Marble Into Music
The events of this tale unfolded in the early 1970s.
After she returned home, Claudia realized something about secrets, something that I'd never bothered to mention.
Secrets go stale. It takes a while, of course, and it seems to depend on the size of the particular secret and its significance to you, but, eventually, all secrets fade. They dry out and go dull.
Then it's a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of a trigonometry test and Claudia thinks to herself, as she frequently had over the last three years, I lived in a museum for six days. I solved Angel's mystery.
She thinks this, then waits. She frowns, because she doesn't feel any different. She tries again, applying the mental emphasis to museum and mystery, expecting the familiar frisson, that tingle across her skull and down her spine and through the centers of her palms, but still feels nothing.
Secrets change, and, in transforming, lose their power. Admittedly, Claudia herself had changed quite a bit, and she would continue to change, far more than she could have possibly dreamed that murky November afternoon, staring at the pale purple mimeographed sheet.
She was taller, and thinner, and her hair behaved better than it used to. Greenwich bored and frustrated her a little more each day; this was because she was outgrowing it. Claudia didn't know this, of course; we rarely know ourselves nearly as well as we'd like to think we do. That includes you, Pingree, cosmopolitan as you may be.
Claudia drove home that evening, disturbed by her secret's lack of power. As soon as she entered the house, she went to find Jamie.
The children had remained -- I wish I could say close, but that is not entirely accurate. While they understood each other, they never particularly liked each other, nor got along all that well. Jamie was twelve now, as mercenary as ever, but he had progressed from gambling on card games to more, shall we say, risky but remunerative enterprises.
Claudia gagged involuntarily when she pushed in Jamie's door and smelled his incense, gym socks, and the tang of bunches of marijuana drying upside down in his closet.
Jamie was, you see, the most reputable and reliable dealer in Greenwich, Cos Cob, and New Canaan. In the middle schools, he would hasten to point out; he hadn't yet cracked the even more lucrative high-school market.
He was working on that.
"Lack of manners," Jamie said without looking up from the desktop where he carefully cut each bag with his personal combination of oregano and marjoram, "are like the first step to Communism. You a Red, Claude?"
"Lack of manners is," Claudia said, glancing around for a non-cluttered spot on which to sit. She found nothing, so she crossed her arms and glared. "Singular subject. That's basic subject-verb agreement, James."
Huffing, Jamie blew his long hair off his still-cherubic face. "What do you want?"
"Does it still work for you?"
"What, this?" He jabbed his finger at the open baggie before him. "Sure."
"Not that, numbskull. The -- Our --" She looked around, but it seemed the only ones listening to her were Robert Plant and Jimi Hendrix from the posters over Jamie's bed. "You know. Our thing. Is it still working for you?"
Jamie leaned back. "What, Angel?"
"Sssh!"
Rolling his eyes, Jamie shrugged. "Sorry. Forgot this week's code. What do you mean, is it still working?"
"Forget it." Claudia turned to go; it was no use trying to talk to Jamie, not unless she needed money for Frye boots or an advance on his product, uncut.
"Calm down," Jamie said. "Huffy, huffy. And, if you must know, the answer's no. Having a --" Winking, he dropped his voice. "-- secret doesn't feel like it used to. Kind of boring, actually. Got other shit on my plate these days."
"Don't swear."
"Fuck off," he said cheerfully. "Call Mrs. F. She'll know what to do."
Rather than calling, Claudia visited me. I had grown quite fond of her visits, despite her rather smug, sullen silences and odd affinity for the most garish of my furniture.
The details of this particular visit are not important. That Claudia was shifty and restless, incapable of finishing her sentences and thoughts, I chalked up to over-indulgence in Jamie's product line. (Did you ever try it, Pingree? I'm not sure you had even joined the firm at this time. At any rate, it was wonderful stuff. Nothing like his later results from the hydroponic plants, but soothing to an old lady's aching bones nonetheless.)
What is important, is that Jamie was wrong; I didn't, in fact, know what to do. Claudia was making me very nervous, however, so I gave her the key to my New York house. Perhaps I wanted to get her off my case; I'm still not sure why I did that.
Our reasons for acting are never as important as the results of those actions. And I was right in giving her that key.
New York was Claudia's true home. She might have grown up in Greenwich, but as soon as she stepped onto the platform at Grand Central, smelled the hot, acrid steam and saw the rapid, unceasing jostle of bodies, she was home.
My townhouse in the East 50s had not been occupied for almost a decade, but I kept it furnished, cleaned, and heated, just in case. Claudia moved through the rooms as carefully, lightly, as a ghost, watching the drop-cloths tremble, touching the light dust on the surface of the paintings and mantels, closing her eyes and imagining that this was her house, her world.
At first, she traveled to the city only every so often, twice or three times a month, an afternoon or full Saturday at a time. She could not bear to stay away long, however, and seeing as her parents had finally relaxed the rather draconian and near-psychotic paranoid watch they had kept over all the children since she and Jamie returned from the city the first time, she was able to escape almost whenever she wanted.
This is, then, where the story really begins. You like knowing all the facts, Pingree, and I've tried to accommodate that, but at this point I really must insist on jumping ahead.
It is mid-April now, an early afternoon on a Monday. Claudia woke that morning to the sounds of her brothers fighting and her mother rattling her Valium bottle. She knew, with that full, glowing certainty of saints and visionaries (we would call them madmen now, but bear with me), that she could not spend another day in this house, that town, the whole of melancholia-ridden suburbia.
So, having taken the 10:51 train, she is sitting near the top of the steps of my townhouse. She is smoking a cigarette (I insisted that she do that outside; I might not live in that house, but it's a filthy habit, not to be encouraged) and soaking in the wan spring sun. A bunch of grapes, pale as the curled leaves on the trees, sits next to her. Claudia feels as if she is waiting for something, and she feels quiet, and she is, strangely (or not) enough, happy.
A checker pulls up to the curb, discharging a girl right at my stoop. Claudia is practicing her Manhattanite nonchalance, so she does not look at the girl at first.
Mine is a quiet street, lined with spindly trees, and quite deserted during the workday. (Indeed, Claudia always felt rather deliciously decadent -- her word, of course -- when she played hooky at the house, as if the entire neighborhood were hers alone, and this afternoon was no exception.)
It is quiet enough that the girl's voice carries up from the sidewalk and draws Claudia's reluctant attention.
"Really, I'll be fine. I've been here a hundred times and I know where I'm going."
She is a small, slim girl, just about Claudia's age, and the sun catches her black hair when she shakes it back. Russet stripes and threads of violet shine for a moment before she turns to face the house.
Her eyes are closed and Claudia forgets all about nonchalance as she stares down at the girl.
She is beautiful, her skin perfectly pale, and elegant is the only word for her. She wears a short wool skirt the color of fawns and does, a darker turtleneck sweater, and black tights that disappear into snug, knee-high boots, their leather finer than anything Claudia could ever hope to find in Greenwich.
Claudia had always loved elegance, whether it was the fall of curtains around a bed or the limestone majesty of the Met or just the upturned face of an angel. Her chest hurts, staring, and then the girl opens her eyes. She takes a small, precise step forward and starts to climb the stairs, her hand resting lightly on the wrought-iron railing.
The girl climbs toward Claudia, but her gaze is blank. Blind.
"Excuse me," Claudia says and the girl stops. The only sign of surprise she betrays is the way her hand tightens on the railing.
"Who are you?"
Claudia tosses her cigarette into the azalea bush below the stairs. "Who're you?" She had come to think of the house as her own, and, in a way, it was. Possession may be nine-tenths of the law, but it is determined most of all by love for a thing or a place. And Claudia loved that house. Moreover, the house will be hers, whenever it is I manage to shake off this aching, creaking mortality.
"Emily. Answer my question now."
Claudia stands up, and, hearing her, Emily adjusts the tilt of her head. Her hair falls softly back from her face, revealing an expression -- set mouth and tight jaw, fixed stare in platinum-gray eyes -- as stubborn as Claudia's own.
"Where do you think you're going, Emily?" Claudia asks, backing up a little to the top step.
"Inside," Emily says. "I play the piano in the parlor sometimes. Keeps it in shape. Leave things too long and they die."
"Never seen you before."
"Mutual, of course."
Claudia's chest tightens further. She realizes, as she watches the shadows shift across Emily's cheeks, that she was lying. She had seen Emily before.
In another form, of course, but Claudia had stood in front of Angel and longed to be such beauty, to hug it and carry it off for her own.
Now Angel stood before her, a living, breathing girl who is growing more impatient the longer Claudia remains silent.
Secrets are not property.
Claudia does not understand that until she finds herself stepping aside and opening the door for Emily.
"I have my own key, you know," Emily says crossly.
"Sorry, I --" Claudia finds it hard to speak. Her throat hurts and her lips burn.
"Never mind."
Following Emily inside, Claudia admires how confidently Emily moves down the hall. She turns right into the parlor and approaches the piano as if it is drawing her to it.
"Claudia," Claudia says, tasting smoke in her mouth. "I'm -- My name's Claudia."
Shrugging off her jacket, Emily slid onto the piano bench. "So, Claudia, are you going to listen or just stand there?"
From the back, Emily could be ten, twenty, years older. Her posture is perfect and relaxed, her clothes well-tailored and mature. Claudia feels almost cloddish, a little slovenly, in comparison.
"Listen, I guess," she says, taking a seat on the Louis XVII davenport.
"Good," Emily says, turning and smiling. In the duskiness of the room, her eyes glow silver, then pewter, and Claudia leans forward.
She thinks that you have to listen purposefully, that concerts are like having your annual check-up: Good for you, but not quite effortless.
She is wrong, Claudia finds, as she listens to Emily's playing. Bach, and then a swooping, joyful piece by Ravel. Claudia doesn't know the names, of course, and Emily does not offer them. But Claudia knows joy and transport when she encounters it, and that is what Emily offers her. Precise notes that quiver in isolation, then slip away to join their fellows, dancing like peasants in a Flemish masterpiece.
When Emily finishes, an hour or more has passed. The last sounds die away as slowly as light fades on a summer evening. Claudia's hands are numb, twisted together in her lap as they are, and her mouth is dry. She cannot quite catch her breath.
"So you know Mrs. Frankweiler, I guess," Emily says, closing the piano and turning around.
"What?" Claudia shakes herself. She was not asleep, but she was not conscious, either. "Yes, of course. How do you?"
"My teacher is -- was, I suppose -- her boyfriend. Gentleman caller, she calls Mr. Theo. Now they're just euchre buddies."
Claudia's nose wrinkles. She does not like the thought of me having a private life; such narcissism is the provenance of the young, and I endure.
I retaliate, as well. I shall not bore you, Pingree, nosy as you are, with the details of their conversation. Suffice it to say that, eventually, Emily and Claudia retired to the master bedroom on the third floor. Throwing open the doors to the tiny balcony overlooking the back garden, they lay down in the sun and talked.
Claudia offered Emily some of Jamie's product. Emily shared the Katz's rye bread she carried in her satchel for Mr. Theo's favorite sandwich. They raided my rather under-populated liquor cabinet, coming up only with some sherry they drank from the bottle.
When they kiss, Claudia draws Emily toward her, into her arms, against her mouth, as if she needs Emily. And she does, believe me that. She needs the sweet gravity of Emily's kiss, the slippery warmth that contacts sends through her, the luxuriant fall of Emily's hair through her fingers.
Claudia needs friendship, but more than that, she needs touch. Emily kisses fiercely, by all accounts, small genius fingers knotting in Claudia's hair, over her breast, pushing herself forward and in.
I'm not going to bore you with their touching but very adolescent fumbling, Pingree. But I think you'll agree that Claudia changed that day. She left the now-desiccated realms of fantasy and entered a new phase, one where elegance and love were not carved in marble and hidden in an old lady's files, but existed within reach, in the skimming touch of Emily's mouth and the whispered promises they shared afterward.
Afterward, Claudia was never the same. Nor was Emily, but Emily was always far more confident and herself than anyone her age.
I hope this deposition assists you with the background for Claudia and Emily's suit, Pingree. I wish them only the very best as they pursue their case against that over-valued, wholly ironic and thoroughly irritating film-maker. That Claudia's experiences in the museum would be stolen as biography for an incestuous, vacant-eyed character, little more than the idealization of male desire, is regrettable. To say the least.
I'll school my temper and finish this now.
I've jumped around in time and tense, but that, I hope, you will forgive as the eccentric indulgence of a very old woman -- one whose highly excitable and despairingly cranky husband is demanding that she stop writing and come to dinner.
Yours very sincerely, Linda Frankweiler-Theotocopoulos Falls Village, Conn.