The Last Romantics

by Tara Conklin

  It was unclear to me if the stories depicted were entirely fictional or based on fact, but it didn’t matter. At the end of every episode, I too was moved to tears. Here was what we needed, I thought. Someone who would understand the sensitivities and complexity of our interest in Luna. Someone who would feel the vibrations of love.

  Mimi Prince in person differed from her television character. This Mimi Prince was shorter, wider, more abrupt. This Mimi Prince required payment up front in cash and Caroline’s signature on a ten-page contract that released Clairvoyant International LLC from all liability and offered no guarantee as to outcome.

  Caroline signed the contract. Mimi Prince closed her eyes and began to hum at a low, even pitch, dreary as a dial tone. We were sitting in Caroline’s living room, Mimi and Caroline on the big turquoise couch, me on a three-legged wooden stool that Beatrix used for cello practice. Items related to Luna and Joe were arranged on the coffee table: the Polaroid, a crinkled receipt from the Betsy Hotel, a hair elastic with one lone black strand caught in the metal fastening. In one hand Mimi gripped the velvet ring box; the other hand rested on her heart.

  I was too antsy to be comfortable. One window was cracked open, and the faintest breeze stirred the curtains. I watched it move and thought surely this was a sign of significance, an indication that Mimi’s efforts—strenuous, as evidenced by the uptick in her humming—would bear fruit. Luna Hernandez, where are you? I thought fiercely, and closed my eyes.

  We sat like that for a long spell. The hum continued with only the briefest pauses to mark Mimi’s inhalations.

  Then, after forty-five minutes, Mimi Prince went silent. She opened her eyes.

  “The trail is cold,” she declared. “No vibrations, no voices. That usually means the subject’s dead.”

  “What?” I said. I felt myself go cold, a sensation that began at the base of my spine and spread upward and out through my chest and limbs and fingertips. Luna could not be dead.

  “This doesn’t always work out, honey,” Mimi said in a practiced, soothing way as she patted my hand and then Caroline’s.

  “So that’s it?” Caroline asked.

  “Yes, dear, I’m afraid so.” And then Mimi Prince looked at her watch and announced that she was late for her next meeting.

  Without a word Caroline showed her to the door. When Caroline returned to the living room, she said, “Okay, Fiona, we tried it your way. Now we need to get serious. We’re hiring a private investigator, end of story.” Caroline began pacing the room, straightening and tidying things with quick, efficient movements. Folding a blanket, picking up a doll, dropping an old magazine into the trash. Today Caroline was wearing a pale blue pullover sweater and a jean skirt that went to her knees, her hair brushed and up in a neat ponytail. In all respects she appeared put together, but I registered an unsteadiness.

  Caroline stopped and turned to face me. “We need to find Luna,” she said. “We need to give her the ring.”

  I nodded. “I’ll get someone to really help us,” I said. “Let me do the legwork.”

  Caroline held her arms in front of her, hands cupping opposite elbows. I noticed a series of small round holes in the hem of her sweater. Moths.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I can pay, I’ll find the money, but I just don’t have the time. The kids—”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I know.”

  * * *

  I found Gary Lightfoot, private investigator, online. He had a slick website featuring grateful testimonials from a host of articulate, attractive clients. Gary himself was very attractive. On the site he appeared in a short promotional video where he tilted his head slightly to the left and spoke with an accent that moved between English and Australian. His office was located in an old redbrick building overlooking Grand Army Plaza. The plaza’s formidable stone arch was just visible from the reception window. There was no secretary. Gary himself opened the office door.

  “Ms. Skinner?” Thick eyebrows, lifted. Neat suit, shiny shoes, teeth that dazzled. The palm of his hand grazed the small of my back as he ushered me into his office. The room was small but well appointed. Leather chairs. A wide, weighty desk.

  For two hours I told Gary Lightfoot about Luna, Joe’s accident, my trips to Miami. He nodded with sensitivity, asked the occasional question, and took detailed notes by hand on a yellow legal pad. His office smelled masculine and spicy, like cinnamon or cloves. The accent made every word sound charming and insightful.

  How much did these details sway me? At the time I would have claimed not at all. But afterward I recognized their pull. I was no longer writing the blog; I had not slept with anyone since Joe’s accident, but I was beginning to miss the heady thrill of attraction and flirtation. It was Gary Lightfoot’s job to persuade me. And he did.

  “I’m thinking one month or two,” he said. “I may need to travel. Of course I’ll run that past your sister before making any arrangements.” He smiled at me, each white tooth nestled soundly within the gum, and I smiled back.

  Outside, I stood before the stone arch and studied the sculpture at its top: the winged goddess of victory, a horse and chariot straining forward. It was spring, the earthy flowerbeds pungent and soft with thaw. Traffic flowed around me on Flatbush and Vanderbilt Avenues, but the green northern edge of Prospect Park dulled the noise and fumes. That day it seemed not that the world was right again but that perhaps the possibility of rightness would return. Gary Lightfoot’s calm confidence, the loping curl of his script across the page, the long haughty Ah: for the first time since Joe’s death, I did not feel crushed by the weight of his absence. The idea of Luna filled me like helium, and I ran down the subway steps and toward home.

  But Gary Lightfoot did not find Luna. After four months he announced that Luna Hernandez was almost certainly dead.

  Caroline and I met him in his little Brooklyn office. Rain fell heavily against Gary’s one window, which shook and rattled with the wind. The room appeared shabbier and smaller than I remembered.

  “You’re almost certain she’s dead?” Caroline said. Already she had paid him sixteen thousand dollars.

  There were no credit-card records, no travel records, no rental cars or car purchases, Gary explained. Internet searches turned up nothing. The last known address for Luna and her mother proved unhelpful, as had the national databases. “She’s a naturalized citizen, but she never applied for a Social Security number,” Gary said. He had found no death certificate, but this meant very little. Thousands of people died every year in the United States without identification or family to claim them, their bodies summarily cremated, the ashes scattered at sea. “And those are the ones who are found!” Gary exclaimed. “Imagine how many people stay where they fall. Those people are just gone.” I thought he said this with rather too much gusto. “Luna has effectively disappeared,” he concluded, waving his hand with a sharp downward chop.

  “But we knew that already,” Caroline said. “That’s why we hired you.” A sudden flash of sun entered through the rain-spattered window and cast speckled shadows over the papers and books on Gary’s desk. The Best of Raymond Chandler, I read on one spine. Fingerprint Analysis for Dummies on another. I felt a mild responsibility for this situation, but it was dull and distant. Gary had done his best. Look at his sharp suit, the shirt cuffs white and starched stiff. Listen to the honey pour of that voice.

  “Well,” Gary said to Caroline, shrugging, “disappeared and dead are versions of the same thing. I’m not a miracle worker, Mrs. Duffy.”

  Outside on the street, Caroline turned to me. We had no umbrella, only our coats. I shivered. The rain plastered Caroline’s hair to her head and darkened it into rivulets of brown that streamed rainwater down her shoulders and chest. Her blue eyes blazed. “Fiona. What was that?” She pointed a finger in the general direction of Gary Lightfoot’s building. “Why didn’t you find someone better? That was all you had to do. That was it. I told you to find someone to help us. You have nothing else going on. You
barely go to work, you’re not even writing anymore. You have all this time. I paid that man so much money. So much! Nathan and I can barely afford it. And for what?” She paused for the briefest moment, too short for me to formulate a response.

  “You are always taking advantage, always using me,” Caroline continued. “Using us, me and Renee, for money or meals at fancy restaurants or help with whatever. And Joe. You used Joe, too. Why don’t you have your own life? Why are you never in a relationship? Why do you always say you hate your job but never look for another one? You’re the youngest, sure, Fiona, but you’re thirty years old! Nothing is serious for you. Everything is a game. And why did you pretend you knew what was going on with Joe? Why did you lie to me that day before his party? Why did you say he was okay? That he didn’t need help? Maybe Renee and I . . . maybe we could have helped him. Maybe—”

  Caroline stopped speaking. She shook her head and looked at me through the rain.

  “Caro, I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought—”

  “What did you think, Fiona? What? That the detective was cute? That he might fuck you?”

  “No.” I knew that Caroline was upset; she was angry, she didn’t know what she was saying. “I thought he could help us.”

  “That ridiculous man?”

  “I thought it would be okay.”

  “It’s not okay. It will never be okay.”

  The rain had infiltrated my coat and spread steadily across my shoulders and down my back. I felt it as a stain, a mold. “Caroline—” I said, and stopped.

  Caroline shook her head one last time and then turned and walked very quickly along the sidewalk away from me. Within a block she hailed a cab and ducked inside.

  I stood on the wet pavement, thinking that perhaps Caroline would return. We had arrived here together; her car was parked outside my apartment building—but no. My sister was gone.

  * * *

  I did not see or speak to Caroline for another five years. My calls and e-mails went unreturned. Nor did I speak to Renee, not really. She remained busy, traveling, always out of phone range or forgetful or uninterested, and I made no special effort to reach her. It was Noni who kept me informed about my sisters. Renee and Jonathan were in India, Venezuela, Zaire. Jonathan’s work appeared frequently in home-design magazines. Madonna had ordered a chair; Robert De Niro a twelve-foot-long dining table. Caroline isn’t doing well; Nathan is working so hard; the kids are great. Noni provided information in a straightforward way, withholding any advice or judgment, reporting the facts of my sisters’ movements and moods as though discussing the weather. I took the information in the same way. I did not respond with emotion or questions, only an acceptance of these facts.

  During this period I considered myself an emotional vagrant. I did not reside in a specific place over which I might exert control—repaint the kitchen, say, or knock down a wall—but in a relentless state that remained absolutely the same regardless of what I did, where I traveled. I did not live in Queens, New York, with a rotating cast of underemployed roommates. Caroline did not live in Connecticut with her family and pets. Renee was not treating patients in Chiapas while a subletter watered her plants and gathered the mail in New York. Each of us occupied the same boundless space of a world without our brother. Each of us gazed at the same horizon that would never appear closer or farther away, that merely underlined the enormity of our solitude. Friends and family milled around us, and yet each of us stood in that space alone. It was as though the care we had shown each other as children had been revealed as faulty, flawed, riddled with holes. Now we avoided any interaction that reminded us of what we once had assumed ourselves to be.

  I continued to search for Luna. In a way we all did. Even Renee. We searched for Luna as we searched for ourselves, the people we were forced to become.

  Chapter 14

  One Saturday I took the train from Long Island City, switched at Court Square, and rode the subway to Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn. I exited to the quiet bustle of early-morning Bedford Avenue. The last big storm had hit two weeks before, and icy piles of gray snow remained in front of unused doorways, marking the sides of abandoned cars. It was cold, a dry, brittle cold that stung my lips and made my eyes water. The year was 2008, two years after Joe’s accident, a year since I’d last spoken to either of my sisters. The Iraq War dragged on, presidential candidates won and lost in state primary elections, but I barely read the news anymore. World events, even climate change, were happening elsewhere.

  I often walked the city. On weekends or afternoons when I left work early, for hours, in all weather. At the beginning I used these walks ostensibly to look for Luna Hernandez. After the fight with Caroline, I gave up searching in any methodical, focused way. I used what was close to hand, what was free, what I could do myself. Perhaps Luna had come to New York, I thought. So many did. Why not her?

  The walks, too, were part of my new project. After Joe’s accident I wrote nothing at all—not a blog post, not a poem, not a line—but after my fight with Caroline I began again. She was right: I did nothing of value, I cared deeply for nothing, no partner, no profession. Friends came and went; men, too, with the frequency of trains, loud and heavy, leaving behind only a blessed silence. And so, slowly, cautiously, I began to write again, not as a poet or a woman but as a sort of record keeper. A witness. The only thing I thought about was my brother, but putting words to paper about him was impossible. Too raw, too hurtful. And so I wrote around him. I began to record in detail the last world that existed when Joe was still alive. The last meal I’d eaten, the last book I’d read, the last pair of shoes worn, the last earrings. Soon it became a tic, almost an obsession, to document all these final occurrences. There were so many of them. Once you begin to precisely identify every action and event, every building, every tree from a particular moment in time, they become countless, they stretch on and on. And so it was with the Lasts.

  At first I wrote them down not as poetry—I could make nothing beautiful then—but as simple lists. Items, colors, smells, sights, speech, weather: an echo of the lists I’d kept as a child. I fixed on paper every element of the old world so that I might remember and return to it when the present world—where my brother was gone, where things happened anew for the first time, and the second, and the hundredth—became too much. I created the old world in specific detail so that I might hide there.

  Last breakfast:

  Mushroom and Swiss omelet

  black coffee

  brown toast, one-half foil packet of butter

  two sips water

  New York Times, Arts Section

  Counter, third stool from right

  Uniform stitched with Paige

  Old Adidas sneakers, blue stripes, hole in toe

  White socks

  I posted the lines first to Twitter, which was brisk and new then and provided me with the same sort of anonymous public platform as the blog. Later The Lasts became my first published work, but at the time I wasn’t thinking about career or recognition or art. It was catharsis.

  On my walks I was always searching for a last. I carried a notebook, and I let Joe lead me. When a sight, a smell, an overheard conversation prompted a memory of Joe, I would follow it. Once I sprinted after a truck emblazoned with joe’s eats until I lost it to the BQE. For an hour I stalked a man wearing a T-shirt with joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat splashed across the front. I’d followed him into the park, down an alleyway, in and out of a restaurant, until finally the man let himself into an apartment building in Carroll Gardens and I gave him up.

  My brother was leading me, I believed, to Luna or to something else entirely. It was up to me to quiet down, to listen wisely and well so that I might hear him. Joe had seen our father—now I believed him! Of course he had seen Ellis Avery. After the disappointment of Mimi Prince, I became more, not less, convinced of this. Mimi was a hack, but the vibrations of love endured. My brother had tried to catch our father with drugs and alcohol, but these produced i
n me only a fuzziness, a blunting. I needed the brisk, brutal force of sobriety to catch the signs. I needed to notice, not to fade.

  As I walked, I counted the rhythm of my steps to my brother’s name:

  Joe, JOE, JOE, Joe. JOSEPH. JOSPEPH. JOSEPH PATRICK.

  JOSEPH PATRICK SKINNER.

  Joe

  Joe

  Joe

  JOSEPH

  Joe

  Today, as most days, my last conversation with Joe played in my mind as a scramble of words and images.

  Don’t, cheap, why, please, careful, someone, love.

  Sunday morning. A hot wind blowing through my open window. Man #82 in the shower. Joe on the phone: “Fiona, have you heard of The Last Romantic?”

  “Sure. I’ve heard of it. New feminism. I read it every week.”

  “Who do you think writes it?”

  “It’s anonymous. Who knows? It could be anyone.”

  “I think I know who it is.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think I know her pretty well.”

  Pause. I twirled a curl around my index finger. Curl, release, curl.

  “Fiona,” Joe said, “why are you doing this blog?”

  “Me?”

  “I hope you’re being careful.”

  Curl, release, curl. “Who told you?”

  “Those guys don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Of course they don’t. That’s the point.”

  “It seems unfair. They trust you.”

  “Trust? I’m the one at risk! I’m trusting them. I trusted you. You kept secrets from me. The knee injury, Sierra, Ace. Remember?”

  “Come on, that’s different.”

  “Not really.”

  “Fiona, the whole thing is cheap, taking cheap shots at these guys. People make mistakes. It’s not right to punish them like this.”

  “I’m not punishing anybody. I’m just telling the truth.”

  “Well, I think it cheapens you.”