Wunderland

by Jennifer Cody Epstein

  What felt like hours later she turned back onto Second, where she began to make out shifting outlines and shapes in the dark: a glint of headlight-limned skin here. A chalk-white tank there. The lit tips of cigarettes, free-floating constellations in the gloom. At some point she noticed a group of shadowy figures drawing together several blocks ahead, like metal shavings clumping toward the end of a magnet. There were more shouts: not just blackout but exulted whoops and catcalls, and the rattling cough of steel gates being pulled shut. A chant started; slowing slightly, Ava strained to make out the words over the pounding of her pulse in her ears: “Hit th’ stores! Hit th’ stores! Hit th’ stores!”

  Then, from somewhere even closer, came the abrupt and unmistakable retort: a gunshot. Then another.

  Ava froze, as shocked as though she’d just been shot herself. Sophie burst into a fresh round of startled tears. Without a further thought for the hospital Ava swung the stroller around and set off back downtown at a jog: however sick Sophie was, it wasn’t worth risking their lives over.

  As she raced over the steaming pavement Ava kept her eyes fixed ahead and her limbs loose, like a wrestler in the ring, stunned by how quickly order had deteriorated around her. How long had they been walking? The street now felt as populated as it had at noon; she found herself darting left and right with the same tight-jawed focus she’d once turned on arcade games. Swerving to avoid two men dragging a full-sized sofa between them, she nearly hit another with a mattress balanced precariously on his head. A woman with a boxed Barbie Disco Playset and a pile of buxom dolls dropped one right into Sophie’s lap, though a moment later the lone policeman who appeared to be giving chase (where on earth were the rest of them? Ava wondered) snatched the toy up again indignantly, as though Sophie were an accomplice to the heist.

  “Be-be-be!” screeched Sophie.

  “I know,” Ava panted, pausing to allow a woman practically mummified in cheap clothing to pass, plastic hangers clacking, price tags fluttering like tiny victory flags. “We’ll get you a new baby. I promise,” she said, though part of her was wondering whether there would be any merchandise left in New York after this. It couldn’t have been more than an hour since the blackout started, but the damage already seemed overwhelming: Doors defaced. Windows splintered. Walls splattered with food or paint or (could it be?) blood. The sidewalk was strewn with glass; pushing through one larger pile she felt a shard working itself into her sandal’s insole, pushing into the soft flesh of the arch of her foot with each step. She limped on, past a man grimly attacking a padlock with a saw and two more prying steel shutters open with crowbars. Across the street the crowd had jimmied a hardware shop gate up with a hydraulic jack, propping it open with a city garbage can and proceeding to strip it clean, some of the men even loading the stolen items into a waiting U-Haul. A few stores down, someone had driven a tow truck up onto the sidewalk in front of an appliance shop and was attaching the hook to the gate. As Ava passed she heard the truck’s engine rev and whine briefly, before the gate clamorously ripped away from its steel frame. A profane cheer went up. A man pushed past her, a KitchenAid blender held aloft like a sports trophy.

  In the absence of working traffic lights the East 4th Street intersection was like the site of some vast, experimental urban art project. Cars honked and dodged in the darkness, loot-laden pedestrians maneuvering around them like gleeful mice in a maze. At first glance, it all appeared to be under the balletic direction of a barefoot man in dreadlocks and a striped tam, though neither drivers nor pedestrians were paying him any attention. After several false starts she got them across, though her heart remained in her mouth for the last few blocks home.

  * * *

  She awoke in grayish sunlight on the bathroom floor they’d collapsed on together following a prolonged battle to give Sophie baby aspirin. Sophie lay starfished on the mat, her blond curls damp and wild, her lips parted to reveal tiny pearls of budding teeth. She was so still that for one petrified moment Ava feared she’d stopped breathing. But then the baby flung one arm into the air and sighed, as though trying for a cloud she knew was beyond reach.

  Carefully resting the back of her wrist against the damp pink forehead, Ava found to her amazement that it felt cool. She wondered whether the surreal events of the past twelve hours had simply been her own fever visions: a midsummer night’s nightmare, sparked by spiking temperatures and too much sugary wine. But the bathroom nightlight still wasn’t on, and the flip-clock on her bookcase remained frozen at 9:22.

  For a moment Ava felt frozen as well: overwhelmed anew by the inky panic of the streets, by how quickly a known place could turn both unfamiliar and perilous. It was an awareness she’d had as a child and as a survivor of the Berlin bombings, but one she’d somehow lost since making New York City her home. She found herself wondering whether Ulrich had lost it too, in his brief window between moving to Israel and dying for it.

  There followed a wash of yearning for him so sudden and dense that Ava’s insides seemed to physically ache with it. Squeezing her arms across her stomach, she found herself thinking: Why? Why did I let him go? Why, after that last night in Berlin, hadn’t she demanded that one of them change course? That he come to New York, or she go to Tel Aviv, or they go together someplace entirely their own?

  But of course, she knew why. It was the same reason that, a decade before their parting, she’d put a stop to their teenage romance before it had really started. At the time she’d blamed the horrific history they’d uncovered together: Look who my dad was. But it was later, only after a string of disastrous affairs with fast, unfaithful men, that she understood the truth: for in fact Ulrich—brilliant, funny, unconditionally-supportive-from-the-moment-they’d-met Ulrich—had quite literally been too good for her. Too considerate; too gentle. Too altogether safe, at a time when what Ava craved was the breathless distraction of danger and pain.

  Now, though, staring up at the paint-blistering ceiling, her sleeping, nonfeverish daughter by her side, she realized just how completely she had changed. Gone were the self-punishing yearnings of her teens and early twenties; the greedy urge to lose herself in a man’s cruel whims. Instead, and for the first time in her life, she needed exactly what Ulrich had once tried to give her.

  The revelation was so crushing—and the yearning so potent—that when the bedside phone started ringing her first thought was that it was Ulrich himself, showing up (as he always had) at precisely the moment she needed him. It wasn’t until Sophie whimpered quietly that Ava forced herself back to the moment.

  Standing as quietly as she could, she made her way to the bed, her back aching from the hard tiled floor.

  “Ja, hallo?” she whispered.

  From the other end came a staticky, compressed version of the chaos she’d escaped hours earlier on the streets: people shouting and arguing. Scores of phones ringing in an atonal chorus. A machine-gun tat-tat-tat that at first sounded like a war zone but she quickly realized was merely battling typewriters.

  “Is this Ava Fischer?” Gruff and deep, the man’s voice sounded as weary as she felt.

  “Yes.” Eyes glued to the sleeping Sophie, Ava slouched onto the still-perfectly-made bed.

  “This is Officer Michaels down at the Seventh Precinct.”

  She sat upright. “The police?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, with exaggerated patience. “I’m calling because I believe we have your mother here.”

  “My mother?” On the bathroom rug, Sophie stirred again.

  “Is your mother Elsie Fischer?” the man asked. “German lady? Older?”

  “Ilse,” Ava said numbly. “Ilse von Fischer. Yes.”

  “We picked her up around five a.m. on the Bowery.”

  Ava gasped. “She’s been arrested?”

  “Not arrested. She was fighting with a couple looters when our team showed up. She didn’t seem to know where to go, so we br
ought her along with the group we brought in.”

  “You say she was fighting?” Ava shut her eyes, trying to process what she was hearing. Her head felt as though it were stuffed with silt. “My mother was fighting in the Bowery?”

  “She’s fine,” the officer said, as though she’d asked the question she should have. “A little shaken up. But not injured in any way that we can see. However, just to be sure, we don’t want her leaving alone. We’ll need you to come pick her up.”

  Ava glanced back at Sophie. Now awake, she had rolled onto her stomach and was on hands and knees, reaching for the open bottle of St. Joseph’s that Ava had left on the tub. “Ah, shit.”

  The policeman cleared his throat. “Excuse me?”

  “Sophie, sweetie. No.” Scooping up the phone base, Ava raced toward the bathroom, stopping short as the cord reached its limit. “Please wait,” she said breathlessly, before dropping the receiver. “Just wait a moment.”

  She reached her daughter just as Sophie reached her bottled quarry, scooping infant and aspirin up in one fell swoop. Failing to find the St. Joseph’s top, she tossed the whole thing in the garbage before speeding back to the abandoned receiver.

  “Sorry,” she said breathlessly, clamping the device between shoulder and ear and reaching for a pencil. “Where exactly are you guys again?”

  * * *

  Outside, the morning light was ashy and wet-looking. Across the street from the precinct office a low-end boutique lay ravaged, its entire front window gone, its mannequins stripped and beheaded. Ava picked her way down the debris-strewn sidewalk, stepping carefully around more broken glass, burst bags of garbage, and two sleeping junkies. On Mott Street the Lincolns, Datsuns, and Buicks jostled and screeched, stopping short like irate bumper cars, honking at one another like lowing cattle. A fire hydrant spewed a foaming white jet of city water beneath which a homeless man, naked but for his briefs, appeared to be joyfully showering. Still in last night’s sweat-stiff sundress, Ava momentarily yearned to join him—Snugli, baby, and all.

  Inside the precinct office, the chaos seemed only marginally more controlled. Disheveled detainees sprawled on the wooden benches and spilled onto the tiled floor, mostly men, many shirtless, some wounded. An emaciated woman in a plunge-neck romper and red stilettos slumped before the exhausted-looking cop who was taking down her information with two fingers, his slow-pecking pace clearly no match for her rapid-fire Spanish. Scanning the room, Ava felt a shudder of recognition. The last time she’d been in a place like this had been a decade earlier—and unlike Ilse, she actually had been arrested. She pictured Ulrich’s wry face when he came to sign her out and felt her throat tighten almost painfully.

  Swallowing, Ava bounced Sophie against her chest and fed her small bits of bagel while surveying the room. She finally spotted Ilse on a bench by the far wall, seated between an enormous blue-black man in a pink rainbow tank and a teenage boy who seemed asleep with his mouth open.

  “Mutti,” Ava called, pushing her way through the crowd.

  “Oma,” crowed Sophie, twisting in her Snugli and spitting gluey dough onto the wooden floor.

  Ilse was slouched where she sat, with her wire-rimmed glasses on, reading something in her lap. As she looked up Ava suppressed a gasp. Her mother looked terrible: disheveled, worn. As Ava approached she refolded her paper with shaking hands and tucked it hurriedly into her worn crocodile purse.

  “Da bist du ja,” she said tersely.

  “Jesus,” gasped Ava. “What happened?”

  Her mother snapped her handbag shut. “Two hooligans tried to take my purse.”

  “But why were you even in the Bowery at five a.m.?”

  Her mother shrugged. “I was taking a walk.”

  “A walk?”

  “Oma!” Pushing off against Ava’s chest, Sophie was trying to torque her body around to see her grandmother, who greeted the greeting with a tepid smile.

  “And why did you try to fight off muggers?” asked Ava, still flabbergasted. “In the Bowery, of all places?”

  “I told you. They were after my purse.” Ilse scowled, looking fleetingly the way Sophie looked when Ava scolded her or denied her something she wanted.

  “But you don’t even have anything valuable in it! You left your ticket and passport at the flat!”

  “Don’t tell me what I have in it,” her mother snapped, slinging the bag over her shoulder. “Can I finally leave? These horrid men wouldn’t let me before.” Without waiting for an answer she turned on her heel and started marching toward the door.

  * * *

  Two release forms and sixty-five minutes later they were back in Ava’s apartment, where Ava had just managed to put a squalling, overtired Sophie down for an early nap. Carefully closing the bedroom door, she returned to the kitchen and set about making coffee in the stovetop Moka. Ilse sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the ruined feast that had been in her honor, a sight that made Ava furious all over again. The Schweinebraten, so brown and inviting just a few hours earlier, had taken on a sickly, grayish-pink color, though this did nothing to discourage the handful of fat houseflies gleefully skating over its larded surface. The second candle had burned out after bleeding an opaque streak of white wax that ended just before the tallow-toned streak of melted cheese and butter from her Camembert dish. Ava was half tempted to wrap it all up in the tablecloth and haul the whole thing to the trash.

  Instead, while the Moka percolated and popped she curtly cleared the remnants of the wasted meal, throwing the food unceremoniously in the garbage, the plates and forks and knives and wineglasses in the sink. Throughout it all Ilse sat like a statue in her chair, her purse in her lap. The first thing she’d done when they reached the apartment was to retrieve her Lufthansa ticket and passport from the television console drawer. Now she had them in front of her and stared down at them without expression. As Ava set a cup of coffee in front of her she looked up and nodded distractedly, as though acknowledging a distant acquaintance.

  Pouring a cup for herself, Ava sank into the chair across the table from her mother and tried to calm her churning thoughts. Above all, don’t get into a fight, Livi had said.

  “You really have to learn to let go of things,” she said carefully. “Physically, I mean. One of these days you’ll really get hurt.”

  “Hurt,” Ilse repeated. Her face bore a look of bone-tired desolation, as though she’d traveled a thousand miles through a desert on foot. Then again (Ava reflected), traveling the Bowery during the early hours of a summer blackout probably hadn’t been much easier.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked, more gently.

  “A few scrapes.” Her mother seemed annoyed by the question. “From where I fell. Nothing serious.”

  “The police didn’t seem so sure.”

  “The police here are idiots. Did you see what was happening out there? That would never have happened in Berlin.”

  “It would happen anywhere, given the right circumstances.”

  “Not in Germany.”

  Ava didn’t have the strength to challenge her. “The bigger question is where the hell you were all night.”

  “Out,” said Ilse stonily. “I told you. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “I mean before that. You were supposed to be here at seven thirty. For dinner. I cooked all day.”

  “I had something to do.” Her mother hugged the bag to her chest, as if she still feared having it ripped away. “I lost track of time,” she added vaguely.

  “For an entire night? How?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Ilse frowned as Ava lit her cigarette. “Didn’t you quit?”

  “I still smoke when I’m anxious,” Ava said dryly.

  To her surprise, her mother held her hand out for the pack, extracting a cigarette and lighting it. Her movements struck Ava as strangely mechanical. It was as though Ilse w
ere operating herself remotely, the way people navigated radio-controlled cars in Central Park.

  “Sophie was sick last night,” Ava said, more abruptly than she’d planned to. “Really sick.”

  “Krank?” Ilse seemed momentarily roused again from her fog. “Why? What happened?”

  “She had a 39-degree fever. You weren’t here to help and I tried to get her to the hospital but then all hell broke loose and…”

  “But she’s all right now.” Ilse’s eyes were cool and gray-blue in the morning light.

  “Yes,” Ava said, unexpectedly stung by her mother’s sudden shortness. For all her prior doting on her granddaughter, Ilse sounded less concerned than impatient.

  “Gut.”

  Resting her cigarette on the ashtray, Ilse unsnapped her purse and slipped her passport, ticket, and traveler’s checks into it. Ava caught the glimpse of a silver compact, the same white folded paper she’d seen at the precinct. She tried again. “Can you at least tell me what part of the city you were in? And how you got there?”

  Her mother sighed. “Why does it matter?”

  “Because you’re my mother. Because I had no idea if you were safe.”

  Ilse studied the cigarette in her hand. “I think I should not have come,” she said quietly.

  Stricken again, Ava blinked. “Why would you say that?”

  “I’m just better off back in Germany. It is where I belong.”

  The words triggered a familiar surge of anxiety: She’s going to leave. “Nonsense,” said Ava stiffly. “You belong with us. You belong with your family.”

  “You have no idea,” Ilse said tersely, “where I belong.”

  Ava took a deep breath. “You’re right,” she said. “I have no idea about you at all.” She exhaled a stream of smoke, struggling to regain her composure. Just don’t let it go there, Livi had advised her. If you see a fight coming, change directions.