The significance of Clive’s pilgrimage to Manhattan Beach was clear to me. He had been marking Alison’s death. It had been months since I had entered his life, and I knew it was time to move things forward. Either I’d gained his trust or I hadn’t, and it was time to find out. Every night before I stepped into the Little Sweet, I promised myself this was the night I would press him, the night I would bring the conversation around to the secrets of his past. But these were false promises; even as I made them I don’t think I believed them. Instead, I spent our evenings lamenting the hideous condo tower rising on Fifty-seventh Street. We groused about the disastrous snow removal after the most recent storm. Clive explained to me the workings of cricket and the Windies’ tumultuous history of shame and glory. On the walk home afterward, I would excoriate myself for my cowardice, though I knew it wasn’t really cowardice preventing me, but something else, something I wouldn’t be able to fully understand for a long time. In truth, I had altogether lost sight of the purpose of my time with Clive Richardson. The winter, these nights, this man—it stretched on and on. I could see no end in sight.
* * *
I GUESS what happened next was inevitable. On a Tuesday in early February, I called in sick at work. Clive was off on Tuesdays, and I spent the day trailing him as he ran various errands. The next morning when I arrived at work, my boss called me into her office. As I sat across from her, she proceeded to describe to me the events of the day prior. Astrid Teague had come in for a marketing meeting. When she was ready to leave, it was sleeting, but she didn’t have an umbrella. My boss took her over to my cubicle, hoping to lend her one, and in my locker, amid an accumulation of dirty Tupperware, they discovered the stack of copies of The Girl from Pendeen which I had never mailed, along with the untouched manuscript by the debut novelist, which my boss would now have to edit herself in a hurry.
I was told to pack my things. I did so quickly. I removed the pushpins that had for the past three years affixed my photographs and decorations to the wall. I gathered my belongings from my locker. Everyone around me was very quiet. My coworkers avoided walking by my cubicle, except for the few who made a point of it, stealing pitying glances at me as they passed. I think this was when I understood that I would lose things in pursuit of the truth that I could not get back, that my life might be derailed in ways I could not recover from.
* * *
I COULDN’T tell my parents I had been fired. How on earth would I explain it to them? I couldn’t tell Jackie. She had given up on me—there had been no texts, no attempted interventions, since the morning I brushed her off at my apartment. The only person I could talk to was Clive. That night, when I told him I had lost my job, he said the usual comforting things. It happens to everyone at some point. I would find another. That old chestnut: “Everything works out for the best.”
“You can’t actually believe that,” I said.
He cocked his head back. “I guess not.” He furrowed his brow, chuckled.
I began to cry, tears that were at once utterly genuine and a command performance. “What should I do?” I reached for his hand, and he took mine in his. He stroked the inside of my wrist with his fingertips. When our gazes met, it seemed they were both filled with the same question. I leaned toward him. I closed my eyes.
It is impossible to say how much of this action was strategy and how much of it was desire. These two tracks had collapsed in on each other. I had reached a level of cognitive dissonance that seems almost impossible to me now, but of which I had only the most submersed, peripheral awareness then: I simultaneously trusted and distrusted Clive Richardson absolutely. I loved him and loathed him. I wanted to destroy him and was terrified of losing him.
Clive dropped my hand. He leaned away from me.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted.
His eyes darted from the floor to the television to the table, looking at anything but me.
“God, I’m a shit show tonight,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes. “Can we just pretend that never happened?” I attempted a lighthearted smile.
“I’m sorry if I—” His gaze had fallen on my hand.
I shoved it under the table. “A cramp.” I’d been doing it without even realizing, tracing a finger through the air: N-e-v-e-r. N-e-v-e-r. N-e-v-e-r. He looked warily at me, and a rush of embarrassment flooded me.
“I think we could both use a drink,” I said. I got up and went to the counter and bought two cans of Carib.
When I turned to walk back to our table, Clive was gone.
* * *
HE WASN’T there the next night, or the next. I sat at the Little Sweet alone, lingering until closing in case he should appear. By the fourth night, I was in a panic. I had pushed things too far, driven him away with the very expressions of intimacy with which I’d hoped to pull him closer.
“Clive hasn’t been around lately,” I said casually to Vincia on the fifth night of his absence, as if I were merely making conversation. She pursed her lips and continued scooping rice onto a plate. “Do you know if he’s, like, away or something?”
“I know if he didn’t tell you, it’s none of your business.”
After that, I didn’t go inside the Little Sweet. I spent hours every night walking the streets, looping past his building to see if he would emerge, which he never did. Back in my apartment, I occupied the liminal space between sleeping and waking all night long, and in the mornings I couldn’t say for sure whether I’d slept at all. I had nowhere to be during the day. I returned to Alison’s diaries, searching her voice for some hint of where to go from here. I roamed the streets of Manhattan, looking in every taxi for his face.
As the days without Clive wore on, a vision of who I was and would be from then on began to sharpen in my mind. I was not one of the city’s bright young things after all, but one of its invisibles. You know the kind of person I mean. You see me hauling myself up the subway stairs in the summer heat, or down them in winter with bags of groceries banging against my knees. You see my brown parka, which is not even utilitarian but actively—intentionally, it seems to you—ugly, and if you are a person with a full and busy life, you cannot even understand the logic behind such a sartorial choice, and the life behind such logic, except to feel sorry but also, well, irritated—all the lonely people clogging the world, making you see them when all you want to do is take the subway home and deal with your own problems and engage in your own small pleasures. Don’t you deserve that? Well, sure, you do.
* * *
A WEEK later, when I looked in the storefront at the Little Sweet through a light snowfall and saw Clive sitting at his usual table, I thought I was imagining it. He looked up and spotted me through the glass. He smiled and waved.
“You were gone,” I said as I took my seat across from him.
“I had some things to take care of. Did you miss me?” He smiled jokily.
“With all my heart.”
“Did you hear about that flasher on the J?”
“It’s always something with the J, isn’t it?”
Just like that, we slipped back into our normal conversation. There had been a coyote sighting in Hamilton Heights—apparently it had scavenged a carton of General Tso’s chicken from a trash can. An abandoned Mickey Mouse suitcase had led to the evacuation of Times Square and snarled traffic all afternoon.
When we finished our food, he proposed a walk. The halal butcher. Immaculee Bakery. The fruit stand (KUMQUATS FRESH!). Winthrop Hardware. The bookstore. (The mother puts the children to bed. He waits for the bus. They say goodbye.) What a relief it was, passing these familiar places with Clive again. When we came to a bench, Clive gestured at it, and we sat. It was a frigid night. Our breath left white contrails in the air. Clive said he’d heard on 1010 WINS that the Gowanus Canal had frozen over.
“I guess now we know the freezing point of whatever the hell is in the Gowanus Canal,” I said.
He laughed. Then his face became serious. “There’s something I’ve been wanting
to tell you, Emily, and I don’t want to put it off anymore. If I put it off I’m afraid I’ll never say it.”
My chest tightened. “Yes?”
“It’s about what you said on Christmas Eve. About how we both have secrets. I think I’m ready. I want to tell you. I want us to tell each other.”
“I want that, too,” I whispered, half afraid that if I spoke too loudly I might shatter the moment. My eyes filled with tears. Bravo, Clairey. “I want that very much.”
“I trust you. I know you would never do anything to hurt me.”
“Never.”
“But I’m afraid,” he continued. “It’s not easy for me, what I have to tell you. Maybe you could begin? With what happened to you in—what was it called, again, the town you’re from?”
“Starlight.”
“Where you skated all the time on the Wabash River.”
I nodded.
“That’s a lie, Emily.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I looked it up. The Wabash River is all the way across the state from Starlight.”
I looked down at my lap. Snow had gathered there, and I brushed it off automatically. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’ve wanted to be honest with you for weeks now. For months, really. The truth is I’m from California. Pasadena. That’s where I grew up. You have to understand—when I talked with you that first night I had no idea you’d become part of my life the way you have.”
He didn’t reply.
“I said I’m sorry, and I am. But I told you I have secrets. So I tell people I’m from one place when I’m from another. Does it matter so much? Are you going to sit here and tell me everything you’ve shared with me is the whole truth?”
He shook his head.
“Please don’t be angry with me. We can still tell one another our secrets, just like you said. Forgive me?”
He held me in his gaze. “Who would I be forgiving? Emily, or Claire?”
SOMETIMES YOU close your eyes and you are back at the beginning. You are walking down the beach. The sand is warm beneath your feet. The water is aquamarine, a wonder, yet when you cup it in your hands it is clear, and this is the biggest mystery you know. Your hand is in her hand. You see the apricot freckles crowding her milky skin, her hair in its messy bun with the yellow elastic band, the billowy white tunic that hides her secret. She looks down at you and smiles. She is yours, a beautiful sister made only to receive and return your love.
Somehow you understand that if only you can hold this moment firmly enough in your mind, if only you can plunge deeply enough into it, the two of you can break off from the world. You can erase the future through an act of will and live together with your sister in this moment forever, see the blue sea stretching before you forever, walk forever down the warm sand, the black rocks up ahead receding at the pace of your approach so that you never reach them. You can remain here until the world forgets you.
But you can never quite manage it, can you? In the end, you always let the world back in. You could have everything you ever wanted, but you spoil it. You spoil it every time.
“HOW DID YOU KNOW?”
Snow continued to fall. Steam rose from a grate in the street. I kept my eyes fixed on the interface where the steam and snow melted into one another to keep me from slipping off the edge of the moment.
“The thing you did.” He traced a finger through the air. “You used to do it then, too.”
“I could never help it,” I said softly. I pressed a fingertip to a snowflake on my coat and felt it melt away to nothing.
“There was a night a few months ago. I was walking home and I thought I heard—did you follow me? Did you call my name?” He bit his lip and squinted down at the sidewalk as if he could scarcely believe what he was asking me. Then he looked up at me, his eyes so full of foreclosed hope that for a moment all I wanted was to be able to tell him I hadn’t and have it be the truth.
I looked back down at the sidewalk. “Yes.”
He shook his head. “I thought I was losing my mind.” He was facing away from me, speaking to the sky, the snow, the brittle February night, and I understood that these words were not meant for me, but for someone else.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something. You’re so good at thinking up things to say. All these nights. I hope you did have a fun time.”
“No.”
“Bullshit,” he whispered.
“You think I wanted to do this? I’ve given up everything. All I ever wanted was the truth. For Alison.”
“For Alison,” he echoed back. It seemed to me that his mind was far away, only the most gossamer of threads tethering him to this bench on this sidewalk here with me. He looked around—at the shop fronts across the street, the snow on the sidewalk, the black sky overhead. “Fuck,” he shouted, punching his fist into his open palm. His shout echoed down the deserted street.
“I’ll go,” I said. I stood. “I’m going.”
He grabbed my arm. “Sit.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Sit.”
“Please let me go. Please don’t—”
“Don’t what?”
“I’m sorry. I just wanted—”
“The truth, Clairey?”
I nodded.
“The truth is you’re a fucked-up girl.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“Just like your sister.”
“Please don’t do this.”
“The truth is Alison destroyed my life, and from what I see, she destroyed yours, too.”
“Please just let me go.”
“No. You want the truth, Claire, and I’m going to give it to you. You’re going to sit here and listen to every word of it. And then I never want to see you again.”
THE GIRL
EVERY WEEK THERE’S A GIRL. Every week she’s pretty. Some weeks she’s tall, some weeks she’s short, some weeks her hair is blond and silky, other weeks it’s red curls. She has big tits or flea bites, it makes no difference to he. He does like them with freckles.
He picks this one straightaway. I see it happen. She gallivants down the sand to the volleyball game and when she arrives she takes off she shirt. I was some distance away, but I saw it. He went still. I followed his eyes to she belly, where she has a big pink scar. Edwin and me have been breds since second grade. I know his mind and how it turns. He likes them with some twist to their pretty. He picks her then. I know even before he.
On the sideline, the girl’s pale little sister spectates. She does something funny with she finger, waving it through the air. She’s burning, but it’s not my place to say so.
* * *
AFTER WORK, me and Edwin smoke in the car park. We count up we tips on the hood of Edwin’s car. Me, twenty dollars. Edwin, thirty-four.
“Figure,” I say.
“What I tell you? You’re too serious. Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. Yankees want to be your friend.”
He’s right, but so? When I try to make chat, the guests’ faces go crooked. When Edwin tells a wife she looks lovely, her husband smiles because he loves to hear how his wife is pretty. When I say the same thing, the husband thinks it’s none of my business how pretty his wife be. I can’t do the job the way he does it. But I’m polite. I’m prompt. Some days, anyway.
After, I bike to Sara’s house to see my boy. When I arrive, Sara’s standing in the doorway with Bryan in she arms and displeasure on she face. Agatha is on the sofa in the parlor, scratching at she scalp.
“You’re late,” Sara says. I feel annoyed, though she’s right—I am late.
She tries to hand Bryan to me, but my boy clings to his mum. When I take him he cries. I stroke he ringlets. My boy is handsome, and I’m not just saying so because he’s mine. His ringlets have light in them. “There, there, my Bry,” I say.
* * *
THE NEXT morning I wake up to pounding on my bedroom door as usual. Gran.
�
��What’s wrong with you? You late!”
Shit, woman.
I don’t say this. I get up and stumble to the toilet. How sad is it for a man to look forward so much to his morning piss? When that relief may be as good as his day will get? But it’s such a good feeling. It could have gone another way. God could have made a world where good things feel bad. Pissing, eating, banging. Maybe he would have been doing us a service.
I bike Mayfair to work. I’m hungover as usual from liming at Paulette’s last night. My bike is old and rusted and squeaks with every pedal. When cars pass, they stir up the dust and leave me in it, and I hold my breath until it settles. But this hour, the streets are mostly quiet. The only sounds are roosters and women sweeping and cartoons inside houses. I feel myself on the bike, a big thing on a little thing. I’m of two minds on this ride, always. It’s a mortification, but so peaceful. When I set out, as long as I’m not running too late, the sky is still smoky blue, like something far away. As I ride, it turns the color of an oyster shell. The breeze still possesses some coolness. Dogs wake. The skinny black hound with the white belly trots alongside me sometimes. Early morning feels like church, when I did go.
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