fate on the road one takes to avoid it.”

“I don't want to be this way.”

He leaned back a little and pressed his palms together, fingertips against his lips as if on the verge of saying something.

Outside the children laughed and screamed.

“Well, aren't you going to tell me what God wants?” I prompted.

“I haven't a clue what God wants for you, Maeve. He doesn't talk to me about your life—he only talks to me about mine. If you are interested in what he has to say, you'll have to listen for yourself.”

“But then why am I here?”

“You're here, I take it, because you've been told to be here. Am I right?” He smiled a little, as if we were playing a guessing
game, and he'd won. “You're under the illusion that someone else is going to tell you what to do or how to do it. But I'm afraid you're a little too old for that now. Now is the time when you must take hold of your life, decide who and what you want to be. You've had a good education, a loving home.” He gave an almost imperceptible shrug that reminded me of Mr. Kessler. “You know what to do.” And with that, he stood up.

“Is that it?” Suddenly I panicked.

He looked at me carefully. “Is there something else I can do for you?”

“But you haven't given me any answers! I mean, I don't know . . . What if I don't even believe in God anymore?” I blurted, provoking him.

I expected a reaction, but apparently my doubts weren't as interesting as I thought they were.

“Well, luckily you don't need to believe in God in order for him to exist. His existence is not contingent on your being convinced. But as far as your life is concerned, well, that's another matter. I think you do need to be convinced, Maeve, of something. Even if it's only that you're not quite as uniquely flawed as you imagine you are.” He held out a thin, gnarled hand. “May God go with you.”

The interview was over. He turned again to look out at the schoolyard.

I walked into the dark stone corridor of the church.

The door closed, and the sounds of the playground, the universal echo of childhood, faded behind me.

Sitting alone on the back seat of the trolley, I stared out of the dirty window. I hadn't wanted to see Father Grady; I didn't think
I needed his counsel or advice. Now I was offended that he hadn't lectured me or given me an ultimatum. I felt utterly lost.

The trolley passed a Salvation Army soup kitchen. The line stretched down the street, round the corner; men of all ages, heads bowed, coats drawn tight against the cold, shuffling forward for watery soup and stale bread. Every day I watched them; it was normal now. Then I saw my own reflection staring back at me in the glass, the same round-eyed hollow look of hopelessness and quiet defeat.

To strive
,
to seek
,
to find
,
and not to yield.

I thought of what Mr. Winshaw had said to me when we argued: that I didn't know what I wanted.

I took out my wallet. There, folded into the bill section, was Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem “Ulysses,” torn from Mr. Winshaw's book.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

As tho' to breathe were life! . . .

. . . that which we are, we are:

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

And there was the emphatic “Yes!” written in the margin.

I held my finger over it. I wanted this; I had a craving for “Yes!”—a physical longing that ached in my chest. But how could I find it? Where did it live, buried beneath the failure and disappointment of my life?

The trolley stopped at an unfamiliar corner, and suddenly I stood up, pushed my way to the exit, and got off. I stood there a
moment, looking down one street and then the other, unsure of where I was or which way to go.

Then I began to walk, very quickly.

I walked to feel the strength of my body in motion, the building momentum of possibility. And most of all just to remind myself that I could.

T
he cold spring softened, blossomed. Early summer arrived green, fresh, and fragrant. Cherry trees exploded into lush candyfloss blooms on Charles Street, and the thick damp fog of winter's chill dispersed, leaving behind a tender, delicate warmth.

Now I propped the shop door open and filled vases with bright red tulips. People strolled along the streets, taking their time, lingering longer in the evening. The shop stayed open later and customers drifted in, staying to browse.

Life was quiet and uneventful, temporarily suspended, like an intermission between acts. James Van der Laar still formed the central focus of my thoughts though he was abroad, traveling between continents. I consoled myself that I could use his absence to pull myself together, a hope that sustained me through the dull hours of peace and quiet that followed Mr. Winshaw's departure to lecture in Philadelphia. It was surprising how much I missed him too.

As for Diana, there was no word. What she'd said the last time I'd seen her still smarted, not least because she was right. My thoughts and feelings about her were as tangled as a ball of fishhooks; I was both sorry and humiliated, missing our former freedom and afraid of it, longing to be forgiven and yet dreaming of cutting things to say when we finally met again. I seesawed from shame to superiority and back again, with no resting place in between.

But I needn't have bothered: day after day it was just Mr. Kessler, Persia, and me. And after work I went to see Mr. Baylor, the man Max had told me about.

“You seem much better, Miss Fanning,” Mr. Kessler commented one morning. “Much calmer,” he elaborated.

“I suppose I am calmer,” I admitted, pleased that someone had noticed a difference.

But I didn't expand, so he didn't pursue the point. Instead he accepted the change with the same grave attitude with which he accepted most good things in his life: as divine gifts that were diminished or even removed when questioned.

Initially, Ma was suspicious of my efforts. Why was I spending my evenings at an Episcopalian church, of all places, rather than at my own? And who was this Mr. Baylor? What could he offer that I couldn't find by going to either the library or confession?

But there was little point in discussing my private conversations with Mr. Baylor, the lay therapist Max had recommended at St. Emmanuel, with her. She wouldn't understand. Not because she didn't want to, but because she couldn't. That was one of the first things he explained to me—that people who weren't afflicted as I was wouldn't comprehend the lengths I had to go to.

Unlike with Dr. Joseph, I never confided to Mr. Baylor the details of my past, and he didn't ask. That alone made me trust him more than anyone else I'd ever met. Instead, his advice was entirely practical, his attitude strenuously positive. Once a hopeless alcoholic near death, Mr. Baylor had gone on to “cure” himself through his own techniques and was now devoted to helping others. He sat across from me week after week, in his comfortable study at St. Emmanuel, a trim, elegant man with lively dark eyes and an alert military bearing. It was impossible to imagine him drunk or debauched. But every once in a while he would share a story from his past, and I would realize that he'd known the kind of baffling misery I had too. This made it easier for me to follow his advice.

“First and foremost, you must accept that you have a nervous mind, Miss Fanning,” he said, “full of fear and worry, prone to irritability and anxiousness. Like a fretting toddler, this mind needs to be calmed, reassured, and refocused.”

“And how do I do that?”

“You must relax. Resist nothing and regret nothing! Now close your eyes, and I will guide you on how to still your thoughts.”

It sounded simple enough, but it was surprisingly difficult in practice. In fact, I'd never felt as anxious and irritable as I did when I stopped drinking. Every sound grated, every thought raced out of control toward impending doom. Suddenly I was permanently on edge. It was as if I'd been numb before and could now feel every single shade and color of emotion—none of them particularly pleasant or manageable.

But Mr. Baylor had seen it all before. “If you want to know why you drank too much in the first place, try stopping.”

So I kept to a strict daily schedule, just as he prescribed. I woke, ate, and went to bed at the same times, exercised by walking briskly, and practiced the daily relaxation methods he'd taught me. Underneath, however, my head churned, soaring between giddy anticipation and depression. “You must remain positive,” Mr. Baylor advised. “Do something physical when the urge strikes—clean the oven, iron, scrub the floor.” One of the benefits of my “Episcopalian regime” (as my mother put it) was that the apartment was always spotless.

The shop became a refuge. It was easier to keep my mind relaxed and focused when I was working. I began to arrive early and was regularly the last one to leave at night. “Refocus your mind!” Mr. Baylor had urged with his trademark emphatic energy. “Life isn't going to just fall into your lap, Miss Fanning. Go on! Try something new!”

So I tried my hand at creating window displays, which I was rather good at, and spent hours thumbing through antiques catalogues, trying to teach myself how to identify styles and eras. Pieces I'd dismissed before became interesting, silent ambassadors of vanished ages. The hard English mahogany chairs were as stoic and unyielding as the puritanical age in which they were crafted, while the gilded French Empire chaise in sea-green silk was as opulent and voluptuous as a courtesan of the Belle Epoque. I began to develop an eye and an appreciation for where I was and what I was doing. And right now, I had to believe that was enough.

Then suddenly, Diana reappeared.

It was on the day Mr. Kessler finally sold the Mozart tea table that I saw her again. Charlie was wrapping the table in old blankets, getting it ready to load onto a truck, when Diana strolled in through the open shop door as if nothing had ever happened, wearing a blue summer dress and bright red sandals. She looked tanned and lovely, and had a white Yorkshire terrier on a red leather leash with her.

“Oh, look!” She ran her fingers over the top of the table, gave a sigh. “I was going to buy that! For my little hideaway, Mr. Kessler!” She stuck out her lower lip. “I feel so
betrayed
!”

The dog growled and barked at the African figures while Charlie stared at her, open-mouthed, as if he'd never seen a female before.

“But I have another one here.” Mr. Kessler hurried over to an eighteenth-century traveling bureau. “This one is a
much
finer piece.”

“But it's not listened to Mozart play scales,” she said sadly. “I cannot live with such a lack of musical appreciation in my furniture. Surely you understand that!”

Only after she'd charmed everyone else did she turn her attention
to me. It was as if she needed to prove that she could still dominate all men in her path—that this power mitigated her relationship with Max and trumped any ambiguity. I could feel her determination to show me, to prove her influence.

“This is Henry.” She scooped up the dog and handed him to me; he licked my nose. “Isn't he adorable? Come and have a turn round the block with us.”

As soon as we were out the door, though, the air of charm and lightness disappeared, replaced by an awkward emptiness.

There'd been so many things I'd rehearsed in my head, curt little speeches and questions, but now their intensity faded to dull confusion.

“How are you?” she asked tentatively.

“Great.”

“You're angry.”

I didn't know what I was.

“Forgive me.” Her strange blue eyes were dimmed, hollow. “Please, May.”

“I know I made an ass of myself that night, that I behaved badly—”

“That wasn't it.” She cut me off, eyes focused on the ground. “It wasn't your fault.”

“Then whose was it?”

“I didn't think you'd want to be around me . . . once you knew.”

“I don't care.”

And I didn't. I minded that she'd not been there when I woke up, and that Max had been the one to tell me to stay away, and I minded that she'd refused to see me. But what she did with Max didn't matter.

We walked on.

“I wanted to come sooner,” she said after a while, “really I did. But to be honest, I couldn't remember where you worked.”

I gave her a sour look. “You've been here a thousand times!”

“I know.” She kept her eyes on Henry, trotting along just in front of us. “But you see, this time the treatments were more frequent, stronger. They tried something new too. Aversion therapy. When I came home, I couldn't remember anything for quite a while. It took me a week, May, even to remember your name.”

She said it so calmly that at first I thought I'd misheard her. Then, even though it was a bright, sunny afternoon, I felt my skin go cold. “Where?”

“A private hospital in Maine.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing I want to talk about.”

Her evasiveness frightened me; I imagined the worst—her sprawled across a floor.

“Did you want to go?” I pressed. “I mean, did you choose to, or were you made to go?”

“What difference does that make?” she answered blankly.

Henry stopped by a tree to relieve himself, and we waited.

“Are you all right now?” I wanted reassurance.

She frowned. “I seem all right, don't I?” It was a genuine question, as if she wasn't sure.

“Why won't you tell me what happened?”

A deep furrow cut across her brow. “I fell in love,” she admitted. “I fell in love with someone I shouldn't have.”

I thought about Max, how protective she was. “But Max cares for you too, Diana. I'm sure of it.”

“It's gone now.” She took a deep breath. “They took it away in
the hospital. Did you ever go to that man I asked Max to tell you about? The one at the church?”

“Mr. Baylor? Yes, I did.”

“Did he help?”

“Yes, I guess he does.”

“That's good. Really good.” She smiled at me, relieved. “I want you to be happy.”

Her concern touched me. Although I didn't want to admit it, she'd helped me that night. Her harsh words had made it impossible for me to ignore my problems. “He's quite clever about all sorts of things. Do you want to speak to him?”

“Maybe. I'm not sure.”

“Have you spoken to Max since you've been back?”

“Why?” She looked up sharply, frightened or offended, I couldn't tell which. Her eyes narrowed, and she seemed to be calculating something, something that proved too difficult to discern from my expression. “No. I haven't seen her. And I'm not going to,” she said finally.

We'd come full circle round the block and were standing in front of the shop again. Diana was uneasy now, on edge. She stared fixedly at the dog. “I'm better now. Much better than I was. It's going to work this time, I know.”

Her determination made her seem all the more fragile.

“Diana—”

“Actually, I'm going to go home,” she interrupted, smiling apologetically. “I get tired so easily. I just wanted to see you, to apologize. Coming here was probably a mistake.”

“I've missed you, you know.”

“Really?” Her eyes softened and for a moment she seemed hopeful. “Most people grow tired of me after a while. I wear them
out. They like me in the beginning, and then when they see who I really am . . .”

“But not me.” I took her hand. “Mr. Baylor's been good to me. You can trust him.”

“Yes, I'll think about it. I promise.” She removed her hand carefully, as if the physical contact were dangerous, possibly even painful. “I'm glad you're doing well, May. Really I am.”

“You are too. You look really wonderful—so healthy and tanned!” I said, even though I didn't believe it.

“It's in my blood. We Afrikaners go brown at the first sign of sun.”

Flagging down a cab, she climbed in, and Henry jumped up on her lap. I noticed her nervously twisting the pearls she still wore round her neck. “I'll be in touch,” she called, reaching to close the door, “and we'll have some adventures. Just like old times!”

“Yes, that's right. Of course.”

As the taxi pulled out, she rolled down the window, and the little white dog stuck his head out, barking excitedly.

“Mr. Kessler,” I asked, standing in the doorway of his office, “have you ever heard of an Afrikaner?”

He looked up from his desk. “You mean from South Africa?”

“Yes.”

He leaned back. “Are you referring to the Van der Laars? The Van der Laars are Boers. South African natives.”

“But I thought African natives would be Negro, wouldn't they?”

“Not exactly. Boer is the Dutch name for ‘farmer,' given to the settlers who came to Africa in the mid-eighteenth century to form settlements for the Dutch East India Company,” he explained.
“You see, the company needed to colonize the area for its own stability, and not many Europeans were interested in going to Africa at that time. So the original settlers were either rural Dutch or Low German, mostly poor farmers, orphans, and later Huguenots, French refugees seeking religious freedom.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “I suppose you're too young to have heard of the Boer Wars?”

I shook my head.

“There were two wars, fought against British colonial rule in South Africa; the last was particularly brutal.”

I leaned against the doorway, trying to follow. “Why is that important?”

“Well, Great Britain had both colonies and growing economic interests in South Africa. The Boer Wars were conflicts for sovereignty and control of the region. And of course, especially in the Van der Laars' case, diamonds.”

“Diamonds?”

“That's right.” He pushed back his chair, and Persia jumped into his lap. “South Africa has some of the richest diamond mines in the world. But they were only discovered in the Kimberley region by accident about sixty or so years ago. The result was something akin to the great gold rush here—the area was suddenly flooded with fortune seekers from all over the world, including the English and, most importantly, Cecil Rhodes, who was an ardent imperialist. The Boers had already been living in the region for centuries. They had their own language, government, and beliefs. However, Rhodes had his own very English vision of Africa. The Boer Wars are the upshot of his rise to political power and his ambition to consolidate all the diamond mines into a single controlling cartel. The Van der Laars are part of that cartel—but only at a tremendous price.”