The Other Life (18 page)

“
Please
don’t give me advice on how to make my marriage work! You’re not one to talk.” Quinn gasped and covered her mouth. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

Georgette waved away the remark and then wrapped her arms around her friend. “It’s okay,” she said. “Because you’re right—I absolutely suck at marriage. But I do know one thing. You and Lewis need some time alone together.”

Quinn couldn’t imagine what “time alone together” would do for her marriage if Lewis wouldn’t speak to her, and by the time he got home her anxiety had been displaced by anger. She was petulant all through dinner, responding to his queries about her state of mind with curt answers like “I’m fine,” or “Don’t worry about it.”

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. Why couldn’t he just let it rest? Didn’t he understand she wasn’t in the mood to talk?

“Whatever,” she said.

“That sounds angry.”

“Just leave it alone, Lewis.”

“Honey, how can I help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

That did it. “I guess you don’t like it when I won’t talk to you, right?” she said, seething.

“Huh?”

“How the hell do you think
I
feel when you turn to stone around me and yet go running to Georgette to spill your guts?”

“What?”

“I saw you jog over there to talk to her last night. And then today, the first thing you did after we spoke was call Georgette to talk about it!”

“Honey—”

“The other night,” she went on, “you made a big fuss over the fact that you’re there for me. Well, I’m here for you, too, Lewis, only you seem to be able to talk to anyone but me!”

“Calm down.”

“I will
not
calm down!” She was crying now. “You’re the most important thing in my life and you’re closing me out.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Quinn, listen to me. The reason I went to talk to Georgette last night is because I was planning a surprise for you.”

“What?” she said. It was as if the wind suddenly changed direction. Or stopped blowing altogether.

“For your birthday,” he said. “I thought we needed some time together. Some time to have fun and forget about everything else. So I called your aunt and asked if her lake house was available. And then I asked Georgette if she could babysit for Isaac. I want to take you away this weekend, honey. All the arrangements are made. I was going to tell you tomorrow.”

“You did that for me?”

“Yes!”

She collapsed into him. “Oh, Lewis.”

“We really need this,” he said softly.

“We do.”

“So you’re okay with this?” he said. “You want to take this trip?”

She did. In fact, it sounded like a lifesaving prescription. The trip was exactly the kind of escape she needed. Instead of slipping through a portal to another life, she could escape right into her husband’s arms. But it wouldn’t be truly romantic unless they could agree to make it a vacation from stress. This trip could be like a chance to go back in time to before this pregnancy, before they were even parents. And, given how she had been pestering him to open up to her, she almost couldn’t believe what she was going to say next.

“Under one condition,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“We don’t talk about the baby. I want this to be all about us.”

 

WITH THEIR BICYCLES STRAPPED TO THE BACK OF THE CAR, Quinn and Lewis drove north across the Throgs Neck Bridge, heading for the scenic Taconic Parkway. It was an older highway, with narrow lanes and sharp curves, but it was Quinn’s favorite way to head toward her aunt Bunny’s vacation home in Massachusetts, especially in the fall.

Her choice was rewarded with spectacular bursts of color on all sides. A week ago, half the leaves were still green. A week hence, more than half would be gone, leaving cold, gray branches. But on this crisp Friday morning, the trees offered nature’s most richly dappled autumn palette—a backdrop of warm rusts and earthy browns splashed with brilliant reds, shocking golds, and oranges that seemed almost aflame.

The farther north they headed, the more the horizon rose before them in rounded mountains. Quinn’s appreciation for the splendor of it all was so tied to her relationship with her mother that she didn’t know how to separate the two. For as long as she could remember, her mother made sure that she and Hayden paid attention to the beauty around them. On a day like today she might have said, “Look, children! Do you think any artist could capture this? Could imagine this out of nothingness? Only God. And it’s all for us. It’s a gift.”

Yes, it was a gift. And her mother’s gift was teaching them to appreciate it. Quinn wished she could express her feelings about it to Lewis without sounding trite. He took his eyes from the road for just a moment to smile at her. He knew. She didn’t have to say a word.

They rode in silence for a few more miles until they came to a scenic overlook and Lewis asked her if she wanted him to pull over. She did.

It was midmorning, and the sun was starting to warm the crispness from the air. It could turn out to be an Indian summer kind of day. They stood, looking out at the vista—nature’s canvas of autumn colors brushing the mountainous scoops all the way to the horizon.

Lewis put his arm around her. “I’m glad we came,” he said.

“Me, too.”

They sat on a wood bench, holding hands, enjoying the view and the breeze. She leaned against him. His skin would absorb the scents of nature and later, when they made love, she would breathe in this moment.

They made their way from the Taconic to Route 7, which meandered north from Connecticut to Massachusetts, dotted with charm and more antiques shops than even the most dedicated collector could possibly visit in a day. Quinn had a couple of favorites she liked to stop into, but the best part was discovering some quaint treasure of a shop she had never been to. They traveled off the main road in search of just such bounty.

“There,” she said, pointing.

It wasn’t exactly an antiques shop, but a small gallery with a sign that said FINE ART AND COLLECTIBLES. Lewis pulled into the small gravel lot.

The store was cluttered, with paintings covering every inch of wall and lying in stacks on the floor. Quinn imagined people loved going through the piles in hope of finding an unrecognized Winslow Homer or John Singleton Copley hidden among the canvases. But that wasn’t Quinn’s quest. The treasure she sought was an American artist of lesser fame but more personal interest. Her mother had spent years living and painting in this area, and her work was still sprinkled in small galleries throughout New England, and in the Berkshires in particular. So it wouldn’t be at all unusual to find one of her paintings in a place like this.

The gallery owner was a woman in her seventies, who introduced herself as Eliza Macie. She was erect and fit, with pale blue eyes and fine cheekbones. Good genes, Quinn thought.

“Are most of these local artists?” Quinn asked, hoping to narrow her search to a specific section of the store.

“Everything on the right is local, more or less,” Eliza Macie said. “Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?”

“Nan Mazursky,” Quinn said, giving the woman her mother’s maiden name. “Or Nan Mazursky Gilbert.”

“I used to have a Nan Mazursky,” she said. “Sold it years ago. But these here are community artists who painted in the sixties and seventies, if you want to have a look.”

The woman seemed to know her inventory, so Quinn doubted she would find one of her mother’s creations among these paintings. Still, she would work her way through the indicated stacks, just in case. Meanwhile, Lewis found a table assortment of weather photographs that captured his attention.

Quinn went through framed paintings of landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and abstracts. Occasionally she stopped at a piece that resembled her mother’s style, but never hit pay dirt.

One of the portraits she quickly flipped past caught up with her consciousness a few moments later. Could she have imagined what her brain was telling her she had seen there? She went back to the painting and pulled it out. It was a dark-haired young woman with amber-flecked green eyes painted against a violet background.

“Lewis?” she called. “Can you take a look at this?”

He approached and studied the painting.

“Who does this look like?” Quinn asked.

“You?”

“No, not me. Keep looking.”

He folded his arms as he stared. “Your mother?”

She nodded.

“I see it,” he said. “It looks like a young Nan.”

“And yet . . .” She trailed off, trying to find a way to articulate what it was about the woman in the painting that didn’t feel like her mother.

“Right features, wrong personality?” Lewis offered.

“That’s it,” she said. “There’s a coquettishness to her. Like she knows she’s cute, or hopes you think so. I don’t mean that in a bad way, just an innocent pride in her appearance. But I can’t imagine my mother ever had that kind of girlish vanity. Still, it looks like her.”

Quinn called the gallery owner over and asked her what she knew about this painting. The woman explained that the artist was a local man who studied and lived in the area his whole life.

“Nan Mazursky was my mother,” Quinn said, “and I think this might be a portrait of her.”

“It’s possible,” Eliza Macie said. “I think they both studied under the same local teacher. If you like, I’ll see what I can find out about it and give you a call in a day or two.”

“We’re only in town for the weekend,” Lewis said, writing down his cell phone number. “But that would be great.”

“Where you folks staying?”

Quinn told her where her aunt’s house was, and the gallery owner said she lived just a few blocks away.

“Tell you what I’ll do,” she said. “I’ll take the painting home with me today so you won’t have to travel far if you decide to buy it.”

Quinn and Lewis thanked her, took a card, and were on their way. After stopping for lunch in Great Barrington, they went straight to Aunt Bunny’s house, as Quinn was eager to take the rowboat out onto the lake while it was still daylight.

It was warm enough to leave their sweaters behind, so, wearing T-shirts and jeans, Quinn and Lewis lowered themselves into the rowboat on the banks of Lake Garfield. Lewis took the oars and Quinn relaxed as he rowed them to a secluded inlet, surrounded on three sides by tall trees dropping leaves into the water. In the distance, the gentlest mountains kissed the horizon. A loud flock of geese flew by, and then there was nothing but the sound of the rustling leaves and the water sloshing softly against the small boat.

Quinn tilted her face back toward the sun, realizing it was the last vitamin D she would get to absorb for many months. The only flaw in this perfect moment was that it wouldn’t last. Soon enough, she would have to return to the fear and anxiety. She put her hand on her belly and told herself that no matter what happened, there would be more moments in her life like this. There had to be.