The Cloisters(92)

“Anyway,” the woman started again, “you’ll be okay. I’ll take you all the way to Johnsburg. We don’t have to talk about it.”

And we didn’t. We drove the rest of the way, as the morning light went from milky to clear, just listening to the radio and driving the two-lane highway to the bus station. I hadn’t left a note for Rachel. I had just left, turned off my cell phone and walked away from it, from her, from the whole thing.

There had been a bite in the air that morning when I got up before the sun. Summer was over. The world we had built at The Cloisters, the one that had kept everything else out, had crumbled, like the building in the Tower card, falling into the sea. It was, I realized, inevitable. Relationships like ours, worlds like that—they can’t withstand the pressure from the outside, particularly when those pressures were from your own past. What, after all, could I tell Detective Murphy? That Rachel had created a complex morality where she felt absolved because there was always a choice for her victims, even though she had orchestrated their fates? That I, myself, was wanted for a hit-and-run in Washington? No. I knew they wouldn’t understand. But I did. The cards did.

When the woman dropped me at the bus station, she pressed a few dollars into my hand.

“You’re going to need this,” she said.

And even though I tried to give it back to her, she insisted. There, I used a pay phone to call Laure and ask her if it would be okay if I stayed with her for the rest of the week, just until my lease started. She agreed immediately.

“Are you okay?” she said over the phone.

“Fine,” I said.

“Did she do anything?”

“No.”

Laure was quiet on the other end, and I could almost hear her chewing on her lower lip, trying to decide if she should push for more information.

“I’ll tell you more when I get there,” I said preemptively. The truth was, I didn’t want to talk about it. I knew no one would understand.

It took the rest of the day to get into the city—bus transfers and trains, finally two subways and a five-block walk. It wasn’t until almost 7 p.m. that I stumbled into Laure’s apartment in Brooklyn where she lived with her boyfriend and two cats. I dropped both bags on the floor and collapsed on the couch.

“You can stay as long as you need,” she said, bringing me a glass of water.

“I just need a week.”

Laure nodded.

“Thank you,” I said.

“So,” said Laure, sitting next to me on the couch. “What happened?”

“It just wasn’t in the cards.”

And even though she tried to press me for more information, I demurred. It wasn’t Laure’s story. It was mine. A story that I knew very few people would believe. After I took a nap and showered, we drank too many bottles of cheap wine at a restaurant whose tables spilled onto the sidewalk, and then we walked home under the orange glow of the streetlamps. And for the first time, I saw another side of New York, the world outside The Cloisters that was still warm and buzzy, even though soon the leaves would turn colors and the air less forgiving. I breathed it all in.



* * *



The next day was Monday, and I rode the subway up to The Cloisters, enjoying again the crush of people around me, the hot, stale air. There would be a new curator at the museum, and for the occasion, I had dipped back into the clothes I had brought from Walla Walla, the scratchy polyester no longer embarrassing, just nostalgic.

When I arrived in the lobby, I noticed that Moira averted her eyes and bent down behind the desk to pull out more maps and welcome guides. The same thing happened in the kitchen, where the conservators nodded at me briskly before slipping away, leaving their sugar packets behind. In the library, Michelle found me, Beatrice Graft at her side.

“Oh, Ann. We weren’t expecting you,” she said. “Would you mind giving us a few minutes?” she said to Beatrice.

For a beat I worried, again, I would be let go. That she would tell me Beatrice and the museum no longer needed me. Only this time, there would be no Patrick to save me. As Beatrice slipped out the door she said, “Just come get me when you’re done.”

Michelle came over to the table and pulled out the chair next to mine.

“Ann,” she said. “With what happened, we assumed you would want a few days off. But since you’re here…” She trailed off. “I guess now would be as good a time as any to introduce you. You know you didn’t have to do this to prove to us your commitment. We’re all very aware.”

“Of what?” I asked.

Then she looked at me curiously. “You have heard, haven’t you?”

“Heard what?”

“Oh dear.” Michelle quickly stepped outside and conferred with Beatrice before joining me again at the table. “Ann,” she said, speaking slowly. “This has been a difficult summer for us here at The Cloisters, and it has been a difficult summer for you, personally. I assumed you already knew. You two were so close. But since you don’t, I want to be the one to tell you. Rachel is dead. She died. A sailing accident apparently. Very tragic. Our whole staff, the whole family at The Cloisters is…” She let the sentence die.

“I’ve been staying with a friend in Brooklyn,” I said. “I hadn’t heard.”