The Swan Thieves

Mrs. Oliver's house, as it turned out the next morning, was nothing like what I'd pictured; I'd imagined it tall, white, stereotypically Southern and gracious, and instead it proved to be a large cedar-and-brick bungalow with hedges of boxwood and towering spruces in front. I got out of the car as gracefully as I could, putting on my wool sport coat and taking my briefcase with me. I'd dressed with care in the Hadleys' dingy little guest room, meticulously not thinking why I was doing it. There was indeed a porch, but it was small, and someone had left a pair of muddy canvas gardening gloves on the bench next to the door and a pile of miniature plastic gardening tools in a bucket--toys, I assumed. The front door was wooden, with a big, clean window; through it I could see the deserted living room, furniture, flowers. I rang the bell and stood there.

Nothing moved inside. After a few minutes I began to feel foolish because I could see so far into the house, as if I were spying. It was a comfortable, simple front room, decorated with quiet-colored sofas, lamps here and there on what looked like antique tables, a faded olive carpet, a smaller Oriental rug that might be a very fine one, vases of daffodils, a darkly polished cabinet with glass panes, and above all books--tall cases of them, although I couldn't read any titles from where I stood. I waited. I became aware of the birds in the trees around the house, calling or singing, taking off with a rush--crows, starlings, a blue jay. The morning had begun springlike and bright, but clouds were coming up, making the front porch cold, the light gray.

Then for the first time I felt hopeless. Mrs. Oliver had changed her mind. She was a private person and I was probably in the wrong. I'd driven nine hours, like a fool, and it served me right if she had decided to lock her door (I did not, of course, try the handle) and go somewhere else instead of talking with me. I might, I thought, have done the same in her place. I rang the doorbell a second time, hesitantly, vowing not to touch it again after this.

Finally I turned away, my briefcase hitting my knee, and started back down the slate steps, riding a surge of anger. I had a long trip ahead of me, with too much time to think. I'd already started the thinking, so that it took me a second to register the click and creak of the door behind me. I stopped, the hair rising on the back of my neck--why should that sound startle me so badly when I'd been waiting five minutes for it? In any case, I turned and saw her standing there, the door opening toward her, her hand still on the knob.

She was a pretty woman, a quick, alert-looking woman, but she was certainly not the muse who filled Robert's drawings and paintings at Goldengrove. Instead, I got a sudden impression of the seashore: sandy hair, fair skin starred with freckles of the sort that fade as their owner ages, ocean-blue eyes that met mine warily. For a moment I was frozen on the steps, and then I hurried up to her. Once I was close I realized that she was small, delicately built, and that she would come up to my shoulder and therefore up to Robert Oliver's breastbone. She opened the door a little wider and stepped out. "Are you Dr. Marlow?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "Mrs. Oliver?"

She took my extended hand quietly. Her own hand was small, like the rest of her, and I expected her grip to be soft and childlike, but her fingers were very strong. If she was almost as small as a little girl, she was a strong little girl, even fierce. "Please come in," she said. She turned back to the house, and I followed her into that living room I'd been staring at. It was like walking onto a stage set, or perhaps like watching a play where the curtain is already up when you sit down in the audience, so that you've studied the scenery for a while before the actors come on. The house was deeply hushed. The books, as I came close, turned out to be mainly novels--two centuries of them--as well as some poetry and works of history.

Mrs. Oliver, a few steps ahead of me, wore blue jeans and a fitted, long-sleeved top of slate blue. She must, I thought, know the color of her own eyes well. Her body looked limber--not athletic but graceful, as if finding its outlines constantly through movement. There was something determined in her walk; it excluded any gesture that might have appeared forlorn. She motioned me to a sofa and sat on another one just across from mine. The living room made a bend there, and now I could see huge windows, floor-to-ceiling, with a view out over a broad lawn, beech trees, a giant holly, flowering dogwoods. It hadn't seemed so large from the driveway, but her property extended far over two open lots, verdant and tree-lined. Robert Oliver had once enjoyed this view. I set my briefcase at my feet and tried to compose myself.

Looking across the room, I saw that Mrs. Oliver was already fully collected, her hands clasped on the knee of her jeans. She wore childish canvas sneakers that might once have been navy. Her hair was thick, straight, cut with rough elegance to her shoulders, with so many tints of lion's mane and wheat and gold leaf that I would have found it hard to paint. Her face was beautiful, too, with little makeup--soft lipstick, the finest lines around her eyes. She didn't smile; she was examining me gravely, poised on the edge of speaking. At last she said, "I'm sorry you had to wait. I almost changed my mind." She offered no apology for her doubts, and no further explanation.

"I don't blame you." I'd thought for a split second of more gallant statements, but they seemed useless in this situation.

"Yes." It was simple concurrence.

"Thank you for agreeing to see me, Mrs. Oliver. Here's my card, by the way." I handed it to her and then felt I had been too formal; she looked down.

"Can I get you some coffee, or a cup of tea?"

I considered refusing and then decided it was better manners, in this pleasant Southern room, to accept. "Thank you very much. If you have coffee already made, I'd gladly have a cup."

She rose and went out--that compact grace again. The kitchen wasn't far away; I could hear dishes clinking and drawers opening, and I glanced around the room while she was gone. There was no sign of Robert Oliver here, among the lamps with their flower-painted porcelain bases, unless the books were his. No trace here of oily paint rags, no posters from the new landscape artists. The art on the walls consisted of a blurred heirloom needlepoint and two old watercolors showing a marketplace in France or Italy. There were certainly no vivid portraits of a lady with curling dark hair, no paintings by Robert Oliver or any other contemporary artist. Perhaps the living room had never been his domain; it was often a wife's sphere anyway. Or perhaps she had erased every reminder of him on purpose.

Mrs. Oliver came back in carrying a wooden tray with two cups of coffee on it. The china was a delicate blackberry pattern; there were tiny silver spoons, a silver cream-and-sugar service, all very elegant next to her blue jeans and faded sneakers. I noticed that she wore a necklace and earrings of gold set with tiny blue gems -- sapphires or tourmaline. She put the tray on a table near me and handed me my coffee, then took her own cup to her sofa and sat down, deftly balancing it. The coffee was good, warming after the chill porch. She regarded me in silence, and I began to wonder if the wife was going to prove as laconic as the husband.

"Mrs. Oliver," I said as easily as I could, "I know this must be difficult for you and I want you to understand that I don't wish to force your confidence in any way. Your husband is proving to be a challenging patient, and as I said on the phone I'm worried about him."

"Ex-husband," she said, and I sensed something like a hint of humor, a gleam of laughter directed against me, or possibly against herself, as if she had said aloud, "I can be firm with you, too." I hadn't yet seen her smile; I didn't see it now.

"I want you to know that Robert isn't in any immediate danger. He hasn't attempted to harm anyone, including himself, since that day in the museum."

She nodded.

"He actually seems quite calm a lot of the time, but he goes through periods of anger and agitation, too. Silent agitation, I mean. I intend to keep him until I can assure myself that he's really safe and functional. As I said on the phone, my main problem in trying to assist him is that he won't talk."

She, too, was silent.

"By which I mean--he doesn't speak at all." I reminded myself that he had spoken once, to tell me that I could talk with the woman sitting across from me now.

Her eyebrows rose over her coffee cup; she took a sip. Those eyebrows were a darker sand than her hair, feathered as if painted by--I tried to think what portraitist they reminded me of, what number brush I would have used. Her forehead was broad and fine under the glinting wave of hair. "He hasn't spoken to you even once?"

"The first day," I admitted. "He acknowledged what he'd done in the museum and then he said I could talk with anyone I wanted to." I decided to omit--for now, at least--his having said that I could even talk with "Mary." I hoped Mrs. Oliver might eventually tell me whom he'd meant by that, and I hoped I wouldn't have to ask. "But he hasn't spoken since then. I'm sure you'll understand that talking is one of the only ways he can let go of what's troubling him, and one of the only ways we can figure out what triggers make his condition worse."

I looked hard at her, but she didn't help me with even a nod.

I tried to compensate with reasonable friendliness. "I can continue to manage his medications, but we can't work on much unless he'll talk, because I can't know exactly how the medications help him. I've sent him to both individual and group therapy, but he doesn't speak there either, and he's stopped going. If he won't talk, then I need to be able to talk to him myself with some sense of what might be troubling him."

"To provoke him?" she said bluntly. Her eyebrows were up again.

"No. To draw him out, to show him I understand his life, to some degree. It might help him start speaking again."

She seemed to think hard for a moment; she sat up straighter, raising the line of her small breasts under her shirt. "But how will you explain knowing in detail things about his life that he hasn't told you himself?"

It was such a good question, such a direct, keen question, that I put down my coffee and sat watching her. I hadn't expected to have to answer this right away; in fact, I'd been struggling with it myself. She'd caught me out in the course of five minutes' conversation.

"I'll be honest with you," I said, although I knew it sounded like a professional line. "I don't know yet how I'll explain that to him if he asks. But if he asks me, it will mean he's talking. Even if he's angry about it."

For the first time I saw her lips curve away from; even teeth, the top front ones slightly too large and therefore very sweet. Then she pursed her mouth again. "Hmm," she said, almost a soft little song. "And will you bring my name into it?"

"That's up to you, Mrs. Oliver," I said. "We can talk about how to handle that, if you'd like."

She took up her coffee cup. "Yes," she said. "Maybe so. Let me think about that and we'll agree on something. Call me Kate, please." That small movement of her mouth, the look of a woman who had once smiled often and might learn to again. "For one thing, I try not to think of myself as Mrs. Oliver. I'm in the process of changing back to my maiden name, in fact. I decided just recently to do that."

"Kate, then--thank you," I said, glancing away before she did. "If you're comfortable with it, I'll take some notes, too, but only for my own use."

She seemed to ponder all this. Then she set her cup aside as if the time for business had come. I realized at that moment how extremely clean and neat the room was. She had the two children, whom she'd said were at school during the day. Their toys must have been elsewhere in the house. Her blackberry china was immaculate and apparently stored somewhere out of reach. This was a woman who managed prodigiously, and I hadn't even noticed that until now, perhaps because she made it look effortless. She folded her hands on her knee again. "All right. Please don't tell him I talked with you, at least not yet. I need to think about that. But I will be as open as I can. If I'm going to do this at all, I want the record to be complete."

It was my turn to feel surprised, and I thought I showed it in spite of myself. "I believe you'll be helping Robert, however you may feel about him at this point."

She dropped her eyes, so that her face aged suddenly, dimmed without their blue. I thought of the name of a color in my Crayola set from childhood: "Periwinkle." She glanced up again. "I don't know why, but I believe so, too. You know, I couldn't help Robert very much in the end. In fact, I didn't really want to, by then. That's the only thing I've truly regretted. I think that's why I've paid some of the residential bills. How long will you be here?"

"You mean this morning?"

"In general. I mean, I've reserved two mornings. We have until noon today, and again tomorrow." She spoke as dispassionately as if we'd been discussing checkout time at a hotel. "If necessary, I can take a third morning off, although it would be difficult. I'll have to double up some of my work assignments as it is. I already work at night sometimes to be freer for the children after school."

"I don't want to trespass on more of your time when you've been so generous," I said. I finished my coffee in two sips, set it aside, and took out my notepad. "Let's see how far we get this morning."

For the first time, I saw that her face was not merely guarded but sad, with its colors of ocean and beach. My heart twisted inside me--or my conscience? Was it my conscience? She looked directly at me. "I guess you want to know about the woman," she said. "The dark-haired woman--right?"

It threw me; I had planned to ease into Robert's story, to ask her a little at a time about his earliest symptoms. I saw from her face that she would not appreciate hedging on my part. "Yes."

She nodded. "Has he been painting her?"

"Yes, he has. Nearly every day. I noticed that she was the subject of one of his shows as well, and thought you might know something about her."

"I do--as much as I want to know. But I didn't think I would ever be telling a stranger about it." She leaned forward, and I saw her small body rise and fall. "You're used to hearing very private things?"

"Of course," I said. If my conscience had been a person at that moment, I might have strangled him.

Mon cher oncle:

I hope you will not mind my addressing you thus, as a true relative, which I am in spirit, at least, if not by blood. Papa bids me thank you for the package you sent in response to my note. We shall read the book aloud, with help from Yves on his evenings at home--he is also much intrigued. These lesser Italian masters have long been of interest to him, he says. I am going to my sister's house for three nights, where I stay to feast on her lovely children. I do not mind telling you they are my favorite models, in my own dabblings. And my sister is my most admired friend, so that I understand very well your brother's devotion to you. Papa says of you that because of your modesty no one knows that you are the bravest, truest man on earth. How many brothers speak so warmly of each other? Yves promises evenings will be all for reading to Papa while I am gone, and I shall pick up where he leaves off.

With warmest thanks for your kindness,

Beatrice Vignot