The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman Read Free Book Online Page A

She starts to say something but another commuter brushes past her and she shrugs her shoulders. “I’d better find a seat,” she says.
    When the door closes I move in the same direction on the platform that I saw Christine head in inside the train. During college we often saw each other off at this train station—on holidays when Christine went home to Poughkeepsie, or when I was going down to the city to visit Neil—and whoever was left on the platform would always wait and wave. “Just like in those old wartime movies,” Christine would say, “when the heroine runs along the side of the train and the hero waves from the window.” Would she remember now?
    When I see her through the window I think she has forgotten. She looks suddenly very tired, like all the currents of energy that have kept her afloat today had drained out of her. This is the way she looks, I realize, when she doesn’t think anyone is looking at her—as if it were the gazes of others that held her aloft. It frightens me to see her this way because I know that for Christine moments of excitement and triumph have always been followed by periods of desolation. She looks now as if a heavy weight has descended on her. Then she sees me and her brow smooths, her blue eyes ignite, and for a moment she looks as if that weight has been lifted. It’s only for a moment, though. By the time she lifts her hand to wave to me her eyes are empty and unfocused, as if she were looking not at me, but at someone over my shoulder.
    I wave to her and try to mouth a better answer to her question because I’ve thought of one that’s not quite a lie, but then the lights flicker inside the train and instead of Christine I see my own reflection in the dark glass. Still, I stand on the platform, waving until the train pulls out, because even if I can’t see her, I’m hoping she might still be able to see me.

I SPEND M ONDAY OVERSEEING THE REMOVAL OF THE L ADY WINDOW . U SUALLY Ernesto and my father handle this part on their own, but on a project this big I think it’s a good idea for me to be there. I’ve also asked Robbie—a recent Parsons graduate who’s apprenticing with us—to photograph the window before and after we take it down. Lead came that looks perfectly good in situ can deteriorate rapidly in the removal process. I want to make sure that when I present the bill to Gavin Penrose we have a detailed record of every stage of the restoration.
    It turns out that we need all our hands just to dig the putty out of the stone slots holding the window.
    “Man,” Robbie says after a half hour applying hammer and chisel tothe hardened putty, “they were making sure this window wasn’t going
no place.”
    “Augustus Penrose didn’t do anything halfway,” my father answers, his voice, even though he’s on the scaffolding working with his back to me, ringing clear in the vaulted space. On the other side of the window is a watery shadow: Ernesto, who is working on the outside of the window removing the exterior putty.
    “Dad, you’re not wearing your mask,” I say.
    He swerves around so quickly that the scaffolding rocks on the uneven stone floor, and he grins at me. “How’d you know that with my back to you?”
    I look up from the bottom edge of the window and smooth away a film of dust from the Lady’s dainty red and gold slippers. “From your voice—it’s not muffled.”
    “Would you listen to that, Robbie! She could tell from the sound of my voice! When she was little she knew from my footsteps on the front stoop whether I’d stopped off at Flannery’s on the way home.”
    “You’d take off your work boots so as not to wake Mom when you’d been drinking,” I say, striking the hammer until a plume of flesh-colored dust fans out over the glass. “If you don’t care about your own health—” I point to the mask still dangling around his neck “—think of the bad example you’re setting for Robbie here.”
    Dad starts to laugh but it