by Anna Woltz
They’ve spotted me now too. They’re looking at me as if I’m not only their daughter, but also someone else. Someone they don’t know, but someone who matters. Their boss’s boss. A doctor who’s going to tell them if there’s any chance of recovery. I squeeze two hands. Two hands squeeze back.
We walk to the fountain and stand there in front of the green table. I watch my dad looking at my dark hair and then at my hands. He hasn’t seen me touch anyone for the past three years. All around us, the tourists are laughing and yelling. Four of us have no idea what to do next, but luckily Abby’s there.
“I’m Abby Greenberg,” she says solemnly. She looks at my mom. “And you’re Nora Quinn. I memorized your name in case Emilia collapsed and was unconscious.” And then she looks at my dad. “Emilia told me what you did. I’m glad to see you’re wearing nice shoes. But I’m still really mad at you.”
“Let’s leave,” whispers Seth.
Abby goes on looking at my dad. “Your daughter has plans for you. But first I have one thing to say: Emilia is awesome. And she’s my friend.”
I have no idea why she feels the need to say that, but it sounds fantastic. Like she’s a mafia don threatening that if anything at all happens to Emilia, he’ll chop whoever’s responsible into tiny little pieces and throw them in the East River.
“Emilia is almost my sister. On Wednesday night we ate from the same bowls, even though there are more bacteria living in your mouth than there are people on this planet. Are you going to remember that?”
My dad nods.
“Okay,” says Abby. “Good luck.”
I feel the two hands disappear. Seth nods at me, almost imperceptibly, and then brother and sister walk away between the Christmas stalls. I can see them for another eight seconds and then New York swallows them up.
I’m alone with my parents.
Now we’re free to give one another long, meaningful looks and experience all our emotions. But I’m not in the mood.
“Did you see the article?” I ask my dad. I speak to him in Dutch, because that’s our language. My mom leans back. She understands what I’m saying, but she doesn’t feel that I’m talking to her now.
“That article by Bastiaan Breedveld,” I say. “About me being dressed as a cat and yelling on the sidewalk.”
“I read it yesterday evening.”
Even his voice is still the same. He sounds like a bird-watcher, not like a porn producer. An old, tired bird-watcher who hasn’t spotted any new birds for a long time. The only new one he saw cost him almost everything.
“Okay,” I say. “Then think about that article. Remember all the things I yelled when I was standing there on the sidewalk, and imagine I just said them to you now. That’ll save me half an hour of screaming. But everything I said is true. That really is what I think.”
I can see he’s doing exactly as I say. With mathematical precision, he’s running through everything I said in that piece.
“You saw the photo too?” I ask. “From Abby’s Twitter account? There was a link.” He nods.
“That’s what I look like when you two aren’t around.” The billion suns are smoldering away in my chest. The three of us are sitting together on that desert island. I don’t see the Christmas market anymore.
My dad clears his throat. “In that article, you suggest some terrible things.” He leans over to me. “Surely you don’t think that I … ”
“I have no idea! I don’t know what you got up to with … ” I can’t even say her name. “… what you got up to with her.”
He looks at me with an expression that I don’t recognize.
“Do you really think I touched her?” he asks. “My student? A girl of seventeen? I never laid a finger on her!”
“But on the Internet … ”
“On the Internet, people rant and rave without knowing what they’re talking about! I wanted to tell you my side of the story, but you wouldn’t listen. And then you just left … ”
“Fine!” I snap. “So you didn’t touch her. But you did send her sixty-seven extremely embarrassing text messages. And you told her all about Mom and me. It’s like someone read my diary to the whole world. Suddenly, everyone knows all about us. No, not everything—only the bad stuff. Everything that’s wrong. And it’s going to be on the Internet forever now.”
His hands are shaking. “I made some terrible mistakes,” he whispers. “I know I can’t make it up to you. It’s unforgivable. I really don’t know how I ever … ”
I look at him and I think: So this is my dad.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” I say. “I have one question for you. Why did you do it?”
He sweeps his thin hair to one side. I know the brain beneath that hair better than any other brain in the world. For me, my dad was what a mother is for most other children. My mom’s changed maybe five diapers in her life. He did everything else. He put me to bed, took me to school, to art lessons.
“But you’re only fifteen … ” He shakes his head. “I can’t. I really can’t. These aren’t things you can talk to your daughter about.”
“Grow up,” I say. “I just survived a hurricane without the two of you. People have died, and I haven’t showered since Monday morning. I’m old enough to hear it. So why don’t you explain?”
“What I did to the two of you … It’s terrible … ”
“We’re well aware of that!”
My mom doesn’t say anything. She just sits watching her husband and her daughter.
“Let’s say it’s a mathematical problem,” I say. “And I don’t get it. So help me understand. What kind of equation was it? What was the value of x? What was y?”
He looks at the skyscrapers around us. The park is a small green rectangle surrounded by huge, magnificent buildings. An enormous tower of reflective glass, a dark brown building with golden trim, the angular Empire State Building in the distance.
“I had … a kind of crush on her,” he says. “Like with a movie star. For no good reason, but it was overwhelming. I thought she was stunning. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.”
I think about Jim. How perfectly his blond hair falls over his sculpted forehead. How handsome I thought he was before I knew him—when he was still a movie star and not just Jim.
“I knew I had to get a grip on myself,” says my dad, “that I simply had to wait for the feeling to subside. Irrational notions like that soon pass. But then she needed extra help in math, and suddenly we were spending time together. We had conversations. She listened to me. I thought she was genuinely interested. And for the first time in a long while I felt a little less lonely … ”
My mom still hasn’t moved. She’s looking at the tops of the trees.
“So what are you trying to say?” I ask my dad. “That this was our fault?”
“No! Of course not. Absolutely not.” He hesitates. “But sometimes it wasn’t easy, you know that. Our family is … ” He looks at my mom, and then at the ground.
“What do you mean?” I ask angrily. “You know how our life works. I wasn’t even there when the agreement was made and I know. I keep to it, don’t I? It’s not that difficult, is it?”
“What agreement?” he asks in confusion.
“The one about our life! For Mom, it’s her paintings that take first place. And for us, Mom comes in first place. If you make an agreement like that, you can’t start complaining later that you’re lonely!”
My mom’s gray-green eyes suddenly refocus on the scene around her. She looks at me. “Darling! What on earth are you talking about?”
“I don’t mind,” I say. “I get it. Your paintings come first. Not many people have your kind of talent. I want you to paint, and so does Dad. We’re proud of you. I just think it’s stupid of Dad to start complaining about being so lonely. And to say that he’s fucking floating on his own among the stars.”
She sighs. “We’re all floating on our own among the stars. You have to accept that. And if, during the course of your li
fe, you find a few people who float alongside you, somewhere within hearing distance, then you should be happy.” She smiles at me. “For me, that’s the two of you, Emilia. Without you two, I could never paint. You come first and then the paintings.”
I look at her and I love her. I know it’s not true. Without us, she’d slowly get back on her feet and make fantastic art. Without painting, she’d just stay in bed.
I look at my dad. “Idiot.”
“You’re right. He is an idiot,” says my mom. “No doubt about it. But everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes big ones. And of all the people I know, he’s still the one who’s made the fewest.” She stands up. “Now, shall we just enjoy New York? I’m finally on the other side of the ocean again after twenty years. I want to see the city!”
I’m not surprised. Sometimes she plays dirty—she always has, ever since I was born. She takes advantage of being a temperamental artist. Her talent is her get-out-of-jail-free card, and she plays it whenever it suits her.
“Sit down,” I say. “We’re not done yet.”
I wait until she sulkily sits back down.
“What do the two of you think? That we can just shrug our shoulders and say, ‘Oh, it is what it is. People make mistakes, let that be the lesson for today.’ Jesus, this isn’t school! This isn’t a ‘learning experience.’ ”
My mom shrugs and the work-of-art collar goes up and down. “If you don’t want to learn this time, there’ll be other opportunities.”
“But this isn’t just a little mistake!” I shout. “This is our entire life that’s been destroyed. People on the Internet wish we were dead. Dad’s lost his job and no one’s ever going to give him another one. And I’ll be damned if I’m going back to that school!”
“I know I’ve done an incredible amount of damage,” says my dad. “But what do you want from me, Emilia?”
“I want to stay here.”
“You know that’s not realistic.” He sounds almost fawningly polite. “Sweetheart, you’re fifteen. You can’t live here on your own, and you know how attached your mom is to our house and her studio and … ”
“There’s nothing I’d like more,” says Nora Quinn calmly.
“What?” he says.
“I’d love to live in New York. If Emilia’s happy here and … And just imagine! Then I could go to the Frick every week.”
We let my mom play her get-out-of-jail-free card. We gave her some time off. She doesn’t have to take part in the Conversation anymore and she can explore the city.
I walk with my dad to Grand Central, because he asked for a tour. Seriously, he wants to see the route I’m going to describe in Out and About with a Plug. He wants to hear all about the hurricane and about how I’ve spent the past week.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was playing dirty too. That he’s hoping I’ll start to like him again if he acts interested enough. But I know him too well for that. He’s not faking it. He really does want to know everything. He wants to hear all about Seth and Jim and Abby, and he wants to see the power outlets.
So I walk with him along the cold and drafty corridor beside the platforms. Together we stand looking at that one power outlet low down on the wall. I stare at it until everything turns hazy.
You can’t compare people’s misery. But if you look down at the earth from space, then Hurricane Sandy made more of an impact than my dad’s sixty-seven text messages. I know that. And while I’m telling him about the wrecked houses and the mom with the sons who drowned, I can even feel it a bit. While I was in the dark, the swamp has gotten a little smaller. It’s still there, but there are new parts to it now. Hard rocks. Grassy earth that doesn’t stink, where the ground feels firm beneath your feet.
I know that’ll change if we go back to the Netherlands. The Netherlands is still one big swamp. They’ll look at me, whisper about me, point at me. Even if we move to another town. Even if I go to another school.
What the truth is, what really happened, if he really touched Juno, none of that matters to them. Only the stories count. And they’ll be on the Internet forever.
• • •
“Do you see that building?” I point at the tower with its silver scales and eagles. “Imagine living in the same city as that skyscraper … ”
My dad shakes his head. He doesn’t want to hear anything about living in New York. He refuses to talk about it. But he has to.
“If we move here,” I say, “it’ll solve all our problems.”
“It’s not possible,” he says immediately.
“Yes, it is! This is one of those mathematical models that solves everything in one elegant swoop. If one part isn’t right, the whole model is invalid. And you have to discard it. But this is completely right. It’s watertight.”
“Real life doesn’t work like that.”
I stop by the stone lions in front of the library. They look very regal in the sun.
“If you want to leave us,” I say, “then you should do that. Mom and I will move to New York, just the two of us. We’re not holding you prisoner. You shouldn’t think that you’re tied down. In fact, you’re absolutely free.”
I manage to stay calm only by yelling “Loser!” inside my head as I’m looking at him. Loser who feels that he’s trapped. Big baby who’s crying because he’s floating through the universe all alone.
He looks very serious. “I’ve thought through all the possibilities over the past few days. I don’t want to leave you. Not at all. Not in the slightest. If I was convinced it’d be better for you if I went—after everything that’s happened, I mean—then I’d do it. But I don’t actually think you and Nora could … ” He clears his throat. “Is that what you want? Just you and your mom?”
I remember the colorful toy bandages I used to make from strips of sliced-up paintings, and I shake my head.
My dad takes a deep breath. He looks at the white lion beside him and pats its stone fur.
“In the Netherlands,” I say, “they’ll never forget who we are. And New York is the greatest city on Earth. You could look for a job here, I could go to a school where no one knows me, and Mom could visit a different museum every day.”
A bride and groom are having their photograph taken on the sweeping steps in front of the library. They look happy in the sunshine.
“You have no idea how complicated it would be,” says my dad. “America isn’t a country you can just decide to move to. You need a green card, and it’s really expensive to live in New York, and … ”
“You’re ruining everything! Again!” I yell. I go and stand in front of him. “Imagine there’s something you could do to put things right between us—after what you did with Juno. All those dumb text messages and calling her the brightest star in the heavens when you always said that was me.”
He winces. “Emilia … ”
I don’t give him a chance to act all sorry for himself again. “Imagine there was something you could do. Would you be prepared to do it?”
The lines running across his forehead like a graph are deeper than I’ve ever seen them before. He’s an exhausted bird-watcher. One who might be happiest to lie down forever in a silent dip in the dunes.
“You know I’d do anything within my power,” he says wearily.
“Promise me this, then,” I say. “Promise that we’ll find out if it’s possible. Promise me we’ll try.”
He nods.
I look at him and hope I never fall in love with the wrong person. I hope I’ll never, ever make a mistake that destroys other people’s lives. Because when you destroy other people’s lives, you want to go lie in a dip in the dunes and become invisible. And that’s something I really, really don’t want to do.
I want to be in New York. I want to live.
For the last time, I walk on my own back to the darkness. I don’t know how long I can continue to play the my-dad-behaved-really-badly-so-now-I-can-do-whatever-I-like card, but it worked today at least.
I ate a burger for lunch, with
the pitiful bird-watcher. Then we went to a movie because the Conversation had gone on for long enough, and then we met my mom for high tea at the Plaza Hotel. And now I’m going back to the night, all on my own.
My mom and dad wanted to come with me to meet Seth and Abby and thank them for taking good care of me. My answer was, courtesy of Jim: No fucking way. As soon as I said it, I started to wave the my-dad-behaved-really-badly-so-now-I-can-do-whatever-I-like card around, because until a week ago I’d been a model daughter who had never cursed out loud in her entire life.
But yeah. This is something I have to do on my own.
I didn’t take a cab, because I need some cold evening air. I have to be able to breathe before I say good-bye to our hurricane shelter. And to Abby. And Seth.
I told my dad that all our problems would be solved if we moved, but I have no idea if that’s really true. Imagine having to go to school here. Are American schools really like the ones in the movies? With a rigid pecking order of cheerleaders and emo kids and honors nerds? I know Seth’s been beaten up three times, and Abby was always delighted when the radio said the schools would remain shut for one more day.
Would I survive the American teen battlefield? And would Mom really want to live here, or would she get desperately homesick after three months?
Suddenly, I think about the Statue of Liberty. The gray-green woman standing on her island to the south of the southernmost point of Manhattan. In the darkness. I think about the immigrants of the past, who left behind everything in Europe to start over again. They were at sea for two weeks before finally sailing into the harbor. The first thing they saw from the deck was Lady Liberty’s burning torch. I don’t know if I could ever be that brave. But I do know something has changed. A month ago, whenever I was in doubt, then I thought: Okay. I just won’t do it.
And now I think: Yeah, let’s do this. Let’s give it a try.
• • •
I look around in surprise. Have I mixed up the street numbers? Shouldn’t it already be dark here? I walk to Twenty-Fifth Street. To Twenty-Fourth—and then I know for sure. It was dark here yesterday. And now the lights are on again. The streetlights are on, the stoplights are working—the power is back!