they stared at each other, and then they both burst out laughing.
“Channeling our daughter?” Kate said lightly.
“I guess so. Her Holiness has informed me that I’m not to sneak up on her or listen to her playing the piano.”
Kate laughed again, but with sympathy. “Oh, poor Ian! And I just jumped all over you again.” She gave him a quick hug, her small arm reaching out to encircle his waist and give it a gentle squeeze, her touch startling and electric. He brought his own arm around hers to try and hold it there, but she slipped away, out of reach.
“Too much estrogen in this place,” she said, her voice dropping deeper. An old joke between them, something an elderly professor had once said to him in her hearing. She didn’t sound like the cantankerous old man, she didn’t sound like a man at all, but he smiled anyway.
“I’ve got to take off, unless you need me?”
Kate’s own smile faded, but she shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“I was going to take the car.”
“Okay.”
“You sure you won’t need it?”
He was pressing, he knew that even before the crease appeared on her forehead, but he didn’t like the idea of her being without transportation.
“I don’t know if you can find a cab here,” he said out loud, wincing inwardly at the ridiculous cheeriness in his own voice.
“Where would I be going, Ian?”
They both knew she didn’t leave the house, that she could barely be coaxed anywhere these days. It had taken a tremendous effort to get her to go to that party the other night, and he’d had the feeling that he’d be paying for the gift of her presence for months to come.
“Okay, I’ll take the car then. I’ll call you later.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know. I want to.”
She accepted the kiss he offered, their lips pressing briefly together like paper, before Kate stepped back. Ian backed out of her space, noticing that her attention turned immediately back to the canvases at her feet. He heard the door close and the key turn in the lock as he walked away.
His shoes tapped lightly on the old bricks laid out in a herringbone pattern to form a driveway. A few of them looked loose, and he had no idea how they were anchored. Mortar? Years of apartment living hadn’t prepared him well for home ownership, but he would learn. When he reached the Volvo, he looked back at the studio and saw Kate standing at the windows looking out, but when he gave a little wave, she didn’t see him.
The old car’s engine coughed and spluttered, but finally roared to life, resuscitated once again, but soon they’d have to replace it. Or maybe, since they were going to buy a second car, the Volvo could hobble along for another year. It reminded him that he had to find a new mechanic; there was no way he was driving any car back into the city to get it serviced.
As he backed out of the driveway, he caught sight of their next-door neighbor coming out the front door of his weathered-looking frame house, the slap of the screen door catching Ian’s ear before the man’s striped shirt caught his eye.
He was an average-looking white man, middle-aged and balding, wearing a short-sleeved shirt that strained slightly over the fullness of a belly hanging over the belt of his pants.
Instantly forgettable except that when he saw Ian, the man actually stopped short before reversing and scuttling back up his front steps to hide in his shadowed front porch.
Ian let his hand drop, the friendly wave forgotten, and concentrated on backing onto the street without hitting the dusty white van parked in front of the neighbor’s door. Guy was obviously shy. A good thing really. The last thing he wanted was some garrulous country neighbor rushing over at every opportunity to share his expertise with the city folk.
Ian drove down Wickfield’s pretty streets feeling a deep sense of satisfaction. This was a good move, a good place to be. Sure, it would take time to get used to the slower pace, but there were lots of advantages to being out of the city, not least getting Grace away from bad influences.
He’d wanted to leave the city earlier, and had received overtures from Wickfield over a year before Kate would seriously discuss it. When he’d first been approached by Laurence Beetleman and others from Wickfield to see if he’d consider becoming dean, he’d mentioned it to Kate, but she’d argued against it. He had tenure in the music department at NYU, she was teaching part-time there, too, and more importantly, there was her whole network of artists and galleries. She’d always talked about her studio when they discussed it, mourning in advance the thought of leaving a space that she’d had for so long, which was entirely hers. It predated their relationship by a year, a loft space in an old industrial building on the edge of Williamsburg that she’d found right before that neighborhood skyrocketed.
She’d extol the light if he suggested that she could find another studio, but he knew that most of her attachment had to do with having been in the space for so long and having so many memories attached to it. She’d taken him there when they were dating, running ahead of him up the dangerously narrow flight of stairs, sliding back the battered metal door with a great flourish, looking for his reaction.
While he’d noticed the concrete floor flecked with paint and the long, battered worktable crowded with pots and brushes, and the three easels holding canvases in various states of completion, his eyes had been drawn relentlessly back to her. Beautiful in her strange hodgepodge of skirts and peasant blouse, an auburn-haired gypsy with clacking metal bracelets that she tossed on the table so they wouldn’t get in the way of her work.
She’d insisted on painting him, making him perch on a chair near the window and hold his face just so, tilted toward the light. Asking him questions and scolding him when he automatically moved his head to look at her as he answered.
“Stop looking at me, I want your profile,” she’d instructed, brow furrowed with concentration. She’d been so fierce in her work, so beautiful.
“I’d rather look at you.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” Her laughter came easily, ringing in the room and making him smile and bringing more scolding. “Stop that. No, no—look away from me! I want you in repose, not staring with a fool’s grin like some Sears Portrait.”
“I can’t help it, you’re making me laugh.”
Once, after they’d been dating for several months, they’d made love in her studio, moving against each other on an old blanket laid across the stained concrete. He could still recall the sunlight dappling her breasts and the feel of the sable brush they’d taken turns tracing over each other’s body.
A sudden honk startled Ian, and he realized he’d fallen thoroughly into memory and was sitting at a green light. He stomped on the accelerator and the old car lurched forward. When the lane changed to two, the SUV behind him roared around his left side, the irate driver communicating his displeasure by leaving the Volvo in a cloud of exhaust.
Annoyed at being lured into unproductive reflection, Ian focused on driving, pulling onto campus in record time. There was a spot assigned for him in the newer parking lot. Just one of the perks of the
