“Are you upset at me?”
The hurt in her voice pricked my conscience. “No, Angie. Not at all. I wanted to write, really I did.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want you to worry, that’s all. It was hard.” I shrugged, tried to smile. “I had troubles.”
“What kind of troubles?” Her voice became stern, maternal. “What happened, Maeve?”
I wanted to tell her; I wanted to be able to tell her. But it was all so far away from anything she was used to, and it had been so long since we’d really spoken. Instead I grabbed at a half-truth, hoping that any confession might draw us closer again.
I inhaled. “I got in the habit of going out after work, hanging out in clubs. I guess I started to drink too much, Ange.”
“Oh, Mae!” The shock and disappointment in her face surprised me. “You mean bootleg gin?”
I knew Angela didn’t approve of drinking. In fact, I’d always hidden how much I’d drunk from her, knowing she thought of it as something only men did and distinctly unladylike. Wine was the exception, but like most Italians we knew, she didn’t count wine as alcohol. The homemade version her father and brothers made in the summer and kept stored in wooden barrels in the basement of the shop was sweet, fruity, and mild. Not even the police bothered to confiscate it. But still, I’d expected her to be more worldly and understanding.
“I wasn’t the only one! Everyone drinks in New York,” I said, “men, women, young, old, Park Avenue right down to a bench in Central Park! But it sort of sneaks up on you. And it does make everything messier …”
“Then just don’t drink.”
Nothing was complicated for Angela. It was one of the things about her that I loved but also resented. Everything that was black and white for her was gray for me.
“Well, I didn’t want to, not really,” I tried to explain.
“Then just don’t! Honestly, Mae!” She’d run out of patience. “They put anything in that stuff! You should hear the stories Carlo tells me!” Brushing some loose crumbs off the table into her hand, she shook her head. “You really need to settle down. You’re too old for that sort of foolishness.”
That was always the answer, no matter the question. If only I would settle down, behave myself. When we were younger, it was a reprimand leveled at both of us. But Angela had since become the model daughter, sister, and now wife. I was alone in my delinquency.
Tears welled up in my eyes. She was right, of course, and I suppose exhaustion and the stress of the day had gotten to me.
I started to cry, something I hadn’t done in almost a year. “I’m so sorry about the wedding! About everything! I’m really sorry I let you down.”
I hate crying; I’d rather be caught naked than with tears on my face.
Angela put her hand over mine. “I just think if you stopped running around and got married you’d be better off,” she said gently.
I wanted to laugh, but couldn’t muster it. “Believe me, no one wants to marry me now!”
“Mickey did. Remember? Probably still does,” she added hopefully.
A year ago, no one thought my old boyfriend Mickey Finn was good enough. Now he was an opportunity.
She lowered her voice. “He doesn’t know what you got up to in New York, does he? So don’t tell him. Any man is better than no man, Mae.”
I stared at her. We were so different now. Tapping my ash into the ashtray, I brushed the tears away with my fingertips. “It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry I’m weepy. So”—I changed the subject—“how’s the rest of your family?”
Frowning, Angela ran her finger along the milky-white porcelain edge of the willow-pattern teacup. It was so delicate, so fragile you could almost see the light through it.
“That’s not everything that happened, is it? You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
She knew me well enough to know I was deliberately shutting her out. I stared down at the uneaten zaletti.
She took a deep breath. “You’re better now, though? Right?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “It’s all in the past.” Outside the window, the evening sky softened, and the men standing round the chestnut stove below were reduced to shadowy outlines, the ends of their cigars glowing and bobbing in the air as they spoke. “It’s good to be back.”
Winshaw and Kessler was quiet. Not just quiet but holding its breath, waiting. After the constant jostling and hustle in New York City, it was strange to walk down an almost empty street each morning, unlock the door, and step into a world dominated not by people but by things. There was a sense of solemnity and guardianship, like being in a library or a church. And like a church, the shop had a muted, remote quality, as if it were somehow both part of and yet simultaneously removed from the present day. The essence of aged wood, silver polish, furniture oil, and the infinitesimal dust of other lives and other countries hung in the air. I could feel its weight around me, and its flavor lingered on my tongue. Time tasted musty, metallic, and faintly exotic.
Almost everywhere else, time was an enemy; the thief that rendered food rotten, dulled the bloom of youth, made fashions passé. But here it was the precious ingredient that transformed an ordinary object into a valuable artifact—from paintings to thimbles.
I’d never been around such extraordinary things. I was content to sit and hold the carved cameo shell for half an hour at a time, running my finger over its variegated, translucent surface, wondering at the imagination that brought the Three Graces to life. The regular clientele, however, were not so easily mesmerized. Most, in fact, were disconcertingly focused.
“Do you by any chance sell eighteenth-century naval maps?”
“You haven’t any Murano glass, have you? Nothing common, mind you. No red earth tones. I want something special. Do you have anything blue? Perhaps influenced by Chinese porcelain?”
They weren’t casually browsing, but on an unending quest for very specific prizes. And they would accept no substitutions.
“I can’t even get them to look at anything else!” I complained to Mr. Kessler one afternoon.
He took off his glasses, rubbed them clean with his pocket hankie. “Perhaps it’s better if you don’t even try.”
He didn’t make sense. “But how am I meant to sell anything?”
Instead of answering he asked, “Are you by any chance a collector, Miss Fanning?”
“Me?” I laughed. “I haven’t got that kind of money!”
He gave me a reproachful look. “It’s not about money. You know that. Tell me, did you ever save anything when you were a little girl?”
“Well”—I paused a moment—“I had a cigar box that I kept under
