Chapter 9 Vivian
Vivian
Early February
Vivian sips the mint tea, leaning back into the claw-footed high-backed chair.
She and Peter are in the parlor room with the double windows, which on the inside is anything but soulless. Vivian’s having trouble trying to decide where to focus her attention: on Peter, sitting opposite her in the tan chesterfield love seat, or on the room around them.
It’s a much more dramatic space than parlors in other various private members’ clubs and country clubs she’s been to.
And she’s been to a few. She belongs to a few: The ’Quin, here in Boston.
The Country Club in the nearby suburb of Brookline.
In New York, Soho House. At least, she belongs to them for the time being, until she has to cough up the money for the annual dues.
Suffice to say she approves of the decor.
So many rooms that mix old and new get it wrong, but it’s almost criminal that this interior space cannot be photographed and splashed across the pages of House Beautiful.
Here the walls are delicately wrapped like a present in a textured cranberry paisley wallpaper and topped with sexy dark gray coffered ceilings from which multiple Baccarat crystal chandeliers hang.
Silky, golden drapes framing each window form luxurious puddles on the dark wooden floor.
A pair of marble fireplaces bookends the far walls: One is coral-colored, mostly simple in its lines, and the other is glossy black, modern, and detailed.
Soft jazz filters through the room, and she can’t tell if it’s coming from overhead speakers or the nearby vintage turntable.
In the middle of the room is a curved glass display case containing what looks like an antique scroll. The charter to the Knox, perhaps? The entire display case—wooden table stand and all—is enclosed in a box-shaped security glass, as if this scroll would better belong in a museum.
Fanning out from it are multiple gathering areas, each one seamlessly demarcated with its own Persian rug.
Vivian and Peter are seated in the far right of the room—the most private area.
On a tray before them, resting on a coffee table that Vivian sourced a few years earlier, is a vintage silver tea set that is Chinese in origin.
The furniture around them is varied and lovely; long, velvet couches with fringe bottoms, claw-footed high-backed chairs, a bench with a vintage leopard-print upholstery, a more contemporary acrylic side table, tufted footstools, coffee tables with marble tops, crowded brass bar carts with casters.
Some of it is also familiar; Vivian’s fingerprint is scattered throughout.
She feels pleased; she doesn’t usually get to see her pieces in the wild, and never in such an exquisite setting.
“I’m sorry, what’s that?” she says, when she realizes Peter is waiting for her response.
“I said, I get it.”
“Get what?”
“I’m an architect, so I understand how you’re feeling. You have the look of a proud mom on your face.”
“Well, yes,” she says after a pause. “I’ve sourced several of these pieces. Furniture and decor.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“You’ve heard?”
“Michael’s spoken about you, or rather about your shop.”
“Oh,” she says. Then she frowns and adds, “I don’t know if proud ‘mom’ is the right word. But I am proud.”
Peter nods thoughtfully. “I apologize. That may have been a poor choice of words.”
“No need to apologize. I’m not offended. It’s more that I’ve never really identified with that sentiment.”
“So how does one come to be an antiques dealer in arguably the most charming neighborhood in America? Is your family from the area?”
Is your family from the area? is much more of a loaded question than Peter realizes.
“I grew up in Chestnut Hill. I’m an only child, and my parents were collectors, so I was surrounded by antiques.
I’ve always loved them.” She swallows at the thought of the antiques her mother either tossed out in the trash due to her dementia or sold off over the years at below value.
All Vivian knows is that the estate sale appraiser she’d sent over informed her that the house no longer contains many of the antiques Vivian had listed—and her mother never consulted Vivian on the sales of any such items.
Batting down the unpleasant memory, Vivian adds, “Of course all antiques are antiques now, but at one time they were simply beautiful pieces of furniture, or belongings, important to someone for some reason. I find it fascinating how antiques have their own personal histories and stories.”
“Ah, I knew we had something in common.” There’s a teasing glint in his eye.
“What’s that?”
“Lonely-child syndrome. It begets much creativity.”
“Were you an only child, too, then? Or just lonely?”
“An orphan, in fact. But instead of finding stories in objects around me, I created objects to tell stories,” Peter says.
“Ah. I like that.”
“I grew up in the Adirondacks,” he continues, and the way he says it makes Vivian feel that the town he hails from is not the postcard image that mountainous area sometimes conjures. There’s a rawness about Peter, she realizes.
“When I was eleven years old, the architect Gilbert Joseph—” He pauses as she nods; everyone has heard of the late New England architect.
“Gilbert came to our town to do a conversion of an old textile mill building into a hotel, and I used to go there after school to watch. Sometimes instead of school.” He grins roguishly.
“Anyway, one day he finally noticed me. And asked me what I thought of the lofts they were creating, and I said, ‘You need a climbing wall for kids if you have ceilings that high.’ And you know what? He did it. Room 428 at the Lodge still contains a climbing wall.”
“That must have been pretty cool to experience as a child.”
“It was.” Peter looks wistful. “Meeting Gilbert Joseph literally changed my life. He became my mentor. Put me through The Bartlett—the architecture school at University College London. Closest thing to a father I ever had. He’s the reason I’m here, at the Knox.”
He must mean Gilbert Joseph was a member.
Vivian had done a fair amount of internet sleuthing on the Knox the past couple of days but was surprised to find barely anything.
Just some vague mentions in previous issues of Boston Common and Boston Magazine.
It’s like the internet had been scrubbed.
How many members are there? she wonders.
There’s so much she wants—needs—to know, but she must tread carefully.
There’s also so much she wants and needs to know about this man sitting in front of her.
Like, when he raises his cup of tea to his mouth and the sleeve of his shirt pulls back, revealing a wrist tattoo, what is it of?
Does he have others beneath those fine Italian clothes he’s wearing? What women have seen them?
And what kind of broken childhood did he have?
Peter opens his mouth as if he’s about to ask something but then decides against it. For some reason this makes her laugh.
“Go ahead, ask,” she says.
“Ask what?”
“Whatever you were going to.”
“I don’t even know what I was going to ask. A million things. Some probably I shouldn’t.” His gaze rakes over her face, as if he’s trying to memorize it.
She, too, is locked on him. She couldn’t look away if she tried.
Then his eyes flicker beyond her, over her shoulder. “Here’s a question for you: What do you think about that painting? The one with the woman on the bus?”
She turns to see. It’s an oil painting of a woman sitting in a row of seats on what appears to be public transportation. The woman’s back is mostly turned, so there is just the slightest glimpse of her profile.
“It could be a train, not a bus,” Vivian points out.
“Hmmm. Maybe.”
Vivian doesn’t love the painting. It’s certainly not of the same caliber as the other artwork in the room, for instance that Andy Warhol–Jean-Michel Basquiat collaboration they passed when they first entered. If truly an original, that one painting could more than solve all her problems.
Christ, what kind of person is she turning into?
“The frame is crooked,” she finally says.
“Really?” He tilts his head. “Now that you mention it, you’re right.”
A young, stout man with close-cropped hair approaches. He’s dressed in black trousers and a tight black shirt. “More tea?” he asks.
“Please, Jerry,” Peter replies, and waits for Vivian to put her teacup down first on the tray so it, too, can be topped off.
The waiter’s hands are big, burly, like the rest of his body. But he’s overall short and has an almost squashed appearance, with a thick neck and crooked nose that looks like it’s been broken at least once. He’d fit in better on a wrestling mat.
“I can always tell when a painting is off-kilter,” Vivian remarks to Peter. “It’s my superpower.”
“That is impressive. Do you see it or sense it?”
“Good question. Both, probably.”
“Thank you, Jerry,” Peter says, when the man is done, and Jerry nods.
“Thank you,” Vivian adds.
“We just got the painting. Graham—he’s the head of the Knox—just purchased it. I can’t decide what I think of it, and I feel like, based on the way you avoided answering, you are also undecided.”
“I’m not undecided. I’m just diplomatic.”
He laughs. “Touché.”
Vivian brings the cup to her face, reveling in the warmth.
She’s not cold, but the steam feels good.
She feels visceral, aware of her senses like she hasn’t been in a long time.
The soft, luxurious velvet of the chair beneath her back.
The way the jazz notes linger in the air, like drawn-out exhalations.
The slight stubble of a beard on Peter’s face that she suddenly has an inane desire to reach forward and touch.
It feels good to be lost in the moment, to not feel the weight of her problems.
Suddenly, she’s aware that time has slipped. How long have they been chatting? She glances at the grandfather clock tucked against one of the back walls, but oddly enough it seems to say the same time as when she looked earlier, the minute hand just past three o’clock.
Peter notices her gaze. “It’s stopped on 3:03, the time that our founder died.”
“Mr. Knox, I presume?”
“William Knox.”
“William Knox. I’d just assumed…”
“Henry Knox?” he fills in. “It’s a common misassumption. No, the Knox was not established by the historical figure Henry Knox, but rather an alleged distant cousin of his, William.”
She files that piece of information away. She’ll need to remember it later, to relay to Rachel. Her friend doesn’t know it yet, but she’s soon going to be putting her talents to use; Rachel’s a genealogist at the Vilna Shul, an old synagogue turned Boston cultural arts center.
“Are you…Are you supposed to be telling me all this?” Vivian asks haltingly.
He laughs. “Probably not.”
“Do you often invite guests inside?”
Peter holds her gaze. “Never.”
Voices drift from the far end of the room. They have company. Michael saunters in, flanked by Jerry, the waiter.
Michael stops short when he sees Vivian. “Vivian, I mean Ms. Lawrence. Hello. Peter.” He nods briskly at Peter. “I didn’t realize you two knew each other,” he says stiffly.
“We don’t. We only just met,” Peter says, while Vivian adds, “Please, it’s Vivian.”
“Now I understand why the Knox has been spending so much money at a certain antiques store,” says Peter.
Michael reddens. “Storied Antiques is one of the finest of its kind.”
Peter laughs. “Relax, Michael. I’m just joking. You know I’ve always approved of the items you procure.” He turns to Vivian. “Michael and I go way back. We were flatmates, years ago in London.”
He says this like Vivian already knows Michael lived in London, but Vivian knows very little about Michael. Practically nothing, in fact. She notices he doesn’t wear a wedding band, just a signet ring. “Is that where you two met, in London?” she asks.
Peter answers for them. “No, we first met here, at the Knox. Michael’s father was close with my mentor, Gilbert Joseph.
You see, unlike me, Michael hails from a long lineage of Knox members.
I’m just the scrappy SOB they somehow let in.
” He grins rather endearingly, and Vivian can’t help but smile back.
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly put it that—” Michael starts to say, but Peter interrupts.
“Vivian, has Michael already invited you to our annual masquerade ball?”
Vivian looks at Michael, who is wearing an unreadable expression. “No.”
Peter runs his hand through his hair. “Well, please do us the honor. It’s next Friday. Eight p.m. It’s one of our only events of the year where we are officially allowed to invite nonmember guests. Come in your finest Venetian attire.”
Next Friday she has dinner plans with Rachel, but she’s pretty sure that she will be forgiven for needing to reschedule. Likely encouraged by her friend to reschedule, in fact. “I’d love to.”
“Wonderful,” Peter says, clapping his hands together as they rise.
Jerry rushes in to clear the tea tray as if being summoned, but Peter subtly shakes his head, and Jerry backs off.
“Wonderful, Michael, isn’t it?” Peter says.