The Emperor's Children

by Claire Messud

  “I’m waiting for Julius to come over.”

  “Julius? What’s happened? David dumped him?”

  “I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. He called me this afternoon, and told me, more or less, what happened.”

  “Why didn’t he call me?” They’d all three always been close, but she had found him, that first week of school, and she’d always thought of him as her friend first. All summer long he’d called her, not Danielle.

  “You’re a newlywed. He didn’t want to interrupt your connubial bliss with his tale of woe.”

  “How woeful can it be?”

  “Pretty woeful.” Danielle repeated the story as Julius had told it to her, including the words of the resident at St. Vincent’s emergency room, who’d warned him that even with her best efforts, the cheek would have an impressive scar. “If it were a dog mauling,” she’d said, “the animal would have to be put down. Are you sure you don’t want to press charges?”

  “Don’t you think he maybe should?” asked Marina. “You can’t let some guy like that—I didn’t like him at the wedding, did you?—you can’t let a guy like that think he can get away with it. I mean, what if he does it again, to someone else? What’s wrong with a guy like that?”

  “I’ll eat you up I love you so,” Danielle said. “And Julius said ‘no!’”

  “It isn’t funny.”

  “It’s a little bit funny. But I know, it’s mostly awful. It’s surreal. The kind of thing you can’t really believe has happened to someone you know. You can’t believe he lived through that. I mean, it was early Saturday morning. Where were we, you know, while that was going on? At suppertime on Friday, it hadn’t happened, and now he’s scarred for life. It makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s what it’s like when somebody dies, I think,” Marina said. “You know, unexpectedly. One minute they’re there and the next they’re not, and you don’t have any way to really get your head around it. Surreal.”

  “Or it’s real. If you know what I mean.” Danielle, Marina thought, was being oddly flippant about the whole thing.

  “When’s he coming over?”

  “In the next half hour or so. I’ve got a bottle of scotch here, and I figure we might tackle it together. He seemed pretty shaken up on the phone.”

  “Since when do you drink scotch?” Marina asked. And then: “Tell you what, why don’t I come over, too? Ludo won’t be here for ages. And when was the last time it was just the three of us?”

  She thought she detected a second’s hesitation at Danielle’s end, and struggled not to succumb to pique when Danielle said, in a voice slightly too cheerful, “Of course. That’s a great idea. Come on over.”

  “Unless the two of you were planning to gossip about the wedding all night?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Come right on over.”

  None of them could remember when last they had gathered, just the three of them. They climbed onto Danielle’s immaculate bed (though not before carefully removing their shoes).

  “You’ve got your good sheets on,” Marina noticed. “Special occasion?”

  “Consolation prize,” said Danielle. “Those of us with no love life have to make going to bed a treat somehow.”

  “I’d trade my love life for these sheets any day,” said Julius.

  “It’s pretty bad, isn’t it? Is it hurting right now?”

  “Seven stitches,” he said. “They gave me codeine at the hospital yesterday, so I’ve been wafting through. Toward the end of a dose, it throbs, though.”

  “Go easy on the scotch.”

  “Oh, lighten up, girlfriend. I need a good buzz on, at this point.”

  “Will your hair grow back okay?” Danielle asked.

  “Apparently. But not before I wander around town for a couple of months like some scabby Frankenstein with a hole in my head.”

  “I think it makes you look intriguing.”

  “Great. An intriguing temporary secretary. Just what everybody doesn’t want.”

  “You’re going to be temping?”

  “I’m calling the agency tomorrow. It’s pathetic, but I need the cash. Even after he was fired, David was covering the rent. Mommy and Daddy, you know.”

  “Do you think he’s gone out to Larchmont?”

  “Scarsdale, actually. Totally different, my dears. What do I know?”

  “Scarsdale? You’re joking. Scars-dale? How can it be true?”

  “He should go to prison, is where he should go. Who the hell does he think he is, acting like that?”

  “Entitlement,” said Danielle. “It’s about a sense of entitlement. Don’t you think?”

  “So what isn’t, exactly?” Julius said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean that it seems as though entitlement, that mysterious gift, explains everything everyone does these days. And I’d like to know why I got skipped over in the entitlement stakes. Is it a Midwestern thing? Danny, sort me out.”

  “You felt entitled to have sex with that guy in the bathroom,” Marina said.

  “Entitled? I felt compelled. But precisely the knowledge that I wasn’t entitled is what made it so sexy.”

  “We’re all of us entitled,” Danielle said. “Comparatively, I mean. We’re so lucky we don’t know we were born.”

  “Do we even know anyone who isn’t?”

  “You mean personally? That’s pathetic. Of course we do.”

  After a minute, Danielle said, “your cousin. Marina, your cousin. Bootie. He doesn’t feel entitled. I think that’s fair to say.”

  “And what’s happened to him?”

  “He’s gone to Brooklyn, right? Poor guy.”

  “Shake Your Booty. That’s right. He left a forwarding address in Fort Greene. But no phone number.”

  “I wonder how he’ll manage?”

  “I put him on to my temp agency,” Julius said. “This is good scotch.”

  “It’s the same kind as my father drinks; did you know that, Danny?”

  “I didn’t, no.”

  “There are no other kinds,” said Julius.

  “He was in love with you, M,” Danielle said.

  “Probably still is,” said Julius.

  “What am I supposed to do about it? As Ludo says, love should feed on mutuality, and when it doesn’t, when it’s one-sided, it’s just narcissism. It’s not my fault if he’s in love with me. I didn’t encourage him.”

  “Nobody said you did. But he’s in a sort of sad situation now. Maybe you should call him.”

  “Julius just said he didn’t leave a phone number. And I’m sorry, but I’m not trekking all the way out to Fort Greene just to see if he’s eating right.”

  “No. But someone—”

  “Then why don’t you take it on, Danny? You could make it your project. You could even make a film about him: A Pilgrim’s Progress, or An Autodidact in New York.”

  “Well, if nobody else will, maybe I should. But I’m the person in the room with the least connection to him. Julius, he lived in your apartment, after all.”

  “My encounters with him have only been—” Julius paused. “Unfortunate. I wonder if he put a hex on me, or on my place. You admit there’s something creepy about him.”

  “I don’t admit that at all,” Danielle said. “Pathetic, yes. Creepy, no. For some reason both of you have it in for him. Think what it must feel like to be a kid—he’s just a kid—stuck here with no connections, now, and no friends. Who do you think he talks to, in a day?”

  “Why do you even care?”

  “I don’t know. He seems poignant to me. I feel like in some way I am him, or he is me. Or that could have been me. Does that sound ridiculous?

  “A little.”

  “Julius, he could’ve been you. It’s different for Marina. But you or me?”

  “Scarred for life I may be.” Julius put his hand dramatically to his bandage. “But I was never fat.”

  “He isn’t fat,” said Danielle. “H
e’s a little chubby.” She turned to Marina. “Don’t you ever wonder if your dad was a little bit like Bootie when he was young? I mean, that’s where he’s from, and—”

  “To be honest, I don’t think my dad was anything like that. And he tried to destroy my dad. He’d like to destroy him. Not that it matters to either of you, but it was a pretty big deal in the family.”

  “Of course it was.”

  “Oh, Danny, don’t take that tone.”

  “What tone?”

  “That patronizing, therapisty sort of tone. I hate it when you do that.”

  “Girls, girls. Let’s keep the reunion sweet.”

  “Short and sweet. I’d better get going. Ludo said he’d call when he was leaving the office, but he might forget, and I want to be there when he gets back.”

  “Sweet little wife, tending hearth and home?”

  “Hardly. It’s the only time I get to see him at the moment.”

  “It won’t last,” Danielle said. “It’s just this week.”

  “Take care of your cheek, Jules. Who knew he’d be crazy?”

  “Crazy? I don’t know.”

  “Crazy,” said Marina, firmly. “There’s a point in anything, isn’t there, when no matter how upset you are, you know you’re doing the wrong thing. And you get a grip. You just get a grip. It’s a choice, to give in to rage like that. It’s crazy.”

  “Well,” Danielle said, “you could say he got a grip of a different kind.”

  “That isn’t funny.”

  “I think it’s pretty funny,” Julius said. “Even if it touches a sore spot.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Not Telling

  After Marina had left, Julius lay spread-eagled on Danielle’s bed and shut his eyes. “Why can’t I live here?” he said. “It’s so much nicer than Pitt Street.”

  “If you had a real job,” she said, “you’d be able to afford it.”

  “So now that you’ve bullied Marina into the workforce, and married her off, too, you’re going to start working on me, are you?” He sighed. “Who’s working on you, I want to know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The sheets,” he said, running his hands over the duvet. “Mmm. The scotch. I don’t know, there’s just something different about this place. It almost smells like cigarettes, though maybe that’s just your neighbors.”

  “You haven’t been here in a very long time.”

  “And there’s something different about you.” He blinked lazily at her, his black eye puffy and already yellowing. “Marina thought you were in love with her Ludovic; but I could tell at the wedding you don’t like him.” He paused. “You didn’t like David much either, did you? Not that it matters.”

  “Mostly I thought he didn’t want to be bothered.”

  “No. So if it’s not Ludovic Seeley?”

  “What makes you think there’s anyone?”

  “Please, Danielle Minkoff. How long have we known each other?”

  Danielle wanted very much to tell him. He, of all people, would understand, would feel the joy and excitement of it. He might even, if he were exercising his intermittent empathetic gifts, see the other side, the madness of always waiting, always wanting, of having renounced composure and continence for a state of constant, insatiable hunger. The madness—the ineffable, horrible deliciousness—of the whole situation. But Julius was not discreet; and if she told him anything, she would eventually tell him who; and once she’d told him that, it would all be over. She knew he wouldn’t be able to resist. But if only she could tell someone, that tomorrow, Monday, just for one night, he would stay; that she’d planned to procure flowers, and a bottle of extremely good wine, and had ordered a meal from a French traiteur that she would pick up in the afternoon; and she’d thought, even, of breakfast, was going to buy croissants and raspberries and cream and fresh-squeezed orange juice; and had already countless times imagined the perfect unfolding of their evening, their unbroken night, their waking together. To Julius, she said only, “In your dreams, there’s someone. Or maybe I should say, in mine. Only in my dreams.” And laughed, a little bitterly, because sometimes—like this past week, when she hadn’t seen him once, had spoken to him, sure, every day, but had had hopes of a sighting several times raised and dashed—it felt as though this grand passion, this union which would, under other circumstances, have been so perfect, did exist only in her dreams.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  A Speaking Engagement

  In all the years, in all the adventures, he’d never quite done this. Never packed his bag and called the limo, taken it to the airport only to get into a cab and come back into town. He’d thought it all through, had the cell phone with him, would call her late, around eleven. He’d said he wasn’t sure where they were putting him up—that happened often enough—and that there was bound to be a big dinner that went till midnight, so not to be surprised if he called from the restaurant. He’d even thought of a dinner—a dinner that had taken place in Chicago two years before—which he would more or less reconstruct for her if called upon to do so. The restaurant, its décor, the seating arrangements. It wasn’t so hard. Thank God his memory for these things was good.

  It felt strange. He wasn’t, in some regard, a liar. An actor, yes; and a good one. Guilty, upon innumerable occasions, of sins of omission, a great believer that what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you (a dictum of which he knew he ought to have been cured by his nephew’s recent perfidy: there, better to have known: what might it have been had he first encountered Frederick Tubb’s musings in print?), a smoother of waters whose techniques had been known to include a gentle reshaping of the facts. And to be fair, Annabel didn’t ask. Her dignity, his, theirs, were premised upon trust, perhaps for each of them a slightly different thing (his definition of trust, on his wife’s behalf, being that she could always know herself supremely loved, and always—ah, until now!—know that at day’s end he came home faithfully to rest his head beside hers. Whereas he was aware, sometimes, that her unspoken understanding of trust might have been rather more strict than his own), but nevertheless, a mutual, a familial value, which left well enough alone. He didn’t delve too deeply into her separate life, hadn’t wanted to meet the famous DeVaughn, say (although he had, that once, in the summertime, without meaning to), or any of the other clients who drew so heavily and zealously upon his wife’s angelic resources. He knew that this was justifying: there was no genuine comparison between her de facto secrets and his own. The point was to assuage this feeling, for which he had no purpose, which could only be named guilt.

  He didn’t feel it strongly in the limo to LaGuardia, a journey during which he was almost persuaded of his own lie. But in the cab, heading back—a particularly shockless and ill-smelling vehicle in which he was jounced, painfully and at speed, over every possible pothole—he suffered torment. It was, in that ride, not too late to redirect the driver, not too late to return to Central Park West, where Annabel would find him upon her evening return, and to tell her, relievingly, that it had all, at the last minute, been cancelled. But in spite of everything, he didn’t really want to. More life, more: he wanted it, and juggling for dominance in his mind, along with visions of domestic safety, was the prospect of Danielle’s fresh flesh, of her blushing cheek, across which stray dark tendrils were prone to meander, escaped from the great waving vine of her hair. He could picture the Rothkos, the view from the window, southward, at sunset, the glinting towers in a gilded sky—being in her apartment was like being aboard a ship, many stories above the earth. It always felt, when he was there, that one could so happily survive with so little, that all the trappings of his adult life were vain and unnecessary. To arrive at her building with his tidy overnight case, with a gaudy bunch of gerberas from the Korean at the corner, at two o’clock on a Monday afternoon, to find her smiling, slightly awkward, in her doorway when he stepped off the elevator, her head coyly bowed, her hair unruly, a mere girl, with the charm and embarrassment—t
hat delicious embarrassment—of youth, was to be cast back, to be liberated unexpectedly into a younger, freer self, even as, miraculously, he could hold close his grander, statesmanlike persona, left to wait, perhaps, in the corridor like a macintosh on a hook, but never relinquished, always immediately retrievable. He reveled in the many-ness of it all, all the things he was, and was to her, Danielle—journalistic eminence, husband, father of her best friend, potential mentor, old and failing body—all these things torn away by their mutual desire, that left him a mere stripling in this time-traveling ship, attended but unmolested by the ghosts of his selves. So enticing, the state left him always eager to regain it: why couldn’t he stay in this doll-sized studio, in this lovely young woman’s arms, forever? But he wasn’t naïve enough not to know how large a part of its allure stemmed precisely from its transience. He loved this, he loved her, and could not contemplate giving it up, only because he was always already giving it up, only to find it—still more delicious—anew the next time.

  “I thought we could have our ride this afternoon,” he said. “I booked it. For dusk.”

  “What ride?”

  “The helicopter ride,” he said. “Remember? To see it all from above. What do you say?”

  “I hate flying.”

  “You don’t think it’s dangerous?”

  “A helicopter? Seems pretty dangerous to me. All that keeps you up are a few swishing blades, like a ceiling fan.”

  “You’ll remember it all your life.”

  “Oh, sure. Just as we plummet into the East River, I’ll remember how much I was enjoying it.”

  “Let’s have lunch,” he said, “and you just think about it. You’ve got all afternoon to decide. I know you’ll make the right choice.”

  “Staying on the ground is always the wisest choice. “

  “Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve always felt absolutely the other way. More. Higher. Faster.”

  In spite of her nerves—and they, too, charmed, and enabled him to hold her hand, almost a child’s hand, smooth and faintly palpitating—they went. Ducking the rotors, they climbed into the buzzing glass bulb of the copter on its West Side landing tarmac, shortly after seven, and then, enveloped in the roar and the glory of it, ascended, lurching, directly upward, before swinging sideways, out and away. He tried to speak to her, to say “Rothko would have loved this. It might have saved him,” but his voice was lost in the din, and she merely gaped at him in barely veiled terror, her eyes’ whites wide, her hair in floating rebellion, as they rose toward the sky’s brilliant striations, through the beginning of a late summer, intoxicated Rothko sunset, gold, pink, red, white, lavender, and palest blue, and over the glinting river, around the vast buildings upon which the shadow of night was beginning to fall, down, out in an arc to winking Lady Liberty and back around the island’s tip, everywhere the lights just flickering on, innumerable fireflies in the waning day. The sun sank at the western horizon as they followed the East River northward, and she was holding tightly, still, to his hand, but the wide-eyed cast of her face was now of childlike wonder rather than fear, and when she turned and smiled at him, conspiratorially—they were co-conspirators, that’s what they were—he was, even in the furthest ravaged brachts of his lungs, in the helicopter-throbbed tendons at his heels, in his very heart, suffused with some hitherto unexperienced delight.