Sari Wilson - Girl Through Glass

The walking is good for my body, which is sore from lack of movement. Usually a day doesn’t go by without me getting in the studio or working out. The haziness has burned off now and the sky is a tepid blue.

While I am waiting for a light, I call my mother, but then hang up before she can answer. Did she not get my message that I’m in New York? I left it on her cell before I left Ohio. It’s weird that she hasn’t returned the call. I think about texting her, but she has an old clam-shell cell and limited texting. She says she doesn’t see texts. Sometimes I worry about all the communication she misses.

It’s midafternoon when I arrive at the law office address, a tall glass and steel building on Park Avenue, at the center of New York corporate power. The computerized kiosk in the lobby lists a Kevin Fox with a multiname firm on the thirty-ninth floor. My amateur sleuthing has proved worthy. I am absurdly proud. I am going to meet Maurice’s lawyer and I will find out once and for all where Maurice is, if he is still alive. If Kevin is, in fact, Maurice’s son.

But I am not ready yet. I leave the lobby and retreat to the low stone steps of a church across the street. The afternoon is slipping away. The sky has solidified into an iron-clad blue, a brilliant color that accosts the eyes. I bought a pack of cigarettes and allow myself a few. To the south, in a store window, is a big Easter display — all bright pastels and fake green grass.

Next week I’ll be back in Ohio, picking up where I left off. But back to what? The smoke claws at my throat. A car’s tires screech. The stone steps are scratchy through my pants.

I check my e-mail on my phone and find one from Bernadith. I hear Bernadith’s tired, authoritative voice in it.

Kate, I’m sorry to tell you that there has been a report filed against you by a student. For inappropriate behavior. You will shortly be receiving an official e-mail. Let’s discuss when you return.

I turn off my phone, push it deep into my bag, and watch the sky begin to change, shadows lengthen, until the street is cast in a glow from the descending sun. The sky is now purplish, ripe. How long have I sat here? I’ve spent fifteen years of my life studying dance history. What are my options besides the academy? Limited, to say the least. Have I just been traveling in circles? And here I am, right back where I started? A girl lost in the grandeur of tall buildings.

Perhaps I have always waited for this moment. Maybe I allowed myself not to know what happened to him. His continued presence in the world was the best bet for keeping in touch with the self I missed and mourned, a self I had never been able to say good-bye to. If he was alive somewhere, then somewhere my beautiful and perfect past self survived, too, and that was an equation that I didn’t want to disturb.

Maybe.

I wanted to tell you because you my dear are one, one of the dead, you will always be —

It’s time. I get up and brush myself off — somehow a layer of soot has formed on me — and cross the street. In the florid glare of a late afternoon sun, I enter the building.

I take the elevator up to the thirty-ninth floor. The atrium is black granite. Orb-like lights reflect on the floor like miniature suns. A mahogany desk, solid, unimpeachable (such a contrast to the all-light-and-air SAB studios) dominates the entrance to the office, but it is unstaffed and I move unimpeded into a carpeted hallway. A few young lawyers scurry by without giving me a glance. I hold my purse tighter, walk the hallways, glancing at the names on the doors. The assistants’ desks are mostly vacant on this late Friday afternoon, stacked folders and pictures of smiling children.

I keep walking, fewer and fewer people pass me. Finally, among a row of offices, I see his name on a gold-plated nameplate on the door: KEVIN FOX, ESQ. A pool of light shines from the open door, the second to last on the hall. Will he have answers for me?

I fight the urge to run back down the hall.

I open the door and enter.

I look around the large office. The mahogany desk, the diploma, the potted plant, the giant plate-glass window, the glittering city against a sherbet sky. A computer station off to the side of the desk, a moonscape screen saver. Next to the desk are several piles of file boxes and stacks of legal folders. At the desk sits a young man reading papers in the light of a lamp; he looks up when I enter. He is a small man and his delicate features are dominated by severe wire frame glasses. The body is the product of many hours at the gym. The face makes my heart pound.

I stare at him without knowing what to say.

“Can I help you?” he says.

“Are you the executor of Maurice Dupont’s will?” I ask. “He was a donor. To the School of American Ballet. They referred me to you.”

“That’s confidential.” His tone drops an octave. “And you are?”

I move a few feet into the room. The smell in this office is strange — potent, fertile. I think of trees, of rain, until I realize it is the smell of coffee. There are coffee mugs all over the office.

“Kate.”

I’m only a few feet away from him. I can see he wears a heavy gold signet ring set with a blue stone.

“That ring,” I say. “It was his. ”

I pull out the envelope with Maurice’s letter in it and lay it on his desk.

A funny look crosses his face. He sticks his hands in the envelope and pulls out the letter, opens it and reads. His face turns a strange color. He doesn’t seem able to look at me.

“It came to my address. My home address,” I say. “Which also is confidential.”

Finally, he looks up. His face has changed and softened. His eyes look wet behind his glasses, but I wonder if it’s a trick of the light.

“It’s our curiosity. It’s so human, really, the most human thing,” he says, stepping around the desk toward me. His eyes are strangely wild, and for a moment I’m afraid. What if he is crazy — or violent? If I had never followed Maurice that day to his apartment when I was eleven, everything would be different. Have I learned nothing? I take a step backward.

But he isn’t coming toward me. He’s bending over and opening the drawer of his desk. From it, he pulls a packet of letters bound with a rubber band. “He gave me these—‘Here,’ he said, ‘these are for her. If you find her.’”

I reach out to take the letters. There are about twenty or so, some written on Florentine paper like the one that I received in the mail. These look the oldest. But there are many others, written on other kinds of paper — pastels, crisper designs, perky retro colors. It feels like the weight of a stone has landed in my hand. All these words Maurice had written. To me. Over all these years.

I take the top letter out and unfold it. It’s dated September 4, 2014. A year and a half ago. Fifteen years after I went to grad school. Thirty years after the last time I saw him. Thirty years after I moved in with my mother. I skim the letter, then begin shaking.

This, then, is my life waiting for me. Like some savings I had held in abeyance, all being spent now, at this moment.

Dear Mira,

Before I die, I want you to know that I’m sorry for what I did to you. I’m sorry for ruining a young life, for tying it in knots that you’ll probably never be able to undo. I taught you to harden your heart as you strove. I taught you to prize only your value to others.

I have lived a long life, much to everyone’s (my own especially) surprise. Old age has taught me humility. I am able now to see things I couldn’t before. How much damage I’ve done. I am sorry for what I did to you.