by Karen Ellis
When Crisp is finished talking, JJ looks overwhelmed, Glynnie shocked.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says. “I heard public school was complicated, but that’s just insane.” For her, the journey from kindergarten through senior year of high school has taken place in the same well-appointed nineteenth-century Victorian pile in downtown Brooklyn, while apparently Crisp fought his way from borough to borough through a vast and fucked-up system, chasing an education that for him, at least, hasn’t turned out badly. The thought that he missed out on being valedictorian this morning now makes her burn with anger. She realizes at this moment that the honor really was no small thing.
Crisp feels almost guilty for having ripped away their veils of innocence, but given what JJ’s up against, he has no choice.
“I’ll help you,” Crisp tells him. “I’ll take you through it step by step.” He can accomplish this regardless of whether he ends up staying in New York serving McDonald’s or actually makes it to college—Princeton is only a train ride away. “And I’ll tutor you for the specialized exam.”
“Nah,” JJ says. “I mean, that’s nice, but I probably can’t afford it.”
“You don’t have to pay me.”
“Everything costs,” the younger boy says with resolve.
“Sometimes it doesn’t.”
“Yeah it does. That’s something I learned. Like…” JJ softens now, gaze moving to the ceiling, thinking. “Maybe if there’s something I could do for you, then we’d have ourselves a deal.”
A deal, Crisp thinks, as if everything boils down to quid pro quo. It doesn’t. But before he can say “No deal, I want to help, in fact I insist on it.” Before he can quote Mahatma Gandhi, who said, “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean doesn’t become dirty.” Before he can recite the Dalai Lama’s words “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.” Before he has a chance to open his mouth and really earn that A plus in Compassionate Rebellions of the Twentieth Century by persuading JJ that receiving is just as important as giving and also that sometimes you have to allow others to step in and help and also and not least that letting Crisp do something powerfully well-intentioned will help him put a better spin on a truly shitty twenty-four hours and also and perhaps most importantly will show his mother that he is who she thought he was, who she raised him to be, that his soul has roots and his mind has wings, that getting arrested was (he hopes) a meaningless blip. Before he can open his mouth with a few choice words to express all that, Glynnie is on her feet.
“I know!” she announces, energized by the sense that two puzzle pieces have just slipped into place, a perfect fit—and she, a witness, has only to spell out the obvious. “JJ, I’m going to buy you a phone you can use with those Beats. In exchange, you’ll take me to your gun guy, and you’ll also let Crisp help you—that’s part of the deal.”
Crisp can’t believe they’re talking about this again. He raises his voice to make sure he’s really heard: “No gun, Glynnie.”
“JJ has his pride,” Glynnie argues with quiet authority, a feeling more powerful than shouting. “He doesn’t want to take your charity for nothing, Crisp. You’ve got to be realistic here. JJ does not want to be in debt to you—he’s got enough problems. You do this for him, he does this for me, and he gets a smartphone. Seriously, could you imagine your life without music?”
Crisp looks directly at JJ and counters with his own calm explanation: “You’ll help me with something in the future, when I know what I need. Or you’ll pay it forward later and help someone else. Seriously, ‘All comes out even at the end of the day.’” (Voltaire.) “JJ, you’ve heard of karma, right?”
The boy picks up the Beats, puts them on, and closes his eyes as if listening to a song when they all know there’s nothing but silence. He takes them off. “A new phone would be good. But like I said, it’s hard to know how Big Man’s cousin’s gonna be.”
“If anything goes wrong,” Glynnie tells JJ, “I mean if anything feels even a little bit off, we’re out of there. I promise.”
“Can’t draw any cops.”
“God no,” Glynnie agrees. “You have my solemn promise on that one.”
JJ puts the Beats back on and closes his eyes and says, “Snap.”
“Good.” Glynnie claps her hands and smiles. “That’s a done deal.”
“Why do you even want a gun?” Crisp pleads.
“Because usually I can’t. This is an opportunity. Plus,” thinking on her feet, “I’m going to Outward Bound. What if there’s a bear?”
Crisp mutters, “Now I’m starting to understand,” her foolishness—but he doesn’t come right out and say that to her face.
But Glynnie perceives the intent beneath his words and it stings. She has no intention of ever using the gun—why would she? (Well, maybe on a bear, and only in self-defense.) But the thought of owning one slides deliciously through her imagination, and now, especially now that Crisp has staked himself against it and on top of that is judging her (just like everyone else, her parents, her teachers), now more than ever she wants to see this happen. She wants it because she wants it. She needs it because no one thinks she’s capable of succeeding, but she is. She will succeed at this.
“Can we get the gun tonight?” Glynnie asks.
JJ slides his right ear free. “We can try.”
“I’ll get the phone tomorrow,” she promises. “You good with that, JJ?”
“Yeah, I am, I’m good with it.”
* * *
Van Brunt Street past midnight is all but abandoned except for bars whose windows showcase late birds enjoying themselves well past bedtime. Walking along with Glynnie and JJ, glimpsing the fact of other people’s eager sociability, Crisp feels more separate than ever. Separate and sober and regretful that he ever left Brighton Beach this afternoon. Stormed out on his mother like that. Found himself here, doing this.
Walking beside Crisp, Glynnie feels she’s not so much walking as leading him and JJ through the quiet night, which makes her feel…what? Coaxed. By herself. By possibilities. Prodded, even, by Crisp’s reluctance. Coaxed and prodded into an unknown future, into the unplanned slips of time her parents can’t reach or control. An unfolding-now future that is of her own making. Coaxed and prodded and excited. The risk and daring of what they’re doing thrills her more than she’d be willing to admit out loud. She’s in control, making decisions and choices, moving forward of her own accord.
Wait until that fucking bear sees her with a gun—no one will expect her to survive, and then she will. It will be her first headline: “Girl Survives Encounter with Bear in the Wild.” No, scratch that: “Woman Survives Encounter with Bear in the Wild.” Now that she’s eighteen and a high-school graduate, no one has the right to call her a girl ever again.
On the corner of Van Brunt and Coffey, she grinds to a halt at the sight of a cash machine built into the wall outside a deli. Dips in her debit card, feeling that curl of anticipation she experiences whenever she’s decided to do something she shouldn’t. Waits for the stack of bills to slide out of the slot. Instead, a message reads No Cash Available at This Time.
Aggravated, she consults her phone and discovers that Chase has an outpost way over on Hamilton Avenue. She walks and the boys follow. When they finally reach the bank she struggles a little with the door until Crisp supplies the final tug that wrests it open, which she reads as implicit cooperation with her venture.
She steps up to one of the ATMs. The only customer at this hour of the night.
Morning now. A new day.
The slot pumps out a stack of fifty-dollar bills, three hundred dollars in all. She counts the cash and then folds it into the front pocket of her jeans.
“Glynnie,” Crisp begs, “will you please reconsider? Can we at least talk about it before—”
“You don’t have to come.” She’s disappointed to realize that he st
ill isn’t on board. “Seriously, Crisp, I know this bothers you and I respect that, but why don’t you just head home?” She holds back from affectionately calling him Crispy Cream, as she might have a couple of hours ago, because his unwillingness—no, disapproval—no longer feels idiosyncratic, interesting, or fun.
“I will,” he says. “But first I want to see where you’re going, get the lay of the land.”
JJ looks at him. “And then you’re leaving?”
“Don’t worry, I’m still going to help you, JJ. My promise holds. And seriously, you do not have to do any of this to pay me. I don’t need payment. I—”
Glynnie corrects him: “We have a deal.”
“Okay,” JJ says. “Cool.”
Crisp pulls open the door and the three are back in the quiet night.
A car drives past. Half a block over, rhythmic waves swish against an unseen shore, and above it the dark sky glows reddish from industrial New Jersey on the other side of Manhattan’s southern end. Crisp means what he says about going home once they’ve arrived at Big Man’s cousin’s building, but not before then. And he means what he says about returning to help JJ figure things out.
“Why are you coming with us at this point?” Glynnie asks Crisp. “So you can show them where to find the bodies?”
“Someone should know where you are.”
“It isn’t like that,” JJ says. “He just makes his sale and then we go.”
“Like you did,” Crisp says, “when she brought in a stranger?”
JJ hesitates before answering; they both saw his alarm bells go off when Glynnie introduced an unknown by bringing Crisp along on her buy. “Yeah, maybe it’ll take a minute,” JJ admits. “Sure. But I’m gonna explain. If we’re cool, he’ll be cool. He’ll want to make his sale.”
Glynnie argues, “Unless he’s an idiot he’s not going to mess with a customer with three hundred bucks in her pocket. He’s a businessman. And if he has half a brain he’ll also be thinking about nurturing a return customer. I am just so not worried about this, Crisp, so please keep your thoughts to yourself unless they’re, you know, productive.”
Silenced, incensed, humiliated, baffled by her recklessness, he walks along with them. Why did he think it was so important to let her know what he was doing in that cage yesterday? If only he hadn’t called out to her and made sure she saw him. If only he had stayed and faced his mother and made that call to Princeton. If only he hadn’t jumped on the subway to go somewhere, anywhere, and foolishly decided on Glynnie Dreyfus as a destination, an innocuous destination (he’d thought) that would kill two birds with one stone: rumors and time. As if he was in control of either.
10
Friday
The leather soles of Lex’s boots clap up the concrete stairs of the High Street station. Out on the street it’s quiet except for a light thrum of traffic ramping off the bridge into Brooklyn Heights.
He’s glad it worked out that he can help with Ethan’s morning school run, that reprieve landing when Katya Spielman got in touch to report that her son had finally checked in with a text saying he was out with friends—not where, or with whom, but it was enough to allow her to stop worrying. It’s more than Lex got from Adam, or offered Adam; they’re heading now into a second day of silence.
He wonders (again) if Adam ever went home last night and tries to understand (again) when things began to sour. He fleetingly recalls that first night they spent together without Adam running home to William like Cinderella back to her keeper. They lay in bed as daylight crept into the room, peaceful in each other’s arms, and Adam confessed how good it was to be with someone who wasn’t an alcoholic, how much he admired Lex’s strength, how surprised he was to discover that he could be this attracted to someone who wasn’t a total mess. Lex didn’t doubt his sincerity, or his relief, having himself grown up with a raging drunk for the first eight years of his life, and knowing from hard experience that love binds without judgment.
The bright morning sun hurts Lex’s eyes after two nights and a day without sleep. He pauses to fish in his backpack for his sunglasses, finds them nested at the bottom, and slips them on. He makes his way up Cranberry Street and turns onto Willow.
David rents the parlor floor of a brownstone, and as Lex comes up the block he sees Ethan perched in one of the front windows, watching for him as he always does. His nephew smiles and waves and disappears. Moments later, father and son emerge at the front door, dressed for their respective days of business and school: David with his short brown hair neatly parted and combed and his dark blue suit and stuffed briefcase, Ethan in crisp jeans, spanking-new sneakers, and green T-shirt emblazoned with a soccer ball dead center over the boy’s heart.
David turns to lock the door. “Thanks for this, Lex. I really appreciate it. My timing this morning is ridiculously tight.”
“No problem.”
As Ethan trots down the stoop his broad smile reveals a surprise: tracks of braces now cover the jigsaw of his teeth. Lex tousles the thick head of red hair the kid inherited from his mother, who still lives in what was the family apartment on the Upper East Side, near the hospital where she’s an ER doctor. Ethan used to take a bus back and forth to his Brooklyn Heights private school, but after the divorce, David moved closer to ease the commute. (And, Lex is sure, to be closer to Elsa Myers, who lives nearby.) Now Ethan spends weekdays with his father and weekends with his mother in Manhattan.
They walk together until they reach the Clark Street subway, where David peels off toward the express train.
“Good luck,” Lex calls after his brother.
David waves, and is gone.
“Hey buddy, how about some breakfast?” The Clark Street Diner, their favorite, is just across the street.
Ethan answers, “I had some cereal at home.”
“Doesn’t school start at eight? It’s only ten past seven. You can have a second breakfast, or watch me eat.”
“I have earth science club at seven fifteen. My mom signed me up.” He rolls his eyes.
“That’s pretty cool, Ethan.”
“Not really.”
“Come on, let’s get you there on time.” Lex breaks into a jog. Laughing, Ethan catches up and stays close, dodging dog walkers and baby strollers all the way to Joralemon Street.
The brick Gothic school building looms over the otherwise residential block. Watching his nephew run up the stairs and disappear into the vaulted entrance, Lex feels grateful for David and Ethan, the only family he has left—a feeling that yanks the scab off a memory he tries not to revisit but sometimes can’t avoid.
Himself, eight years old, alone and frightened, entering the jaw of Sheremetyevo Airport while his drunk-in-the-morning father stands there and watches him go.
What did his father think, what did he feel, putting his child on a plane to America to live with his first wife and son, Yelena and David, whom at that point Lex had never met? The memory lands whole with a reminder of forfeiture so painful it encompasses every sense.
The river of Russian language, its sounds and symbols, that was so familiar he never thought about it until it was gone.
The sour taste in his mouth from morning tea but no breakfast.
The chill of overcooled industrial air.
And the stench of his father that lingered as the distance between them grew.
They say that vodka is odorless but Lex knows what it smells like. It smells like the far edge of alcohol and the near edge of abandonment. Like two sharp sensations you know are there because you intuit them but you can never quite describe their most salient qualities. You just know that one stinks and the other hurts and together they represent disaster.
It was the last time he would ever see his father before cirrhosis killed him a year later.
The last time he saw his mother was two months earlier, and the smell she left him with was lilac. Sometimes she couldn’t get out of bed, she was so tired, but that day, their last together, she was not only up but wearing
a dress, purple with wavy yellow stripes. Her long brown hair fell neatly down her back. Her perfume was strong; she had just put it on. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, doing homework. She didn’t say anything but when she kissed him there were tears in her eyes and one of her cheeks was violently red—he didn’t have to ask if his father had hit her again. He would never forget the hard click of the door closing behind her and the soul-sucking quiet that followed. A few years later he was told that she, too, had died, but the way the news was presented, without detail, left him with a fantasy that it wasn’t true and a hope that one day he would find her. Searching for clues about what happened to their family and where Nina might have gone, he would study the single photo his father sent him off with: a boy rooted happily into his young mother’s lap, her hands clasped around his slender waist, the father standing behind them wearing the creased, humorless mask that was his face. But there were no clues in that frozen image. Eventually Lex grew up, filed away his father’s death certificate, stored the photo in the cloud, and consulted it only at his weakest moments.
Standing outside Ethan’s school, he abhors this feeling and pushes it away—this toxic memory of abandonment, this certainty that he was born for it, that he’s destined to be deserted again and again, that the cycle will never stop and the dread of it will destroy him and anyone he loves.
