* * *
• • •
I crane my neck as I approach Vera’s door. Two women in scrubs stand there and chat. They are part of the cleaning crew. Every morning, they spill from a van with tinted windows reminiscent of an airport shuttle bus. I’ve watched them through my bay window before as they walk to their respective buildings. By now they have begun to look familiar: one wears a turtleneck, and according to Vera, she’s covering up a tattoo. Some of the women are young, others in their fifties. They carry large purses and lunch boxes.
I’m distracted by a woman pacing up and down the walkway. Her cell phone is pressed to her ear and she seems worked up about something. She is wearing regular clothes, not scrubs, so she could be Aubrey, Vera’s assistant. I’ve heard Vera speak of her—she is like a niece to me—but I’ve never met her.
Aubrey is in her mid-thirties, her mouse-brown hair is up in a sloppy bun and she wears ghastly cat-eye glasses. That’s all you see when you look at her, a face dominated by thick frames flaring out at the temples. I wonder if she knows those are ill fitting. Black slacks stretched tightly across her stomach and a white blouse would make her look put together if it wasn’t for her sloppy cheap flats with scuff marks on the back.
“You must be Mrs. Pryor. I’m Aubrey.”
“How’s Vera?” I ask.
“She’s been asking for you,” Aubrey says.
“I didn’t bring anything,” I say.
“Don’t worry about that. She’ll be glad to have company. She’s worked up about something. She mentioned your name but I couldn’t make sense of it.”
Vera does her fair share of complaining about Aubrey, though she’s quite fond of her. She can be overbearing, just like Marleen. Her responsibility, as far as I know, is the preservation of Vera’s estate, specifically organizing and transcribing notes Vera writes on canary legal pads, which she leaves on her kitchen counter by the dozens.
When I met Vera, I did my fair share of snooping. I ran across articles and photos of her; wrap dresses and tailored skirts with knee-high boots. She was casual yet effortlessly chic in her ribbed Henley shirts with her long hair parted in the middle and prominent eyebrows. In one picture she leans against one of those Mercedes roadsters, in another she sits in an overgrown yard with a typewriter on a weathered table. There are pictures with headscarves and large round sunglasses. She is still slim bordering on emaciated, her clavicles poking from beneath her translucent freckly skin. I saw a photograph of her once with Lagerfeld in a black suit and a ponytail, dark shades, huddled together as if they were the best of friends. She has replaced her cashmere sweaters and scarves for kaftans and loungewear these days but she’s still beautiful.
How odd I’ve never been to Vera’s apartment. “I have stuff all over the place, research and such, it’s really not in the condition for visitors,” she told me once and I accepted it. “I try forever to keep up with the clutter but it always gets away. You know how things get away sometimes, don’t you?”
I wouldn’t know but I nodded. Poor Vera suffers from some sort of brittle bone disease. She must be careful not to fall or even bump into things. Born with a broken collarbone, she was predisposed even before birth, which I assume lent itself to spending lots of time indoors as a child. There’s also some issue with her connective tissue, a rare disease which can be controlled but not cured, though it is manageable as an adult, but I don’t know the specifics. You wouldn’t know any of this by looking at her. She is one of those women who spent her life indulging in artistic endeavors, traveling and never wasting a thought on having a family. Vera’s wealthy. She doesn’t talk about money, that’s how I know, people who are don’t ever do.
Standing in Vera’s foyer, I’m taken aback. I all but expected her house to be messy but not unbearably so. I imagined it to be minimally furnished, an artful bohemian aesthetic mixed with vibrant and rich colors, textures and patterns, handmade and vintage pieces. A hand-carved bench from Sweden, a velvet couch in a jewel tone with embroidered kilim pillows and plush rugs. Somehow I thought her home to be her greatest work of art but this place looks like all work but no art.
Crowded seems too trivial a word for what this is: tables with randomly stacked books, some of the backs show but most are upside down, titles illegible. Papers, so many papers. Reams of them stacked on tables, not even real tables but plastic folding things, and cardboard boxes with indecipherable black felt-tip marker scribblings in the corner. What good can come from being this disorganized? The walls are bare and devoid of any framed art. Black bags are lined up on the kitchen floor, the veined marble underneath stained with dirt and smudges. One bag is leaking some sort of fluid. My mind makes the connection and horror overcomes me as I realize what they are: garbage bags.
I enter Vera’s bedroom. She’s propped up by multiple pillows and her legs rest elevated on a wedge-like Styrofoam shape. Her mouth is open and she seems to be resting. Dots travel along her upper arm as if fingertips have dug into her, one bruise reaches all the way to her elbow. Purple, as if she had fallen on something oblong, but there are lots of bruises in yellow and green which must have been hidden by her kaftan sleeves.
The front door slams and Aubrey mumbles something under her breath. I can see the parlor and the kitchen from the bedroom door and I watch Aubrey stuff leaking bags into a larger one.
“Aubrey,” I call out into the hallway. “What happened to Vera?”
Aubrey pokes her head into Vera’s bedroom.
“Just a slip.”
“What happened?” I repeat, this time with a sharper tone.
“She fell but she’s fine. The doctor said not to worry but she needs some rest.” She pauses for a second. “She was upset with me earlier, I needed to step outside for a moment.”
“Why was she upset?”
“She was upset when she told me about you two having plans so I called Marleen to let you know,” Aubrey says and tucks a messy strand of hair behind her ears.
“How did she fall?” I ask and hold my breath.
“It was really just a slip in the kitchen. I don’t know if she told you about her”—there’s a pause, during which she lets out a deep breath—“her habit of going through peoples’ bags. She leaves them in the kitchen and she won’t allow me to tidy up.”
Vera is stirring, then fiddles with the blanket.
“Your friend Donna is here, Vera,” Aubrey says and then lowers her voice. “I know this place looks alarming but I’m organizing her notes. She’s working on so many projects. There’ll be a collection of essays and a short story collection, maybe even two. And she is working on a novel. At this point there’s so much material I don’t even know where to begin. We’re imaging some of her handwritten notes so editors can get a better look at them. You know, the anniversary of her book is coming up. Thirty years. There’ll be a special edition and we want to include some new content. It’s a lot of work, as you can see.” She nods toward the hallway and the stacks of papers.