Visible City

by Mirvis, Tova

  Until Emma had come home, he and Claudia had passed their nights reading on the couch, turning pages as a form of conversation. But every night was now spent in hushed conference, Claudia picking apart Emma’s words to assemble an explanation of what was really wrong. Even if he had the patience for the discussion, he couldn’t muster the same concern. From a young age, Emma had not been the kind of child you worried about. He took great satisfaction in his daughter’s self-sufficiency, a trait she had inherited from him as surely as her dark curls and heart-shaped mouth were from Claudia. They had been subjected to the usual jokes about therapists’ kids being screwed up, but he’d always laughed off those comments because Emma, with her ebullient confidence, her ease of accomplishment, had so clearly emerged unscathed.

  After leaving the apartment, he had sat in his car which was as old as Emma, a Volvo wagon, boxy and white, with 250,000 miles on the odometer. It had begun its life as a family car, with toys and crumbs buried under the seats, but now it was his private ship. He was in control of the music and the climate. The doors could be locked. People who walked by might see him, but no one would knock.

  He’d watched the people who passed: The old man shepherded by his female attendant, then the children on tricycles, metal poles attached to the backs for the mothers to push when the kids grew tired. Next came the two dogs who hated one another. The small gray terrier wearing a bejeweled blue collar was seemingly of a different species from the black Great Dane. The little dog was fearless, barking incessantly, as though no one had informed him of the impotence of his high-pitched yap. The owners were well matched to their dogs. A petite woman with cropped gray hair and bright blue glasses, exuding the same nervous energy as her dog. A tall, pompous, dark-haired man with excessively straight posture and an air of proprietary combativeness. If Leon were to guess, he’d say that the man drew his fierceness from the dog. Was that true for all pet owners? he wondered. On the leash or in the cage, was some real or imagined aspect of ourselves made manifest?

  His fellow parkers began stepping out of their cars as though given word that they’d docked on dry land. He too emerged from his car, now allowed to park in the spot he’d been holding all morning. Instead of moving forward into his day, he was still thinking about the look on Emma’s face. Though he feigned being in a hurry, he’d had enough time before his first patient to go back and ask her what she’d really wanted. He wasn’t proud of this aspect of himself, but there it was, true and unchangeable: At work, he had the capacity to give endlessly. At home, he was impatient before he’d even begun. Instead of going to talk to Emma, he’d gone to Starbucks. Though he’d once chafed at the idea of paying three dollars for a cup of coffee, now he gladly paid for the luxury of sitting undisturbed. Was this the secret to the chain’s success? No one wanted to be home.

  Now, at the end of his day, Leon walked back uptown, the streets crowded, people’s worshipful faces upturned toward the sun. For a few blocks, he was behind a woman in jeans, pushing a stroller laden with bags. As Leon drew closer, he recognized her. She was the young mother—Nina, he recalled, was her name—whom he’d met earlier that day in Starbucks. He’d spoken to her only because he’d become aware that she snuck glances at what he was reading, and he felt a prickle of pleasure at her interest.

  When she stopped at a Don’t Walk sign, he had a few seconds to decide whether to acknowledge her. Better, perhaps, to leave unexamined those moments of strangerly connection, to allow them to dangle without taking on a fixed meaning. But it didn’t matter what he decided. As though she knew him far better than she did, she turned and smiled as he approached.

  “Leon, right?” she said.

  “Are you following me, or am I following you?” he asked.

  “Both,” she said.

  He fell into step beside her. They were going in the same direction, and like him, she was a fast walker. The first time he met her, the children were sleeping. Now they were babbling, snacking, spilling. Both kids had inherited her straight, dark hair, pretty blue eyes, and round face with its innocent, unguarded expression. Once again, he noticed her unexpected curiosity, as though she was waiting for him to say something. It wasn’t unlike the look Emma had given him that morning, but somehow with this woman, it was intriguing rather than exhausting.

  “Are you heading home?” she asked.

  “I’m meeting my wife and daughter at that new café at Broadway. Have you been in yet?”

  “The cakes look tempting, but my kids are too noisy,” Nina said.

  “The whole city is noisy,” Leon said, and thought about their earlier conversation when he’d lied about not having heard the woman screaming. At the sound of Claudia’s voice, he’d rushed into the bedroom thinking she was hurt but had stopped in the doorway, shocked, as before his eyes, his even-tempered wife had come unleashed. It was one thing for him to see Claudia this way, but disturbing to realize that of course others heard her as well. She would be mortified if anyone knew that she was behind that screaming voice, yet he was propelled, inexplicably, by the need to say more.

  “My wife is the one screaming at the construction workers,” Leon confessed.

  She took in what he’d told her, as surprised as he was by the revelation.

  “Why does the noise bother her so much?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “To be honest, it didn’t occur to me to ask her.”

  They walked quickly. Leon had no need to look at the signs to know which block they were on. The Victoria’s Secret on 85th Street jarred with his inner map, and for those who’d lived here long enough, the storefront with the pink-and-white-striped awning and lingerie-clad mannequins would always be Broadway Farm. All those who lived here crafted their own internal rendering of the city based on how long they’d been here. He too carried his own version of the neighborhood—he’d grown up on the West Side and remembered when it had boasted one of the city’s highest crime rates. His parents had lived with an ever-present worry that he would be mugged, and had they been alive, they would have relished the upscale stores and safe parks. Like him, they wouldn’t have bemoaned the neighborhood’s transformation. He could never summon the indignation of those who’d once gathered outside Victoria’s Secret to protest, with equal vigor, the skimpiness of the attire and the lack of a good neighborhood grocery store. Skeptical of their motivation, he wished their placards conveyed not the slogans written in bright, bold letters, but the quieter internal ones, such as Afraid of Change, or Need Outlet for My Anger.

  “How long have you lived in the city?” Leon asked Nina.

  “Since college. My main criterion for picking a school was that it had to be in New York.”

  “I take it you like it here?”

  “I do. I want to stay here but my husband has had enough. He doesn’t know where he wants to move, as long as it’s far away.”

  On the corner of Broadway and 100th, they stopped in front of a small brick building. Signs plastered on the window of the dollar store on the ground level announced, in big red letters, LOST OUR LEASE.

  “It’s going to be another luxury apartment building,” Nina told him.

  “How do you know?”

  “Jeremy, my husband, is a real estate lawyer, and he’s been working on the deal nonstop,” Nina said, and Leon noticed that all the while, she had been stealing glances at him, her gaze lingering a little too long. Like him, she was an observer, though he doubted that for her it was a means of avoiding engagement. On the contrary, her watchfulness seemed like a prelude to something more.

  Her interest ignited his own. Perhaps she thought her curiosity was well hidden; so intent on watching other people, she forgot they were doing the same to her. He had the surprising urge to call Claudia and say he would be unable to meet her and Emma after all. Instead of being recruited into a family conversation, he wanted to ask this woman whom he barely knew if she wanted to walk until they reached the edge of the city, then walk some more. There was littl
e risk: he could easily return to the state of not knowing her. Strangers were blank canvases, and there was an inexhaustible supply of them.

  Overhead a sign was displayed on the building, courtesy of the Royalton Company. Building the New West Side, it read, next to a picture of a smiling little girl holding the hands of her young well-heeled parents, striding happily into their towering new home. He could decry what these flashy façades represented and bemoan their assault on the character of the neighborhood. Yet as he stared up, he surprised himself once again. He wanted each colossus to rise proudly in their midst. With their glass and steel, their unabashed presence, they would shatter the inertia that suddenly felt suffocating, in his own life and all around.

  Her parents’ apartment triggered a Pavlovian urge to eat. As soon as her mother went out, Emma went into the kitchen where, supported by her crutches, she stood in front of the refrigerator, fighting the impulse to consume everything in sight. She was probably not supposed to feel such pleasure in eating her way through their fridge, just as she was probably not supposed to feel so relieved to be sleeping in her old bedroom as though she were still a child.

  Every morning since she’d been home, her mother had brought her breakfast in bed. She made her grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, the same as she’d done whenever Emma had stayed home sick from school, the day spreading out before her with a seemingly endless number of hours to fill as she wished.

  Emma had urged her mother to turn her former bedroom into an office, instead of squeezing herself into the tiny maid’s room, but her mother wouldn’t hear of it. As a result, her bedroom remained untouched. On the walls were the black-and-white photographs she’d taken in college and developed herself. There were copies of her high school literary magazine which she’d edited and to which she’d contributed numerous poems that now made her laugh with embarrassment. On her bulletin board were a slew of tacked-up awards. She had starred in a high school play, won a school science award; she had spearheaded a fundraising project to buy goats for villages in India. The room was a trophy case to her early achievements.

  In the past, she had flitted from one passion to another; she might not have known what she wanted to do, but she hadn’t worried about it. The world was filled with possibilities, especially when you had parents who trusted every decision you made and were willing to support you through any adventure. Newly out of college, she had backpacked through Europe for six months. When she came home, she took acting classes, then dropped out because what she really wanted to be was an art therapist. Her parents never said anything directly but eventually she felt their impatience. In search of what she really wanted to do, she’d once marveled at how her mother could study one artist for so many years and never get bored. “It feels new every day. I always come away with something unexpected,” she had said, and Emma had never forgotten it. Her own interest in French was one of the few things that had lasted. In college, she had fallen in love with French history and literature, but more than either of these, it was the language itself she wanted to live inside. Her parents had treated their areas of interest as sacred subjects; when they spoke about their work, they possessed languages of their own. Now she would have her own language and world, one as robust, as all-consuming, as theirs.

  After a few more false starts and abandoned plans, she had started her graduate program with great enthusiasm, studying late-nineteenth-century French women writers and writing her dissertation about the period between George Sand and Colette, looking at several relatively unknown women who were considered part of the burgeoning littérature féminine. Their increased visibility had prompted a rash of outrage by the male literary establishment, who likened them to hysterics and prostitutes. The fear of the female body was ever-present, but Emma wanted to study another fear, the fear of the female mind.

  On the desk beside her, the books were waiting; there had once been a time when she would have viewed a broken ankle as an opportunity to get work done. But her inability to concentrate had persisted. Instead of reading, she ate one container of soup, two servings of pasta, three helpings of salad, but she was still hungry. Foraging through her parents’ kitchen cabinets, Emma found a bakery box, from the café where she was later meeting her parents. Inside the box, four purple cupcakes were decorated with tiny flowers. The only things missing were the candles and a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday.” She knew she should probably save two for her parents, but the cupcakes were already a few days old and looked like they’d been forgotten. It was sad to eat such pretty creations alone and all at once, but even when the sweetness became corrosive, Emma didn’t stop. Perhaps sugar was the best medicine of all, because with each bite, she minded less that Steven was gone, that she hated being in school, that she had no idea what to do with her life.

  She first met Steven at a café near Columbia. He had been hunched over a laptop but looked occasionally in her direction as she talked to a group of fellow students in French. She had always been told that she talked too loudly, but when she was excited it was hard to hold back. At first she was flattered by his attention, wondering if he mistook her for a native speaker. She spoke louder until she finally realized that he was simply hoping she’d be quiet. His eyes were as dark as his hair, and his stare was remote and hard to read. She was always drawn to the ones who tucked themselves away and, in doing so, invited you to come in pursuit.

  In preparation for her orals, she was supposed to be reading, or at least skimming, six hundred books in nine months. It was hard to sit still for such long periods of time, and to make it easier, she started spending her time in the café where there was the possibility of human contact. She glanced at Steven when he wasn’t looking, then stealthily looked away when she thought he was about to look up at her. The few times she got caught, there was no choice but to smile.

  A few weeks later, they had both been on campus late in the evening, though a blizzard had been predicted. He was teaching in the Columbia MFA program and she had been holed up all day in the library. They ran into each other as the snow was falling, the streets emptied of both people and cars, and he had followed her lead in walking in the middle of Broadway. To fill the silence, she’d talked about her dissertation topic and her classes and her fellow students and the time she’d spent in France. He had listened at first but then playfully put his hand over her mouth. If anyone else had done this to her, she would have been outraged. But they stood with their eyes locked, their hair, their coats, dusted with snow. She willed herself not to look away until he brought his lips to hers and kissed her.

  She grew accustomed to his quiet moods and to how he retreated when he was in need of space. Waiting for the moment when he would turn to her, she learned to hover silently at the edges as he slowly doled out pieces of himself. With past boyfriends, she’d simultaneously wanted them and wanted to be free of them, but she never got tired of being with Steven. She could chase him forever and never quite catch him.

  They had been dating for two years when Steven broached the subject of marriage. Until now, she hadn’t been sure what she wanted, but her life was finally taking shape. She moved into his apartment where the two of them worked side by side, he on his novel, she on her dissertation. It was just as she’d imagined her parents’ lives when they were newly married. In her mind, they had managed seamlessly the task of being both together and apart.

  If she had what she wanted, why, one day, had she awoken and been unable to get anything done? One week off turned into another and she still couldn’t return to her work. Instead of reading or writing, she decided that no one could live in an apartment with peeling white walls and so little color. She spent hours at the hardware store, plucking paint swatches from the display, enthralled with the range of possibilities as laid out by Benjamin Moore: Symphony Blue, Turquoise Haze, Harbor Fog, Sapphireberry, Billowy Down. Not caring if she dripped onto the floor, Emma plunged in, taking pleasure in the tangible work of her hand. This was her true calling. Instead of f
inishing her dissertation, she would paint houses professionally, matching moods to swatches. Her walls would take on the quality of the gemstone rings she’d worn as a kid that were said to change color according to your mood.

  When every wall in their apartment was covered in Atlantis Blue, she biked through Central Park and baked bread and made gnocchi from scratch. She attempted, unsuccessfully, to make her own jam and pickle vegetables. She tried to talk to Steven but he couldn’t understand the part of her that was incapable of sitting still when he was proudly proclaiming that he was almost done with his book. A hard spot of envy grew inside her. Maybe if she knew more about his book she wouldn’t feel this way, but the secrecy shrouding his work was as important as the work itself.

  She put off a meeting with her adviser as long as she could, but by the end of the semester, having run out of excuses, she hastily threw together a few pages which she submitted in advance of their meeting, in the hope that, if looked at in the right way, they might resemble the very preliminary outline of a very rough draft of a first chapter. She was used to being able to talk her way through any situation, but she was sure this would be the moment in which she was revealed as an imposter. Instead, she watched in silence as he rifled through her pages and nodded with satisfaction. “Excellent work. You’re off to a very promising start,” he said.

  She felt relief, but what did it mean that her adviser was pretending to have read something she was pretending to have written? The writers she studied were flinging conventions aside, living boldly. She didn’t want to write about these renegade women; she wanted to be them.