A Flicker in the Clarity

by Amy McNamara

  He closes the door to the hut and scrambles onto a huge block of sand-colored stone. The high morning sun highlights his profile. The bruise under his eye blooms brilliant blue and I spot another along his jawline. The light catches a thread on his split lip. Actual stitches. Not part of his act.

  “The blocks of granite that form the towers and support the suspension span must be built on bedrock. Hundreds of us dig under the murk.” He points to the dark river. “The caisson we work in is meant to be a pressurized, oxygen-filled, watertight chamber.” He looks grave. “It is not. It’s a hellish place with such poor pressurization we get earaches and pains in the head that are unbearable.”

  He pulls several plastic laminated images from his back pocket and passes them around. Pen-and-ink line drawings show bridge workers digging in a small dark space, swinging pickaxes and pushing wheelbarrows.

  Theo raises his voice, startling me slightly, and claps his hands over his ears, his face twisted in a grimace. “Some of us tie roasted onions to our ears with rags to ease the pain. Others twist and drop, so contorted we can’t straighten them out. We call this caisson sickness the bends.” He pauses for effect, then lowers his voice. “Some find themselves paralyzed . . . or worse.”

  A German with a massive sandy mustache breaks the spell.

  “And voorse means vhat?” Like he can’t take the suspense.

  I giggle. Impossible not to.

  Theo flashes a quick wink in the direction of my giggles before turning a solemn face to his questioner. “Ah, well, they died, sir. Sie starben.”

  A laughing fit surges through me, an unstoppable wave. I turn away from the group and look out at the water while biting the inside of my cheek. Hard. The breeze off the East River smells good, like wet pennies. I’m glad I lost my class. I’m actually enjoying myself.

  The sun is high and too hot for winter. I loosen my scarf, senses on overdrive. Em calls it squirrel-jitters. She says it’s how I act when I flirt, which is not, for obvious reasons, often. But right now the air has the crackle it gets when you like someone and have the feeling they like you back.

  My hand floats up like it’s got a mind of its own, then I pull it down when I realize I’m about to ask if he’s one of the men who survives. I swallow another wave of giggles. Theo glances my way, but the Germans are full of questions. One guy wants to point out that the first engineer, Roebling’s father, was a German immigrant himself. Another man steps up close to Theo and, squinting at him, asks if the black eye is real. Theo laughs and says with a grin, “Aye. More on that in a minute.”

  He turns back to the rest of us. “Any other questions?” he asks, shooting me this look for one more beat.

  My pulse does a happy dance.

  “Okay, then follow me back this way.” He waves us in the direction of the Roebling House. “We’ll have a look inside an average worker’s apartment.”

  Right as we get to the door of the building, Emma, Jack, and Alice’s group files out.

  Jack’s wound himself around Alice, his mouth near her neck, but when he spots me he comes up for air.

  “Courage,” he whispers as he passes by. “So, so boring.”

  Exit from the Gift Shop

  AFTER THE TOUR, THEO BRINGS US back to the gift shop. Jack and Ben are at the register buying candy. Em and Alice are in the middle of a Bly throng laughing at something so super funny. It sounds fake, but apparently that’s the hallmark of this new best-friendship. I fight the urge to rush out. I’d have to pass them if I did, so I beeline for the back of the shop and squeeze behind a pyramid of books.

  “Good morning, Veddy Most Sexy Lady.” Mandi slinks an arm around my neck and purrs in my ear in a fake Russian accent.

  I jump. She laughs.

  “I didn’t see you there,” I whisper.

  People are a little scared of her because in addition to being at the top of our class, she does stand-up at all-ages open mic nights, and no one’s ever really sure if she’s going to roast them in the hallway or not.

  “Why are you whispering?” she loud-whispers back.

  “Sore throat,” I lie, like a freak. Time to bolt.

  “Dude, bummer day to be sick!” Mandi says, kind of loud. “Did Em tell you? Everyone’s gonna hang in the park after the library since it’s so damn nice out.”

  I shake my head and move away from her.

  “Feel better, Ramsey!”

  I rush toward the exit.

  Em and Alice have moved over to a rack of Brooklyn Bridge–inspired necklaces and earrings. Jack’s outside on the sidewalk talking to Ben and Jay, but I can blow past him.

  I’m contemplating Mandi’s “everyone” and how, without Em, it doesn’t seem to include me, when a woman with two sticky-looking kids in a double stroller pushes in through the shop doors, blocking my escape. I back up near some 1917 Votes for Women letterpress posters to let her pass, but before she does, the kid in the front catches my eye, winds her arm back, and chucks her cup at me. Full-on hurls it. Like I’m a hoop and she’s gonna sink it.

  Any normal person would jump out of the way, but I lunge, try to catch it instead. The cup grazes my fingers and the kid’s eyes get huge. She looks like she’s about to cheer, like this is the event that’s going to make her morning, make up for however long she’s been stuck in that stroller, and for a second I think I’ve got it too, disaster averted, but then the waxy paper sides compress between my fingers and the lid pops off with a smuck! In slo-mo the cup collapses in my grip. A plume of cherry soda geysers from it, dousing me from my chin to my waist.

  It’s so, so cold.

  I look down. The thin blouse I’m wearing is now transparent and glued to my bra, clinging to the blue lace underneath. The right sleeve of my coat is soaked and there’s soda in my pocket too.

  Before I can even react, the kid laughs. Hard. From the sound of it, this is the funniest thing in her life so far. Her mom’s oblivious. The other beast in the back of the stroller is wailing, and she’s bent over her, too busy to notice what the dastardly cackler in the front just did.

  I stand there stupid another second and gape down at my wet chest.

  Thanks to the din in the gift shop, the murmuring Germans, and the general clatter of more arrivals, the embarrassment of this disaster appears to be all mine. I could probably stand very, very still and drip-dry if I wanted. If Em and Alice weren’t six people away with their backs to me.

  “Holy shit!”

  Theo comes climbing over the edge of the stroller, one long leg after the next until he’s by my side. The woman glares at him and pushes her kids away from us.

  “I saw that go down. Nice save. Thanks!” he says, with no trace of an accent. His eyes dart a millisecond to my chest, then quickly shift away.

  Theo points over my shoulder. I glance behind me to the suffragist posters.

  “Not a drop on ’em! We got those in last night. The last set sold out in two days.”

  He’s right. They’re unmarred. My chest, on the other hand, looks like I lost a paintball battle. I curve my shoulders forward to try to loosen the fabric’s sticky cling.

  Theo sizes me up with a slow grin. “So, I bet that feels awesome.” He has a crooked eyetooth, and it sticks out a little over the next. “Your next tour is definitely free.”

  The way he’s obviously avoiding looking at my chest makes me blush brighter. This is not happening. I glance over at Emma, but she and Alice are oblivious, half turned and huddled, laughing at something on one of their phones. I turn back to Theo.

  “Um, yeah.” He blinks at me a second. Clears his throat. “Okay. Uh, sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

  One brow shoots up high, his eyes startlingly light.

  He thinks I’m German.

  “I don’t know what that means?” I say, suddenly fighting back another laugh. This is all so absurd and so totally something that would happen to me that I’m scared if I start laughing, I might never stop. I roll my shoulders forward even more. I probably l
ook demented, but my shirt’s freezing cold and revealing much more of me than anyone’s ever seen.

  He laughs for me. A big open sound. “Sorry! You were so quiet I thought maybe you were German.”

  I shake my head and delicately pinch the wet fabric away from my skin, but there’s this weird suction action, and when I pull it away in one place it clings more in another.

  “C’mon,” Theo says, wrapping a hand around my wrist. “You can’t go out like that. I’ll get you another shirt.”

  Theo weaves us through the crowd and over toward a door behind the ticket counter.

  “Hey, Jeremy,” he says to the guy at the register. “We need serious paper towels on the floor over by the posters. I’m running upstairs for a few. You got this?”

  Jeremy nods.

  “Excuse us, coming through,” Theo repeats, and people shift to let us pass.

  His fingers on my wrist. I must be blasting the place with pheromones. Em’s eyes are on me now.

  I meet them. I can’t help it. It’s a reflex.

  Theo’s hand is a distractingly hot circle around my wrist and I need her to see it too. I glance at it, then back to her face, widening my eyes at her with a slight smile, like, What crazy happy thing is happening?

  And then, even though we’re looking right at each other with no one between us, she acts like I’m not there. It makes her look blind, the light in her eyes gone out, like I’m nothing more than a minor disturbance, a mirage, a flicker in the clarity.

  I try to shake it off, pretend that didn’t just happen, focus on the heat in Theo’s fingers, the angle of his shoulders in front of me as we pass through a door behind the register marked “Private.”

  Other People’s Families

  I FOLLOW THEO UP a narrow staircase. We rise into a sun-bright apartment. Unlike the narrow tenements on the other side of the building, this space is opened up wide, many of its windows facing the Brooklyn Bridge.

  “This is your place?” I ask.

  “Yeah.” He smirks. “Brace yourself for Gray family chaos.”

  “Can you own a historical site?” I marvel at piles of rugby gear and tennis rackets and towers of books.

  “The Roeblings’ building no longer stands,” he says. “When my mom started poking into the history of our building, she discovered it was here back then, so she decided to bring it back to life.”

  “Kind of like the Tenement Museum.”

  “Exactly.”

  The apartment’s a colorful explosion of mismatched furniture. On the floor to my right, a battered marble bust lies on its shoulder next to a rickety upright piano. The piano keys are chipped, and I wonder who thundered across them until the bust shimmied over the edge. Before I can ask, a small boy slips out from a blanket tent under the dining table and bounds across the space to us. His hair’s a straw nest on his head and his blue glasses are crooked.

  “Theo! Guess what?”

  He spots me and stops.

  “Who are you?”

  “Alo, manners.” Another voice comes from the far side of the sunny space. A woman stands working at the kitchen counter. There’s so much to see in here I didn’t notice her at first. Her eyes land on me.

  “Well, hello.” Her face is wide and open like Theo’s and framed with what is obviously the family hair.

  “Hi,” I say, tentative.

  She pushes the bridge of a clunky pair of tortoiseshell glasses up her nose with a potato-covered knuckle and comes over to us, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She’s baking something savory.

  “I’m Margaret Gray. Theo, introduce us?”

  “Yeah, sorry . . . Mom, this is . . .” He looks at me, furrows his brow. “I didn’t catch your name.” He turns back to his mother, “she’s not German.”

  “Evie Ramsey,” I laugh, plucking at my shirt to unstick it from my chest again before I step forward to shake her hand. There’s a small bit of potato on the side of her nose.

  “What happened to you?” Alo grimaces like I’m covered in blood.

  “Shark attack,” I say casually. It’s the kind of thing that makes the Hanover twins crack up.

  Alo’s more circumspect. He raises his brows at his brother, then turns to me, skeptical.

  “Are you Theo’s friend-friend or are you a Lindsay friend?” he asks, hand on his chin like a mini professor.

  “That’s enough out of you, blockhead,” Theo says, lightly ruffling his hair. Alo takes a swing at him, but Theo laughs and holds him off with a straight arm, palm flat against Alo’s forehead, while the kid whirls his fists in a frenzy, just out of reach.

  Margaret shakes her head at them both, then turns to me and takes in the full state of my shirt and coat.

  “Don’t freak out.” Theo sidesteps Alo and leans against the piano. “A kid in a stroller threw a soda.”

  Margaret gives Theo a horrified look. “In the shop?”

  “Nothing got wrecked,” he says. “Evie caught most of it. She saved Jonathan’s posters too. We need to mop down there, but otherwise all’s cool.”

  “Well! I guess we owe you a thank-you!” Margaret says, looking at me like she’s sizing me up. “I’m sure we have something here you can put on. Theo, run upstairs and find Evie a shirt and some kind of jacket, okay? Laundry goes out this afternoon. I’ll add yours in with our order. I hope they can get that terrible red dye out of your beautiful coat!”

  “Oh, really, that’s not—”

  “Nonsense! Your things will be ruined if someone doesn’t get to them right away.” She grabs a notepad and a crayon from the dinner table and hands them to me. “Write down your address and Theo will bring them to you when they’re done.”

  “If that’s cool with you.” Theo looks kind of embarrassed.

  If I give her my clothes I’ll see Theo again.

  I smile gratefully. “Yes, that would be great. Thank you so much!”

  While I crayon out my address, Margaret Gray fingers the sticky wool on my arm, making a tsk sound. “I hope they can save this lovely coat. If they can’t, we’ll reimburse you, of course.”

  I look down at my sleeve. I hope they can save it too. The coat’s my mom’s, and I only grabbed it this morning because the last time I borrowed it, Jack told me the blush-colored wool looked great with my hair.

  She takes the paper with my address on it and hands it to Theo. “I’ll lose this,” she says. “Hang on to it for me.” She turns and points to Alo. “You. Run to the bathroom and brush your teeth. The unschoolers will be here any second if they’re not down there already. And you”—she turns back to Theo—“how was that tour? It wasn’t too big? You’re still feeling okay? No headaches or anything?” She leans toward her son and inspects the meaty-looking bruise near his eye.

  “Jesus, Mom. Enough.” He shrugs his head away from her, his face closing up, eyes gone distant.

  “Okay, then, a few things.”

  Theo groans.

  “Shush. It’s not much. There’s a new pile of dirt in the basement near the back chimneys. Sweep it before tonight? Film people are coming to look at the chairs down there and I want it clean before they come. Also, if you have time, check the roof. They’re talking about using it.”

  She eyes me a second. Shakes her head. “We have to rent the place out. Getting Porter to pay for repairs is an impossible task!” She laughs, making this exasperated face like I know who Porter is or what the heck she’s talking about. I laugh too, because it seems rude not to.

  Theo looks at me a little surprised, and then I feel stupid.

  Alo races out of the bathroom, a toothpaste ring around his mouth, and grabs his mother’s hand. “Let’s go!”

  “Go wipe your mouth and let me get the shepherd’s pie.” She rushes back to the counter to retrieve a low dish with a golden crown and covers it with a linen towel.

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Alo bounces on his toes. “I wanna get down there!”

  “And Theo,” Margaret says, passing us, “I told your fat
her to bring the rakes with him when he comes. He should pull in by three or four.”

  “Great. Thanks, Ma.”

  “Thank you, Mommy,” a voice mimics in falsetto.

  A sleepy-looking guy steps into the living room from the back stairs. He has insane hair and deep pillow lines on his face, but neither is as remarkable as the fact that he’s shirtless and wearing only what appear to be a pair of seen-better-days navy boxers.

  He freezes when he spots me, then scratches his head.

  Theo bends over and explodes with laughter.

  “Dude,” he says, collapsing back against the piano, which emits a plinky complaint. “Roll in late last night?”

  “Oh! For heaven’s sake, Lazarus!” Theo’s mom says, turning at the stairs. “Pants!”

  “Pants, Lazzy!” Theo mimics his mom in a mocking tone.

  Lazarus has the same wonky nose as Theo and solid jaw, but he looks older. His top lip dips in a sharp bow. Instead of hay-colored hair and light eyes, his are both dark, and his skin is olive brown. He runs a hand through his hair and blinks at me a second, as if I’m the startling vision and not him.

  “Shit, Ma,” he says, ignoring Theo’s laugh. “No one prepped me for company.”

  I look at my feet, my face hot again.

  “Welcome home, Spazzy,” Theo laughs as Lazarus heads back up the stairs.

  “Theo!” Margaret shouts on her way down. “Quit mocking your brother and get some clothes for Evie!”

  “On it,” he laughs. He steers me to a chair at the dining room table. “Back in a minute.” His hand’s warm on my shoulder.

  Like a Dream I Don’t Remember

  I WOULD GIVE ANYTHING FOR EM to be here, to see Theo, his crazy family, this incredible apartment overlooking the bridge. But if Em were here, none of this would happen to me. He’d see her first and she’d be the one flirting.

  Because Theo’s cute. Empirical fact.

  I touch a spiky tower atop a glue-and-toothpick model of a pretty out-there-looking building on the table near me. I’m trying to absorb as much as I can about other people’s families so I’ll know how to do it myself someday—make a noisy, bright one like this, like Em’s used to be BPD—before Patrick died.