At home, she did a pirouette in front of the mirror. This creeped him out. She was only thirteen, but she already seemed like a young woman in a way he didn’t feel like a young man. You’re fucking with me, he wanted to say. Stop fucking with me.
* * *
—
Secretly, though, Sarah had told her mother.
“This can’t go on,” Pru said to Spence. Arlo could call her a deferring wife, he could call her a bad mother, but if she let him chop off her daughter’s hair, then she would really be a bad mother. “I’m at the end of my rope. He keeps this up, and I don’t know how much longer he can live with us.”
13
“I want to go to a club,” Sarah told him one night. “Take me to see a band you like.”
“You’re only thirteen,” Arlo reminded her.
“I’ll be fourteen next month.” Sarah’s music taste had evolved and was starting to resemble his. With her hair cut short and that streak down the middle like a zebra stripe, she was looking hardcore herself.
A few days later, he tossed an ID card onto her bed. “I made you legal.”
She glanced down at the card. “Oh, Arlo, this isn’t going to work. I don’t look twenty-one. And what are we going to tell Mom and Dad?”
“That I’m taking you out for your birthday dinner.”
On the appointed night, they said goodbye to their parents and took the subway downtown.
“What’s the band called?” Sarah said.
“Bad Brains.”
A velvet rope lined the sidewalk. The bouncer, a pale-skinned man of about thirty, paced back and forth like an enormous cat. His head was shaved, and he stared at the crowd with barely concealed venom.
“Just look confident,” Arlo said.
Then they were in—the bouncer barely glanced at their IDs—and Arlo nodded tersely at his own accomplishment.
He walked up front to listen, but the music was so loud it hurt Sarah’s ears, so she circled the bar, away from the amps.
“Are you thirsty?” he asked her between songs. He removed a twenty-dollar bill. “Go get us some beers.”
“Now?”
“Why?” he said. “Is there a waiting period?”
She had taken a few sips of beer once, enough to determine she didn’t like it. She returned to Arlo with two cups of beer.
“Happy birthday, kid.” They clinked cups, and the beer sloshed around and nearly spilled on her.
“I’m starting to get drunk.”
“You’ve taken, what, two sips? You can’t get drunk just from smelling the stuff.”
“I’m not just smelling it.” But she did smell it, too, and the stench repulsed her.
Arlo returned with two more beers.
“I haven’t even finished my first one.”
“Then you better drink up.”
She balanced herself on her high heels, feeling as if she were on ice skates.
“Well, look who’s here,” Arlo said. “It’s Henry and Max.” He was already past her, conferring with two boys his age. “This is Sarah,” he said. “My kid sister.”
Henry was dressed in blue jeans and a black T-shirt. Max, taller and thinner than Henry, wore khakis and a white shirt with a red necktie like a strip of bacon. “We go to school with Arlo,” Henry said.
Arlo said, “Max and Henry can’t read any better than I can, but you don’t need to read to like hardcore.”
“In fact,” Max said, “it’s a disadvantage.”
“I can read the word Molson,” Henry said.
“I didn’t know your friends would be here,” Sarah said.
“Well, I didn’t know you’d be here,” Max said.
Henry said, “We didn’t even know Arlo had a kid sister.”
“It’s not something I advertise,” Arlo said. “Boys, it’s Sarah’s birthday. She turned twenty-one today.”
Max raised a dubious eyebrow. “Would that be in dog years?”
“Show them your ID,” Arlo said.
Sarah handed her ID to Henry, who handed it to Max.
“Zackheim,” Max said, “you’re an expert counterfeiter.”
“Well, happy birthday to Sarah,” Henry said. “May she be legal for many years to come.”
As the band played on, Sarah instinctively lifted her cup to her mouth. She felt as if she were playing a drinking game called Drink for Your Brother, and now she was really getting drunk. “Jesus Christ,” she said, grabbing Arlo’s arm. “It’s eight-forty-five!”
“The main act never comes on before ten.”
“We told Mom and Dad we’d be home by nine.”
“It’s hard to see that happening. Unless we find ourselves a helicopter pad. Even then, I’d say the odds are poor.”
“They’re going to kill us.”
“Relax,” he said. “They’ll be fine.”
But when she persisted, he agreed to give them a call. He went out onto the street to find a pay phone.
When he returned, he bounced across the floor to the residual sounds of the music. “They said we could stay out as late as we like.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you want.”
Woozy and wobbly-footed, Sarah was discovering at fourteen what she would discover afresh at college, when she would like beer only slightly more than she did now, and she would stand at parties, surrounded by strangers, unable to get herself to leave. “You were supposed to take me out to dinner.”
“I was supposed to take you out to this club. You’ve been begging me to go, and now, guess what, you’re here.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to skip dinner. I’m hungry.”
“Well, luck is with you.” Arlo grabbed her by the wrist.
Outside, Max and Henry had bivouacked themselves on an SUV. It had started to rain, and Max had purchased an umbrella, which he held ceremoniously over Sarah’s head while Henry harpooned candles into a cake.
“It’s freezing out,” she said.
“Embrace the cold,” Arlo said. “Make a wish.”
She wished the owner of the SUV wouldn’t show up. She wished he wouldn’t have them arrested.
“Don’t accuse my friends of not being gentlemen.”
They were being gentlemen, but the way they were being gentlemen was so exaggerated they seemed to be ridiculing her.
“It’s a Brooklyn Blackout,” Henry said.
“Manhattan imports its cakes from Brooklyn,” Arlo said. “What has the world come to?”
How jaded her brother was, when two years ago he couldn’t have even named the five boroughs.
“Jesus, kid, will you blow out the candles before the wind does it for you?”
Then they were gone, and she was left with chocolate crumbs spread across the SUV.
Back in the club, she scanned the room for an exit sign. “I want to go home,” she told Arlo.
He laughed.
“I’m fourteen,” she reminded him. “I have school tomorrow. I hate hardcore.”
“It’s an acquired taste.”
“Well, I haven’t acquired it.”
He led her roughly back onto the street. “It wasn’t easy making you that ID. It took talent and time, and you haven’t even thanked me for it.”
“Thank you,” she said churlishly.
“Your attitude is shitty, you know that?”
“Fine,” she said, and she went back inside and drank her beer as quickly as she could, then drank another one. She would embrace this, she thought, do whatever was required of her. How many beers did she drink? More, certainly, than she’d drunk in her whole life, but that wasn’t hard.
It was one in the morning when the last set was over. She barely made it outside before she threw up.
“Up and
out of there,” Arlo said, holding her hair away from her face. “Clear out the passageways.”
“Happy birthday, Sarah,” Max said, and Henry, cupping his hands over his mouth, said, “Watch Arlo’s little sister hurl!”
“Jesus,” Arlo said, “you’re a real mess.”
She was a mess because of him, but she couldn’t even get the words out.
* * *
—
It was two in the morning when they got home. She’d thought her parents would be asleep, but all the lights were on in the apartment. Her parents sat beside each other on the couch.
Her father said, “I hope you know we called the police.”
“You what?”
“You were supposed to be home five hours ago.”
“Arlo told you we’d be late.”
“He most certainly didn’t,” her mother said.
“Not that we’d have allowed it even if he did.”
Sarah started to speak, but Arlo interrupted her. “Would you please just shut up?”
In the morning, she felt too ill to go to school. Arlo felt ill, too, but he knew better than to stick around, so he put on his clothes and left the apartment.
At home, they secluded themselves in their respective bedrooms, knowing they might be pitted against each other.
Sarah was grounded for the rest of the year. Arlo remained scarce, seeming to think that if he didn’t meet his fate, it wouldn’t meet him in return. But he really just wanted to be left alone, so he ate dinner in his bedroom and slipped out early every day.
* * *
—
One night, Arlo overheard his father through the bedroom wall, talking to Pru.
“I’m sorry,” Pru said, “but I can’t do this anymore.”
“What do you suggest we do? Put him on the street?”
“Send him to London, for all I care.”
“His mother won’t take him.”
“Then send him to one of those military schools.”
“What he needs is our love,” his father said. “And our patience.”
The next day, Arlo called his mother in London. He started to cry.
“Arlo, darling, what’s wrong?”
“The things they’re doing to me.”
“What are they doing?”
“I don’t care if I have to live on the streets. I’ll run away if you don’t come get me.”
* * *
—
On the day he left, Arlo woke Sarah up at six in the morning. He’d put a tag on each of his two suitcases, with his name, Arlo Zackheim, written across them; they were his only possessions in the world.
“You’re really leaving.”
He nodded.
“You can still turn back.” She stood before him in her pajamas; the lights flickered overhead. “Mom and Dad said you should wake them.”
He knew they had, but he refused to do it. He couldn’t endure another goodbye.
“When does your mother come?”
“In fifteen minutes.”
“Where’s she taking you?”
“I’ll know when I’m in the cab.”
She took him by the sleeve. “I’ll go downstairs with you.”
“No, Sarah, please.”
Standing beside the elevator, he hugged her. “I’m sorry for taking you to that club.”
“I wanted to go to that club. I couldn’t admit it, but I had a good time.”
“I was a jerk,” he said.
“No,” she said, “I was.”
The elevator door opened, and he stepped inside. She hesitated for a second, thinking she might follow him—for an instant she contemplated running away herself—but then the door closed and he plunged out of sight.
* * *
—
Downstairs, Arlo saw his mother for the first time, two years older, a little grayer, calling to him from the open window of a cab. “Darling,” she said, “I missed you so.” She was still a Joni Mitchell fan, always with a folk song at the ready: she had her head out the window and was singing “Big Yellow Taxi” through the dawn mist.
Arlo could smell her, talcum and lemon and clove. Now the taxi was wending its way through the city, ferrying him through the streets for the last time. Morning was rising, the cityscape was barnacled with light, and Arlo, staving off tears, sat quietly in the cab, waiting to see where his mother would take him, watching the streets recede in the mirror, terrified of what would come next.
Part IV
14
Pru lined them up like hens: a friend’s housekeeper who had worked in eldercare, a nanny who cared for triplets, a retired nurse. She wanted someone strong enough for the job, but the first woman, Ginny, was wearing layers—a peacoat over a cardigan—so she couldn’t assess her build. “Please,” she said. “Sit down.” She didn’t know what to look for on Ginny’s résumé, so Pru made a purposeful show of reading it, even as she felt no purpose at all.
Ginny was in her mid-forties. Her hair was cut in a short Afro, and she had on large, dark-framed glasses; on her forehead was a tiny birthmark like a smudge of clay. She wore post earrings and a dab of burgundy lipstick. Pru was wearing pressed pants and she’d put on lipstick, too.
“Is this the first time you’ve hired someone?”
“Yes,” Pru said. “It was my daughter’s idea.” But she didn’t like the way that sounded, so she said, “But I agreed, of course.”
But she hadn’t agreed, at least not at first. A stranger in the apartment: it was too close to communal living. And she couldn’t afford to hire someone. Sarah had suggested she take out a loan (“Follow my example”), but the difference was, Sarah would be a doctor someday.
Ginny was from Jamaica originally. She’d moved to the States with her husband and young son and settled in North Carolina, where her mother lived. But things didn’t work out between Ginny and her husband, and she thought the North would be better for Rafe. So they moved to Brooklyn, to East New York. That was ten years ago, and now Rafe was fourteen, starting high school in the fall.
The job Ginny had quit was with a retired opera singer, a woman sufficiently well known that Pru had heard of her, and Pru didn’t know much about opera. A diva, Pru had heard, on the stage and off. Was that why Ginny had quit? If it was, she wasn’t saying. She spoke carefully, maintaining a circumspect, reticent air, as if husbanding her own dignity. Her employer, Ginny said, had multiple sclerosis. She lived in Connecticut and Ginny didn’t have a car; even with a car, it was too long a drive to Westport. As it was, she had to take the subway to Grand Central and board the Metro-North, and it was ten at night before she got home. “I’m willing to commute, but there are limits.”
“It’s a commute here,” Pru said. “We don’t live in East New York either.”
“At least it’s New York,” Ginny said. “Everyone has to commute to work.”
“Some of us get to walk.” Pru was thinking of when the weather was good and she would hike the couple of miles to campus.
“Oh, I walk,” Ginny said. “If I end up working for you, I can take the 2 instead of the C, and then I’ll walk from Broadway.”
“So you have it all mapped out.”
Ginny looked at her strangely, as if to say who in the world interviewed for a job without mapping it out first?
Ginny had once thought to become a nurse. Actually, she’d more than thought of it: she’d studied nursing in North Carolina. “Night classes,” she said. “I was a good student and I was enrolled part-time, but even part-time I couldn’t make it work. It’s hard to hold a job and study.”
“And be a parent,” Pru said.
“And be a parent.” Ginny touched her glasses. “I’m surprised I even made it halfway through the program. I would nod off in class.”
“I’ve fallen as
leep in my fair share of classes.”
“But did you do it when you were sitting in the front row? And did the professor drop the textbook onto your desk to startle you?”
No, Pru admitted, that hadn’t happened.
“Anyway, my nursing classes were years ago. Nursing changes, just like everything else. With Rafe, I was just starting to understand the new math when it became the new-new math. But I do know first aid. And I was recertified in CPR last year.” It was good timing, Ginny said, because a week after she was recertified, a man had a heart attack on the subway.
“You gave CPR on the subway?” Pru felt nauseated, but Ginny herself didn’t appear nauseated. She spoke matter-of-factly, as if to say this was simply what had happened on her subway ride. “A long time ago I wanted to be a nurse, and now Rafe wants to be a doctor.”
“My daughter’s in medical school,” Pru said.
“The difference is, your daughter’s already in medical school and my son’s in the eighth grade. He hasn’t gotten a single A in high school yet.”
“Or a single C, presumably. Listen,” Pru said, “I don’t know much about multiple sclerosis, but does it affect a person’s thinking? Because my husband…”
“The professor?” Ginny said. “Is he not here?”
Now Pru understood why Ginny had appeared uncertain when she entered the room: she’d been looking for Spence. Was it possible Pru was keeping Spence from Ginny, fearing that, if she met him, she wouldn’t want the job? “My husband’s resting,” she said. “But when he gets up, I’d like you to meet him.”
“Does your husband have Alzheimer’s?”
Pru thought of the neurologist’s words. You can’t know for certain. Then she thought of his other words. Given the symptoms, blood work, and scans, I’d be shocked if it was anything else. “Yes,” she said, “my husband has Alzheimer’s.” She hadn’t said these words to anyone but Sarah, and to her surprise, she felt relief.
A rumbling came from across the apartment. Spence used to move with such grace; now he lurched like a drunkard.
“Darling,” she said, “you’re up.” She was glad it was morning, when he was most alert. Get the job, she thought, as if he, not Ginny, were the one applying for it.
Morningside Heights Page 11
