Lady in Waiting: A Novel (5 page)

I worked at it for several minutes, prying and prodding. When at last the lock sprung free, the corroded hinges clattered to the table in pieces. An audible sigh seemed to escape the box as fresh air crawled inside for the first time in who knows how long. Wilson had rejoined me, and he heard the sigh too. It was as if the box was whispering, “At last …” I lifted the lid and peeked inside. The contents were covered in filaments of straw that disintegrated at my touch.

Inside the folds of a loosely woven bit of fabric was an onyx rosary, a small hand mirror blackened with age, and a book in such decrepit shape, its back cover hung by fibers in several places. I lifted the book from the box and gently opened it, but the pages threatened to fall away from the spine. I gently laid it on the acquisitions table, wishing I had put on a pair of gloves before attempting to pick it up.

“Good Lord. That book must be three or four hundred years old!” Wilson squinted at the script. “Look at the lettering!”

I peered at the first page, but the ink was too faint. I couldn’t make out anything other than its title:
Book of Common Prayer
. “You think so?”

“Definitely. This should have been in a museum somewhere, instead of some farmhouse attic,” Wilson grumbled. “Where did Emma say she found it?”

“At a jumble sale in Wales.”

I touched the edge of the spine that was halfway connected to the back cover and ran my finger along the inside. It felt like finely stretched leather. A bump under the lining caught my attention, and I rubbed my fingertip back over it. The raised portion was about the size of an American nickel, slightly round and lumpy. Whatever it was, I knew it would have to be removed if the book was to be repaired.

“Think you can fix it?” I asked Wilson.

He shrugged. “Maybe a professional could do something with it. They will charge you a pretty penny, though. And no one will likely pay what it’s worth with the shape it is in. It’s too bad, really.” He fingered the rosary. “This is in lovely shape, though. Not as old as the book, I’m sure.”

He held up the dangling crucifix. The black beads shimmered under the recessed ceiling lights, practically calling out for hands to touch them in prayer, and I wondered how long it had been since anyone had touched them. I looked at the shiny black stones in Wilson’s hands, and I pondered for a moment what it might be like to hold them in my fingers, the tiny form of the obedient Christ dangling from my palm.

Stacy returned to the back of the store. “So what did I miss?”

“This lovely rosary. A hopeless hand mirror. And a very old prayer book that someone should’ve taken better care of.” Wilson laid the rosary next to the tattered
Book of Common Prayer
.

“Wow,” Stacy rubbed a finger over the rosary’s beads. Then she leaned over the book, gently turned a page, and her eyes widened. “This thing is ancient. And it’s a Protestant volume. Look. It was printed by the Church of England. And omigosh, did you see this date?”

Wilson and I leaned in, but the ink was too faint for me. Stacy’s young eyes were bright. “Sixteen sixty-two! It’s, like, three hundred and fifty years old!”

I’d never owned anything as old as this. Never.

“A Catholic rosary placed in a box with a Protestant book of prayer.” Wilson laughed.

Stacy bent over the book again, and I saw her notice the lump in the spine. “What is that?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Maybe the remains of an insect or something. I’m sure it’s the reason the spine has started to separate. We’re going to have to find a way to get it out. I won’t be able to reattach the spine as long as that bump is there.”

“Are you going to try and fix it yourself?”

“Wilson said it would cost a mint to get it fixed professionally.”

Stacy nodded. “Might be worth it, though. You could probably sell it to a collector for some good money.”

Something about the book was comforting to me—like the clock that didn’t tick—and the thought of selling it and the rosary made me frown.

“What?” Stacy noticed.

“I don’t know. I just … I might hang on to these for a while.”

Stacy smiled. “They are kind of cool, actually. Like little pieces of God from hundreds of years back. You know, when we didn’t even exist and he was who he’s always been.”

She walked over to the tea set that Wilson unpacked. Ivory china edged in gold filigree and decorated with lavender asters. “These dishes are cool.” Her spoken thoughts on the Divine had been a mere stepping stone to a comment about dishes.

Most of the time I could forget Stacy was the daughter of missionary
parents. Then there were moments, like that one, where I would almost hear a swishing sound as I brushed up against her confident faith.

I reached for the rosary and the prayer book and placed them gently back in the ancient box that they came in.

Instinctively I set them by my purse to take home with me; the little pieces of God that seemed to resonate with my little broken world.

I
heard from Brad a few times after he left. He called after he broke the news to Connor, and again, two weeks later, when he phoned to make sure I had enough money to cover the bills. He made one trip back to Manhattan to pick up the canoe he had in storage and the panini sandwich grill, but he came while I was at an auction in Newark. He left a note on the breakfast bar saying he hoped I didn’t mind him taking the sandwich maker and that he was sorry he missed me.

Sorry he missed me.

Each of those tender intrusions—the two calls, the note—left me wavering on the edge of hope and doubt when I crept into bed at night. Brad’s voice and his handwriting, so familiar to me and so absent now from my day-to-day life, kneaded my thoughts like a masseur pressing against taut muscles. Sleep never came on those nights.

His first phone call came on the heels of his conversation with Connor, the same day he left. He told me he and Connor had met at the Ben & Jerry’s near the Dartmouth campus. While eating ice cream, he told Connor he was trying out a new a job at a hospital in New Hampshire. And taking a little break from Manhattan.

I had paced the quiet apartment during the hour I knew he was meeting with Connor. I thought of the things Brad had said to me when he told me he was leaving. I wondered which of any of those things he was telling Connor.

That Brad and I needed some time away from each other to think.

Time to ponder.

Time to review.

Time to decide.

Brad had been insistent that this time away from each other wasn’t about waiting. But time is often about waiting.

I’d thought perhaps Connor would call me after Brad left him. Surely he had questions. Was he mad? sad? confused? Was Connor disappointed in us? How much time did he need before I should talk to him?

Connor didn’t call until nearly ten that night. There had been a queer, disapproving tenor to his voice, the kind of tone a cop uses when aiding a stranded driver who should’ve known better than to slam on the brakes when driving on ice. I told him I was going to be okay. Everything would be fine in the end. Dad needed to check out the New Hampshire job alone for a lot of little reasons, none that he needed to worry about. We didn’t talk long. He clearly didn’t have a clue as to how to process the situation. And that actually made me feel somewhat vindicated. Connor hadn’t seen it coming either.

I had left the shop a few minutes before six. It was Stacy’s night to close. I had just kicked off my shoes in my apartment and was sorting through the mail when my cell phone trilled. It was Molly inviting me over for dinner; Jeff was at a Yankees game, and it was just her and the girls. I declined, but she kept after me until I finally said yes. She didn’t like me eating alone every night.

We hung up, and I changed into jeans and a sweater. Coming back through the kitchen, I sifted through the contents of the bag that I took to the store every day, looking for a tube of lipstick. My fingers brushed up against the flannel-wrapped package that contained the prayer book
and the rosary. I gently removed them and placed them in the center of the table. I stared at them as I painted my lips a plummy red. Then I grabbed a bottle of wine and began to walk the seven blocks to Molly and Jeff’s apartment.

I’d known Molly since my freshman year at Boston University. Her older brother, Tom, knew Brad before I did, and it was at a birthday party for Tom that I met Brad. Molly had often said if it wasn’t for her, I would never have met the man I married.

She hadn’t offered any advice on my dilemma, other than to reassure me that women aren’t mind readers. I told her I felt foolish for not picking up on Brad’s signals that he was unhappy.

“What signals?” she had said.

What signals indeed?

Molly and Jeff had moved to Manhattan before Brad and I did, coming here as newlyweds a few years after Brad and I got married. Jeff was an investment broker, a loyal fan of the Yankees, and had a hard time talking about anything other than stocks and baseball. Molly was the principal at the private school her twin twelve-year-old daughters attended and where Connor had graduated two years before.

Brad and Jeff were, I suppose, as close as two men could be with few interests in common. Brad enjoyed reading biographies and preferred the water—sailing, canoeing, fishing—to any televised sport. Brad and Jeff weren’t close, but they’d spent time together; they’d talked. I hadn’t, to that point, asked Jeff if he knew how frustrated Brad was with our marriage. And I was glad he was going to be at a baseball game because of that. I was somewhat afraid Jeff had known Brad was leaving me before I did.

Twilight was turning Seventy-eighth Street into an amber palette of shining colors. The evening commute was still in full swing as I stepped into the swell of pedestrians—some in suits, some in denim—as they made their way out of the heart of downtown to quieter streets and boroughs.

Brad didn’t find any poetic charm in the human sea that is the streets of Manhattan. Embracing the persistent press of people was one of the concessions he made when we moved to Manhattan the year Connor turned thirteen. As I walked, brushing up against the elite and the ordinary, it occurred to me that the year Connor turned thirteen was the last time Brad made a decision that changed everything for us. The extended hours at Memorial and the hourlong—sometimes longer—commute home to Long Island had been keeping Brad away from Connor and me for too many hours of the day. Brad decided to move to the Upper West Side without even tossing the idea around with me. He wanted to be home more, and I wanted the same thing. It was easy for me to rationalize that he’d made that decision for me and Connor.

As I rounded the corner to Molly and Jeff’s apartment building, I couldn’t help but wonder if Brad had been feeling a disconnect with me, even then. And had made a rather impulsive move to reverse it.

I didn’t mind the move to Manhattan; in fact, I was excited about it—more so than Brad. But it felt strange to tell my parents that Brad and I had decided to relocate to Manhattan, when I hadn’t decided anything at all. My parents pressed me for reasons, and I listed them all as if the move had been my idea.

They had, of course, heartily praised Brad for wanting to spend more time with his family, even though the move meant we wouldn’t be living fifteen minutes away from them anymore.

My parents had been charmed with Brad since the moment I brought him home to meet them, practically congratulating me for falling for a medical student who would one day be able to provide for me in ways my parents could not. My dad envied the doctors he shared the hallways with at Long Island General. He and they both worked long hours and wore beepers on their belts and had the same pale yellow name tags. They both were called away from warm beds at 2 a.m., from Christmas
dinners, and into driving snowstorms to respond to emergencies. But the doctors scurried to save lives, and my dad to respond to a stalled ventilation system or leaking water tank. Dad didn’t draw the same respect or paycheck as his co-workers in scrubs and white coats.