by Aimee Liu
Bellevue. That was a new addition. Usually it was just the threat of the street. One more chance, she’d give me. Maybe two. But now it was Bellevue: straitjacket time.
The policemen were staring past Harriet into my apartment. Sandra looked as if she was trying to decide whether I had recently ingested monstrous quantities of prescription pharmaceuticals. Larraine was sizing up the taller policeman’s backside.
I apologized, assured the police that I was alone, in no danger, it wouldn’t happen again. I closed the door and threw a towel across the crack underneath to make them think I’d turned out the lights. Though I sometimes dream the lamps have caught fire and my sleeping eyes open to flames just inches away, it’s a risk worth taking against the alternative: darkness.
But this time I knew I couldn’t return to sleep, no matter what tricks I used. I spent the remaining hours before dawn peering at the six-inch Sony at the foot of my mattress, trying to substitute whirling images of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire for my usual dream. The dream, of course, won. Kept playing over and over like a negative superimposed on those elegant, gleaming dance numbers. A subway chase, photographers exploding flashbulbs.
An unlit tunnel leads to stairs. I climb. And climb. When I emerge atop the statue’s crown, I am up against the sky. Below, the Hudson River runs red. Bodies lie thick in the streets. I mount the howl of sirens, hard as a gale wind, and spiral over the ruined city above vacant penthouse gardens and skyscrapers shorn in half. Fifth Avenue writhes with human heads and limbs, expensive jewelry. Discarded party hats and bleeding babies. A handsome blond man frowns at the sky.
When I was little, the nightmare would abruptly change at this point and, just as the horror began to sink in, a second surge of siren sound would carry me safely home. I’d land on a red and green balcony surrounded by musical bells.
In the version of recent years there is no rescue. I spin my arms like one of those weather-vane ducks to stay aloft and only think I know where I’m going. “Home!” I scream. “Let me go!” But it’s as if a cloud of white silk has eaten lower Manhattan. I cannot see beyond Canal Street, nor can I turn back. I enter the cloud and drop without warning, spin like an insect caught in a whirlpool. Down I fall, down, bracing to hit concrete, but though I feel a pain like razors being sharpened against my skin, though I open my eyes wide enough to take in all Mott Street, I see nothing. The white becomes snow as thick as ink. I plunge faster, faster. Invisible hands claw my eyes and mouth. Smoke chokes my throat but I cannot cough. Strangled voices jeer and whisper. Another minute, they tell me, another second and I will never breathe again.
The lamps have come on over the playground, and the crowd of skaters is growing. The center is given to experts who glide backward and two-step as if they were born on wheels. The shadows are filled with less ambitious couples who flirt and fight, killing time.
Nights like this in Chinatown I used to sit out on our balcony and listen to the washing of mah-jongg tiles from the terrace upstairs mix with the laughter of boys playing craps on the sidewalk directly below. I’d watch the slow procession of traffic, a pageant of shadow and mirrored light. That balcony was like a box seat at the theater with all of Mott Street the stage.
My father, who would drive an hour to save a dime on a carton of Kents, used to say our third-floor walk-up on Mott Street was the biggest bargain in Manhattan. Where else in 1960, he said, could we find a four-bedroom for under two hundred a month? Given our address and my father’s Chinese birthright, you might think that apartment would have been splashed with Oriental touches, at the very least some bean curd, lotus root, or winter melon tucked into the refrigerator—but it was as though a fine dotted line traced the perimeter of my childhood home. To cross it was like stepping from Hong Kong into Geneva.
Outside, whether in the hallway or the street beyond the terrace, the air danced with fragrances of sandalwood, water chestnuts, dried shrimp, and garlic. Doors were hung with good-luck banners and appeals for protection from the gods. The reigning colors were scarlet and gold.
My mother chose to arrange our home in black and white, with an occasional accent of lemon yellow or hot pink to “punch it up.” The apartment coordinated well with her wardrobe, which in the sixties was stylishly eye-popping. The kitchen was done in stainless steel, and though the native language was English, the cuisine was aggressively French. A monstrous air conditioner, which my father purchased at a factory sale in New Rochelle, was installed in the kitchen window and ran year-round to keep the smell of the neighbors’ cooking from contaminating Mum’s. Out on the balcony, where the locals might grow peonies or chrysanthemums, she established a garden of pots containing Alpine wildflowers.
She lived there for nearly twenty years but I never once heard my mother call Chinatown home, and after we moved away she would unfailingly correct the rest of us: “It’s not our home anymore. We’re up towners now.”
Perhaps that’s why I so automatically rejected Tommy Wah’s invitation to return. That and the fact that for years, because of my recurring nightmares, I’ve tried to block out all thought of the old neighborhood. But ever since Tommy’s letter the memories have been creeping back, and I no longer know whether to battle or embrace them.
Now, in a corner of the schoolyard I can only dimly see, a girl has fallen, is crying. A boy stands over her shaking his fist. She twists away.
I suddenly realize I’m sweating, holding my breath. Blood flows where I’ve bitten my lip. The music throbs and jumps to top volume, and the boy yanks the girl to her feet. Their shadowed figures collide, then merge.
I make myself breathe in. And out. They are kissing. I have film to develop. I need to go in and work. But even in the darkroom with the door shut, the music penetrates. Pumping. Pounding. “Emotional Rescue.”
* * *
My plan failed on both counts. I did not learn to fly freely or fearlessly. I clung instead to one anonymous man after another. And my nightmares clung to me.
I could say it was Tommy’s letter that prompted my return. Or the incident in Pensacola. Or Marge. But the truth is, my nightmares have been driving me back for years, as relentlessly as they once pushed me away. I came to New York more determined than ever to find the source of these nightly terrors, face it down and conquer it.
But determination can be a very fickle bedfellow, and it, too, threatens to fail me now. Mystical signs and coincidences aside, unless I make some progress against my dream life soon, I will lose this apartment and even the minimal safety net I’ve managed to establish here.
No more men. And no more running away.
2
My mother began teaching me practically from birth to watch the world through an imaginary viewfinder. Using the magic of the camera, she said, I could stop time cold, yet keep it alive. Through the alchemy of the darkroom, I could float the ghosts of moments I’d lived through back into shadow and light, and when I finally mastered the magic, I would feel in every photograph as though I were watching myself watch the world—and seeing the world look back. Then I would know I’d made Art.
She had such high hopes when I set off on my cross-country jaunt after college. Her plan was for me to venture, experiment, and gradually narrow my sights to a particular, salable vision. When I told her I’d settled for the view from thirty thousand feet, she made a noise at her end of the phone as if I’d spat on her.
“You can’t be serious. Not you, too. You’re giving up before you’ve begun, and to do what} To be a flying waitress!”
“You’ve always wanted to go to Europe. I can get you free airline passes.”
“Not on your life. You actually think you can bribe me to approve of your squandering your talent?”
“I’ll have plenty of time off. I can work then.”
“Ah, yes, but will you?”
The operator interrupted. I was calling from a pay phone at Staples International. And I was out of change.
“You’re quitting, Maibelle.”
&nb
sp; She didn’t need to say the rest: I was quitting just like my father.
That was the last we spoke until this week.
“Darling!” she shouted when I called. “Where on earth are you? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Mum. I’m in New York.”
“My God, Maibelle.” She seemed to be catching her breath. “I thought something dreadful— Well, you know how I am about planes. I can’t bear to think of you thirty thousand miles above ground all the time. Do. You. Realize. It’s been three years.”
“Feet, Mum, not miles. I realize. If you’re going to be around over the weekend, I’ll come uptown. We can talk then.”
“I don’t know if I can stand it.”
“What?”
“Both daughters here at once.”
“Anna’s coming home?”
“Just for a few hours. Maibelle, how long are you going to be here? Why aren’t you staying with us?”
“I’ve moved back, Mum. I have an apartment.”
I pictured her gray eyes closing, the two upright worry lines plowing deeper. The impatient, manicured hand brushing a frosted wisp from her cheek.
“Excuse me?”
“Please. Let’s not do this over the phone.”
“There’s a man. Is there a man? You haven’t gone and gotten married, Maibelle!”
The receiver throbbed as if it were a direct line from her speeding heart to mine.
“There is no man, Mother. I can assure you. But I’d really prefer to discuss this in person. Is she coming Saturday or Sunday?”
My mother’s voice, when she finally answered, made me think of a plate-glass window through which I was about to be thrown. “Saturday. For lunch she’s coming. Around noon. If the stars are in alignment, Henry will join us, too.”
Her mouth twitched when the elevator doors opened. She was standing in the hallway with two unopened bottles of champagne, and I could recount every minute of her morning just by looking at her. An hour bathing and putting on that black velveteen pantsuit and ruffled white blouse, another half hour doing her makeup and hair, then a spell in her apron making some watercress or quail salad she’d seen in Gourmet and shopped for at Zabar’s.
“You look terrific, Mum.”
“I work at it. You look beat. And you’ve lost weight.”
I’d gone western for the day in a long riding skirt, concha belt, boots, and voluminous poet’s shirt, but my mother’s X-ray vision cut right through the disguise.
“Some.”
“Well, we’ll fix that. Come here, you.”
We hugged stiffly, both holding our breath as we tried in vain to fit the points of our bodies together. Because of the bottles, it was like being embraced by someone holding barbells.
“Where’s Dad?”
“It’s noon. Where else would he be? Getting dressed. You’re the first one here.”
I trailed her into the kitchen for want of an alternative. Immaculate white with butcher-block counters and the same stainless-steel equipment she’d brought up from Chinatown, the room was either brilliantly light and breezy or sterile as a morgue. It varied with my mother’s mood.
I picked up a paperweight from the counter. A solid crystal sphere filled to bursting with a real dandelion puff. I couldn’t imagine how its maker had managed to keep all those feathery strands intact, encased. Each filament reached outward, pushing against the curved surface, and every one was so perfectly poised and balanced that the whole seemed about to explode.
Think light and breezy, I told myself firmly.
She put the bottles in the freezer, tied on an apron, and began emptying the cabinets. Jars, boxes, shakers, funnels, cups, and spoons soon filled the counter. Like a chemist, she proceeded to pour and measure ingredients into a huge mixing bowl. She stood with her back to me, arms popping out at odd angles as she reached and whisked. I deduced she was making salad dressing, but it looked like enough for the entire Upper West Side. She beat the concoction for three solid minutes by the Bauhaus wall clock. Dad had found that clock at a Phoenix House thrift shop and given it to her for Christmas the year before I left. He swore up and down it was brand-new, and she loved it so left it at that.
“Want some help?” I said at last.
She stopped, stock-still, then slowly turned, the whisk in her hand dripping perfect beads of oil onto her spotless floor.
“How long have you been here?”
“A few weeks.”
“A few weeks.”
She tossed the whisk in the sink and pulled off one large gold shell-shaped earring, rubbed the exposed lobe between her fingers. Her face seemed to list with the weight of the opposite earring.
“If you’d let me know, Scott Sazaroff had the most fabulous place in the West Seventies. He would have—”
“That’s why.”
“Why what?”
“I’ve been living on my own for years. I don’t need you to find me an apartment.” My voice sounded as if I were being strangled.
She let go of her ear and clenched her fist, stared at it, flattened it on the counter. The gold shell skittered among the salad dressing ingredients.
“I see. Well, in that case, I can hardly wait to see what splendid arrangement you’ve made for yourself.”
“I didn’t want to bother you and Dad.”
She turned to clean up the mess she’d made and spoke slowly, deliberately, over the shoulder as she worked. “You go off God knows where—with whoever. You don’t even have the courtesy of letting us know if you’re dead or alive… but you didn’t want to bother us.”
She whirled around, hugging her arms to her stomach. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”
I counted to five before answering, and my voice almost didn’t shake. “I knew this would happen.”
“What? What would happen?”
“You’d get defensive.”
My mother replaced her earring and began pressing loose strands of hair into place. “Could we back up a little? Why, exactly, have you moved back? Have they changed your—what do you call it?”
“Base.”
“Right. I’m to understand you’re based out of New York now?”
I shrugged.
“I said, is that right?”
I didn’t answer.
“Then you’ve left the airlines?”
“You’ll slip on this in a minute.” I took a sponge from the counter and reached down to wipe up the oil she’d spilled.
“Maibelle?”
I came up slowly so as not to get dizzy and turned the tap on over the sponge. The sun through the window caught the oil and made streaks of rainbow going down the drain. When I turned and looked her in the eye, she stamped her foot and raised her arms.
“At last you’ve come to your senses. I’m so glad, Maibelle. So glad!”
You’d think I’d just been freed from slavery. God almighty, free at last. Before she could hug me again, I told her to stay put, I needed some air. Having scored her first victory, she didn’t object, but I could feel her jubilant eyes on me through the window as I moved across the terrace.
I stayed to the back of her garden of pots, away from the edge and her view. Here the gravity of detail gave the terrace such heft that it seemed inconceivable the real ground was twenty floors down. Detail. Like the Brown and Jordan garden furniture. Planters with evergreens and blooming peach trees. Terra-cotta pavers. Every indication that this was Mum’s little slice of heaven on earth. No one would guess what a stink she put up at first.
I was thirteen the year my father finally made the killing that enabled us to leave Chinatown. Unfortunately the patent sale of his “micropore ziplock bottlecap” to a dairy distributor in New Jersey did not bring Upper East Side money, at least not the Sutton Place- or Murray Hill-or Park Avenue-type Upper East Side that my mother had in mind. But Dad, pioneering the tactic that later put me in touch with Marge Gramercy, found a lead in the obituaries. A photographer he’d known in his youth had died in a
plane crash in the Andes, leaving untenanted the penthouse of a rent-controlled building at Ninetieth and Central Park West.
“Awfully close to Harlem, isn’t it?” Mum asked the first day we came for a viewing.
“It belonged to a Life photojournalist” Dad said. “You’ll love it.”
The elevator was broken. The service lift stank of rotting garbage. In the kitchen a herd of cockroaches was devouring the remains of an ancient pack of pork rinds, and pea-colored paint dropped from the ceiling in chunks. Dad’s friend must have been dead for some time, I thought, or else he’d been in the Andes for years without bothering to keep his cleaning lady.
“Joe,” said my mother, “we’re wasting our time.”
“Just look at those ceilings. Ten feet at least. You can’t find height like that anymore. Not for four hundred a month.”
“I sure hope they’ll throw in the roaches,” said Anna. (Already eighteen, on her way to college and the World, my sister never did live with us uptown. Possibly my parents’ combat over the apartment gave her the excuse she needed. Certainly her quest for celestial harmony became a constant in her life ever after.)
“Tommy Wah’s ma says roaches are good luck,” Henry said. At that time Tommy was still his best friend. “Every New Year she has me and Tommy catch one for the kitchen god.”
“Maybe she’d like to move in here,” Mum said. “It’d save you and Tommy all that trouble.”
“How about this?” Dad led Mum outside. “Enough space for a real Alpine garden. Five bedrooms. Separate living and dining rooms, plus a powder room and full terrace overlooking Central Park. Diana, we’ll never do better than this.”
The way she looked, I could tell she was ready to explode.
But Dad tried again. “This is a real bargain—”
“And I,” she shouted, “am sick of bargains! Just once in my life I’d like to forget about money. I don’t want something for nothing, you see? I want to pay through the teeth—every penny, if need be—for something I absolutely love!”
Dad leaned against the balustrade and stared out over the park. “I thought you would love this.”
