strongly. Why don’t you get along?”
“For the reasons you already pointed out: I think she’s a lightweight, and I care about what I’m doing. She thinks she’s an artist. I don’t buy it, not that I’d tell her to her face. We’re part of the same local community, so I don’t go looking for trouble. But I think I can say that working with her is not going to be a picnic. She’s already tried to shut me out—she didn’t want me coming back here again. She wants control of things.” I hesitated for a moment before adding, “And I think that’s one of my conditions. If you want me to stay on and babysit Maddy, I’ll need to have equal access to the pieces, if I’m supposed to come up with something harmonious.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less. Let me worry about Maddy. So you’ll stay?”
Had he had any doubt? The siren song of the glass had lured me here—well, that and some ordinary curiosity about a man whose name appeared in headlines. So sue me, I’m human. But the glass was the deciding factor: I wanted to see those windows, not just once, but again and again, under different conditions. I wanted to know them, internalize them, learn from them, and see what I could take from them for my own art. “I will, under those conditions. You manage Maddy, and I’ll see that she doesn’t go overboard with cutesy.”
“Thank you,” he said simply. We sat in silence for several beats, and then he stood up abruptly. “Do you want to see what else I’ve uncrated?”
I stood too. “Absolutely.”
As we walked back toward the front of the house, I asked, “You know, Maddy hasn’t filled me in on the scope of the project. How many rooms are you talking about? Which artists?”
“Six rooms, all the ones overlooking the desert, on the ground floor. You’ve seen the Chagall already. I’ve got a magnificent French medieval panel, very rich colors. A Tiffany, of course. A Matisse, a William Morris, a Frank Lloyd Wright. Those are the major pieces. There are a number of smaller ones, but they’ll be easier to distribute, and I’m playing around with some display ideas.”
We were walking slowly now. “And what were you thinking about placement?”
“I’m still working that out. Chronological order seems rather trite, and I’m still getting used to the house, how the light falls. You know, several of these pieces I’ve seen only in dealers’ showrooms, by artificial light. I need to see them by natural light. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Completely. You can rationalize all you want, but there is still a visceral, emotional response to any work of art, and the windows incorporate a whole other dimension.”
We had reached the doorway of yet another room. “Of course—light.” When we walked into the room, I came face-to-face with the medieval window, and it stopped me in my tracks.
In college, and after, I had done the European grand tour thing and had ogled my share of cathedrals along the way. I know what an extraordinary effect medieval architects and glass artisans had achieved combining their solid stone with the ephemeral screens of colored glass. But finding one in front of me, illuminated by the intense Arizona sunlight, was an entirely different experience. I waited until my head had stopped spinning and tried to look at it dispassionately. It wasn’t easy.
I barely heard Peter’s soft voice. “For bright is that which is brightly coupled with the bright/And which the new light pervades,/ Bright is the noble work.”
“Abbot Suger,” I breathed. “Oh, lord, don’t tell me this came from St. Denis?”
Peter smiled. “The first true marriage of form and philosophy, the divine light of God’s wisdom embodied in colored glass. Almost makes you want to believe, doesn’t it?”
I crept closer, examining the individual pieces of glass, their color, their inherent flaws. There was so much I could learn here, so much I could use. . . . I realized neither of us had
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