She walked past him, squeezing through the hallway that was narrowed, as were all their hallways, by canvases in various states of completion stacked against the walls. In the kitchen she poured herself a glass of wine and leaned against the counter to hear his news. “Is it about the commission?”
He looked back out into the hallway. When they had first moved into this house fifteen years ago, she took hold of the idea that the shabby streets could be brightened into an appropriate neighborhood for rearing a family through fertilizer and forsythias. Now, in the swell of late summer, when her garden was still in bloom and young couples walked labradoodles on the sidewalk past her front door, she could believe that the dirt under her fingernails had manifested the improved property values for the whole neighborhood. But after nearly a decade and a half here, even with friendly yellow flowers peeking up from a window box under her kitchen window, she had to concede that the interior of the house failed to match the picture of the open and uncluttered family home that she had conjured in that same imagination.
“Tell me what happened then.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have taken it,” he said.
“It was such a terribly generous lot of money,” she said. With understanding, not with regret. Something about John’s face—sturdy, bearded, blue-eyed—conjured for Liesl a sense of warmth in the very bottom of her belly, a warmth like good whiskey or strings of white lights at Christmas that made disappointments devilishly hard to cling to.
Liesl had a healthy pension waiting for her, but she worried about having a cushion were something to go wrong, as John had no retirement money of his own. A couple of portrait commissions would have gone a long way in easing her concerns about finally retiring, and steady work gave John a reason to get out of bed every morning. If he kept turning them down, she would have to get him a dog, and she wasn’t fond of animals.
John continued, “We don’t even really need the money. And I had a bad feeling.”
“You’ve said that about every commission you’ve ever received,” she said and took a long drink of wine to try to stoke that warmth in her belly.
True, the job was a bit tacky. Someone John had met through a donors’ function at the library wanted his new wife’s perfect, unlined face preserved in oil paints and hung on his mantel.
“Indeed. But I don’t believe my bad feelings manifested the demise of this particular deal,” John said.
“Why not?”
“The subject of the portrait was found to be, shall we say, less than faithful to my patron.” He took the glass from her hand and took a drink.
“Oh dear. How do you know? How did he know?” Liesl clasped a hand over her mouth as if she were the one who had something to be ashamed of, but John’s face was twisted into a smirk.
“I believe he was an eyewitness,” John said. “And he’s not shy about telling me or anyone who will listen.”
“No!”
“So he won’t be wanting a picture of her face for his study,” said John. He had finished her wine, so he moved to refill it. He wasn’t supposed to drink. Not really. But he was out of bed and smiling, and the loss of the commission really didn’t seem to be his fault, so she said nothing.
“No, no more. I should get some work done,” she said. She opened the refrigerator to find something she might put together for dinner.
“I’ve left some spaghetti warming in the oven for you,” John said.
“My hero.”
“You’ve been my real patron all these years. The least I can do is dinner.”
There it was. That warmth again.
“Thank goodness for you.”
“Have you had a bit of a day? Do you want to talk about it?”
“I have, and I don’t.”
She ate the pasta standing over the kitchen counter.
“Come on,” John said. “At least sit down for a cup of coffee before you go back to your work.”
Liesl shook her head and wandered down another crowded hallway to her small office. Her desk was scattered with materials for the book she was meant to be writing on her leave. Printouts about ancient landscaping practices, titles about floral crops. She pushed it all off to the side and switched on her computer.
“Mom?” She heard her daughter calling from somewhere in the house.
Hannah was about to complete her last year at the university but still treated her childhood home as a laundry and pantry, to Liesl’s delight.
“Dad said you were in here working,” Hannah said, poking her head into the office. The room got brighter when Hannah entered it, as though even the halogen bulbs were happy to see her. It was hard to be objective about her own child. About her sandy-blond hair that glowed like Liesl’s own happy childhood. About the improbable brown eyes that kept Hannah from looking too flighty, so much more respectable and serious than blue might have been. Hannah was a whole person with bad habits and acne scars. But Liesl would be damned if she couldn’t see any of that for all the light that shone off the girl.
“I’m trying to get ready for tomorrow. I feel a bit behind,” Liesl said.
“It’s nearly nine o’clock,” Hannah said.
“Tell me about the first day of classes,” Liesl asked.
“No classes,” Hannah said. “I just had a meeting with my thesis advisor.”
“And did you like him? Because if there is someone you would prefer to work with, I’ll see what I can do. Your thesis advisor is the most important relationship you’ll have during your academic career. He’ll steer your research, provide you guidance on graduate schools, and his reference and introductions can really make or break your chances.”
“She, not he,” Hannah said.
“I wasn’t assuming; I thought you told me it was a man,” Liesl said.
“Right,” said Hannah. “Dad told you about the commission?”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Liesl said, glancing back at the computer. “It’s terribly bad luck, but I’m really proud of your father for taking the job in the first place.”
“So you’re not mad then? Dad was worried you’d be upset with him.”
“Hannah, baby,” Liesl said, and she fixed her face as she said it, to look as un-angry as a person could look. “How could I possibly be annoyed with your father because some twenty-eight-year-old cheated on her septuagenarian husband?”
“I told him it was silly,” Hannah said. “But he was worried.”
Hannah had come and sat on the edge of the desk, the way she had been doing since she was a small child. She was as much a fixture in the room as the bookshelves.
“Now tell me about this thesis advisor. What’s she like?”
“Nothing to tell yet. You tell me about this fancy new job. I’m so proud of you, Mom.”
“Now you’re the one being silly.”
“Silly how! You’ve secretly been doing all of Chris’s work for years.”
“That’s not true. The collection that Christopher has built…”
“If the dude had to have a stroke for you to finally get the job title you deserve, I’ll take it.”
Liesl shooed her daughter out of the office. “Don’t ever say things like that where people can hear you.”
Liesl drank a lot more wine once John wasn’t there to see her pour it. She would have liked to go to bed but knew what her marriage needed was for John to go to sleep before she came up so she wouldn’t have to reassure him over and over that she wasn’t mad.