1

The American Wing

Clara, 25

New York City, 2035

Clara stood at the entrance to the Met in the crisp November morning and put a hand to her chest. She had the strangest feeling, like a claw clutching her heart. In an instant it was gone. She glanced at the crowd snaking down the steps to Fifth Avenue. Where was her mother? Clara called her cell but it rang out.

The security staff were checking through visitors’ bags.

‘Good morning, Clara,’ said Jay as she rummaged through an oversized vintage Louis Vuitton, followed by a well-worn black faux-leather handbag and a grubby canvas ‘I NY’ tote.

Jay was always finding items to confiscate. Once she had found a handgun. The woman was from Texas and said she didn’t know the rules were different in New York. Jay acted impeccably throughout the encounter, and Clara had a word to the director about Jay’s excellent demeanour with visitors.

‘Are you okay, Clara?’ asked Jay.

‘I’m waiting for my mother. It’s 10:20, isn’t it?’ Clara looked at her cell. The time couldn’t be wrong. And yet.

‘Yep,’ Jay said, glancing at her wristwatch. ‘It’s 10:20.’

‘Well, this is a bit unusual for her,’ said Clara, staring out on to Fifth Avenue. The yellow taxis were creeping along, but surely her mother would have walked the few blocks.

Clara tried her mother’s cell again.

‘Clara, are you coming to the American Wing? Didn’t you want to show your mom the new exhibition?’ called out Mariella.

‘Yes, she’s meant to be here. I’ll just go over there and check she hasn’t come in a different way. Maybe she’s walked in via the gift shop downstairs,’ said Clara.

Clara headed towards the American Wing. But as she scanned the heads, she didn’t recognise anyone.

Clara had spent her whole life wandering the halls of the Met. Of course she had her favourites, but they had changed over time. As a child, she had spent hours gazing at the Ancient Greek vases (thinking that the ones depicting the Goddess Athena looked eerily like her mother – her mother denied it, of course). The European period rooms enchanted her (oh the harp! the little dog kennel!). She noticed when the curators changed the order of the Vermeers. She loved how David insisted that Mick Jagger was in the medieval stained-glass window on the first floor. She had met her friend Georgina under the origami Christmas tree. There were so many moments, so many memories, encased in this building.

When she first started working at the Met, Clara would usually eat lunch in the park, although in inclement weather she would sit among the tourists in the café in the American Wing, one eye on the park and the other on the sculptures and stained-glass windows, trying to imagine what it was like to see them for the first time. She didn’t remember anything before living in Manhattan. She couldn’t remember her first visit to the Met.

There was this sparkle, sometimes a tear, in the eyes of the visitors. There were mid-Westerners who had saved up all their pennies to finally come to the big city. Seeing some art. But they averted their eyes from the nude sculptures – the ones that were allowed to remain. That was just too much body. Too much truth.

Where was her mother? Clara tried calling again, and again the cell rang out.

She texted Sam.

Have you heard from Mom today? She’s meant to be meeting me.

A few seconds later came the reply:

Nope. Sometimes she gets the days mixed up. Just go over there.

Yes, she would just go over there.

Clara grabbed her coat, draped over a desk chair in her office. The fall wind always chilled her. Her grandmother would say it was because she was too thin.

Her mother and Clara still spoke to Yiayia Koula on weekly video calls.

‘Clara, you are too skinny,’ her grandmother would say, as well as, ‘Why don’t you eat the yoghurt I send you? You’re not vegan, are you?’

‘I do, Yiayia Koula,’ said Clara. ‘I eat it all the time.’

‘Maybe American men like fatter women. Maybe that’s why you haven’t met anyone. Eat more yoghurt,’ Yiayia Koula said. ‘Let me see you eat it.’

Clara’s mother would roll her eyes, take out the yoghurt from the fridge and wave it in front of the screen, then spoon some into a bowl for Clara to eat while Koula watched. It was a bizarre ritual, but one that was oddly comforting.

‘She still hasn’t forgiven me for not coming home when the pandemic happened,’ said her mother, almost every time they ended the call. ‘She still thinks we should have gone back to Perth.’

It had been a scary and confusing time. Clara had missed a lot of school. Every time she had walked outside in those first weeks she’d felt like she was in an Edward Hopper painting. Clara, Sam and her mother would stand outside the Met, looking through the glass to the American Wing.

That was when she still wanted to be an artist.

Before, before, before.

Fall had brought bursts of red foliage and spiced pumpkin lattes. Clara loved the crunch of the leaves under her boots. The warm colours. It was nearly Halloween. With each block she passed, she remembered the celebrations of past Halloweens and wondered how the city would be decorated this year. Most years this was the corner where a giant black spider hung from a black tinsel web. There were always families of zombies and skeletons. Clara and Sam loved to dress up, even as adults. When they were little, their mom would lead them around the streets and they would trick-or-treat at the stores and their friends’ apartments. She smiled, recalling the smell of fall and candy and thick stage make-up and being allowed to stay up late.

Her mother hadn’t grown up celebrating Halloween. As a child, Clara thought that was terrible. No Halloween! Her mother only occasionally spoke of Perth. How the seasons were all so similar and now it was sliding towards always hot and in the next hundred years would be uninhabitable. The same story everywhere. The catastrophe of ignoring the inevitable. Clara tried not to think about it all the time. She’d lost a lot of sleep over climate change.

Where was her mother?

Clara crossed Park Avenue, which was being hosed down by the last remaining uniformed doormen, the rest phased out by automatic doors long ago. Some buildings had resisted the change, kept the doormen on out of nostalgia, or attachment, or the fact that it was somebody’s livelihood. Her mother’s building had a doorwoman, Victoria, whom Clara had known for years.

‘Good morning, Victoria! Have you seen my mother this morning?’

‘No, sorry, Clara,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Haven’t seen her today.’

Clara loved the checkered tiled floor of her mother’s apartment building. She and Sam used to play a game as children, pretending the white squares were death. Jumping over them. ‘You fell in the lava!’ Sam would shout at her. Clara had never been very nimble on her feet. Her name and small stature gave people the wrong idea about her. She was no ballerina.

‘Imagine growing up in Australia,’ said her mother. ‘Where all anyone cares about is how fast and coordinated you are.’

‘Some people care about that here,’ said David. ‘I mean, not us. But some people do.’

Clara got in the elevator and pressed the button for their floor. She missed David. They all did. This had originally been his apartment, and it was her childhood home. The only one she remembered, anyway.

When she got in the elevator, she could always smell who had been in there last. Her mother’s vanilla and sandalwood scent. A stronger French perfume of the woman who lived down the hall. Or the sweaty gym clothes of the young guys on the floor above. But today she couldn’t smell anything. Clara was properly worried now. Her mother hadn’t been in the elevator this morning. She just knew it.

The doors took forever to open.

Clara hurried to her mother’s door and knocked.

‘Mom!’

There was no answer, so she took out her key and opened the door. It took Clara a few seconds to process what she was seeing.

On the floor.

Her mother.

‘Mom! Mom! No!’ Clara said, bolting towards her. ‘Are you okay? Mom!’

She didn’t answer. Clara reached to feel a pulse. But her own hands were shaking so much that at first she couldn’t feel anything. There was no heartbeat. Her mother was not breathing.

She fumbled with her phone and called for an ambulance.

‘911, how can I direct your call?’

‘My mother – she’s not breathing – no pulse. Please help me. Carnegie Hill Apartments 10F, 94th and Park.’ It was so hard to say those words.

She put the phone on speaker and followed the operator’s instructions. It was as if she was watching two strangers from the other side of the room. She couldn’t believe this was happening. This was her and Mom.

‘Please wake up,’ Clara sobbed between breaths. Out of her mother’s hand rolled a máti.