Triangulating between the headlights and the burning, she ducks down a tributary street that doglegs toward the river. This neighborhood was once an active port, but now feels, as she scours the dark, like a game preserve for muggers. Moist weeds, waist-high, spring through gaps in the pavement. There isn’t a single pedestrian except the one whom, in her zeal to save lives, she’s maybe just killed. What is she even looking for? An off-duty paramedic? Loose painkillers? A kindly old lady who’ll invite her in to use the phone? Each idea seems stupider than the last, yet Jenny apparently still needs to believe some invisible hand’s at work, balancing accounts. Any minute now, this fucked-up present will crack, and her real future will return to her, the one in which she redeems her life, or Richard Groskoph’s. Or maybe she’s supposed to be the one to crack it. To turn back. But here comes the kerosene again. Dogs barking. Smashed glass. More than righteousness, or charity, it is fear that spurs her on. Then another crash sends her ass-over-teakettle among the grasses. There’s a bright mild ache where she’s fallen, but that doesn’t matter, because above her, backlit by the stars, looms the thing she’s just tripped over: an abandoned grocery cart.
Of course, every solution bears the seeds of new problems. In this case, there’s the noise the cart makes on the street. She’d rather not attract attention, but near the place she’s left Mercer, paving stones push through patches of tonsured asphalt, and when the wheels hit these she might as well be whaling on sheet metal with a crowbar. But fuck it. She gathers her breath and sprints, pushing the cart ahead of her into the brightening intersection. “Quick, help me get him into this.”
“A shopping cart?”
“It’s what I could find.”
“You’re not supposed to move a body like this.”
“Mercer, I’ve had a chance to scope the area. Power to the people aside, I would really like not to be here when those torches you’re seeing down there arrive.” She tips the cart on its flank. There’s no gentle way to get an adult body inside, and it takes their combined strength—blocking the wheels in place with their feet and heaving at the handle—to get the thing upright again. She wishes there were some scrap of cardboard or old shirt she could use to cushion the guy’s vertebrae, but if he’s bleeding internally, he’s not going to care. There ensues a brief argument about whether to head toward the hospital closest to here or continue to the East Side, and an even briefer argument about whether to take a couple of the squash rackets. Her position is, she’d feel safer with them; his is, having seen what she’s capable of unarmed, he’d feel safer without. The torchlight is very close now, though, so she lets him win this one, too. “Come on. Push.”
The added weight should make the damn cart quieter, but all it does is amplify the noise. She makes Mercer share the handle with her, and together, they find a speed somewhere between trot and sprint. “Quit groaning,” she says. “You’re giving us away.” But he must not hear her over the approaching din, a clanking of chains, the sharp inhalation of more flames. He doesn’t wait to find out if the sound is marauders, or revolutionaries, or citizens who just want to know where their power went. “Push!” she yells, and the handle surges forward, almost out of her grasp. She wouldn’t have thought Mercer Goodman had it in him. At any rate, whoever is bringing this hellfire out into the street must be transfixed by the weird missile of the shopping cart, or the weirder duo trailing along behind, because just as another collision becomes inevitable, the noise softens, the flames draw apart, and Mercer and Jenny and the body before them are allowed, untouched, to pass.
UPPER EAST SIDE—10:49 P.M.
THEY ARE CAREFUL not to jostle each other as they move up stairs and down halls, past doors the neighbors have locked tight for fear of some disruption on the streets below—unless these same neighbors have gone out to join in. Either way, the vibe is of evacuation. The man fumbles for his keys, but the woman already has hers out. (What can it mean that she’s held on to them?) Then her flashlight is sweeping through the open door and into a foyer he wishes he’d prepared for her coming. One thing he almost certainly would have done is try to make it look like he’s capable of living without her. As it is, the critical beam seems to land on all the crap he’s kept exactly the same since she left. The framed harlequin. The dish of New England pebbles. The row of shoes by the door, to which he now adds his loafers. On the other hand, not having changed anything means the emergency supplies are still where she always kept them, on the lower shelf of the hall closet. No sooner does he remember this than she’s handing him a flashlight of his own. A flick of the button, and a second beam races out to lose itself in hers on the floor. “Will?” he calls. “Cate?” There’s no answer. “I told you they weren’t here.”
“And now I know it’s true.”
The beams separate. Hers probes deeper into the apartment; his turns toward the kitchen. There’s no sign that anyone has touched the room-temperature fridge since this morning, and no note on the door. When he doubles back to their—his—bedroom, it is aglow. Regan sits on the big horsehair bed, her back to him, an address book beside her. He’s hesitant to intrude on whatever thoughts she might be having, but then he sees she’s got the bedside phone to her ear. “Emergency services keeps giving a busy signal.”
“Could the kids possibly have gone back to Brooklyn?”
“I just tried my place, and the Otanis’. No answer. And you already called, remember? You said you tried everywhere. They didn’t have subway fare.”
“They could have borrowed subway fare.”
“And then gone anywhere. They could have gone to the game without you.”
“The tickets are right here in my pocket.”
“It’s not like they’re hard to get, Keith. It’s the Mets.” She doesn’t turn, nor does her flashlight move from the mustard-colored bedspread where she’s placed it, but things around them are becoming clearer. “Goddammit, where were you?”
“Hung up at work.” It’s the same shuck-and-jive he’d used about Samantha, but telling Regan he’s already dealt with the cops once today would raise all kinds of questions he doesn’t want to answer. Anyway, she doesn’t seem to notice. She’s unbuttoning her blouse.
“Well I’m not going back out in the dark in this suit, with a target more or less on my back. Where are those sweats I used to exercise in? And does Will have sneakers over here?” His flashlight stays on her as she plucks off her silver earrings and drops them on the bed and reaches back to remove heels barely worn. She has dressed to impress whoever she was supposed to spend the night with. Embarrassed to discover how much he’s gleaned, he turns to the armoire and sends the sweats arcing through the dark. Then he finds his own jogging shorts. Puts his flashlight on the bed between them and removes his belt, his pants. When his shirt comes off, their eyes meet. Her navel is a slim caesura between her lacy slip and brassiere; he’s down to his briefs. They’re like kids playing truth or dare, he thinks—and then, given the gravity of the situation, feels ashamed again. “What?” he says. “It’s going to slow you down if I change, too?”
She ignores him and pulls on the sweatpants.
“But what are you proposing to do, exactly?”
“If I can’t get the cops on the phone, I’ll get them on foot.”
“And if you can’t do that?”
“Turn the city upside down myself.”
Doubtless she means it as a brush-off, but he sees a chance here to reassert himself as the husband he still technically is. “Then give me a minute to find my running shoes, too,” he says, “ ’cause you’re right, things could get a lot worse out there, and I’m damn sure not letting you wander around in it alone.”
UPPER EAST SIDE—EARLIER
MOST EVERY OTHER AFTERNOON that summer, Will and Cate have been parked in aftercare, while Mom toils away at the office to save Grandpa, and Dad does whatever Dad does. This particular day, though, they’re conducted at the end of regular camp to the cafeteria, from which the normals get dismiss
ed. Absent the school-year complement of lunch ladies and clattering trays, certain things become clearer. That loneliness, for example, smells of barfed-into chocolate milk. It is extra-pronounced for Will, who is one of the oldest kids here and far too proud to fraternize with C-Formers. This leaves his sister to practice on her own the string game she learned in Arts & Crafts. “Quit it,” he says each time her elbow quote-unquote accidentally jostles his. Then the Assistant Head Counselor comes in to retrieve another camper or cluster of campers whose punctual parent or nanny has arrived.
There are like forty kids to start with. Then there are twenty-eight. Then fifteen. Then five. Then it’s just him and Cate, and they are led back out of the cafeteria, recidivists denied parole. At the threshold of the aftercare room, the A.H.C. asks if Will is sure their dad knows to pick them up today. Sure, Will’s sure. Didn’t he hear Mom say it on the kitchen phone last night, while he pretended not to listen? At least twice she’d asked Dad to repeat it—she had “plans for the evening,” and not to be late. Then again, sometimes it takes more than repetition to remind Dad of his responsibilities.
At 6:30, the aftercare kids get brought out into the blast furnace of rush hour to wait for pickup on the school’s front steps, so that the janitors can start cleaning inside. The sky, as usual, is perfervid. Away and to the north, smog climbs the air. And still no Dad. Will can already see where this is headed: phone calls, embarrassment, the screwing-up of Mom’s plans. (Maybe this is what Dad wants.) But can’t they just leave on their own recognizance? He’s almost thirteen, for God’s sake. When the A.H.C. goes to use the john, Will approaches a Shaggy-haired Counselor-in-Training and points to a figure down at the end of the block. “I think I see him. That’s our dad.” And when Cate opens her mouth to contradict him, he pinches her, hard. Her shout seems to distract the C.I.T. enough that he doesn’t look too long at the gentleman in question. Good thing, too, as Will can now make out a prayer shawl and yarmulke. He hustles his arm-rubbing sister down the steps.
It’s only a fifteen-minute walk down to the old apartment, though the way Cate complains about her feet you’d think it was fifteen thousand. He’s a bit nervous about going over like this unannounced, but you can tell even from the street that no one’s home. The lights stay off, despite the fact that it’s getting dark. Probably Dad’s forgotten all about them and gone to the ballgame himself. And Will has left his extra keys at Mom’s. He could always ask the super to let him in, but that would mean letting Dad off the hook, when the hook is what he deserves. He decides instead they’ll walk back to Brooklyn. If they average a block a minute, they can be to the foot of the Bridge by eight. Or okay, maybe half past. How hard can it be?
What he’s failed to account for here is Cate having to stop every five blocks to use the can, or drink from a fountain, or be bought a bagel with Will’s last quarter. At Forty-Second Street, she makes them cut over to the library so she can sit out front for twenty minutes rubbing her sore feet. She’s always loved knowing their grandpa’s name is etched into a third-floor wall inside, like initials sewn into underwear. It occurs to him to turn the walk into a game for her, mapping out all the personal landmarks they’ll pass. But as it gets darker out, he’s getting worried he’s made the wrong decision. He’s never been on some of these streets before; people are watching from doorways, with what intentions he can’t tell. He and Cate have come too far to turn back, but don’t seem remotely close to Brooklyn, and he has no money left for even a phone call. It’s only the thought of Dad pacing frantically outside the day camp’s locked doors that keeps him going—of justice finally being done.
See, Will suspected what was going on even before he found out for certain. He wonders now if that was what had brought him back to the apartment that day he’d played hooky from school last fall, before the separation. He’d climbed into bed to read and had fallen asleep there. He woke to sounds coming from the living room as if someone were being hurt. But even kids know the difference between pleasure and pain; if it was the latter, why was Will getting hard? He’d padded to the door, hating himself for wanting to hear more, but maybe that was Mom out there with Dad, and everything was okay, if also gross. A floorboard creaked, though, and he froze. What came next was his father’s voice. He sounded pissed at whoever the woman was. And what might he do if he caught his son spying on them? Will retreated to his closet and climbed into the laundry basket and pulled a pile of old sheets on top of him. He waited there, nearly suffocating, until he heard them leave. Then he waited another ten minutes, to make sure they weren’t coming back.
Now buildings are coming on above them like bejeweled drunk ladies at parties. He leads Cate by the hand past lit-up nail salons and dry cleaners and Jewish bakeries, telling her every few blocks it’s just another few blocks now. She’s got to pee again, she says. And she’s tired. He slings her overstuffed backpack over his own shoulder, where it bumps against his duffel. The street signs dwindle toward single digits, and it starts to seem they might make it to the Bridge. But somewhere below Fourteenth Street, there’s a kind of whooshing feeling, and everything around them save the traffic falls dark.
It takes him a full minute, pinned to the middle of a downtown sidewalk, to figure out what’s happened. To judge by the sudden quiet, cars stopped dead in the streets, Will isn’t the only one afraid. He can feel people moving around and behind him, each of whom now registers as a potential threat. Sirens, undulant, paint distant sectors blue. “It’s okay,” he tells Cate shakily. “Just a blown fuse somewhere.”
“I want to go back to the library.”
“That was an hour and a half ago, Cate.”
“But I’ve really got to go.” He recalls having seen a parking lot up ahead and tells her she’s going to have to pee between some cars. He stands guard and, when she’s done, tells her she’s a mensch and squeezes her hand and explains what it means. They start walking again. They must be heading south, because there are little lights flashing atop the Trade Center ahead. The farther they go, though, the higher the intervening buildings loom, until he can no longer see those flashes. They are east, too far east, in the Village. Down here, headlights prowl sharklike through unsignaled intersections, light up freakish swaths of streetscape: ashcans, knees, hydrants gushing senselessly. On one block, a man strides out of the dark with a TV on his shoulder. On another, music blasts. Behind a wrought-iron park fence black guys with sweaty chests writhe around to disco music. He makes Cate look away, but can’t help staring back at the gate. When he does, a man wearing only a cowboy hat and a jockstrap is standing there, watching them closely.
Will is spooked. He takes a sharp right at the end of the fence, then another. He’s navigating by feel, trying to veer neither into the mounting disorder nor into sockets of light where they’ll look like gazelles dissevered from the herd. Fifteen minutes later, though, when he tries to straighten out their route with two additional lefts, the grid has broken down. He’s starting to feel like one of his avatars in Eldritch Realms, the Gray Wizard, doomed to wander alone in the underlit maze of a once-great civilization. Or not even alone, actually. For when he looks back again, there is the man in the jock and the black hat, less than a block behind.
ANOTHER MOTHER
OUT ON LONG ISLAND, Ramona Weisbarger cranes toward her television set, where every few minutes the stalwart newsroom gives way to images from around the City. Battered storefronts, burnt-out cars, gangs of menacing ethnics perched on stoops in the dark. All the boroughs gone black, the anchorman repeats when he returns. So how are your cameras still running? Ramona wants to know, but Morris Gold has already decided there must be generators. Then he’s gone a little huffily back into the kitchen to mix up another packet of iced tea, “for in case the ballgame ever comes back on.” She’s been doing her best, for an hour and a half now, not to compromise the illusion that she gives a damn about the Yankees. But she refuses to get up and help him, because here it comes again, the City flickering across the scre
en, and she knows, with maternal ESP, that her Charlie is out there in it.
Morris has lectured her on this, too, these last few months—how it’s not her fault, how the boy has to learn his lesson. Though “lecture” probably isn’t fair, his method is more what-do-you-call … the one where you ask the questions. Wasn’t it true that … Didn’t she think … Usually, she responds like a sensible woman, rather than the guilt-ridden creature she’s become. And part of her knows he’s right. Charlie’s practically an adult, and it really is his fault for running away. To cover up the grief she therefore shouldn’t feel, she’s tried to adjust. Has, after those first few stunned and inconsolable weeks, spent many more trying to get used to the new order of things. Or just trying to distract herself (she sees now) from the absence at the heart of it. She has shown houses, gone twice as often for hair appointments, sat with a stiff smile through birthday parties the twins got invited to, renewed the Valium prescription her doctor first wrote back at the start of David’s heart trouble. She has even begun, without either of them formally acknowledging it, letting Morris Gold stay over on certain nights when he comes to dinner. A family of squirrels died in his air-conditioning ducts over the long Fourth of July weekend, and with the humidity high every day since, there’s apparently a waiting list for repairmen. The two of them sit on the davenport by the window unit and watch the late games beamed from other time zones, though she hardly knows an RBI from an APR.
This is not like that.
Morris comes back in, carrying a glass whose perspiration runs in clear tracks when he taps a spoon against it. He doesn’t know how much sugar to put in, can never quite hit the saturation point, but she takes the tea and lets him gather her feet into his lap. The Channel 5 Newsplatoon is reporting that looting has spread to Brownsville, Harlem, Washington Heights, and the Lower East Side. Officials are cracking down, says the reporter on the ground, and hope to have the power on by morning. He is standing in an incongruous zone of bright white outside Con Ed headquarters, a nice-looking black man in a tie and windbreaker. Behind him, what look like protesters duck into waiting police cars. Careful of their heads! she thinks. Though who’s to say that the reporter isn’t standing on a soundstage somewhere, and that the rail-thin kids being paraded in handcuffs before the spotlight aren’t just special effects?
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