Something Wild

by Hanna Halperin

  Tanya gets dressed. She leaves the room and walks down the hallway of the doctor’s office, which has become familiar, almost homey, these past few months. Before pushing open the swinging door that leads into the waiting room, she peeks through the small windowpane, where she can see Nessa and Eitan sitting beside one another. Nessa has one of the parenting magazines open in her lap, and she’s reading aloud.

  Tanya smiles, watching Eitan. He’s trying so hard to contain himself as he listens to Nessa. His lip is quivering—he’s suppressing a grin, and he’s jiggling his foot with anticipation. He looks like a boy stuck indoors on a warm day—glancing out the window every few moments, anticipating the air and the sun and the wind and the grass. A boy who can barely stop himself, so strong is his desire to jump out of his seat and race around until he can’t anymore, until he collapses on the grass with exhaustion, his nose and his cheeks and his chest humming with warmth. She can picture him then as a young boy with his kippah, davening next to his father on Saturday mornings, his huge eyes taking up half his face, and the thought leaves her breathless. Little Eitan with all that boundless energy.

  They are starting something new, together; she and her husband. Something decidedly different. It’s optimistic, of course; maybe foolishly so. It’s what every young couple thinks when they start out: gathering from their pasts what they’d like to pass down and tossing away the rest. It’s bound to be messier than they anticipate. When they tell their little boy about his grandmother, eventually they’ll have to tell him about Jesse, also. When she sings their son the moon song, it’ll be something more than just a lullaby. There will be grief there, too, but that doesn’t mean she won’t sing it.

  Tanya pushes open the door then, and Eitan and Nessa both look up.

  “There you are,” Nessa says. “Tee, have you thought at all about what kind of birth you want to have? I was just telling Eitan—I know the whole midwife doula thing isn’t really your style, but I actually think you may want to consider a water birth.”

  “Maybe,” Tanya says.

  “Why are you laughing?” Nessa asks. She smiles.

  Tanya shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she says. “It’s hard to explain.”

  It’s easier to be alone in New York City than in Northampton. In a college town, everyone, it seems, is in love. All those perfect green quads. The ever-constant Main Street with its hemp stores and coffee shops. Couples crowding the sidewalks with their romance.

  In New York, people walk alone, rushing past one another. After Tanya’s doctor appointment, Nessa heads off by herself to the Met. Her loneliness rises up like heat, mixing with all the other loneliness in the city, and becomes part of the collective. As she walks across Central Park toward the East Side, she feels herself becoming part of something bigger. It’s practically religious, though it has nothing to do with God.

  When she reaches the East Side, she walks the ten blocks up Madison Avenue toward the museum, past outrageous storefronts—Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang, Gabriela Hearst—past apartment buildings with uniformed doormen standing patiently in the doorways. The sidewalks are wide and clean; tulips burst up in orchestrated color along lines of locust trees.

  Inside the museum, the lighting is white lace, angelic. She makes her way through the exhibits as if in a dream, stopping to look at paintings that catch her attention and passing by the ones that don’t. She likes the art with people in it the most; isn’t interested in the abstract or the surreal. She’s drawn to the pieces that tell a story. She finds herself narrating the art in her mind, as if to another person, and she’s aware, again, of her own deep loneliness. She’s not bothered by it—she’s lived with it for so long. Rather she’s struck by it. But here in the museum, in this city, surrounded by all this beauty, Nessa is at home in her loneliness.

  She stops in the gift shop on her way out and buys an overpriced sketchpad and drawing pencils and emerges back into the day with her new supplies. She takes the subway downtown, the hurl and clatter of the train a drastic shift from the stifling tranquility of the Upper East Side, and gets off at Bleecker Street.

  She buys an empanada from a food truck, then settles in a park to eat and draw. The park is small, with minimal green space and a smattering of benches along a paved winding path. Across from her are two teenage girls on another bench. One of the girls is holding a white box from a bakery in her lap, which she opens to reveal two perfect cupcakes—vanilla cake with pale pink frosting. Nessa watches the girls. They spend a lot of time admiring the cupcakes, giggling to one another. When they start to eat, Nessa puts down her empanada and pulls out her pad and begins to sketch. One girl is eating the frosting first and the other one starts from the bottom, leaving the frosting for last. They’re turned slightly toward one another on the bench, as if to watch each other enjoy the cupcakes, but they are no longer talking or giggling, so Nessa knows they must be close. Close enough to be able to eat in each other’s presence without feeling pressure to entertain one another at the same time.

  They finish their cupcakes and get up and leave before Nessa has even finished sketching the skeleton of the bench and one of the girl’s figures. She puts down the pad. The drawing does not resemble girls eating cupcakes in the slightest. Nessa finishes her own food and thinks about Tanya’s baby. How when you’re born into a family, you’re born into this very specific kind of sadness. It’s part of you before you even enter the world. This little boy already has so much history—not that it will ruin his life. But it will be a part of him. Even if Tanya decides to never tell him any of it. As Nessa glances across the park, and beyond to the city streets, she thinks about all the people carrying around things they have no idea they’re carrying around. She wonders what’s inside her—all the things she doesn’t know about.

  She wonders how motherhood will change Tanya. She knows her sister is scared. She can see it in Tanya’s eyes—that veiled panic. Nessa doesn’t know why it keeps happening this way—that her little sister is the one to grow up before her, that Nessa always seems to fall behind. Tanya still seems to need her, to want her there. There is comfort in that.

  Nessa opens the sketchpad again and turns to a blank page. She pivots on the bench and begins to sketch a tree; behind it a fence and some tenement buildings. Windows open, air conditioners busting out, curtains and blinds—some pulled open, some closed. In one window sits a cat. She has the most fun drawing the windows, like making a pattern but with small, important differences in each repeated shape.

  “You an artist?”

  Nessa looks up, over her shoulder.

  A man is standing behind her bench, peering at her drawing, a cigarette hanging from his lip. He is wearing a dark coat, too warm for the day. His head is shaved, but his stubble is silver. He is attractive, though in need of a shower.

  “No,” she says, turning the page quickly to a blank one.

  The man smiles at this. “You’re shy,” he says. “Why?”

  Nessa looks at him again, harder. His eyes are shining. She tries to understand what she is seeing on the man’s face; what she is feeling.

  “You want one?” he asks, pulling out his pack of cigarettes. “Artists smoke, don’t they?”

  Nessa realizes then that she’s been inhaling deeply through her nose, sucking in the cigarette smoke, as if she were a smoker who’d recently quit, aching for one more puff. The smell has always reminded her of someone, and now, she realizes—probably always—it will remind her of her mother; more so than of any man.

  Nessa considers saying yes. Smoking with this stranger. Will the smell transport her? she wonders. Will it make her feel closer to her mother? And giving herself over to the man, which she feels herself longing to do—it would be so easy—will it make her any less lonely?

  “No,” she says. “I don’t smoke.” And then before he can make more conversation, Nessa stands up and leaves the park.

  * * *
<
br />   —

  SHE WALKS FOR A LONG TIME, watching the city change from block to block, from neighborhood to neighborhood. The air cools as the sun slowly sinks from the sky, dropping behind the buildings. Her body starts to ache. First her lower back and then her legs. The shoes she’s wearing are rubbing against her heels and the tops of her pinky toes. For a while she’s able to ignore it, but soon it’s all she can think about, the little blisters she can see in her mind’s eye, growing pinker and shinier and more painful by the minute. She forces herself to keep walking. When she reaches Times Square, the city explodes—in color and in scale—and the blisters on Nessa’s feet explode, too. She ducks into a Duane Reade and buys Band-Aids and plasters them all over her feet.

  It’s dark by the time Nessa stops for dinner and she is light-headed from hunger. She orders the steak.

  “Anything to drink?” the waiter asks.

  “Just water.”

  When he brings her food she has to stop herself from making noises while she eats; it is that good, and she feels so satisfied. She eats too quickly and leaves her plate clean.

  “Room for dessert?” the waiter asks.

  Nessa glances at him. She wishes he wasn’t so cute—dark, youthful eyes, and a playful half smile. She reminds herself she’ll never see him again. “Yes,” she admits.

  He brings her the dessert menu.

  Nessa orders a nine-dollar slice of cake. The cake is so beautiful that for a minute she just stares at it. Thinking of the teenage girls in the park, Nessa pulls out her sketchpad and begins to draw the cake—the contoured icing, the plump raspberries, the dollop of homemade whipped cream. She draws the plate it’s on, white china with a drizzle of chocolate, and, beneath the plate, the checkered tablecloth. She draws the lip of her purse, the curve of the shoulder strap, the edge of the Duane Reade bag, which are piled on a corner of the table.

  When she finally begins to eat, she realizes how full she is from the steak, but she isn’t one to waste dessert. She finishes it, slowly, the entire thing.

  “Can I get you anything else?” the waiter asks, clearing away her empty plate. “Coffee or tea?”

  “Just the check, please,” Nessa says.

  She leaves a hefty tip for her cute waiter, and exits the restaurant, full and sleepy.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN NESSA FINALLY makes it back to Tanya’s apartment, it’s almost eleven.

  The intercom crackles and then Tanya’s voice emerges. “It’s fricking late, Nessa.”

  “Let me up,” Nessa responds.

  The door buzzes and Nessa opens it, flying up the stairs.

  Tanya is standing grumpily in the doorway of her apartment. She’s in her pajamas, her hair pulled into a bun, her glasses perched on her nose. She’s wearing her retainer. Beneath her T-shirt, her sister’s stomach swells.

  “Did I wake you up?” Nessa asks.

  “What does it look like?”

  “Sorry.”

  Tanya shrugs, but a hint of a smile peeks through. “How was your day?”

  Nessa steps into the apartment, which is chilled from central air. “It was nice.”

  “Yeah?”

  “First I went to the museum—”

  “Shhh,” Tanya interrupts, pointing to the bedroom. “Eitan’s sleeping.”

  “Sorry.” Nessa lowers her voice to a whisper. “First I—”

  “Wait, wait,” Tanya says, ushering them into the living room. “Let’s sit.”

  Nessa steps out of her ruined, bloodied shoes and unzips her shorts, which began to feel uncomfortably tight after the cake.

  Tanya turns on the lamp beside the couch and they both sit, Nessa leaning against one arm, and Tanya against the other.

  “Here,” Nessa says. She unfolds the blue throw blanket that’s draped over the top of the couch and smooths it over both their legs. “Do you have enough?”

  “Yeah,” Tanya says. “But my feet are cold.”

  “You can put them under me if you want.”

  Tanya makes a face. “I’ll pass.”

  “Fine.”

  “Actually.” She reconsiders.

  Nessa lifts her hips off the couch and Tanya slips her feet underneath.

  Nessa tucks the blanket under their legs so they’re enclosed in it together; swaddled. She remembers back to the afternoon in their mother’s bedroom, two days after Lorraine’s death, when Tanya had asked to keep the blue blanket. Nessa had almost said no. She had so many memories of that blanket, and as soon as Tanya had asked for it, Nessa had desperately wanted it, too. But somehow, she’d managed to pull back; she’d stopped herself from saying so. Now, sitting across from Tanya, she’s relieved that she did.

  Tanya pops her retainer out and sets it gently on the coffee table, then pulls the blanket up to her chin and leans forward, her eyes bright with expectation.

  And in that moment, Tanya looks so much like she did when she was still a girl—before she wore makeup, before they’d ever let each other down—that Nessa can feel it, a weightlessness in her chest. The sensation of starting again.

  Acknowledgments

  First I want to thank my agent, Margaret Riley King, and my editor, Allison Lorentzen. Without these two brilliant women, this novel wouldn’t exist. Margaret believed in this book before it was a book and has been advocating for it since the very beginning. Her sharp insight helped shape it into the story that it is today. Her dedication means the world. Thank you to Allison Lorentzen, for her wise and thoughtful editing. It’s rare to find an ideal reader, and for me, Allison is that. It is a true honor to work with her.

  Thank you to everyone at Viking who has done so much to bring this novel into the world. I’m grateful to Carolyn Coleburn, Bel Banta, Camille Leblanc, Lindsay Prevette, Nora Alice Demick, and Mary Stone. Thank you to Lynn Buckley for designing the beautiful cover. Thank you to Sophie Cudd and Haley Heidemann at WME.

  The seeds of this story began at the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. I’m forever grateful to my Wisconsin writing family—Danielle Evans, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Judith Claire Mitchell, Piyali Bhattacharya, Christian Holt, Will Kelly, Lucy Tan, and Jackson Tobin—all of whom have read drafts, multiple drafts, or pieces of the novel along the way.

  There are certain writing teachers whose feedback and encouragement made a profound impact. For me, those teachers are Amelia Kahaney and Judith Claire Mitchell. Thank you for your generosity and for taking my writing seriously. Also, for being there in moments of discouragement.

  Thank you to everyone I have had the privilege of working with at Emerge and CONNECT. Thank you for the work you do to end domestic violence and the difference you make in people’s lives: David Adams, Susan Cayouette, Ted German, Zack Moser, Erika Robinson, Teresa Martinez McCallum, Maria Ciriello, Jennifer Neary, Heather Arpin, Sara Townes, Isadora Brito, and Haven Huck. I have met so many people doing this work whose stories and strength I am forever changed by.

  Thank you to Lizzy Schule and Mike Broida for being early readers and for excellent notes that I returned to again and again. Thank you to Kevin Jiang for long talks about writing and life; to Rebecca Luberoff and Laura Olivier for the walks and talks; to Linda Kilner Olivier for the Arlington memories; to Jenna Bernstein for being a creative soulmate on the Island. Thank you to Andrew Ding who is a good friend and always provides honest and helpful feedback on my writing. Thank you to my grandmother, Joan Halperin, who was one of the first readers of this novel and who encourages and inspires me.

  My sister, Sofia, and my brother, Gabe, are my closest friends; I’m so happy that I’m related to you. Thank you to my dad, who taught me how to listen. And to my mom, who showed me to find beauty and creativity in the unexpected things. I am tremendously lucky to be your daughter.

  About the Author

  Hanna Halperin is a graduat
e of the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her stories have been published in the Kenyon Review, n+1, New Ohio Review, Joyland, and others. She has taught fiction workshops at Grub Street in Boston and worked as a domestic violence counselor.

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