The Center of the World by Thomas van Essen Page B

fellow. It is quite wonderful how that narrow mean staircase opens up into this most marvelous and expansive room. The staircase is, I see now, deliberately shoddy; I confess that my heart sank as you led us up. What could this be? I was prepared for something rough-and-tumble and rude. But this is too wonderful. There is a childlike sense of delight in this room that is quite enchanting. I commend you, Mr. Rhinebeck.”
    “And you, Lottie. What do you think?” her husband asked. “You seem less enthusiastic than your charming friend.”
    She paused for a moment before speaking. When he was younger, Rhinebeck found the time she spent gathering herthoughts an affront to their collective mortality, but his Turner had somehow taught him to value the care with which she spoke.
    “It is, as Maria says, a most marvelous room,” she offered at length. “And I see the qualities of play and delight that Maria has mentioned. But there is something sad about it as well. I see that the room has been designed so as to accommodate many of your friends, but I mostly see you here, Cornelius, by yourself. It seems somehow a solitary room.”
    Rhinebeck shrugged. “There is something to what you say. I had the room built to suit my own fancies. But the chief mystery of the place is not yet revealed. I have promised that I would show you, even though you are ladies, all there is to see of Birch Lodge.” He stood up and moved to the cabinet. As he opened the door Rhinebeck felt a moment of unease as he recognized in his gesture the flourish with which Stokes had opened the curtain when he revealed the Turner.
    The two ladies looked at the painting for a moment. “She is naughty, very naughty,” Mrs. Overstreet said. “I understand now why you wish to keep her for your gentleman friends.”
    Rhinebeck turned to his wife. “What do you think of her?”
    Again there was that pause. “Oh, I worry for her. I think she might catch her death of cold.”
    “Should I cover her up again, so that she will be warm?” he replied, returning her smile.
    “No. She is very pleasant to look at. She reminds me of myself during some long August afternoons in the house on Nantucket many years ago. I was a young woman then, more a girl,really, but old enough to plead a headache on certain afternoons when the grown-ups and the younger children were about to embark on some tedious march along the beach. I would be all by myself in that big old house with the warm sea breeze blowing through the open windows. I look back on those afternoons as some of the happiest times of my life. But it was so many years ago now.”
    There was a long silence.
    “I don’t know about you two,” Mrs. Overstreet said, “but I am very tired. The journey was exhausting. Thank you so much for your kind hospitality, Mr. Rhinebeck. If you both do not mind, I will bid you good night.”

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14
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      I CAN LOOK at a calendar and see that I found the painting on the afternoon of Monday, July 7, 2003, and that I drove home on Sunday, July 13, but the days, hours, and moments between the first event and the second are a blur of sensation and feeling. I cannot distinguish what I saw when I was awake and what I dreamt when I was asleep. I am not a romantic character. I am not a person who needs medication. I am a middle-aged American male who works for a small charitable foundation. I read grant applications for a living. My colleagues consider me a steady and reliable worker. But this is my truth.
    I recall being in bed—this was probably the first day after I found the painting—and being overwhelmed by the fear that I had left it propped up against the barn wall. I seemed to see Mossbacher coming back to make a concrete offer for the house. I saw him step through the open barn door and take what was mine. But then I was sitting in front of it on the barn floor before the sun had quite crested the hill. The world was cominginto being with the brightening daylight, but I