by Ali Benjamin
Out there is a rogue planet, tied to nothing, wandering the universe alone and never seeing a single dawn.
Yes: he wants this moment to keep going. He wants to walk and walk—past his house, into the fields beyond. He wants to stand in the open meadow, look up at all those glimmering lights, to feel, fully, that fist-sized muscle, his heart, beating behind his ribs.
What if he could just let it roll off of him—the bills that haven’t been paid, the checks that haven’t arrived, the bygone days with Randy, the witches in his living room, all the news that everyone’s so pissed off about all the time, the broken house, the kid’s prescriptions and homework, Randy’s hysteria, this deathly quiet town filled with ghosts and bones?
What if he could let it all go? What if he could be just like, whatever?
Bränd’s First Leap of Faith is a painting. Street art–style, but these brushstrokes cover not some brick facade of New York’s Lower East Side but rather one of the most prime advertising sites in the city: the Forty-second Street/Eighth Avenue billboard—a spot that has always, until now, been reserved for the Stetson-clad Marlboro man.
According to the eyewitnesses who will go on record with the New York Times, the canvas had not been unfurled at 2:30 a.m. But now, as the first beams of sun break over the East River, it’s there. It won’t last long—a couple of hours if they’re lucky. Newspapers will document not only the painting itself, but also its speedy removal. Pundits will wonder aloud: What exactly was that? Some sort of protest against Big Tobacco? An advertisement? And if so, for what?
The subject of this painting is a man—one that anyone who ever took freshman lit, or ever read T. S. Eliot, will recognize: the poor bastard whose hair is growing thin, who shall grow old, who has seen the moment of his greatness flicker. The man, seen from behind, stands stiffly in a dark suit and bowler hat. Something about his posture suggests hesitation. Toward the edge of the frame, the viewer glimpses, through a crack in the door, technicolor nebulas, pinwheel galaxies, the entire magnificent universe.
The image bears just four words. The first three form a simple question: Do I dare?
It’s 1995. The world is post–Cold War, post-Perestroika, post-reunification. The Internet, that information superhighway, is still novel; the world it will create, like the new millennium itself, lies just over the horizon. Right now, as Ethan and Randy, barely a year out of college, stand here looking up, a billion-dollar telescope perched hundreds of miles in outer space beams down images of the heavens. Scientists huddle over DNA in labs, mapping the entirety of the human genome.
Everything feels new, limitless, there for the taking. Do we dare?
Over the next few days, similar paintings will appear around the city: this same, sad man hesitating before reaching for a peach. Standing at the shore, ear tilted as if trying, and failing, to hear some siren call. Trapped against a corkboard by an oversized pushpin. Two dozen images in total, appearing collectively on walls and sidewalks in SoHo, Alphabet City, Chelsea, the Meatpacking District, Brooklyn Heights.
But this one, astride the massive DKNY mural in the heart of Times Square, is the first, and the biggest, and the boldest, and the most surprising. This is the one that seems to best capture how it feels to be alive right now.
Within months, the artist who painted this canvas, a woman, will have a solo show at the Gagosian. Within a few years, the Whitney. But the artist’s name, today, appears nowhere. There was a cost to this anonymity, but everybody has their price—and Randy, who commissioned the work, has an instinct for such things. Where the artist’s signature would ordinarily appear, in the lower right-hand corner, is a single word: Bränd.
Randy, on the ground, stares up at the billboard.
“Fucking Prufrock, man,” Randy says. His mouth curls into a smile.
Watching him, Ethan realizes: No. The painting is most of us. But not all of us. It’s not Randy, not even a little.
Unlike Eliot’s Prufrock, Randy fucking dared.
HOW TO COME HOME
You think you know what to expect. You assume, when you open the door to your home, you’ll see the usual group of women, planning their next protest, or finishing up a card-writing campaign, or staring at a gerrymandered map of some district you’ve never heard of.
It’ll be grim faces. Dark eyes. Protest. Resist.
But you’re not the only one who’s chosen to escape the usual categories tonight. You’re not the only one who longs to feel the thrum of life moving through you.
Here is what greets you: a swirl of pink, a crush of bodies in motion. Limbs and feet and hips and breasts. Lurching, swaying, bobbing, writhing. Dancing. The music blares. Your living room—the part that isn’t covered up by contractor plastic, that is—has become a dance floor, some strange, surrealistic night club, all bumping pelvises, rolling shoulders, bodies that gyrate and bounce and flail in only-sort-of-sync with the pulsing beat.
And here is the oddest part, the truly unnerving thing: amid all this movement there are no faces whatsoever. You see no noses, no freckles, no chins or cheeks, eyebrows or eyeglasses or earrings or, for that matter, ears. No distinguishing haircuts, no hair at all. In place of all of these things, there is only pink yarn.
What the…?
And where, in this crowd, is your wife?
* * *
—
Ski masks. The women in Ethan’s house are wearing some sort of ski masks.
Except that’s not quite right: their head coverings aren’t for winter sports. They’re…what do you call them? Balaclavas, that’s right: headwear for both criminals and dissidents. The women are wearing cheap acrylic pink balaclavas, every last one of them, as if the group that calls themselves All Them Witches have, in an instant, transformed from aging small-town activists into some sort of girl gang, a posse, goddamned lady-burglars.
Actually, Ethan realizes, that’s not a bad idea for a story. The Burglarettes. Could be a film, maybe, or a TV series. He’ll pitch the idea to Randy one of these days, if—when—things get back on track.
Ethan doesn’t recognize the song that’s blasting through his home, but every bar seems to end with the same line: Don’t play stupid, don’t play dumb, Vagina’s where you’re really from!
He searches for his wife among the dancers. None of them is Zo. All of them are Zo. Ethan is struck by the odd sensation that he doesn’t actually know what his wife looks like now. It doesn’t help that the room is so crowded! It’s not just the number of dancers—there are probably a dozen or so, jammed so close they might as well be a single organism—or that half the square footage of the first floor lies on the far side of contractor tarps. It’s also that what little space they have is crammed with furniture, far more than one family needs.
Zo’s fault, that furniture. For some reason she won’t stop buying. Their contractor has explained that if their renovation is ever to move beyond the demolition phase, he’ll need the next payment installment. And for that to happen, they need either Ethan’s late Bränd checks, or a new check from Dr. Ash, or for Zo to finish that ESPN documentary. Instead of working on the project, though, Zo seems to spend hours shopping for furniture online, as if they already have their skylights, their recessed lighting, their open floorplan. Just this afternoon, a new sofa arrived, even though their current sofa is less than two years old. Ethan had been in the process of turning away the delivery, explaining that there must be some mistake, until Zo appeared behind him. “Yes, that’s ours,” she confirmed, leaving him standing there like an idiot, like a dope. Now as the women dance in balaclavas, two sofas (one new, one definitely-not-old, both the same dingy shade of gray) sit back-to-back. Everyone’s sardined into a space that also includes three rolled carpets (two still covered in plastic), two coffee tables (one made of chrome and glass, an obvious disaster-in-the-making for a family with a kid who’s been diagnosed hyp
eractive), four armchairs, and some sort of tufted ottoman.
With nowhere to move, each dancer is simply repeating the same motions over and over. It looks like a cross between the Irish Republican Army and the Charlie Brown dance scene. Ethan scans the moving figures, tries to ascertain who’s who. Nearest to him is a set of gyrating hips, slow and heavy in baggy, elastic-waist pants. No question who this is: the oldest of the group, in her late seventies, maybe. Short hair, dyed jet-black. Name’s Eleanor. He’s pretty sure it’s Eleanor, anyway. Could be Ellen? Elna? Something like that, definitely begins with an E-L.
Elastic, Ethan thinks. Elastic Waistband. Ye shall know me by my pants.
Next to her is a stick figure in athletic gear, all elbows and fibrous muscle. This can only be Running Mom, the one he sees sprinting through town, a permanent scowl on her face.
Running Mom hip-bumps a figure in paint-splattered jeans: the artist, no doubt. Last spring, Ethan and Zo went to one of her openings at a gallery over in Bettsbridge; there, Ethan drank boxed wine from a plastic cup and tried to make sense of the woman’s paintings, which were of…meat cleavers. (Canvas after canvas, nothing but meat cleavers! There were bloody meat cleavers, gleaming meat cleavers, meat cleavers on beds, and on sterile trays! Pairs of meat cleavers facing off, blade to shining blade!)
Those are the women he can pick out. The others, including his wife, are indistinguishable.
Don’t play stupid, don’t play dumb, Vagina’s where you’re really from.
He longs to leave this scene, maybe disappear into his bedroom—it’s right there, on the first floor, next to the dancing women (“A first-floor master so you can age in place,” said the real estate listing when he and Zo bought the place, back when aging anywhere was an abstraction, wholly hypothetical). But Maddy’s already plopping down on the brand-new sofa, sprawling across it with her shoes still on. (She’s so comfortable! Everywhere she goes!) Maddy pulls her sapphire hair into a loose bun on top of her head, begins tapping on her phone.
There. The one down by Maddy’s feet: Torn jeans, oversized L.L.Bean sweater, holes at the elbows. That’s his wife. That’s Zo.
Above this entire scene, CNN plays in silence. The screen shows a protest in the Capitol Rotunda: all women, all in black, many with duct tape covering their mouths. The chyron at the bottom of the screen reads: Supreme Court battle heats up. Ah, yes, the newest outrage: a SCOTUS nominee who has been accused by a high school classmate of a long-ago assault.
Ethan’s phone buzzes. He pulls it out, expecting Randy. In fact, it’s Maddy, texting from three feet away. OMG, she writes.
He texts back a wide-eyed emoji.
Maddy: White ladies, am I right?
His finger hovers over his phone. He could tease, “Aren’t you a white lady?” But he looks up at Elastic Waistband, at the short, jerky thrusts of her pelvis—that’s entirely too much thrusting, frankly—then remembers how Maddy looked beneath the streetlight: her smooth curves, the gentle lift of her head as she drew that smoke into her lungs.
No, Maddy seems like a different sort of being altogether.
He sends Maddy a laughing-face emoji, then a shrug emoji. And that’s when Ethan notices that one of the balaclava-clad dancing women isn’t a woman at all. It is, in fact, an eleven-year-old child. His child. Alex.
Ethan weaves his way into the throng of women, taps his daughter on the shoulder, motions for her to remove her balaclava. She does, but she continues bobbing up and down in rhythm to the beat. “Kiddo, it’s time for bed,” he says.
Alex continues dancing, mouthing the words of whatever song this is: My pussy, my pussy, is sweet just like a cookie.
Jesus Christ. He puts his hand on her shoulder. “Alex. Bed. Now.”
Alex has a way of going dark. It happens instantly, like someone’s yanked a shade down over a window. Her eyes go black, her jaw hardens. Ethan, undeterred, stares her down, reminds himself that he’s doing the right thing. It’s late, she’s a kid, it’s a school night, this is perfectly fair. He’s doing what fathers are supposed to do, he’s parenting for Chrissakes, no matter what the heck her mom is doing.
“Fine,” Alex snaps. She stomps toward the stairs.
“I’ll be up in five minutes to make sure you’re asleep,” he calls behind her. In response, Alex whirls around. Lifts her hands like they’re claws, and hisses at him. Bares her teeth.
Sixth grade, this kid, and she’s still hissing like a feral cat.
“I’m serious, Alex.” Alex narrows her eyes, gives him a final snarl, and disappears into the upstairs, leaving him alone with the dancing Burglarettes.
* * *
—
When the music ends, the women peel off their masks. And just like that, guerrilla soldiers become again moms and grandmas, small-town neighbors with ordinary lives. They’re women who hold down jobs, care for kids, volunteer, who-the-heck-knows-what-they-do.
They’re laughing now. Even Zo’s laughing, which means, just for a moment, she resembles the person he thought he’d married—the woman he had married, the one who was clever and grounded, who could find the funny in anything, until anger settled inside her like an unwelcome squatter. Zo wipes a trickle of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “Wow,” she says. “That felt great.”
“What’s that?” Elastic Waist asks. Can’t hear worth a damn, this woman.
“I SAID THAT FELT GREAT,” Zo repeats.
“Boy did I ever need that,” says Running Mom with a laugh. “Especially this week.”
“Right?” says the artist. “I think we all needed that this week.” Then, to Elastic Waist: “WE ALL NEEDED THAT.”
By now, though, Elastic Waist’s eyes are on the television.
There, on the screen, is Bill Cosby. It’s not the Bill Cosby that exists in Ethan’s mind, not the man who once sold him Pudding Pops and danced around in colorful sweaters with the rest of the Huxtables. This is an older version: slower, more grizzled, nothing funny here. Sad Bill Cosby is in handcuffs, and he’s shuffling out of a courtroom guided by a uniformed officer. The chyron: Bill Cosby Sentenced to Prison. The ultimate walk of shame, this: a once-beloved comedian being sent off to prison for things that Ethan still somehow can’t quite connect to the man. (Bill Cosby? Host of Kids Say the Darnedest Things? Seriously?)
And then Cosby’s gone, and CNN’s on to the next segment, which means the women are looking at a smiling headshot: the new Supreme Court pick, the one who denies everything. (There will be a hearing. The man plans to fight this, he’ll stick it out, emerge a martyr or a champion but he won’t fucking cower, won’t be shamed, won’t crawl away with his tail between his legs. That’s not how this is going to go down.)
The women boo, and someone shouts “motherfucker,” and someone else lifts a middle finger, and then they’re all doing it, the whole lot of them, standing there with their fingers up, like some rebel army flashing their salute to one another.
Whatever the hell new war the women have declared, Randy had said. It hits Ethan: Bränd could be in trouble. Real trouble.
But come on: Randy’s no Bill Cosby, is he? Sure, the guy’s a pain in the ass, can be a bit of a dick, to be honest, always with the showman thing. But Ethan’s known him nearly three decades, since their first day of college. Whatever accusations face Bränd, they won’t stand up in the face of real scrutiny. Ethan’s sure of that. Almost sure.
So why does he feel so uneasy?
Feeling eyes on him, he looks up. Elastic Waist, the only one not flashing her middle finger to the screen, is watching him. Assessing him somehow. Or maybe judging him. He can’t discern what the woman’s look means, exactly, but he doesn’t like it, doesn’t like her, if he’s being honest, and isn’t it time all these women go home?
Zo clicks the remote control, and the screen go
es dark.
Hugs all around. Murmurs of encouragement. We’ll get through this and Take care of yourself, try to get some sleep, and We’ll stop him, we will, and Will we?
Whatever it takes, they say.
Hell or high water, they say.
Good night, they say, picking up purses and backpacks and notebooks and reading glasses and balaclavas. GOOD NIGHT, they say, a little louder, to Elastic Waist. Hypatia lumbers around the abandoned dance floor lapping up cookie crumbs and popcorn bits. Maddy, still sprawled across the new sofa, smiles at something on her phone. Ethan empties a wineglass into the sink, sets it in the dishwasher. Drive safe, stay strong, is this your bag, they say, and then, at last, Zo closes the door.
And then it is his house, theirs, again.
A beat.
“So that was—” Ethan begins to say. The next word is going to be interesting. Meaning, the dancing, the masks, because it was. It was interesting. He’s not going to say ridiculous, he’s not going to say absurd, he’s definitely not going to say fucking insane, he’s not an idiot for heaven’s sake, but it doesn’t matter. Zo holds up her hand, stops him midsentence.
“Don’t,” she warns. “I swear to God, Ethan, just don’t, because it’ll just lead to a fight, and I cannot take one more thing this week.”
He’s acutely aware of Maddy, the way her finger pauses over her phone screen just for a beat before she continues tapping.
He drops a plate into the sink with a clatter. Let Zo clean up. He didn’t make this mess, or ask for it. He heads upstairs to check on Alex.
A swish of covers. A body diving. A flash of light disappears beneath a pillow, and then there is Alex: instantly still, eyes squeezed shut, blanket to her ears, her snore too conspicuous to be real.
“Hand it over,” Ethan commands.
Alex sits up. “Ugh. Fine.” She pulls a cracked iPad from beneath her pillow and hands it to Ethan. The device is the vestige of a brief, failed experiment at her private school. Last year, all families with students in fourth grade or higher were required to purchase iPads—the cost, mind you, was on top of the five-figure tuition they were already paying. In exchange, administrators promised project-based learning, coding classes, access to libraries and resources around the world. Whether any of those promises were kept is unclear. What’s certain, though, is that school servers accessed Pornhub and similar sites so often that administrators shut down the iPad program midyear. The school’s latest round of marketing materials declares them proudly screen-free, as if that had been their intended policy all along.