Authors: Elizabeth Collison
But there was more to these Gothic old foyers. They were also where visitors were kept when calling on the tubercular. Outsiders were not allowed down the halls, they could not chat with patients in their beds. Though no one knew then the source of white plague, the smart money did not sit in small rooms with it. The foyers with their high ceilings and open wide floors made for safer and more sociable reunions.
Frances says well that was true for back then but it's now space that's just basically wasted. Frances would have redecorated a good bit around here. But Dr. Steinem had his own plans for our foyer. He made it into our receptionist's post, moved in a large desk, and stationed poor Marcie at it. Then, to make us look more important, we think, he brought in a dozen high straight-back chairs. As though we were expecting long lines of people, and they needed somewhere to sit down. But of course no one much ever comes up to fourth floor, our foyer is a waiting room in waiting. Or so it was until the first of last month.
Which brings me to Chaise du Jour. What the editors and I stand now facing.
Chaise du Jour started, I am pretty sure, by accident, it was not at first anyone's fault. Unless possibly the weekend janitors are to blame, the weekend janitors who are students at the university
and strong enough to lift a few chairs. Certainly it was not our Tuesday-night Earnest, who is too old for the labor involved. No, it was probably some work-study student.
I imagine this is how it began. One Sunday night while vacuuming the foyer on our floor, this janitor, probably somebody new, a serious boy, bent on vacuuming all the way under things, moved a few chairs out of his way. And then, called off to a crisis on some floor below, to some louvered shade or drain suddenly jammed, he forgot what he'd been doing on fourth and left the chairs where he had moved them. Five foyer chairs all in a straight row, directly across from the elevator.
After that there was no going back, not after those chairs aligned. The next morning they got our attention right off, when the elevator doors first opened. Well, now. Look at that. Something was up at the Project. Normally those chairs sat demure, indistinct, in a conversational U near the back wall. It made us all laugh, those prim straight-backed chairs advancing like that in brigade, holding the line at the elevator. We all talked about it then over lunch. Those five chairs looked so odd, so out of their place, so rigid and alert in that single straight row. They were like some column of high-back sentries on lookout for attack by hoist. And they became our main topic of conversation all lunch, eclipsing even Lola's new squeeze who had us going the day before.
The chairs were still on our minds when we returned to fourth floor at one. Where to universal surprise we found the chairs had changed place once again. Though still in a row, now they were facing away from us, as if they had turned on their heels in one great group chair snit. Someone had moved them when no one else saw, it was even a better joke now. And each time then that
day and the next, when one of us had reason to pass by them, the chairs had again rearranged. Marcie, who worked in clear sight of the chairs, hadn't herself a clue how. She is, truth be told, a great taker of breaks and often not at her desk. Meanwhile, someone was toying with our foyer.
It was Emmaline again. Celeste said it first. But by the end of the day, the others were all certain too. It was Emmaline, all right. Although, as Celeste pointed out, Emmaline would never herself let on. Still the editors all knew about poor Emmaline, that she sometimes grew restless and bored with our floor, that she sometimes just needed a change. We were happy she had found a small outlet. We were happy about the foyer chairs.
Because they have become, it turns out, our running office joke. They are something for us to look forward to. And even now, a month on, Emmaline still comes through. She has long since moved on from chair rows. Some mornings we come in to six chairs stacked straight up. Some days four lie on their sides. And once ten chairs formed a pyramid in the middle of the room like trick elephants coaxed up onto each other's shoulders.
“Chaise du Jour,” Frances named the chair sculptures. After which an easel appeared, with large placards written in red, in what suspiciously looked like blood. Someone, Emmaline again naturally, we assumed, began captioning our Chaise du Jour. On Monday, two chairs set down facing each other, mirror-image; the placard: “Chair and Chair Alike.” Replaced the next day by a single chair, a heart-shaped box of chocolates on its seat: “Mon Chair Amour.” Followed on Thursday by two chairs again, one propped up against the other: “Sonny and Chair,” which has remained pretty much our favorite.
But now today when the elevator doors open, we see Emmaline has taken a new, darker tack. The chairs line up grimly, all facing forward, and we give a collective little gasp. “Really,” Celeste whispers, “she's outdone herself.” Before us are not one, but three Chaises du Jour.
On the left, two chairs placed side by side, the back of each painted with a large red D; in the center two more chairs, the first painted 2, the second a capital B; on the right, one lone chair, another large red 2. Then in front of each display, an easel with placard.
For our benefit, Celeste reads them aloud, left to right:
D-Seats
Seats 2-B
B No More
“Oh no!” we all say and pull back. And I think well, of course, more bad omens. The editors catch them as well. And we just stay in the elevator where we are.
Except for Celeste, who, feeling responsible, feeling in charge, launches herself into the foyer. She gives a quick angry look once around. Then staring straight up at the ceiling, “Emmaline,” she calls loudly. “That's not funny.”
He closes the door to the studio and leans back against it, listening to the silence. He loves it here evenings alone.
He breathes in, smells the linseed and solvent. Looks up. High
ceilinged and limestone, the cavernous old room is perfect. In this room you step back, it is centuries ago within these stone walls. By day, its old skylights let in ancient sun, and at night galaxies revolve at the panes.
He brings his own canvas, his paints. Sets up alone. He has come for the painting. He tells no one. But at night, alone, he paints. The way in is the way out, he murmurs.
He works by starlight, or by the full moon. He finds his way in the painting.
It's been a long day at the Project. All these visits from Emmaline and her ilk take a toll. As do the series editors. Too much talk of ghosts for one day, I think. And besides I have now more pressing business. I have Ben Adams to find. So on this afternoon's bus ride back into town, I'm anxious only to be off again to Ben.
And as soon as I'm home then, I climb into my car and head to his farm to find him. To find him and possibly save him. Or barring the need for the latter, at least have the chance to talk.
Ben rents a farmhouse ten miles out of town. You have to take back roads to get there, and if you do not have a good map your first trip, you will most certainly lose your way. But I myself know the route well, I have made many trips out to Ben's. And always I am happy to make the drive. Ben's farm is a splendid place once you're there, peaceful and quiet, with low rolling fields and a sky as wide as it's high.
Still, because it's a long drive and there is time now to think, and because after all I'm going to see Ben, I find once again I am thinking about himâonce more about him and me.
The simple fact is, after our coffee early last fall, Ben and I began seeing each other. There was, first of all, our first dinner, something that I will get to. Followed by still other dinners, the beginning of our seeing one another. After which we decided it would do no harm, just now and then, seeing each other otherwise. It was a lovely time really, just seeing each other this fall.
We began dividing the visits between country and town, spending time at first at my house where Ben stopped sometimes after class. Although soon he began stopping on weekends as well. He would ask if maybe I had something he could fix, or repaint, or possibly just move. Maybe an old carburetor he could clean. Ben is handy, he liked having something to do with his hands. And when he was done with whatever small task I came up with, if the day was still warm I would fix us iced tea and we would drink it out in my backyard. Or if it was cold and raining, or, later, snowing, I would make a pot of fresh coffee while Ben stoked the fireplace in the front room. Then we would sit in our woolly socks on the floor and drink our coffee from big china mugs.
That is mostly how it went on Ben's trips into town. But the fact is I preferred visiting Ben at his farm. And not just for dinner, I liked seeing the farm in the day. I liked the long drive, I liked the back roads, the trees turning color, the heartening change of scenery. On the way, I'd open the car windows and sing.
And once arrived, I would spend a good part of my time just sitting out in his farmyard. The grass there this fall was spectacular, lush, and for a farmyard the air was clean. I would take little
naps in that grass. I would lie back and sometimes, if there were breezes, if I happened just then to be lying in sun, things occurred to me that normally would not. Reveries, of sorts. I would think, for instance, how there should be great loads of laundry just now blowing in these magnificent breezes, the clothesline stretched from Ben's door to his flag. Overalls and work shirts, large white boxers, all on the line out drying. Everywhere chambray should be flapping.
And sometimes I would say, “Oh Ben, this is perfect. This place is where you belong.”
Ben thought I romanticized things. “It's just an old farm, an old farmhouse,” he said.
But I think there is more. Ben's farm is solid and it suits him. And although I knew in the spring he'd be leaving, although I did not tell him this next part, I would sometimes sit in the grass of Ben's farm and wish somehow he could stay.
So yes, you could say we were seeing each other, Ben and I. And the complication of course was that Ben is a married man. Something I've already touched on and something most people would not approve. But it was also not what most people would think. Ben and I at that point were just friends. I was seeing Ben Adams but we were just friends.
Well no, that isn't it either. Ben and I were not only friends. We were more, or maybe just else. Well, I do not think there's a term for what Ben and I were, especially in the beginning. The closest I came to were words just for Ben and even then I thought of him as hybrid. Part mentor, part swain, part ward.
It remains, however, that this man I was seeing, Ben Adams, was indeed a married man. A husband, a spouse, though thankfully
nobody's father. It is a fact I had to remember. His wife's name, I learned, is Ellen, and until this past June, Ben lived with her in his Western state. That is all I learned about Ellen. She was the one topic that mattered that Ben and I did not discuss.
Which, I should add, did not stop me, at least in the beginning, from sometimes trying to see things from her point of view. I tried to think, for example, how I would feel if I were a wife in a Western state with a husband off mentoring and swaining. But I did not get far in my line of thought, as I had no idea who this Ellen was or if she had a point of view. Or even if she knew what was up. Then again, I was still not myself sure what exactly was up. Nor, I think, was Ben. So there you have it. We were all of us this fall confused.
Nevertheless, all this fall, Ben and I were happy to go on seeing each other, just stopping by now and then. To leave it at that. What could be wrong? What could possibly go wrong with that?
Well of course the answer is a great deal. And it could still all end terribly wrong. Although by wrong, to be clear, I do not mean wrong as in immoral. Not wrong as in sin. I am not much a holder with sin, which I realize does complicate a stance on wrongdoing, and what leads to irreparable harm.
No, what I mean here about wrong, about seeing a married man as wrong, is that it can be incredibly wrongheaded. Misguided, delusional, a bad idea. And it can indeed lead to harm, no matter the initial intention.
In the beginning, however, I did not think this applied to Ben and me. When I tried very hard to be honest, I did not think what we were doing was wrong. I was not out to take Ben away from his Ellen. Or make him change his old life for me. And except on
the occasional breezy day on his farm, I did not particularly wish he would stay.
In fact, Ben's marital state was an advantage, I thought. How safe, really, married men were, how unlikely to become hangers-on. How awfully convenient, really. With Ben, I believed, life could just carry on. By summer there was somewhere else he should be, he had a Western wife to return to. And because I was already where I should be, I could stay just as I was.
Which is right where the wrong part came in.
But just now, in record time, here I am already at Ben's farm. And I drive up his long driveway to the front of his house and stop where I usually park.
“Ben, Ben,” I call from the car window. I am excited to see Ben at last. But I look at his house then and notice the shades at his windows are down and his truck is not there on the side. His truck is in fact not here at all, and I know then neither is Ben.
A low cloud moves in, leaving the farmyard in shadow, and I feel a shiver pass through me. Ben should be here. Something is wrong. Somethingâand I try hard to think. But then the breeze picks up, the light returns, and because I cannot just now put my finger on it, I give a little shake and snap to. Well but it is only that Ben is not home. It is only my own bad timing. I have driven all this way to tell Ben the newsâthat possibly he is in danger and for this reason I have come to save himâbut now what do you know, Ben is not here.
I sit for a minute considering. Still, what does it mean, Ben's not here? Could in fact this be what Mrs. E had in mind, that Ben is off now somewhere in danger? That someone or something has taken him away? It's possible, as I've said, Mrs. E has it right.