The Drowning Tree Read Online Free PDF

for his windows.”
    “Yes, now that I think of it, Eugenie talks about the furnaces in her journals—she compares them to the fires of hell. I don’t think she liked that part of Augustus’s work. She preferred the tapestry and pottery studios.”
    “Well, it was all here—like a medieval crafts workshop—that was Augustus Penrose’s ideal. It’s rare for a stained-glass studio to make its own glass, but Tiffany did and so did Penrose so I figured, why not McKay Glass?”
    I’ve finally gotten the door open and wave Christine into my studio. “Our apartment is just up here,” I say, steering her toward the wroughtiron spiral stairs. “Let me get you something to eat before you have to get on the train …” But Christine has paused in front of the drawing on white vellum that covers the two-story-high wall opposite the stairs. It’s a wax rubbing of the Lady window that we’ll use as a guide for releading the window after it’s been taken down.
    “Are all those cracks places where the lead is broken?”
    “Uh-huh,” I say heading up the stairs, “this restoration is coming none too soon. Lead can start deteriorating after seventy years and the window is eighty years old.…” I pause at the top of the stairs to grab a bottle of Pellegrino water, half a loaf of sourdough bread, some fresh mozzarella my father brought me back from Poughkeepsie last week, and a jar of olives. Christine is still dawdling, halfway up the stairs, looking down at the studio. “But I keep forgetting,” I yell down at her, “you’re the expert on the window now. I bet your lecture convinced a lot of people to contribute to the restoration fund.”
    “But I wouldn’t have even done the lecture if you hadn’t steered me toward studying the window—or convinced me to apply for that grant …” She stops as she comes up the stairs and sees my expression—the same one she gives me when I try to thank her for the many times she’s saved my life. “Anyway, I just reminded them they had an importantpiece of Arts and Crafts stained glass that they were letting rot—you told them what they had to do to save it. And you’re the one who will save it—look at this place.” She sweeps her hand over the view of the studio laid out below us. “Juno, I’m so impressed. You’ve re-created Augustus Penrose’s dream of the medieval workshop!”
    I’ve got to admit the place looks pretty good from up here. I’ve gotten the guys to clear up most of the smaller restorations—a few fanlights for houses up on the Heights, some lancets for a Presbyterian church down in Tarrytown—to make way for the Lady window. My dad has built a new light table and installed a wall of vertical shelves to hold the sheets of colored glass that Ernesto and my father have painstakingly blown to match the colors originally used in the window so we’ll be able to replace any broken panes.
    “I don’t know about a medieval workshop. All I did was expand my dad’s business.…”
    “No affront to your dad, Juno, but he was repairing broken storefronts on Main Street and installing storm windows up on the Heights. You’re really creating art here … did you do these?” She’s moved now to the panels set into the French doors. I use the opportunity to open them and wave her out onto the rooftop garden, but only Paolo and Francesca respond to my hand gestures by sauntering side by side out onto the tarpaper roof.
    “A little project I did with Bea before giving up on the idea that she had any interest in working with glass,” I say, giving the glass panels a rueful look. The truth is I’d had to finish them myself while Bea made one excuse after another to get outside on the river.
    “Well, they’re beautiful.” Christine traces with one finger the pattern of vine and leaf. “They look like real vines climbing up the outside of the building.…” She looks up, following the vine pattern up to the skylight. She looks away and then back