The Paper Palace

by Miranda Cowley Heller

  “No etchings,” I explain.

  “Ah.” Peter laughs. “Don’t underestimate me. Come, I’ll show you the bedroom.”

  I hesitate, part of me wanting to follow, part of me wanting to run for my life. But I follow.

  Unlike the living room, Peter’s bedroom is surprisingly neat, the bed properly made, hospital corners.

  “God, you’re lovely,” he says. His voice is frank, direct, secure in its own knowledge. “Let’s get you out of these wet clothes.”

  I wince as he starts to unbutton my shirt. It has been six years since Conrad. And though I’ve had a few drunken kisses, I have never let a man touch me underneath my clothes.

  Peter goes to unzip my jeans, but I stop his hand.

  “Sorry. I thought—” he says.

  “No. It’s okay. Just . . . I’d rather do it myself.” My fingers shake as I finish unbuttoning my shirt, pull down my jeans, step out of them. I stand in front of Peter in nothing but my underwear and bra. The rain is coming down harder now, a latticework of rills streaming across the enormous windows. Behind Peter, on a tall Tudor dresser, there’s an unopened carton of Rothmans, a half-eaten pear. I unclasp my bra, drop it to the floor. He comes to me, cups my breasts in his hands. My entire body is shaking.

  “You’re cold.” He lifts me up, carries me to the bed.

  He makes love to me slowly, fingers tracing my curves, letting me respond to him, our tall, lanky bodies wrapping into each other, the rain on the windows, the tang of tobacco, his powerful, muscular arms. I close my eyes tight, brace myself as he enters me. My sharp inhale of breath betrays me.

  “Do you want me to stop?” he whispers.

  “No.”

  “We can stop,” he says.

  “It hurt a bit, that’s all.”

  Peter goes completely still. “Are you a virgin, Elle?”

  I wish I could tell him the truth, but instead I say, “Yes.”

  And so we begin on a lie.

  1989. December, New York.

  The 86th Street subway station is a bleak and dirty place, filled with gum-rubs and lifeless bits of paper on the tracks. The station empties out onto the four corners of a wide, ugly street. Anna and I exit the northwest corner into a blast of icy wind that whips up under the bottom of my down jacket. I’ve forgotten how cold New York gets. Outside on the street, the chestnut man is huddled by the warmth of his open stove, roasting fat, gaping nuts on a brazier. The night air smells sweet and delicious.

  We turn the corner onto Lexington Avenue, picking our way around black-speckled snowdrifts in our high-heeled boots. At six p.m. the light is gone, replaced by the sheer acid halos of streetlamps and a swampy darkness.

  “So, she was a total douche,” Anna says.

  We’ve just had our annual Christmas Eve tea with Dad at his Greenwich Village apartment, where we were introduced to his new girlfriend. Mary Kettering is a redhead from Mount Holyoke with thin lips and a pencil-sharpened nose. When she smiled at us, her mouth became an angry line, revealing everything she was in an instant.

  I’m carrying a shopping bag full of our presents. They are wrapped, but I know from the dead weight that it is books again. Our father pretends they are specially chosen for us, but we know he gets them for free from the giveaway table at his publishing house. Every year he gives us meaningless books with meaningful inscriptions written in blue fountain-pen ink. He has graceful, memorable handwriting and a way with words, if nothing else.

  “She couldn’t stand us, either,” I say.

  “Understatement of the year,” Anna says. “Could she have hated us any more? And when she started talking about the Hamptons?” Anna sticks her finger down her throat and gags. “And Southampton, not even Water Mill. How can he kiss her? Ugh. She’s like this horrible little bird skeleton.”

  “You really are a cow.” I laugh. I have missed my sister more than words since I’ve been in London. “She might have been nicer to us if you hadn’t rolled your eyes every time she opened her mouth.”

  To his credit, my father stuttered past the awkwardness, seeming genuinely happy and proud to have brought us all together. After tea, he poured two inches of bourbon into his teacup and played “Rock the Casbah” on his new turntable, dancing in embarrassing, awkward little jerks. He was barefoot, in a pair of old Levi cords, and the tops of his feet were hairy. Thick tufts grew up from each toe. It was mesmerizing. Mary beat the rhythm out with her Belgian loafer.

  “She’s just another Dad horror story in a long line of Dad horror stories,” Anna says.

  “Maybe she’s nicer than we think.” My foot slips on a patch of black ice and I go sprawling.

  “I think that’s God’s way of telling you no.” Anna laughs.

  The shopping bag has ripped open, spilling our gifts onto the slushy sidewalk.

  I get on my hands and knees and crawl around collecting the presents. “Help me with these.”

  Anna is already fifteen yards ahead. “Leave them. We’re going to freeze to death. We don’t want his stupid books anyway,” she says, and keeps walking.

  “Seriously?” I call after her. “Fine. I’ll tell Dad you didn’t want his presents.”

  “Be my guest,” she says over her shoulder. “He can give them to Mary instead. Ooh la la, what joy she’ll feel. What laughter. A hardcover copy of Bartlett’s fucking Quotations.”

  A woman walking a greyhound clothed in a houndstooth sweater-cape and booties stops, watches as I crawl around picking up the parcels. Next to me, her dog balances on his shivering hind legs and takes a shit in the snow.

  I catch up to Anna as she’s entering the lobby of our building. “Nice,” I say. “Thanks for the help.”

  The bitter wind follows us in through the swinging double doors, and the new doorman, Mario, rushes to close them shut. A fake fir tree in the lobby twinkles with colored lights. On the marble mantle-piece beside it, a menorah with fat, flickering orange bulbs is plugged in.

  “Ladies,” Mario says, ushering us toward the elevator. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Happy Hanukkah,” Anna corrects him.

  Mario looks confused.

  “We’re Jewish,” Anna says.

  We get onto the elevator.

  “Jewish? What was that?”

  “We could be. He doesn’t know.”

  “Why are you being such a total asshole?” I say.

  “Because he makes me sick.”

  “Mario?”

  Anna gives me her best “how can you be such a fucking idiot” look. “Dad.”

  We stamp the snow off our boots, leave them outside on the mat to drip. The front door to the apartment is, as always, unlocked. The lights are out. Mum is sitting in a chair in the middle of the hallway, backlit by a living room lamp, the tabby cat curled in her lap.

  “You look like Anthony Perkins,” Anna says, taking off her coat. “We brought you some ginger cookies.”

  “Please don’t take another step into the apartment,” Mum says.

  “Do you think she’s being held hostage?” Anna asks me in a stage whisper. “Mum,” she says in her normal voice, “you’re acting weird.” She hangs her coat up in the closet and tries to push past, but my mother blocks her.

  “Your father called me after you left. It seems his new girlfriend Mary left a large bag of marijuana in a coffee canister and it disappeared after your visit.”

  “Mary smokes pot?” Anna says. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I wish I were kidding. I really do,” Mum says. “I don’t want to do this, but your father made me promise. Please get undressed, both of you, and empty your bags.”

  “You’re out of your mind.” Anna laughs. “What am I, five?”

  Mum sighs. “I know. It’s ridiculous. But he gave his word to Mary, and he asked that I respect her request.”
r />   “I don’t even smoke pot,” I say.

  “Tell her to take her nickel bag and shove it up her vagina,” Anna says.

  “Anna.”

  “You haven’t met her, Mum. She’s repugnant. She has sharp little pterodactyl teeth.”

  “I have no doubt.” My mother dumps the cat out of her lap and stands up. “In any event, I promised your father I would insist you let me search you, and now I have insisted. I didn’t promise him I would do it. I’m going to make myself an eggnog and climb into bed.”

  “Wait,” I say. “He really asked you to strip-search us? On Christmas Eve? You know what? Fuck it. Fine.” I take my clothes off, step out of my underwear, and throw them at her.

  She hands them back to me with a beleaguered sigh. “I’m too old for this.”

  “You’re too old? I’m twenty-three, for fuck’s sake. Tell Dad I’m never speaking to him again.”

  “You need to wax,” Anna says, and heads down the hallway.

  I call Peter from my bedroom. It’s almost midnight in London, but I know he’ll be awake, trying to finish his piece before deadline.

  “My mother just tried to strip-search me. Merry fucking Christmas.”

  “Sorry?” Peter says.

  “Dad’s new girlfriend accused us of stealing her stash.”

  Peter laughs. “Did she find anything?”

  “Fuck you, Pete. It’s not funny.”

  “It’s spectacularly funny. Though if that’s how you do things in your family, I may have to rethink coming over for New Year’s.”

  “Don’t bother coming,” I say. “I’m getting on the next flight back to London. I’m done with these people.”

  “That’s an awful idea. You’ll have to eat my mother’s cold salmon with dill mayonnaise that tastes like vomit. And attend midnight mass. And sleep in an icy room with stone walls and medieval windows. Alone. Because my mother does not approve.”

  “I thought your mother liked me now.”

  Peter’s parents are very posh. His father is an MP. When they aren’t at their country home in Somerset, they live in a large house in Chelsea overlooking the Thames. They hunt and have a Pimm’s Cup with lunch. They take brisk, tweedy walks across the moors. His mother is a classic battle-axe in pearls. After my fifth date with Peter, she insisted he bring me over to be inspected. We drank sherry in a large sitting room with polished hardwood floors—mahogany inlaid with fruitwood, she explained. A tasteful abstract painting hung over the marble fireplace. She’d recently taken an interest in “the Moderns.” I perched on a sage-green velvet sofa and thought about Becky Sharp as I crossed and uncrossed my legs. Peter’s mother could barely conceal her disdain when I confessed that I had never been on a horse. I redeemed myself somewhat when she learned I was getting a postgraduate degree in French literature at Queen Mary and planned to teach. “Though, of course, you would do much better to read German. Far more depth, less of that vulgar excess,” she said before refilling only her own glass.

  “She does like you,” Peter says now. “Very much, for an American. That said, she has made it abundantly clear to me, abundantly,” he says with emphasis, “that she believes it inappropriate for me to be with a young woman I picked up on a street corner. You could be anyone.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “Look, stay calm. I’ll be there in four days. We’ll work all this out. Incidentally . . .”—Peter laughs—“I’m very much looking forward to getting high with your father.”

  “You aren’t going to meet my father,” I say. “Because I am never speaking to him or seeing him again.”

  “I thought that was the entire point of this visit,” Peter says, “so I could ask him for your hand in marriage.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Stop turning everything into a joke. I’ll meet you outside baggage claim.” I hang up the phone, lie back on my bed, and stare at the ceiling. There are cracks in the plaster. Bits of peeling paint. Garlic and onions are cooking in an upstairs apartment. The interior courtyard smells thick with it. My single bed—the same bed I have slept in since I was five—is too short for me. On the bookshelf above my desk, next to the wooden turtle my father carved for me when I was little, is an entire set of useless Encyclopaedia Britannicas that my mother rescued from a Dumpster when I was ten, thrown away because it was out-of-date. “Knowledge is knowledge,” my mother said. I get up and pull volume 4, Botha to Carthage, off the shelf. Hidden deep inside it is a single sheet of paper, folded into a tiny square, entirely covered in words. One sentence, written over and over. Part punishment, part incantation: I should have saved him. I refold it, put the encyclopedia back on the shelf. Outside, the wind blows up gusts of dry snow from the cement ground. I head down the hall to find Anna. The door to her bedroom is partly closed. She’s at her desk, her back to me, rolling a joint.

  22

  1989. December, New York.

  Peter’s flight arrives on time, but I’m hideously late. The Train to the Plane goes out of service at Rockaway, and we all have to wait outside on the platform for the next one to arrive. Sleet is turning to heavy snow and I can feel my eyelashes beginning to ice over. This is why I hate picking people up at the airport. It’s a gesture that almost always backfires. Peter will be pissed off and sulky that I’m not there, jumping up and down, when he comes out of the international tunnel after an eight-hour flight. And even though I’m trekking all the way out to fucking JFK and getting pierced in the face by thousands of freezing sleet needles, I now feel guilty and resentful. I should have told him to take a cab.

  By the time I reach the International Arrivals gate I’m sweaty, breathless, and ready for a fight. I see him before he sees me, sitting on top of his duffel bag, back against the grimy airport wall, reading a book. He smiles when he spots me.

  “Right on time,” he says, and gets up to give me a massive kiss. “God, I’ve missed you, beautiful.”

  * * *

  —

  I’ve prepared Peter for our dark apartment, my depressed mother’s obsession with conserving electricity, the slow, heavy way she moves—as if she’s sagging under the weight of her own boards.

  “Must have been a cheery Christmas all-round,” he says.

  But when we get there, every light in the apartment is on. A Duraflame log makes its noiseless crackle in the fireplace. A scratchy LP plays bossa nova.

  “Mum? We’re back,” I call out.

  “In here,” she singsongs from the kitchen. “Leave your boots outside if they’re wet.”

  I shake my head, puzzled. “Maybe she stole Mary’s pot.”

  Peter gives me a wry look as we head into the kitchen.

  My mother is standing at the icebox. Her hair is up in a bun. She’s wearing lipstick and a red silk blouse.

  “Peter.” She gives him a kiss on both cheeks. “You made it. How was your flight?”

  “Fine. Bit bumpy, but nothing.”

  “It’s been blizzarding on and off all day. We were worried they might divert you.”

  “Where’s Anna?” I ask. “She said she was going to be here.”

  “Some friend of hers from law school called. She went rushing out.”

  “Sorry,” I say to Peter. “I really wanted her to be here when you arrived.”

  Mum pulls a silver shaker and three martini glasses out of the freezer. “Olive or twist?”

  “Twist, thanks,” Peter says.

  “A man after my own heart.” She pours him a drink.

  There’s cheese, pâté, and a small bowl of cornichons on the kitchen table. She has brought out the special rosewood cheese board with the irritating little curvy knife that she and my father were given, a million years ago, as a wedding present.

  She raises her glass. “Here’s to a new year. It’s so good to finally put a face with a name. You never told me he was so handsome, Elle.” She is
practically batting her eyes. “Chin-chin.”

  I feel like I’ve stepped into one of those black-and-white society movies where everyone lives in an apartment with fifteen-foot ceilings and wears fur stoles to lunch. Any second now, Cyd Charisse will stick a black-stockinged leg out from behind a door, while a maid in uniform serves canapés and a little white dog scampers about.

  They clink glasses. I raise my glass to toast, but they are already drinking. My mother takes Peter’s arm. “Let’s go sit in the living room. I’ve made a fire. Elle, grab the hors d’oeuvres. I got a piece of Stilton at Zabar’s. I figured that was a safe bet.”

  Peter follows her out, leaving me standing there with my glass in my hand.

  “Oh, and your father called. Twice,” she says over her shoulder. “You’re going to have to call him back sometime. It’s so nice to have a man in the house, Peter,” I hear her saying as they disappear into the other room.

  I know all her efforts—Peter’s warm welcome—are meant for me. And the last thing I want is Peter’s first instinct to be “Escape from Horror Castle.” But listening to my mother howling with laughter at something Peter has just said, all I want to do is slap her.

  * * *

  —

  “I like her,” Peter says later as he drags his duffel down the hallway to my room. “She’s not at all how you described her.”

  “A narcissistic bitch?”

  “What you said was that she’s been very sad. And she likes to conserve energy. You never mentioned what an attractive woman she is.”

  “Stilton? Because you’re English? We’ve been living on saltines and peanut butter and soup out of a can since Christmas. Believe me, this is not normal life.”

  “So, just my British charm?”

  “No. She’s a male chauvinist pig. Also, she asked me to take my underpants off in front of her on Christmas Eve. And gave me ugly gloves and a bottle opener for Christmas. So, it might be Yuletide guilt.”

  Peter stops to scan the bookshelves that line the hall. Pulls out an old grade-school textbook of mine. “Caribou and the Alaskan Tundra. Perfect bedtime reading.” He opens it and riffles through. “Oh good. You’ve underlined the important bits. That’ll save me time.”