Solsbury Hill A Novel (3 page)

It still felt like rain outside, but it was just the damned pressure of rain about to explode and clouds as dark as the steel wool under the kitchen counter. Long after midnight, Eleanor’s mind was still restless and she called Miles again. She wanted to lie down next to him, but he didn’t answer his phone.

There were no more bear claws in the fridge, there was no coffee in the canister, there were no apples in the bowl or blueberries in the freezer. Eleanor grabbed her purse and made her way down six flights of stairs to the ground and up the street to First Avenue to catch a cab.

“Eighty-third and Columbus.” Her head rattled with the windowpane. Her eyes closed, she recollected images of their weekend at the lake: the first time she popped up on one ski, the fresh fruit jam they made and spread on biscuits he’d bought in the little town. They’d kissed each other, that day, with sticky faces, licked jam off each other’s lips, tasted the crumbs of oats and berries. She remembered how her body
ached in the morning after skiing. She remembered the feeling of gliding on water, breaking through the wake, Miles’ face turned toward her, perched on the top of the seat as he took her around the full perimeter of the lake.

Eleanor had said yes to Ms. Angle on the phone, but she wasn’t at all sure she should have, not at all certain she had the courage to go. She hoped Miles might come with her to Yorkshire, as she’d never really been anywhere without him.

“Thanks,” she said as she paid the cabdriver. She looked up at the brownstone’s black front door and brass lion knocker. It had once been his parents’ pied-à-terre. She’d been here so rarely.

The street was silent and all the houses were ready for Halloween, just days away. There were fallen leaves on the ground. The air smelled of earth and worms and damp. She took the steps one at a time. Stopped at the top and looked east down the long, quiet street. Perspective drew her eye to as far as she could see and then she turned to the heavy lion’s head. As she reached for the bell she noticed the ring on her right hand, the band of jet and the lovely carved cameo. It had arrived in a pink box tied with a black satin ribbon, and inside the box was a handwritten note:
A Victorian ring of Whitby jet, sent with love, passed down for generations and meant to be yours. Aunt Alice.

Eleanor pulled the lion’s head just to feel the weight of it, dropped it against the plate, and heard the hollow sound resonate in the inside hall. She leaned her back against the door
and wondered if she should use her key. Miles often used his key to her place, but she spent so little time here, hardly any at all.

Still, she longed to feel the flannel sheets on her skin. She pictured him with three pillows around him all in pale-blue-and-white-striped flannel. She would take off her clothes and slip silently into his warm, high, king-size bed.

The key was lost in her capacious bag. She fumbled past lipsticks, pens, wallet, coin pouch, bills she meant to mail, then felt the satin ribbon. She opened the main door and then the bright red door to his apartment. Through the dark living room, she saw a low light from his bedroom glowing into the hall.

The tangle of skin was confusing at first. The breathing was vivid; they hadn’t heard her come in. She regretted using the key as she stood there. When she came to a dead stop on the carpet in the hallway, she hoped she’d got spun about and was in the wrong apartment.

If she hadn’t used the key in her bag, she’d have rung the bell. If it hadn’t rained, she might not be here. If Ms. Angle hadn’t called, she’d be asleep in bed now. Time might unwind. There would be a different tomorrow.

Eleanor stood in the hallway and watched, without Miles hearing her heartbeat or catching her shadow or feeling her.

There must be presences that linger all around us, she thought, which we simply ignore. We must get used to shadows nearby.

The light was so perfect it may as well have been on film.
The light from his bathroom shone on their bodies. He’d left the light on and the door slightly open, so he could see the naked body that lay beneath his naked body, which Eleanor could see was tangled in cotton sheets. Not striped and not flannel.

He’d left the light on so he could watch as the pixie tipped her head back, the bony rise of her throat, had left it on so Eleanor could see the urgent way he sucked the unfamiliar mocha skin and the fervency of his kisses. She did this and he did that, and their bodies glistened as if they’d sprayed themselves with oil for maximum effect. Miles was moving as if he couldn’t manage enough parts at once, had left the girl’s neck and was holding her tight to flip her on top of him when he saw Eleanor’s face, just as she decided she was leaving and had begun to back her way down the hall. Too close to coming to stop, Miles finished before he pushed the girl aside and scrambled naked down the hall after her. The front door and the street door were open. The key was on the table in the front hall.

E
leanor went straight to Soho House, where Miles had a membership, to get drunk and take a wild dip in the pool on the roof, but after a quick drink at the bar she hadn’t the heart. Instead, she went home to her apartment where she broke dishes, wreaked a little havoc, and realized she had to get out of there, too. She sat in an all-night café till the sun came up and then, in the early hours of the
morning, headed toward the sliver of a workshop she rented in SoHo. At Balthazar she stopped and bought two hot chocolates and a bag of buns to share with her assistant who would be there, as she always was, in the quiet of a Sunday morning.

Gladys was about to cut into a swath of wool when she saw Eleanor looking tired and lost as she struggled to open the door. Gladys hurried to open it for her. “Hey,” she chimed.

Eleanor lifted the Balthazar bag.

“Are you okay?” Gladys asked.

Eleanor shrugged, strained a smile. “I knew I’d find you here.” She made an effort to sound strong and cheery.

“It’s true. I like the quiet,” Gladys said. “I sneak out early, before breakfast, leave the paper and the kids’ waffles to Harry.” Gladys took the cups and bag and placed a gentle hand on Eleanor’s back. “You don’t look so good.”

“I’m all right. I’ve kind of been up all night.”

“I can see that.”

Eleanor picked up a pile of sweaters to sort. “I had a call from England, from a friend of my aunt. My aunt’s not well and they want me to come for a visit.” Eleanor dropped the sweaters and sat down.

Gladys pulled up a chair beside her. “I didn’t know you had an aunt in England.”

“She’s my mother’s sister. She’s fifteen years older than my mom, and it sounds like I should go. Did I already say it was her friend who called?”

Gladys nodded.

“I wasn’t sure at first if I’d go, but now I think I will.”

“This was last night?”

“Yep. I think I should. Her friend was pretty insistent. She said it was important, so . . .” Eleanor shrugged, and as she shrugged her eyes filled with a thin line of tears.

“Well, it’s a good time to go,” Gladys said tentatively. “The collection’s sold, production’s under way, it goes on pretty well without you, and I’m here in case of anything.” She spoke softly. “Hey, you’ve done it, El.” She quoted a yoga teacher they shared, with a lovely singsong voice, “In doing, in doing, it is done.”

This made Eleanor smile.

“You’ve made it happen,” Gladys said and gazed at her. “You deserve to celebrate.”

Eleanor took a breath as if it were her first in quite a while. Tears flowed silently.

Gladys’ voice grew even softer. “Eleanor, tell me what’s up . . .”

Eleanor closed her eyes. “I’m just tired.” She’d been working day and night since she was in high school, hadn’t gone to college with her friends because she’d already started making clothes and had made a small name for herself—reviewers called her the Wool Wunderkind for the clothes she made from recycled woolens accented with fabulous buttons. For more than ten years, she’d worked without a rest.

“I get that.” Gladys hesitated before she returned to her cutting.

The quiet rhythm of scissors slicing soothed Eleanor and she lay back on the flokati rug. She felt spent from inside out, wracked from her bones to her skin. “You must be great with your kids,” she said.

“Why’s that?” asked Gladys.

“You’re just so gentle. You don’t ever press. What’s your favorite thing with them, the thing you like to do best?”

The scissors made their silvery sound. “When we curl up with books and Lily keeps up with the words and Jonah just listens to the song of it all. That’s my favorite time.”

In the silence, Eleanor said, “If I didn’t make clothes, I think I’d make books.”

“Me, too.” The cloth fell away as Gladys cut, and a piece fell to the floor as the scissors turned a corner. “One day they’ll be reading on their own and I’ll miss it,” she said.

“We used to have this photograph—my dad framed it but I don’t know where it went—of my mother reading to me in a hammock. I was probably three or four then.” Eleanor couldn’t remember herself that small but she had cherished the picture, could almost feel the hammock swaying, hear the rustle of the low wind in the Chinese elm, loved the moment captured, her mother just kissing the back of her head, her hair probably warm from playing in the summer sun all day and her innocent eyes intent on the picture book’s page.

Gladys came back to the table and sat down, took a sip of the chocolate.

“You’re going to have an adventure in England, I can feel it. Whatever happens, it’s going to be good over there.”

Eleanor’s eyes welled again.

“Do you want to tell me? Do you want to talk about it?”

Eleanor shook her head no. “Thanks, though.”

“For how long will you go?”

Eleanor shrugged. “I hadn’t even thought of it.” She looked up at Gladys, her eyes blank with incomprehension.

“Well, you know I’ve got things covered here,” Gladys said.

Eleanor reached across the table to touch her hand. “You’re sure it’s not too much? I guess that’s what I needed to know.”

“I’m positive,” Gladys said.

Miles tried to contact her every way he could that day, and in the late afternoon he knocked at the door, even tried his key when she didn’t answer, but the chain stopped him, and though it was hard to hear him stand silent on the other side of the door, hard not to go after him as she heard his feet move slowly toward the stairs, she had nothing to say. On Monday morning, the sun rose over the Williamsburg Bridge as she headed for JFK.

PART

TWO