Wendy dressed in the dark. She jammed a bunch of baby-sitting money in her pocket. Outside, she walked to the corner and hailed a taxi. She’d never done anything like this before, but it was easier than she thought. The driver didn’t look surprised to see someone her age riding alone in a cab into Manhattan at night. Maybe it was the times.
She had never been out on her own so late before. If her mother was there, she would never in a million years let her, but that was the thing: Her mother wasn’t there.
The streets were quieter than she expected. A couple of homeless people lay on blankets with cardboard over their heads. As she got closer to Canal Street, a parade of army trucks with flags on their hoods rumbled past, hauling loads of broken-up metal. If Louie was here, he’d count them.
The police had blocked off the streets below Canal and West Broadway, but she could see some people getting through. The thing was to look as if you lived there. They were checking people’s identification to see their address. Wendy had nothing.
I was walking our dog, she told the policeman. His leash came out of my hand and he ran ahead of me. It surprised her how easy it was lying to a policeman.
Okay, go on through, he said. But next time, you need to have ID.
The air was thicker here. On the news, they called it a burned rubber smell, but Wendy had smelled burned rubber and this was different. She pulled her turtleneck up over her nose and dug her hands into her pockets.
She passed a man carrying a lamp and a suitcase and another carrying a carton of milk, but otherwise no one except the men in orange vests and police. A bus crawled past and let out a dozen people, also in orange vests. Another group got on board. Their faces looked chalky and they sat facing the front of the bus; none of them talking. As the bus pulled away, she could see the fresh group of workers marching in with their shovels.
I was just wondering, she said. A young woman in a vest had stopped to take a drink from her water bottle by the spot where Wendy was standing. You aren’t finding bodies or anything are you?
Not much you’d recognize, the woman said. If it’s anything human, they’ve got a priest set up in a tent to say the last rites.
One thing I’ll tell you right now, she told Wendy. When this is finally over, I’m going into therapy.
Wendy walked another block. From somewhere in a high-up window she could hear the same Madonna song that had been playing everywhere. From someplace else, the national anthem. A siren wailed. She turned another corner.
At first she couldn’t understand what the shape was, spiking up into the night sky against the blue glare of the searchlights. It looked like a giant bony finger pointing toward the moon. A crane maybe. Like the tallest cornstalk ever in some field after harvest time that someone forgot to cut down, and now it was dried up and bent over.
Then she recognized the form. She’d seen it those times she visited her mother at her job, when she and Josh would stop by with Louie, times when they were having a slow afternoon. The giant finger was the base of her mother’s building. Not the whole of it, but part of a steel arch, twisted and broken off. Two stories high, maybe more. The only part left you could recognize. Only where the plaza used to be, where just last week Louie had practiced his skipping, there was nothing but a mountain of metal and dust. How high, she couldn’t tell at first, until she made out the forms of a couple of men in orange vests in the middle of the vast expanse of rubble. Just dots.
She stood there, looking at the spot, the hole where her mother’s building used to be. She had seen pictures of the moon, and a place in the desert of Nevada where they tested nuclear weapons, but she had never seen anything as desolate as this.
The last time she’d been here was with Josh and Louie. They were picking Louie up from day care, and her mother had said, Why don’t you stop by the office and take me out for cappuccino after? Her boss was away, and things were slow.
Wendy was used to her brother’s costumes, mostly, but that day he’d wanted to dress up as a pirate, with a pair of her mother’s boots that were so big he could hardly walk in them. Can’t you get him to put on something else, Josh? Wendy had said.
Josh laughed. If you ask me, the world would be a happier place if everyone felt comfortable enough to put on pirate hats and capes when they felt like it, he said.
Louie had also stuffed in his pocket a velvet bag his mother had given him, that some makeup came in. On the elevator going up, he passed out stones he had gathered in the bag. Wendy stood as far away from him as possible, but it was hard to act as if you didn’t know someone, when you were in an elevator together for eighty-seven floors.
Her mother took them into her boss’s office. Wendy just wanted to get out of there, before anyone saw her brother in his pirate costume, but Louie had sat down in the boss’s special chair and spun around.
Oh, miss, he called out to their mother. Miss. Is the report ready?
One of her mother’s coworkers had stuck his head in the door then, and her mother introduced them all. This is my daughter, Wendy. My husband, Josh. When she got to Louie, the man had said, This one’s the dancer, right? We’ve heard all about you.
Her mother and Louie had a routine they did, from A Chorus Line—“One, Singular Sensation.” When they did it back home in the living room, they each had their own hat and cane, but here in the office of Mercer and Mercer, her mother had used Mr. Mercer’s umbrella. Louie had located a golf cap.
Looks like we’ll be seeing this one on Broadway one of these days, Janet, the coworker had told her.
Wendy plays the clarinet, her mother said.
All Wendy could do was shoot her a look.
There had been no music at their house since Tuesday morning, but on the one-week mark, she woke up in the night and heard the album her mother and Josh were always playing late at night. Clifford Brown with Strings.
She got out of bed and went into the kitchen. Josh was smoking a cigarette.
I didn’t know you smoked, she said.
I gave it up the night I met your mother. She said she had a rule—she’d never kiss a smoker.
You shouldn’t start, she said. Mom would hate it if she knew.
Some people have started acting like the situation’s hopeless, he said. They’re having memorial services. I got a call to play at one.
What do you think?
I try not to think, he said. If there was anything I could do, I would. The sickening thing is that there isn’t. Having to sit here, waiting. Knowing this could go on forever.
So what are we supposed to tell Louie? When do we go get him?
Louie’s probably better off over at Corey’s for now, Josh said. The song on the record was “Laura”—another of the ones they used to dance to in the kitchen. For all the days since her mother had disappeared, Wendy had felt a strange new awkwardness about hugging Josh, and he must have felt something similar, as if maybe, putting their arms around each other, one or both of them would break. Now, though, she leaned her head on his shoulder and patted him. When she did, he wrapped his arms around her. They just stood like that, nobody moving, for a long time.
Maybe it would be good if you started playing your bass again, she said.
He looked at her as if he wasn’t sure what music was anymore.
I was thinking I might call my father, she told him. She thought if she said that, Josh might finally do something, but all he said was, Good idea.
Four
He had written his phone number in his letter. She reached for her desk atlas to find out what time it would be in California. Nine-thirty.
Hey, said the voice. It was a little scratchy. Cell phone.
Is this Garrett DeVries? This is his daughter speaking.
She could hear voices in the background. It’s my kid, he called out to someone. More voices.
I’m calling from New York, she said. I guess you know about what happened here.
I was meaning to call and make sure you were okay. Your school’s
nowhere near that place, right?
On the other side of the river.
Still, it’s got to be pretty bad just being there.
It hadn’t occurred to her that he wouldn’t know. She hadn’t had to tell anybody before.
Yes.
So how’s school going? he asked. Rough start, I guess. She could hear him say, I told you I had a kid.
We had Wednesday off.
Well, there you go. No news is all bad.
The reason I called, she said.
Quiet down, Bobby, he called out. Sorry about that. The crowd’s a little rowdy here. In the background she could hear country music and the sound of glasses clinking.
So when are you coming to see me? he asked. You got the letter, right?
Maybe on one of my vacations, she said. Right now, it’s the start of school and everything. I’m in band.
She just wanted to get off the phone now. She couldn’t even remember why she’d thought it would be a good idea to call.
Let me guess, he said. Your mom put the kibosh on you coming out to visit, right?
Not that so much, she said.
Just remember you’re fourteen years old now, babe, he said.
Thirteen, but she didn’t say it.
You have a say in your own life.
My mom, Wendy said. She didn’t want to cry, so she stopped talking.
A different song was playing now. A woman singing about how you can take this old frying pan. A voice called, You in this round, Garrett?
My mom worked at the towers, she said. She didn’t come home.
She thought when people were divorced as long as her parents, they probably didn’t care if the other one disappeared. Her mother, for instance. From how she talked, Wendy could imagine her mother might have been almost happy if a building fell on her father. But now all he could say was, Oh my God, oh my God.
Josh thinks she might have been hurt and lost her memory, she said. Some people say there’s sure to be people waiting to get dug out from the air pockets.
Oh my God, he said. I can’t believe it. Quiet down, you guys.
Things are a little strange here right now, she told him.
Your mother and I, he said. I never expected.
I should probably go now, she said. I think my little brother needs something.
I’ve got to think. His voice sounded hoarse.
So I guess we’ll be in touch, she said. What’s the weather like there? She didn’t know why she said that. Just to stop him from saying Oh my God over and over probably.
We had our rough times, he said. The thing is, we really used to love each other.
I guess I better go, she said.
She was in her mother’s closet one time, looking for dress-ups, when she found the painting. Even at five years old, Wendy knew it was of her mother. She wasn’t wearing any clothes except a scarf around her shoulders and her hair was still long. She was standing in front of some mountains, with a river at her feet.
Your dad painted that, her mother told her. We were really young then.
By this time he was gone, and the only time his name came up was when her mother had something bad to say about him, usually to Kate. It was hard imagining her ever looking out at him the way she did in the painting, with a smiling mouth and no frown lines in the space between her eyes.
We should hang this up in the living room, Wendy said. We could color over the bare parts.
She thought it was beautiful, but she was also thinking about the boyfriends who came over now and then to take her mother on dates and how it might be embarrassing if they saw her naked.
I don’t think so, honeybun, her mother said.
Wendy wanted to know why. Her mother looked so pretty in the painting. Like Ariel in The Little Mermaid.
Bad memories, she said. I’d throw this painting out, except that I don’t think you should ever destroy someone’s artwork.
We could give it to a museum, Wendy said. Sundays, she and her mother went into the city a lot, and sometimes after the polar bears in Central Park, they went to the Met.
They might not think he’s quite as great an artist as he does, she said.
It wasn’t hard remembering the fights because there’d been lots of those. Jesus Christ, Janet. If what you cared about so much was a microwave oven and health insurance, you should have married a damned banker.
They must have thought she couldn’t hear them when Mister Rogers was on, because they always seemed to have their worst arguments at five o’clock, right around the time he was taking off his sweater. But Mister Rogers spoke very quietly, even with the volume up. She’d be curled up under the blue afghan in her TV chair with a plate of Ritz crackers and peanut butter and a glass of soy milk, but she could hear them in the bedroom, even though the door was closed.
You make it seem like there’s something sick about wanting to be sure your child can go to the dentist twice a year and take a few swimming lessons.
Who said she couldn’t go swimming? All I did was bring home one lousy tube of orange paint.
I don’t recall hearing you ever did without much when you were a kid. Seems to me I’m talking to the person who used to get daily private tennis lessons every summer.
Maybe it was doing that shit that made me understand how little it all adds up to. Not to some people, I guess.
She couldn’t make out what her mother said then. Just the sound of crying. On TV, Mister Rogers was telling Audrey it was time for the trolley to come. Then came the jingle of the bell, and sure enough, he was right.
I wonder what Trolley’s got with him today, said Mister Rogers.
From the bedroom, the other voice. Her mother’s. You care more about going fishing with your friends than your own child. Maybe I might like to make art, too. We’ve got a child here to think about.
Looks like Prince Friday might have gotten a new balloon for his birthday, Mister Rogers said. A beautiful shade of blue.
But I want the red one, said the prince. And then her father: Who’d want to stay home with a person who’s always ragging on them?
Oh, now I get it. It’s all my fault.
People can’t always get what they want, Prince Friday, Mister Rogers was saying. But it’s all right to be disappointed now and then. What do you think, Mister McFeeley?
You know what, Garrett? Her mother, crying. You break my heart.
They were in their green car with no roof, driving somewhere in the country. Wendy was very young.
It’s not safe having her on my lap, Garrett. She should be riding in a car seat.
When was the last time you saw an Alfa with a car seat, babe?
Slow down at least.
What about you, Wenderina? You want the wind in your face?
She didn’t actually, but she knew what he wanted her to say.
Faster! More!
They were heading someplace outside New York City. Her grandmother’s house, with the piano, and the olden days cart, with the tea set on it, which she used to serve special cookies that came from England. Wendy stuck her hand out the side of the car and let the veil on Wedding Belle Barbie flap in the wind.
At her grandmother’s, she slept in the room that used to be her father’s. There was a picture over the bed of a man on a horse that her grandmother said her father made when he was a little boy.
Your father was supposed to go to art school in Rhode Island, her grandmother told her. Before you came along.
Give it up, Mother, he said. I’ve got my artwork right here. He meant Wendy.
On their way back home, driving fast on the Hudson River Parkway, she accidentally dropped her Barbie out the side of the car. She wanted to go back, but her father said they couldn’t.
He had a show of his paintings. Not in New York City, but someplace a little ways away, where you had to ride a train. She and her mother put on long skirts. Her mother dabbed perfume on Wendy’s neck.
You can wear this, she said. Her purple boa.
>
Her father came in the room. He must have shaved, because he had the special smell he always had after. She rubbed her face on his smooth cheek. He looked handsome as a prince.
Nobody else’s daddy knows how to draw dinosaurs like you, Wendy said.
Too bad nobody wants to buy paintings of dinosaurs. Her mother talking. She was laughing, but her father wasn’t.
Will you ever quit, Janet? he said.
He had another show, someplace upstate this time. He was gone a week, setting things up. He told her mother not to hassle with coming to the opening. I’ll be home in two more days anyway, Janet, he said. Dance our girl around the room for me, and tell her there’s a treat waiting for her in my bag.
Times like that, when he was coming back from one of his trips, she and her mother would decorate the house. One time they made paper chains they hung from the ceiling and put on their long dresses. They worked out a dance routine to “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid.
Another time, the two of them hid in the closet to surprise him. They waited so long that time, Wendy’s arm fell asleep and their hairdos got mussed up. After a long time waiting, her mother said they’d better get out of the closet.
Something must have come up, she said. By the time he finally got home, Wendy was asleep, and when she woke up in the morning, he was gone again. They’d had one of their fights.
The time he went to New Jersey, her mother had the idea they should show up and surprise him. They put on their dresses again. They had to take a train from Penn Station to Trenton, and from there a taxi to his motel. Her mother got the key from the front desk. I’m his wife, she said.
The Usual Rules Page 7
