by Dale Peck
“Oh, Aunt Endean.” Claudia’s cheeks shone with a high, polished light. “I wish you’d come.”
Nellydean just shook her head and backed away, a stricken expression on her face, and in the cab Claudia was giddy, practically hysterical. She only stopped laughing to spit out some inanity at the driver.
“Oh my God I love your turban!” She burst into giggles and the giggles turned into ows, ow-ow-ow, and she made an attempt at what I think was controlled breathing and then she said, “What’s that smell? Is it frankincense? Or cardamom? Are you eating dinner up there?”
She tried to lean forward to put her face through the window but couldn’t. For his part the cabbie kept saying, “Not in my cab, please, not in my cab. You waited nine months, now please, wait ten minutes more. Just ten minutes more.”
It fell apart at the hospital. Not just Claudia’s composure, but the whole charade: it fell apart as soon as the triage nurse asked for the name of Claudia’s obstetrician and Claudia said, “I don’t have one.”
It was the triage nurse who actually said, “Girl, what have you been doing for the past nine months?” All I could manage was her name.
“Claudia?”
“Shut up, Jamie,” Claudia said, very calmly. To the triage nurse, she said, “I’m in labor. I need to have a cesarean. I don’t know what you have to do to make that happen but you have to make it happen now.”
I grabbed her arm. “Claudia, what the hell is going on?”
She whirled on me. I thought she was going to slap me the way she’d slapped me that day in the car, but her words hit even harder. “Get the fuck away from me, Jamie. I never want to see you again.”
The waiting room was windowless, its white walls glistening under the fluorescent lights. After nearly a year in No. 1 its antiseptic purity was unbearable. I sat on a couch whose mottled upholstery was so durable it scratched the backs of my legs through what was left of my pants. The plants in the room were plastic, fake palm fronds waxed to an oily sheen, the tables made of some particle board concoction no more solid than a sandcastle’s walls. Oh, it was dry as a desert, that room, and I longed for the fine old stink of my mother’s buried house, the plainer truths of stone and wood, paper, dust, mold. I had to fight the urge to run—the revolting prospect of convalescing in such a place was only topped by the prospect of failing there—but Claudia’s suitcase anchored me with the weight of Nellydean’s gifts: before and during and after. The worn leather was soft and warm beneath my fingers, and when I brought it to my nose it smelled like leather, and like the shop—dust laid on top of mold, a dry but spicy smell like cinnamon in coffee. When I fell asleep it was with my cheek resting on its smooth surface, and when I woke up my shadow remained there, painted with sweat on Claudia’s suitcase as Divine’s had been painted with soot on the passenger seat of Lily Windglass’s second-best car.
I awakened to the sound of a conversation between a nurse and a doctor. “Complications” was the first word I remember hearing, but I could only make out bits of what they were saying, something about lack of prenatal care, high fevers, low birth weight, then, clearly: “Hemorrhaging.” Who was in trouble, I wondered, Claudia or the baby? But all I could make out was: malnutrition, hypoglycemic shock, toxic accumulations in the liver, kidneys, brain, blood barrier. But Claudia? Or the baby? Incubation, intubation. ICU, emergency transfusions, conversion still a possibility.
“Claudia?” I demanded. “Or the baby?”
One of the nurses looked up at me as if she’d forgotten I was there.
“Ms. MacTeer is resting comfortably, Mr. Ramsay, but she asked not to be disturbed. Her son was born at three-fifty this morning.” A puzzled expression crossed the nurse’s face then. “She asked for her pouch?”
I retrieved it from the suitcase. “Here, let me.”
The nurse shook her head. She took the pouch, opened it.
“Ginger snaps! What a good idea!” She took one for herself. “He’s in the viewing room, if you’re interested.”
“He?”
The nurse looked down at her clipboard, looked back up at me.
“Divine?”
And there he was: Divine, version 2.0. He was no bigger than a grocery bag that had been rolled into a wrinkled spiral, and as I looked at him through the glass I suddenly understood why we call them newborns rather than youngborns: because nothing looks as old as an infant. It’s not the age of a person we see, a personality, but the age of the species itself. It’s as if each new life requires the shedding of an old one. Looking at Claudia’s Divine, I could almost see the other Divine, see him being wrung out of this body like water from a cloth. This lumpy sponge was all that was left, but in its tiny twitching limbs I could see it reaching out for its own water, its own chance to swell.
I could see all that, but I couldn’t see Claudia anywhere.
NELLYDEAN ROUSED FROM SLEEP at the bell’s ring, saw me, saw the suitcase in my hand. She nodded at me to open the suitcase and when she saw the jar she’d given Claudia six hours before, the square of cloth, she just shook her head.
“At least she ate the cookies.”
She went to a shelf, opened the dusty lid of a brass-hinged wooden cozy and pulled from it two tiny teacups, nearly translucent in the dawn light. In that single gesture I finally realized Claudia had been telling the truth: there was no treasure. Nothing was hidden in No. 1. Though it might hold hundreds of secrets, thousands, nothing in this building was hidden to Nellydean. The treasure had been nothing more than a story she’d perpetuated so she could stay a little longer among the things she loved.
Now she pointed at the mason jar and I brought it to her. She opened it and poured us each a cup, held one out to me.
“It ain’t nothing,” she said in a voice that was broken, defeated. “It’s just peppermint tea.”
And it was just peppermint tea, but it was also still hot, and as we sat there sipping it silently, the tears rolling down Nellydean’s cheeks, I found myself thinking of all the things parents say to their children. Speak up! they say, and Pipe down! Wash your hands after you use the bathroom and Don’t talk with your mouth full. Look both ways before crossing the street, they caution, and, handing over the birthday present, You said you liked the blue one, right? How many Yes’s and No’s a child hears from its parents, how many Say please’s and Give your grandma a kiss’s and It is not all right to use that word, even at home. Jupiter is the largest planet, they say, and they add, I think, and they do think, these parents, and say, they speak to their children, they offer them the words my parents never offered me. “The words,” I say, but I mean the word, the single word, exhortation and admonition, the prayer hiding behind Tell Jimmy he can ride his own bicycle down that steep hill and If Charlotte’s mother lets Charlotte wear that dress it’s nobody’s fault but her own and all those countless other codes and catch-phrases that now, I finally realize—finally, because I never heard them, never learned the code until after my own childhood was over, until, in other words, it was too late—boil down to one word, without which a child is like an anchorless boat in rough seas, charging always forward because he cannot stop. And that word is: Live.
Nellydean stood up when she’d finished her cup of tea. “It’s times like this you want somebody to blame. But they ain’t nobody to blame except maybe God himself. Or Claudia,” Nellydean said then. “I guess we could always blame Claudia, but what’s the use in that?”
five
THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN something wrong with her. In these scenes there’s always something wrong with her. How to say this? I wanted there to be something wrong with her, because even though we’d spent half a year avoiding any real intimacy we’d done it together. We might not have learned anything about each other but we’d learned about other things, together. We’d held each other’s hand as we wandered through the dark recesses of the basement; we’d gotten lost together, and however bad that was it was still better than being lost alone.
But there
was nothing wrong with her. She simply refused to talk to me.
They kept her in the hospital one night, for observation, then kept Divine in after she left, for further tests. It turned out Claudia had miscalculated the date of his conception and he wasn’t really early, but he was still underweight and had difficulty digesting formula, and his lungs, though fully formed, were still weak. None of which meant there was anything wrong with him, only that there might be. But Claudia wouldn’t talk about him either. When she came home from the hospital I followed her up four flights of stairs but no matter what I said she refused even to look at me. When she got to my mother’s old apartment she closed the door and it didn’t matter that every lock in No. 1 took the same key: Claudia’s door was closed against me.
In desperation I turned to Nellydean. But she had no time for me either. She shuttled up and down between the third and fourth floors laden with cups of noxious smelling brew and bowls of aromatic soup and stew.
It wasn’t until the third day after Claudia came home from the hospital that Nellydean actually spoke to me. I was coming in with dinner; she was standing behind the counter pushing a little piece of paper over its surface like a rag.
“Thai food,” she said without looking up. Then she looked up. “That’s a switch.”
“How do you know what’s in a sealed bag? It’s not like the name of the store’s written on it or anything.”
Nellydean rolled her eyes and tapped her nose, a simultaneous feat of almost yogic difficulty. “Curry, chili powder, lime juice, peanut sauce. Smells like Thai to me.”
I tried sniffing—all I smelled was dust—but Nellydean was wrinkling her nose.
“Some kind-a white fish? I wouldn’t eat too much-a that if I was you. I hope that’s not what you brought for Claudia. Spicy food’s the last thing that girl needs right now.”
I had bought the food for Claudia, though I wouldn’t have dared to mention her name. But now that Nellydean had I said, “Please. Can’t you just tell me? What’s wrong?”
It was late afternoon, February 4, 2002; there was little light left, outside or in, but when Nellydean’s head bent forward I could see clearly every wrinkle and fold in skin worn thin as my clothes by eight decades of constant wear and tear.
“She won’t tell me neither.” Nellydean lifted her head again, stretched her neck long and taut, steeled her voice. “I was wondering if you mightn’t be able to pick up a few things.” She nudged the piece of paper on the counter again, and I realized it was a twenty-dollar bill.
“Groceries?”
“I’ll pay for em. I’d just appreciate it if you picked em up. The deli on Ann and William. I already phoned in an order.”
“But why don’t….” I let my voice trail off as I remembered Claudia and John’s rebukes concerning that word. “Who used to pick up your groceries for you?” I said then, even though I was pretty sure I knew the answer to that question too.
“Justine used to come round fairly regular, although this winter’s been a little unpredictable.” She tapped the twenty on the counter. “It’s mostly fresh food. I’ve got enough canned goods to last a lifetime.”
I went to the counter then, gave her the Thai food, took the money, but before I went back out I said, “How long has it been? Since you left No. 1?”
“That’s not the kind-a thing I keep track of,” Nellydean said, picking up the bag of food. “Well, let me see if Claudia wants any curry.”
A half hour later, as I turned onto Dutch Street from Fulton, I was immediately stopped by the glare of headlights shining from a flat-fronted white van. Sonny, I thought, but this van was bigger than his, but it wasn’t till I saw the mural on the side, the hills, the sliver of waterfall, that I recognized it as the Merton and Morton van that had brought my mother’s magic cabinet to the shop last summer. A scrolled carpet lay on the Belgian blocks at the back of the van, but then, when I got closer, I realized that what I’d taken to be some kind of spindle sticking out of the roll was actually a head fashioned from blackened bronze. It was bigger than a big watermelon, with bulging egg-sized eyes and an enormous Byzantine nose. Eight feet beneath lips like crushed cigars two steel-sandaled feet poked from the wrapping—which was, in fact, a rolled-up carpet, unraveling and full of holes. The feet were the size of Wonder Bread loaves, each toe as big as the biscuits I’d baked at the Big N.
A voice echoed out of the darkened interior of the truck.
“Sorry bout the late drop-off. The Garden’s, you know, it’s a little off the beaten path.”
A gray-haired man, maybe fifty, maybe fifty-five, emerged from the shadows and dropped nimbly onto the street, followed by a second man who looked to be in his twenties. Both of them had wheeled pallets in their hands, and they positioned these just inside the door to the shop while I watched them.
Suddenly Nellydean appeared in the doorway. She had her trusty broom in her hands and she glared at the two men, who hopped quickly out of her way, then smiled at each other behind her back. Nellydean stalked down the three steps to the statue and thumped its toga-clad shoulder with her broom handle. A hollow boom emanated from its mouth, a kettle drum’s basso profundo declaration of war, and even as my throat constricted I thought: that was the sound I’d wanted to hear every time I tapped my hammer on the basement’s walls.
“Bronze my ass,” Nellydean said, more to the statue than me. “Goddamned woman couldn’t tell the difference between cast iron and the Chrysler Building if her life depended on it.” She lifted a corner of the carpet then, as if inspecting its worth, then flipped it back derisively. “You got something for me?”
I handed Nellydean the groceries.
“And?”
I dug in my pocket for the change: all of sixteen cents. One of the movers, the young one I think, snickered.
“Whyn’t you make yourself useful here while I take these upstairs.”
She disappeared into the building, leaving me alone with the movers. It still remained to lift the statue up No. 1’s three steps and onto the waiting pallets. Though hollow, it looked, as Nellydean said, to be cast iron; I couldn’t even imagine how much something like that would weigh. By then the older man had stationed himself at the statue’s head, his younger partner at its sandaled feet, so I positioned myself in the middle with my back to the shop. I couldn’t get my hands under the statue’s back until the head man heaved up his end; then the foot man got his end in the air and I sort of played fulcrum, sort of, although in truth I couldn’t get much of a purchase on the statue’s ass, which was as hard and round as the bottom of a wok.
“Hey,” the foot man said, as, an inch at a time, we sidled toward the steps, “who is he anyway?”
“I’m—”
“Think it’s Hermes?” the foot man said over me, grunting as he took the first step.
“Nah,” the head man said, swinging his end around. “Hermes is usually depicted in a running pose with a more sensitive expression. And besides,” the head man winced as he followed us up the first step, “no wingèd sandals.”
“Wingèd, eh?”
“Fuck you, Philistine.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” the foot man said, lurching up the second step, “whoever he is, he’s fucking heavy. Apollo?”
The head man shook his head. “Look at the eyes, the mouth. Hair in disarray, laurel crown missing. This guy’s a belligerent drunk.” He’d made it up the second step by then, and we paused to catch our breath. “My guess is you’ll find an amphora under there when you unwrap him,” and then he led the assault on the third step, and it was all the foot man could do to gasp,
“Amphe-what?”
“Amphora. A jar, jarhead.” I was wondering how I was going to get out of the way so the movers could set the statue on the pallets when we were stopped by a breathy voice.
“My goodness! It looks like I’m just in time!”
At the sound of John’s voice I started to let go of the statue, but groans from its head and feet stopped me
.
“Holy Mary mother of God!” the foot man gasped as his right leg stumbled from the top step down to the second. His left leg, still on the upper step, folded at the knee and smacked against the corrugated metal. I thought he was going to fall over and I threw my arms around the statue, one under, one on top of its waist. The statue trembled and when it was still I was able to turn my head. The foot man’s eyes were closed, and in the oblique light from the shop his face appeared to be beet purple. His nostrils opened and closed with each heavy breath he took. Then I saw John.
He lurched wildly as he walked up Dutch from—from John, I suddenly realized, and I would have wondered about the coincidence if there weren’t more pressing matters occupying my attention. Claudia’s dress hung off John’s left shoulder like the toga worn by the statue in my arms and his hair was a hard brown-black sphere, a skullcap as matted and solid as Reggie Packman’s dreads. I wondered where his helmet was, but then for the first time ever I saw his face. It looked naked without its helmet. Something—tears, I want to say, but who really knows—had washed the dirt from his right cheek, and where bare skin showed through I could see the prickles of something that was probably scabies, and the flesh itself was so thin and sunken it outlined each tooth in his mouth. But the left side of his face was a thousand times worse: as misshapen as the badly soldered bust of the statue in my arms. It looked as though Sonny had only hit John on the left side of his head, and I could see that too, as if it were happening on the street in front of me, Sonny’s good arm—his sighted arm—swinging out and connecting with John’s profile again and again. It was as if he had beaten an image etched on a coin, and even though there wasn’t any blood on John’s face his right eye had swollen to a slitted mound and that side of his mouth looked as though it were pressed against a window. And he was crying too. Not sobbing but wailing aloud. But not for himself. For the statue.
“Oh my goodness!” John exclaimed as he careened toward us. “Whatever has happened!” He pitched himself up the steps and practically fell against the statue. He threw his reedy arms around the statue’s waist just a few inches above mine, but even that weight was enough to force a pinched mmph out of the foot man. That was all the breath anyone could spare for a moment. Then from my left I heard a thin voice.
