They rode Amtrak through Connecticut, through industry swathed in green. At Penn Station they bought cigarettes and giant salty pretzels, that they ate during the cab ride to Park Avenue. When they arrived at the familiar awning, Sal, Rebecca’s favorite doorman, was on duty. She was so happy to see him that, though she’d never done it before, she gave him a hug.
“This,” said Vivi, “is swank.”
Sal laughed. “Oh man,” he said. “Right?”
“Sal, this is my friend Vivi.”
He gave Vivi’s hand a good shake. “I’ve known this one—what?” He nodded at Rebecca. “Ten years? Since she was practically a baby. You girls be good, you hear me? Your father know you’re here?”
“Of course,” Rebecca lied. “You know me, Sal. I’m the last good kid on Park Avenue.”
He said, “I’m telling you.”
Though it had been only a couple of months, Rebecca had the feeling that when she opened the apartment door everything would be changed, but she was wrong. Nothing was different. The wall of Picasso sketches, the red Rothko, the gray Knoll couch, the white Eames kitchen table where she’d done her homework for years—all there. The photographs in their silver frames still stood staring on the piano. And the view from the fourteenth floor—overlooking the trees of Central Park, the way she always knew the beginnings and endings of seasons—the view was intact.
Vivi took off her blue cowboy boots, slid in her socks across the dark-wood floors. She touched the couch, the dove-colored cashmere throw, a row of leather-bound book covers, three crystal vases, the Giacometti on the end table. And then, looking suddenly kind of raggedy, as if she could use a shower, Rebecca’s friend pressed her face against the thick glass windows. Vivi stood like that, frozen, looking out over the treetops. After what felt like the longest silence that had passed between them aside from that day at the Tree, Vivi asked, in a near hush, “Why didn’t I come here sooner?”
Rebecca laughed and—with a distinct feeling of relief—collapsed onto the gray wool couch. She kept her eye on Vivi, who, after continuing to pick things up and put them down, finally sat down at the piano to play. When Rebecca immediately recognized Vivi’s piece as the only one her mother ever played, she almost told her to stop. She could picture her mother tugging off her rings and saying, Chopin Prelude Fifteen, as if Rebecca should pay attention. But Vivi played the piece faster than her mother ever did, and Rebecca had to fight the urge to tell Vivi to slow down. Think of a dark and wooded path, she wanted to say, a cool stream of water in the shade.
“That was nice,” Rebecca said instead, after Vivi had finished. “Who taught you to play?”
“My father,” said Vivi. “There was this old hotel with a piano.” She seemed less proud than sad. She stood up and started to look at the pictures, zeroing in on the coarse-looking man and smiling plump woman standing in front of a tenement—
“My grandparents,” Rebecca said.
“Which side?”
“My father’s,” said Rebecca. “Dora and Murray. Never met Grandma Dora. Really wish I could have.”
“And old Murray?”
“Tough customer.”
Vivi looked silently at Pigtailed Rebecca, Ballet Rebecca, Awkward Bat Mitzvah Rebecca, Beach Rebecca held by her very tan father in swimming trunks, shielding his face from the sun. The pictures of her mother were gone.
“You were a seriously cute kid,” she said.
“Thanks,” Rebecca mumbled.
“Your dad looks kind of tough himself.”
“My dad? Yeah, I guess. A lot of people say that. But, y’know—he’s a businessman. He’s not that tough. Hey, what are we doing tonight? We have to do something.”
“Of course we do,” said Vivi. “Who’s showering first?”
“There are four showers,” Rebecca said, laughing. “Here.” She walked Vivi through what she still thought of as her parents’ bedroom, into the art deco bathroom that opened into what used to be her mother’s dressing room, which was now her father’s study. “You can have the nicest one.”
When Rebecca returned, wearing outfit number one—black REM concert T-shirt, black miniskirt, black combat boots—to get Vivi’s assessment, she found Vivi, still in a towel, sitting on her father’s desk chair, reading one of his many yellow legal pads.
“What are you doing?” Rebecca snapped.
“Relax,” said Vivi, “I wasn’t snooping.”
“What are you doing, then?”
“Um,” she laughed in that sudden way of hers that seemed to indicate contrition, “snooping?”
“Get dressed, okay?” Rebecca said, not bothering to ask Vivi’s opinion of her clothes. “I want to get going.”
“Are you wearing that?” asked Vivi.
It was a good two hours before they went anywhere, which didn’t matter, because the club where Vivi’s friend was DJ’ing was way downtown and didn’t even open until eleven. It was in a warehouse, the music was rap, and there were shared urinals and people much older than Rebecca and Vivi, one of whom was speaking French to Vivi, shrieking happily over the music. There was a silver flask of tequila, proferred by (according to Vivi) Suzanne Vega’s brother. There were bottles of beer drunk quickly and the relief that she was finally—at fifteen—drunk for the first time. They met a guy, a friend of the shrieking French woman, named Jean-Loup Wolf, who was American and tall and so untouchable that Rebecca found herself laughing hysterically over his name out of sheer awkward desire. His lips were full and his hair was so thick and so gloriously unwashed and he was wearing some kind of silky shirt that looked … elegant. Loup means wolf in French! she whispered dumbly, and, Jean-Wolf Wolf, she kept saying to Vivi, but Vivi wasn’t beside her anymore. Vivi was standing in front of Jean-Wolf Wolf, and then, within seconds, she was perched on top of a railing, her legs wrapped around his waist. They were kissing and Rebecca was watching. She thought, What is she doing with her hands? I have to remember to do that.
Vivi and the wolf walked over; his arm encircled her shoulder. “We’re going to Jean-Loup’s.” She said his name with a strong French accent.
Rebecca followed them outside.
“I’ll give you rides on my bike,” he said, pointing to a gleaming motorcycle. “One by one.”
“Thanks,” said Rebecca, quickly sobering up. “But I can’t ride on a motorcycle.”
Vivi quickly took her aside. “You’re kidding,” she spat.
“I am definitely not kidding. They are death traps,” she muttered back. “Besides, look what you dressed me in!” Rebecca yanked down the black Lycra minidress that Vivi had found in a ball at the bottom of her closet, which Rebecca had previously worn only once, in the sixth grade, when she was a cat for Halloween. “There is no physical way.”
“You have to relax,” said Vivi.
Rebecca shook her head. “Just give me the address and I’ll meet you. That is,” she hesitated, “if you want me to.”
“Of course I want you to.” Then, in a brighter voice, meant for Jean-Loup: “It’s no big deal. She has a thing about motorcycles.”
That night in Jean-Loup’s apartment was the first time Rebecca saw a bathtub in a Lower East Side kitchen. It was the first time she smoked pot and sat outside a bedroom talking to a sexually ambiguous guy, while Vivi was inside a bedroom, making time. The friend, Tad, was nice. He was even kind of old-fashioned, dressed in a clean white button-down shirt and black trousers. He offered to make Rebecca a cup of hot chocolate. He asked her if she’d seen any John Waters films, and when she said no, he popped in a VHS tape and they watched Pink Flamingos, which was, without a doubt, the most disgusting thing she’d ever seen. He told her that trash could be beautiful, even violence could be beautiful. She told Tad that she was feeling a little freaked out and he said sweetly, Okay, I understand—you are a lovely girl.
By the time Vivi emerged from Jean-Loup’s room, the light outside the window was silver.
“I must have fallen asleep,” Rebecca whisp
ered. She was lying on the couch, still in the Lycra dress, covered with a soft blanket. She looked around, but Tad was gone.
Vivi knelt beside her; her face looked red and raw. “Are you okay?” Vivi asked.
She nodded. “Are you?”
“Absolutely.” Vivi smiled. “Let’s go.”
They walked to a diner and had coffee ice cream sodas for breakfast. Vivi didn’t tell her any details and Rebecca didn’t ask. They watched the sun rise over the East River—gray and platinum, blue and gold—until it was a new day.
In November, in the Arts Center, Vivi showed Rebecca a series of self-portraits.
“You have no face,” said Rebecca.
“It’s supposed to symbolize my shyness.”
Light poured in through the skylights of the painting studio even though it was wet and rainy. “Okay … but you’re not shy.”
“Secretly.”
“Secret shyness? I don’t know, Vivi.… You might need to learn to paint your features.”
“Just because your own shyness is so obvious—”
“Hey, I managed to meet you on the first day of school, didn’t I?”
“Doesn’t count,” said Vivi, still scrutinizing her canvas. “I was the one who introduced myself. You were following me, but you never would have said anything.”
“See—you’re not remotely shy. And you think everyone is following you.”
Vivi shrugged.
“You do! I swear I’ve never met anyone more … confident.” Vivi started to laugh and shrugged again. “I’m just willing to see what’s right in front of me.”
“Like what?”
“Well, let’s see. Off the top of my head? Okay.” She took a dramatic breath. “Nobody really looks like me. I am not as smart as you. Smartness is overrated. Also? My friends from freshman year? Not my friends anymore. Not sure when that happened, maybe it was my fault, but, whatever—there’s nothing there now.”
“Does it bother you?”
She nodded. “I’m sentimental.”
“You?” Rebecca wasn’t being sarcastic, but as soon as she’d said it, she realized that of course Vivi was sentimental. She’d just never thought of her that way.
Vivi blushed, and her face was so deeply, so unexpectedly red—it was almost uncomfortable to watch. “Oh, and here’s another thing. This painting? Bad. And,” she took a generous pause, “every painting I’ve ever made is bad.” She chewed on the end of one of her cornrows, which she did only when deliberating. “I’m going to stop painting and try photography.”
Rebecca looked at Vivi’s painting. It wasn’t good. Nor were her grades. But instead of noticing all the various ways in which the painting was lacking or thinking that Vivi should have gotten her grades up last spring in order to get into a better college, Rebecca found herself impressed that Vivi could move on so quickly, that she didn’t cling to the idea of making the painting better, that she cared more about expressing herself than she did about her college placement. Part of Rebecca’s inability to try even the most minor of creative endeavors (like baking a long-promised coconut cake for her friend Dan’s birthday last August) was that she knew she’d never know when to let the idealized version go. She knew she’d be up all night baking that stupid cake, convincing herself that she could make it better than it could ever actually be. “I think,” said Rebecca, “this is a good call.”
“Okay, then, we’re in agreement there,” said Vivi, still focused on the canvas. “I totally suck as a painter.”
“No, come on—”
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
“My mother’s boyfriend’s beach house. Remember?”
“Oh, right. What’s it like?”
“I don’t know.” Rebecca shrugged. “Decorated?”
David’s house in Southampton was exactly the kind of place that Vivi loved hearing about. But Rebecca did not tell her about the antique Mercedes convertible that was used just for going to the beach or that there was a whole other “cottage” for the year-round chef. She did not share how, during her last visit during the summer, every morning there was a newspaper for each and every guest—the sections already separated and neatly stacked alongside the breakfast spread. She did not mention the breakfast spread—the baskets of croissants and pastries and bagels from E.A.T., the platters of smoked fish and exotic fresh fruit and made-to-order omelets. Or how there was a giant Calder mobile on the lawn leading to the clay tennis courts. Or that one of her early memories was of her father taking her from the Museum of Natural History straight across town to the Whitney, where he pointed out Calder’s Circus and told Rebecca he preferred Calder to dinosaurs. Rebecca did not tell Vivi how her father would have been so jealous if he saw that Calder—maybe even more jealous than if he saw her mother kissing David—because her father wanted to own what he loved.
“Is that where you want to go for Thanksgiving?” Vivi asked.
“Sure.”
“Really?”
Rebecca pictured the white four-poster guest bed and how she knew she’d have trouble sleeping under the same roof as her mother and David. She already knew that she’d long to feel close with her mother and yet would barely be able to look at her, forget about touching her, not even a hug goodbye.
“No,” Rebecca admitted. “That isn’t where I want to go.”
“So come with us instead.”
“To Haiti?”
Vivi shook her head. “We’re going to Anguilla.”
“Your family goes to Anguilla?”
“My aunt Kitty is a decorator, and she’s doing up a house there. She’s done a bunch of these houses in the Caribbean and then she sells them at a gigantic profit. Mom gave her the idea. My father totally disapproves and thinks it’s obnoxious and that she’s ruining the island’s integrity, but he’s coming anyway. I think he feels bad about disappointing Aunt Kitty. Plus my cousin J.K. is in rehab—poor J.K.—which is really expensive. I had no idea rehab was so expensive. Did you?”
Rebecca shook her head. She looked over at a still-life display; a white sheet was crumpled at the foot of a table. She felt like pulling that sheet over her head and waking up with Vivi’s family in Anguilla, where nothing was remotely familiar. People adored one another and stayed married, and made even a trip to rehab seem okay. People spent their lives working with incredibly poor and sick people, got paid next to nothing, and vacationed in Anguilla.
“I can’t come,” said Rebecca.
“Why not? I just invited you.”
“But—”
“I really mean it. You’re invited. I understand the importance of an invitation.”
“Huh. I find that hard to believe.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think you probably walk through a whole lot of doors without an invitation. In fact, I bet your un-American globetrotting life is like one big fat American game show. What’s through door number one? The Caribbean! Oh, wait, what about door number two?” Rebecca knew that she was being more than a little confrontational, but she wasn’t exactly sure why. She waited for Vivi to take offense, but Vivi only began to place her canvases alongside other painted canvases, under a sign cheerfully labeled: FEEL FREE TO PAINT OVER!
“You’re invited,” said Vivi definitively, with a somewhat eerie disregard for Rebecca’s rotten behavior. “You should come.”
Chapter Fourteen
NYC/Velocity
During a fit of Zionism combined with a feckless desire to rid his collection of a Philip Pearlstein (the model looked like Jill), Ed had donated a painting to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. He had learned for the first time of Jill’s struggles with fidelity, and though it was several years before they actually signed divorce papers, he’d thought of that painting’s journey to Israel as representing the bitter end of their marriage. He went as far to picture himself as the painting: crated up, stuck in limbo, waiting to emerge. He should have, in fact, held on to the Philip Pearlstein. If he still had the Pearlstein
he would be able to sell it along with the rest of his collection in the coming year (if it came to that—which it could have).
It could, in fact, come to that.
However.
Having made the donation, he received invitations to anything remotely suggestive of contemporary art or Israel, and, over the past few years, he’d taken to attending one event per week. Though he hadn’t finished packing and his flight was in the morning, and though he’d never previously been to China, he was far too socially careful these days to miss an event for which he’d RSVP’ed. He abandoned his suitcase and his checklist and strolled over to Roseland on a late October evening. As a kid, fall had been his favorite season—he loved returning to school—but as an adult he found it disheartening. It was getting dark earlier now, and the air was crisp; everything was beautiful in that sad kind of way that he absolutely fucking hated. A party was what he needed; he needed to feel like a sociable person, which—for him—entailed talking with people who didn’t know him yet. He heard the swing band, the muffled chatter, the clinking glasses and silver, and as he entered the room, the first two people he saw—the very first two, as if this all were nothing more than one of his ridiculous Ziegfeld-style dreams—were Ted Kennedy and Connie Graff.
They were dancing. Teddy twirled Connie, who was wearing a low-cut red taffeta number; they were both laughing. It was still cocktail hour, and they were the only ones cutting a rug. Teddy was very red and very large. He had a presence. It didn’t matter that his dance moves weren’t terribly fluid. He was a friend of the Jews. Ed swiped a glass of champagne. A toast-and-salmon canapé. He didn’t know whether to laugh or leave, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the senator and Connie. He watched them through a fine rendition of “I Get a Kick Out of You,” and, when they were finished dancing, Connie whispered something in the senator’s ear and—to Ed’s great surprise—they came right over.
“Ed,” Connie said.
He kissed her on the cheek. She smelled citrusy, metallic. One of her diamond earrings nicked his cheek. She made the introduction.
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