“No, but something about Meyerhold’s drawings must have gotten to him. And he must have felt they’d speak to you as well.”
“Weirdly enough, they do. They’re not what I’m usually pulled to—but something about them . . . A mysteriousness. Not quite playful, not quite aggressive. Clowns are like that, I guess. Cheerful, but with an edge of something sharp, or sad . . .” She looked at me. “But do you want the drawings, Cam? As a memento?”
“No,” I said. “I like knowing they’re with the person Jordan wanted to have them.”
“I wish Mom had seen them,” she said.
HER STATEMENT gave me what I needed, a go-ahead. “I suspect he showed them to her,” I said.
Setting the envelope down on the cloth next to her, Danny turned and looked inquiringly at me. From my bag I pulled the snapshot she’d left at The Fourth Wall, laying it on the ground next to the envelope. “Columbine,” I said, pointing at Eve. “And Pierrot.”
She frowned at it, then at me. “Ye-e-es?” she drawled, warily.
“Only here, Pierrot’s the one wearing the mask,” I said. “Jordan needed it to be that way. A secret.”
“Jordan . . .” Her eyes widened slightly with a realization under way, expanding with each passing second. “You’re saying this is . . . but that’s impossible, Cam.”
“Impossible? No, just unimaginable. Or at least it was for me, until our trip to Ithaca. Physically, of course, it’s entirely possible. Judy Deveare was no doubt right: Eve was inseminated, but Billy wasn’t your father except on paper.”
Danny began shaking her head. “No, no, no.”
“Why not?” I’d begun, I’d keep going. “My guess is, Eve was in love with Jordan from the time she was fifteen or sixteen. He was the central person in her life. And he was everything her father wasn’t: a successful professional, a world traveler, an artist, attentive to her—”
“Oh, come on, Cam, don’t shove a bunch of amateur psychology at me and expect me to swallow it!”
Her resistance was as unsurprising as it was powerful. “Try seeing this from your mother’s perspective,” I said. “Jordan was different from all the other adults Eve knew. Not just Dan and Sarah, but everyone. She trusted him, but it went further than that: she revered him. She imagined herself his apprentice. He’s the one who urged her to study horticulture and landscaping, remember? He understood who she was, what made her happy—flowers, plants, trees, land . . . She must’ve fantasized they’d end up working together. She’d design a garden for him! She’d have his child . . .”
“This is crazy! Why would he . . .” Danny twisted one of her rings off her finger and stared at it, as if it and not my words were the source of her incredulity. Without looking at me, she added, “You’re asking me to believe my mother’s uncle seduced her—”
“No, not seduced. It’s more complicated than that.” Reaching again for my bag, I took out a small envelope and laid it next to the Halloween photo. “Take a look at this.”
Danny opened the envelope and pulled out a photocopy of a black-and-white photograph.
“That’s from my family photo collection—such as it is,” I said. “Now, think back on Eve and yourself in Jordan’s garden, when you were little. I bet Eve looked a lot like that woman, didn’t she?”
“Who is this?” Danny regarded the image closely. “And why are there all these little holes in the picture?”
It was covered with tiny pockmarks from my darts. “It’s a copy of an old photograph, the only one I’ve got of my mother,” I said. “That’s Camilla. Eve’s aunt.”
“Wow. I’ve never seen a picture of her before,” Danny said. “Neither you or Mom ever showed me one. I’ve always wondered what she looked like.”
“Your mother and Camilla looked a good deal alike. Especially to Jordan, no doubt. And especially at this age”—I tapped the photo—“roughly the same as Eve was at Cornell.” I paused. “When you told me Jordan had visited Eve there, everything fell into place. They had an encounter then, Danny, I’m sure of it. And it changed everything.”
SHE HANDED me the photo. “Changed . . . ?” she asked. Though she still wasn’t able to look at me, in her tone I could hear a new, hesitant receptiveness.
“My guess,” I went on, “is that for Jordan, the notion of having an actual relationship with his own niece must’ve been more than he could handle. Even if she was his niece only by marriage. He couldn’t go ahead with it. He knew it would turn excruciating in the end. And not just for him—for Eve, too. Because of who she was. And who I was.”
“How do you mean?”
“It goes back to Camilla. My father felt guilty for having impregnated my mother. For causing her death, in effect.”
“That’s absurd.”
“I know. But I’m sure it’s how he felt. And my presence—just the sheer fact of me—reminded him too much of my mother. That’s why he always kept a distance between us. Yet he didn’t want to make things worse for me by choosing Eve over me—which was how he believed I would’ve experienced it. And he wasn’t wrong!”
Danny said nothing; my words seemed to have stunned her into vacancy.
“Then there was Eve,” I went on. “Forty years younger! I’m sure Jordan was terrified he’d never be able to make things right for her, after their encounter. That he would destroy her, just as he had my mother.”
At that Danny roused herself. She held up one hand, palm out, in a blocking gesture. “Wait,” she said. “You’ve got it completely wrong! Stop!”
“Hang on.” There was more evidence; although I didn’t have it in hand, I could invoke it. “Remember that picture Judy showed us? The one of Billy?”
She nodded.
“Billy was short and skinny. Not like him, right?” I pointed at Eve’s masked partner. “After hearing Judy’s story, I looked again at this picture, and I knew Eve had written the truth on the back of it. This man wasn’t Billy, but Jordan.”
“No! It’s someone else!”
“It’s Jordan,” I repeated. “I know it is, Danny.”
“You know?” She gave a quick, hard laugh; then, rolling onto her back, she pulled up her knees so her feet rested flat on the ground. “Okay,” she said, staring skyward. “You think we’re sisters? Go ahead and tell me what you know, then. And don’t leave out one fucking bit of evidence.”
She turned to stare at me, and I could see I’d lose her if I let her down now. “Tell me everything. And then I’ll tell you what I know,” she said.
WHAT I knew, I hadn’t even realized I knew until I fooled with the photos, rearranging them on my desk. Sam, Danny, Jordan, Eve, and me. Something had made me play with those pictures, some intuition, a sense of urgency. And I wouldn’t have concentrated on them if Stuart hadn’t first transformed me into my father.
I described to Danny how Stuart had worked his particular magic on me. After becoming, for a few powerful moments, Jordan himself, I’d been able (not immediately but thereafter, over a period of days) to assemble the pieces of my father’s life in a new way. For the first time, I’d allowed myself to look at what lay behind his reticence. Having been made to resemble him outwardly, I somehow had access to his inner life.
After my mother’s death, I told Danny, Jordan had come to believe he’d nothing left to offer or receive, from me or anyone else. But Eve had broken through his barricades. Her lush physicality, her seeming self-sufficiency: how could he not have responded to these, as if to an extraordinary scent? And how could Eve, virtually fatherless, not have reacted in turn to his responses?
Encountering each other in Ithaca, they’d found it impossible to resist enacting a desire each was no longer able or willing to suppress. After that visit, Eve had become a permanent captive to her craving for my father. Jordan, though, knew what he needed to do: for the sake of the daughter who’d already cost him one passion, he’d have to forgo another. And for Eve’s sake . . . There could be no shared life, no garden; he would not allow himself to
be compelled by such fantasies. He would love Eve, but not as she longed for. Capture her, but never be taken himself.
DANNY HEARD me out as she stared at the canopy of leaves overhead. When I’d finished, she tilted her head sideways and gazed at me.
“You’re asking me to believe Mom was in love with your father. Well, maybe so, in a college-girl way.” She pulled herself upright and sat cross-legged. “But for her entire life? Have you forgotten who we’re talking about—who Mom was? She always surrounded herself with men her own age or younger. She could have any man she wanted, and she knew it! Forget the fact that Jordan was her uncle, part of her family. Why would Mom want a man more than twice her age?”
“Because he was the only man who ever mattered. All the others were simply distractions! She had to keep herself occupied with them—not because she was bored but because she was desperate. She wanted Jordan. And she didn’t know what to do with the fact that he wouldn’t have her. Even though he loved her—she knew he loved her . . . The other men were like a drug she took, to make her situation bearable.”
“And you’re saying she finally convinced him to be the father of her child. How’d she do that, Cam? How can you believe something so crazy?”
I nodded. “Let me tell you what I think happened. The whole time she was upstate, Eve clung to the belief that Jordan would come round. Eventually he’d accept that the two of them had to be together. That the really absurd thing was the fact that they weren’t. And since they’d remained in touch—”
“How do you know that?”
“After his death, while I was cleaning everything out of his house, I happened to glance at a few of his phone bills. He’d saved them all; he was very retentive that way. I got curious when I saw Eve’s number on several bills, so I looked at the rest. He’d made regular calls to her in Ithaca, Danny. Over a long period of time.”
She frowned, still disbelieving. “But did he and Mom actually see each other, or did they just talk on the phone?”
“They saw each other, though not frequently. Jordan sometimes drove into the city from Frenchtown, to go to the theater. She’d come down from Ithaca, and they’d meet in Manhattan.”
“Did you see her when she visited here?”
“Not often. Sometimes we’d have coffee, and she’d mention having seen a play with Jordan. Which didn’t surprise me—when he came into town, he always went to more than one show. He’d take me to one performance, Eve to another. She always stayed with friends, never with me. She didn’t stay in the Ninth Street apartment either. She didn’t want to see Dan and Sarah.”
“So you’re saying the person she really came to New York to see was Jordan?”
“She was in love with him, Danny! She couldn’t not see him. And for whatever reasons of his own, he couldn’t not see her either. They were at an impasse—unable to be together as lovers, or to accept separation as necessary. And I guess on some level, they wanted it that way. At least Jordan must have.”
Danny rubbed her eyelids as though my words were inflaming them. “What do you think broke the impasse?”
“Jordan was in his early seventies when Eve decided she had to have a baby. I imagine she’d held out for that all along—thinking it’d be the thing that would finally make Jordan relent. But he’d always refused to become her lover, and he was still refusing. So she came up with another plan.”
“Insemination? You’re saying she convinced Jordan to help her conceive artificially, since he wouldn’t be her lover? But why would he do that?”
“He loved her,” I said, the words at once balm and salt, relief and reopening of the old wound. Eve more than me.
“But what’s the difference, Cam? I mean, what does it matter whether a kid’s conceived one way or the other? The father’s still the father!”
I nodded. “You’re right. But Eve must’ve wanted to observe a distinction—for Jordan, not for herself. He’d made it clear, after that one encounter in Ithaca, that he wouldn’t ever sleep with her again. And she wasn’t asking him to reconsider—not at this stage. She must’ve promised him that if she managed to conceive artificially, she’d ask nothing further of him. She’d raise their child by herself. Jordan wouldn’t be around forever, after all. Yet maybe there’d be a few years during which he could see her happy. She would’ve gotten part of what she’d longed for . . . And Jordan wouldn’t have to worry about me. I’d know nothing about how Eve actually became pregnant. Billy Deveare would take care of that.”
I STOPPED talking. For a while, silence reigned around us; then two ducks lifted off, squawking, from the far edge of the pond below, alighting in the water with a noisy commotion of wings. Once they’d quieted, Danny picked up the Halloween photo.
“You’re right. Billy’s not my father. We both knew that after seeing Judy,” she said softly as she looked at the picture. “But neither is Jordan. You’ve got that wrong, regardless of what might’ve gone on between him and Mom.”
“Well, who do you think is, then?”
I expected a vexed “I don’t know!” Instead, she spoke a name, and when I heard it, my confusion immediately yielded to comprehension. Naturally she’d invoke Sam—how could she not? He had been her father, in all but fact.
Seeing me nod, she began shaking her head. “No, listen to me, Cam! That”—she pointed vehemently at the masked man next to Eve—“is Sam.”
She was speaking the truth as she felt it: I could see this, feel it. “I know how crazy it sounds,” she added slowly. “But it’s true. And Sam knows it.”
Her last four words winded me. Several moments passed before I could take in enough air to speak. “Danny, for God’s sake,” I began, as a moist flush broke out across my face.
Danny reached for one of my hands, massaging its clammy palm. “The thing is,” she said, “after our weekend, you sifted the evidence and saw Jordan. And I remembered this picture and saw Sam.”
I COULDN’T make my way to further speech, couldn’t form any words. Like a narcotic, shock stilled me. Releasing my hand, Danny continued talking.
“Remember when Judy showed us that picture of Billy and said I didn’t resemble her brother in the least? She was right. Nothing in his face or body reminded me at all of myself. Some part of me just knew he wasn’t my father. But that only made things worse—it meant I’d never find out who my father really was.
“One day I left work early, went home, and stared at myself in my bathroom mirror for a long time. I made myself think of Mom’s body and mine, how they were alike and not alike. Since her death I’d been having trouble recalling what she looked like, but on this day I could remember her perfectly. Like she was standing there, staring with me into the mirror . . . I could see I had her shoulders and hips, her hands. Not her feet, though—mine are several sizes bigger. But I’m her height, even though I’m thinner. Then I compared our coloring. I’m less olive-toned than she was. She had dark hair, and mine’s more of a tawny brown, wouldn’t you say?”
She looked at me, expecting a response. Somehow I nodded.
“And my eyes aren’t dark blue, they’re brown, but a shade that’s unusual, distinctive. The color of nutmeg, Mom once described it—like the color of Sam’s eyes. That’s what I found myself thinking as I stared at myself.”
Her smile registered less amusement than perplexity. “It’s a funny sensation, looking hard at your own eyes in a mirror. Ever tried it for more than a few seconds? It’s even weirder when you realize your own eyes remind you of someone else’s. Their color and shape, their lashes and brows—everything’s exactly the same . . .
“At this point I wasn’t saying to myself, ‘Oh, now I get it, Sam’s my father!’ But I did think it was astonishing how much alike our eyes were. And strange, too, that no one else seemed to have noticed the similarity. Then I started thinking about that snapshot I’d left at The Fourth Wall. The masked man in the picture was obviously taller than Billy. And the clothing was wrong, as you noticed. There was another de
tail, too, which you’ve overlooked. The background. See?”
Holding the snapshot before me, she indicated a brick wall in front of which Eve and the masked man were standing. Near them, to Eve’s left, was a delicate Japanese maple tree. To the man’s right, bordering the wall, were two magnolia bushes. The wall needed repointing; along its top, several bricks were missing, which lent the whole structure an air of charming dishevelment.
“I had a feeling this picture wasn’t taken in Ithaca,” Danny said. “And that feeling got stronger and stronger . . . I was right—the picture was taken here in New York. In the Village.”
I GAZED at the photograph.
When Sam and I met in December of 1981, I’d been renting a small, cozy walkup on Cornelia Street. Sam had been on Barrow Street, also in the West Village. He’d rented the top floor of a dilapidated townhouse for the better part of a decade.
When we decided to move in together, we took the money Jordan had left me and bought our own apartment (now mine) on the cheap. Sam’s savings went toward refurbishments of The Fourth Wall, which we’d just opened. In return for those improvements, we’d received a guaranteed long-term lease from the owner of that building.
What had the Barrow Street townhouse looked like?
I’d been there with Sam only a handful of times; our courtship had taken place mostly in my apartment. Had there been a garden in back, with a wall? Yes: I remembered now. We’d sat there once, with Henry, Sam’s housemate. Henry had teased me because I’d never tasted a gin martini; he made me a strong one.
That was in the spring, not long after Sam and I met—which had happened just before Christmas. At The Mad Gardener.
I’d been in Chelsea that day, and decided to stop in and say hello to Eve. Though I hadn’t seen her in several weeks, I’d seen Danny: the previous weekend, Eve had asked me to take care of her daughter. She and some guy had dropped Danny off at my place; the guy, I recalled, had walked Danny to my door while Eve stayed in the car. Danny brought some finger paintings she’d done at school—she was in second grade . . . Eve phoned afterward to thank me for babysitting, and told me I should stop by sometime and see her store. It was looking very festive, she’d said.
Thirty-three Swoons Page 27
