One oppressively humid morning in late August, Sophie dropped Lucy off for a playdate with Mathilda, then strolled Elliot to the Azalea Garden behind the museum. She spread a small blanket under a magnolia tree and emptied Elliot’s travel bag of toys onto the blanket. Elliot ignored the jumble of brightly colored plastic and headed straight into a nearby flower bed, trampling hostas and coral bells and digging his fingers into the mulch. Sophie picked him up and redirected him toward the grassy lawn, but this became a funny game, Elliot running shrieking back into the flower bed and Sophie pulling him back out, her stern “no” an occasion for more delighted laughter. It irked her more than it probably should, to be laughed at when she was trying to be serious. But where was there to go, after delivering her meanest face and deepest growl? Was a smack on the rear the next logical step in the arms race?
Sophie left Elliot in the flower bed and began gathering all of his toys in the travel bag. Then, without a glance backward, she walked out into the middle of the grass and began tossing toys to and fro. The cheerfully smiling fire truck landed with a clatter; the Duplo blocks sailed through the air like candy from a parade float; stacking rings whizzed like Frisbees. From the flower bed, an enraged howl; she didn’t even have time to turn around before the bag had been snatched from her grasp, and Elliot began staggering across the lawn to retrieve his toys: it was like an Easter egg hunt, only angrier. Sophie retreated to the shade and sat on the blanket, feeling partly triumphant and partly guilty. Maybe it was wrong to exploit her son’s controlling, tidy nature. But he shouldn’t have laughed at her.
Elliot finally sat down in the grass, absorbed in arranging the stacking rings in the proper order, and Sophie lay back, propped on her elbows. Small spots of sun pricked the dense mat of waxy leaves overhead; long knobby branches, mottled with lichen, created a low canopy. It was a good climbing tree. As a child, Sophie would not have hesitated to clamber into its branches, searching for a comfortable joint where she could lean back, legs dangling, and gaze into the high-ceilinged rooms of her shady mansion. So much of childhood, she realized, was spent imagining or assembling shelter: the blanket-draped chairs in the living room; the cardboard box castle; the large, hollowed-out boxwood in the backyard in Bethesda. Even Lucy had created a nest in her bedroom closet, piled deep with blankets and stocked with dolls and markers and a lovingly curated collection of business reply cards.
An airplane crawled across the shimmering sky and disappeared into the branches, drawing her thoughts to Randall. She’d never even had a chance to see his personal effects. She’d always wondered what they’d recovered. His Casio watch? His wedding ring? Whatever was left of him, it had disappeared along with Maeve after the funeral. There had been a few sporadic postcards for a while; Maeve was “taking time off,” living with friends in the Southwest, experimenting with alternative lifestyles, whatever that meant. Sophie assumed Maeve was running from her guilt, which was ridiculous. Her father’s plane was a 747, but not the variant her mother had helped design. Just an evolution of it.
She glanced back at Elliot. He was walking with an all-too-familiar hitch in his step. “Come here, babe,” she called, spreading the changing pad out on the blanket. Elliot toddled over, and she realized his face was bright red from the heat. She gave him a sippy cup of water to suck on while she changed his diaper; he drained it within seconds.
“Let’s go visit Daddy,” Sophie said. “It’ll be nice and cool in his office, and we can get some more water.”
Marjorie greeted them at the museum’s handicap-accessible entrance, where Sophie pushed the stroller up a ramp into the bracing air-conditioning. All of the curators were in a meeting with the director. “They should be out soon,” Marjorie said, leading Sophie to the elevator. When they got upstairs, Sophie set Elliot on the floor, swung her diaper bag over her shoulder, and collapsed the stroller. Propping it against a wall, she led Elliot down the hall to the watercooler, where she refilled his sippy cup. Four object carts lined the hallway on the other side of the cooler; Elliot reached toward a shiny crystal chalice, but Marjorie grabbed his hand. “No touching, please!” She shook her head, sighed, and pulled a pile of small cards from her jacket pocket.
“What have they got you doing now?” Sophie asked, nodding toward the cards.
“I’m trying to match each piece to its object card so we can put it into off-site storage,” Marjorie answered. “Then I have to submit paperwork for it all, so they can keep track of what’s been moved. These are all good to go.” She indicated the cart nearest the cooler, which held a footed crystal bowl, some silver pieces, and a carved wooden clock. Each object had a small yellowed card propped against it. Marjorie walked further down the hall, pointing to three more carts. “Halfway there. No cards to be found. Haven’t even started.” She turned back to Sophie. “It’s a mess.”
“Why is it so hard to match the cards?”
“Well, let’s see. The object number is worn off half of them, and some were tagged, and the tags have fallen off. And then these—” She held up the stack in her hand. “Mystery cards! Look—this one says ‘silver spoon.’ There’s no photo, and we have a hundred silver spoons.” She pulled a stack of cards from her other pocket. “These are things I just can’t find. Yet. I’m sure they’re in there somewhere, but I’m only one person.” She smoothed her already smooth bob.
Sophie widened her eyes. “Is anything missing?”
“Oh, I doubt that. Of course it’s possible—in this state of disorganization, yes, I suppose some things could wander off. But nobody really has access back here. To be honest, I think most people have forgotten this storage room even exists. It’s quite unusual to have storage near the offices. Quite unusual, and definitely not a good idea, if you ask me, which nobody has.”
“And why do they have you doing this?” Sophie asked. “I mean…volunteers don’t usually do this stuff, do they?” Elliot tugged on her shorts, and she picked him up. He handed her his sippy cup and laid his head on her shoulder.
“Oh, I’m qualified,” Marjorie huffed. “I worked at the Atwater Kent for fifteen years, in the registrar’s office. Brian never told you?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, I did. But you’re right, Brian and Michael were supposed to be doing all this. But it wasn’t getting done, and I started to get concerned. You know. Objects all over people’s offices. Michael gone. You never know what could happen.”
“True.”
Marjorie shook her head. “It’s impossible to get it all done in my ten hours a week, but somebody has to try. Anyway, I’m going to take these down to Art Handling to be packed up. Brian should be here soon.” Marjorie maneuvered the finished cart down the hall and into the freight elevator at the other end, leaving Sophie and Elliot alone among the treasures.
Sophie picked up one of the object cards on the half-finished cart. The brittle yellow paper had been typed on with an old typewriter; all the capital letters floated slightly above the rest of the text.
31-145-1
Dutch
18th Century
METAL
Brass and Copper
SMOKERS’ EQUIPMENT
TOBACCO BOX
SOURCE: Dr. Robert H. Landon Collection
SIZE: L. 0.165m W. 0.05m.
DESCRIPTION: Ornamented with inscriptions and figures. Copper body.
In one corner, a fuzzy black-and-white photograph showed the box, which appeared as little more than a dull oblong shadow. Sophie didn’t envy Marjorie’s job, considering the scant information on each card. Shifting Elliot to her other arm, she picked up the small box and turned it over. The number 31-145-1 was painted in faint red numbers. She returned it carefully to the cart.
Elliot was going limp and heavy in her arms. “You sleepy, babe?” she murmured. She carried him into Ted’s office, where a small love seat sat under the department’s only window. She laid him down, then rummaged in her diaper bag for the blanket. She wrinkled her nose, remembering that she still hadn’t thrown out Elliot’s dirty diaper, which was loosely wrapped in a plastic grocery bag. She pulled out the blanket and draped it over Elliot, then headed toward the restroom to throw away the diaper. As she passed the carts in the hallway, her eye browsed the objects. On the second cart, among some candlesticks and platters, she noticed a small, flat silver box with no object card. She picked it up; the cool touch of metal reminded her of Harry’s shop, and the taste of gin. She turned it over. The size of a deck of cards, the box was ornately decorated on both sides; the metal was coppery-black with tarnish. There was no place that a number could be painted, and there was no tag dangling from it. Sophie popped it open, and widened her eyes: the smooth interior surface, broken only by two small stamped marks, gleamed with the unmistakable warmth of gold.
She snapped the box shut and cradled it in her hand. It was so small, and so lost among the jumble of unwanted objects. She felt a wave of tenderness… In a strange way, she felt almost protective of the little thing.
She considered the diaper in her other hand, then hurried back into Ted’s office.
Sophie spread the changing mat on the floor beside Elliot, pulled the diaper out of its plastic bag, and peeled back the Velcro strips that were holding it closed. She exhaled through her nose; Elliot’s older, solid-food-based poops were a lot less endearing than the tiny newborn squirts that had smelled like baking bread. Sophie positioned the silver box above the brown smear, then thought better of it, and wrapped the box tightly in the plastic bag. Then she pressed the small package into the poop, and with practiced neatness, rolled the diaper back up and fastened it into a tight bundle with the Velcro strips. She folded up the changing pad and dropped it with the diaper into her bag.
“Pyoo,” she heard behind her.
“Sorry! Sorry,” she said, standing up with the diaper bag. Ted stood in the doorway, fanning his nose. “I should have changed his diaper in Brian’s office. I had no idea it was such a bomb. We just stopped in to get some water and say hello.”
Brian appeared behind Ted. “I thought that was our stroller,” he said. “What are you doing in here?”
Sophie indicated the love seat. “He passed out, so I thought I’d put him down while you were in your meeting. It’s so hot outside. We can get going now.”
“That’s all right, that’s all right,” said Ted, sitting down at his desk. “Leave him be. I’m just going to catch up on some memos.”
“You’re sure?” She picked up the diaper bag. “I’ll get out of your way.” She followed Brian into his office and, once he’d sat down at his desk, nudged herself into his lap. He wrapped an arm around her waist and scrolled through emails with his other hand.
“Where’s Lucy?” he asked.
“Keith and Amy’s. Playdate.”
“Marjorie let you in?”
“Yeah. Elliot was dying of heatstroke out there.”
“Why don’t you take him to the pool?”
“Mmm. Good idea.”
Brian stopped scrolling. “Look at that. Madame Viellefond wrote me back.” He stared at the screen for a moment, his fingers lightly tapping the top of the mouse. Sophie tried to remember who Madame Viellefond was. She knew that Brian had found a stack of postcards among Wilder’s personal papers that were signed by someone named Sandrine. From the way the postcards were written, Brian assumed Sandrine was Wilder’s not-so-secret French lover.
“Is she the woman you found in Collonges-la-Rouge? Sandrine’s relative?”
“Her great-granddaughter.”
“What does she say?”
“She knows about Wilder.”
“You mean—his affair with Sandrine?”
“Yes. She says Mr. Wilder was a benefactor of the family. He made sure her great-grandmother was very comfortable.”
“Must be nice.”
“And he gave her many gifts.”
Sophie raised her eyebrows. “Impressive. I can’t believe how far you’ve come based on a hunch and a couple of postcards.”
Brian kissed her shoulder. “I know. It’s exciting.”
“Something tells me you’re going back to France.”
“Yeeeeeah. Just for a few days. Is that okay?”
“I’m kind of busy, you know, with the Intactin job.”
“I know, I’m so sorry. You know I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important…”
Of course it was important. Even Sophie wanted to know what Sandrine’s great-granddaughter had to say about Wilder and the missing Saint-Porchaire. But the prospect of spending another week alone with the kids filled her with dread. Her only consolation was the small, tightly wrapped secret tucked into her bag. Maybe it could cast a little light on those dull, aimless days.
“All right,” she said. “But tomorrow I have to go up to New York. For a meeting. So…”
“Can you get a sitter for the afternoon?”
“Yeah, but you need to get home by five thirty in case I get held up. Deal?”
“Deal. Thanks, Soph.”
***
Extracting the silver box from its hiding place, it occurred to Sophie that the task probably should have filled her with some amount of revulsion. But once she’d plucked it from the plastic bag and thrown the diaper away, the bad smell quickly dissipated and she became absorbed in the box’s beauty, which was even more lovely now that it was freed from the confusion and fluorescent lighting of the museum hallway. Sophie pulled off her rubber gloves and turned the slim box over in her hand, admiring the intricate relief work. Bell-shaped flowers climbed along the edges, framed by orderly patterns of stylized vines and leaves. In the center, under a beribboned canopy, a man and woman danced with joined hands, their figures enlivened with billowing hair, lace, skirts, a feathered cap. At their feet, a pair of putti played a tune: one on trumpet, one clapping a tambourine.
On the other side of the box, a woman wearing some sort of elaborate headdress stood lightly poised on one foot, framed by swags of ribbon and flanked by a pair of sphinxes with long, snakelike necks. The scene was odd, mysterious, but pleasingly symmetrical.
Sophie called the number on Harry’s business card.
“Darling! Thank God you called!” His tone was so affectionate, so intimate, Sophie felt a pleasant rush of warmth. “You’re my favorite person right now. My absolute favorite, and I didn’t even have your phone number.”
Sophie laughed. “Well, here I am!”
“Here you are! You must come immediately so I can give you champagne and…and massage your feet. Whatever you want. I am your humble servant.”
“You sold it.”
“God, yes. My client was over the moon. Absolutely over the moon. Please come soon, love. Can I buy you dinner?”
“It’s going to have to be lunch. Tomorrow.”
“I’ll take you somewhere posh. All right?”
“Perfect.”
***
Harry took her to a sleek vault of frosted glass and stainless steel, where they sat at the foot of a tower of wine bottles that glowed with eerie blue light. “I feel like I’m on a spaceship,” muttered Sophie after the six-foot-tall hostess had led them to their glossy white table.
“We’ve been abducted by aliens,” Harry said. “They’re going to probe our wallets.”
“Ha-ha.”
“Champagne?” Harry waggled his eyebrows at her.
“You’re really out to spoil me, aren’t you.”
“Who else is going to do it?”
“You have no idea. I have many lovers.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“Well, you should. I can arrange one if you like. What’s your type? Tall and dark? Short and sweaty?” Harry leaned toward the waiter without breaking eye contact with Sophie. “Taittinger Brut, please.”
“That’s sweet of you, but I’m happily married.”
“Right. Mr. Sophie. And what is it that he does?”
“Brian…is…in import-export.” Sophie studied her menu. “Everyone’s eating cheeks these days, aren’t they? Veal cheeks. Fish cheeks.”
“I’m more of an ass cheeks man, myself.”
“Harry! I’m going to send you to the naughty spot.”
“No need. My life is one big naughty spot. So what does Brian import and export?”
“Mmm…decorative items. The skate sounds good. But does it have cheeks.”
“From China? India? That sort of thing?”
“Not really.” Sophie snapped the menu shut. “So why are you spoiling me like this? You barely know me. The last time I had a meal this expensive was at my wedding.”
“I just happened to do really well with that little mirror of yours, and I wanted to thank you.”
“I take it you did your research.”
“Mmm. You could’ve done a little better for yourself if you’d’ve let me do a proper appraisal. The whole thing was a bit seat-of-the-pants.”
“I’m new at this myself, Harry, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to feel guilty about making a huge profit off someone.”
“Quite right. Quite right. I’ve got a big mouth. Don’t know if you’ve noticed. Anyway, I like you.”
“I don’t know why.”
“Well, you’ve got excellent taste in objects of virtu. And you’re interesting. I don’t really know what it is yet, but there’s something intriguing about you.”
Sophie fussed with her napkin, caught off balance.
“Plus, I deal with such assholes all day long,” Harry continued. “I mean, real assholes. And you know, I only moved here a year ago, when I took over from my dad. I haven’t got any friends.” He made a sad-puppy face.
“Well I don’t know why, if this is how you treat them,” said Sophie, raising her champagne flute. “Cheers.”
She was actually glad to hear that Harry had made out well with the mirror. The quantity of cash he’d given her was enough of a hassle; a greater amount, all at once, would have created logistical problems. And now the mirror was gone, continuing on the journey of its now-troubled provenance, having passed through Sophie as if she were a ghost. Part of her was curious where it had ended up, and part of her wanted to forget she had ever seen it.
At the end of the meal, Sophie sat back and savored her wine—something dark and pleasantly earthy, several years her senior, unlike anything she’d ever drunk in her life—while Harry provided a steady stream of commentary on the restaurant’s clientele, his own clientele, and Sophie’s hair, which he had decided needed highlights. “Nothing stripy,” he said. “Just some glints, a little dimension. Know what I mean?”
“I have something else for you, Harry,” she said, putting her glass down.
“What’s that?”
“Another piece.”
“Aha. You’ve…been to another sidewalk sale?”
“Same sidewalk sale.” She pulled the box out of her purse and laid it on the table in front of Harry.
“Lots of old money in Philadelphia, I hear,” said Harry, cracking his knuckles. “That’s a pretty little snuffbox, in’it?” He opened it, squinted at the marks, closed it, turned it over in his hands. “French rococo. I’m thinking early seventeen hundreds. Not sure what that mark is—maybe Guynot? Anyway…” He rubbed his lips.
“Do you like it?”
“Well, sure, I mean…” He laughed. “You kind of knocked my socks off with that mirror. This is a little…”
“Small?”
“Late. D’you have anything else? Perhaps a bit older?”
“What? No!”
“All right, all right. It’s just, my client—the one I sold your mirror to? He’s rather fixated on the Renaissance.” Harry turned the box this way and that. “This is a nice piece, though. It’s very pretty, finely worked, classic rococo. People do love snuffboxes, God knows why.” Harry popped his knuckles. “Tell you what. I could probably sell this for five grand. Why don’t we split it? Twenty-five hundred?”
It was Sophie’s turn to make the sad-puppy face.
“Oh, come on, love! If it was anyone else I’d offer them two hundred. But I’m investing in our…” He waved his hand around. “Relationship.”
“I don’t know. I was hoping it was worth more.” It was easy enough to research snuffboxes on the Internet. What did he take her for?
Harry took off his glasses. “Why’d you think that?”
“Well, to begin with, it’s gold inside.”
“Good lord, so are most of my teeth. That doesn’t make them masterpieces. Seriously, though, what’s all this about? Are you sure you don’t have anything else up your sleeve?”
Sophie shifted in her seat. “Did you want dessert? Because I’m seriously considering it.”
“You are the queen of the redirect, aren’t you.”
“It’s a parenting thing.”
“All right, well, I’ll give you three grand for this, in the hopes that you will continue to grace me with your presence, and whatever else you might decide to bring me.”
“Four.”
“Brute! Just tell me—is there more?”
Sophie stared at him for a moment. “That depends on you.”
Harry drained his wine. “All right, fine. But remember. Renaissance.”
“Noted.”
***
The midafternoon Metroliner wasn’t crowded, so Sophie was able to raise the armrest, take off her shoes, and curl up with her feet in the next seat. She gazed out the window as the train crossed the Hackensack River, wondering at the stretches of grassy marshland all around, with narrow two-lane roads seeming to float on the greenish water. It was unaccountably wild here, right at the feet of Manhattan, the sandy landscape delicately crisscrossed with power lines and abandoned train tracks, but no buildings, and few cars: only a lonesome pickup truck parked, strangely, on a narrow spit of land that stretched into the water. Here and there, birds dotted the grasses; an egret, a puff of downy white speared on spindly legs, stood in the shallows. Sophie felt a rush of delight. Right here, bubbling up through the tangle of highways and runways and train tracks fighting their way toward Manhattan, nature was asserting itself, against every odd.
A violent jolt concussed the window, and she jerked her head back. Another train passed with a roar, inches from her face, rushing toward the city. In a moment it was gone, leaving a vacuum of sound behind. Outside, the landscape had changed back to office parks, parking lots, and warehouses with tractor trailers nosed up to them like baby pigs at their mother’s belly.
Sophie stretched out her legs and savored her drowsy good mood. She was looking forward to seeing the kids. For once, she missed the warm weight of Elliot’s body in her arms, and Lucy’s chattering voice. Separation, she realized, was crucial to the mother-child bond. If she spent too much time with them she developed a crackling force field around herself, resisting their intrusions. But now, after a day of luxury, gloss, drinks, charm, she was ready to sink back into the marshmallowy world of motherhood.
At home she found Brian grilling shrimp and corn while the kids drew on the patio with sidewalk chalk. Sophie hugged him, resting her cheek against his chest; she loved feeling the warmth of his skin through a crisp cotton shirt. He smelled of sweat and smoke, with a faintly lingering whiff of aftershave. “Thank you for coming home early,” she said into his chest.
She pulled away and bent to pinch some wilted blooms from the geraniums growing in pots along their fence. Up above, two squirrels chattered and tumbled through the branches of the neighbor’s sycamore tree. It was rare to have such a pleasant, shady outdoor space in the city; Sophie had grown to love it as much as any of the rooms inside the house.
“I was happy to get away from Marjorie this afternoon,” Brian said. “She’s so grumpy these days, always going on about how much better things are at the Atwater Kent. Today I thought about calling them and asking them to take her back.”
Sophie laughed, and Brian raised his eyebrows at her.
“Red wine? Must’ve been a fun meeting.”
Sophie ran her tongue over her teeth. “We had a working lunch.”
“Nice! Sounds like they’re treating you right. As they should.”
“I guess.” She felt her good mood begin drifting away, joining the dirty smoke from the grill as it wafted into the sky.
“So they were okay with your estimate.”
“Yes. It’s all fine.”
“Good money?”
“It’s fine, the money’s fine. You sure have a lot of questions.”
“Just making conversation.”
“Your corn’s going to burn.”
While Brian addressed the corn, Sophie knelt and kissed the kids. Lucy’s breath smelled sweet and crackery. “Did you give them Goldfish?”
“They were hungry.”
“Well, they’re not anymore, are they?” She brushed orange dust from Elliot’s cheeks and stood up. “Now they won’t eat dinner.”
“Sorry.”
“You know how that works, right? Food goes in their stomach, they feel satisfied, then you put more food in front of them and they turn up their noses. Parenting 101.” She wasn’t sure why she’d decided to go for the extra thrust. She was just getting impatient with Brian’s seeming lack of curiosity…his willingness to believe that she’d had a few glasses of red wine with a client. Why didn’t he press for details? Didn’t he want to know what she was really doing?
“Sorry…sorry,” he said lightly. “Always screwing up the parenting, I know. Do you want something to drink? There’s a bottle of Muscadet in the fridge.”
“Quit trying to distract me! I’m not a two-year-old.”
Brian turned back to the grill, saying nothing.
“Do you know how much sodium is in those crackers?” she cried.
Brian began snatching the corn from the grill and plopping it onto a platter with the shrimp. A piece of shrimp fell to the ground. Brian bent, picked it up, and, with a furious convulsion of his arm, threw it in the direction of the street. The shrimp sailed through the alley, over the wrought iron gate, and landed on the hood of a Subaru Outback parked out front.
That, Sophie thought, is more like it.