Chapter 9 - The Garden in the Sky
By June, the fifty-second floor of Sterling Tower had been transformed.
What had once been an unused mechanical penthouse and an abandoned water-tank room had been converted into a private rooftop conservatory overlooking the entire island of Manhattan.
The limestone parapets had been restored, surrounded by eight-foot panels of structural glass that baffled the wind without obscuring the view. Long cedar planter boxes were filled with blooming hydrangeas, creeping thyme, dwarf Japanese maples, and wild roses that smelled of rain and salt. In the center of the flagstone terrace, a small stone fountain bubbled softly, its water reflecting the pale-blue expanse of the summer sky.
It was four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon.
Fiona was sitting at a weathered teak table, her sketch pad open, drawing the bridges that spanned the East River like thin silver threads against the blue water. Leo was running along the perimeter path, his laugh ringing out over the hum of the city seventy stories below, chasing a monarch butterfly that had somehow climbed the thermal currents all the way to our roof.
Arthur Franklin sat on a bench beneath a trellis of wisteria, reading the weekend edition of the Financial Times, a glass of iced lemonade at his elbow.
"Mrs. Sterling," Thomas Kelly’s voice came over the intercom near the elevator vestibule.
I walked over, pressing the brass button. "Yes, Thomas?"
"There is a delivery for you at the service entrance, ma'am. A small parcel from the surrogate’s court in Dutchess County. Should I send it up?"
"Please, Thomas."
Two minutes later, the bronze elevator doors slid open, and a young messenger handed me a small, flat box wrapped in brown butcher paper and tied with hemp twine.
I took it to the stone table where Fiona was drawing and sat down.
I cut the twine with a small brass letter opener. Inside was an old, velvet-lined jeweler’s box from 1952, and beneath it, a single handwritten letter on cream stationery that smelled faintly of lavender and cedar shavings.
Margaret's handwriting.
Jessica,
If you are reading this on the roof of 540 Madison, it means the limestone held.
I watched your mother spend her entire life waiting for a man to give her permission to breathe. She thought that if she was quiet enough, gentle enough, and small enough, someone would build a fence around her and keep the wolves away. The wolves ate her anyway, my dear. They always do when you present yourself as a lamb.
I never married because I refused to let a husband become my landlord. When you married that boy from Westchester, I watched him closely. I saw the way he checked his reflection in the shop windows while you carried the diaper bag. I saw the way he made your home his kingdom and your work his subsidy.
I did not save you then because you cannot save a woman who still believes her cage is a sanctuary. You had to see the door open yourself.
The enclosed item belonged to your grandmother, Eleanor Sterling. She wore it when she opened the first women’s bank in Troy in 1912. Wear it when you sign the leases. Wear it when you walk through the lobby.
Never apologize for the ground you stand on, Jessica. You built the foundation with your own hands.
Your Aunt,
Margaret
I opened the velvet box.
Inside lay a heavy gold signet ring, carved with the crest of a peregrine falcon perched upon a stone tower, its eyes set with two tiny, flawless diamonds that caught the late-afternoon sun like sparks of fire.
I slipped it onto the third finger of my right hand.
It was cool against my skin, perfectly balanced, heavy enough that I could feel the weight of every woman who had refused to be small.
"Mom," Fiona said, looking up from her drawing. "Look at this."
She turned the sketch pad toward me.
May you like
It was a drawing of our house on Maplewood Lane, but the front porch had no suitcases. The privet hedge was blooming with white flowers, and on the second-story roof, standing tall against the sky, were three figures: Fiona, Leo, and me, our hands linked together, our feet planted firmly on the shingles, looking out over the world without a single shadow behind us.
"It's perfect, Fi," I said, kissing the top of her dark head. "It's exactly right."
