The Sky Below

by Stacey D'Erasmo

  In through my heavy front door. Early evening. The gate over the back window, rusted shut, threw shadows on the floor. The plastic clock hovered, as ever, between 4:37 and 4:38. All the furniture had been salvaged from the street—great finds, amazing finds—except for one expensive throw pillow ornamented with a plain blue triangle and a wall clock that looked as if it had been made out of bicycle spokes. I think it actually was made out of bicycle spokes, and it had been quite expensive, a gift from Janos. I looked around without turning on any lights. My house. It looked as if it was all made out of shadows.

  I took the cut-glass pineapple out of my pocket and put it on the windowsill, as if to ripen, next to the other objets I’d collected from Fleur’s house—trinkets, really. She would never miss them; some overpaid interior designer had selected most of them. But as I eased the pineapple into place, a porcelain milkmaid with spreading, deep blue skirts fell and broke. Her head rolled under the radiator. Damn. On hands and knees, I retrieved her head, covered in under-the-radiator crud, but her neck was hopelessly shattered. I set her head, rolling awkwardly, next to her smooth porcelain body. Then I took the two envelopes of money Fleur had given me out of my breast pocket, wrapped them first in tin foil, then in a plastic Gristede’s bag, then in another layer of foil. I opened the freezer door and added the thick, oblong aluminum bundle to the others and tapped it into place. The silvery bundles were stacked, mute and heavy, in neat rows, shrouded in ice. The freezer was nearly full. I needed to push a bit to close the freezer door, but at last it clicked shut. It was going to go twice as fast now. I might have to get another freezer, maybe a little portable one, just for the money.

  In a way, it was the money wrapped in aluminum foil that drew me into the wrong grove. Money has its own animus, its own gravitational pull, its own will to live. I worked on Wall Street, after all; the evidence surrounded me every day of how willful money is, how it gathers force as it accumulates, like a creature assembling itself out of the dust, bit by bit.

  Money has its own ideas, its own plans. Hadn’t it frozen the bull in place on Bowling Green? And I liked the money so much. At the beginning, I had half thought, or told myself, that I could use it to buy some time to work on my boxes—I knew I should want to use it for that—but after the first few months of stacking silver bricks on old freezer ice, I had had to admit that I didn’t want to spend it yet. I liked thinking of things I could do with the money. I liked the secret weight of it, liked the fact that no one knew I had it, in the same way that I liked the trinkets of Fleur’s that I’d curated and set out on my windowsill. It had been just over a year that I’d been stacking up silver bricks, and I didn’t want to stop. Ever.

  It was part of another world, that money—a world that no one else could see and that wasn’t entirely visible even to me. But I could feel that world, its curves and spires, pressing against the inside of this one. I glimpsed it from time to time. And it wasn’t like the money had been given to me; I didn’t steal it, either. I’d earned it, and I was overdue for a raise. Fleur’s books, including the one I’d helped her write, sold boatloads of copies. It was all on the up-and-up. The money, shiny and cold, was simply an if. The if was a door. As the money stacked up, it had persuaded me to enjoy the idea that I could, one day, swing the if open. The money wasn’t wrong. I mean, wouldn’t you want a door like that? Wouldn’t everyone? Money knows that. It knows all about you and what you really want. It knows, for instance, that you’d rather not be caught off guard, helplessly peeing in your pants on a cold day. It is never, ever still but always moving, always changing: now an open door, now a mirror, now a loyal dog, now a busy city, now you, now me.

  And then the door did swing open. A crooked door, that small, grave girl: that’s all it took to pull me across the river for good.

  I stared out my dirty office window in the city of the dead on a Tuesday afternoon. Wall Street burbled and bustled below, businessmen shoving right through the ghosts on the sidewalk, elbowing them out of the way as they wolfed down sandwiches from the carts and gossiped about what money was getting up to today. My gaze had to leap the South Street Viaduct, the ferry slips, the gray river, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, but then there it was: the land of the living, bounded on the south by the Brooklyn Bridge and the enormous tan building with the letters that read THE WATCHTOWER, that badly printed weekly booklet handed out on streets and at doorsteps by Jehovah’s Witnesses; and on the north by industrial buildings.

  One day not long after I’d gotten my raise from Fleur, still feeling restless and ill at ease, haunted by I didn’t know what, I stared across at the city of the living and willed my spirit onto those wide, leafy streets, willed my body to follow my spirit somewhere, anywhere. It didn’t. My spirit snapped back into my body and landed with a dull thud. I was in my same old cubicle, with the same fuzzy, beige half-walls. I still had the Band-Aid on my finger. The kneeling figures of Agriculture and Mining were nearby. I straightened my brown tie. It was 4:56.

  I played some online poker (I lost), cropped a picture or two of famous people who weren’t dead yet, and then, as if blown by a gust of wind, grabbed my things and left the building (“Dentist appointment!” I yelled into Sydnee’s office), sending my body in search of my spirit. People on those long rides under the river from Manhattan to Brooklyn often doze, lulled by the motion and the length of the trip home. I liked it. I let other people lean drowsily against me as I watched the stops tick by. I got off at Clark Street. As soon as I came up through the St. George Hotel and saw the great brownstones, like ancient towering redwoods, I felt that satisfying click, that release. Yes. Here.

  I made my way down Clark Street, Henry Street, Love Lane (Love Lane! Who would dare it?), and then, whistling, onto Pineapple Street. I took out my one cigarette, getting ready, and hurried to the lamppost. I turned up my collar; chillier today. But as I cupped my hands and bent to the match, I noticed something. Two things, actually. First I noticed that the widow’s walk had been fixed. That two-by-four had been replaced by a nicely turned white post that nearly matched its fellows except for a slight brightness, like a new tooth. Good, I thought, but then my gaze fell on the other thing, the hand-lettered sign in the front yard: FOR SALE BY OWNER, and a phone number written underneath.

  I shook the match out, the unlit cigarette between my lips. The uneasy thrum I’d been feeling for weeks deepened, intensified. The red patch on my arm (which had been getting bigger, it needed some cream or something) itched ferociously in protest. I scratched it. My ears began to ring. What would a house like this go for? For sale by owner. Something about that phrase bothered me, suggesting as it did a certain greed. Or was it an opportunity? My pulse quickened. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I felt a sudden urge to piss.

  The dark green front door opened. The little girl walked out of the house. She was wearing purple and white leggings, a pink skirt, a second, turquoise skirt on top of the first, a stretchy yellow shirt with orange sleeves and a big blue dog appliquéd on the front, five plastic bracelets in tropical hues, and a red macramé beret on her head. Lavender high-top sneakers. In her hand was a lighted square of computer that seemed to be singing; an intricate design coiled and uncoiled on the screen. She walked down the steps and stood at the gate. On her face was an expression of anticipation mixed with melancholy. She looked up the street, down the street. She ran her hand along the top of the gate, closed her eyes in the manner of a child making a wish, opened them.

  She sighed. Just that: a sigh, the smallest sigh of a child waiting at a gate, a sigh I knew so, so well.

  I began to shake. My left hand burned. FOR SALE BY OWNER. That bell rang in my ear again, but now, with an almost euphoric blend of sadness and joy, I welcomed it. There should be more bells, a row of bells, all ringing together, to herald the moment when I had glimpsed, at last and unexpectedly, my proper future. Gabriel, on Pineapple Street, in autumn. It was here, it had been here all along, waiting for me to recognize it, just across
the river. It had pulled me here today, beckoned me to the land of the living. I was going to cross the Hudson to it on a walkway of icy, oblong silver bricks. (When was the last time I had counted them?)

  As my hand burned, my life passed before my eyes. I saw it all so clearly: I had sold a box here and there over the years; I had gotten a grant or two; I was in a show called “Boxes.” I had gotten by, hanging on to my day job. But it was as if I had lived not in the apartment on East Seventh Street but in my own boxes all this time, tapping my dwindling stash of Belgian nails into manzanita wood from the inside, arranging found objects artfully around me, looking at the city’s washed-out night sky with my head pressing against the top edge of the box and my feet curled against the bottom edge. And now, all at once, I found that I was reaching up and out toward that dark horizon, that there was no end to my reaching, and it seemed that without knowing it I had been reaching like this always. Manzanita wood splintered around me.

  I didn’t know how it would happen, but this life that I saw on Pineapple Street was the life I had always wanted, and somehow I was going to get it. The light in the lamppost went on, a joke, but it was all I could do not to weep. How had I ever forgotten? FOR SALE BY OWNER: this was my sign, my chance, my past, and my future.

  The little girl at the gate was regarding me in her grave way.

  I smiled what I hoped was a non-threatening, non-child-kidnapping, invisible, distracted, grown-up sort of smile.

  “Hey, are you Mr. Bender?” she called out.

  I made a show of stubbing out my cigarette, though it wasn’t lit. “Who? I’m just—”

  “We’re waiting for Mr. Bender,” she said somewhat accusatorily, as if I’d eaten him. “He’s my new Latin teacher.” Did they speak Latin in Brooklyn now, on top of everything else? What was this place? On the lighted square of the girl’s computer, the intricate design appeared to turn inside out and chuckle.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not Mr. Bender. Hey, listen. Who do I talk to about your house?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Gabe.” I moved to cross the street to the house, then thought better of it. The little girl folded her arms, eyeing me up and down.

  “We don’t sell to crackers,” she said. “Our house is nice.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’d have to take a look.” I tried to slow my breathing, seem casual.

  The little girl didn’t care, or notice. She remained at the gate, kicking one lavender sneaker in the dirt. “Fat chance,” she said. “Dream on.” She kicked the gate. “We’re getting a rottweiler when we move.”

  “Sounds good. They’re good dogs.”

  We eyed each other from opposite sides of the street, like gunslingers. The back of my neck began to ache. My vision blurred, resharpened, blurred. I was dizzy, thirsty, beside myself—literally, it felt like I had split into two versions of myself and neither of them was me. I wanted to sing. I wanted to vomit. I desperately hoped I wouldn’t pee in my pants.

  The front door opened again. The mother, in a business suit, leaned out. “Alice, come in here.”

  I had never known what her name was.

  Alice gave the gate an aggressive push. It clanged, clashing with the ringing in my ears. “Bye,” she said.

  “Bye.”

  She walked up the stairs backward, still looking at me. “Don’t come back, cracker.”

  I shook my head slowly, as if I was appalled by her bad, childish behavior. Then I turned away and plunged down the block, repeating the number on the sign over and over to myself until I had it memorized. I didn’t look up or pay attention to where I was going until I realized I had arrived, as if by instinct, at the river.

  Dusk was coming in. The peaks of the small gray waves were hooded with light, marching toward me. I held fast to the railing on the Promenade. I needed to focus. I closed my eyes, trying not to cry. I opened my eyes and watched the seagulls squawk at one another over trash: a bit of hot dog bun, a grimy French fry container. A big, dingy gray seagull sat on the rail with the lordly expression of one who had already eaten well. Others wheeled hungrily in the air. The light deepened; the river seemed to flatten out into a long glow. Pulling out my cell phone, I dialed the number. “This is Carl,” said a recorded voice. “If you’re calling about the house, leave a number and I’ll call you back.” So the square-faced father’s name was Carl. I left my number and folded my phone into my palm with a click.

  Across the illuminated river, I could just make out the modest, shadowy rectangle, like a headstone, of the building that housed The Hudson Times amid the mammoth glass-and-steel buildings that towered over it. I tried to imagine that it was my past and to summon up a rueful tenderness, but instead, just like earlier in the day but in reverse, my spirit seemed to be stuck over there while my body was here on the Promenade. On the shabby eighth floor, the lights were on. The river turned entirely gold, solidified. I could barely see the building now, it had dissolved into the last blaze of light, but I could feel the taut stretching, the hollow in my chest that pulled me toward it. I was suddenly tired. With a sinking feeling, I knew I couldn’t stay here, that I was going to have to go back. For now. Before the tug of sleep overtook me altogether and the river went black, I picked up a little stone and put it in my pocket for the journey across the river. Souvenir, theft, ballast, return ticket.

  Carl, I discovered two days later, had a few threads of gray in his modest beard. He wore a plaid shirt and khakis. Inside the house, the rooms were small, with drop ceilings and wallpaper ornamented with blue and white figures in Colonial dress, walking along country lanes and dancing merrily. The floors were wide-planked, uncarpeted, and buffed to a high sheen. The air smelled of freshly baked cake. Every window was elaborately curtained in several layers of filmy white fabric. We sat in the living room as Carl explained the history of the house, the work he had done on it himself, the copper pipes, the new roof, the double-paned windows, the central heat. On the tour, I had seen the Jacuzzi in the master bathroom, the neat rooms upstairs, the immaculate attic. The kitchen was old, and the basement was wide, dry, clean-swept. New hot water heater. Sitting in a wingchair, I listened, nodding, imagining in detail how spectacular the house was going to look after I gutted it, ripped down the upstairs ceilings, and punched holes in the roof for three or four cunningly slender skylights.

  Carl leaned back. “Do you have any questions, Gabe?” I had told him to call me Gabe, since we were all on a first-name basis now.

  “Well. Why are you selling, Carl?”

  Carl chuckled. “This house,” he said, “was left to me by my grandmother. I have no mortgage, so my wife and I have decided to move up to Chappaqua with Alice. The schools are wonderful up there. That’s why the Clintons moved there. I’ve been in Brooklyn my entire life—I want to have grass. I want to have trees. I want to see stars at night. And Alice is getting to be quite the rider.” He chuckled again. “Sorry. Long speech. It’s just . . . we’ve had a lot of great interest in the house, and I’m eager to get going. Can’t wait.”

  “What, um, price did you have in mind?”

  Carl put his hands on his knees, making himself into a small, solid, plaid square. “Two point five,” he said forthrightly.

  “Two point five?”

  “Two point five,” and he added, as if I didn’t know what he meant, “million.”

  What a greedy bastard. He had to be kidding. “Listen, Carl,” I said. “I’m an artist. I could never afford that much. But this is my house. I’ve been watching—” I stopped myself. “I love this house. It’s very special to me. Very.”

  “Well now, Gabe, it is a special house, you’re right. And that’s nice, that art thing. But.” He shrugged. “This is business. And, to be quite frank with you, I don’t expect it will stay on the market for long.”

  “You’re bleeding me,” I blurted out.

  He tilted his head. “I don’t even know you.” He stood up, held out his han
d. “Good luck to you and your art, Gabe. I’ll keep an eye out for your name.”

  “No, no,” I said. “No.”

  “Yes,” said Carl. He gestured toward the door. “I have another appointment coming.”

  Shattered, I managed to get to my feet, shake Carl’s hand, and stumble down the front steps. Two bearish guys in baseball caps, one with a baby in a Snugli on his chest, were coming up the walk.

  “Wow,” said the one who wasn’t carrying the baby. The other one waved at me in a friendly way. The baby cooed.

  “The rooms are small inside,” I said. “Very small.”

  They ignored me, climbing the front stairs with heavy, bearish, big-assed footsteps.

  Back home, I took all the money out of the freezer and heaped it up on the floor in a glittering, melting silver pile. I unwrapped one of the bundles and counted the chilled cash inside: $300, just like the first one Fleur had given me. The plastic Gristede’s bag was clammy; the aluminum foil, like a carapace, lay stiff, wet, and empty on the floor. I tapped the rest of the bundles, but none were light, and then I counted how many bundles there were. More than I had thought: $25,520. I stepped over the pile and opened the small filing cabinet in my bedroom. I found a relatively recent 401 (k) statement from The Hudson Times: I had another $7,863.29 in there. So, altogether, that was about $33,000. I glanced at the trinkets on my windowsill—the cut-glass pineapple, the antique copper Buddha, the Steuben starfish, the gold-handled grape shears, etc.: $3,500, perhaps. $5,000? $8,000?

  It didn’t matter. It was nowhere near enough.

  I sat down on the floor next to the melting heap of money, fighting despair. What would the Stolen girls do? They would be clever. They would be resourceful. In miniskirts, tied up with clothesline. Like the scrappy working gals they were, they would find a way where there seemed to be no way. I wondered what that way could be. Because it just wasn’t fair. The market was so horrible! How were middle-class folks like me, working artists, strivers, people with families, ever supposed to get a toehold? The city had been ruined by September 11, sure, but hadn’t it been just as thoroughly, if more slowly, destroyed by its hyperinflated real estate market? Eaten away from the inside, co-op by co-op, condo by condo, thousands of dollars a square foot, even a square foot of air. I didn’t exactly blame Carl, but what he was profiting from was evil, and he was turning a blind eye to that fact. What if I had been a black artist? Would Carl have lowered his price? My instincts said no. So that was on Carl, too: all he cared about was getting his, the rest of the race be damned. Had that been his grandmother’s intention when she left him the house she’d probably worked her whole life to pay off ? That he would sell it to move to some white suburb?