The Vixen

by Francine Prose

  “I promise,” I said, at the same time as Julia said, “We promise.”

  My mother closed her eyes and didn’t open them again.

  When people ask Julia why she wears a ring that says 1931, she flips the onyx over, and my mother’s sweet face answers.

  For some time I thought that we’d failed to keep our dying promise to her. I’d done a better job fulfilling Ethel’s last wish. I’d tried to keep Ethel’s name bright. But I couldn’t save my father.

  When my father stopped eating after my mother died, we assumed that grief was making him lose his appetite. The doctors agreed. Another fatal mistake. Too late, we learned it was something worse. A failure of the imagination: we couldn’t yet imagine anything worse than grief.

  I hardly remember their funerals except in isolated images, like snapshots of an event I missed. Everything was so clouded by sorrow that I hardly saw what Julia later reported: my relatives greeted me with the slightly bewildered, anxious faces of friends with whom we have lost touch and who don’t know what they could have done to offend us.

  I SEARCH FOR my parents in my daughter’s face. In my dreams my mother and father are young and healthy. I wake from those dreams in tears. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of them and miss them and wish they’d lived to see my children grow up.

  I keep wishing I’d done something differently, though I’m not sure what. I should have visited them more often, more willingly. There is always that.

  Sometimes I walk to the end of the snowy yard. Across the Hudson, and slightly south, shine the lights of Sing Sing, surprisingly bright and festive, less like a prison than a riverboat gambling casino. Sometimes, a trick of the darkness or the water makes the lights seem to blink on and off.

  I think of that night, so rapidly fading into the past, when Ethel and Julius died. I remember our kitchen light flickering at that moment. Blink, a pause, then blink blink blink.

  And I can hear my mother’s voice.

  Adios, amigos.

  Chapter 18

  Every summer, as soon as Evan was old enough, and then after baby Aurelia was born, Julia and I took the kids to Coney Island. At first we’d combine it with a visit to the grandparents, but after my parents died—within six months of each other—we still went.

  The boardwalk, the beach, the crowds, the rides. Our pilgrimage. Hot dogs, cotton candy. Family fun. We rode the Wonder Wheel, the merry-go-round. The kids thought it was a cool place for their dad to come from.

  Without discussing it, we took a circuitous route to avoid passing the dark rides. If we’d mentioned it, which we didn’t, we would have said that it was for the children’s sake. We didn’t want them scarred for life, as we joked that I had been, by memories of the Cyclops’s eye snapping in its socket.

  The truth was: we avoided the rides to avoid upsetting Julia. I had told her about Anya and the Terror Tomb that first day, at Julia’s house in Harlem. Even then I’d known: that was a mistake.

  After we’d been married a while, I thought that the subject of Anya would have lost its power to wound Julia, but oddly, it grew stronger.

  I didn’t want to remind my wife of that brief, strange affair. I didn’t want to be reminded. I almost felt as if I were being asked to choose between the two women. No choice was being offered. How could lasting love and a tranquil domestic life compete with strangeness and sex and mystery? How could presence compete with absence? Later, I didn’t like thinking about how many years had passed since then, or about the lost, innocent, unrecognizable boy who’d been in love with Anya.

  I still thought about Elaine. Whenever I congratulated myself for remembering a birthday or a name, for packing something special that Evan or Aurelia might want in their school lunch, for figuring out what was bothering them and how to reassure them, I’d think that I had become the sort of person I’d imagined Elaine was. After a while, though, I had only a vague memory of what Elaine looked like.

  But I had Anya’s author photo. It was, like any photograph, an image of one moment, though we didn’t know that then, when we believed it would last.

  I tried not to think about Anya. She was the question that had no answer, the riddle with no solution, the one loss that, despite everything, I mourned when I was tired or nostalgic, vulnerable or saddened by the passage of time. Thoughts of her recurred, unbidden and unwelcome, like bouts of malarial fever. First it seemed impossible that I would never see her again, and then it seemed impossible that I ever would.

  I searched for her from time to time, in phone books and later on the internet. Occasionally I thought I passed her on the street or in the subway. But always when I turned, she was gone, or had never been there. How foolish we are to assume that the lost will be found, the hidden revealed, the mystery solved, or even that we will figure out what to call the mix of emotions we feel when a passing stranger turns out not to be the person we hoped and feared to see.

  ONLY ONCE, JUST once, I was sure that I saw her. This was in Grand Central station. I was on line at the ticket window. I was going to see a friend in Ossining. A dying friend. I was bringing bags of delicacies that Julia had helped me choose, even though we’d heard that neither my friend nor her husband was eating. Maybe I was doing something I hadn’t done for my father, which put me in a particular mood: more available to ghosts. I was unhappy because of my errand, and because I was so far from the front of the long line.

  I was transferring the grocery bags from one hand to the other when my fingers brushed against something furry, and I recoiled. A woman in a fur coat rushed by. It was the dead of winter.

  Everything about the woman reminded me of Anya. It was Anya. Older. Still beautiful. But it was Anya. Definitely her. I would have known her anywhere.

  She ran as gracefully as one could, on very high heels, up to another woman, also in fur, waiting for tickets near the front of the line. The line was so long it curved around. The two women were way ahead of me. I could see them laughing, talking, but only in fragments, like the stuttering frames of a silent film. Maybe it wasn’t Anya. I couldn’t imagine her having a friend. I kept craning my neck and rising on my toes, annoying the people around me.

  As I said, the line was long and moving very slowly.

  Maybe it wasn’t Anya. Maybe I only thought I saw her because I was going to visit a dying friend. Or maybe because my friend lived in the town where Ethel and Julius died, not far from the asylum or rest home or theater set where I first met Anya.

  Then I thought: It’s Anya.

  What if it was? I tried to imagine what I would say, how I would try to look. It never occurred to me to get out of line and go up and see if it really was her. I didn’t want to lose my place, or maybe I suspected that I would be losing my place for nothing.

  At last the women bought their tickets, and arm in arm, supporting each other on those ridiculous heels, rushed toward me. Maybe they were late for their train.

  It wasn’t Anya. I was sure of it now. The woman looked like her. Terrifyingly like her. But no. It wasn’t her. I’d so wanted it to be her that I couldn’t breathe. I thought I might die right then and there, my heart was slamming so hard. If I fell down dead on the station floor, Anya or Not-Anya and her friend would stop and join the crowd gathering around me. Or maybe they’d keep running.

  I wanted it to be Anya, though I knew that it wasn’t.

  “Anya?” I said, as the woman rushed by. My voice sounded nothing like my voice. How could my heart have beat harder without suffering permanent damage? “Anya Partridge?”

  The stranger looked at me and frowned. Both women shook their heads. What a stupid name.

  Passengers hurried past me. The people on line were still on line. No one knew that I had seen Anya, that I hadn’t seen Anya. No one knew what had happened and not happened. There was no one I could tell, no one anywhere. Not my wife, not my children. I was alone in the world.

  My heart took its time slowing down. I waited. I bought my ticket.

 
I visited my friend. She and her husband thanked me for the food, for the delicacies, which they insisted I take home.

  All that evening, I was impatient with Julia and the kids.

  * * *

  Once, just once, after all that time, Anya managed to drive a wedge between Julia and me. It was my fault. I had neglected to throw out the fur stole that Anya left in the nursing home, or whatever it was: an upscale mental hospital or CIA simulacrum.

  I’d forgotten the fox pelt until I was going through some soggy cardboard cartons in the garage. Time and humidity hadn’t been kind to the fur, and when I touched the pelt, it felt like a dead rat. I let out a yelp of animal fear. I was embarrassed in front of my daughter. I didn’t want to remember looking into the fox’s face as Anya twisted beneath me. I didn’t want to touch it or recall the calculated witchiness, the fetishism, the time I spent under its spell, or how I’d found it in Anya’s empty room.

  Aurelia asked if she could play with it. I don’t know why I said yes. At least it would have some use. I didn’t think much about it. That was another mistake.

  Julia must have known that it had belonged to Anya. She must have seen Anya wearing it. Or she remembered the detail from The Vixen. She threw it in the trash, and told Aurelia that it was crawling with mites and lice. Julia didn’t speak to me for a week, and I had to slowly and cautiously work my way back into her good graces.

  I wished that I could have told her that what I felt for her was so much deeper and more powerful than anything I’d felt for Anya, certainly for Elaine. I had never for one moment thought, as I did about Julia, that I couldn’t live without them. I wished I could have told Julia that love was a stronger aphrodisiac than risk, longer lasting and with a lunar pull that flooded and ebbed over time.

  Maybe she would have believed me. But she was still young, romantic, and jealous, and what she wanted—to erase everything I’d felt for any woman before I met her—was impossible. She wanted the past not to have happened, and I couldn’t do that, nor would it have helped to mention that the past, the same past, was what had brought us together. To say that I loved her more than anyone would only have reminded her that anyone had existed.

  * * *

  The Wonder Wheel, the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Steeplechase, the Aeroplan-o, each ride had a minimum height and age that children had to reach in order to ride it. We mostly stuck to the rules with our kids. Though if they really wanted to go on a ride, we added a year and an inch, a harmless little lie that made us all feel closer: outlaws and rebels together.

  WHEN EVAN WAS ten and five foot two, the legal age and height, he asked to go on the Parachute Jump. He’d been asking for years, and at last I agreed. I’d been hearing that they were about to shut down the ride because of safety concerns. That should have made us stay away, but instead it made it seem urgent. I thought about my father’s warnings with detached bemusement: how ironic it would be if Dad turned out to be right.

  Evan and I were strapped in together, and as we were hoisted up, I concentrated on not seeming scared, for my son’s sake. I focused on breathing steadily. My boy was excited and happy. They kept us at the top for a while, to ramp up the fear and the excitement. People were already screaming, and their terror edged into my consciousness, like someone opening an envelope with the tip of a knife.

  I wished I’d told Julia I loved her once more. I wished I’d kissed my daughter. I couldn’t see them from the air. It was the middle of July, and the heat made the streets wobble and shimmer beneath us. Julia had thought the ride was dangerous. She’d been angry at me for doing something stupid. She’d whisked Aurelia off to get something to eat and spare our child the sight of her father and brother falling from the sky. Why hadn’t I listened to Julia? Why hadn’t I believed my father?

  Goodbye, I thought. Goodbye.

  But once we started our descent, I was no longer afraid.

  As we dropped and dropped, I never doubted that things were under control, that we would land safely, that our parachute would open. We were weightless, deep in the ocean, looking up through jellyfish at the sun. Everything was beautiful except what we do when we forget our humanity, our human dignity, our higher purpose.

  I held my son against me. His spine and his rib cage pressed into my chest, his bones as fragile as a bird’s. I felt as if I had scooped up a baby bird fallen from its nest.

  A baby bird fallen from its nest. The fear came back. I’d made a mistake. Because I gave in, because I’d ignored my instincts and intuition, because I’d forgotten my father’s warnings, because I hadn’t listened to my wife, because I’d wanted my son to think I was braver than I was, because of one reckless act, my son and I were going to die. Julia would never get over it. Aurelia would grow up without me.

  I prayed to whatever was out there.

  Shorter are the prayers in midair, but more heartfelt.

  I prayed that if we landed safely, that after all this ended, after we’d plummeted through the air and floated down onto the ground, that if my son and I could just stand and brush ourselves off and go back to our ordinary lives, if we could just go on living, just this once, this day, this hour, if we could be allowed to keep what we had, just this, no more or less, then I promised that someday, I would write, as honestly as I could, the true story of the year when Ethel Rosenberg died and I so desperately wanted to save her. I promised the parachute that opened. I promised the sky that let us go. I promised the earth that heard my prayer and rose up to receive us.

  Acknowledgments

  I’m endlessly grateful to my first readers, whose encouragement and suggestions improved this book in ways that I couldn’t have imagined: Doon Arbus, Michael Cunningham, Deborah Eisenberg, Howard Michels, Judy Linn, Leon Michels, James Molloy, Scott Spencer, and Karen Sullivan. Thanks also to my editor, Sarah Stein; my agent, Denise Shannon; my publisher, Jonathan Burnham. Thanks to Padma Lakshmi, for her friendship and generosity. Thanks especially to Bruno, Jenny, Emilia, Malena, Jack, and Pablo for their love and support. And to Howie for everything, everything.

  Dozens of books helped me understand the historical background against which this novel is set. Among them are Legacy of Ashes, by Tim Weiner; The Cultural Cold War, by Frances Stonor Saunders; Finks, by Joel Whitney; The Rosenberg File, by Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton; Secret Agents, by Marjorie Garber and Rebecca L. Walkowitz; We Are Your Sons, by Robert and Michael Meeropol; Invitation to an Inquest, by Walter and Miriam Schneir; A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy, by David M. Oshinsky; and Point of Order!, by Emile de Antonio and Daniel Talbot.

  About the Author

  FRANCINE PROSE is the author of twenty-one works of fiction, including, most recently, the highly acclaimed novel Mister Monkey and the New York Times bestselling novel Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932. Her novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife and the New York Times bestseller Reading like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, and a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a distinguished visiting writer at Bard.

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  Also by Francine Prose

  FICTION

  Mister Monkey

  Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

  My New American Life

  Goldengrove

  A Changed Man

  Blue Angel

  Guided Tours of Hell

  Hunters and Gatherers

  The Peaceable Kingdom

  Primitive People

  Women and Children First

  Bigfoot Dreams

  Hungry
Hearts

  Household Saints

  Animal Magnetism

  Marie Laveau

  The Glorious Ones

  Judah the Pious

  NONFICTION

  Peggy Guggenheim: The Shock of the Modern

  Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife

  Reading Like a Writer

  Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles

  Gluttony

  Sicilian Odyssey

  The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired

  NOVELS FOR YOUNG ADULTS

  The Turning

  Touch

  Bullyville

  After

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  THE VIXEN. Copyright © 2021 by Francine Prose. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Cover design by Robin Bilardello

  Cover photograph © adoc-photos/Getty Images

  FIRST EDITION

  Digital Edition JUNE 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-301216-5

  Version 05192021

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-301214-1

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