Summertime Guests Page 10

  “Yes.”

  “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sometimes I miss spending time together, just the two of us.” And as soon as the words escape from his mouth, he regrets them. Because what kind of father admits that he wishes he could spend time without his daughter around?

  Marie surprises him, though, when she grabs his hand and says, “Oh, me, too. You’ve no idea.”

  Maybe, he reasons, they should choose one night a week for a date night, a time that they could both look forward to. Surely someone at the hotel could recommend a babysitter. Would a few date nights be enough to get them back to where they were, though? Because that’s what Jean-Paul misses the most, their life as it was, but with Isabella neatly tucked into it. The flirtatious exchanges, the lazy Sunday afternoons reading the paper, making love on a weeknight just because they felt like it, going out to dinner on a Tuesday because Marie had read a review in the paper about a fantastic new restaurant. Talking about the books they’d read (Jean-Paul can’t even remember the title of the last book he read!). Their lives used to be overflowing with culture, with intimacy. And now there’s hardly any. By the time he arrives home from work, they’re both too exhausted to do anything but eat dinner, feed Isabella and crawl into bed.

  He’s been thinking of this year as a year to be gotten through—until the renovated hotel is up and running at full speed, until the baby gets through her colicky stage. Life, he tells himself, will improve. But meanwhile, he’s left Marie to deal with the here and now, to help them over to the other side. And it feels as if she’s mentally keeping track of all the time she tends to the baby while he’s at the hotel, like she might be tallying up her total hours and will one day hand him a bill.

  They’ve arrived at another painting, Le Verre de Porto, where a melancholy woman, cradling an aperitif, stares out at them, while her husband, his back turned, enjoys a smoke. When did he and Marie start to keep score? he wonders. When did they forget to go searching for those pockets of joy hidden in their daily lives? The trips to the bookstores and museums and chocolate shops that were so readily available to them in Paris? And are also available to them here in Boston. Somewhere along the way, probably with sweet Isabella’s birth, they’ve let those moments fall by the wayside so that lately their marriage feels more like a competition, a game of scorekeeping. Only when someone grows afraid of being left behind. That’s when the scorekeeping begins. The answer comes to him unbidden, as if the woman in the painting has spoken directly to him.

  He spins away and lifts Marie’s hand to his lips. “Let’s do this more often.”

  And Marie, his lovely, smart wife, turns to him, a smile playing across her lips, and says, “Yes, all right. Good idea. How about every day, then?”

  Before he can respond, she leads him to a Mary Cassatt painting of small children playing in the sand. Maybe, he thinks, he can persuade her to throw away the scorecard, to get back to the way they used to be. He’d almost forgotten their outings together, how much he enjoyed them. And he feels a stab of guilt that he hasn’t thought sooner to grab his wife by the hand to go exploring their new city together. That’s what they need to do to get their lives back on an even keel, he thinks. More exploring. More pockets of joy. And preferably, as soon as possible.

  * * *

  In the Old Masters wing, Claire peers at a dark, somber painting by Rembrandt. It’s part of a study on the Dutch Golden Era, as the free leaflet informs her, and she pauses to read the label: Artist in His Studio. So, it’s a self-portrait, then, but Rembrandt looks surprisingly unassuming, a wee little man dressed in tattered clothes, his brown hat tipped at an angle. Claire imagines that if she were to paint a self-portrait, she’d err on the side of embellishment, not modesty, as Rembrandt seems to have done. He really isn’t much to look at, even though she understands that’s not the point.

  On the museum map that she consults, the Impressionist wing (her favorite) appears to be located farther down on the second level, and Claire goes in search of it, bypassing the Caravaggios (overly dark and religious) and the Bruegels (slightly more cheerful town scenes). Outside the Rubens room, she pauses for a moment, taking in the huge canvases bathed in dark scarlets, rich tans and creamy browns. In one, a baby’s hands are so exquisitely rendered that Claire is inclined to reach in and touch it, imagining the pudgy fingers entwining with hers. How marvelous, she thinks, that a few brushstrokes can add up to create an image so realistic, so three-dimensional. (Although, to be honest, she could do without quite so many naked women frolicking about in Rubens’s paintings.)

  Walking among all this extraordinary art makes her think that she’s missed out on what could have been a dynamite piece about the MFA for the paper. Of course, Providence has its own museums to tout—the RISD Museum, the Children’s Museum, the John Brown House Museum and the Museum of Natural History, to name a few. They’d run articles on all of them. But it wouldn’t have killed the Providence Dealer to expand its reach a little, highlight this mecca of art that’s less than an hour away. And now, when it seems the paper might not even welcome her back, it’s unlikely she’ll get a chance to pitch the idea at another editorial meeting.

  When Claire finally reaches the Impressionist wing, she drops down on the uncomfortable wooden bench in front of the foyer to catch her breath and gather her thoughts. A moment to be honest with herself. Because, really, isn’t that the other reason why she’s here in Boston? Not only to find Marty but also to escape? To take a little break, as her boss Julian suggested.

  So she’d flubbed a story. But one botched article in thirty-some years wasn’t so terrible, was it? Granted, it was a big story, maybe her biggest yet, alleging that a Providence politician (and alleged mob boss) was dipping into taxpayers’ money for personal gain, but Claire had made certain that every statement was impeccably sourced. Artie McKinnon’s assistant, the woman who shared unlimited access to his emails and accounts, had turned on him, and Claire had given her word that she’d be protected.

  But now McKinnon, of all people, was threatening a lawsuit against the paper, claiming defamation of character, and Claire’s boss had recommended that she take a temporary leave of absence while, as he said, “the brass figured things out.” Which Claire had interpreted to mean Take a long vacation until we can turn this into your early retirement. Ordinarily, she’d protest, fight like hell to stand up to Artie McKinnon and his goons, but even Julian had seemed spooked. “He’s at the top of the mob chain, Claire. We don’t like to mess with guys like that.” And Claire had thought Well, it’s a hell of a time to tell me that now, don’t you think? Without so much as a murmur of disapproval, Julian had signed off on the original idea for the article. Now, when things had gotten uncomfortable, he’d run off like a hound dog, his tail between his legs.

  Maybe, she allows, Julian is truly concerned for her well-being. It’s possible. Her own children, after all, have bought into the conspiracy theory, worried that she’s gotten herself—and by extension, the rest of the family—into a pot of trouble by pointing her finger at the mob. Last time she spoke with her daughter, Amber had sounded positively ready to sign her up for the Witness Protection Program! But isn’t this why Claire became a journalist in the first place? Why anyone becomes a journalist? To keep public officials honest and accountable? Artie McKinnon had been flexing his predatory muscle around Providence for years. It was only a matter of time before someone called him on it.

  But for all their trailblazing bravado, the paper had retracted the article last Friday, offering a formal apology. Claire assumed it would be more than enough to call off McKinnon’s goons. She knows her kids still worry, though. How many times does she have to remind them that she’s a sixty-one-year-old woman who sometimes forgets where she left her glasses or her coffee mug? How much harm can she do?

  Of course, there’s the lamentable matter of a few messy facts—that’s
the most unsettling part. She’d promised herself that if she ever lost her edge in the business, she’d cut out, shut down her byline. Her reputation for almost three decades has been unimpeachable. But when she’d been putting the final touches on the McKinnon article late at night, she’d found herself unable to reconcile a few contradictory items. In one paragraph, she’d written that McKinnon had swindled a dry-cleaning business out of $2,300,000; in the next it was $230,000—an alarming discrepancy. Which was it? To eliminate the figure entirely would unravel too many other allegations in the article. Claire had gone back to check her notes, scrambling for clarification, and had suddenly found herself spiraling down a rabbit hole of panic. The feeling wasn’t unfamiliar exactly—it had happened a few times before—and she rested her head on the table, waiting for the spell to pass.

  But when she resurfaced—a few minutes later? a half hour?—any recollection of what had upset her in the first place was gone. Poof! Sometimes the anxiety had this effect, swept her away on such a colossal wave that nothing remained when she resurfaced. A momentary blackout, a brain freeze, her mind empty. When she got up to get some water, the office was eerily dark, only the blue blink of screen savers lighting the path to the watercooler. Back at her desk, she’d felt an indescribable chill—because nothing was coming back to her. Piles of papers stared up at her from her desk. She searched her computer screen, her notes, anything to jog her memory.

  Gradually, it dawned on her that she was staring at the McKinnon file, still open on her screen. She’d yet to send it! She quickly closed out of the document, hit Send, and off it went with only minutes to spare till press time.

  Only later, when the piece ran the next day, did the inconsistencies and contradictions swim to the surface again. There was the money discrepancy, two different names referring to the same person (an alias, but still)—and who knew what else. Fear slid over her while she read. This is bad.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, but are you all right?” Claire startles. The museum guard, an older man with a mop of gray hair and watery blue eyes, studies her, as if perhaps she’s lost. She glances over at Monet’s Water Lilies series. How long has she been sitting here?

  “Oh, yes, I’m fine. Sorry, I just needed a minute to rest.”

  “No problem.” The guard waits a moment. “Can I help you up?”

  “No, no. That won’t be necessary. Thank you, though.” She nearly leaps to her feet. It’s one thing to call her ma’am, quite another to help her up. She’s not that old. “The Monets are lovely, aren’t they?” She hopes she sounds semi-knowledgeable, not someone deserving of his pity, and she sets off determinedly for Renoir’s A Girl with a Watering Can, another favorite.

  * * *

  In another wing, Modern Art, Jason grips Gwen’s hand tightly. They’ve been here for over an hour, which by his count is an hour too long. But after their tennis match earlier this morning, Gwen insisted on going to the MFA. “Winner gets to choose what we do for the rest of the afternoon.” This had included snatching an autograph from Ray Romano (who’d turned out to be a genuinely nice guy), lounging by the pool, playing croquet, and then visiting the museum in the evening. (The concierge at the hotel had tipped Gwen off that on Wednesdays the MFA stayed open late.) Jason would have been perfectly content hanging by the pool and watching his girlfriend slather sunblock on her legs, but she’d insisted on getting a taste of culture while in Boston. “C’mon, it’ll be fun,” she’d said. “Take your mind off whatever’s bothering you.”

  “Nothing’s bothering me,” he said.

  “Yeah, right. Which is why you keep checking your phone.”

  “Mea culpa.” (Jason still hasn’t called his department head back. Why ruin his vacation completely? He can’t delay it forever, though. He’ll need to get his side of the story out there before Charlie tries to bully the university into giving him a decent, completely undeserved grade.)

  So, he and Gwen had hightailed it over to the museum in an Uber, their driver nearly colliding with a Green Line train that ran on its own track with its own set of stoplights. There was, Jason thought, something unnerving about seeing subway cars out in the daylight, like trying to play dodgeball in a pinball machine. Too many moving parts. College kids, dressed in shorts and Boston University T-shirts, flocked the sidewalks. Their driver explained that a lot of students stuck around during the summertime. It was so unlike their small New Hampshire campus, where the inside joke was that the college was an island unto itself—once you were in, there was no way out. But they’d made it safely to the museum, and ever since, he’s been counting down the minutes till they can leave and grab dinner. He’d spotted an Uno Pizzeria not too far away, a couple of bars that seemed like good options.

  Jason’s hands are stuffed deep inside his jeans pockets, and the sunburn on the back of his neck is beginning to throb. Something about museums always makes him twitchy. It’s the same feeling he used to get as a young boy whenever he visited his grandmother in the nursing home. The smells aren’t comparable (thankfully no urine or disinfectant here), but the sense of being surrounded by relics from the past makes him antsy. The irony isn’t lost on him—a historian who doesn’t care for museums—but nevertheless, the place makes him feel weirdly depressed, like everyone, no matter how famous, is going to die anyway, so why bother? If he were to share this view with Gwen, though, she’d say that’s precisely why everything matters: because art survives life. But he doesn’t feel like getting into a tautological argument right now, so he keeps his mouth shut.

  At the moment, she’s leading him by the hand toward a life-size bronze sculpture. “Cool, right?” she asks, and Jason offers a lackluster nod.

  He thinks it looks like a couple of naked women hugging. When he reads the card, though, it says Two Fish Jumping. He laughs, shakes his head. “Sorry, I don’t see it.”

  “I think you’re supposed to be open to the possibility,” she counters, “even if they don’t literally resemble fish.”

  “But that’s just it. Why make a sculpture of two fish if they don’t look remotely like fish?” He doesn’t mean to be difficult. Or, maybe he does.

  In another room, there’s a papier-mâché sculpture that reminds him of a bag of McDonald’s french fries, but he knows better than to say so. The label identifies it as Purse of Sorrows. His eyebrows flicker upward, but Gwen ignores him. “Moving on,” she announces without further comment.

  Somewhere around the Andy Warhol paintings, Jason’s attention swerves toward two guys talking near an enormous sculpture of a dog fashioned out of metal slats. They’ve spied Gwen on the other side of the room but haven’t yet connected her with him. He watches while the taller one, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and bright blue Nike sneakers, nudges his buddy and says something under his breath. Slowly, the guy inches his way toward her. She’s studying Warhol’s painting Red Disaster when the guy makes his move.

  “You like it?” he asks, and Jason watches her back stiffen. His girlfriend is distinctly attractive, and unsolicited attacks are par for the course. But Jason’s typically not within viewing distance when they happen. Usually he hears about them after the fact.

  “Yeah.” She turns her back on the guy and quickly moves on to a painting of a double helix exploding. Jason leaves his corner. He can’t get to her side fast enough, but when he does, he inserts himself in the narrow space between Gwen and the other dude.

  “Hey, babe.” He moves toward her, wrapping a possessive arm around her waist. Now that Jason’s within striking distance, he sees the guy is younger than he’d originally assumed, probably midtwenties, with slicked-back dark hair and bright blue eyes. Jason bets his hands are soft like a baby’s.

  “Hey, man, sorry. I didn’t know she was with you.” Blue Eyes’s hands are raised, palms open, apologetic.

  Jason pretends to play it off. “No worries. I mean, how would you know, right?”

  Blue Eyes nods,
as if he’s relieved they’ve reached a gentleman’s agreement, as if Gwen is a piece of property to be bargained over.

  “Jason, it’s fine,” she whispers, her hand clasping his, perhaps sensing his growing anger through the tight press of his fingers. “He was just asking about the painting.”

  “Mm-huh.”

  The next several seconds happen so quickly that even Jason’s not sure he could recount them precisely. But when Blue Eyes’s buddy approaches, Jason could swear he hears him whisper to his friend, “Bitch is already taken.” It’s a word that instantly triggers memories of his father shouting at his mom, and it’s as if a switch that he wasn’t even aware existed inside of him goes off.

  He finds himself letting go of Gwen’s waist, taking a lunge toward Blue Eyes and swinging at his face. His fist collides with the bridge of the guy’s hooked nose, as if in slow motion, and releases a sickening, cracking sound.

  “Dude! What the fuck?” the friend shouts, dropping to his knees to see if his buddy, who’s now moaning on the floor and cupping his bloody nose, is all right.

  “Jason!” Gwen yells and tries to yank him away. “Stop it! What are you doing?” The rage in him is so fierce, so intense that it’s all he can do to restrain himself from kicking Blue Eyes in the stomach. But his buddy quickly forms a body shield in front of him. When Gwen yells “Stop it!” a second time, Jason is swept back to his mother’s screams, her voice ringing in his ears. Stop it! Stop hitting him! He’s only a kid! You’re hurting him. There are his father’s punches landing on his stomach again, his body curled into a protective ball on the living-room couch.

  He stumbles backward, unsure of what’s just happened here. His right hand is bloody, the knuckles scratched up. In an effort to make sure nothing’s broken, he tries to straighten his fingers, his thumb. A small group of people has gathered at the edge of the room, where someone is calling for a guard. And then, for the police.