Twenty-five

JEN WAS COMING BACK from school in the afternoon, a child on either hand, when she saw the van in the street. It was parked outside Anna’s: the back was down, and she saw crates and boxes inside. She puzzled over it for a second or two, her youngest pulling on her arm while trailing her coat along the ground. She glanced down to pick up the coat, and, in that moment, she realized what was happening.

She started to run.

“Mommy!” her little girl complained.

She found the door propped open; inside, there were men’s voices. “Hello?” she called. “Hello?”

They were somewhere far up in the house. She walked down the hallway, looked in the kitchen.

“Grace,” her boy said.

“I don’t think that Grace is home, honey,” she told him. “Here…here.” She fumbled around with the seats, and looked hastily in the cupboards. “You sit here, sweetheart, and take care of Sadie.”

“I want to go home,” he told her.

“In a second,” she said. “Here’s the lemonade. Pour your sister something to drink. And don’t go out in the yard. Don’t move, OK? Just for two minutes.”

She raced up the stairs.

On the landing, she found James Garrett.

“What’s happening?” she asked him. “What are you doing?”

“Hello, Jen,” he said. He looked gray, she noticed; exhausted.

“Is Grace here?” she asked.

“No,” he told her. “Grace is at the hospital.”

She looked at the portfolio that he was holding. He had it balanced over one arm, and had evidently been turning the sheets of paper.

“Who’s upstairs?” she asked.

“I’m just arranging something for Anna,” he said. “A collection she wanted.”

Her gaze kept drifting to the portfolio. It contained Anna’s botanical drawings.

“I always liked these,” he mused. “They’re really well done.” He turned one of the pictures for her to see. “What is this called?” he asked.

“I don’t know. James, who is upstairs? What are they doing?”

“And this?” He was holding up another drawing.

“It’s the Meconopsis,” she said, only half paying attention, her eyes fixed on the stairwell.

He smiled sadly at her. “The what?”

“I believe it’s some kind of poppy.” She looked back at him, feeling herself blush. Upstairs, she could hear something heavy being maneuvered across the floor.

James was looking steadily at her. “You didn’t say a poppy,” he said. “You gave it half of its Latin name.” He glanced down at the sheet. “Meconopsis integrifolia.” He nodded to himself. “And what would Meconopsis punicea be?”

“I don’t know,” Jen said.

He closed the portfolio carefully, and tied the cloth string to fasten it. “It’s red, Jennifer,” he said quietly. “It’s another poppy, and very rare.”

“Is it?” she said.

“I wonder,” he mused, putting the portfolio by his feet, “if we might stop playing games?”

“Games?” she echoed. “What games?”

“Well,” he said, “for instance, the game where I show you something that has been under lock and key—along with a number of other items—and you at first seem to have some sort of understanding and recognition of what I show you, and then, in the next moment, you pretend that you don’t.”

Jen’s heart did a slow somersault. “You’ve broken into Anna’s desk,” she said.

“Broken into it?” he repeated. “Do you know, until this afternoon, I had no idea that there was anything locked in that room?” He shook his head, almost sorrowfully. “No, I didn’t break in,” he said. “But I found a key sitting on top of the table, and I found that the key opened the desk.”

“Those are Anna’s private things,” Jen said.

“Not private to you, apparently,” James answered.

“If Anna’s shown them to me, that’s no business of yours, either,” Jen retorted.

There was another noise from Anna’s studio above them. “What the hell is going on up there?” Jen muttered. She put her hand on the banister to start up the steps.

Immediately, James put his hand on her wrist. “They’re bringing something down,” he said. “Don’t get in their way.”

She tried to pull her arm away. “Bringing what down?” she demanded.

He didn’t answer her. But he looked down at his own hand rather bemusedly, as if he were surprised to see it on hers. His gaze fixed on their two sets of fingers on the stair rail. “You know,” he mused, “I’ve really been rather slow in putting two and two together. I never thought that ‘cinnamonifolium’ had any significance.”

It was her turn not to reply.

“And let me see,” he said, making a show of recalling. “Other names of her abstract work. The one I sold on Long Island, ‘Koyamai.’ I thought it was Japanese—I said as much to Anna. She let me believe she had a Japanese influence. And ‘Corydalis.’ Do you know that I looked up the word corydalis in an opera guide? I thought it was the name of a character. That gray-green and yellow. It reminded me of a heraldic symbol. She laughed about it,” he said. “She implied it was simply manufactured.”

Jen had moved no further than the first step of the stairs. The tone of his voice had frozen her. She couldn’t remember ever having seen James Garrett angry—or, if he had been, he had never shown it to her. He had always been formally polite to her.

“Mommy!” Sadie yelled from below.

James had still not released his hold on her wrist. She glanced warily at him. His hand was almost cold. She looked over the banister. “What is it?”

“Want to go!”

“OK,” she replied. “Wait…wait.”

Above them, two men started down the stairs. One was carrying a large four-by-six portfolio, the other a box. She stood in the way, and looked back at James.

“You’re stealing her work,” she said.

“I can’t steal something I already own,” he said.

“But you don’t own it,” she said. “How can you own everything in her studio? How can you own unfinished paintings?”

“Jennifer,” James said. “Would you let these men get down the stairs.”

“I won’t stand by and see Anna’s possessions taken from her home,” she said. She tried to pull her hand from under his, but he was pressing down on the rail.

“I’m taking work for framing,” he said. “Look in the portfolios. They’re not unfinished. They’re finished pieces that we’re preparing for sale.”

“And Anna wants you to do this?”

“I have a contract with Anna for all her work,” he said. “Did you forget that?”

There was a protesting scream, the sound of an argument, from downstairs. Jen hesitated, torn between her children and Anna’s defense. In the second that she looked back, James took her wrist and disengaged her hand from the banister, nodding to the men to walk past her. She watched them go in utter frustration.

“All her ceramics?” she asked. “Notebooks, everything?”

He waited until the last man was on the second stairway. The face he turned back to her had changed from the affability of the last few moments.

“I have a contract,” he repeated.

“Not for everything in that room.”

“For everything Anna does.”

“And you—” Suddenly, she stopped. “If you’re taking everything,” she repeated, aghast. Her eyes widened. “What’s happened to Anna?” she said.

He didn’t reply at first. For a moment, his eyes strayed upward. When he resumed, his tone was almost conversational. “I never connected the names at all,” he said. “Until I saw the tray.”

The tray, the drawer, she thought. Oh, no.

“Do you know what cinnamonifolium is?” he asked. She heard a hitch in his voice now; a little twist of grief. “It’s an extraordinary name, isn’t it? Botanical names are rather rhythmical, aren’t they? Cinnamonifolium is a blue-black version of a plant called viburnum. And koyamai is a species of spruce.” He shook his head, and gave a short, exasperated laugh. “It’s all perfectly easy, once you have the key, once you know what it is you’re dealing with,” he told her. “And corydalis…corydalis is a common weed, a climbing weed with a yellow flower.” He gave a great sigh. “Extraordinary,” he murmured to himself, “that I never realized. But why would I? I had no idea.”

“Mommy!” Sadie called. “Mommy!”

“Realized what?” Jen asked. She didn’t like the way he was looking: haunted almost. Sick.

James took a step toward her. “All these years, and I never knew that everything she painted, everything she drew, everything I sold for her, every single name of every painting, every abstract, had a botanical name. Or a shortening of a botanical name, or was an anagram of a botanical name. Isn’t that amazing?”

Jen heard Sadie start up the flight of stairs below. “Michael is outside,” her daughter called. “Michael went in the yard.”

“You don’t find that amazing?” James repeated.

“All right, Sadie,” she called. “You call him back. You tell him to come here to me.”

“I suppose,” James said, getting close to her, “that you knew all this?”

“No,” Jen said.

“No?” he repeated. “She must have thought I was very stupid.”

“I don’t think Anna would call you stupid,” she said.

“But I even thought she had made the names up. It must have given her hours of amusement!” He had gripped her wrist again.

“Let go,” she said, frightened. She backed away across the narrow stairwell. He stepped up alongside her, and began pulling her up the stairs.

“Let me go,” she repeated. “My kids…Let go…”

They reached the top floor. He yanked her in through the door. James let Jen’s hand drop, and walked to the other side of the studio, where he picked up the tray.

“You’ve seen this,” he said. “You know what’s in here?”

“Things from college,” she breathed. “James, look—”

“From college,” he said. “Ten years ago. More than ten years. That’s right.” He snatched up a cardboard box, and tipped the contents out onto the tabletop.

She saw the smaller white envelope of the oak leaves fall out. He snatched it up.

“What’s this?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” she lied.

He took out the leaves and held them out to her on the palm of his hand. “What significance are these?” he said.

“I really don’t know.”

“Leaves,” he said angrily, bitterly, almost to himself. He threw down the envelope. “And this?” He was holding the Oxford map.

She said nothing.

“And this? And these?” He threw the postcards and essays down on the table.

“Everyone keeps things from college,” she murmured.

He glared at her. He opened the watercolor pad, and turned the pages, staring at her as the images echoed each other. The lonicera, the lilies. He picked up another pad, and almost tore the front sheet as he opened it. On each page, Anna had written an explanation of the watercolors, noting the location.

Here were images of strange and beautiful landscapes: the Great Wall at Shanhaiguan, snaking down the mountains and across the coastal plain to the sea, and at Jiankou, scaling the bladelike summits; Po Lin monastery on Lan Tau Island. The red sandstone peak of Longhua Shan, near Tingtan, looking like a complete fairy tale citadel, the river snaking at its feet, and yet more promontories behind it, one after the other, each as breathtaking as the last, rising from fields whose shade of green was almost too emerald to be real. Heaven Lake in Jilin province; and, lastly, the village of Meirendao in the Three Gorges, the Yangtze storming at its side, its tiny fields of maize looking like sculptured lawns.

“China,” James said. “China…China…China…”

“I’ve got to go,” Jen told him. She could now hear Sadie and Michael in the hall. She was also acutely aware that, downstairs in her bag, she had left her cell phone. I must call Grace, she thought. I must tell Grace.

James stepped in front of her. “This is him,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

“Who?” she asked.

“David Mortimer. This is all him. This is what he does. He’s a scientist. He told me.” James cast about himself, his gaze moving from one image to another and from the maps and cards back to the drawings, as if simply by looking at them he could make sense of them. “Is he interested in China?” he asked. “Did he go there? Had he lived there?”

“I don’t think so,” Jen said.

“He must have,” James replied. “Look at all this. He must have been there, or they were going to go there, or he had some sort of connection with the place…”

He was taking more items out of the tray. For a second, he seemed to have forgotten that Jen was there. “And for five years,” he muttered, “she never mentioned his name. I knew of course that Rachel had a father somewhere. But I thought that he was less than nothing to Anna. And yet she’d kept these things, she named every painting for him. What that meant to her, to dedicate her work to him…And she never told me,” he said. “She never told me a word about him.”

Quite suddenly, Jen felt sorry for this man in front of her. You’re just not equipped for life, she thought. You have no idea.

“James…” she murmured.

“I gave her a necklace, and she wouldn’t wear it,” he said.

She didn’t know what he was talking about.

“It’s here,” he told her. “It’s here, in this box, in this drawer.”

He fumbled about in the tray, and brought out a long blue jewelry box. He held it tightly for a second. “Lilies,” he said. And pointed to the drawings. “Lilies, like these. That’s why she wouldn’t touch it, isn’t it? Because that’s what they were about. She and David Mortimer. Something to do with them…something…”

He looked at Jen, but she purposely did not look up at him to return his gaze, even though she could feel his stare boring into her.

“Do you know how many drawings of lilies there are in here?” he asked her. He threw the jewelry box down in frustration. “But she never drew them to sell,” he said. “They weren’t for sale.”

She looked behind her, to the door.

When she looked back, he had David’s letters in his hand. He saw her expression, and gave a faint smile. “I’ve read them,” he told her. “Have you?”

“No,” she said.

“Never read them?” he asked. “Never had them read to you?”

“No.”

“How extraordinary,” he said, opening one. “Let me enlighten you.”

“I don’t want to hear,” she said. “It’s not right.”

“Anna,” he read, holding the letter at arm’s length, as if he were giving a speech. “Anna, please write to me. Call me. If you can’t get through at Magdalen, here’s Sara’s number…” He glanced at Jen. “Who is Sara?”

“I…”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Don’t bother.” He went back to the letter. “You didn’t give me a chance. I just want to talk to you. I’ll come to Boston if you want me to.”

Jen put her hand to her face.

“Pitiful, isn’t it?” James asked. “Almost tacky. Embarrassing, don’t you think?”

“No,” Jen retorted. “I don’t, actually.”

“Here’s another,” he continued, in the same tone of fastidious revulsion. “Dated three weeks later. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? That’s all I want to know. I want you to come back, or I’ll come to you…’”

James dropped the letter, with the rest of the things, on the table.

“And why was that?” he asked her. “Why did she leave him?”

“Look, James,” she said, “if Anna has never told you about this, then I can’t.”

“Had they argued?” he asked. “What had they argued about?”

“I can’t say.”

“You can’t say because you don’t know, or because you won’t?” he demanded. “She came back to Boston, suddenly. That much is obvious. She left him during the university year.” He pointed at the last letter, where it had fallen. “That is dated March,” he said. “She left in March. Before the end of the term. Why?”

She couldn’t meet his face.

There was a silence.

“Rachel,” he said. He was staring down again at the date of the letter. “Rachel was born that year.” He suddenly walked around the end of the table, and grabbed Jen by the shoulders. “She never told him about Rachel,” he said. “Why not?”

“My kids are downstairs,” Jen said, stepping backward, trying to fend off his hands. “I’ve got to go. I’m going now.”

“Grace knows,” he said. “Doesn’t she? She knows how Anna felt about this man. That’s why she called him, isn’t it? But Anna never asked him to come here. Why not?”

“If you don’t take your hands off me, I’m going to start screaming,” Jen told him. “Try explaining that to your hired help down there.”

It had no effect on him. “Why did she leave him?” he insisted. “Why?”

His tone frightened her. “Because she was afraid that he was somewhere else,” she relented, at last. “Somewhere she couldn’t find him.”

“But he loved her,” he said. “Look at those letters.”

“She was afraid that he was like his father.”

“His father?” he repeated. “What about his father?”

She frowned, passing a hand over her forehead. “I don’t really know,” she said. “Anna only met him once.”

He thought for a moment. “If she only met him once, it must have been something striking.”

She shook her head. “She didn’t go into it in detail.”

He was staring at her. A look something like triumph flickered in his expression. “I thought so,” he said. “I asked him about it. He deflected the question. I was right. David Mortimer inherited something that Anna was afraid of.”

“He wasn’t sick,” Jen said. “If you think that.”

“No,” James murmured. “Not sick, exactly.” And he shocked her by laughing. At last, he dropped his hands from her. For a moment, she saw a thwarted, isolated child in his face. He looked away, across the studio, fixed his gaze on the leaves for a second. “How very ordinary,” he whispered. “Just like any other woman.”

On the stairs, Jen heard the footsteps of the moving men.

Garrett looked back at the table. Then, he walked back to it, and slowly picked up the two drawing pads. He smoothed down the pages.

The men came in the door; he inclined his head to indicate the plan chest on one wall. “There are about twenty more pen-and-ink studies,” he told them. “Pack between cartridge, like the others.”

And he smiled a coarse smile; shocking, not because of the greed, but because of the disgust in it.