The Cloisters

by Katy Hays

What if our whole life—how we live and die—has already been decided for us? Would you want to know, if a roll of the dice or a deal of the cards could tell you the outcome? Can life be that thin, that disturbing? What if we are all just Caesar? Waiting on our lucky throw, refusing to see what waits for us in the ides of March.

had already learned that no one wanted to hear what loss was really like.

The Cloisters, I knew, had been brought into being—like so many institutions—by John D. Rockefeller

Crumbling remnants of twelfth-century abbeys and priories had been imported throughout the 1930s from Europe and rebuilt under the watchful eye of architect Charles Collens. Buildings that had been left to the ravages of weather and wars were reassembled and polished to a new-world sheen—entire twelfth-century chapels restored, marble colonnades buffed to their original gloss.

“Typically,” said Rachel, “any square medieval garden surrounded by walkways like this one was called a cloister.