by Naima Coster
“There’s a picture of your dad hanging in the back. Have you seen it?”
Penelope remembered the old coatroom, its wood paneling. If it got too loud, Lionel would let Penelope sit back there, atop the mountain of wool coats, and draw while the grown-ups drank at the bar. A few times her mother had retreated into the back room, too, and once, she even brought her a Coke. Penelope had been so moved that she was still thanking her mother for the soda an hour later, and it had become a big joke among the grown-ups, how gracious of a little girl she was. The memory now made Penelope sick—how pathetic she had been, how full of need.
Jon asked what had been troubling her lately, if it wasn’t her old man. Penelope said she was having trouble with her landlord.
“Can you afford to move?”
It would be hard to find anywhere she could be on her own for so cheap, and she couldn’t imagine having roommates, not after five years of being on her own. And if she moved, where would she go? If she left again, she might only find herself back in a few years, Ralph even worse off than he was now. Besides, where would she go? Here, she had at least her father, a job. There was nothing and no one else to follow. The thought uncorked a sadness in her, and she rose to leave.
Jon asked her to stay for another round.
“Wish I could,” Penelope said, and she was half-sincere. She liked the bartender. He had a sweet and hospitable way about him, and she didn’t have to worry about what she sounded like to him, or what he was deciding about her based on the things she said, the words she used. She felt less alert than she did with Marcus, loose and calm, although she’d had only one drink. Jon was familiar to her. He could have been a boy she knew from PS 23, who left the city, grew out his hair, pierced his ears, and came back a man.
“Come on, it’s going to be slow in here for at least another hour. Make my shift go by faster. Stay.”
“You’re not as bad as I thought you’d be,” Penelope said. “As a bartender, I mean. Although I’d have chosen honey and lemon over blueberries and lime. Given the weather.”
“Next time.”
Penelope waved good-bye, wrapped herself up in her coat and her scarf, and made her way to the exit. The music swelling from the ceiling PA was a buzzy, sweet melody, all synthesizer and tambourine. It was the score to her exit, and Penelope couldn’t help but smile. She had found her bar. She turned east toward Greene and the house where she at least had the traces of a life.
Penelope entered the house on Greene and saw the parlor doors were pushed open. Marcus had a guest, another white man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans. They were sitting on the ottomans drinking beer. Penelope squinted at them, the parlor a blinding white, the bubble chandelier pumping too much light into the room. A clanging guitar echoed out of a portable record player.
“Hello,” Penelope said, although neither man had addressed her.
She saw panic flit across Marcus’s face. He placed one hand underneath his bottle, and gripped the neck with the other, as if he expected, suddenly, to drop it. It hurt her to see him look at her that way—as if she couldn’t be trusted, as if she were no good.
The man in plaid stood. He must have been in his midthirties, his dark brown hair already receding, revealing a ridge of bone across the width of his forehead. He had a dozen keys on a ring in the belt loop of his jeans, a pair of glasses in the breast pocket of his shirt.
“You must be Penelope. I’m Marty. Marcus and I grew up together.”
“Another California boy,” she said, deciding to flirt. “You must have been a swimmer, too?” She inspected his torso, the span of his shoulders. If Marcus was going to be afraid of her, she would give him a reason.
“I was even better than this guy.” Marty jerked a thumb toward Marcus, then offered Penelope a beer. She sat next to him on the ottoman, sucked the cold beer out with her tongue. She proclaimed it a good saison and easy to drink, and Marty seemed impressed. She kept playing along, tossing her hair from one side to the other, while she drank. She felt dark in the bright room, cold beside their warm, pale bodies.
Marty announced that he was thinking of moving to the neighborhood. He had been looking at a house over on Macon Street. Marcus spoke for the first time since Penelope arrived.
“I thought you’d never leave the Lower East Side, man. I’m still in shock.”
I’m still in shock, Penelope repeated to herself. She drank more of her beer. She tried to enunciate each word perfectly, although the sentence threatened to roll in on itself in her head.
“Why are you leaving the Lower?” she asked.
“I love my place now, really, I’ve got everything you could ask for—wine chiller, washer, dryer, all new kitchen in granite and stainless steel. I can see the Williamsburg Bridge from my balcony. But one of these days, I’m going to want what Marcus has—hot wife, sweet kid, plans for another. And my one bedroom is not going to cut it. No matter how killer the view.”
“Right,” Penelope nodded. Another. She swallowed down more of the beer. She pointed to the keys dangling from his belt loop. “So are you buying a whole block?”
“No, no—the real estate agent, he forgot them. Handed them to me with the paperwork and forgot to take them back. Can you believe that? Must be a rookie.” He slurped from his bottle. “Black kid. Says he grew up in the neighborhood. He told me what I already knew—now’s the time to buy before rates go up in a couple of years. But I wish I had done what Marcus did, honestly. He got this place for dirt cheap, really, when you think about it. It’s a hassle being out here, sure, but he and Sam are making a fortune on this place just by living in it.”
“Well, it’s a historic house—” Marcus began, but Marty didn’t let him finish.
“And all the things they hate about this neighborhood—they just have to wait it out, and in a few years, it’ll be better. Totally different. Worth the wait.”
“Marty, we don’t hate it.”
Marcus flushed behind his ears, but Marty didn’t stop. He lowered his voice, flung his arm around Penelope’s shoulders, as if he were about to let her in on some tremendous secret. He was close enough that Penelope could feel his breath, smell the appalling mixture of ale and salmon. She lifted up her bottle of beer between them.
“Take Williamsburg.”
“Take it how?”
“Twenty years ago, that place was all Puerto Ricans and Hasidic Jews and empty warehouses and crime. Now? Galleries. Condos. Decent bars. And it didn’t happen overnight like people think. It took time. It’s going to take time here. But this neighborhood will turn around soon. I don’t have to tell you that—you knew enough to move here.”
“Actually, this is where I’m from.”
“Marcus said you were a painter? From Pittsburgh?”
“I was born here.”
“Right here? In this parlor?” Marty laughed at his own joke. “Come on, Penelope, you know what I mean—you may have been born here, but you’re still a part of the new Brooklyn. You’ve got a college degree, right? You’re an artist, you’re a part of the creative class. Don’t tell me you haven’t taken advantage of all the new places around here—that brick-oven pizza place, the whiskey bar, the sherry bar, Sprout—”
“Is that why you’re moving here? For the sherry bar?”
“Marty, you sound like a cad,” Marcus said, frowning. “There’s a lot more to this neighborhood. Didn’t you see all those murals on your walk over here? And it’s not just art—there’s history.”
“Yeah, no kidding. Of course there’s history.” Penelope glared at Marcus. He seemed lamer than he ever had to her.
“Marcus, I’m not talking about some mural to ODB—I saw that one on my walk over here—and I’m not talking about history. I’m talking about the future. I’m talking about possibility. Potential. There’s no telling what this neighborhood could become—a new Chelsea, an East Village, an Upper West Side. Right now, anything is possible. This neighborhood is a blank canvas.”
Penelope felt a charge in her
fingertips, her cheeks. “Is that what you see?”
“Penelope, I get it, people have all kinds of romantic attachments to where they grew up, but that’s life in this city. You lose everything you love here.”
“What have you lost? What has Marcus?”
“At least, the three of us in this room can all benefit from the changes—”
“Don’t you dare compare me to the two of you—”
“Safer streets, better schools, more amenities. Tell me you don’t like good coffee. Tell me you didn’t like that beer. And why not? Why not enjoy good things? Would you prefer if I complained about it? Would you prefer if I were miserable? Playing the martyr never did anybody any good—”
Marty still seemed so calm, although his voice was raised, as if it were all a game. Penelope stood so he could see that she didn’t want to play. Marcus stood, too.
“There are people here, real people, who already have potential. Just because we’re not white and didn’t go to Stanford—”
“Let’s take it easy,” Marcus said, and he put up his hand, a few inches from Penelope’s chest.
“You can keep your condo and your fucking wine chiller, fucking Sprout. You entitled little shit—”
“Penelope, that’s enough.” Marcus folded her hand into his and marched her out of the room. As he pulled her out of the parlor, she turned around and called Marty an asshole, and he stood there, stunned, red-faced. He crossed his arms and muttered, “Wow!” to himself, as if he were the one on the higher ground. So Penelope yelled back that he wasn’t just any asshole—he was a racist asshole—and she let Marcus take her away.
He took her into a small side room. There was nothing inside but empty shelves, a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and a chain to turn it on. Marcus pulled the chain and closed the door.
“A racist? Jesus Christ, Penelope. Marty’s been my friend for over twenty years.”
“He wants to make money off black people being cheated and pushed out! And to say you’re making a fortune just by sitting in this house? That’s ’cause you’re white, and you know it!”
“It’s a historic house, Penelope.”
“It’s always been a historic house, but it hasn’t always been worth a million, two million, whatever you and Samantha Harper, Esquire, paid for it. Do you even know who used to live here?”
“What are you doing, Penelope?”
“I am right. You know I am right.”
“God, Penelope, don’t pretend you’re all worked up like this over gentrification—”
“He’s talking about things that ruined my father’s life. He lost his store, and then he had an accident, and nothing has ever been the same—”
Marcus looked at her gravely. He pressed his fingers to his temples and sighed.
“Marty’s an idiot. He’s a good friend to me, but he’s an idiot. Still, you have no right to make a scene like that. This is my house.”
“I live here, too, don’t I?”
Marcus didn’t answer.
“Don’t I?”
He shushed her and put a finger to her lips. “Penelope, you’re drunk. And you’re embarrassing me.”
“I’m sure you’ll both have a laugh about it as soon as I go upstairs—Crazy lady in the attic, ha ha! Ignore her, Marty, ha ha—”
“Penelope, when will you stop punishing me? My whole life can’t change because we had a few nights together. I have a family. You know them.”
“I don’t know Samantha. She’s never here.”
“They’re my life, Penelope.”
“And what about me? Don’t you have any ties to me?”
“I’ve said it before: I think you’re beautiful, and you’re brilliant, but—”
“You used me. You wanted to get away from your sad marriage, and I was your break. I was your sabbatical. Your tropical vacation—”
“Penelope, stop. Don’t talk like that.”
“I’ll talk about you however I like! You’re not my husband. You’re not my father. You’re nothing to me.”
“And what do you think you are to me? You’re just an easy fuck who lives upstairs.”
Marcus’s fists were balled at his sides. His eyes shone darkly. Penelope stepped away, and Marcus seemed to come to his senses. He hung his head in his hands.
“God, I’m sorry. I really can’t understand what’s come over me since I met you.”
“Maybe this is just who you are.”
Penelope brushed past him and opened the door. “Consider this my thirty days,” she said. “I’m moving out.”
The next day Penelope went for a run to scout out where else in the neighborhood she could live. She crossed north past the Y, and the plantless lots, the liquor stores that had hung up wreaths for the holidays, the fried chicken spot on DeKalb, the twinkling lights in the windows of the projects on Myrtle. She ran the industrial stretch of Flushing—a blank canvas—then back along the residential streets. She was in Williamsburg now. The houses here were shorter and less stately than in Bed-Stuy, but they were filled white people. Here the takeover seemed nearly complete: there were the rare Puerto Rican families that had managed to hold out, the blocks that belonged to the Hasidim along the fringes.
Penelope half expected to see an old classmate from RISD while she ran. Her old roommate, Meg, probably lived here now. She might have been a curator, or an assistant to a famous foreign artist, or maybe she was still just painting, living off her parents’ money. And here was Penelope, too, with her broken-down life: motherless, her drinking father, a trunk full of object studies.
She turned onto Kent with the goal of reaching the water. She was close. A pack of young people were halfway down the block, slowly making their way toward her, their bodies taking over the entire width of the street. The girls wore sheer tights and pleated skirts, the men knee-length coats, unkempt beards.
When they didn’t move aside to let her through, she yelled at them. It felt good to raise her voice, to see their startled faces. They muttered after her as she passed, but she couldn’t make out what they had said, and she didn’t care.
She was rounding the corner when she hit a patch of black ice and slid. She landed hard on her hip, skinned her hand on the curb. The shock of the fall made Penelope dizzy, and she lay flat and waited for the sky to stop revolving. She felt she couldn’t move, and she wondered whether she had hit her head and she was dying. She couldn’t remember. When she sat up, she saw she had slit her running pants, and she was bleeding where she’d scraped her thigh. She had ripped a hole, too, at the elbow of her insulated shirt. She looked around for anyone to help her up, but the hipsters were gone, disappeared into one of the warehouses.
Penelope hobbled toward the pier, a current of pain transmitted from her heel to her hip with every step. She wondered whether this pain was what Ralph felt when he tried to move around.
The East River was choppier than usual, chunks of ice afloat in the waves. Manhattan was an apparition behind a screen of mist. Penelope found the Empire State Building, the needle glowing a ghostly holiday blue. She would have liked to live here, near the water, if she could afford it. More likely, she would wind up in Flatbush or Crown Heights, maybe farther—Ridgewood. She had thirty days to decide.
Penelope couldn’t run back to Bed-Stuy, so she walked, limping as she went. It took her an hour. When she reached the house on Greene, the light was on in the vestibule. She heard a woman singing. Penelope took off her sneakers and held them in her hand so that she could move more quietly.
The door to Samantha’s study was open, and her back was to the hall. The room was colored tawny and cream, the long desk fashioned out of what looked like driftwood and metal. A potted orchid sat in the window overlooking the empty backyard. All she could see of Samantha were her feet up on the desk: golden, short nails painted crimson, a silver charm dangling from an anklet.
There was a white ceramic carafe on the desk, a stemless wineglass, and a matching ceramic coaster. The musi
c played from somewhere overhead, another woman’s sad, shrill voice.
Penelope tiptoed in her socks, careful not to step on the floorboards that creaked. The chair swung around.
“In a rush?”
Samantha looked like a tiny egg, skinny and white, nestled in the center of the plush desk chair. She wore a chocolate-brown cashmere sweater and red silk pants. Her heels were kicked off to the side, and she had rubbed her face clean of makeup. She looked tired. Penelope decided to say hello, to ask how she was doing.
Samantha shrugged, gesturing toward the air with her glass, giving a toast to no one.
“I’m enjoying the quiet. I can’t remember the last time I had the house all to myself.” The landlady went on about how Grace was at a playdate in the city, and Marcus was working on a story he had booked. “I’m off for the night!” She made the exclamation without any joy and took a sip of her wine.
“I won’t disturb you,” Penelope said and turned back to the stairs.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Samantha said flatly. “Actually, I’ve been hoping to catch you. Come in, won’t you?”
Penelope sat on the beige loveseat and crossed her legs. She saw Samantha eye the rip in her leggings, but she said nothing. The landlady sat and watched her and drank, as if she were trying to discern something by studying Penelope’s face, her mannerisms. Penelope kept cool. She let the music fill the room, the woman’s voice quivering out of the overhead speakers.
“Little Earthquakes. Do you know it?”
Penelope shook her head.
“I used to listen to this album all the time when I was pregnant with Grace. Marcus hates it. He hates most of my music, actually, says it’s all just women complaining about their lovers, but that’s not true at all.” She smiled. “Marcus and I have been together long enough that we know the things we can share and the things that we can’t. Marriage is like that.”
The women stared at each other, neither of them moving.
“Where are my manners? Would you like a glass?”
“I’m not much of a wine drinker.”
“Hm, neither is Marcus. He’s a whiskey man. But he’s not always so particular. He’ll drink other things, if they’re around.”