“You should dry off.”
“Thanks, I will.” She wrinkles her brow and nods as though my statement requires deeper consideration. And when her face goes soft again, I wonder when was the last time someone considered her at all. It makes me back up into the bedroom. She follows, sad-faced again. But as she comes nearer, she starts trying to regroup. “In my new bathroom.” She sets the bag down and I smell garlic, roasted meat, maybe even french fries. She circles the bag then drops down cross-legged beside it. She starts taking things out, moving faster, regaining that earlier energy. She even starts to smile.
“I got this from my restaurant.” She spreads some napkins on the floor and dumps out a pile of shoestrings. “I love free food.”
“You own a restaurant?” I mumble, trying to sound interested—trying not to look too closely at her or what she’s doing.
“I bartend at a restaurant.” She seems to have forgotten how sad and wet she is and snorts at my expense. “You think I own something?”
“Sorry.”
“Oh,” she waves a fry at me but concentrates on pouring two cups of wine. “It’s okay, honey. I don’t even know if I’d want to own one. There’s something to be said about counting your cash and leaving,” she rolls her eyes up at me. “Right?”
“Right.”
“Here’s to living under the radar.” She raises a mug and drinks, then pats the floor beside the other cup. “You have to eat some of this—so sit.” She keeps patting the floor until I do, with my back against the couch. She shrugs, eats the fry, hums something to herself, rolls her eyes back up to me, shaking her head with a widening grin. She stops suddenly.
“What’s that smell?”
“Primer.” She pinches her face as though to question. I jerk my head at the bathroom and raise my pitch to help clarify. “Primer.”
She frowns strangely, stands, and skates to the bathroom, wiping her hands. I stand, too. She enters. “Oh, my god!” she sticks her head out, then moves her whole body to the opening. “Where? How?”
“I stole it.”
She starts to turn in the doorway—looking at my work, looking at me—examining and reexamining as though I’d gutted and refurbished the whole room. “Wow,” she mouths and then comes into the bedroom, toward me, more like a glide than a walk. She stops a few feet away.
“You’re so bad—you’re awesome. I would’ve been so chickenshit to do that. Beth, she’s great, but you know what, fuck her. I’ve dumped so much money into her place—making it better.”
“This is hers?”
“Yeah, I’m a renter. Even if I could afford it, I probably couldn’t get a place—I’m on the lam. My ex, this was his studio, he wasn’t supposed to live here, but he did. Beth hated him, but we got along. I think she inherited the building from her father. Everything he did was illegal—taxes, parking tickets. So when he left, Beth said I could stay. I’ve been here—shit—seven years.” She looks back into the bathroom. “Oh, my god.” She shakes her head slowly. “Thank you.” She reaches out, almost touches my arm. But she does stare at me, which forces me to look down, shuffle, and inch back to the couch. She looks down at my fingers—for the umpteenth time. “I’ve turned you into a criminal.” She turns her voice down. “Your wife won’t like that much.”
“Well,” I stutter, speaking before any thought can intervene.
“Don’t—it’s okay. I didn’t mean anything. You still together?”
“I don’t know.”
“Kids?”
“Three.”
“Pictures?” she brightens.
“No.”
“I’ll bet they’re beautiful.”
I nod.
“It must be hard.”
“You should change.” I hit that note again, but this time it sounds off-key. It makes her neck bend awkwardly to the side. After it fades, she straightens and raises both palms to me.
“I’m sorry.” She thumbs into the bathroom. “I’m going to change.” She glides over to the stacked crates, pulls out some things, balls them up, and glides back, with one last quick look to see if I’ve been watching.
How does a man disappear—for a decade? From others, from self—nomadic, hand to mouth, episodic in achievement. Never went to law school. No real estate license. What happened? You go to sleep young and somewhat stupid and wake up to new noises—the clock—new complaints, things that didn’t hold any sway before. From the bathroom she lets out a semiprivate “Wow,” turns on the tub, but stops it quickly. I can hear the sheets of ply creak under her as she shifts her weight—leaning, then sliding her feet along behind. She inspects the medicine cabinet, opens and closes it with a soft click and a dull thud. She looks in the mirror, scrutinizes her freckles, the beginnings of her age lines. The light is poor. She opens the door one more time and fills the cabinet with beauty products I hadn’t noticed were there.
I feel naked, so I rub my pants to make sure they’re really there. Laura saw me naked, I mouth. And then I reconsider Marco—that stern look he gave me after I chased away his mistress. I hadn’t connected the two—my nakedness and his near scowl. Laura had gotten into her car and dialed her husband on her cell phone while speeding away from my crime. What did she say?—“I saw him naked.” And each reading of the event, from the first onward is different—to her one thing, to him . . . what did he see in his head, some porno-pass by me at his wife. No words, just naked flesh, a blatant, literal gesture. In my case sex has been demystified. Sex as a by-product of love, or anything else—I just always thought the need to explain it folly. That first time I lay next to Claire, she thought I was nervous, shy, or sweet. Perhaps I had been all those things. I was all those things—all the time. I knew that what we were about to do would never bring me closer to her. I just hoped that it wouldn’t push me farther away.
I’ve always thought that those who do mystify it, say that it is transformative in any way other than pregnancy or disease, were just horny, even a little cruel—masking want with imaginary emotions—and those who downplayed it, sad. But with her on the other side of the wall, I wonder if I’m damaged or just no damn good. Even so, damage is never an apt substitute for piety.
The music has almost gone through its complete rotation. I turn the stereo up a little, leave it playing Coltrane. I pick up Eliot, sit down on the bedroom couch, mouth the words, somehow trying to make them jibe with the melancholic sax and droning bass. “I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you / Which shall be the darkness of God . . .” I feel myself drifting off again, but I don’t want to close my eyes. I stand up and I’m compelled to the quiet of the bathroom. What’s she doing in there? “Favorite Things” comes up; Coltrane’s flourishes seem to call for action rather than thought. I’d always assumed that he was giving license to drift, meander, or rant with him. No. Hearing it now, I realize he reveals his shape and size in song—whole, unique, solid. And the multifaceted images reflect not his fragmented self but, rather, mine. Why do things fall apart? Helena in the next room: ringlets and limbs, odd laughs, genuine joy and sorrow. She doesn’t come to me whole. “I said to my soul, be still . . .” It doesn’t seem to listen. It churns out image after image: Gavin’s freckle-puss, Shake’s shakes, Brian’s charred bones, Daddy Bing’s crooning gums, Lila’s makeshift whips that crack when they elongate like a long, crooked mouth—rosy, rosy welts. I shake them off and concentrate on her—imagining sounds, even: the quiet stretch of wet cotton; pants dropped on the floor; the slip of thighs against each other—but I can’t see her, nor can I judge the gap between us. Coltrane exhorts something I should understand—high and trilling.
Then it comes—“snap”—her bra strap slips off her finger onto her shoulder and snaps. It reverberates outward against the tiles, the porcelain, finds its way out and hits the side of my skull. The waves bounce back, and she takes form: her freckled shoulders, the way she can pull them back to make them broaden or roll them softly forward, deepening the wells behind her clavicles w
here scent collects—a citrus spray, the sharp metallic city rain, her breath; small breasts and the small points of her nipples; the soft line of her last ribs and its suggested circle, completed by the joining of her hips and belly. “Snap.” There was darkness on the deep and then she was there—pushing out against the void. The returning waves give her face shape and color. I see her, trembling in the darkness, like a string of clustered stars and the shape of things around her.
The floor creaks my way, and I back up quickly into the center of the bedroom. She comes back in, quietly, steers around me in a wide arc and sits on the edge of her bed. She’s put on navy sweatpants and shirt, which makes her hair look like dark flame. She’s pulled her hands into her sleeves. I’ve never cheated on anyone, not even Sally. Standing here in the center of this room, I can’t believe that love has been the deterrent—perhaps damage has taken moments like these, diffused them into countless, useless metaphors, visions, and earnest words. Touch her. That is good. Really touch her—the word made flesh.
“How long have you been alone?” I ask.
She raises an eyebrow and cocks her head to one side. I point to the windows behind her.
“What?” She seems to ask it of herself.
I lower my arm. “Is it safe?”
She stands quickly. “There’s nothing out there.” She hops forward into a jog and makes for the front. I follow. She stops at the table, leans against it, and pulls her shoulders back.
“Can you leave your number—so I can call you when the kitchen comes?”
Something in her tone makes me respond quickly. I nod, go back to the bedroom, pick up my tool bag, and count to five. I come back out. She’s counting money.
“Do you have an invoice?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, what do I owe you?”
I shrug, “Whatever.”
She shakes her head. “That’s one hell of a negotiating ploy.” She picks up the bills from the table. “Is this enough?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t even know how much it is.”
“It’s fine.”
“Did you leave your number?”
I nod and thumb at the bathroom.
“You left it on the bathroom wall?”
I force out a little smile, which I’m sure looks like a twisted grin. She pinches the fold of bills and holds it out to me, “Cash is okay, I assume?”
Now she looks as she did when I first saw her, untroubled by my looming. And I don’t know why I feel this way—like I already miss her. Her freckles, her now warm cheeks, the cascade of now cooling flame. I take the money, being careful not to touch her hand, and go.
14
There was a stomach virus going around and both boys got it. Edith had come down, taken over the couch and allegedly the care of the boys—so I took them, both with bubbling stomachs, in her car on a bitterly cold February morning to the hospital. It was all the way up at the top of Manhattan, where there seems to be nothing but trestles, trains, and putty-colored stone buildings. The Harlem River bends there like a horseshoe—north from the Hudson, east behind the hospital and then south again, running with the tracks and the expressway.
It may have been the bug, but it also might have been the combination of that bright sun you can get on winter days—the sharp direct rays that seem to have had all the good parts in them frozen, and what remains is magnified through the glass. And the new car smell, the thick artificial heat. Just before we turned into the parking lot, both boys puked, covering the back with their breakfasts.
I didn’t really have a choice: They needed new clothes. Luckily their heavy coats were up front with me. I stripped them to the waist and wrapped them up. I put C on my shoulders, carried X in my arms and went out on Broadway. It’s covered up there—a drawbridge I think—across the narrowest stretch of water. I headed uptown to one of those ninety-nine cent stores, bought long underwear shirts and sweatpants for them and cleaning products for the car. On the way back I stumbled and almost lost C over the edge—down into the brown and white river. I took a step back from the rail and thought about how I’d rescue him: Leave the little one alone on the sidewalk and dive; carry X down with me—sprint to the end of the bridge, climb the fence and scramble down the dirt-weed hill and try to reach him from there. He’d just turned five and wasn’t much of a swimmer. The river was fast that day—silver on top and white toward the edges—rushing to Hell’s Gate.
He shivered up there and made me remember that I hadn’t dropped him. He was still on my shoulders, groggy, sick, and cold, but alive. I skated over the sidewalk, to move quickly, but so as not to jar them too much. When we got back to the parking lot I put them in the front, cleaned and dressed them and scoured the back of the car. X wasn’t quite two yet so I had to smuggle him into the hospital in a duffle bag. He loved the idea, and even though he was still feeling a bit wretched, he giggled when I beeped his nose through the unzipped opening and shushed him.
He trembled in the bag on the way in, trying to suppress his laughter, but we made it in. I unpacked him in the bathroom and he jumped out of the bag as though the adventure had righted him—C, too. Neither boy could stop grinning or shuffle-dancing, bumping into each other, grasping at imaginary things in the air.
Maybe I only tricked myself, that they’d been magically restored to health because it wasn’t such a great idea—bringing two infectious children to visit a convalescing mother and child, but it had been a hard week for everyone. The boys had never spent time away from their mom. And I’d been traveling back and forth from Brooklyn to Washington Heights. There’d been a lot of dragging hours filled with anxiety, even dread. A lot of pain and blood. And when you were finally born you were so small that I could hold you in one hand—dusky, bald, struggling for breath. They took you away immediately. I had to let them. I had to let you go.
I close the notebook. It’s the best I can do. I put it back in my bag. Where is the moon? It should be high up in the eastern sky, way above the courthouse, but it’s nowhere to be found—no stars either, just overstretched clouds, purple-gray and static. They seem, at first, to be translucent, but I don’t know—the glow—perhaps they’re reflective instead, weakly returning the city’s residual light. They look dry, but there must be moisture in them. It’s not raining anymore but the air is thick and damp. Occasional drops randomly fall from above like tepid drips from sweaty cellar pipes. I don’t know why I’ve stopped here—Foley Square. It smells like fish—old fish, dead fish, washed up, or floating, lost under the shadows of the bridges. The scent comes up on the wind from the south and seems to stop and swirl around the square. It’s a strange little place. I’ve only driven or run past it. It’s a narrow diamond—Worth Street to the north; Center and Federal Plaza run along the east and west and join at the southern tip. At the top, next to Worth, is Thomas Paine Park, an empty gesture at a fenced-in green space.
At my feet is a directional star—with thin strips of brass inlaid to accentuate the line—at the center of which is a large circle. The first clauses of the Constitution follow the arc along the inside. And inside that circle are strange engraved scenes of British persecuting Americans, as well as Americans persecuting Americans—early patriots, lynched slaves, burned witches—some vague apology of sorts, I don’t know. This is an African burial ground—both free and enslaved—four hundred or more, under the tarmac, under the massive footings of the official buildings in which are engraved grave maxims: THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IS THE FIRMEST PILLAR OF GOOD GOVERNMENT. It seems almost too sad to even attempt to offer commentary on the absurd conglomeration: Dead blacks honored in swamps claimed by Indian, then Dutch, then English, then Irish, all in the shadow of a soot-stained alabaster Greco-Roman monolith.
One of the points of the star is a path that leads to the center of the square. In fact, there are several paths that lead there—like a miniature of the Place d’Etoile. Perhaps that’s too grand—or not even close. These paths are rose
-colored granite, edged by gray, in the midst of lilacy-gray hexagonal pavers. The colors and patterns create the opposite of what I imagine to be the desired effect—they stop and push you out, make you focus on the garishness and want to leave. If you don’t, if you hang on, you’ll see the giant sculpture in the middle of the square. Two steps up—it begins with a polished black granite pool, rolled at the edges, making it look like an enormous ashtray. It’s half filled with water. The spray and the caged lights are off for some reason. There’s less change than you’d think—or perhaps more when you consider the easy access. But to me, the scale and the still water make it seem unreceptive to wishes.
An elongated, narrow trapezoid, like a heavy footbridge, spans the water from east to west. Atop it is an abstract sculpture. From far away you almost miss it—dwarfed by the official buildings. Up close, it dwarfs you. It’s at least fifty feet tall and resembles, at first, a sword with an elaborate and asymmetric hilt, pointing skyward. If you step back and circle the pool, it looks more like a phallus, then a dead tongue of flame, or perhaps the marker the fire has left in space—black, solid, unlit—pointing up to the strange, double-layered purple sky, up to the faithless lights, defacto vacuums. A symbol, perhaps, of a debt either owed or paid or still disputed, like a lone protester, vigilant outside the courthouse.
I’ve read about it—three hundred tons of black granite—a memorial to the displaced dead. If you came this way, moving slowly, on foot, with time to spare, and followed the curve of the pool around the south side, you’d eventually see the large stone marker, which the heavy path across the pools abuts. There are words carved into it. “Commissioned by the city . . .” Then the words of the sculptor himself—a chiseled disclaimer yanking it from the abstract: “The Chi Wara rests on a horizontal plane which symbolizes the canoes used by the Native Americans, the slave vessels that transported African men, women and children and the passenger ships that brought immigrants to this country. The part of the granite these words are inscribed in represents the land.” Six years and three hundred tons of granite later he still wants to tell me exactly what it is. I give up.
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