by Sarah Gerard
Seven
I’m hungover at the hypnotist’s the next morning. The news is on in her waiting room. I view this as an oversight on her part—she should have known I would find it distressing. I watch and drink freezing water from the cooler. Flint is still toxic. Ebola is spreading to neighboring countries. A frustrated virgin in California killed six people before shooting himself. Children seeking asylum from one dictatorship are falling into the hands of another. Everything that enters our bodies is poisonous.
In her office I beg the hypnotist to help me. I tell her that I harbor a lot of anger. I often feel overstimulated and have the urge to flee, and she tells me that my fight-or-flight response is disregulated. “Let’s try some grounding exercises,” she says. I identify all the red items in my vicinity—a pillow, a candle—then touch and verbally identify objects—a rock garden, a small fountain. This helps a little. She tips me back on the recliner and asks me to close my eyes and stand inside an early memory of fear.
“How old are you?” she asks.
“Seven.”
“Imagine the scene in detail.”
I’m standing at the top of my street at dawn. I’m wearing a gum-colored backpack stuffed with a shirt, a pair of shorts, and seventeen dollars of allowance savings. I’m waiting for Odessa, who lives on the next street, because we’re going to run away together. It was her idea, and I agreed because I saw that she needed me and there was no saying no to her, to her desperation.
Neither of us can tell time, or maybe she forgets about me, or gets caught sneaking out, or changes her mind. I wait as the day grows hot. No one comes outside to check on me. I have no plan for where I’m going. I haven’t thought beyond this moment.
My father’s car appears beside me. It’s cherry-colored. He pauses at the stop sign, turns left, and drives on. I see his profile through the window, opaque, fixed in a forward position. He disappears around the corner of the first cross-street.
I kneel on the sidewalk and disrupt an anthill to observe it. A fire ant climbs onto my thumb and the burn of its pincers feels distant, but my fury grows hotter the longer I wait for my mother to find me. The ant pierces my skin again and I crush it.
The hypnotist tells me to kneel and place my arm around the shoulders of my inner child. I do. I remind my inner child that the world is not a safe place because of other people, and I turn her to face down the street in the direction of our house, with its familiar curve of sidewalk. I remind her that she doesn’t know how to cook, spell, or ask for help.
For the next week, my inner child observes the ant bite turn carmine and harden with pus. She finds that she enjoys the sting of touching it lightly from time to time. She breaks it open with a needle and watches the fluid, yellow and bloody, flow over her wrist. She peels the scab each day until it’s pink. Over time it turns into a bright, puckered scar.
THE NIGHT BEFORE I’m to leave for New York, Seth breaks his punishment of silence and taps on my window. It’s a gentle tapping, unsure if it wants to be heard, and when I open the side door, he’s standing there with his messenger bag slung across his body, letting it ride high like some kind of emo hipster. I’m met with a memory of seeing him at a Saves the Day concert in high school. He was crying and singing along with the lyrics, even then equating pain with love.
“I know I’ve been holding you responsible for things that are more often than not my own projections,” he says.
“Thanks for saying that.”
“May I come inside?”
He stands in the center of my living room, empty other than twenty or so boxes of books since I hauled most of my furniture to the alley. “I’d still like to come to New York,” he says. I note that he doesn’t say he wants to come with me. “You understand that it’s hard for me to trust people. My parents divorced and my father died soon after. It’s affected me in ways even I don’t fully comprehend.”
“Consider therapy.”
“I have.”
The anger I feel is minor compared to the terror that engulfs me when I realize that Seth anchors me in the world. He’s like a cell phone or my keys. His life provides a groove along which mine can travel. In New York, I could get lost, be kidnapped, die and be found in a river, and there would be no one around to claim my body—it happens all the time. There are germs as big as rats, men pressing against you in the turnstile, milky brown lakes of oily rain. Seth sees the anguish in my eyes and forces me to bribe him for protection, knowing I find it degrading to admit to having needs. He drags his feet to remind me—or himself—that he has the option to go alone. He doesn’t need me; might prefer not to have me. The space between us reveals my desire for him, as I am always the one trying to bridge it.
He kneels to say hello to Butters. He lays his hands on her very biblically. “Nina,” he says, “she looks weak.”
I’ve failed to notice how Butters’s appearance has changed in the last days. I’ve been too distracted with the drama and disarray of moving. A month ago, Butters was eating three tuna Fancy Feasts a day, licking the sides of the cans. Now she smells like my nana’s medicine cabinet. I haven’t fed her tonight because she still hasn’t touched her food from this morning.
Taking a cat to the doctor wasn’t a practice while I was growing up, either with Skittles, our indoor cat, or Nugget, our outdoor cat. Until she wasn’t, Skittles was healthy; we knew just by looking at her; she was a cat, a simple creature. To complicate her by suggesting that she might need a checkup was ludicrous. “Don’t be hysterical,” my father would say. This was before every cutlet had a name and an origin story. I never learned how one even goes about taking a cat to the doctor. How much would they charge me? What should I tell them about the cat’s condition; what do I know? What have I honestly observed? Her bowel movements? Her water intake? Her affect? Were cats not solely for pleasure?
I remember standing in the street with my parents as a child, laughing at the humorous misspelling of a note in bubbly, feminine handwriting, taped to our mailbox: FEED YOU CAT. There was a mild cringe in the background, which I now recognize as guilt. Of course we fed Nugget. Did we leave her food on the porch to get rained on? Sure. Were there old pellets and bugs in it? Yes. Was she ever allowed inside the house? No, but my parents assured me she didn’t want to be in the house.
We don’t know what happened to Nugget. We moved and set her outside in our new neighborhood, and never saw her again. My parents weren’t concerned. We never put up signs with her picture on them. “She probably tried to go home,” said my father. But our old home was miles away, and I knew she wouldn’t find it. She would never find her way back from it, even if she did. She would have to cross back over the freeway, if she made it across the first time.
“I think we should take her to your father’s house,” Seth says. He holds Butters like the Pietà. “I’ll drive us there.”
My father makes her a bed with towels on the floor of the bathroom. For some reason, this makes sense to all of us. It also seems natural to assume that, given our timeline, given our inability to care for Butters in that moment, given our move, financially and emotionally, my father will take over her care.
“She’s very ill,” Seth says, stroking her on the floor of my father’s bathroom. She sits on all fours with her tummy hovering above the tile. She’s wasted away in the course of a day, like something vampiric has taken possession, sucking the life from her.
Seth asks me if I would like to say goodbye to her. I say no. I sit with her for a moment on the tile, but her scent and her suffering are too potent. Her eyes plead for something I can’t give her, have failed to give her. I stand to leave the bathroom, with Seth’s eyes following me, judging.
THE NEXT MORNING, we wake together in my father’s condo. Butters is still alive. It’s implicit that my father will take her to the doctor. When Seth and I arrive at his apartment with the moving van, he has packed nothing: not his art supplies, his hundreds of records, his dozens of ironic thrift store shirts, his chaise
longue, or the archives. A few times, in moments of panic, in weeks past, I’ve alluded to the immanency of our move, have offered to help him with packing, but he is avoidant, ashamed to be stalling under deadline. The word “stress” passes through his lips twice a day like he’s chewing on it: “I’m so shtreshed,” he says, touching his forehead, where the stress is located, in his brain.
Now he’s crouched over a box of old photographs. I come up behind and see him admiring one from his fifth birthday. He appears to be staring into an area of damage in the collodion. “We need to go,” I say. “I’m throwing this trash bag away.” I slam the door to the outside stairs.
On the street, my mother is leaning against our moving van. I didn’t invite her, haven’t talked to her in three years. My father must have told her where to find me. She’s wearing a T-shirt with the neck cut out, a hot-pink bathing suit, and a pair of cargo shorts. Her skin is the color of bronzer. Her hair is cut short.
The last time we spoke, I told her, “I think I’m in love.” It was just after I’d met Seth. I was sitting on the stoop of my apartment, away from Mission. The orchid tree across the street was blooming, and lavender and fuchsia littered the lawn. “Of course you are,” she said. “Falling in love is your favorite thing to do.” She said I was codependent and couldn’t be alone. That she wouldn’t come to see me as long as Seth and I were together. She couldn’t pretend to approve, and I needed to be focusing on sobriety and school, not other people. It was then that I told her I wouldn’t be going back. I said it to be spiteful, but I wondered whether I meant it. I briefly considered running away with Mission to hop freight trains.
“I know you don’t want me here,” she says. “I just wondered if I could talk to you for one minute.”
An unkind person would say no. I walk with her to her graphite SUV. It’s already cool inside when we climb in. She blasts the air-conditioning, and I angle it away from my face.
“I need to tell you something about your uncle Bruce,” she says. I expect her to tell me he’s dead, which wouldn’t be bad. He’s a raging alcoholic after working in the sex crimes unit for thirty years. “He was inappropriate with me when we were children. It went on through grade school,” she says. “I’ve been living with a lot of resentment and pain. Shame. My actions toward you and everyone have been terrible. The last time we talked, I had a revelation afterward, and looked back at the whole history of hurting you. I can’t believe what I said to you. It’s not right, Nina. I’m not right. I’m sorry.”
I look at her and can tell she’s not lying, as she never apologizes. Uncle Bruce was never seen at Christmas. I ask her if Jude and my father know about it, and she says yes. My uncle Jude saw it happen. He couldn’t stop it. He was a child. My pop-pop and nana knew, too, but chose to ignore it. Children experiment, said my nana. “She told me not to disgrace my brother.”
Seth comes up to the window. He’s carrying boxes stacked in front of his face. I tell my mother I need to help him. I say we’ll talk later. I open the car door onto the realization that my mother needs me to hold space for her so that she can forgive herself, that this task has fallen to me. “I love you,” she says, and I say I love her, too. She’s suffering; I’m not a sociopath. I’m in pain. We all are.
Eight
In New York our mattress sits atop another, atop a box spring. The basement we were told we could use for storage is padlocked, and our furniture and other worldly belongings are Tetris-ed into our below-street-level, furnished, East Williamsburg Airbnb studio sublet. We’re unable to open boxes, so although our belongings are close around us, they are inaccessible. The unit is a single room with a bathroom divided off from the kitchen by a plastic hospital-blue curtain. There are two small windows above eye level. We’re lit from above by a bare bulb suspended on a cord hanging from the low ceiling. When Seth shits, I smell it. When we argue, the neighbors hear us. I fall asleep next to him while he watches Antichrist on his laptop in our bed. I wake to Charlotte Gainsbourg circumcising herself with hedge shears. I ask him to turn it off. There is nowhere for me to go when he refuses.
He’s desultory, grumpy, and blameful for what he perceives as my failure to house us properly. For weeks prior to the move, I sent him listings. “I did not spend any time in front of my computer today,” he’d say when I asked what he thought of them.
I find myself missing Brian. As if he felt me crossing the line into Georgia, he texted me a line from “Pale Blue Eyes.” I was touched he remembered which song was playing when he answered the door my first time at his house. I responded with the next line.
Since then, I’ve felt inspired to send him dispatches on the Hare Krishnas in Union Square, the bleeding man on the J train, one-eyed bodega cats, borderline-contaminated street meat, Hasidic men in vans, topless book clubs in Central Park, the man in Atlantic Terminal playing “Ave Maria” on repeat on a beat-up, child-sized violin. I want to bring Brian close to me, or bring me close to him, but more than that, I’ve found, seeing New York as a collection of details to notice and send to Brian brings me into closer contact with my city of residence. Brian is an outlet, recipient, and depository of my observations as a native returning from exile. He is my audience, and I want to entertain, educate, enlighten, intrigue, and arouse him.
SETH IS SLEEPING when I get home. He was also sleeping when I left five hours ago. I study his face for signs of consciousness. I set my laptop at his feet with the camera facing away from him, at chest level on the double-high mattress. I stand on a chair and mute the speakers, and the Photo Booth timer counts to three. The screen flashes and produces a thumbnail of my ass. The camera counts again and snaps a thumbnail of my tits. I wet my mouth and lean forward. It counts again, and I slide two fingers inside myself. I send the images to Brian. I delete them from the roll. Seth sleeps.
When he wakes an hour later, we walk to Trophy Bar, beneath the M train. We’re here to celebrate that I’ve been offered a job as the personal assistant to the New York Times bestselling author of what is popularly known as the Jewish DaVinci Code. Part of my compensation for assisting him will be twenty-four-hour access to his office in Midtown, which makes it feel as if I have my own studio.
We bring our happy hour IPAs to the outdoor patio with no breeze. “What did you do today?” I ask Seth. I’m hoping he’ll tell me he looked for a job, since we’re also looking for a real apartment.
“I went for a walk with Paolo,” he says. “He asked me if I would help him paint a mural he’s been hired to complete.”
“What’s he painting?”
“The client has asked for something tropical that may include animals.”
“Can I see it?”
“That may be hard. It’s in a private home.”
“Whose?”
“A couple who is having their first child.”
My phone vibrates in my purse. I reach inside and tilt it in my hand to read the message on the lock screen privately. Next time send a video.
You first, I say. I turn it facedown. It vibrates again.
“When are you starting?”
“We’ll meet in the space this weekend to measure and do sketches.”
“How much are they paying you?”
“They’re not paying me. They’re paying Paolo.”
“How much are they paying Paolo?”
“I haven’t asked him.”
It vibrates again. I glance at the screen. You have to wait for it.
“How much is Paolo paying you?”
“Paolo pays me in friendship. He is a good friend to have here.”
“I see.”
“This is the gift economy of art, Nina.”
THE THRILLER WRITER subleases a corner office on the tenth floor of a skyscraper near Grand Central. My cubicle is visible through his glass wall. I feel him watching me as I carry out his various assignments. I offload photos from his family vacation, upload them to Google Play, and share them with his elderly father in Boca Raton. I book his travel
arrangements to Jewish Community Centers. I post factoids related to the content of his book on his Facebook author page. He pays me twenty-five dollars an hour, but only for those hours when I’m actively working for him at my desk. He doesn’t pay me for the hours during which I’m not working, even if I’m sitting at my desk. I have to sit at my desk all day, whether or not I’m working for him. When I’m not working for him, it’s understood that I do my own writing. I keep a time sheet, which I submit at the end of each week for us to go over together. He asks me to explain my logged hours, then cuts me a personal check. He gives me his leftover kosher sandwiches out of pity. I accept them because I was taught that it’s rude to turn down food.
I rack up billable hours trying to stomach his bestseller. Though it was published with a major press, it reads as if it’s never come within ten yards of an editor. It’s riddled with inconsistencies, plot holes, bad grammar. It’s also five hundred pages long. He’s asked me to comb through it and make suggestions for linking it to the next book in the series, which he hasn’t yet begun. When he sees me reading at my desk, he comes out of his office. “What are you doing?” he asks. He says that reading is recreational, not billable work, and that I should do it outside the office. The thriller writer believes my investment in his writing is equal to my investment in my own, that I should be happy to read his novel on my own time, that I should not consider reading this garbage labor. He adds that no one wears bare legs in Midtown; that I’m to wear stockings to work from now on.
His office is housed in his friend’s insurance company. I don’t know anyone’s name, and no one seems to understand why I’m here. I watch them all leave at six o’clock while I stay to work on the novel I abandoned around the time I started dating Seth. I’m rewriting the first two chapters. My unnamed protagonist has just met the person she’ll eventually have sex with at a college party in front of everyone. I’m trying to articulate what’s so attractive about him, or at least what would attract my protagonist to him. He seems brooding from a distance but up close is humble, with a darkness that calls to hers. The question is: What is the nature of my protagonist’s darkness?
