Still Me, Page 21

  I didn't feel entirely comfortable with the idea of extracting so much money without Mr. Gopnik's knowledge. But I knew that Agnes's links to her Polish family were intense, and I also knew better than most how you could long to feel close to those who were far away. Who was I to question how she was spending her money? I was pretty sure she owned dresses that cost more than that little piano, after all.

  For the next ten days, at some point during daylight hours, I dutifully walked to the ATM on Lexington Avenue and collected the money, stuffing the notes deep into my bra before walking back, braced to fight off muggers who never materialized. I would give the money to Agnes when we were alone, and she would add it to the stash in the dresser, then lock it again. Eventually I took the whole lot to the piano store, signed the requisite form and counted it out in front of a bemused shop assistant. The piano would arrive in Poland in time for Christmas.

  It was the only thing that seemed to give Agnes any joy. Every week we drove over to Steven Lipkott's studio for her art lesson, and Garry and I would silently overdose on caffeine and sugar in the Best Doughnut Place, or I would murmur agreement with his views on ungrateful adult children, and caramel sprinkle doughnuts. We would pick up Agnes a couple of hours later and try to ignore the fact that she had no drawings with her.

  Her resentment at the relentless charity circuit had grown ever greater. She had stopped trying to be nice to the other women, Michael told me, in whispers over snatched coffees in the kitchen. She just sat, beautiful and sullen, waiting for each event to be over. "I guess you can't blame her, given how bitchy they've been to her. But it's driving him a little nuts. It's important for him to have, well, if not a trophy wife, someone who's at least prepared to smile occasionally."

  Mr. Gopnik looked exhausted by work and by life in general. Michael told me things at the office were difficult. A huge deal to prop up a bank in some emerging economy had gone wrong and they were all working around the clock to try to save it. At the same time--or perhaps because of it--Nathan said Mr. Gopnik's arthritis had flared up and they were doing extra sessions to keep him moving normally. He took a lot of pills. A private doctor saw him twice a week.

  "I hate this life," Agnes said to me, as we walked across the park afterward. "All this money he gives away and for what? So we can sit four times a week and eat dried-up canapes with dried-up people. And so these dried-up women can bitch about me." She stopped for a minute and looked back at the building and I saw that her eyes had filled with tears. Her voice dropped. "Sometimes, Louisa, I think I cannot do this anymore."

  "He loves you," I said. I didn't know what else to say.

  She wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand and shook her head, as if she were trying to rid herself of the emotion. "I know." She smiled at me, and it was the least convincing smile I'd ever seen. "But it is a long time since I believed love solved everything."

  On impulse, I stepped forward and hugged her. Afterward I realized I couldn't say whether I'd done it for her or myself.

  --

  It was shortly before the Thanksgiving dinner that the idea first occurred to me. Agnes had refused to get out of bed all day, faced with a mental-health charity do that evening. She said she was too depressed to attend, apparently refusing to see the irony.

  I thought about it for as long as it took me to drink a mug of tea, and then I decided I had little to lose.

  "Mr. Gopnik?" I knocked on his study door and waited for him to invite me in.

  He looked up, his pale blue shirt immaculate, his eyes dragged downward with weariness. Most days I felt a little sorry for him, in the way that you can feel sorry for a caged bear while maintaining a healthy and slightly fearful respect for it.

  "What is it?"

  "I--I'm sorry to bother you. But I had an idea. It's something I think might help Agnes."

  He leaned back in his leather chair and signaled to me to close the door. I noticed there was a lead glass tumbler of brandy on his desk. That was earlier than usual.

  "May I speak frankly?" I said. I felt a little sick with nerves.

  "Please do."

  "Okay. Well, I couldn't help but notice Agnes is not as, um, happy as she might be."

  "That's an understatement," he said quietly.

  "It seems to me that a lot of her issues relate to being plucked from her old life and not really integrating with her new one. She told me she can't spend time with her old friends because they don't really understand her new life, and from what I've seen, well, a lot of the new ones don't seem that keen to be friends with her either. I think they feel it would be . . . disloyal."

  "To my ex-wife."

  "Yes. So she has no job, and no community. And this building has no real community. You have your work, and people around you you've known for years, who like you and respect you. But Agnes doesn't. I know she finds the charity circuit particularly hard. But the philanthropic side of things is really important to you. So I had an idea."

  "Go on."

  "Well, there's this library up in Washington Heights which is threatened with closure. I've got all the information here." I pushed my file across his desk. "It's a real community library, used by all different nationalities and ages and types of people, and it's absolutely vital for the locals that it stays open. They're fighting so hard to save it."

  "That's an issue for the city council."

  "Well, maybe. But I spoke to one of the librarians and she said that in the past they've received individual donations that have helped keep them going." I leaned forward. "If you just went there, Mr. Gopnik, you'd see--there are mentoring programs and mothers keeping their children warm and safe and people really trying to make things better. In a practical way. And I know it's not as glamorous as the events you attend--I mean, there's not going to be a ball there, but it's still charity, right? And I thought maybe . . . well, maybe you could get involved. And even better, if Agnes got involved she could be part of a community. She could make it her own project. You and she could do something amazing."

  "Washington Heights?"

  "You should go there. It's a very mixed area. Quite different from . . . here. I mean some bits of it are gentrified but this bit--"

  "I know Washington Heights, Louisa." He tapped his fingers on the desk. "Have you spoken to Agnes about this?"

  "I thought I should probably mention it to you first."

  He pulled the file toward him and flicked it open. He frowned at the first sheet--a newspaper cutting of one of the early protests. The second was a budget statement I had pulled from the city council's website, showing its latest financial year.

  "Mr. Gopnik, I really think you could make a difference. Not just to Agnes but to a whole community."

  It was at this point that I realized he appeared unmoved, dismissive even. It wasn't a sea change in his expression, but a faint hardening, a lowering of his gaze. And it occurred to me that to be as wealthy as he was, was probably to receive a hundred such requests for money each day, or suggestions as to what he should do with it. And that perhaps, by being part of that, I had stepped over some invisible employee/employer line.

  "Anyway. It was just an idea. Possibly not a great one. I'm sorry if I've said too much. I'll get back to work. Don't feel you have to look at that stuff if you're busy. I can take it with me if you--"

  "It's fine, Louisa." He pressed his fingers against his temples, his eyes closed.

  I stood, not sure if I was being dismissed.

  Finally he looked up at me. "Can you go and talk to Agnes, please? Find out whether I'm going to have to go to this dinner alone?"

  "Yes. Of course." I backed out of the room.

  --

  She went to the mental-health dinner. We didn't hear any fighting when they got home but the next day I discovered she had slept in her dressing room.

  --

  In the two weeks before I was due to head home for Christmas I developed an almost obsessive Facebook habit. I found myself checking Katie Ingram's pag
e morning and evening, reading the public conversations she had with her friends, checking for new photographs she might have posted. One of her friends had asked how she was enjoying her job and she had written, "I LOVE it!" with a winky face (she was irritatingly fond of winky faces). Another day she had posted: "Really tough day today. Thank God for my amazing partner! #blessed"

  She posted one more picture of Sam, at the wheel of the ambulance. He was laughing, lifting his hand as if to stop her, and the sight of his face, the intimacy of the shot, the way it placed me in the cab with them, took my breath away.

  We had scheduled a call for the previous evening, his time, and when I'd called he hadn't picked up. I'd tried again, twice, with no answer. Two hours later, just as I was getting worried, I received a text message: Sorry--you still there?

  "Are you okay? Was it work?" I said, when he called me.

  There was the faintest hesitation before he responded. "Not exactly."

  "What do you mean?" I was in the car with Garry, waiting while Agnes had a pedicure, and I was conscious that he might be listening in, no matter how engrossed he appeared to be in the sports pages of his New York Post.

  "I was helping Katie with something."

  My stomach dropped merely at the mention of her name. "Helping her with what?" I tried to keep my voice light.

  "Just a wardrobe. Ikea. She bought it and couldn't put it together by herself so I said I'd give her a hand."

  I felt sick. "You went to her house?"

  "Flat. It was just to help her with a piece of furniture, Lou. She doesn't have anyone else. And I only live down the road."

  "You took your toolbox." I remembered how he used to come to my flat and fix things. It had been one of the first things I'd loved about him.

  "Yes. I took my toolbox. And all I did was help her with an Ikea wardrobe." His voice had grown weary.

  "Sam?"

  "What?"

  "Did you offer to go there? Or did she ask you?"

  "Does it matter?"

  I wanted to tell him it did, because it was obvious that she was trying to steal him from me. She was alternately playing the helpless female, the fun party girl, the understanding best friend and work colleague. He was either blind to it or, worse, he wasn't. There wasn't a single picture that she had posted online in which she wasn't glued to his side, like some kind of lipsticked leech. Sometimes I wondered if she'd guessed I'd be looking at them, and if she got satisfaction from knowing the discomfort this caused me, whether in fact this was part of her plan, to make me miserable and paranoid. I wasn't sure men would ever understand the infinitely subtle weaponry women used against each other.

  The silence between us on the phone opened up and became a sinkhole. I knew I couldn't win. If I tried to warn him about what was happening, I became a jealous harpy. If I didn't, he'd carry on walking blindly into her mantrap. Until the day he suddenly realized he was missing her as much as he had ever missed me. Or he found her soft hand creeping into his at the pub as she leaned on him for comfort after a tough day. Or they bonded over some shared adrenaline rush, some near-death incident, and found themselves kissing and--

  I closed my eyes.

  "So when do you get back?"

  "The twenty-third."

  "Great. I'll try and move some shifts. I'll be working for some of the Christmas period, though, Lou. You know the job. It doesn't stop."

  He sighed. There was a pause before he spoke again. "Listen. I was thinking. Maybe it would be a good idea if you and Katie met each other. Then you can see she's okay. She's not trying to be anything other than a mate."

  Like hell she isn't.

  "Great! Sounds lovely," I said.

  "I think you'll like her."

  "Then I'm sure I will."

  Like I'd like Ebola virus. Or grating off my own elbows. Or maybe eating that cheese that has live bugs in it.

  He sounded relieved when he said, "Can't wait to see you. You're back a week, right?"

  I lowered my head, trying to muffle my voice a little. "Sam, does--does Katie really want to meet me? Is this, like, something you've discussed?"

  "Yeah." And then, when I said nothing, he added, "I mean, not in any . . . We didn't talk about what happened with you and me or anything. But she gets that it must be hard for us."

  "I see." I felt my jaw tighten.

  "She thinks you sound great. Obviously I told her she'd got that wrong."

  I laughed, and I'm not sure the world's worst actor could have made it sound less convincing.

  "You'll see when you meet her. Can't wait."

  When he rang off, I looked up to find Garry was looking at me in the rearview mirror. Our eyes met for a moment, then his slid away.

  --

  Given that I lived in one of the world's busiest metropolises, I had begun to understand that the world as I knew it was actually very small, shrink-wrapped around the demands of the Gopniks from six in the morning often until late evening. My life had become completely intertwined with theirs. Just as I had with Will, I'd become attuned to Agnes's every mood, able to detect from the subtlest signs whether she was depressed, angry, or simply in need of food. I now knew when her periods were due, and marked them in my personal diary so that I could be braced for five days of heightened emotion or extra-emphatic piano playing. I knew how to become invisible during times of family conflict or when to be ever-present. I became a shadow, so much so that sometimes I felt almost evanescent--useful only in relation to someone else.

  My life before the Gopniks had receded, become a faint, ghostly thing, experienced through odd phone calls (when Gopnik schedules allowed) or sporadic e-mails. I failed to ring my sister for two weeks and cried when my mother sent me a handwritten letter with photographs of her and Thom at a theater matinee "just in case you've forgotten what we look like."

  It could get a little much. So as a balance, even though I was exhausted, I traveled to the library every weekend with Ashok and Meena--once even going by myself when their children were ill. I got better at dressing for the cold and made my own placard--Knowledge is power!--with its private nod to Will. I would head back on the train and afterward make my way down to the East Village to have a coffee at the Vintage Clothes Emporium and look over whatever new items Lydia and her sister had in stock.

  Mr. Gopnik never mentioned the library again. I realized with mild disappointment that charity could mean something quite different here: that it was not enough to give, you had to be seen to be giving. Hospitals bore the names of their donors in six-foot-high letters above the door. Balls were named after those who funded them. Even buses bore lists of names alongside their rear windows. Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Gopnik were known as generous benefactors because they were visible in society as being so. A scruffy library in a rundown neighborhood offered no such kudos.

  --

  Ashok and Meena had invited me for Thanksgiving at their apartment in Washington Heights, horrified when I revealed I had no plans. "You can't spend Thanksgiving on your own!" Ashok said, and I decided not to mention that few people in England even knew what it was. "My mother makes the turkey--but don't expect it to be done American-style," Meena said. "We can't stand all that bland food. This is going to be some serious tandoori turkey."

  It was no effort to say yes to something new: I was quite excited. I bought a bottle of champagne, some fancy chocolates, and some flowers for Meena's mother, then put on my blue cocktail dress with the fur sleeves, figuring an Indian Thanksgiving would be a suitable first outing for it--or, at least, one with no discernible dress code. Ilaria was flat out preparing for the Gopniks' family dinner and I decided not to disturb her. I let myself out, checking that I had the instructions Ashok had given me.

  As I headed down the corridor, I noticed that Mrs. De Witt's door was open. I heard the television burbling from deep inside the apartment. A few feet from the door Dean Martin stood in the hallway glaring at me. I wondered if he was about to make another break for freedom, and rang the
doorbell.

  Mrs. De Witt emerged into the corridor.

  "Mrs. De Witt? I think Dean Martin may be about to go for a walk." The dog pottered back toward her. She leaned against the wall. She looked frail and tired. "Can you shut the door, dear? I must have not closed it properly."

  "Will do. Happy Thanksgiving, Mrs. De Witt," I said.

  "Is it? I hadn't noticed." She disappeared back into the room, the dog behind her, and I closed the front door. I had never seen her with so much as a casual caller and felt a brief sadness at the thought of her spending Thanksgiving alone.

  I was just turning to leave when Agnes came down the corridor in her gym kit. She seemed startled to see me. "Where are you going?"

  "To dinner?" I didn't want to say who I was going with. I didn't know how the employers of the building would feel if they thought the staff were getting together without them. She looked at me in horror.

  "But you can't go, Louisa. Leonard's family is coming here. I can't do this by myself. I told them you would be here."

  "You did? But--"

  "You must stay."

  I looked at the door. My heart sank.

  And then her voice dropped. "Please, Louisa. You're my friend. I need you."

  --

  I rang Ashok and told him. My one consolation was that, doing the job he did, he grasped the situation immediately. "I'm so sorry," I whispered into the phone. "I really wanted to come."

  "Nah. You got to stay. Hey, Meena's yelling to tell you she's going to save some turkey for you. I'll bring it with me tomorrow . . . Baby, I told her! I did! She says drink all their expensive wine. Okay?"

  I felt, briefly, on the edge of tears. I had looked forward to an evening full of giggling children, delicious food, and laughter. Instead I was going to be a shadow again, a silent prop in an icy room.

  My fears were justified.

  Three other members of the Gopnik family came to Thanksgiving: his brother, an older, grayer, more anemic version of Mr. Gopnik, who apparently did something in law. Probably ran the US Department of Justice. He brought with him their mother, who sat in a wheelchair, refused to take off her fur coat for the entire evening and complained loudly that she couldn't hear what anyone was saying. Mr. Gopnik's brother's wife, a former violinist apparently of some note, accompanied them. She was the only person there who bothered to ask what I did. She greeted Agnes with two kisses and the kind of professional smile that could have been meant for anyone.