The Paper Palace

by Miranda Cowley Heller

  “That’s sounds a bit dramatic, even for you,” Jonas says.

  I laugh. “Yeah, a bit. But it’s true.”

  “Then come now,” he says quietly.

  * * *

  —

  Peter looks at his watch, scans the lobby. I duck down behind a large man in a purple tuxedo. If I can slip out the side door before Peter sees me, I can call him from the street—tell him I’m feeling too sick to come. I can go downtown to see Jonas and be back at the apartment before Peter gets home. The big man turns, stares down at me as if he is looking at a small, blinking mouse. His face is painted in clown makeup.

  “Good evening,” he says. His voice is high-pitched, like a little girl’s.

  I smile up at him, trying to act as if squatting in a crowd is perfectly normal. He cocks his head, considers me, lipstick-red clown mouth pursed, before moving on. I hear my name being called. Through the window Clown Man has left in his purple wake, Peter has spotted me.

  “Oh good,” Peter’s mother air-kisses me on both cheeks. “We were beginning to worry.”

  “I dropped my keys,” I say to Peter.

  Peter’s elegant father stands next to him, thick silver hair brushed back, Savile Row suit. He looks older than the last time I saw them. Tired around the eyes.

  “You must be jet-lagged.” I give him an awkward hug. Even after all these years, Peter’s parents still intimidate me in their properness, their adherence to a mysterious Upper-Class Brit code of manners. As much as I have tried to learn its rules, whenever I’m with them I have the feeling I am making a faux pas. And worse, I don’t know what the faux pas is.

  “I had a bit of a nap at the hotel,” Peter’s father says.

  “We don’t believe in jet lag,” his mother says.

  “I thought I was late. I ran all the way from the subway. Almost killed me.” Peter gives me a big wet smooch. I can feel his mother’s eyebrows raising. Public displays of affection are definitely frowned upon. Almost worse than visible panty line.

  “It’s the cigarettes,” she says. “Eleanor, you really must make him stop.”

  “I’ve been here,” I say. “I went to the ladies’ room.” I pause, trying to think of some excuse, anything that will get me out of here. Jonas is waiting. If I stand him up, he will not forgive me again. Peter takes my hand.

  “Shall we go up?” His father pushes the elevator button. “We booked at Le Cirque.”

  The elevator begins to rumble down. I listen to its approach, knowing it’s now or never. “I’ll meet you up there,” I blurt as the doors open. “I need to use the bathroom.”

  Peter looks at me, confused. “I thought you just came from the bathroom.”

  “I’m feeling a bit ill,” I say. “Tummy.”

  “You do look flushed.” He reaches out to feel my forehead, holding the elevator doors open with his free hand.

  “If you aren’t feeling well, Eleanor, you should go home. No use getting the rest of us sick,” Peter’s mother says.

  “Mother.”

  “She’s probably right,” I say. His mother looks so thrilled by her petty triumph that I almost feel absolved.

  “Then I’ll come with you,” Peter says.

  “No. Stay with your parents. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

  The elevator dings impatiently.

  “Peter,” his mother says. “Other people are waiting.”

  “Go,” I say. “I’ll see you at home.”

  I wait for the elevator doors to clang shut before running out to the street and hailing a cab.

  * * *

  —

  Jonas is outside his building, hands in his pockets, staring up at a scraggly tree boxed into the sidewalk. I almost don’t recognize him. He’s still Jonas, but he’s broad-shouldered now, muscular: a man man. I follow his gaze to a large hawk perched on an upper branch.

  “It’s a redtail,” Jonas says. “Must be hunting rats.”

  “How disgusting.”

  “Still,” he says, “a bird of prey in Greenwich Village.”

  “That could be the title of my stepmother’s memoir.”

  Jonas laughs. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Manage to make me laugh even when I hate you.” He looks at me, gaze direct, no lies behind his water-green eyes. “To be honest, I was hoping you’d gotten really old and fat. All doughy and English. But you look beautiful.” He frowns, runs his fingers through his dark hair. It is long again, wilder. He’s in his work clothes, jeans and T-shirt covered in paint. He smells of turpentine. There’s a smear of ocher on his cheek.

  I reach out to wipe it off, but he stops my hand midair.

  “You have paint,” I say.

  “No touching.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” I put my arms around him, don’t let go. It feels good to be close to him. When I step away, there is wet oil paint on my linen dress.

  “That’s all I meant,” he says.

  “Shit. I liked this dress.”

  Far down the street I see a couple crossing at the light, arm in arm. For a second, I think it’s my father and Mary, and a rotten, crumpling feeling clenches my insides.

  “What?” Jonas asks.

  “I thought I saw my father,” I say. “I don’t speak to him anymore.”

  “What happened?”

  “He put Granny Myrtle in a home. Against her will. She died the next day. She called me. She was so scared and alone. I tried to get there, but I was too late. I’ll never forgive him.”

  Above us, the hawk takes wing, chasing after a smaller bird. I watch it circling in. “I lied to Peter and his parents. Told them I was feeling sick to my stomach.”

  “Sorry,” he says. But I can see in his eyes it makes him happy that I lied to Peter so I could see him.

  “Don’t lie to me,” I say. “It’s pointless.”

  He smiles. The truth of everything between us. “I was thinking we could grab some beers on the corner and walk down to the river.”

  The windows of my father’s apartment are open. Someone—Mary, obviously—has attached tasteful window boxes filled with trailing ivy and white geraniums. Jonas and I walk, arms entwined, through the narrow cobbled streets. Down Perry and across West Street to an old pier littered with desiccated dog shit and crack vials. We find a cleanish spot and sit down. Legs dangling over the edge.

  “I thought it would be romantic, but it’s actually kind of disgusting,” Jonas says.

  “I forgot how much I like you.”

  “Same,” he says. “I kind of hate everyone else.” He hands me a beer. Opens one for himself.

  “I’ve never seen you drink before. Funny,” I say. But it doesn’t feel funny, it feels sad, all the things we have missed.

  “Yes.” He slugs his beer. “So many things.”

  We sit in silence, watching the current. A small pink plastic spoon drifts by. Baskin-Robbins, probably. There’s no awkwardness. No tension. Just familiarity—the bond between us that nothing will ever replace.

  Jonas looks down at his knee, rubs at a paint stain. “I wasn’t expecting your call. I think I thought . . . I waited a long time. And then I stopped.”

  “It was too hard,” I say.

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He drains his beer, reaches for another. “So, are you planning to marry this guy?”

  I look away from him. Behind us, on the West Side Highway, traffic has come to a standstill. In the near distance, I hear the rise and fall of a siren. A taxi driver leans on his horn, a pointless gesture, like pushing the elevator button again when it’s already lit. Another driver honks at him for honking, shouts, “Fuck you, moron,” out of his window. A quarter mile behind them, I watch the circular flashing light of an ambulance trying to wedge its w
ay forward between the grudging cars.

  “Maybe.” I sigh. “Probably.”

  He stares out across the heavy river. “Promise you’ll warn me beforehand.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t surprise me. I hate surprises.”

  “I know. I promise.”

  “Mean it.”

  The sun has set, leaving behind a fiery orange sky. Pylons that once held up the long-gone piers stalk out into the river in rows of two, black against the burning sky.

  “It’s painfully beautiful,” I say.

  “Just so we are clear,” he says, “I will never love anyone the way I love you.”

  26

  1996. August, the Back Woods.

  It’s Anna, not me, who insists we go to the end-of-summer bonfire. I can’t remember the last time I went, and I don’t particularly want to go. But Anna has come to the woods for a solo visit. She rarely comes back east anymore—it is practically impossible for her to get time off from work now that she’s on the partner track—and Jeremy, her Orange County boyfriend whom I cannot bear, thinks the Paper Palace is a decaying slum: the sagging cabin steps, Homasote ceilings stained brown with small circles of mouse piss or the slow drip drip of their afterbirth. No one has ever had the guts to investigate what lies above. And mosquitoes, which, Jeremy insisted, the one and only time they came to the camp together four years ago, do not exist in Manhattan Beach. He has not been back since.

  “We live on the beach, babe,” he said to Anna at breakfast after their second night. “This place is great, but why be here when we can be at home in the condo? Frosty AC, chilling on the deck, a good chardonnay.”

  “That’s the reason we love it here,” I said. “No Chardonnay.” I have tried to understand why my sister is with Jeremy. As far as I can tell, he represents everything we detest. But maybe that’s the point.

  “It’s odd,” my mother said, coming onto the porch with her coffee and a novel, “Manhattan and beach are two of the greatest things on earth. But put them together and all you have is mediocrity.”

  “Mom,” Anna said.

  “It’s such a treat having you both here.” Mum sat down on the horsehair sofa and settled herself in, opened her book to the middle. “Anna,” she said without looking up, “I hope you explained to your young man that we don’t flush for pee.” She took a sip of coffee. “Don’t let me forget to call the plumber about replacing the septic tank. Clearly, tainted groundwater is leaching into the pond.” She pointed out toward the lily pads. “How else do you explain the algae bloom?”

  This summer, by some miracle, Jeremy’s bosses have invited him to attend a marketing conference in Flagstaff the same week he and Anna had already booked to come to the Cape.

  “I can’t believe you managed to resist the dramatic-but-healing landscape and the all-you-can-eat buffets to come to the ‘shithole,’” I say now as we canoe across to the far side of the pond. On bonfire night, it’s impossible to park at the beach—much quicker to canoe and walk. We’ve packed a bag of marshmallows, Cape Cod potato chips, red wine, and a moth-eaten army blanket to sit on when the sand goes cold.

  Anna laughs. “Harsh.”

  “He insulted my favorite place on earth.”

  “You can’t condemn him because he doesn’t ‘get’ the pond. It was my fault. I forgot to tell him the name Paper Palace was ironic.”

  “It’s not just the camp,” I say. “It’s his whole outlook on the world. Like everything should be made of Saltillo-fucking-tile and polished granite countertops.”

  “That’s why I like him. He’s predictable. I know exactly what I’m getting.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “Elle, we all have different shit. Jeremy makes me feel safe. Anyway, not everyone can fall madly in love with a rich, dashing English journalist. Some of us have to settle for a kind-if-boring Californian guy with good pecs. So, don’t be such a judgmental cow.”

  “That’s fair.” I will never like Jeremy. Not because, as Anna says, he’s predictable or, as Mum says, “bourgeois.” But because he makes her be less-than, and it pisses me off.

  We are both quiet for a bit, our paddles cutting the glass-still surface of the pond, the canoe gliding silently into a reflection of pink sky. A heron stands statue-still in the reeds, letting us pass.

  “What time is Peter driving up tomorrow?” Anna breaks the silence.

  “Right after lunch. He wants to beat the rush hour.”

  “If he’s taking the Merritt, ask him to pick up some bagels from H&H.”

  Our canoe hits sand on the far side of the pond. I hop out into the shallows, trying not to soak the cuffs of my jeans.

  Anna winces as she climbs out. “I shouldn’t have ridden my bike into town this morning. That dirt road is one big pothole. I think I bruised my vagina bones.”

  “Gross.” I laugh.

  We drag the canoe up onto the shore, into the thick grasses beyond the rough scrape of wet sand against metal, stash it in a gap between the trees.

  “I haven’t seen any of these people in so long,” Anna says as we walk down the red clay road toward the beach. “It’s going to be weird.”

  “It’s like riding a bike, only more boring,” I say. “And less painful.”

  Anna laughs. “I wish I didn’t feel so fat.” She pulls her hair up into a ponytail. “I’m not in the mood to be judged by these fuckers.”

  Anna has been model-thin for years, but she still thinks she’s a fat kid. “Fat thighs are like a phantom limb,” Anna tells me. “Years after you lose them, you can still feel them rubbing together.”

  “You look amazing, Anna. I, on the other hand, spent the winter holed up in the apartment with Peter eating Milanos. I need to starve myself between now and the wedding.”

  We walk on the road single file, Anna in front, skirting thickets of poison ivy. The back ends of her flip-flops raise little puffs of red dust.

  “You know which ones are underrated?” Anna says. “Brussels.”

  “And Chessmen.”

  “Dad’s favorite.”

  “Have you talked to him recently?” I ask. I haven’t spoken to him since our grandmother’s funeral.

  “He calls me every once in a while,” Anna says. “We have these awkward conversations where all I want to do is get off the phone. The whole thing is ridiculous. You two are the ones who’ve always been close, not me.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “The only reason he calls is because Mary forces him to. She likes to tell her friends what a doting husband and father he is. She’s trying to get them into some country club in Southampton. One of those no-Jews places.”

  “I hate her.”

  “Anyway, I’ve told him he needs to call you. He’s the father, for fuck’s sake.”

  “That’s the last thing I want. Honestly? It’s a relief. I don’t have to wait for him to disappoint me all the time.”

  We stop at the top of the high dune. Down below us, a hundred yards to the right, there’s a crowd of linen. Someone has planted Chinese fish flags on poles in the sand—a brightly colored circle of wind socks. The bonfire has been lit, its flames mostly invisible in the still-light summer evening, heat oiling the sky above it.

  “P.S., I know you’re mad at me because you think I acted like a total pussy for forgiving him. I just don’t care enough about him to care. I’ll freeze him out if you want me to,” Anna says.

  “I did want you to, but thinking about it, I’d rather you be the one getting Belgian loafers for Christmas, stuck in a needlepoint chair in the sitting room drinking eggnog with the evil cunt.”

  “That’s fair.”

  “Merry Christmas!” I laugh. “Here are some book galleys.”

  “‘And a nickel bag from me!’” Anna squeaks in a high voice, imitating Mary.

  We run down t
he steep dune toward the sea, shouting into the wind, ecstatic, faster than our legs can carry us. At the bottom, our momentum is slowed by the deep crunch of flat beach.

  Anna falls forward onto her knees, raises her arms into the sky, victorious. “This, I miss.”

  “This, I miss.” I fall onto my back next to her, making a snow angel in the sand. Anna’s cheeks are flushed pink, hair wind-tangled. “You’re looking absurdly gorgeous.”

  “Don’t let me get drunk and fuck some hot guy in the dunes,” Anna says.

  “I think you’re safe. Everyone here’s a thousand years old.”

  “Still.”

  I push up onto my elbows, look out at the sea—the pooling sun, the whitecap flecks, the crest and swell. Every single time I see the ocean, even if I’ve been there in the morning, it feels like a new miracle—its power, its blueness always just as overwhelming. Like falling in love.

  The wind shifts, carrying the smell of burning driftwood and brine. Anna gets to her feet, brushes sand off her knees. “Right. Let’s go get our linen on.”

  “I refuse to be seen in public with anyone who says, ‘get our linen on,’” I say.

  “It’s repulsive, I agree,” Anna says, cracking herself up.

  I worship my sister.

  The first person to come into focus as we walk up the beach is Jonas’s mother. She’s standing slightly apart, her back to me, but I recognize her grizzled, aggressively undyed hair, the worn-suede Birkenstocks she’s holding in one hand, the line she’s drawing in the sand with one big toe. She must feel the vibration of our steps in the sand, because she turns, like a snake, and smiles. She’s talking to a girl I’ve never seen before: young—maybe twenty—pretty, petite, dark hair frosted blond at the ends, skin tanned a perfectly even brown, wearing shorts and a cropped T-shirt. Her belly button is pierced with a large diamond stud.

  “Cubic zirconia,” Anna says as we approach them. “Do we know her?”