I smiled and nodded. “Yes. Keeps them off the streets, right?”
He shrugged. “Streets can teach you a lot, Mrs. Willard.”
The Petimezas house was a bulky gray box of brick, framed by statues of lightly draped Grecian women. When we’d stopped in front, we saw Milo in the open garage, leaning against his hot yellow Mustang, looking a bit indistinct through the scrim of the downpour, as if seen on an old TV. He nodded to me as our car pulled into the driveway, flicked his smoke away, strolled out into the storm, not seeming to notice it at all.
Dmitri appeared and climbed into the back seat. Milo gave the hood a couple of blows with his hand. “Have fun, bowl good,” he said.
The house on Monsignor Murphy Street seemed to have listed a few degrees farther west, and the curb in front was strewn with soaked garbage, diaper boxes, broken bikes, a gawping old washing machine. We all sat there for a minute, watching a plastic bucket roll back and forth in the wet wind. “Looks like one of the neighbors has been cleaning house,” said Dmitri.
It was the day before Jillian Broder’s birthday party. The glancing dregs of a hurricane had settled over the city, promising lousy weather for the event. The Brigade was gathering tonight for an emergency meeting. Pete said a message had come via the dark web, not that I knew what the dark web was, or where one might find it. Pete was supposed to be working on his college application essay—the topic was “How I Overcame My Speech Disability” as suggested by the nice lady with the spider plants in her office. (What was her name? She seemed a relic from another time.) But the essay would have to wait. He intended to be at this dark-webbed, rainswept emergency meeting. I’d agreed to drive him and Dmitri to these forsaken flats.
“Thanks for the ride, Abby,” Dmitri said politely as he slid out of the car.
Pete turned to me. “You coming in?”
How much he looked like her at that moment, as he turned his head to me, the pointed chin, the dark-light eyes.
“You go.” I took his hand and pressed it to my cheek. “And be careful, my darling.” His pudgy little boy hand, his big, bony almost-man hand. Warm flesh of my flesh.
Dr. Tristane Kazemy, SEPTEMBER 26, 2016
Laurin cornered her by the microwave, as she stared in at a revolving dish of boeuf bourguignon, her mostly uneaten entrée from last night. She’d squabbled with Samir all through a candlelit dinner at Bistro Cinq. Then broke off with him via text.
You are on thin ice, said Laurin, coming up close behind her.
Yes? she replied. She remained fixed on the buzzing box. Her blood pounding suddenly, her lungs contracted.
I know you are pursuing that case again. Wasting my lab’s time, he said. On an ordinary brain. On a pile of nothing, an American lady with a bad case of nerves. It is nothing!
The beep sounded. She opened the door and extracted the steaming plate. I carry the largest caseload of any fellow here, she said.
You do your duties. But I fear—
You must know your Latin, Doctor? She regarded him through the vapor. Ex nihilo nihil fit. From nothing comes nothing. She sidestepped him and headed for the door. Therefore, you have nothing to fear.
ABBY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2015
Dennis and I stood silently at the coat check set up in the front hall, listening to the roar from the riotous rooms beyond. I handed over my dripping raincoat but kept my silk scarf, wrapping it around my bare-shouldered dress, shivering a bit in the air-conditioning. In contrast to the rain-soaked streets, Mariah’s carriage house seethed with humanity. Glittering, chattering, exclaiming in little bursts, craning this way and that to see who they could see, and to see who was seeing them. Women in tall black boots, like armor for their skinny little legs. Angular eyeglass frames. Carefully cultivated chin scruff. All of this backed by Mariah’s artwork, eloquent, numinous, and, to the joy of everyone near it, stratospherically expensive.
At the center of the living room stood Jillian Broder in a gunmetal-gray silk suit, severe and thin as a scalpel. The shimmery long hair was gone—instead, she wore a snow-white buzz cut. Her long earrings swayed as she received greetings and searched the crowd for important faces.
I turned to Dennis. “Should we say hello?”
As we edged into her orbit, she spotted me. She was still nodding at someone else and talking. “Gruesome, just gruesome what some people will do,” she said. “But look, it is the elusive Abigail Willard.” She extended her hand to signal me closer. “One of New York’s unheralded brilliances. One of the lost tribe.” We air-kissed, and she rested a palm on my cheek for an instant. “You are still beautiful. Bereftly beautiful.”
“I am not bereft,” I said, trying to chuckle.
The corners of her mouth turned down and she gave a little sigh. “No, of course not. Except that, well, I would love to see what you’re painting sometime.” She dropped her voice and looked at me with concern. Her eyes were arctic blue. “You are working, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I answered with a tight smile.
She turned to a tall, big-bellied man with gray wooliness on his face and gray curls that wound down the back of his neck. “Charles, Abigail was one of my earliest finds, plucked right out of RISD back in the bad old days. And she is perhaps the most talented colorist I’ve ever known. Now she works in—what is it—the medical equipment industry?”
“Pharmaceuticals,” I said.
“Pharmaceuticals,” she said. “She designs boxes.”
“Visual branding,” I said.
“But I don’t mean to denigrate, you know that, sweets.” She gestured to the man. “This is Charles Moffat. Of Charles and Kay Moffat. The collectors.”
“Of course,” I said, reaching for his extended hand.
“So nice to see you,” he said warmly.
“And this is my husband, Dennis”—I gestured—but he was no longer beside me. He’d melted away somewhere. “Well, Dennis Willard, he’s a wonderful sculptor.”
“Very muscular,” said Jillian, and waggled her brows at me.
“I’d love to see your work sometime—and his.” He put his arm around Jillian. “This lady has an unerring eye.”
Jillian chuckled and laid her hand on his chest in a way that left no mistake. She’d fucked him.
“Do you have a card?” said this Charles Moffat, collector. “I’ll have my assistant call you to set something up.”
“I have work to show,” I stammered, “but nowhere to show it. I don’t have a studio at the moment.”
He and Jillian looked at me. I could see a haze of doubt beginning to film their eyes. And then, suddenly, I blurted, “But Dennis does. We can show his work and my work there.”
“Fine, email my assistant,” said Jillian with a note of finality. “I’ll play go-between.” She took Moffat by the arm and started to lead him away.
I called after her: “Happy birthday, Jillian,” but if she heard me, she didn’t acknowledge.
Three cocktails later, I still hadn’t found Mariah. Weren’t we here for her sake, after all? I circumnavigated the room, sidling through the crowd. Scanned the white sofas (thronged, no Mariah), peered into the hallway leading to the bathroom (silent line of people checking phones, no Mariah), and the kitchen pantry (crates of wine and two sequined beauties in a glommy embrace, no Mariah).
And, come to think of it, where had Dennis disappeared to?
At the back of the kitchen, near the service entrance, stood the door to the elevator, and the narrow staircase rising alongside it. Did I dare check the upstairs bedrooms? The studio with its capacious chaise, where Mariah liked to stretch out for afternoon naps?
I wavered.
Then I noticed a compact man in a leather jacket and black leather sneakers standing on the landing of the staircase. He appeared to be studying one of our hostess’s small, early collages. “Excuse me,” I called. “Have you seen Mariah?”
The man shook his head. He never even turned around. Rude art-world monster.
Maybe loo
k outside first? I could use the fresh air.
Then, Forest Versteeg near the coat check. Running a small brush over his beloved’s back. He chuckled as I approached. “Our car is half canine. I never travel without an arsenal of lint removal devices.”
“And this jacket is a fucking fur magnet,” Matthew Legge-Lewis added, turning around and tugging at the hem of his velvet blazer. We exchanged embraces, and then I asked them if they’d seen Dennis. Perhaps he’d stepped out front to share someone’s weed—hadn’t he’d done that at the auction, after all?
“The only thing we saw out there was a pack of gnarly, angry, soggy people in black,” Matthew said.
“Oh? Have they stopped letting guests in? It is overstuffed in here . . .”
“Those hooligans are not guests! Are you not aware of what’s going on out there?” said Forest.
“Is anyone aware of what’s going on out there?” said Matthew. He turned to his husband. “I need a drink,” he said. “Before they shut this shitshow down.”
JACARANDA PINK COILS, glistening with droplets of hurricane rain. This is what the colorist would see first. Pink locks quivering in gold-orange streetlamp light, shaking with every bellowed syllable. “Hey hey ho ho, fascist royals got to go.” The fuchsia, the marigold.
But also, everywhere, the black.
Dmitri in black. Giant Vincent in his tiger-striped tattoos and black. Twiz in black. The entire crew, on the black asphalt, black face coverings pulled up high, right beneath their eyes. But I knew who they were.
The pack of protesters stretched clear across the street and halfway down the block. So many people in black. (Later Pete would tell me that extra bodies had been mysteriously mustered, unfamiliar men, from Jersey and as far away as Baltimore.)
A forest of signs scrawled with blood-red spray paint: ANARCHY NOT MONARCHY, NAZI BLOOD MONEY, and THE PAST IS PRESENT.
And there, in the center, my boy. Black hoodie, black bandanna. I stumbled down the front stoop—yes, I was definitely slightly soused—and grabbed Pete’s arm. “This was the emergency action?”
“Go back inside,” he hissed, shaking my hand from his arm.
Dmitri spotted me then. “This house stands on blood money, the bodies of Greek freedom fighters and the Jews of Europe,” he cried, over the chanting. The dark energy in his eyes, once again. “The Greek royals were Nazi-loving fascists, Abby! Read your history!”
“Mariah is not a Nazi,” I shouted. The words scraped my throat. The sidewalk was atilt. Or was it me.
Pete reached out to me then, perhaps he saw me teetering. He put his mouth close to my ear. “I tried to talk them out of this,” he said. “But the truth is the truth, right, Ma?”
I shook my head weakly, the world spinning, I clutched his arm. The shouting of the crowd swirled into my ears, my brain. The sight of them stirring the thick air with their fists and signs made my mind fly to Eli. To A.
I was still that girl, really. I still wanted what she wanted.
Truth, freedom, passion?
Didn’t I want these things?
The answer boiled up first in my abdomen, then bubbled up through veins, filling vesicles just beneath my skin. My skin practically steamed. Sweat prickled on my hairline.
My neck was on fire. My scarf suddenly felt too tight.
Loosened my scarf. Breathed for a moment. Deeply. Then I pulled the fabric up to cover my nose and mouth. I stood next to my son, taking my place. In rage, at the greed-fest inside, at Jillian, her acolytes, the billionaire collector, the swiveling, craning lot of them. Rage at the notion that any of this had anything to do with what mattered.
The others were raising their fists. Shouldn’t I do it too—for Pete? For Benjamin. For Dennis. For Mariah even. She would understand. For the young woman I was, and the old one I would become. Didn’t this feel like a good fight?
I made a fist and punched the black sky.
It ignited a shocking sound. A deep thrumming thump. Then a messy burst of crackling red sparkles, bouncing off the carriage house bricks, reflected off the wet sidewalk, in the glass windows of the house. A small puff of sulfuric smoke.
Pete and I exchanged astonished glances.
Someone had tossed a firecracker.
Dmitri appeared, the red sparks gleaming in his eyes. “Shock and awe,” he shouted, nodding toward the back of the pack. “Firework mortars, harmless. The Jersey guys brought them.”
The sound thundered in small echoes down the block, and now the chanting and the general mood upshifted, striking a more frenzied note. Up at the top of the stoop, the horrified faces of Matthew and Forest, among others, peered through the front windows.
Then a second incendiary popped. It was a soft bass thunk, almost a dud, but I saw another flash of red in front of Mariah’s garage, and heard panes of glass breaking. A feeling drenched me, a burst water balloon of dread. Surely the cops would be called now, surely this was nowhere I wanted my son to be. I grabbed Pete’s arm. I pulled the scarf off my face, and urged him farther back into the crowd, out into the street. “Wait a second, Mom, wait!” he said.
We turned to see many partygoers pouring out of the house now, some shouted insults flew back and forth. A shoving match almost erupted between towering Vincent and Jillian Broder. “Bring it!” she snarled. “I dare you.” But he chose not to bring it. A ragged breathlessness and a sense of jangled nerves hung over the crowd, the antifa and the art world facing off, warily regarding each other. A confused restraint seemed to prevail. Distant sirens could be heard.
I held fast to Pete’s arm. I could feel myself still swaying.
Under each streetlamp, a cone of gilded mist.
Then. BOOM. Louder, by many multiples, than those firework pops.
A single horrendous blast.
All of us in the street felt it in gut, ears, bones. As one organism, the crowd flinched, recoiling from the blow.
Mariah’s garage door lay smoking on the sidewalk, peeled off the house like a dead fingernail. A greasy cloud belched out of the opening. As it cleared, everyone seemed to gasp in unison.
Black dress, red blood. She lay on the floor. Standing over her, a stunned and soot-covered man.
Part 3
The Fire
10/10/10/10
ABBY, OCTOBER 1, 2015
On Avenue C, a new twenty-story condo tower has assumed command of a broken old corner, gray glass balconies rippling up its flanks like chain mail. It casts a heavy shadow even at night. Along this shadowed block, the building’s residents walk little dogs buckled into plaid jackets, recount their workdays to their faraway parents in Phoenix or Shanghai.
I watch them. This is the tower that has replaced Eli’s tenement. I search for A.
Maybe I’m simply unhinged in the aftermath. Dr. Unzicker might be able to tell me, but I haven’t managed to see her either. The message on her answering machine says she’s been unwell.
Join the club, Dr. Unzicker.
On the ground floor of this East Village condominium fortress is a blaring bright drugstore. For a while, I watch people purchasing hand lotions, greeting cards, allergy pills. Then I stare up again at the fifth floor. Is she somehow up there, even though the building is not the same one that smelled of cat and cumin? There are no junkies sleeping in the stairwell, and no cumbia music wafting up the fire escapes. There are no fire escapes.
I understand that I am needed at home. Dennis has been catatonic; the boys are at loose ends. After all, schoolwork and dinner and all those things still need to happen. And I am the breadwinner now. The only steady paycheck. I must keep my center, keep my focus, keep my neck in the yoke and my eyes on the road ahead of me.
And so I finally turn away from my vigil, walking back west, away from the bewitched corner of Eli Hammond, toward the subway. Past the place where the heroin hole used to be, the sidewalks of broken glass and discarded needles and lost shoes. Now clean. Now lined with rows of bikes ready to be borrowed with the swipe of a card.
A’s head is on the bar. Her shoulders are shaking. I can barely make out a bartender at the far end of the horseshoe, washing beer mugs. The TV is switched off. Without its glow, the room’s gloom is very deep. And the place is deserted. But she is here and so am I.
And she is crying, and I sit down next to her, and I too begin to cry.
It’s over. I think it has to be over, she says. She sobs steadily, then cuts her eyes to me. I am slumping, barely holding my head up. The vertigo has begun again, and the world is beginning to twirl. I put my forehead against the battered wood bar.
I hear her say, But you? Why are you crying?
I can feel words forming in my voice box, words pressing on my tongue.
I’m exhausted, carrying her fate.
But what choice do I have? None. If I know anything at all anymore, I know that I am duty bound to say nothing. My life, my sons’ lives, depend upon this moment of silence. Nothing can be changed. The excruciating parts of the story. The parts that remain in the haze. Nothing can be changed.
So I say nothing. But I let the tears fall. And so we both sit, heads bowed, tremoring, faces wet, moving slightly, undulating, in the manner of certain barely sentient things that live in the sea, anemones or sea cucumbers. Because sorrow is aquatic, somehow. It tastes salty, it submerges you, it makes you undulate at its will. Sadness can turn you into something drowned and dumb. As the world tilts, I’m scarcely aware that we’re drawing together, she and I, as we rest our heads on this stalwart, scarred wood. Toward each other, until I think I can feel her skull, an opposing arc, meeting mine for a millimeter or two, just a point of pressure so close to my brain. And maybe the ghost of her hand on my arm. It feels like a frozen gas, like liquid nitrogen, spilling across my skin. Too light and fast to leave an icy burn, but painful just the same.
October 2, 2016
* * *
From: [email protected]
You Again Page 18