Morningside Heights

by Joshua Henkin

  “At least I’m working with books,” he told Sarah, whom he would find at home in front of the TV, and who, sprawled out in an exaggeration of repose, seemed to be taunting him; even her hair seemed to be taunting him, slung casually across the couch. The problem was, he didn’t love books the way he thought he did. He liked treading down the hall to his father’s living room, but at the bookstore it was all bustle and commerce and the breaking down of boxes; it wasn’t like his father’s living room at all. And the money he’d been promised was just that—a solemn pledge—because he got paid only every other week, so he would come home most days without anything to show for it.

  “At least you’re learning something,” his father said, but Arlo didn’t know what he was learning besides the indignities of a menial job. “You’re supporting independent bookstores,” his father said, but that, too, was meager consolation. He was sacrificing his own independence for the store’s independence, which made him feel like a fool.

  * * *

  —

  One day, his father stopped in to the store.

  “Arlo’s our star worker,” Paul said. “He keeps it up, and we’re going to have to name him employee of the month.”

  As far as Arlo knew, there was no employee of the month, so he took Paul to be mocking him.

  “Arlo’s told me none of this,” his father said.

  “That’s because he’s too modest.”

  Arlo’s pretty coworker walked by, carrying a coffee-table book. Jennifer—Arlo had learned her name—held the book in one hand, and Arlo could see the tendons in her forearm.

  Paul said, “I was going to ask Arlo if he wanted to stick around for the summer. I was thinking we could bump up his hours. There would, of course, be a corresponding bump in pay.”

  “Would you like extra hours?” Arlo’s father said, and Arlo, relieved to be a party to these negotiations, said, “Yes, sir.”

  “I can’t tell you how happy I am,” Paul said, but again he was talking to Arlo’s father.

  “I think this is an excellent plan,” Arlo’s father was saying.

  It wasn’t that Arlo regretted his decision. It was, rather, that his increase in hours was like his hiring itself: a force greater than he was. His father had wanted him to work in a bookstore, so he was working in a bookstore. His father had told him it was one of the best bookstores in the country, and what Arlo heard was that he, Arlo, was one of the best people in the country. His father called someone he respected an able fellow, and now Arlo was an able fellow, too.

  * * *

  —

  School was off for the summer, and the weather, which the previous week had been unseasonably mild, was now unseasonably hot. Someone suggested the air-conditioning be turned up, but Paul was concerned about electricity bills. It was a tough go, they understood, working at an independent bookstore. You had to contribute to the cause, so Arlo contributed to it by sweating through his shirt.

  His hourly wage had increased from $6.50 to $6.75. This was a nearly 4 percent raise, but to Arlo it was a measly quarter, which his mother used to place under his pillow—his mother, the tooth fairy, who would put on a pair of wings and flutter about the room before depositing the coin in its resting spot.

  He’d moved from hauling and opening boxes to shelving books, and soon books were being discovered in the wrong sections of the store.

  Someone said, “What’s The Catcher in the Rye doing in Sports?”

  “That’s Arlo’s section.”

  Arlo denied having shelved The Catcher in the Rye in Sports.

  Over the next two weeks, Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own was found in Home Furnishing, Graham Greene’s The Quiet American in Spirituality and Meditation, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird in Nature, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer in Science and Medicine, and William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch in Cookbooks. “What’s A Farewell to Arms doing in Military History?” someone said. Soon there were more sightings: Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea in Marine Biology, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying in Death and Mourning, John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany in Religion and Spirituality, and George Orwell’s Animal Farm in Gardening. Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited wasn’t with the books at all but was shelved instead with the bridal magazines.

  The mis-shelvings were Arlo’s doing, but whether they were mistakes would have been hard for him to say. Some were oversights; others came closer to acts of sabotage.

  Then one of his coworkers, who had been quietly trailing him, caught him shelving Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky in Astronomy. “Aha!” he said. “We caught him red-handed! In flagrante delicto, indeed!”

  “I’m sorry,” Arlo said. “It was a mistake.”

  Word must have gotten out, because the next morning he overheard someone say, “Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous midwestern archaeologist,” and someone else said, “Rembrandt van Rijn, the acclaimed Dutch botanist,” and someone else said, “Émile Durkheim, the great German chef,” everyone kicking the words around like a Hacky Sack, not caring if Arlo heard.

  Now, whenever anything went wrong on the floor, people assumed he was responsible. “Whoa, dude,” someone said, “you pulled a Zackheim,” and someone else said, “I Zackheimed up.”

  If Arlo could have retreated any further, he would have. He was out on the floor as little as possible. The rest of the time he withdrew to the stockroom, where even Crenshaw kept his distance.

  One afternoon, he had a pile of books at his feet and a cup of coffee on the chair beside him. It was intentional, even as he also believed it was unintentional, his bumping into the chair as he went to shelve a book. The chair was jostled, the cup got toppled, the coffee spilled onto the books.

  And there was Paul, immediately on top of him. “Jesus Christ, Arlo!” He wiped off the coffee with a paper towel, but there was no point: the books were ruined. “That’s almost three hundred dollars in damages. I should dock your pay.”

  Arlo thought he’d feel satisfied, but the next few days he was jittery.

  One time, he saw Jennifer outside the store. “Hey, you,” she said. “Don’t look so glum.”

  “I’m not glum,” he said, but he wasn’t good at hiding his feelings.

  “Why should you know as much as they do? When I was your age I was hanging out at the mall.”

  “My father got me this job,” Arlo said. “That’s the only reason I’m here.”

  “Well, good for him,” Jennifer said. “Good for you both.” She was crouched above the sidewalk, and Arlo reflexively crouched down, too. He could see the customers walking in and out, their legs moving like chopsticks.

  “Paul shouldn’t allow people to treat you like that.”

  “Paul’s in on it, too.” Arlo told Jennifer how Paul had berated him.

  “Then Paul’s as bad as everyone else.”

  Arlo agreed: sometimes he thought Paul was the worst of them.

  “Arlo, you’re sweet, you know that?” Jennifer stood up. “Don’t let what people are saying bother you. Someday you’ll look back and laugh at us.”

  “I won’t laugh at you,” Arlo said, but Jennifer had already gone back into the store.

  The next day, Arlo saw someone who looked like Jennifer walking on the street, holding a man’s hand. He quickened his pace until he was only a few yards behind them. The woman swiveled her head. It was Jennifer. She went to kiss the man, and as the man turned toward her, Arlo was startled to discover it was Paul.

  * * *

  —

  He was paid overtime to work on July 4th, but he didn’t care about overtime. He would call in sick and rollerblade through Central Park, go downtown and catch a band. He’d stick it to Paul the way Paul had stuck it to him, the way Jennifer had stuck it to him, too.

  He didn’t even bother to call in sick; he simply didn’t show up. And when
he came to work the next day, hungover from the fireworks and the beer, Paul was in the stockroom, waiting for him. “You have a lot of explaining to do.” He’d had July 4th plans himself, Paul said, and he’d had to cancel them.

  Paul’s plans had probably been with Jennifer: Arlo was glad to have ruined the holiday for them both.

  * * *

  —

  The next week, he arrived late for a staff meeting. Soon he was showing up late every day—fifteen minutes, half an hour, sometimes more.

  Finally, Paul called him into his office. “If the circumstances were different, I’d have put an end to this sooner.”

  “What circumstances? If I wasn’t my father’s son? I could be scooping ice cream for the pay I’m making here.”

  “And you’re welcome to do that. Häagen-Dazs is right down the block, Arlo. Just make sure to get to work on time. And don’t confuse the flavors.”

  * * *

  —

  He was angry at everyone now—at Paul, at Jennifer—but mostly he was angry at his father for having gotten him the job in the first place. His father had done it for his own vanity; he enjoyed wielding his influence.

  One day Sarah said, “Doesn’t your school give you summer homework?”

  “It’s none of your business,” Arlo said. “Do you think anyone cares that you’re going to get a PhD?”

  “Who says I’m going to get a PhD? I want to be a doctor.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since right now. I’m good at science, and I want to save people’s lives.” A thought seemed to alight on her. “Hey, Arlo, maybe you can be a doctor, too.”

  Arlo laughed.

  “Come on. We can go into practice together.”

  “What makes you think I’d be a good doctor?”

  “You’re excellent at math, and your handwriting is terrible.”

  Now Arlo knew she was taunting him.

  But Sarah insisted she was serious. They could be a brother-and-sister medical practice. Arlo could be in charge of the business side of things. She certainly needed help with that.

  * * *

  —

  Fall came and Arlo had new teachers, who forced him to repeat what he’d learned last year. He hated the repetition, hated the sounding out of words. He thought of that word mnemonic, which his father had written on one of his flashcards. He needed a mnemonic to remember the word mnemonic, and what was the point of that?

  For thousands of years humans had done fine without reading, and during the fall of his junior year Arlo resolved to do fine without reading, too. As the semester wore on and he continued to disappoint himself, he thought of another word his father had taught him, abdicate, and he started to see school, to see his whole time in New York, as a well-meaning but failed experiment.

  * * *

  —

  Then it was Christmas, which he’d always celebrated—not in church, of course, but with eggnog and presents under the tree, in the church of consumerism, as his father liked to call it, but Pru wouldn’t have countenanced celebrating Christmas, even in its watered-down consumerist form. So Arlo was left to celebrate Chanukah, which had dreidels, latkes, and jelly doughnuts, but he felt that the holiday wasn’t really his, that he was witnessing a foreign ritual that wasn’t supposed to be foreign, as if he were poaching on his own land.

  Christmas Eve came without eggnog or a tree, though Sarah, as if to toss him a bone, left presents at the foot of his bed: a pair of his own blue jeans and a couple of his T-shirts, which she’d pilfered from his dresser and wrapped for him.

  * * *

  —

  “How’s your mother doing?” Pru asked him one night.

  “Why would you care?” Arlo said. “You’ve always hated her.”

  “Arlo, come on.”

  “At least my mother knows how to give people space.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Sarah’s thirteen, and you still make her lunch for her. One time, you cut off the crusts on her sandwich.”

  “It was for old times’ sake. I used to do that when she was little.”

  “Maybe if you liked your work more, you’d hover less.”

  “I like my work just fine.”

  “You raise money so my dad can teach. You might as well be making his sandwiches. You gave up your career for him.”

  She started to deny it, but there was no point. Everyone made their choices.

  “You still pretend you’re an actor.”

  “Are you kidding me? I haven’t acted in years.”

  “What about that community theater you do?”

  “It’s a hobby.”

  “But my dad sits in front like he’s proud of you.”

  “Maybe he is proud of me.”

  “Yet you look down on my mother because she doesn’t have a career.”

  “When have I ever said anything about your mother’s career?”

  “Say what you want, but my mother never gave up her dreams for a man.”

  “Oh, really? Your mother moved to London for a man she barely knew.”

  And she’d moved to other places for other men. But fundamentally she followed her own compass. Which was more than he could say for Pru.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning Sarah said, “I heard my mother crying last night.”

  “Well, boo-hoo,” Arlo said.

  “You made my mother cry, Arlo. I’ve never done that in my life.”

  “Do you know how many people have made me cry in my life?”

  “My mother doesn’t owe you anything. You’re only here out of the goodness of her heart.”

  “What goodness? Your mother broke up my parents’ marriage.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Sarah called her mother inside. “Tell my mother what you just said.”

  “You stole my father from my mother.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “So you just happened to come along and my father just happened to leave my mother?”

  “No one happened to do anything. I was barely out of college when your parents got divorced. It was months before your father told me about your mother. I didn’t know about her, or about you.”

  Arlo just stared at her.

  “The only reason your father married your mother was she got pregnant.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You were a mistake.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “It’s not.”

  “I’ll go ask my father.”

  “Be my guest.”

  “I’ll go ask my mother.”

  “By all means.”

  * * *

  —

  As Arlo dialed his mother’s number, his pulse thrummed in his throat.

  “Arlo?” she said. He heard a strange echo through the phone, as if she weren’t across the Atlantic but beneath it.

  “Did Pru steal Dad from you?”

  “Oh, Arlo, it was ages ago. How can I possibly remember?”

  “Was I a mistake?”

  “You, darling? You’re the most important person in my life.”

  “But was I an accident?”

  “Everything’s an accident, darling. Millions of sperm, thousands of eggs. What are the odds that any of us is alive?”

  * * *

  —

  At first he was decimated, but soon it was clarifying, cool and clear as a brook. His careless, wayward mother paying him no heed. And his father: all those years keeping him at bay. Now it was so obvious, it was laughable: he hadn’t been wanted. It was sad, but it was true. And with the truth came liberation. He could leave now and never see them again. He could murder all of them.

&n
bsp; After midnight, he entered Sarah’s bedroom and saw her lying there, her head lifted as if she’d been taxidermied. And the words came to him: the sleep of the dead. Her hair was in a braid, lying like a snake across the pillow. There were scissors on her desk, just two feet away. He grabbed them. How long did it take to do the deed? Three seconds? Only two? A single snip and the braid was off, the snake’s body severed. Just as quietly as he’d entered the room, he left it.

  In the morning, he heard Sarah scream. He locked his bedroom door. Then he changed his mind: he would meet what was coming at him head-on.

  He went into the kitchen, where Sarah was eating breakfast. She didn’t even look up.

  Then his father came inside and saw her. “Good God.”

  Pru came in, too. “My lord, Sarah, what have you done?”

  Sarah glanced at him for such a sliver of a second he wasn’t sure she’d looked at him at all. “I cut my hair,” she said equably. “I’ve always wanted it short.” Then she grabbed her backpack and left for school.

  * * *

  —

  He’d been waiting for his punishment, but instead there was this: no rebuke, no drama, nothing at all. He could have amputated her leg and she wouldn’t have said anything. Maybe she was scared of him. She should have been scared of him: he was scared of himself.

  He’d done a hack job on her hair, so she went to the beauty salon and had the ends evened out. She even got a streak of purple running through it.