Claire lagged behind along the path and the loud leaves sounded like cracking joints. She breathed the cold air into her lungs. It felt good. A cigarette would also feel good. A hand-rolled cigarette. She reached Freddie, leaned against him and looked at the river not so far below, the water shimmering in the breeze.
“We haven’t done anything like this in ages,” Freddie said.
“Why is that?”
“We could try. We should try to be good.” Freddie made her look him in the eyes. “I want to be good to you, Claire.”
She pulled away slightly to look at him better. “Is that so?” She tried to sound light, and thought: how funny that I do not feel a thing.
“You know you’re very hard to please,” said Freddie.
“And you’re so easy,” Claire said. She was smiling, wasn’t she?
“We should take a trip. We could go back to Cuba for our anniversary.”
“We could go to Ovid.”
“We’ll talk about it.” Freddie leaned in, spoke into her hair. “We’re all alone up here. No one around for miles.”
Claire turned from the wet of his breath, his arms around her waist.
He grinned. “You know I could kill you and no one would ever know.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I could, and then leave you here. Who would know?”
Claire did not answer.
He laughed sharply. “But I won’t. That’s the point. That’s how much I love you. I could, but I won’t.”
He took her silence to be anger—how would he know it was indifference?
He said, “It’s a joke, Claire. Come on. Come here.” He pulled her closer and tried to kiss her mouth, but she turned and he settled for her ear. The Hudson moved beneath them.
“You could barely walk up that hill, let alone fight me,” she said.
“It was a mountain,” Freddie mumbled. He let go and walked farther along the path, into the woods. She could not say out loud that she did not love him, because then it might be true.
I could kill you, you mean.
6.
Freddie was on his way out to see the doctor when Tomasz appeared in the open doorway of the apartment. Claire stood by as Freddie shook his hand heartily. “Good to see you,” Freddie said.
Tomasz smiled. “You don’t look well, sir.” He wiped the hand Freddie had shook on his pant leg.
“That’s what she tells me.” Freddie waited. “Is there something you need from me?”
“Just here to have a word with your wife.”
Freddie glanced at Claire, who hadn’t let out a breath. But he didn’t pause on this long. “About the building board?”
“Yes,” Tomasz said.
When the elevator doors shut on Freddie, Tomasz reached for Claire’s hand and she pulled away from him with the pretense of searching through her purse for her powder. She could not feel her own face.
“Well?” Claire said, not meeting his eyes.
He stood there with his hands in his pockets, a smirk on his face.
“I’m very busy,” Claire said.
“You are a funny woman, Mrs. Bishop,” he said. Then he shrugged and handed her a stiff, charred piece of canvas: it was from the bottom right corner of the painting. Claire could make out the last of Nicolette’s signature, missing the N. He showed her a blister forming between his knuckles. “I forgot to cut it out until I’d already lit the fire. I burned my finger.”
“I told you I didn’t want to know.” She was surprised by the anger in her voice.
He took off his hat and bounced it in his hands.
Claire forced a smile. “Thank you, Tomasz.” She slipped the proof into the pocket of her suede coat. Again she unclasped her purse. “I’m sorry, I’m not carrying much on me now.” And she continued to dig for the money she knew she’d somehow have to get from Freddie.
Claire stood in the doorway of her empty bedroom and looked in, like it was a museum installation and she was on the other side of the velvet rope. The king-sized bed, the paperbacks on the nightstand, Freddie’s filthy socks draped over the hamper in an attempt at tidiness—everything in its place, as if people lived there.
And then the bedroom was not empty. There was Freddie, lying in bed, and she was in the armchair in the corner of the room, her art history book face down on her lap. He was re-reading his signed copy of Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. The doctor had diagnosed some kind of respiratory ailment with syllables that were new to her. She felt she could see his infection writhing in his lungs.
There was a space of carpet between them that seemed to help her. She was wide awake. The room drenched in lamplight, soft, yellow. She hadn’t planned to speak but then she was saying, “I don’t really care that you’re sick.” The bedside clock ticked and she looked over like it had whispered something she had not quite understood and needed repeating.
He rolled on his side and propped his head on his elbow to look at her.
“I think we should separate.” She said that. She did.
A hesitation, very small. “You don’t mean that.” He didn’t sound surprised or hurt, merely pragmatic. But perhaps that was another mask Claire could no longer penetrate.
“I do mean it.”
“Prove it.”
She braced the plush arms of her chair. “I slept with Tomasz.”
Freddie coughed. “Tomasz. The super?” His coughed and laughed at once. “That’s ridiculous. That is so ridiculous it’s embarrassing. I don’t even believe you.”
“That’s fine, don’t believe me,” Claire said.
“What’s gotten into you? Is this about yesterday on the river? It was a joke. You can’t honestly be mad about that.”
“You know that’s not it,” said Claire.
“What is it?” Then he laughed. “Is this about the painting? It is, isn’t it? Jesus, Claire.”
“It’s not about the painting. I had it destroyed anyway.”
“Destroyed? What do you mean?” When she didn’t answer, he stood with more gusto than she’d seen in him for days. “Let me know when you’re done feeling sorry for yourself and maybe we’ll have some fun again.” His nose was running and he wiped it with the back of his hand. “What do you plan to do for money? Where will you go?”
Claire put down her book and looked him in the eye. “I’ll live here. You’ll move out.”
“Is that so?”
Claire held her stare.
Freddie stumbled toward her and pulled her from the armchair and held her forearms tight, as if he planned to shake her. She didn’t fight him. “It’s just a painting, Claire.”
“I know it’s just a painting!”
Freddie let go of her and stood with his arms at his sides like they were someone else’s arms. Claire knew that if she walked into those arms, they would embrace her and all of this would go away, and the painting might be a painting.
She flew from the room, down the hall to the den, and lunged for the glass display cabinet. She grabbed as many plates and porcelain clowns as she could hold against her chest with one hand. With the other she grabbed the wooden case that held her fork collection and wobbled to the window. Freddie was behind her, catching his breath. The window would not magically open, and she tried to tuck the case under her arm to manage a free hand. Only then did Freddie snap to and say her name.
It was exactly the way her mother said her name when Claire first returned home after marrying Freddie: Claire had changed, and her mother was betrayed by that.
Freddie reached around and opened the window for her.
“Do it,” he said, smiling.
She turned to him, at once horrified and furious. Then she chucked every last trinket out the window. She would have liked to have laughed. Giddy desire. A string of deadly, smashing clowns.
Claire stood in the hall, wool coat in hand, facing the front door. If she could stand still forever, nothing would happen to her, nothing bad, and the painting wo
uld not mean a thing. It struck Claire that she could have lied to Nicolette—she could have told someone else’s story, and would the portrait have changed? Would it show a different fate? Or wish?
She could hear Freddie packing, huffing and shoving his illness into a few tired suitcases. She imagined his mean laugh and the whole circus of Greenwich Village calling her a fool for thinking she could survive alone. Panic began to swell in her stomach, her chest. She tried to tamp it down with the simple task of slipping her arms through her coat sleeves. She felt sorry for Freddie. It was a thrill, a rush of heat to say, even as she only half-believed it, “What do I care what you all think?” This was her town, her circus. In the back of her mind was a faint singing, the choir of anticipation—that cocktail of dread and hope all flattened into one note.
She opened the door.
PART II: THE FUTURE IS FIXED, THE PAST AMBIGUOUS 2004
And that’s why I’m telling you all this truth stuff, Dear Listeners, partly because I have no clue what you do or do not already know. Maybe you know everything I do. Maybe you’ve been with me since I was born a squirming baby boy, or, who knows—before. But I’m not interested in objective Truth with a capital T. I’m talking about truth, subjective and hairy. And here it starts, because today I’m going to see Nicolette.
Truth: My name is West Butler and I am not like most people. I’ve worked as a data miner and network engineer in New York City for the last ten years, ever since I left my home of Port Townsend, Washington (a little Victorian thing on the Olympic Peninsula), and I am in love with an artist.
But that is not the whole of why I’m not like other people.
The last time I saw Nicolette, nearly a year ago, she said it would be dangerous for me if I tried to find her. But that doesn’t stop me from getting on the 1 train to the Bronx. I have the whole orange plastic row to myself until a woman sits down beside me. At first I want to pull her hair, but I’m not willing to give up my seat. And I don’t mind it after a minute, being that close to someone, sharing space and time. She sees me looking at her but I don’t look away. I’m trying to remember her face because there’s something odd about it—she has large pores, a map on her skin. There’s a message I want to memorize, there’s a clue to find. But her face doesn’t stick. If I look away, she’ll disappear.
I tracked down Nicolette’s new number from a gallery that used to represent her, and we made plans via text message (though she’s not very good at it yet) to meet in public at her current installation—what bloggers call the “landmine house.” She said she had to go there anyway to fix something that got knocked down in the wind, and we could grab coffee and talk after—because I’m healthier now, and we’re both ready to see each other again.
Do you remember how, when she left, my heart crawled across the floor like a crab? At least I could find it again if I needed it, follow those tracks behind the bookshelf.
Something is about to change. And not the way something is always about to change. I feel it in my toes, which have turned to ice chips. The melting and melding of seats and bodies in the humid underground.
I feel like I’m about to meet Nicolette for the first time again. This is her first installation in over a year. She painted dozens of portraits of me back when we were together, but I haven’t seen them since she took them with her when she left, back when I was in the hospital.
I don’t blame her for that.
What if she doesn’t show? What if the landmine house isn’t even up anymore and I can’t find her? I waited too long to reach her. Not that I haven’t tried before.
I dig out my little pad and pen. The woman next to me tries to look over my shoulder to see what I’m writing, so I write messier than usual.
All thoughts are potential clues. Pebbles dropped along a path of pebbles leading back to my true self fixed high above me. I must document these clues or they will be lost, forgotten, unwritten from time. My love will never have existed.
In this particular subway car, two clues shine out: 1) the woman’s map of a face and 2) the graffiti. Riding the 1 train feels like stepping into a child’s drawing: the windows are covered in scratch graffiti and the floors in loopy black, and every advertisement has at least one moustache penned across a model’s lip. And, like a child’s drawing, the train doesn’t quite make sense: who’s that guy in the seat across from me with the top hat, and why does he have no shoes? I wish I were a graffiti artist, here but not here, shouting out my unknowability. I am unlocatable! Just try to find me.
Not unlike Nicolette, who so easily slips away.
But what if it’s awkward, because we’re not supposed to see each other and everyone knows that? What if I see the installation and don’t get it and can’t fake it?
All fears are clues. I write them down. Like Buckminster Fuller, who archived his life, organizing every slip of paper, every bill, every letter, every idea into clues and proofs as evidence for his existence. Forty-five tons of material. He couldn’t judge what was valid, so he included everything, what he ate then what he shat. He didn’t know MySpace was coming. He wasn’t trying to write a book. He was trying to tell the Grand Story, and not for us—for people or aliens to dig up a hundred years from now, to see how much changed in one lifetime, how the world could go from genocide to civil rights to genocide. How one person could change everything. Or not.
Personally, I keep records of what I ate and shat only if there is a disparity between the two.
But even as he archived every detail, I wonder if Bucky really knew himself. Maybe he wrote to get to know himself, and he was afraid he never would. Maybe he was like me. If you’re like me, everyone thinks they know you better than you know you.
I am a detective in search of myself.
The streets are strangely empty. Except they aren’t empty at all. They’re filled with so many shadows there’s barely room to walk. The street signs, the whites of them like the white of an eye, pulse electrically for my attention. The stale breath of traffic outside the 231st Street Station. Someone’s hand-held radio jibes at me. Something old and jazzy. It pushes out a tune that reminds me of a man hunting buffalo. But the hunter is blind and wrongly aiming at me.
I should turn back now—it would be safer than shuffling around the booby-trapped shadow of a sidewalk tree. The landmine house is a block away, off Tibbett Avenue, but there’s a train grinding in my head—are you driving it? I rub at my temples, try to scratch graffiti on it, vandalize it, hide it away.
On the corner, a gray-haired woman with peach fuzz on her chin rummages through a garbage can, organizing aluminum cans and bottles into two sections of a baby stroller meant for twins. She is listening in on my thoughts even though I know she’s not. Someone is not always watching me. She is not watching me.
The landmine house is situated in the middle of the block. Just one house in a row of houses. White with green trim. Barbed wire runs chest level along X-shaped crossbeams around the manicured lawn. I’m as close as I can be without touching the wire. There’s a sign sticking up from the grass in Nicolette’s handwriting: danger: live minefield, keep out. And beside it—a crater she caused by an explosion.
No sign of Nicolette, but she’s always running late.
When I was released from the hospital, there were puddles all over the street but I’d missed the rain. Big dazzling eyes staring up at me from the ground. They weren’t so different from Nicolette’s eyes.
But that was last autumn and this is summer, in the Bronx between the projects and the wealthy Jewish neighborhood.
It’s only me here, and I press in closer, until I feel the prick of the barbed wire through my shirt. I have to get closer because the whole trim of the house—do you see it?—is made up of words. Microscopic negative spaces between the letters. Tiny green inscriptions that hold some inviolable meaning that no one will ever get close enough to read. Except me.
Nicolette cannot scare me. I make my fear whimper at my feet. I want to kick it. It’s ju
st like her to give me something only if I’m willing to die for it. The unreadable word.
I duck under the wire and inch along the grass. Just a little. The barbed wire glistens around me. I listen to the summer heat buzzing in the wings of insects and I hear footsteps reverberating in the wings and I stare at the words that will never be mine unless I move now, I have to move now, and my feet begin to sweat and burn and I start to feel real wild and hot inside like my body is picking a fight with me, and I look up and down the street and something is coming or has already come and I edge closer to the house—am I not afraid to die? Do I need her words that badly? Would I risk my life for them? Or would I risk knowing there are no landmines at all?
Footsteps, voices in the distance, and I duck back under the wire, but it’s not Nicolette.
Men in black hats are coming around the corner. They’re approaching like B-movie monsters—slow and in packs. They could be on their way to shul, someone might say. But I know better. No one goes to synagogue in the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday. They’re marching. I can feel the street vibrating. It rings up and down my body. I turn and stare at their leader, the man at the head of the pack. He’s looking right at me. He’s a few feet away but his eyes catch the sun like tin and glow through the distance between us.
Of all the hours and days they could have visited and here they are next to me. They pant dangerously in the heat, but I can’t get a read on their threat level. It’s hard to tell how many there are out of the corner of my eye—there could be five or twenty men. They are one blob, one giant black-suited being. Do they mean to keep me from her? Of course they don’t, why would they care?
“What is this?” one of the Hasidim exclaims in disapproval. His face is tree bark. “It is like a box you cannot open. Call it art if you want.” The others send out a low hum of agreement. Even their throat clearings are layered in decades of Eastern Europe. “And the tiny words—a cheap trick. She absolves herself of having to say anything real.”
The Suicide of Claire Bishop Page 5
