Chapter Eighteen
Knowing that Ben Marcus has gone to find Esta should make my days at Crantham easier. All I have to do is behave myself, swallow my pills (or at least appear to; I continue to stockpile them instead), and busy myself with some harmless pursuit in the recreation lounge.
Since our sketching session on the terrace Edith has decided to switch her major from art history to studio art. “My roommate, Libby, says why should I study what a bunch of dead white men painted when I can make my own art?” she explains.
Libby sounds like a bit of a tool, I think, remembering from Edith’s files that it was her roommate who turned her into the administration when she had the baby. But I can’t argue against sitting outside on the terrace drawing side by side, wrapped in afghans against the cooler weather.
My own attempts are clumsy, but Edith clearly has—or had—talent. She captures the contours of the landscaped grounds, the meandering paths, gently rolling lawns, dark woods, and the tower rising on the ridge above it all. She draws the tower again and again. “Libby says I need to work on perspective,” she says, “and an octagonal structure is perfect. It’s like the temple in Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin.” I remember that was one of the pictures in her stack of art cards. She’s put away the cards now that she’s changed majors, but she keeps the piece of red ribbon tied around her wrist.
“You like your roommate?” I ask.
“Oh, Libby’s the best!” Edith gushes in a girlish voice totally at odds with her lined face and white hair. “She’s actually been to all the places we study in art history. She’s so . . . worldly. She gets all her clothes at B. Altman’s in the city and has her hair done at Helena Rubinstein’s. She’s going to take me the next time she goes in.” She gives me an uncertain look. “I could ask if you could come too.”
“Thanks,” I say, “but I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
Edith looks relieved. “Well, maybe that’s best. Libby can be a little finicky, if you know what I mean. She might not like a change of plan.”
I’m so taken up in Edith’s fantasy world that the next time we meet on the terrace I ask her how her trip to the city went.
“Oh!” she says, her face lighting up, “it was wonderful! We had lunch at the Lotus Club and went to the Metropolitan Museum. Libby bought me a book on perspective at the Met and I drew this. It’s modeled on Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin.”
She takes out a piece of paper and hands it to me, as if to prove that the excursion really happened. It’s a sketch depicting two figures in classical garb, a man and a woman, standing in front of a round temple. It actually looks very much like the picture from the card. Mary’s face is tilted, her eyes cast modestly down at her hand as Joseph puts the ring on her finger. A perfectly proportional classical temple stands behind them, giving the scene a sense of order and balance.
I look up from the drawing into Edith’s wide green eyes. “It’s very good, Edith. You’re very talented.”
A shy smile tugs at her mouth. “Thank you. Libby says I should do my junior year abroad in Italy and go to the Slade after college.” Her eyes are so full of hope that for a second I am seduced into imagining Edith studying art in Rome and London. Then I remember that that will never happen. She will give birth alone in a dorm room and throw the child into a trash bin. She will be expelled from college and go crazy, tortured by that irrevocable act. She will be locked away in this place, her youth and talent burned out of her by drugs and shock treatments, her mind so haunted by the memory of that lost child that she’ll climb to the top of the tower and throw herself over.
This is what will happen to me if Ben doesn’t find anyone to prove I’m Daphne Marist. They’ll give me shock treatment and I’ll forget what’s happened in the last few months. I’ll forget Chloe. I’ll forget myself. I’ll become an empty hull, a shadow.
I wipe away a tear and Edith’s sketch, which I’ve been blindly staring at, swims in front of me, the pencil shading of the temple blurring into shadows. There seems to be something in one of the windows.
I look closer. Yes, there’s a figure in the center window of the temple, a shadow of a shawled woman, one hand lifted in a wave. It’s only the briefest of sketches but Edith really is talented: I could swear the woman is signaling for help.
Laurel’s Journal, August 1, 20—
I went to the city to see JB today. It had been so long since I’d gone down to Manhattan. When we moved here Stan said I could go in every day if I wanted, lots of people commute. I did go in at first but then when I was pregnant I hated the crowded trains, so many bodies pressing in around me.
At first I was excited to be making the trip. I put on a new dress and heels. I’d have lunch at a nice restaurant after the meeting, do some shopping. I thought I’d walk along Fifth Avenue for a bit, look in the shop windows, but it was so hot that by the time I got to the law firm I felt wilted and tired.
