The Emperor's Children

by Claire Messud

  “Here?” Danielle gestured at the sand, the water.

  “Not on the beach. Of course not. Please. You could come to me. Stay with me.”

  “I can’t live with you, Mom.” Danielle squinted at her mother. “Don’t look that way. I know you’d take care of me. But I’m thirty years old.”

  “So?”

  “So, I have a job.”

  “You can have it somewhere else. You can have a different job.”

  “I like my job.” As she said this, she thought it was true.

  “Okay, then why not go to Australia, make that show now? It’s a good time to go to Australia. I could come with you, make sure you’re okay.”

  “They don’t want that show. Nicky killed it, months ago.”

  Randy made an exasperated click in her throat. “You make me want a cigarette,” she said. “After all these years.”

  “So have one.”

  “Don’t you get it?”

  “Get what?”

  “You called me. Because you needed me.”

  Danielle watched two girls—teenagers, probably—shimmy by in high-heeled mules, slipping in the sand, bravely persevering. They wore thong bikinis, and jewels in their navels, and one of them had glued false eyelashes around her doll blue eyes. Both were made up—foundation, eyeliner, big wet lips. The girl with the eyelashes had a tattoo of a small sailing ship on her somewhat dimply butt. She was laughing and slipping as they passed in front of Danielle, a harsh, staggered laugh.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m just telling you what I think. I’m still your mother.”

  “Of course I’m going back.” This, too, was true. She had a film about liposuction to make. It seemed, in some lights, trivial, but it wasn’t really. By the time it was finished, people would be tired of greater tragedies, and would be ready to watch it again. Mostly, people’s tragedies were small. She’d be doing the right thing.

  Randy stood up and brushed off the sand. “I’m going in,” she said. “I don’t know what all this is for, if you won’t listen to me.”

  “I’m grateful, Mom. Really.”

  Randy bent and kissed the top of Danielle’s head, the News Café baseball cap picked up upon arrival. Danielle wondered about how much her mother suspected—not who, but that there was something, someone, a private sorrow—because Randy hadn’t asked anything about it. Then again, she probably thought it was about Marina’s marrying Ludovic Seeley. Or about Frederick Tubb. Bootie.

  Danielle watched her mother pick her way down to the shore, brace herself against the water. Small and sturdy, she stood in the shallows, her elbows bent, hands out in front of her, as if warding off the gentle surf. Her straps cut into her freckled shoulders; her breasts, iron-clad, could not move, her stomach pouching rebelliously beneath their corsetry. She’d kept the hat on, her glasses. She wouldn’t, Danielle knew, go much farther before coming back, her legs sparkling with drops, her manner deliberately invigorated. Randy waved; Danielle waved back, a small salute, then lay back again and closed her eyes. She wanted so much to tell someone about it all, about him, about everything leading up to that day and the day itself. She wanted to tell her mother, have her mother take care of her, put her arms around her, kiss it better, the way in childhood kissing really worked. How could Randy be her mother and not know about this, this most momentous change, the gaping crater in her self? She imagined, for a few minutes, the words she might use, the conversation they might have; but couldn’t, even in her mind, make it proceed the way she wanted it to. And so knew she would never have it aloud. It wasn’t a conversation for her real life. Maybe none of it—lying here, near naked, on the hot sand, this seemed just possible—had been real at all. Here she was, erased, reborn, with her brave mother, albeit blindly, watching over her, with the chance of a new beginning, a new forgetting; and that was all she had now. The sunlight was dark pink through her eyelids, and she followed the little transparent creatures—what were they?—as they swam back and forth across her field of vision. She used to do this as a child, lie in the sun at the pool, at the country club in Columbus, feeling the water evaporate from her skin and watching the play on the insides of her eyelids. It was restful. It made everything else seem far away. She thought that maybe Randy was right; she thought that maybe she shouldn’t go back. But she knew that she would, because she didn’t want to go anywhere else, or have anywhere else to go. She knew that her life—her future—was there.

  Later, near dusk, Danielle and Randy went for a walk. They wore flippy, bright skirts, sandals, as if celebrating something. They turned inland, away from the shorefront parade, the muscles and stomachs and golden, golden skin. The restaurant beneath their apartment was blaring Frank Sinatra when they left, and a lone waiter on the terrace nodded at them as they passed, his arms crossed over his chest. He didn’t look as though he expected many customers: the restaurant was loud, but unpopular.

  Behind the beach, the neighborhood felt quickly uneven, like a pioneer town in which the sidewalks run out into prairie. The avenue one block in was crowded, each store lit and open to the street, fancy clothes places and cafés and kitsch. The second avenue was dotted with little hotels, newly renovated, and restaurants, quieter ones, but down to the right they could see the fluorescent light pooling outside a seedy market and fish-fry in the middle of a row of disused storefronts. The block beyond, as far as they went, was residential, spookily quiet in the failing light. None of the houses seemed to have people in them, and only an occasional dull wattage burned behind the curtains, the sort of little light you put on to keep burglars at bay.

  “Shall we head back?” Randy suggested. “Maybe get a drink in one of those places?”

  “Why not?”

  The makings of their supper—salad and fruit salad, for Randy’s perpetual diet—were laid out on their kitchen counter next to the orange juicer. They would, Randy joked, dine with Sinatra.

  But first, Randy chose the place for a cocktail, the garden restaurant of one of the little hotels, overhung with palm fronds, dotted with fairy lights. A balmy breeze rustled the foliage, caused the candle on their woven metal table to flicker.

  “It’s nice here, darling, isn’t it?” Randy said. “It just feels special.”

  “Sure. It’s a real treat. Thank you, Mom.”

  “I’m glad we have this time. My baby.” She sipped her bright, fruity drink. “We haven’t had this in years.”

  “No.”

  “Your father would be jealous. Will be.”

  “Don’t gloat.”

  “I’m not gloating. But I can’t help it if I’m grateful.” She paused. “You could always go back to Columbus if you preferred. I’d understand that.”

  “I’m going to go home, Mom. As soon as I’m ready. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  They were quiet. It was, Danielle felt, an amicable silence. A small lizard scuttled across the paving stones, and a man, several tables away, whooped with laughter.

  Danielle turned to look at him. He was fat, with a fair nimbus of cherubic curls. His belly looked as though it might escape the confines of his plaid shirt, a short-sleeved garment from which his stubby arms protruded like stockings full of sand. He had a long upper lip, and was very red in the face, though it was hard to tell whether this was from sun, or drink, or emotion. Maybe he was German, she thought. It would fit her idea of them.

  Something behind him caught her eye. A gesture. A particular, fisty way of pushing glasses up the nose. A particular arc of the arm. He was standing in the gloom by the doorway to the lobby, in a uniform, black and faintly zen, with a mandarin collar. No curls, his head almost shaven, and thinner; but it had to be.

  She looked back at her mother, who was smiling slightly to herself, sipping again from her drink. “Mom,” she said. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  But he was gone, when she reached the stairs. She went inside, past the large, softly burbling mouthwash-col
ored aquarium and its garish purple fish, to the concierge desk. Another uniformed man puttered quietly at the reception. He was older, Latin, handsome.

  “Excuse me,” she began. “I think I just saw a friend of mine. Maybe he works here? Frederick? Frederick Tubb?”

  The man stopped puttering, eyed her wearily.

  “I just saw him. In uniform. Young guy, glasses? Frederick?”

  “I don’t know, miss. Frederick? I don’t think we have any Frederick.”

  “Bootie, maybe? Sometimes people call him Bootie.”

  The man snickered softly. “No, miss. Not at this hotel.”

  Danielle rested her hands flat on the countertop, at chest height. The black stone was cool. “So maybe he has a different name,” she said. “But I just saw him.”

  The man was just shaking his head when Bootie Tubb—it had to be—crossed the lobby bearing a sweating metal pitcher full of water. He had his head down, and both hands on the pitcher, as if it took all his concentration not to spill it.

  “Bootie?”

  He didn’t break stride, perhaps faltered a tad; it was hard to say.

  “Bootie Tubb?”

  If anything, he walked more quickly.

  She followed him back outside, waited on the top step until he had finished pouring water for the fat man’s table. She wanted to see his eyes. When he approached, she said again, barely above a whisper, “Bootie Tubb. What are you doing here?”

  “It’s Ulrich,” he said, still holding the jug. He didn’t look at her.

  “Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

  He said nothing.

  “Your poor mother. It’s devastating. I think Marina’s at your memorial service almost right now.”

  He shifted, then. He almost looked at her. But didn’t. “She’s okay?”

  “It’s a relative term. What the hell are you doing?”

  He turned at last. His eyes, behind their thick glasses, were immense and a little watery. “Just leave me alone, please.”

  “But your family—everyone—how could you?”

  “How could I what?”

  “Let them think you’re dead?”

  He looked into the pitcher, as though something vital floated there. “I’m just,” he sniffed, “surviving. I’m doing what I’ve got to do to survive. You wouldn’t get it.”

  “Try me.”

  “No. Frederick doesn’t exist; and for me, for Ulrich, you don’t exist. I don’t have to explain anything.”

  “Actually, I think you do.”

  He was angry now, she could tell. He almost spat at her. “I needed to go. I would be dead, otherwise. I needed—I haven’t done anything wrong. If I would’ve killed myself otherwise, then I’d be dead, really dead. Maybe that would be better. Then would you be satisfied?”

  “No,” she said. She wanted to say she understood that, at least, but he wouldn’t look at her. She reached out and touched his arm, but he flinched, retreated, and the water sloshed in its pitcher, jangling the ice cubes.

  “I’m not the same person,” he said. “My name is Ulrich.” He stood up straighter, spoke more firmly. “I’m sorry for the confusion. And sorry about your friend.”

  “Me, too,” she said. She felt it as another gash, another invisible wound. How many would it take to finish things off? Which would be the mortal blow? Sauve qui peut, she thought. “Do you think I don’t know?” she said. “What it’s like? Murray—I loved him, too. Just as much as you. Maybe more.”

  “I know.” He shrugged, faintly. “But he isn’t who you thought he was, is he?”

  “I don’t even know that. I’m not sure I know who I think I am.”

  Bootie—Ulrich—looked at her for a minute. He held on to the water jug. His face bore no discernible expression. “So it happens to us all,” he said. “Marina would tell us we just need a change of clothes.” He indicated his own zen suit.

  “Maybe so.”

  “I’m going now,” he said. “I’ve got work to do.” He paused. “Good to have met you,” he said, as if they’d never met before, and as if he really meant it. “And good luck.”

  “What was that?” Randy asked, back at the table, well into her pretty drink, goose bumps rising on her arms from the cooling breeze.

  “Just someone I thought I knew.” Danielle shook her head.

  “It’s funny that way, this place. I could’ve sworn Lauren Hutton walked by while you were gone. Right outside on the sidewalk. That’s who I mean, isn’t it—the one with the big gap in her teeth? Probably not much younger than me?”

  “Yeah.” Danielle watched Bootie out of the corner of her eye, as he moved between the tables. There were more customers now, ordering food, and it was noisier, a parroting chatter among the greenery. Bootie—Frederick—Ulrich—did not raise his eyes to her even once. Still slightly awkward, physically, and a little chubby, he was nevertheless much changed, almost handsome in his mandarin-collar jacket, with his tightly cropped hair. She thought that somebody might love him, in time. Her, too, for that matter. She thought of his mother, and of her terrible, ineffable grief; she reached across and took her own mother’s hand.

  It was a small hand, so like her own, but bonier, veinier, drier. The stones of her mother’s big fake rings dug into Danielle’s palm as she clasped Randy’s hand tightly, and it hurt, but Danielle didn’t mind.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Take Them by Surprise

  After he left her, he had two sentences in his head all that night: at work, in his room, in the street. They were always in his head now, but tonight more insistently, because he wished he’d said them aloud to her. She might have understood, then. Maybe she understood anyway, though probably not. She, of all people. The one most like him. What did it matter? Would she say something? It wasn’t all over: he would just move on, now. If she said something, who would believe her? What had he done that was wrong?

  When he got back to his room, he started to pack his few things into the navy nylon rucksack he’d bought just in case. He thought of taking a bath, one last time in the plastic tub of which he’d grown fond; but there wasn’t time. He left the Musil, volume one, behind on the nightstand, for someone else to discover, silently said good-bye to its baffled, blurred face. He ran his hands lightly, like a healer, along the top of the television, the dresser, the paisley synthetic bedspread. Lastly, the window ledge: it was after midnight, and the parking lot was quiet, the vista, with its lone fizzing streetlamp, as still as a painting. Outside, on the macadam, he breathed deeply, aware of his warped black shadow, born of the artificial light, behind him. He would remember the smell of the air, here, and the way the breeze played significantly on his skin. He would carry its message with him, along with all the others.

  This time, he was ready. This person in motion was who he was becoming: it was something, too: a man, someday, with qualities. Ulrich New. Great geniuses have the shortest biographies, he told himself; and take them by surprise. Yes. He would.

  Read an excerpt from

  THE WOMAN UPSTAIRS

  By Claire Messud

  Available from Knopf

  April 2013

  1

  How angry am I? You don’t want to know. Nobody wants to know about that.

  I’m a good girl, I’m a nice girl, I’m a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody’s boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents’ shit and my brother’s shit, and I’m not a girl anyhow, I’m over forty fucking years old, and I’m good at my job and I’m great with kids and I held my mother’s hand when she died, after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father every day on the telephone—every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it’s pretty gray and a bit muggy too? It was supposed to say “Great Artist” on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say “such a good teacher/daughter/friend” instead; and what I really want
to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL.

  Don’t all women feel the same? The only difference is how much we know we feel it, how in touch we are with our fury. We’re all furies, except the ones who are too damned foolish, and my worry now is that we’re brainwashing them from the cradle, and in the end even the ones who are smart will be too damned foolish. What do I mean? I mean the second graders at Appleton Elementary, sometimes the first graders even, and by the time they get to my classroom, to the third grade, they’re well and truly gone—they’re full of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry and French manicures and cute outfits and they care how their hair looks! In the third grade. They care more about their hair or their shoes than about galaxies or caterpillars or hieroglyphics. How did all that revolutionary talk of the seventies land us in a place where being female means playing dumb and looking good? Even worse on your tombstone than “dutiful daughter” is “looked good”; everyone used to know that. But we’re lost in a world of appearances now.

  That’s why I’m so angry, really—not because of all the chores and all the making nice and all the duty of being a woman—or rather, of being me—because maybe these are the burdens of being human. Really I’m angry because I’ve tried so hard to get out of the hall of mirrors, this sham and pretend of the world, or of my world, on the East Coast of the United States of America in the first decade of the twenty-first century. And behind every mirror is another fucking mirror, and down every corridor is another corridor, and the Fun House isn’t fun anymore and it isn’t even funny, but there doesn’t seem to be a door marked EXIT.

  At the fair each summer when I was a kid, we visited the Fun House, with its creepy grinning plaster face, two stories high. You walked in through its mouth, between its giant teeth, along its hot-pink tongue. Just from that face, you should’ve known. It was supposed to be a lark, but it was terrifying. The floors buckled or they lurched from side to side, and the walls were crooked, and the rooms were painted to confuse perspective. Lights flashed, horns blared, in the narrow, vibrating hallways lined with fattening mirrors and elongating mirrors and inside-out upside-down mirrors. Sometimes the ceiling fell or the floor rose, or both happened at once and I thought I’d be squashed like a bug. The Fun House was scarier by far than the Haunted House, not least because I was supposed to enjoy it. I just wanted to find the way out. But the doors marked EXIT led only to further crazy rooms, to endless moving corridors. There was one route through the Fun House, relentless to the very end.