Lucy by the Sea (41)

Bob said, “Here you go, Lucy. Your own studio.”

I did not understand what was happening at first. But in the room, and it was not a small room, were a table and a big upholstered chair, and a couch and also two bookcases and two lamps on small tables. “What is this?” I asked.

And William said, “We found a studio for you, Lucy.” His face was filled with emotion, he was really worked up. He said, “For you to work in.”

And they stood there, those two men, with such looks of suppressed excitement on both of their faces—



—

I could not believe it.

I have never had a room to work in. Of my own. Never.

iii

My apartment in New York bothered me more and more, and each time I thought about it, I thought: No. That is what I thought. One night—it was toward the end of August and I had spent the day at my studio—when I came home I told William again, as I had that night of my panic attack, about how I felt about my apartment in New York, and I could see that he was hearing me. He asked me when the lease got renewed.

I said, “The end of September.”

He leaned forward, his arms on his knees. “Then give it up, Lucy.”

And I said, “I can’t give it up!”

And he sat back and said, “Why not?”

“Because I can’t go to New York with this virus—how could I move anything out?”

William sat with his arms on the chair arms and said, “Bob will get some guys here from town and they’ll go get what you want. It’s a tiny place, Lucy. Think about what’s in it that you want, and Bob will have some guys bring it up here. For now. We can figure the rest out later.”

I sat and said nothing as I absorbed this.

William added, “And now is the time to do it, because New York is not in terrible shape at the moment, but there will be another surge when it gets cold. So let’s do this now.”

“Really?” I asked.

He just raised his eyebrows at me.



—

And so by the middle of September, with help from Bob—who found three young men ready and excited about doing the job, they had never been to New York City—my things were moved up to Maine from New York. I gave everything in the kitchen to Marie, who helped me with my cleaning: She FaceTimed me from my apartment. And I gave her most of my clothes as well. I also gave her most of the linens and most of the towels. Her aunt wanted the bed, and they had it moved to her aunt’s place in the Bronx. My building manager—a young woman—was extremely good about all this; usually someone has to be there if you are moving out, and certain insurance things have to be filled out by the movers, but the manager let the guys come in and take the things that were left; she was very nice about it, as I have said. I told Marie I would give her a year’s severance pay; she—or, rather, her husband, the doorman—had come into the apartment every week to water my plant; it was—along with David’s cello—the only thing in the apartment I really cared about.



—

When I saw the plant, almost eight feet tall, standing so shyly on our porch, I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe I had done this. I put David’s cello in the spare bedroom upstairs, the one with the bookcase in it and the trees pressing up against the windows.



—

When I thought of the New York apartment, I thought: It is gone, as all things will be gone someday.

iv

From New York had come four large cardboard boxes filled with old writings and photos of mine, and so one day William helped me take those to my studio, and I went through the boxes slowly. It was very strange. There were photos of me in college, with William, and with other friends. I looked so young and happy!



—

I found a journal entry from back when I had been living with William and the girls—they were about eight and nine at the time—and I had decided to have someone come in and clean the apartment. It was a young man who had arrived; he was very sweaty and anxious-looking, and I recorded in my journal how I felt sorry for him while he vacuumed with sweat dripping off his nose. But then this young man had gone into the bathroom for quite a while, and after he left I went into the bathroom and I realized that he had masturbated in there, and I had a very bad reaction to this.

I had forgotten the incident until I read it there in my young handwriting. Of course I had been frightened by this, because my father would so frequently do the same thing during my childhood. According to the journal entry, William did not care when I told him. I mean he sort of shrugged it off.

I had called the young man and told him we did not need him anymore.



—

It was a strange thing to go through those papers.



—

I found this: a birthday card from my mother. As soon as I saw it I remembered: It was the last card she ever sent me, the year before she died. On the front were pretty violet-colored flowers. When I opened it up, the card had printed on it: Happy Birthday. And below it was simply—

M.

v

William and I continued to take car trips. We did not feel safe spending the night anywhere else, but we would drive to various places and then come back home. In late September, William and I drove to a town called Dixon; it was almost two hours away. The town was built along a river, and there was a paper mill that had once employed thousands, but it had mostly closed down many years earlier; only one hundred people still worked there. William was interested in the old mills; he had researched this one and said that the man who had started the mill in the late 1800s was from England and that he had made houses for the millworkers that were quite beautiful; it was called Bradford Place. William had shown me a photograph of the houses online, and they did seem lovely, built on the hills throughout the town, two-family places of brick, with wide porches. On top of the hill was a huge cathedral. The photograph was from the 1950s.