by Chase Novak
“But what was it? What did they say?”
“They said you were my trophy wife.”
“Yes, that was it,” Leslie says. She laughs, holds her arms out wide, looks at herself—her drooping breasts; the rippling muscles of her abdomen; the roughness of her skin, the result of so many waxings and peelings and laser treatments—and then she looks at Alex. “No trophy now, right?”
Rather than comfort her with words, Alex puts his arms around his beloved wife, holding her close. Kneading her shoulders, he slowly turns Leslie around and embraces her from behind, slowly entering her, moving back and forth, side to side, and breathing into her ear, which, even in the consuming, lovely mindlessness of this sudden lust, he manages to remember is something she likes. “It’s like sweet wind in my ears,” she has said. “Like we’re flying.”
A little later, they soak together in the bathtub, which, though luxuriously large, is not really large enough to hold them both, and so Alex soaks on the bottom and Leslie is half on top of him, half to his side. They feel so close to each other. They both look deep within themselves and find no words to describe their feelings.
“Do you want me to wash you?” Alex asks.
“No soap, just water,” Leslie answers.
“Where do you think they are?” Alex wonders. “Do you think they’re together?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Leslie cups some water and brings it to her face. “I hope so. It’s not good.”
“What’s not good?” He tries to keep any hint of impatience out of his voice. But he has not failed to note that Leslie’s conversation is becoming more and more dominated by missing words and wrong words and general verbal confusion. Now and again it happens to him too, but his difficulties are nowhere on the scale of hers. And if it is language that makes us human, then Leslie is becoming slowly less and less human, and the grief he feels at this prospect is not based on judgment—the distinction between human and animal has long since ceased to make much difference to him—but is, rather, based on the fear of losing her. And he is losing her. He can feel it. She is fading just as surely as loved ones can begin to disappear when they become gravely ill or start to succumb to Alzheimer’s disease—there is less and less of them, until one day they are gone.
“You’re a scrubber,” Leslie says, followed by a low laugh.
A scrubber? Alex supposes she means he has scrubbed her back with a washcloth.
“We were talking about the kids,” he says.
“I know.”
“I was wondering if they are together and you said, ‘It’s not good.’ ”
“Alex. Please. I won’t be condescended to.”
There’s a welcome edge to her voice. Lately her main emotions have been rage and confusion, but this last remark drips with sarcasm, and Alex’s spirits lift.
“But what did you mean?” he asks.
“I was a highly respectful editor at a terrific New York publishing house, so don’t talk to me as if I were some kind of idiot.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” Alex says, but all he can think is: You said respectful.
“They need to be together, Adam and Alice,” Leslie says, as much to herself as to Alex.
“I worry.”
“I love them so much. No matter what, they’re my… they’re my babies.”
“What if they go to the police?” Alex says.
“To say what? What could they say?”
“Whatever children say. They are clearly frightened—why else would they be running.”
“They know nothing,” Leslie says.
“Hey, my parents thought I knew nothing about their private lives—but I knew my father was having an affair and that he had a collection of photographs that could have filled a porn museum, and I knew my mother drank to excess, and I knew all kinds of other things too that they assumed I was in the dark about.”
“Those are silly secrets,” Leslie says.
“Silly maybe, but not so secret.”
“Our secrets are different.”
“Worse, you could say.”
“And we guard them with everything we have. All we do is keep our secrets; it’s the main thing.”
“But we can make mistakes,” Alex says. He realizes he has been scrubbing Leslie’s back for over a minute, and the skin is bright red—which seems to highlight the wisps and curls of hair on her shoulder blades. “Letting them get out of their rooms was a bit of a fuckup, wouldn’t you say?”
“They tricked us,” Leslie says, nodding.
“And they show no interest in coming home.”
“Maybe they want to and they are not able.”
“They’re running, Leslie. We need to get them back in the fold before they start telling tales.”
Leslie doesn’t say anything. She is engrossed suddenly with trying to touch the tip of her tongue to a bead of water that hangs from the tip of her nose.
“Leslie?”
“Hmm?”
“What are you thinking about?”
“I’m remembering.”
“What are you remembering?”
“I have a mother too. Or maybe no more? Maybe she died?”
“No, she’s alive. She’s old, she’s sick.”
“In San Francisco, right?”
“That’s right.”
“San Francisco, California.”
“Right.”
Leslie is silent for a moment. She lifts her hips out of the water, soaps her middle, and then relaxes and watches the soap bubbles zizz off of her.
“With my sister.”
“Yes.”
“Cynthia.”
“Your memory’s getting better again.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s super-duper.” Her voice curdles with sarcasm. “I actually remember my sister’s name. I think I will be working as an editor again before too long.”
“You ought to be a little more forgiving of yourself, Leslie.”
She reaches behind herself and lovingly pats Alex’s cheek.
“How much longer?” she asks.
“How much longer?”
“This,” she says. “This life.” Before he can answer—or before his not answering becomes too sad—Leslie begins to kick her legs in the bathwater. The water starts to foam, and as she kicks with more and more vigor, waves of soapy water slosh around the tub.
“Take it easy,” Alex says.
But Leslie’s fluttering legs only work harder and faster and soon the water is flying every which way.
“Stop!” he cries. But she does not stop. And the chaos she is creating is somehow infectious. It triggers something in Alex, some love of fun, some curiosity about what will happen next. And first with his hands and then with his legs he too begins to beat wildly at the water inside their tub. No doubt about it—it’s fun. The walls are soaked, thick sudsy gray puddles form on the floor, but who cares? It’s fun! It’s really fun. Alex’s and Leslie’s barks of excitement and shrieks of laughter echo against the room’s black-and-white tiles.
Across the country, in San Francisco, Cynthia Kramer is showing a mahogany tripod table from the era of King George III to yet another young married couple with bewildering amounts of dough to spend on fragile antiques. Unlike many of her customers, these two actually seem to have a great deal of knowledge about the objects they crave, and after they ask Cynthia a question about a painting or a pair of candlesticks, they listen keenly to whatever she says, all the while trading little conspiratorial glances, as if trying telepathically to decide whether or not to offer on a piece. Gilty Pleasures on Castro is still the place to shop in northern California for people interested in old English and early American furnishings. The problem with the business now is the same problem it has had for the past ten years, and that is half the time it is closed. Cynthia used to be open all day long six days a week, but after a disastrous trip to New York and the heartbreaking alienation from her beloved sister, and the crushing depression that the loss of Leslie caused in
Cynthia, she can manage only two or three hours a day. Her energies simply will not return, despite the cavalcade of cheerful little pills that march through her system. Now the sign on the door says BY APPOINTMENT ONLY above the telephone number of a cell that lives in the glove compartment of her car, a phone whose ring she often as not can’t hear and whose backlog of messages she rarely checks.
Right now, her shop is filled with English and early American pieces, many of them coming straight out of Leslie and Alex’s house, arriving in crates, unasked-for and unacknowledged. She cannot look at one of them without feeling in the pit of her stomach the terror of that afternoon ten years ago when her sister out of nowhere began accusing her of making a move on Alexander Twisden. The injustice of this cannot be forgotten, the betrayal, the ugliness. Cynthia’s boyfriend once tried to convince her to forgive and forget, and even went so far as to suggest she was being rigid, unreasonable, that she was holding on to the insult long past its expiration date. But what was the worth of his advice? Of course he believed in forgiving and forgetting—he was already having an affair and making preparations to leave her.
Yet what can she do with the pieces that arrive? Throw them off the Golden Gate Bridge? Leave them in front of the Salvation Army over on Mission Street? And so she has been selling the vases and the dinnerware and the silver and the mahogany, and the needlepoint and the carpets and the oppressive-but-pricey paintings as they come in.
And why? she often asked herself. Why were Leslie and Alex divesting themselves of their fine furniture, some of which, she has noticed, has had the varnish gnawed off the legs and arms? What was going on in that terrible, crazy house? And what about her niece and nephew, neither of whom she has ever met?
“I’m not really entirely certain this isn’t a reproduction,” the male half of the newlywed couple says, hoisting a bronze Regency inkwell, the lid of which resembles a book, a Bible perhaps, presided over by an unclothed cherub, all of it set upon nine inches of black marble.
“I can assure you that it’s original,” Cynthia says. “It’s been with one family for over two hundred years.”
In actuality, it is one of the items Leslie had sent to her shortly after Cynthia left New York and fled back to San Francisco.
“It’s very beautiful,” the wife says, tapping her finger on the cherub’s naked bottom. She smiles apologetically at Cynthia, and, in a flash, Cynthia sees the whole tedious landscape of their marriage, how this poor girl will be forever smoothing over all the feathers that her husband rudely ruffles. She will be picking up the dirty socks of his bad behavior until she drops dead—or gets the hell out.
Just then the phone in the shop begins to ring. Cynthia squints at the caller-ID box on the phone, but the plastic is smudged and her eyes are not really very good, and so, as usual, despite the technological prompt, she has no idea who is calling. Normally she doesn’t bother to pick up, but this time she does, primarily as a way of keeping herself from saying something rude to the young man.
“Gilty Pleasures,” she says instead of hello.
The sound of breathing, heavy and troubled. She ought to hang up—listening to some pathetic creep pleasure himself is not her idea of a good start to a day. But she gives it one more try and repeats the store’s name.
“Cindy,” the voice says, and there are only two people alive who still call her that, and one of them, her mother, is in a coma.
“Hello, Leslie.” Cynthia glances at the arch clock somberly ticking next to the telephone; it’s eleven in California, two in the afternoon in New York. Assuming Leslie is in New York. She may be in France, or on the moon. Cynthia waits for Leslie to give the reason for the call, but all there is is more breathing. It’s both alarming and annoying, and Cynthia is about to hang up.
“Cindy?”
“What do you want, Leslie? I’m surprised you would even—”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Cynthia presses her lips together, but she feels the strong pressure of tears filling her eyes.
“Are you okay, Les?” She cannot help herself.
“No.”
“No?”
“No, I’m not, I’m not…” Leslie is crying—or is she? Horrible, strangulated howls of what seems to be grief pour out of her, but they do not sound like anything Cynthia has ever heard before. She wonders—Alex? Has something happened to Alex? Or has Alex—whose disgusting, insane behavior was, finally, at the root of the fight between the two sisters—left her, hit her, done something unforgivable?
“What’s going on, Les? Why are you calling?”
“My babies…”
Oh my God, Cynthia thinks. What could be worse?
“What’s happened to them?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Cynthia hears the chime of sleigh bells followed by the vigorous closing of the door—the newlyweds have moved on, looking for another antique store in which hubby can demonstrate his expertise.
“They ran away!”
“Both of them?”
“Yes.”
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know. How can you not know?” Cynthia feels herself being drawn into the old and beautiful familiarity of her relationship with her younger sister, and she tries to stop the process—it’s like having ten years sober and suddenly being tempted by a bottle of Boone’s Farm.
“Two days, maybe?” At this point, Leslie tends to mark time in meals, but she knows if she says four eatings ago it will push Cynthia away. She feels a twist of impatience. How is it that Alex can still use his wristwatch, pay bills, talk to people on the outside?
“Have you notified the police?” Cynthia asks.
Leslie is silent. Finally, she says, “Yes.”
“And what do they say?”
“Nothing. They won’t help.”
“They won’t help?”
“You have to!”
“I have to what?”
“Help us. We’re flap…”
“Flap?”
“Not flap. Um… frantic. We are frantic.…”
Cynthia lives in a six-room apartment in Telegraph Hill, and after closing Gilty Pleasures earlier than planned she sits at her breakfast counter drinking green tea and eating shortbread cookies. She hears music from her neighbor’s apartment, bright, happy, up-tempo music, folk-rocky good-girl music, music that sounds like a mockery of Cynthia’s inner life.
She dunks her shortbread cookie into her tea—the nice thing about living alone is you don’t have to be too fussy about your eating habits, or anything else pertaining to manners. She swirls the cookie around, wanting it to absorb the maximum amount of moisture before she eats it.
The crumbs from the cookie disperse in the tea, floating this way and that. There is something about it that trips a memory, and Cynthia is instantly transported to her childhood home in St. Louis, to the playroom in her family’s drafty Tudor near Washington University. The two sisters are playing tea party, but with their own personal pop bent to it—they are two married women making tea for their husbands, Daryl Hall and John Oates.
A tornado of longing for her sister whirls through Cynthia. She covers her face and weeps into her hands. It feels all right to weep, to shed the tears she failed to shed when her connection to her sister was severed. Once she has composed herself, she opens up her laptop and books her flight to New York. She chooses the first flight out the next day, but then she cancels that reservation and finds another flight for today, 4:00 p.m., which will get her to JFK a little before two in the morning, and then she changes that to the red-eye, which will get her in around six.
Adam and Alice have, for the time being, fallen in with Rodolfo and his wild friends. Peter has gone into some sort of rage and no one can hang out at his apartment where the manacled parents are kept, but none of the gang seems to care about this one way or the other. They are all used to getting bounced out of places. Camps, schools
, restaurants, movie theaters, playgrounds, amusement parks, beaches, their own homes. Some disperse to Central Park; a couple of them mention something about Carl Schurz Park way on the Upper East Side; and the rest, including Alice and Adam, simply walk as a pack two blocks south and one block west to an apartment on Riverside Drive.
Here the ruination of the place is so extreme that in comparison, Peter’s place seems cozy. The new hanging-out spot is the home of a fleshy, sneering girl whom everyone calls Chiquita. She wears a brown-and-white Peruvian wool cap and has several tattoos that run like angry tears from the corners of her eyes down her cheeks. Her voice is low and foggy; she sounds as if she has a bad cold, or has just awakened. The apartment is on the top floor of an older building on Riverside and when Chiquita brings her friends in, the doorman pretends to find something interesting in the tips of his shoes, making not the slightest gesture as the rank file of boys and girls streams past him, with their smell of smoke and wind and squirrel and hormonal chaos trailing after them like exhaust out the back of a bus.
The wooden floors of Chiquita’s apartment are bare and so scratched and warped that it looks as if a hockey team has been over them with their skates on. Except for a high-backed sofa, there is not a stick of furniture in the apartment, and the sofa itself is piled with everything from broken ice trays to lamb bones.
The windows are covered with sheets and blankets. The wind makes its frigid way into the apartment; the window glass has long been shattered, and all there is are empty mullions. The walls, where holes have not been banged through them, are thoroughly defaced with incomprehensible graffiti, everything from anarchist As to ravings that are apparently obscenities in an unknown language, judging from the furious energy that seems to emanate from the letters.
Teenagers of indeterminate gender chase and grope each other, and there is shit on the floor. Literally, shit on the floor.
Alice instinctively takes Adam’s hand.
“What’s with your sister?” Rodolfo asks, sneering. Ever since Alice called Adam and he found his way over to the West Side, Rodolfo has been weird toward him. When they walked on the sidewalk, Rodolfo continually “accidentally” bumped into Adam, sometimes so hard that he forced him off the sidewalk. When he speaks to Adam he stands too close to him, and he also likes to throw playful punches, usually stopping an inch short of Adam’s stomach, but when the target of the punch is Adam’s arm Rodolfo is not always so careful to stop before contact is made.
