The Changeling

by Victor Lavalle

  New Dads didn’t know how to do serious home repair. But they could pay for it.

  Emma nodded and laughed quietly. Nice to see her smile.

  They ate quietly, and Brian fell asleep. The offer to fix the door to Brian’s room didn’t have one damn thing to do with the text she’d received, but it provided a service much like when she’d hung the blackout curtains. Fortify the nest.

  When they finished dinner, they rose and quietly set their plates in the sink. They moved around the baby as they would a bear trap. They tiptoed out of the kitchen. Apollo turned out the light. Was it wrong to let their infant sleep in a bouncy seat on the kitchen floor? What could be the harm? He’d been born on a stalled A train, after all. They went into their bedroom, leaving the door open so they’d hear Brian if he cried.

  “This is the farthest he’s slept from us since he was born,” Apollo said.

  They climbed onto the bed, and Emma turned on her side so she faced the baby. Apollo spooned behind her, brought his arm around her belly. He kissed her neck, and she turned and kissed him back. Within minutes both Emma and Apollo passed out. As the entire Kagwa clan slept, Emma’s phone lit up on the kitchen table, a new message sent. It was as if one bright eye opened in the dark apartment, then shut again.

  LILLIAN ARRIVED EARLY. Meant to come to the apartment at seven but was there by six-thirty instead. She buzzed downstairs, and Apollo rang her in, then scrambled to figure out how he might do three months of cleaning in the three minutes it would take his mother to get upstairs. Messy kitchen, messy living room, messy bedroom, bathroom, too. Emma was in the shower, and Apollo had just been. He almost forgot where Brian might be until he remembered he was carrying the child. If nothing else, his left arm had become stronger. Then the doorbell rang, and Apollo opened the door, and there was Lillian.

  While Emma dressed, Lillian showed Apollo her new cellphone. Brian sat in her lap, and he grabbed at it. Lillian let him hold it—try to hold it—but then Emma came out of the bedroom, practically sprinting, and slipped the cellphone from her son.

  “He’s too young for that,” Apollo said.

  Emma handed it back to Lillian. “We just don’t want him getting used to it already.”

  Lillian set it down on the arm of the couch. “He’s too young for it, and I’m too old for it. So instead we’ll spend the whole night playing games and hugging.”

  Emma leaned close and kissed Lillian on the cheek. “Thank you, Mom.”

  “Don’t thank me. Spending time with my grandson is a gift.” Lillian turned the baby so he faced her. How much did Apollo love to see his mother holding his son? More than he could say, so instead he took out his phone and snapped fifteen pictures quickly.

  “He’s not wobbling his head anymore,” Apollo said from the other side of the phone.

  “I see that! He’s getting stronger. And he still looks like a turtle.” Lillian turned Brian again and kissed the baby six or seven times, right on his weak chin. “How’s the sleep?”

  “There’s a rumor he should start going six or seven hours in a row soon,” Apollo said. “I’ll believe it when I sleep it.”

  Lillian smiled at Apollo. “You got a haircut.”

  “Date night,” Apollo said.

  Emma reappeared from the bedroom. She wore yellow teardrop earrings, and her lips showed a faint reddish blush. Lillian nodded and cooed at her daughter-in-law. Apollo took her hand.

  —

  They traveled downtown to see a movie at Film Forum. It might’ve been Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, back in the theater after its initial release. They picked the flick because its showing time fit their date night plan and they wanted to eat downtown. As soon as they sat down, they felt comfortingly, surprisingly, like adults again. Not mother and father but husband and wife. This lasted for all of eighteen minutes. Previews began, and both of them fell asleep. When they woke up, about an hour into the film, Brad Pitt was being a mean father, why exactly they couldn’t tell. It seemed unlikely to let up. Apollo and Emma looked at each other, faces illuminated by the screen, and agreed to get the hell out of there.

  Next they headed to the sushi place on Thompson Street, site of their first date. They’d been feeling vaguely nostalgic and were already going to be downtown, so why not? But with the weather turning temperate, the line outside went halfway down the block. Instead they went around the corner to Arturo’s for the coal-oven pizza. The place had a piano right next to the bar, and a man sat at the bench, not exactly playing but draping himself across the keys in a way that occasionally produced a tune. Emma let herself have one glass of red wine. She’d pump tonight and toss the milk. Apollo let himself have the other three or four that came out of the bottle. He hoped he appeared as handsome to her as she appeared beautiful to him.

  When they left the restaurant, they hurried to reach the train, sure they’d been out till midnight. But when Emma checked her watch, she had to laugh, it was only quarter to ten.

  “Let’s do one more thing,” she said.

  Apollo waggled his head there on the corner of Houston and MacDougal Street.

  “How about a great escape?”

  “As long as we’re home by twelve,” she said. “Your mom’s going to be tired.”

  Apollo pushed his wife out into the street. “Hail us a taxi, my love.”

  Emma got one on her second try. It stopped, and Apollo scurried into the car behind her. “Wall Street,” Apollo said, leaning too close to the divider. “Pier 11.”

  When they reached the pier, they were just in time for the last Water Taxi tour of the night. A one-hour cruise on the East River, passing the Statue of Liberty and Governors Island, threading under the Brooklyn Bridge. Tourist shit, but so what? Being a new parent in New York demotes you to tourist status. Worse, actually. At least tourists go out at night.

  Though spring would soon turn to summer, the weather hadn’t become truly warm, so most of the passengers huddled inside the main cabin the whole ride. Apollo and Emma stayed out there longer, leaning at the railing and tucked up against each other.

  “I’m glad we went out,” Emma said quietly, watching the skyline of Manhattan. “Date night.” She sounded as if she were practicing a phrase in a new language.

  THERE WAS A man at the front door. Apollo heard him knocking from the living room. Apollo walked to the door, as the knocking grew louder. He reached his hand in the air and turned all three locks of the apartment door. A man stood in the hallway. His face looked blue. He had no nose or mouth, only eyes. He pushed his way inside. The man knelt down in front of Apollo and pulled off his blue skin. Underneath it was his daddy’s face. Apollo smiled and hugged him. Apollo’s daddy held him, and he heard the sound of crashing water. Apollo’s daddy opened his mouth, and a white fog rolled up from his throat. It spilled out past his lips, and Apollo tried to turn away, but his father held him tight and made him watch. The apartment filled with cloud smoke, and the sound of rushing water grew louder, wilder. Apollo’s daddy picked him up. Apollo’s daddy walked him into the mist.

  Daddy said, You’re coming with me.

  —

  Apollo woke up with a start. He expected to be back in his apartment in Queens. A boy again. But his wife and son were there in the bed with him. She breastfed the baby with her eyes half-closed. Apollo turned his back to them and failed to fall back asleep.

  SIX MONTHS WITHOUT much sleep is very different from three months without sleep. The mind gets swampy. The body goes sluggish and soft, gears grind down. Kim knew all this but still felt caught by surprise when she arrived at Emma’s place and found her sister looking so torn down. It was one thing in a client but quite another in your sister. Kim had had to ring the doorbell for what seemed like ten minutes before one of the walking dead answered it.

  “Emma?” Kim asked in the doorway. She set down her medical bag and her purse. She stopped herself from embracing Emma but couldn’t say why.

  “What are you doing here?” Emma asked, in
a tone so affectless, she sounded like someone muttering in her sleep.

  “I’ve been calling and texting for a week,” Kim said. “Six-month checkup for you and Brian.”

  Emma looked back into the apartment. Early morning, but the interior stayed so dark. “Brian is with Apollo,” she said. “And I’ve got to go somewhere.”

  That did it. Kim stopped being the concerned midwife and once again became the older child. “You understand these are medical guideposts. I have a job to do.”

  Emma shrugged and nothing more.

  Kim felt herself about to argue and blame, but why? Plenty of mothers ignored her texts, needed to reschedule checkups, forgot them entirely, and slept no matter how long she rang the bell. She closed her eyes and calmed herself. “Can I come with you on your errands?” she asked.

  Emma finally looked at Kim now.

  Kim wanted to brush her sister’s hair, pull it back, and tie it up. She wanted to wash her sister’s face and feed her lunch and put her to bed. She raised a hand but caught herself. Emma had always had an asymmetry to her eyes, the right a little larger than the left, but somehow the discrepancy had grown more pronounced. Or at least it seemed that way. Emma’s right eye almost looked dilated. Kim left her medical bag inside the doorway, then waited as Emma locked the door.

  “So where are we going?” Kim asked as they walked downstairs.

  “If you’re coming, then you’ll see,” Emma said.

  They walked north along Fort Washington Avenue. At mid-morning the rush-hour crowds had disappeared. The elderly and the parents of the very young were out in force. Emma improved outdoors. At least she swatted her hair out of her eyes and in a few minutes she even spoke. “I stopped checking my phone,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t realize you were coming.”

  “Stopped when?”

  “Maybe a month ago.”

  Emma didn’t wait for the light at 181st Street. She glided right through the intersection and put up one hand. Cars trying to turn stopped short.

  Kim played catch-up. The drivers didn’t honk at Emma, but they sure got loud with Kim.

  As they continued up Fort Washington, they passed Bennett Park. “Apollo brings the baby here every morning now,” Emma said. “He doesn’t sleep much anymore.”

  “Brian isn’t sleeping?”

  “Apollo,” Emma said. “He started having nightmares.”

  “If he takes Brian out, then at least that gives you time to rest in the morning.”

  Emma trouped along. “I don’t sleep while they’re out,” she said. “I don’t sleep at all. We’re a mess.”

  Kim made note of this as she felt her worry rise again. She switched into her professional mode, taking refuge in expertise. “You could try Benadryl, or there’s something called Tranquil Sleep,” she said. “They’re both safe to use while breastfeeding. Are you drinking coffee? The caffeine can stay in your system longer than you’d think.”

  Emma nodded, but lowered her head as she walked. A curtain seemed drawn between them.

  Kim tried to figure out how she’d part it again.

  They reached a building on the corner of 190th Street, and Emma turned without any warning and entered the lobby. By the time Kim got inside, she’d already rung the buzzer and the lobby rattled as someone upstairs let her in. If Kim hadn’t rushed close, she felt sure Emma would’ve let the door shut behind her.

  As they waited for the elevator, Kim tried pure honesty. “I’m worried about you, Emma. I see you, and I feel worried.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” Emma said as she walked into the elevator. “I’m worried, too.”

  The elevator crept upward slowly. Kim felt her throat tighten as she waited for Emma to say more, to explain, but Emma didn’t say a word.

  The elevator reached the sixth floor, finally. Emma walked to an apartment door, rang once, and put her hands behind her back to wait.

  “This is the place?” Kim asked. “What is this place?”

  “Just try to trust me for once in your damn life,” Emma said.

  Kim felt cold shock at the words, her cheeks tingling as if she’d been hit. Soon the door’s peephole went dark as someone inside watched them. A woman’s voice from the other side.

  “Can I help you?” An accent to the voice.

  “I heard about you on the message board,” Emma said. “You were told I’d come.”

  “Who sent you?” the woman asked.

  “Cal sent me,” Emma said.

  The door opened a moment afterward. The woman inside looked much younger than Kim or Emma but wore the same signs of exhaustion that new mothers come to bear. Her skin sallow and her eyes a waxy red. She handed a large tote bag through the door, something heavy inside, the sound of metal shifting and clinking.

  “I hope these are useful,” the woman said. She looked at Kim quickly, then shut the door.

  Emma made for the elevator with Kim close by her side.

  “Let’s go up to Fort Tryon Park,” Kim offered. The determination with which Emma moved made Kim fear her sister would get outside and sprint back to the apartment and lock Kim out.

  “No,” Emma said.

  Kim watched her sister, the way she clutched the bag with two hands and still had trouble carrying it.

  Kim reached for the bag. “What the hell is in there?” She yanked it from Emma. Her sister put up surprisingly little fight.

  Kim looked inside the bag. “Chains?” Kim said, so surprised she lost her breath.

  Emma didn’t acknowledge the question. She slipped the tote back from her sister’s fingers, picked it up with a huff, then tired of waiting on the elevator, she made for the stairs.

  “Chains,” Kim said again, but no one else was there.

  KIM VALENTINE CHASED her sister out the building and followed her farther north. Not hard to find a thirty-three-year-old woman hauling a tote bag full of chains. And she became even more conspicuous in a playground. Kim watched Emma slip into Jacob Javits Playground and considered calling Apollo, but what would she tell him? Your wife is acting strange? She loved her brother-in-law, but this would seem like a betrayal. Since their parents died, no one had ever come between the two sisters, not truly, and Kim wasn’t about to break the tradition now. Also, maybe Emma needed the chains because they’d bought new bikes. There had been a U-lock in the bag, after all. Kim tried to get herself to believe this, but had a hard time feeling convinced.

  Two mothers pushed their daughters in swings, and a couple helped their son climb the ladder of a jungle gym. An older girl, maybe eight, sat by herself in a tire hung from chains and spun it around and around to make herself dizzy. The girl’s grandmother sat at a nearby bench watching her but hardly seeing her, a distracted air, deeply tired.

  And there was Emma walking the perimeter of the play area. She moved quietly, like a soldier on sentry duty, hefting the heavy bag alongside her; at times it slapped the ground making the chains rattle. It sounded like old Jacob Marley had come to haunt the kids.

  Kim reached Emma, and they moved together quietly. Emma’s body gave off such tense energy that Kim’s own back stiffened and her shoulders locked until her posture matched her younger sister’s. It would not do to ask about the chains directly, about the woman at the door, about the kind of message board where coils of chain were advertised. Kim couldn’t expect to reach Emma with direct questions so instead she told her sister a story.

  “April 14, 1988. You don’t remember the day as well as I do.”

  Emma lost a step, nearly tripped. “I remember what you’ve told me before,” she said, then resumed her march.

  “Oh yeah? Tell me what that was.”

  “You and me came back from school, and the fire trucks were already there. The house was on fire, and we watched it burn for a long time. Mom and Dad got caught inside. The firemen tried to take us away, so we wouldn’t see, but we fought them, and they took us to the hospital. I never understood why they took us to the hospital, though.”


  “That’s what I told you for years,” Kim said. “But that’s not what happened. Today I’m going to tell you what happened.”

  One of the girls in the swing wanted to keep being pushed while the other decided she wanted out. Her mother tried to accommodate, but the girl wouldn’t leave without her friend. The one in the swing gripped its chains tightly and wouldn’t move. The mother, caught between the two, gave one a push and the other a hug.

  “We were in the house,” Kim said. “I never went to school that day.”

  “I don’t remember that,” Emma said, resting the bag of chains on the ground.

  “You were five,” Kim said. “You’ve forgotten it all. Mom told us we could skip and stay home until Daddy got back from the overnight. We watched TV and ate Cap’n Crunch, ate Cap’n Crunch and watched TV. When Daddy got home and saw us there, he went into the kitchen and screamed at Mom about why the hell we were home making noise when he needed to sleep. And you might remember this about Mom; she screamed right back at him, I want them close! After an hour Daddy gave up on the fighting and went into their bedroom, straight to bed.

  “Mom came out to sit with us. She did your hair while we watched Card Sharks and The Price Is Right. Then she tried to do my hair, but I was sixteen years old. We weren’t…friendly. She almost got in a fight with me about it. That, and the fact that she let us stay home, should’ve been enough to tell me the day was all wrong. But I couldn’t think that far ahead. We were home, and after lunch I figured I’d go out and find my friend Shelby, break her out for the afternoon. After The Price Is Right we watched The Young and the Restless. Mom made me sit on the couch with her, and she had you in her lap.”

  “In her lap,” Emma repeated.

  They’d stopped walking. Emma and Kim had their backs to the girls in the swings. A peace had been reached. The girl who wanted to keep going had been promised a treat if she came down. Now the two girls held hands and ran from their mothers, toward the jungle gym.