The Swan Thieves

Mary rejoined me at my hotel for breakfast, meeting me in the half-empty restaurant. It was a quieter meal than dinner had been the night before; the first flush of her excitement was gone, and I noticed again those violet smudges, shadows on snow, under her eyes. Her eyes themselves looked dark this morning, clouded. She had a few freckles on her nose that I hadn't registered before, tiny shavings, completely unlike Kate's. "Did you have a bad night?" I asked, at the risk of courting one of her stern glances.

"Yes," she said. "I was thinking about how much I've told you about Robert, so many private things, and how you were sitting there in your hotel room thinking about it all."

"How did you know I was thinking about it?" I passed her a plate of toast.

"I would have been," she said simply.

"Well, I was. I think about this constantly. You are remarkable to let me see so much of him, and your doing that will help me more than anything has, to help Robert." I paused, feeling my way while she let her toast get cold. "And I see why you waited for him for a long time, when he was unavailable."

"Unattainable," she corrected.

"And why you love him."

"Loved him, not love him."

I hadn't hoped for this much, and I focused on my eggs Benedict so that I wouldn't have to meet her eyes. In fact, we finished our breakfast mainly in silence, but after a while the silence became comfortable.

At the Met, she stood looking at Portrait of Beatrice de Clerval, 1879, the picture she'd first encountered in a book Robert had left next to her sofa. "You know, I think Robert came back here and found her again," she said.

I was watching her profile; it was the second time, I remembered sharply, that we'd been in a museum together. "He did?"

"Well, he traveled to New York at least once while he lived with me, as I wrote to you, and he came back strangely excited."

"Mary, do you want to go see Robert? I could take you when we get back to Washington. On Monday, if you'd like." I hadn't meant to say it right away.

"Do you mean that you want me to find out more for you by asking him myself?" She stood straight and stiff, examining Beatrice's face one more time without looking at me.

It shocked me. "No, no--I wouldn't ask that of you. You've already helped me see him in a new way. I only meant that I don't want to keep you from him if you need to see him yourself."

She turned. Then she came closer, as if for protection, with Beatrice de Clerval watching us; in fact, she suddenly slipped one hand into mine. "No," she said. "I don't want to see him. Thank you." She took her hand away and walked around looking at the Degas ballerinas, and the nudes drying off with their big towels. After a few minutes she came back to me. "Shall we go?"

Outside, it was a bright, soft summer day, warm rather than hot. I bought each of us a hot dog with mustard at one of the stands on the street. ("How do you know I'm not a vegetarian?" said Mary, although we'd already had two other meals together.) We wandered into Central Park and ate on a bench, cleaning our hands with paper napkins. Mary unexpectedly wiped the mustard off my hands as well as hers, and I thought what a lovely mother of young children she might have made, but naturally I didn't say it. I spread out my fingers.

"My hand looks much older than yours, doesn't it?"

"Why shouldn't it? It is somewhat older than mine. Twenty years, if you were born in 1947."

"I won't ask how you know that."

"No need to, Sherlock."

I sat watching her. The shade from oaks and beeches dappled her face and short-sleeved white blouse, the fine skin of her throat. "How beautiful you are."

"Please don't say that," she said, looking down at her lap.

"I meant it only as a compliment, a respectful one. You're like a painting."

"That's idiotic." She crumpled up the napkins and aimed them into a wastebasket next to our bench. "No woman actually wants to be a painting." But when she turned back to me, our eyes met across the strange sound of what each of us had just said. She glanced away first. "Have you ever been married?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Oh, a lot of medical school, and then I didn't meet the right person."

She crossed her legs in their jeans. "Well, have you ever been in love?"

"Several times."

"Recently?"

"No." I considered. "Maybe yes. Almost yes."

She raised her eyebrows until they disappeared under her short bangs. "Make up your mind."

"I'm trying to," I said as evenly as I could. It was like conversing with a wild deer, some animal that could start up and spring away. I stretched one arm across the back of the bench without touching her, and looked out into the park, the bends of gravel path, boulders, green hills under patrician trees, the people walking and biking along a nearby route. Her kiss caught me by surprise; at first I understood only that her face was very close. She was gentle, hesitating. I sat up slowly and put my hands on her temples and kissed her back, also gently, careful not to startle her further, my heart pounding. My old heart.

I knew that in a minute she would draw away, then lean against me and begin to sob without making a sound, that I would hold her until she was finished, that we would soon part with a more passionate kiss for our separate journeys home, and that she would then say something like, I'm sorry, Andrew -- I'm not ready for this. But I had the long patience of my profession on my side, and I already understood certain things about her: she loved to go out to Virginia for the day to paint, as I did; she needed to eat often; she wanted to feel in control of her decisions. Madame, I said to her, but silently, I observe that your heart is broken. Allow me to repair it for you.