Men and Angels by Mary Gordon Page A

Having only three hours, she quickly requested the sales catalogues of exhibitions where Caroline’s work had hung, made notes, and checked her information. It was, as an activity, cool, fast and businesslike, but she had wanted that. Her head was hot from wine in the afternoon, which she rarely had, from meeting Jane, who to anyone, she imagined, was like a series of big waves washing over, sometimes overturning, coating the skin with a cool salt. Yet it was different for Anne: Jane was not only herself, she was Anne’s connection to Caroline. And she was the model, the subject, she was the woman in The Striped Dress , in Woman Reading a Letter. In loving those paintings, one somehow was loving her. And she had sat across the table, eating lobster, talking about Chaucer, Nazis, her mother-in-law, boiled eggs. It was a relief to sit in this overcrowded room, so bottom-heavy with activity. The earnest, worried, or delighted scholars sat in a horizontal line while above them two-thirds of the room was empty air. And Anne belonged there. She was one of them.
    The children’s room of the Selby library was small and square and overheated; the temperature made the children’s complexions look hectic, but they moved in a trance of peace. It was a privilege to be nearly silent there, to look and comment upon books in whispers, to sit at the oak tables turning pages and to smell the smell of paste and crumbling paper. She couldn’t bear to hurry the children, so she knew she would be late for the appointment Laura had made with the electrician. She would have to apologize, and that would start things off on the wrong foot. But nothing was worth introducing any element that jarred; she watched their heads bent over their books and saw her children had found sanctuary and must not be disturbed.
    When she arrived home the electrician’s truck was parked in front of the house, EDWARD CORCORAN, ELECTRICIAN , it said formally, black paint on white metal. She liked the looks of the man who got out. He was a large, heavy man, almost a caricature of a workman—only, he was dressed exactly like Peter, in jeans, a red hooded sweatshirt and sneakers that had once been white. The contrast between the two figures heightened, comically, each of their natures, Peter so thin, edgy, and electrified, Edward Corcoran so slow-moving and massive. He had thin, uncontrollable hair that sprang out in patches and wanted to clump. There were wood chips in his hair. Perhaps he had been walking in the woods. Imagining this, Anne was pleased; she hated to think that the people she did business with had less enjoyable lives than she did.
    A small boy got out of the truck and walked seriously beside the man toward the driveway.
    “I hope you don’t mind me bringing my son with me. My wife’s sick,” he said.
    “Of course. I mean, of course not. Come in. I’ll make some coffee. The children can have juice and cookies.”
    Edward Corcoran’s son stood slightly behind him, peeping out at people to the right of his father’s thigh. She remembered Peter at that age; each time she saw a younger child, she felt a sharp joy, then a loss, as if she had seen a beloved place—no longer open to her kind—in a geographic film.
    Anne said to the little boy, “These are my children, Peter and Sarah. They can show you the house and their rooms. Or you could stay with your father if you like.”
    The boy disappeared behind his father.
    Peter and Sarah went in first. Peter held the door for everyone, as if the occasion called for his best manners. Behind them, Laura walked into the kitchen, smiling.
    Anne knew she had to be businesslike and efficient. She wondered if she had made a mistake. Perhaps she shouldn’t have offered this man coffee until he had looked around the house. The point was, she knew, not to entertain the man, but to get him to give a fair price, do a good job. Michael always did this sort of thing; she felt on shaky ground; she felt she could be