Читать книгу The Dead Place - Rebecca Drake - Страница 11

Ian Corbin stood in front of the mirror adjusting his tie and ran the new job title through his mind. Dean Corbin. Ian Corbin, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He’d been Professor Corbin or Dr. Corbin for so long, it was going to take time to make the switch.

Red silk tie in place, he dropped his arms and looked at himself. Pressed white shirt, new charcoal suit, and a tie Kate had picked for him. It was going to be hot today. He’d probably ditch the jacket as soon as he got to the office.

He had a sudden memory of that late summer day, all those years ago, when he’d taught his first class. Only two years into his doctoral program, he’d been completely green and barely older than the undergrads he was being asked to teach. It had been a hot, sultry morning just like this one and the sense of excitement just the same.

He smiled at his reflection. Except for a slight blurring of his jawline and the silvering of his temples, he looked essentially the same. It was only if he looked closer, stared deep into his eyes and counted the fine lines creasing the skin around them, that he saw the profound change.

He’d been single back then, a small-town boy made good, his own savings and a handful of scholarships making it possible to get his undergraduate degree. It was still some years before he became a husband and a father, a time in his life when he worried he didn’t fit in with the other students, the ones who traveled from wealthy suburban towns followed by an endless supply of money from parents who were alumni. He’d rented what was virtually a cold-water flat near the train station, the hot water a trickle when it deigned to appear. The walls of the building were so thin that he could hear every word of recrimination between the couple next door and sometimes startled awake fearing that a whistling engine was about to run over him.

He’d been so strapped for cash that he donated plasma for a couple of bucks each week and pulled discarded newspapers out of waste bins to look for coupons. Cans of crushed tomatoes made barely edible soup. Cheap white bread and ramen noodles. A box of eggs made to last a month and the cheapest cuts of stew meat. A diet of bad food and not enough of it.

He was constantly hungry, his dreams filled with visions of tables groaning under the weight of holiday meals, the gnawing of his empty belly ever present, along with the guilt that he’d left behind his mother.

The sound of the piano broke his reverie. Ian shook his head to clear it, moving toward his dresser and scooping up the gold wristwatch that had been his father’s, the last vestige of that time. He slipped his calfskin wallet into his back pocket.

The swell of Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor grew stronger as he headed out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Grace was sitting at the Baldwin upright that had survived the move from Manhattan. It had been a lot easier getting it into this house than into the loft eleven years ago. Intent on the music, the sound loud enough that she couldn’t hear his footsteps, Grace kept playing as her father entered the room.

One tiny strap of her black tank top had slipped down her tanned shoulder, and with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and wearing khaki shorts and sandals, she looked younger. For one brief moment he thought she was ten again, happy to see him, eager to have him listen to a new piece she’d learned, her smile radiant as she’d barrel across the loft to hug him as he came in the door.

Grace saw him and the music stopped abruptly, the face turned toward his scowling. “Stop staring at me!”

“I wasn’t staring, I was watching.” Ian dared to rest a hand lightly on her dark head, but she jerked it off.

“I’m trying to play.”

“So pretend I’m your audience.” He tried to coax a smile out of her by making a goofy face. “Look, I’m dressed for it. Just pretend.”

They’d done this when she was little, calling it Carnegie Hall, and sometimes she’d made her own tickets and issued them to her parents and their friends.

Now the scowl remained firmly in place. “It isn’t ready.”

Yet she was already a better pianist than he’d ever be. Ian had made peace with his own middling talent years ago, choosing to go into teaching because he’d never be able to support himself as a performer, but there were moments when he felt almost envy for his daughter’s talent and annoyance at her lack of awareness of it.

He resisted the urge to force some point of connection with her, and said instead, “Where’s your mother?”

Grace shrugged, her attention already back on the sheet music. “The studio, I think.”

The music began again, haunting and lilting, as he walked from the living room down the hall to the kitchen where he grabbed a cup of coffee before heading out the back door.

He saw Kate before she saw him. She was bending over a box, her brow furrowed in concentration. It was a relief to see her out here. A relief to think that she was moving forward. Maybe everything would be okay.

He tapped lightly on the door and her head flew up, eyes wide with fear.

“It’s okay, it’s just me.” He hurried to reassure her, chest tightening with sympathy. Her eyes narrowed, the deep blue turning black.

“Don’t sneak up on me!”

“I didn’t think I was. It’s okay, Kate.”

He meant to calm her down, but it seemed as if everything he said just inflamed her. Between the frown and the thick titian hair made thicker by humidity and fanned about her head like a fiery halo, she looked like some mythical demon.

“I am calm! Or I was before you snuck up on me.”

“Fine.” He held up his free hand in surrender. “Whatever.” The word slipped from his lips effortlessly, and he only realized what he’d said after the fact. He saw it register in Kate’s raised eyebrows, followed by a half beat of silence while 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 job and as he parked the car, Ian’s feeling of satisfaction returned, heightened when he made the brisk walk across campus to the beautiful Beaux Arts building that housed the offices for the College of Arts and Sciences.

His office was on the fifth and top floor in a suite at the end of a long hallway tiled in squares of ocher and black. The brass nameplate on the solid wood door was new, and Ian felt a peculiar mixture of pride and embarrassment, flashing back to his first day as an undergrad, so glad to be there and yet so self-conscious about being the new guy on campus.

His secretary sat behind a boxy wooden desk that he knew to be a smaller version of the one in the inner office, as if she were in training to be dean.

Mildred Wooden was small, round almost to the point of being cherubic, and of indeterminate middle age. Ian could have been convinced she was forty-five or sixty-five. Her bob of perfectly smooth ash blond hair was cut too short to flatter her round face, and she favored boxy suits in harsh colors like puce and orange. She moved her small, bejeweled hands when she spoke, and reminded Ian of a tropical bird.

“You have fifteen calls already this morning, Dean Corbin,” she said in greeting, bobbing up from her seat to wave a handful of papers at him.

Ian took them from her into his office while she flapped along behind him chattering on about a faculty meeting and other commitments. He barely heard her, focused instead on the view out the two large windows that dominated the back wall of the office.

Here was the University of Wickfield depicted on postcards undergrads sent home to their parents. The rolling green lawns and massive brick and stone buildings, the bell tower where generations of students had carved their names, the avenue of stately elm trees that had been saplings when President McKinley visited Wickfield, and the gentle curve of the river just visible at the farthest edge of campus that Ian could see. He knew that at this very moment more than one pencil-thin scull was slicing cleanly through its silver surface.

In the far right corner of his window he could see an edge of the field where the new Performing Arts Center would be built. This was why he’d been wooed, and allowed himself to be wooed, away from NYU. The chance to be part of something like this center came once, if it came at all, in a career. The building would be a design masterpiece, something that would stand for generations, and he would be part of the creative process.

Of course, it was still in the planning stages. They wouldn’t break ground, wouldn’t even be able to name the place, until funding was secure. Finding the money and convincing the rest of the university community to back this project would be his biggest challenges this year, but just the thought of being able to look out this window and see the product of his hard work excited him.

“Would you like me to call Mrs. Corbin to let her know about the reception?”

The question doused his sense of satisfaction like a splash of dirty water. Mildred Wooden paused in the doorway waiting for an answer, fidgeting now with the chain of multicolored pebbles supporting her reading glasses.

Ian turned his bark of startled laughter into a cough just in time. Ask Kate to attend two events in one week? The old Kate, yes, she’d loved socializing, but not the new one.

Ever since the assault, she couldn’t bear to be around crowds. She also couldn’t bear to be touched. He understood this rationally. It had made complete sense to him after what happened, and he’d been so careful in those first few months not to so much as brush casually against her.

But that was eight months ago. Eight damn months and he couldn’t even move his hand toward Kate, much less touch her, without that shuttered look coming over her face and her body stiffening in a way that told him without words that he wasn’t wanted.

It was hard not to take that personally. It was hard not to think that this withdrawal from the world was also a withdrawal from him.

The secretary he’d inherited from his predecessor was still fidgeting in the doorway. “No,” he said at last to Mildred Wooden. “I’ll call her myself.”