“I don’t know . . .”
“Deanna, it’s Anna's birthday . . .”
“Look . . . you can stay the night, okay? But in the morning, Charles, I want you to leave.”
“I understand. That’s fine. Thank you.”
It felt a little odd thanking my wife for letting me stay overnight in my own home. Not unjust, just odd. The important thing, though, was that she’d said yes.
When I arrived at the kitchen door, present in hand — I’d bought her three CDs based on the recommendations of a clerk at Virgin Records — Anna was sitting at the counter munching cereal and staring zombie-eyed at MTV.
“Daddy!” Anna, who normally liked to keep her childish enthusiasm under control, seemed unabashedly glad to see me. Only not as glad as I was to see her. She popped up off her stool in a flash and straight into my arms, where I clung to her as if my very life depended on it. And maybe it did.
I was about to ask her where her mother was, but just then she walked into the kitchen. I had no idea what to do — I felt as awkward as someone on a blind date. I wasn’t sure how to greet her, what to say to her, and it occurred to me that she was probably a little confused on the issue as well. We both hesitated, then settled on a perfunctory embrace with all the warmth of a postgame hockey handshake.
“How was California?” she asked me, evidently determined to see the charade through.
“Fine. Not done yet, either. I have to go back in the morning.”
This was evidently news to Anna. She immediately pouted and said: "Daddy . . .”
“Sorry, honey. There’s nothing I can do about it.” And here, at least, I was telling the truth.
“I wanted you to see me sing at the spring concert. I have a solo.”
“Well, don’t turn professional till after high school.”
The attempt at levity failed; Anna turned back to MTV, looking hurt and upset with me.
“Can somebody get me some juice?” she said. Her hands were suddenly shaking; she was holding the TV remote, and it was jiggling up and down.
“Are you low, honey?” Deanna said, quickly opening the refrigerator.
“No. I’m shaking because I like to.”
Deanna shot me a look: See what I’ve been going through, this look said. She's getting worse.
Deanna pulled out some orange juice and poured Anna half a glass. “There you go. . . .”
Anna took it and swallowed a little.
“I think you should drink a little more,” Deanna said.
“Oh, is that what you think?” Anna, ever vigilant against any suggestions concerning what she should or shouldn’t put into her own body. She was still shaking.
“Come on, sweetie,” I said.
“I’m fine,” Anna said.
“You’re not — ”
“All right!" Anna said, grabbing the glass and striding out of the room. “I wish both of you would get off of my back already.”
After she left the room, Deanna said: “She’s scared. She’s been going up and down like a roller coaster. When she gets scared she gets angry.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know.”
Why did you call me Anna? our daughter Anna used to ask when she was very small.
Because you’re part of me, Deanna would answer: De-Anna, see?
“I have to get back to the bills,” Deanna said. Which suddenly reminded me that we might soon be having a problem paying those bills. Deanna left the kitchen.
I still needed a birthday card. Since my daughter and wife were both mad at me, I decided it was a good time to go to the stationery store on Merrick Road and buy one.
When I walked into the store, an older woman was buying Lotto tickets at the counter.
“. . . eight . . . seventeen . . . thirty-three . . . six . . . ,” listlessly spitting out a seemingly endless litany of digits. “. . . nine . . . twenty-two . . . eleven . . .”
I walked to the back where the greeting cards were. Of course, there weren’t just greeting cards; there were anniversary cards, get well cards, condolence cards, Valentine’s Day cards, thank-you cards, graduation cards, and birthday cards. I planted myself in front of the birthday section, momentarily dazzled by all the subcategories: Happy Birthday, Mom, Son, Wife, Mom-in-law, Grandmother, Best Friend, Cousin. And Daughter—it was there somewhere. Of course, once I found the category, I had to decide on the tone. Funny? Respectful? Sentimental? I was inclined to go sentimental here, since that’s how I felt these days. There were a lot of sentimental cards, too, most of them with flowers on the cover and little poems on the inside. Only the poems weren’t sentimental as much as trite—the roses are red, violets are blue genre of poem writing.
For instance:
To my daughter on her birthday
I have this to say
I love you very much
Your smile, your spirit and such
Even though we may be apart
You have your daddy’s heart.
The end.
I was worried Anna might throw up if I brought that one home for her. On the other hand, if I wanted to be sentimental and halfway intelligent, the pickings were slim. There were cards with nothing on the inside, for instance, allowing you to be as intelligent or sentimental as you’d like. These cards tended to have moody black-and-white photographs on the cover — of a snowfield in Maine, say, or a lonely mountain stream. They basically said stupid poems are for the unenlightened masses — these are for the more soulful of you. I couldn’t decide if I was up to soulfulness today, though. So what was it to be?
Just past the card racks there were more elaborate gifts. Ceramic hearts saying “World’s Best Mom.” A golf ball “Fore a Great Dad.” Fake flowers. A bell that said “Ring A Ding Ding.” And some picture frames.
I didn’t notice it immediately.
I looked here and there, sifted through the ceramic and cheap plastic, picked up the golf ball, gently rang the bell. I even turned back to the card rack, intent on finally making a decision. Only I had what you might call an episode of peripheral vision—you might, except it wouldn’t be strictly true. It wasn’t that I saw anything out of the corner of my eye, just that I remembered seeing it.
The bell, yes. And the silly golf ball. And the ceramic hearts. Keep going. There.
It was in the second picture frame.
And the third one, too.
And three miniature ones set behind it. And the large frame decorated with a metal trellis of flowers.
“Can I help you with anything?” The voice seemed to be coming from far away.
The picture in the picture frames.
They put them there to show you how nice they’ll look once you get them home and put your pictures inside them. You and your wife at that wedding in Nantucket. The twins as Hansel and Gretel from a long-ago Halloween. Curry, the sweet-faced pup. Because people lack the necessary imagination otherwise. They need surrogate faces in there so they’ll know what to expect when it’s sitting back home on the mantelplace.
“Can I help you with anything, sir?” The voice more insistent now — but it was as if it were speaking through glass.
Behind the glass of the picture frames was the picture of a little girl. She was on a swing somewhere in the country, with her tawny blond hair caught in midswirl. Freckle faced and knobby kneed and sweet smiled. The very model of carefree youth. Because she was a model. Behind the swing were makeup artists and hairstylists and wardrobe people — only you couldn’t see them.
“Sir, are you all right?”
I’d seen this picture before.
I showed you mine, now you show me yours.
Remember?
She’d seen Anna peeking out from the inside of my wallet, so I’d asked to see hers.
I showed you mine, now you show me yours.
And she’d laughed. I’d made lovely Lucinda laugh out loud, and she’d reached into her leather bag and shown me.
The little girl on the swing. Out in the country so
mewhere.
She’s adorable. That's what I’d said.
And she’d said thanks. I forget sometimes. Two parents complimenting each other on their respective progeny, commuter small talk, nothing to it.
Nothing at all.
I forget sometimes. Because maybe that was an easy thing to do, to forget something that you didn’t actually have.
She’d shown me a picture of her child, only it wasn't her child. It was someone else’s child.
“Sir? Is something wrong?" The clerk again, wondering just what had come over me.
Well, I would tell him. Amazing grace, that’s what.
Was blind but now I see.
THIRTY-THREE
I was helping Deanna clean up the plates smeared with half-eaten cake and dollops of melting ice cream.
I was asking myself how it was possible.
The birthday celebration had been strained and awkward. Anna had invited just one friend, possibly her only friend these days. It felt more like a wake than a birthday celebration, but then I was kind of preoccupied.
I was thinking about that resident in the ER who’d asked me about Anna’s eyes. I was thinking he should’ve asked me about my own. Are you having problems seeing? And I would’ve said, Yes, Doctor, I’m blind. I can’t see.
But not anymore.
My life had turned into a train wreck. I could hear the screams of the dead and dying. But all that time it had been Lucinda at the wheel. I knew that now. Lucinda. And him.
How was it possible?
A lie. A farce. A con — trying to stick a label on something that was clearly out of my experience. As Anna waited patiently for us to stop singing “Happy Birthday.”
A setup. A hoax. As she opened her presents and read her cards. My card said: “Can’t you stay thirteen forever?”
An out-and-out robbery. As Anna thanked each of us for her presents and even gave me a hug.
And this, too: That man at Penn Station.
He wasn’t her brother, her neighbor, or her favorite uncle.
He was next.
Deanna and I had managed to put up a decent front. We’d smiled, we’d talked, we’d clapped our hands when Anna blew out her candles.
But now that Anna and her friend had been dropped at a movie and we were alone, it had grown deathly quiet again. Just the steady splash of the faucet and the sour clinks of plates and glasses being laid to rest in the dishwasher tub. And the awful shouting going on in my own head.
“Well,” I said, trying desperately to tug my thoughts in another direction, any direction, and at the same time cleave the silence, “one year older.”
“Yes,” Deanna said without much enthusiasm. Then she placed the last plate into the dishwasher, walked to the kitchen table, and sat down. And, for the first time in God knows how long, really began talking to me.
“How have you been, Charles?”
“Okay. Fine." Liar, I thought.
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m okay, Deanna.”
“I was thinking,” she said.
“About?”
“I was thinking as we sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her. To our Anna.”
“Yes . . . ?”
“You said something once. About us, about being a parent. I wonder if you even remember it?”
“What did I say?”
“You said”—she closed her eyes now, trying to conjure up the exact words—“that it was like making deposits. ”
“Deposits? I don’t remember . . .”
“Anna was three or four, somewhere around there, and you’d taken her someplace she wanted to go — the zoo, I think. Just you and her, because I was sick. I don’t think you were feeling so hot yourself — I think I’d caught your cold. And you just wanted to stay home and lie down on the couch and watch football all day, but Anna pestered you and you gave in and took her. You don’t remember?”
I did remember now, vaguely, anyway. A Sunday long ago at the Bronx Zoo. Anna and I had fed the elephants.
“Yes, I remember the day.”
“When you came back, I thanked you. I knew you were feeling shitty and you didn’t really want to go. It wasn’t a big thing, but I remember being really happy that you did it.”
Deanna was looking right at me now — directly at me, as if she were searching for something missing. I wanted to say, I'm here, Deanna. I never left.
“You said something to me. You said that every day with Anna, every good moment you spent with her, was like a deposit. A deposit in a bank. If you made enough of them, if you diligently kept putting money away in that account, then when she was older and on her own, she’d be rich enough to get by. Rich with memories, I guess. I thought it was kind of sappy. I thought it was kind of brilliant. She’s going to need dialysis soon,” Deanna said.
“No, Deanna.” All thought of zoos and elephants, of Lucinda and Vasquez, immediately disappeared.
“Dr. Baron did some tests. Her kidneys are failing — one of them is barely there at all. Very soon our daughter is going to have to be strapped up to a machine three times a week so she can stay alive. That’s what he said.”
“When?”
“What does it matter? It’s going to happen, that’s all.”
Then Deanna was crying.
I remembered wondering not too far back if Deanna was all cried out. But then I’d learned differently — that day in the garden. And now.
“I think you were right, Charles.”
“What . . . Deanna . . . how do you mean?”
“I think we did okay with her. I think we gave her a very nice bank account. I think we never forgot to put something in. Never. Not once.”
I felt something itchy under my eyes, something hot and wet on both cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Charles,” she said. “I never closed my eyes to what was going to happen. But I did in a way. Because I wouldn’t let you talk about it. I didn’t want to hear it said out loud. I’m so sorry. I think that was wrong now.”
“Deanna . . . I . . .”
“I think we should talk about it. I think we should talk about what a remarkable daughter we have, for as long as we have her. I think that’s very important.”
And somehow, in some magical and unexplained way, we ended up in each other’s arms.
When we stopped crying, when we finally disentangled and sat across from each other, holding hands and staring out the window into the black-as-ink night, I thought that Deanna was about to ask me to come home now. I could almost see her forming the words.
I deliberately broke the mood; I got up and said it was time to leave, to go back to Forest Hills.
I couldn’t come home. Not now. Not yet.
Something had just been made clear to me. Crystal clear.
I had unfinished business to take care of.
I was out of one job, fine. Now I had another one. An even more important one.
I had to get Anna’s other bank account back.
Somehow I had to find them.
Somehow I needed to get back my money.
THIRTY-FOUR
It was impossible to miss Lucinda’s legs.
I hadn’t missed them that first morning on the train.
And I didn’t miss them now when I saw them emerging out of the morning crowd at Penn Station. Striding forward from a sea of denim, serge, and English wool — sleek and sexy and belonging solely to her.
Her and that man.
I’d been waiting to see them for days. I’d taken the 5:30 into Penn each morning. I’d planted myself at approximately the same spot I’d seen them the last time. I’d diligently stood guard. When the morning crowd dissipated and they didn’t show up, I’d walked from one end of the station to the other.
I’d done this day after day.
I’d told myself it was my only chance. I’d crossed my fingers and said my prayers.
But now that I’d spotted them, I had trouble looking at them.
I felt naked and vulnerable and
scared.
I couldn’t help looking at that man, for instance, and seeing myself. Once at an office friend’s bachelor party, I’d turned away from the nubile young stripper in a gold lamé thong just long enough to see everyone else staring at her and thought with sudden dismay: I look like them.
This man was so evidently besotted with Lucinda — or whoever she was. He kept grabbing for her hand and gazing lovingly into her eyes.
I hadn’t been wrong about who he was. She was playing him just as she’d once played me. He was next.
How pathetic, I thought. How pitiable.
How exactly like I’d been.
When I’d looked into the picture frame that day in the candy store, I’d asked myself what it was that had made me such a target. But only briefly. Because I knew the answer. In the cold light of day, it was so easy to see just how much I’d been asking for it. For something. Anything. Anything at all to come rescue me from me.
I’d spent a lot of time replaying all the moments I’d spent with her, too, my rescuer. Only now remembering them just a little differently from before. Running them back and forth and back in my head, the way, in the days before computer editing systems, I used to have to run strips of celluloid through Moviolas until they frayed and split. I had to patch them with tape again and again and again, until the images formed actual cracks and nearly disintegrated into dust. Take the first time I met Lucinda. Here, I’ll take care of it, she’d said sweetly on the train that day, but when I looked closely now, I could already see ugly fissures crisscrossing her face as she offered a ten-dollar bill to the pissed-off conductor.
She’d picked me that day.
Lucinda and the man had worked their way over to the open coffee shop, where they sold fat-free peach muffins and doughy bagels. The man ordered coffees, and they stood elbow to elbow across a small table. Steam sometimes obscured their faces.
I kept my back to them. I flipped through newsstand magazines and peeked. I was worried about her seeing me, but less worried than I might have been.
My face had changed.
It had happened gradually, bit by bit. I’d lost weight. As my life seemed to implode, my appetite had lessened, waned, disappeared. My clothes began to hang on me. When Barry Lenge administered the coup de grâce and sent me into the ranks of the unemployed, I’d stopped shaving, too. My goatee had become a beard. A few days ago, I’d looked into the bathroom mirror and seen the kind of face you see in hostage dramas staring back. That haunted-looking overseas government official who’s finally been released after months of dark captivity. I looked like that.
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