All the Greys on Greene Street

by Laura Tucker

  Lady Day read the yellow comic-book speech bubble running along the top of the poster:

  STAY COOL!

  Hearing it made me laugh out loud.

  Lady Day moved in for a better view while I stayed behind on the sidewalk, looking around.

  The Wake Up Artist had reappeared up the hill, just off Mercer Street. She was watching us. I waved a thank-you, and she swept off her hat, holding it in front of her as she folded into an elaborate Shakespearean bow.

  I looked back at the poster then, the smile still broad on my face. And when I looked back up the hill, the Wake Up Artist was gone.

  BROOKLYN

  The next day, Apollo borrowed Joyce’s car so he could drive me to the airport. But first, we were going to Brooklyn, to see my mom.

  Joyce calls her car the filing cabinet, so I had to clear some of the bills and art magazines onto the floor before getting into the front seat while Apollo put my new suitcase in the trunk.

  My stomach fluttered. It was weird that I was more nervous about seeing my mom than I was about going on an airplane. But after a few blocks, I realized: I wasn’t nervous about seeing her. I was scared that I was going to be mad.

  It’s easy to talk in the car because the driver can’t look at you for long.

  “Is my dad why my mom got depressed?” It was the first time I’d said the word out loud. Depressed. Like the snake in The Jungle Book.

  Apollo shook his head.

  “Not really, no. She has struggled with this for a long time.”

  I knew that was true. Not everybody who gets Vouley Voo’d goes to bed.

  “But everything that happened probably did make it worse—even the good things, like getting the big show.”

  “Is she going to get better?”

  His voice was soft again. “She can, with the right doctor, and some help. I think she will.”

  “You rescued her,” I said, trying it out.

  Apollo shook his head without taking his eyes from the bridge in front of us. “You cannot rescue somebody, little bird. You can help them. But they must rescue themselves.”

  Alex had been right. Apollo had been letting my mom do it herself.

  “Are you going to be together now?”

  He shook his head. “She needs to get better, stronger. Then maybe we’ll see.”

  It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no, either, and I was glad for him, and for my mom. I was happy for me, too. Apollo feels like home to me. He always has.

  We were quiet for a while, crossing the bridge. Then I asked, “Is she working right now?”

  I could imagine art being the kind of thing my mom’s doctors didn’t want her to do. But, as I could have told them, it was when she wasn’t working that you had a problem.

  “Yes, but the work is different now.” Another kind of happy look. “It’s good, I think. You’ll see.”

  We were driving through in an industrial area, the kind of abandoned neighborhood they use for car chases in the movies. The buildings were mostly one story, with metal roll-up grates in front. I read the signs to Apollo as we drove past: “Custom-Crafted Tables and Chairs for the Hospitality Industry,” “Full-Service Machine Shop and Mechanical Contractors,” “Low-Cost Iron Work, Residential and Commercial.” There was a lot of sky because the buildings were so short.

  Apollo pulled up outside a nondescript building on a corner, a little taller than the rest. He rang a bell and the heavy metal door buzzed open for us. The elevator was enormous, big enough for a car, with metal accordion doors you had to open and close yourself, and a lever you pushed down to make it go.

  Apollo let me do the lever, which was the kind of thing I would ordinarily like, except that my stomach felt very bad suddenly and I got worried about lining the elevator up with the fourth floor, which was where we were going, so Apollo helped.

  The hallway was clean: battleship grey and lined with metal doors. Apollo stopped in front of one of them and knocked his big cop knock.

  The door opened. And just like that, I was in my mom’s arms.

  OFF THE GROUND

  I have no idea how long we stood there. My ear was squashed and a piece of my hair was caught in the button of her shirt, but I didn’t ever want her to let me go.

  She was very thin. But she felt strong, too, and she smelled clean. I closed my eyes and let her hold me. I wasn’t mad. Or maybe I was, and it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all.

  I finally opened my eyes, still in my mom’s arms. We were in a loft with windows on two sides like our apartment at home. But in the center of this one, there was a huge sculpture, if sculpture was even the right word. It looked like the cyclone in The Wizard of Oz—a tornado of tiny objects. Dense at the center and sparser at the edges, the sculpture whirled with barely contained energy, as if a nudge would break the whole thing apart, sending each piece spinning off into space.

  “Whoa,” I said, into my mom’s sweet-smelling hair. “Is that yours?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Want to see?”

  Holding hands, we walked over to look. The objects were suspended and tied together with fishing wire so thin I could barely see it. Some of the pieces were held tightly in place. Others dangled free, moving with the currents in the air. I blew gently, just to see it move.

  “You made it so fast.”

  “I had a lot of time to think, in the hospital. When I came out, I knew exactly how I wanted it to look. I had to get off the ground,” she said. “Move into space.”

  I walked around the cyclone. Every angle gave you something different to look at.

  “I’d made a lot of it already, too,” she said, pointing to the PUSH button, and the dangerous little lady’s fan.

  I turned to her, confused. “Wait—how?” I had no idea what had survived the fire, if anything.

  She shook her head, sad. “Apollo found the box and brought them here. Before. He was making a studio here.” She looked at Apollo, and I understood that there was a whole secret language between them now. I thought it might make me feel left out, but it didn’t. “For the two of us.”

  Seeing her art felt like being reunited with an old friend. My brass faucets punched through dark blue velvet. The tea bag was there, too, a needle suspended in midair from the unfinished embroidery, making you worry that it would slip the needle’s eye. There were hundreds of details I hadn’t seen before, also, mostly taken from nature: acorns and leaves and whirligigs and bits of rock wired like precious jewels. My mom said, “There’s lots more to do, but I’m on the right track, I think. We go for a lot of walks. The trash is good here in Brooklyn. So are the parks.”

  I didn’t want to let go of her hand, so I pulled her backward so I could take the whole thing in again.

  “Watch,” she warned softly, and I looked behind me. There was Apollo’s box of colors, the same box I’d nearly tripped over at the studio.

  I thought about the two of them here, making work together. I thought about Apollo’s kettle whistling, reminding them to take a break, and a secret stash of Pecan Sandies somewhere Alex wouldn’t think to look. I thought about mixing colors with Apollo, maybe making a color study with him to replace the one that had hung across from my bed.

  I looked back toward the muscular twist of the sculpture.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  My mom dropped my hand to hug me again then, and I let myself rag-doll in her arms. Then she stood me on my feet, and the mischievous look in her eyes was not unlike the one the Wake Up Artist had given the Head on her poster.

  “Come,” she said, heading toward the door. “We’ve got one more thing to show you.”

  SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO

  We were out in the hallway, still holding hands, and my mom was aiming for the door at the very end.

  It was the longest time I’d ever seen her without a cigaret
te.

  The door at the end of the hallway opened as soon as we knocked. The sound artist, Sari, stood there.

  She hugged my mom, and I could tell by how gently she shook my hand that she knew the whole story. (Either that, or she’s the kind of person who shakes hands like a dead fish. Joyce says it’s important to have a solid handshake, but not a bone-crusher. We spent an entire afternoon working on mine when I was eight.)

  I wasn’t that surprised to see Sari; Apollo always ends up friends with them after they break up. I was glad to see a guy on the couch in his pajamas, though, who looked up and waved before going back to his book. At least Apollo wasn’t Sari’s True Lost Love.

  “We wanted to introduce you to someone,” my mom said, looking behind Sari to the most beautiful cat I’d ever seen, stalking across the bare wooden floor of the loft like a model on a runway. She was a brown tabby, covered in light and dark stripes, with eyes the color of the jade fish necklaces you can buy in Chinatown.

  “Her name is Artemisia.” My mom raised her eyebrows. “Bet you can’t guess who named her.” Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian painter at a time when there weren’t that many women painting; Apollo finds her work nuanced and expressive.

  A beat later, something struck me. “Wait. Are you saying that Apollo named me?”

  My mom laughed. “Let’s say he consulted.”

  I looked back down the hallway, but Apollo was nowhere to be seen. “Then why Olympia?”

  “We hoped you’d be clear-eyed.” She paused. “And unafraid.”

  As if she knew we’d gotten distracted, Artemisia brushed by my mom’s legs, her elegant, striped tail lingering behind to wrap in a question mark around her calf. She had a white chin and elaborate black and white stripes around her eyes that made her look like she was wearing Egyptian makeup.

  Sari sat down cross-legged on the wide wooden floorboards then, patting the spot next to her. I sat, admiring the thick, comfortable socks she wore, and my mom dropped down beside me.

  “She’s playing hard to get,” Sari said, looking at the cat, who was sitting a little ways off, tail curled primly around her neat paws. Without thinking, I held up my fist, and Artemisia came right over to bump my hand with her head as if she was saying hello to another cat. Then she let the whole soft, warm length of her graze my knuckles, her tail curling around me like a lady with a feather in the movies.

  Sari looked surprised. “My friend Lady Day taught me that,” I told her. “A fist is the shape of a cat’s head. It looks scary to us, but it’s friendly to them.”

  “I didn’t know that!” Sari said, impressed. She held up her own fist, and Artemisia came over to say hello to her, too.

  Sari asked me, “Do you know about the blink of love?”

  I shook my head, and so did my mom. I bet Lady Day knew.

  “That’s what I call it, anyway,” Sari said. “Cats indicate trust by making eye contact,” she looked meaningfully at Artemisia, “and then closing their eyes in a long blink.” She closed her thickly lashed eyes for a moment to show us. “Between cats, it means, ‘I trust you enough not to watch you every second.’ But when domesticated cats do it to their people, it’s more like blowing a kiss.”

  I looked at the tabby cat and closed my eyes, feeling like a complete idiot. When I opened them, Artemisia was looking at me like she thought I wasn’t entirely wrong to feel that way. But then, a few seconds later, she closed her eyes in a long blink, too, and a thrill went up the back of my neck.

  “Ha!” my mom said triumphantly, and I saw a flash of her old self.

  I made the fist again, and Sari said, “She likes her head scratched hard.”

  “Like you,” my mom said, using her nails on my back.

  I pushed into my mom’s hand, and Artemisia pushed her head back into mine, eventually flopping over to lie on her side. I looked at her greedily, marveling at every perfectly symmetrical stripe, wishing I could draw her and pet her at the same time.

  The cat’s eyes were closed, and the motor of her purr was so loud it was almost a growl. Without looking up, I said, “Lady Day also told me that purring doesn’t necessarily mean that a cat is happy. It can mean she’s scared, or hurt, or sick, too.”

  Sari’s voice was careful.

  “I didn’t know that. But I can tell she really likes the way you’re scratching her head.” Hearing that, I could have sat in that patch of sunlight forever, especially after Artemisia fell asleep, her head resting on the arch of my hurt foot. The center of her paws moved from dark to light—ombre, I could hear my dad—with pads the exact color of dark chocolate. I committed every whorl to memory so I could draw them later.

  Apollo came into the apartment behind the three of us, still sitting in the sun around the sleeping cat. “It’s almost time to go,” he said gently. “We don’t want you to miss your flight.”

  “She’s so beautiful,” I said, turning around to show him without moving my foot.

  “Yes,” he said, “she is a good-looking beast.” A glimmer of conspiracy passed between him and my mother. Then my mom squeezed my leg and said, “And she’s going to have some good-looking kittens. In about a month, when you’re going to be getting back from France.”

  Sari said, “The babies have to stay with her for a bit after they’re born; I was hoping you’d come and help me with them.”

  I nodded yes at Sari as if it was no big deal, but my brain went kittens kittens kittens kittens kittens kittens kittens kittens kittens kittens kittens kittens kittens kittens kittens.

  My mom reached over to push a strand of my hair behind my ear. For the first time, I noticed that the area under her beautiful eyes looked bruised and tired, but her smile was real. “And once you’ve gotten to know the litter, we thought maybe you could pick the one you like best.”

  I looked up at Apollo, then back to my mom for confirmation. They were both smiling like they were the ones getting the present. Apollo said, “We don’t really know how any of it is going to work, Ollie, but we will find a way for you to have a kitten. I promise.”

  I leaned forward and gave my mom another big hug, awkward because of the way we were sitting. Between us, Artemisia opened one eye and shifted as if we had ruined everything, then went back to sleep on my foot.

  “Something to look forward to,” my mom whispered into my hair. “For when you come home.”

  THE BLINK OF LOVE

  My mom walked me and Apollo down to Joyce’s car. On the way out, I noticed what I’d missed on my way in: a red plastic A.I.R. sign on the door, the letters official, indented and white.

  “I’m glad you’re going to see your dad,” my mom said. “He misses you so much.”

  “You’ve talked to him?”

  “Sure. I miss him, too.” She looked away, down the deserted, industrial street shining in the sun. “Anyway, it’ll be fun for you to see the Head where she belongs. He’s going to spend the summer putting her back onto the altar they stole her from.”

  “I drew her a thousand times,” I said, “but I never got that expression exactly right.”

  “Your dad will help. And it might be useful, to see her in place,” said my mom.

  I scuffed my sneaker into the sidewalk, not sure. “Maybe. At least I’ll find out what she was looking at.”

  My mom’s head tilted to one side. “You don’t know?”

  I shook my head. “No! Do you?”

  “Yes,” she said, turning away to look down the empty street, but not before I saw that she was trying not to cry. “She was looking at her baby.”

  She looked back at me then, and there it was, the Head’s expression on my mom’s face.

  Apollo was already in the car; he looked at his watch, then leaned over to open the passenger side door. I had to go. I hugged my mom one last time, burying my face in the warm, sweet smell of her, then got into the front seat
next to him.

  As Apollo started the engine, my mom raised one open hand in a wave, and I put my own scarred-up open palm against the window. She was smiling and crying at the same time. And as we pulled away from the curb, past her and into the Brooklyn sunshine, I saw my mom close her tear-fringed eyes at me in a long, slow blink.

  AWAY

  The stewardess in charge of me was called Rita. She had a southern accent like Joyce and high heels and a nice face, framed with the kind of round sausage curls I’ve always wanted to pull. She gave me a wing pin from the pilot that I put on my sweatshirt to be polite, but secretly thought I’d save to send to Lady Day.

  Once we’d taken off, Rita showed me how to lower the tray table attached to the seat in front of me. There was a round depression in the pebbly beige surface that made me think of the indentations in the watercolor palette Apollo had brought me.

  The watercolors were packed in my suitcase. Still, I imagined filling the dent with a thick slurry of pigment and water, of dragging a brush across the tray table and then the back of the seat, over the strange round windows and up to the curved ceiling of the plane, until the whole interior was covered in a gorgeous wash of luminous color.

  Then Rita set a little cup of orange juice with a tinfoil cover into the spot, and I shook myself back to reality.

  “You got everything you need, sugar?” she asked.

  I nodded yes and smiled my thanks. “Holler if you think of anything,” Rita said, and I said I would.

  Then I opened up my notebook, picked up my Blackwing, and began to draw.

  NOTE TO THE READER