Will, meanwhile, leaned brooding against an empty section of fence, his own overnight bag and his sister’s at his feet. It would have been terminally uncool to sit with his mother, an admission of his own difficulty making friends, though the only conceivable reason any kid wouldn’t have wanted to be friends with her brilliant and warm and spooky-sensitive child, now stretching his arms out cruciform and wrapping his hands around the bars, would have been jealousy. He looked like an advertisement for boredom. Behind him, the sky, New Jersey, and the water were a parfait of diminishing brightness. He’d been right. He was too old for playgrounds. But she didn’t want them making the long subway or cab ride uptown alone—it didn’t seem safe—and when Keith, after she’d refused to meet him halfway (why should she?) had agreed to come down here and pick them up, she’d found she couldn’t bear the idea of him in the new apartment, or even in the hallway outside it. That was the point of the move, after all, and was maybe why everything was still in boxes—because she couldn’t be sure what she (the other she, whoever that was) had touched. And so, Tuesdays and Saturdays from now until the kids were old enough, they would all come out here and wait for Keith … which was what, she realized, she was doing. She had chosen this bench for the view it offered, not of her kids, but of the park entrance. And what would the other women think when he arrived? She crossed her arms.
Then Cate was dragging her brother across to the tree, and the other little girls were screaming and laughing and fleeing before the giant interloper. Will stooped to examine the spot they’d been poking at. He glanced over at Regan, and his look made her understand the thing on the ground differently. “Honey—honeys—don’t touch that, please.” Some subfrequency of concern made the other women turn toward her, but she was already up and moving toward the mound of feathers they’d uncovered. “It’s probably crawling with germs.” And now, thrust by minor emergency back into her role as a mother, she knelt on the asphalt, ignoring the wet salt-pebbles digging into her knees, to look at the thing.
It wasn’t the kind of bird you ever saw in the city. It was too big by half, the size of a football or lapdog. And too gaudy to blend in with buildings and streets. Its plumage was the blue and orange of jungle flowers, flamestitched in black. She tried to recall anything she’d ever known about birds. A woodpecker, maybe, or some mutant jay? Its head must have been tucked underneath its body. There was a stick in her field of vision, too, its tremulous end only inches from the bird, and she assumed Will was the one holding it, but when she reached for it, she discovered it was attached to a new kid, or not a new kid—her kids were, she supposed, the new ones—but a kid that wasn’t hers. He was either Japanese or Korean, halfway between Cate’s age and Will’s, with hair like black straw sticking out from the back of his Yankees cap and a smooth little face that gave away nothing. In the seconds during which he held her gaze, she felt him to be older than Will. Than herself, really. This had to be a hangover thing, this roaring mysticism or racism or whatever. Then the boy shrugged and let go of the stick.
It shook a little in her hand. She wanted to stop when she felt the soft weight of the bird at the end of it, but (this was absurd) the Japanese kid, from the shadows beneath his brim, seemed to be evaluating her performance, and beyond, in the blurred middle distance, she was sure the mothers whose park this was were watching.
“What are you doing, Mommy?” Cate asked. Will shushed her but looked a little pale as Regan drove the stick farther into the space between the bottom wing and the asphalt. In truth, she didn’t know. Was the bird still breathing? Would she have to put it out of its misery? The give of it was nauseating, the sagging articulation of a wing that refused to come loose from the ground. And then, as though a frame of film were missing, the body flopped over and the head, previously hidden, came into light. One eye was missing, or stove in, it was impossible to tell amid the dried brown blood. The blood had matted the feathers—had been what was gluing them to the ground. But the other eye, intact, no larger than a pea, stared up toward the vacant heavens. It had a tiny lid, she noticed. She imagined the bird blowing off course during the snowstorm, breaking short its migration, straying into the wrong neighborhood, alone but assuming it would stay aloft, everything would continue just as before. She hadn’t cried last night, when she’d seen the stretcher, but now she almost—almost—let go. It was the stranger kid who stopped her.
“Are you all right, miss?”
She sniffed. She was fine. She had to be fine. “A cat must have got hold of it.”
“If it was a cat there’d be more blood,” the kid said, scientifically.
“Well, some predator, anyway. Will, can you find me a bag or box or something, please? We don’t want to just leave it here to get stepped on.”
When Will had returned with an old newspaper, she scooped the bird up in the sports section. It seemed undignified. She thought of asking the Japanese boy if he knew some special way to fold it, but thought better of it. Instead, she found a nearly full trashcan and laid the little bundle of newspaper inside. On the ground nearby were some dried-out branches with leaves still attached. She reached for one and laid it gently over the top of the newspaper. “Does anyone want to say a few words?” When no one did, she said, “Goodbye, bird.”
“Bye, bird,” Cate repeated, laying on another branch. Will and the other kid were too old or too male to be this sentimental, but each added a branch, and when they were done, the lines of newsprint carrying tidings of another Knicks defeat were barely visible through the winter-brown pyre of leaves. For a moment, Regan relaxed.
Then something made her turn. Keith was watching all four of them from the park entrance. But mostly, she couldn’t help noticing, watching her. From his stubble and a certain squinty quality around his eyes, her guess was that he’d spent his night as she had, drunk—maybe with the other woman, despite his protestations, or with someone else. It hardly seemed fair, the way dissolution made him look even better, the steel-blue shadow tracing the strong line of the jaw, the blue eyes wounded, the off-center cleft on his brow that used to appear only when he was deep in thought. And it hardly seemed fair that he could watch her openly and without rancor, when the separation was his fault. To stop herself from moving toward him, she touched her kids’ shoulders. Their rites over the bird had brought them into keen attunement; they looked up from the trashcan in unison, like grazing antelope at a distant sound. Neither ran to their dad, she was relieved to note, and also pained. Nor did Keith come to them. He seemed to recognize the invisible line drawn on the asphalt. This was Regan’s place, not his. Will gathered up the bags he’d left along the fence, and together they crossed the melting park.
“Happy New Year,” was the first thing Keith said, after Cate had clamped herself around his leg. “I sent the check for spring tuition.”
“Already deposited.” Regan wasn’t sure if they were supposed to shake hands or embrace. She let him kiss her cheek. “I don’t know if happy’s the right word.”
“Or lucky, maybe. Double sevens. It’ll be better than last year, anyway.”
Having been smart enough to stay away from the party, it occurred to her, he wouldn’t have heard about the indictment, or the shooting in the Park, or any of it. She longed, irrationally, to confide in him, but the kids were standing right there, Will already closer to him than to her. “Keith, I need a favor. Something’s come up at work, and I may need to go in early Monday morning. Would you mind keeping them until then?”
Behind her almost-ex-husband, brownstone Brooklyn was a blur: ladies with shopping trolleys, people walking dogs, mottles of ice in front of buildings whose owners hadn’t sprinkled salt, and all the way up the hill trees dripping in the rare air. He seemed to be trying to read her. “Sure, Regan. No problem.”
“I’d really appreciate it. I know it’s not your day.”
“Don’t. Don’t do that,” he said. “This is hard enough as it is.” And then he peeled Cate from his leg and lifted her, and her
face was botched with tears. Regan reached for Cate’s back.
“Honey, what’s the matter?”
“What do you think’s the matter?” Will said.
It took Cate a few seconds to steady her breathing enough to speak for herself. “Who will take care of Mommy?” she wailed, and then she buried her face back in the front of Keith’s coat.
Keith asked what she was talking about.
Regan blushed. “It’s nothing. I was a little under the weather this morning, and Cate was a good helper.” But was it really nothing? Because she’d be on her own for the next thirty-six hours, in the empty apartment. She’d managed all right in the old place uptown, when Keith had been sleeping on his friend Greg Tadelis’s couch and would come to take the kids ice-skating or to the movies. That apartment understood her. That mirror was the one she’d looked into all fall to remind herself that, no matter how bad things got, she would not stick her finger down her throat. But last night she had thrown up again, and once the kids were gone there was nothing to stop her from going into the bathroom and repeating, and repeating. Nothing but herself.
“I’ll be fine, sweetie,” she said, and she had to draw closer to Keith to squeeze her daughter’s shoulder. She could smell his aftershave. She could feel his eyes on her.
“We should talk some time,” he said.
She ignored this. “You can usually find a cab up on Clinton. Make sure these two wash their hands as soon as they get back.” She squeezed Cate again. “Give Mommy a kiss, sweetie. I’m going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.” Cate sniffed and nodded. “Take care of each other,” Regan whispered in Will’s ear.
“It’s just two nights.” His embrace was stiff. And then she had to step back, to break contact. Otherwise she would never have let them go.
“Tell your dad I said Happy New Year’s,” Keith said, pointlessly.
She watched them walk up Pierrepont Street, Keith holding Cate’s hand in one of his, the other hand carrying both bags. Will’s own hands were in his pockets, his head down, watching the rock-salt he scuffed skitter gutterward. And she was okay with this not because she was a bad person, but because there was no alternative. She could keep herself busy until their return. There were phone calls to make. There were—Lord knew—boxes to unpack. She would be fine. Everything was going to be fine.
14
HAD THE RASP OF THE KEY IN THE LOCK brought William to the door—or had William been waiting inside on the futon, arms crossed, in the shiny blue kimono of judgment—and had he then demanded to know where the hell Mercer had been all night, Mercer might have been prepared to confront him straightaway about the heroin. But at 6:15 a.m. on the first day of the year of somebody’s lord 1977, the loft was empty, save for the cat. In the grayblue light from the windows, the lump of sheets on the bed was an actual lump of sheets. Was it a kind of revenge, then, to return the chesterfield coat to its box, to slide it back under the futon where it had waited so long? Or was it, rather, a test, to see if William noticed it was missing? Too tired to decide anything for certain, Mercer trudged to the sleeping nook, shooed Eartha from his pillow, crawled half-dressed under the coverlet, and abandoned himself to troubled dreams.
He woke hours later to the warmth of another body in the bed, a heavy forearm across his chest, the ebb and swell of breath on the back of his neck, neutral with toothpaste. The faint catch in William’s throat meant that he, too, had begun to dream. Before the inevitable whimpering could start, Mercer decided to get up.
He put on one of the overdue Puccini albums he’d checked out from the library. He turned it up loud. He clattered around in the kitchenette, preparing breakfast for one; one way or another, he would pick a fight. But when William stepped naked through the beaded curtain (for he always slept naked), he looked as innocent as Adam. Finger-shaped bruises had appeared on his arm where it had been hurt a week ago, and he still held it against his chest, instinctively, for protection. Wouldn’t there have been needle-tracks? “What are you doing, you ridiculous man? It’s New Year’s Day, and you’re unwell.”
“I’m unwell?” This was Mercer, still/again full of doubt.
“Your cold.” Right. His cold. “Why don’t you come back to bed, let me take care of you? God knows you did it for me when I was down.”
William moved the Magnavox into the sleeping nook, placed it on a towel on the radiator at the foot of the bed. Mercer watched him work the rabbit ears. He decided to say something. “You have a good time last night?”
“Comme ci, comme ça. The Ex-Post revival seems harmless enough, though I’m half-deaf now. I missed you.” So maybe everything since their phone conversation had been a confusion, Mercer thought. Or if it hadn’t been, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He laid his head on his lover’s chest and let the static and glow of a soap opera sweep him away.
For lunch—or dinner, really—they ordered Chinese. They forked moo shu out of white cartons right there on the bed, a concession to Mercer’s ostensible ill health. At any rate, spending all day in bed had been enough to make him feel somewhat ill, like a kid playing hooky from school. William parceled out crumbs of information about his ex-bandmates, dressed up as anecdotes—just enough to seem not to be hiding anything. Occasionally, Mercer obliged him with a cough. He couldn’t find a way to turn the conversation to the drugs, and then William was asleep again.
Nor was this a new thing, the rhythm of small-talk and deferral, the elegant Noh dance around whatever was really at issue. William had always had a preternatural sense of how much he could get away with, of when to push and when to pull back. Mercer stared through the caul of televisual light at the sleeping face, trying to imagine it as a junkie’s. The black eye fit, anyway. And he wanted so badly to tell this face what had happened to him—and to ask it, What happened to you? But what if he did? The little kit with its needle and spoon, still vivid against the white of the interrogation room in his mind, seemed tied by invisible threads to all the private pain that predated Mercer, the stuff William didn’t ever talk about, the secretive slipping away he, Mercer, had pretended not to see. It was where all the loose ends met. If he started tugging at them, their entire life together might unravel. In the next room, a bell began to ring.
It was genuine dusk now, the bookshelf where the phone sat submerged in shadow. The ringing seemed antique, somehow, prematurely quaint, like the carillon of a village church slated for demolition. Mercer let it continue, to see if William would stir, and when he didn’t, gathered breath and reached for the receiver. It being a holiday, this had to be his mother. “I was beginning to think you’d been hit by a bus,” was her opener.
He wanted not to sigh, not to be the sort of person who sighed at his mother. “Occam’s razor, Mama. Happy New Year’s to you, too.”
“This is a bad connection. I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying, why hit by a bus? I could have been working, or out on the town, or just decided not to call. I could have been doing any number of things.”
“Well, anyway, I’m glad you’re safe. What was that?”
“What?”
“Did you say something?”
In the sleeping nook, William had groaned theatrically. Mercer threw a couch cushion, aiming for the beaded curtain, but it missed and hit the window instead. More birds took flight from the cinderblock flowerbox outside: bursts of light loosed in the gloaming. Down in the street, a white van was double-parked, mired in graffiti, but why, in New York in 1977, would you paint a van white to begin with? “Nothing, Mama. Just opening a window.”
“Isn’t it cold there? The radio this morning said high thirties. You know I always listen for your weather, you and your brother’s. I certainly couldn’t live like you do, with the cold. And how are things working out with that new roommate of yours? I don’t think he’s ever once given you a message from me.”
She’d picked up the word roommate the first time he’d let it drop, and had been wielding it as a s
hield or weapon ever since. It was a tiny thing, really, and accurate as far as it went, but each repetition on either side, in holiday cards and birthday cards and the thank-you cards he wrote when a check from her appeared out of the blue (for the purpose of eliciting a thank-you) made him feel a little guiltier, until he’d stopped writing home altogether—another failure she’d detected with alacrity. “You must keep busy, Mercer, because when someone does pick up, it’s usually what’s-his-name.” Translation: Can you really believe you’re too busy to speak to your own mother? She was a kind of Rembrandt of implication.
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