Denise is a ghetto Mae West, with huge half-lidded eyes, globes of breasts, and a strut. She flings the dishrag over her shoulder and evaluates Jamey, her pupils smoking.
She grins, wet and mean. “Well, if our girl loves you, we got to love you too. We don’t have no choice.”
Jamey tries to smile.
Angel is a mountain, with a mullet, curly on top, hair so thin his scalp is visible. “How you doin’, man,” he says to Jamey, and his hand is a cinder block.
“This is Dawn, Jesus, and Little Marie,” Elise says, and the children stare with mouths open.
“Who are you?” Dawn asks.
“My name is Jamey.”
“What are you doing here?”
Denise swats at her head with the dish towel. “Shut the fuck up, baby. We don’t talk that way.”
The dog is like a cotton ball pulled out of a drain. Teeth and gums so nasty her breath transcends a closed door. (She torments Angel, waking him by standing over his face and breathing into his nose. Jamey will hear all about it later. Angel opens his eyes every morning to this gremlin. When he moved back in recently, she shat in his disco loafer, a twirled army-green turd, curlicued with malevolence.)
A blue tinsel tree is wired with lights the colors of Jujyfruits candies. The same Elvis songs from the taxi play on this radio: “Blue Christmas,” “Merry Christmas Baby,” and “Silent Night.”
A silent night it’s not! Jamey sits with the men, where Angel rules. Someone hands him a snifter of Hennessey and an El Presidente. The men smoke cherry cigars, the windows cracked. The kids chase one another, shrieking. The kids he met seem to have spawned more kids.
Everything is out in the open. The second someone gets angry, there’s a fight. Then it’s resolved. Denise and the other women catch children who come and lie against their laps for a minute, languidly scratch the kid’s head with their long nails, then let them go.
Elise is overwhelmed by how different everything seems, and how it’s the same as when she left. Even while she’s in here, talking and arguing and laughing, she’s also coming down the hall, nine years old, in a clothing-drive parka with a grocery bag on her hip. It’s stacked with bread, milk, and diapers. She’s putting her key in the door but she forgot the beer! She goes back into the cold because she’ll get a beating if she doesn’t.
On the fridge, Jamey sees a photo of Elise in a basketball uniform.
“Look at you,” he says.
“I played on the boys’ team. For one year.”
“That team, what a fucking tragedy,” Denise says. “Them boys, the second they got good, they was arrested, hooked on drugs, or they family was falling to pieces and they hadda take over. Like, two kids would show up at those practices.” She laughs hoarsely.
Jamey looks at Elise looking at the picture. She doesn’t seem bitter—just curious about the girl on one knee, greasy hair parted in the middle.
The ladies drink Amaretto sours for the holiday.
“Cheers, all-a you!”
Aunt Shay busts in from her house on the next block. Cracks jokes about Jamey—but won’t look at him. It’s an aggressive shyness. A shy aggressiveness.
“I keep expecting you to like start waltzin’ or some shit,” she says, gesturing loosely at Jamey and looking around at everyone else, a comedian.
“Oh, she flirtin’ with your man,” Tara says to Elise.
“No, I ain’t!” Aunt Shay protests with sass and a hand spread over her heart. “I like em tough. You know what I like.”
“You can’t talk like that, sister!” says Terrence, and there’s a whole argument about Jamey that doesn’t actually involve Jamey.
Shay’s high on cocaine, her own private eggnog, or blizzard.
There’s Barbies, remote-control cars, baby dolls that speak in robot voices. The dog doesn’t stop yapping—it’s like she’s keeping time, and no one stops her.
They eat Christmas nachos (with red and green peppers), cheeseburgers Angel cooks on the grill in the freezing cold, then cherry pie with Reddi-wip.
Manic honking from the street, and Angel’s eyes light up.
“Aw, that must be Goldie—he got a new ride for his mama!”
The men make an exodus onto the front stoop.
And there it is: a Champagne-pink 1980 Cadillac Seville with the bustleback and a Rolls Royce–like grill, fake belt strap on the trunk lid. Stadium seating in coral-red leather.
Jamey is jammed into the back, where he’s pretty much sitting in Raul’s lap.
“Shit, brother. This is bananas, man!” says someone.
“V8, man,” says Goldie. “Hey, who’s the rich boy?”
“Some kid Elise brung in from the city.”
Jamey’s high on cognac, so he gives a polite wave. “Hey there. Jamey Hyde.”
Goldie glares in the rearview with wasted, happy eyes. “How you know Elise?”
“Well,” Jamey says. “I’m married to her.”
Angel looks at Goldie and looks back at Jamey.
“Stop the fucking car!”
Goldie screeches on the brakes and the big pink ship sails to a stop in a cloud of smoke.
“What do you mean, you’re married?” Angel asks.
When Jamey sees everyone’s expressions, he understands.
The Cadillac is headed to the house.
Angel smiles as he busts in the door. “Dah-neese,” he says.
She doesn’t hear, jabbering with the girls.
“Dah-neese,” he says again.
The room is quiet.
“Your girl got married.”
Denise swivels giant eyes at Jamey.
No one says anything.
Jamey clears his throat. “I feel extremely fortunate about it.”
You can hear a pin drop. Elise looks at the floor.
“I feel as though perhaps I should in fact start waltzing, ha-ha,” he tries.
Denise drags Elise by the wrist into the bedroom and slams the door.
Mother and daughter sit in the dark, ignoring the drunk cousin snoring against the headrest.
“Talk to me. Did you change your name?” Denise asks.
“Yeah.”
“Did you go on a honeymoon?”
“Nah, just a short one.”
“What the hell does that mean? You do a honeymoon or not, not no short one or long one. Did you even have a wedding?”
“Ma, we got married at the courthouse.”
“But you’re not pregnant?” she says quietly.
“No.”
Elise is glad it’s dark so she can’t see her mother cry, intoxicated and crushed her baby didn’t want her at the wedding.
“What’d you wear?” Denise asks gruffly.
“Not a real dress, Ma,” as if that would make this better.
Denise sniffles and they sit there.
“I can tell you love him,” her mother says.
Elise looks toward her in the gloom.
Denise continues: “I think you love him too much.”
Her mom seems like the frightened kid, face round, eyes glistening, shoulders hunched. Elise takes her hand instead of answering.
“Do you?” Denise presses.
“It’s not possible to love him too much, Ma.”
“Oh, honey. You’re gonna learn the hard way, like you always done.”
Elise pulls her hand away. “We’re happy. We have a life together, he’s got my back, in a way you wouldn’t even understand.”
“Yeah? I don’t understand? Fuck off.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You don’t know shit, little girl,” Denise says.
Sirens. Lots of them. Someone’s tree must have caught fire. No matter how many public-service announcements they run on TV, there’s always fires on Christmas Eve.
“I feel like I lost you for good this time,” Denise says.
Elise wraps arms around her mother, her own face wet. “Ma, please don’t say that.”
They hug
in silence. When they pull apart, Elise fishes the Tiffany pin out of her pocket and puts it into her mother’s hand. “Here. This is a little extra. Jamey wants you to have it. I mean, he doesn’t know about this, but still. Take it to Easy Pawn.”
Denise snuffles at the object shining in the dark.
When they come out, holding hands, they walk into a dance party—toddlers and grannies, Aunt Shay, Angel, even Jamey, everybody getting down and doing their thing to Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder and the Pointer Sisters. Jesus swivels his six-year-old hips like a sex machine to make everyone laugh.
And right before dawn, when teal leaks into the ragged horizon, Elise and Jamey pull out the couch in the living room, its mattress so thin they feel every spring and hinge. The kids bed down in the corner with Snoopy pillows stained from Marie’s nosebleeds.
In the morning, everyone’s hungover. Angel comes out of the bedroom, stepping over drunk people on the floor, his eyes wild and red. He drinks Kool-Aid from a pitcher and slams the fridge door. A kid begs him for pancakes, and Angel shakes his head at the child, who then asks again, and Angel grabs his jaw and pushes it so hard the kid falls.
“Get the fuck. Outta. My. Face.”
Jamey rubs Elise’s shoulder.
Angel back in the bedroom, Elise sits up, hair tangled, and pats a spot between her and Jamey. But the little boy retreats to his makeshift bed with the others, proud and sleek like a kicked cat.
She wants to leave before seeing everyone, tucks Pop-Tarts into her handbag on their way out.
She can hear the chaos of the past right outside: the ice cream truck’s melody, kids with stolen bikes shouting to come play, girls fighting over a candy necklace.
As they stand on the threshold of the cinder-block hall, knotting scarves and surveying wreckage, Elise seems worried.
“What is it?” Jamey asks.
She shrugs unhappily.
The cab honks again downstairs.
“What?” Jamey asks.
She’s annoyed. “Nothing. It’s hard to leave.”
“Why are we in a rush to go?”
“Because.”
They slide into the cab, and ride through blanched, wounded streets to the train. This neighborhood is burned and deserted, the sidewalk weeds siphoning poison groundwater into their leaves.
He waits for her to kiss his fingers, or do one of a hundred other things that let him know everything is okay. He rubs her neck muscles with no response. She sits up straight, and looks out the grimy window, her face deeply irradiated with sun, except where it is very dark in shadow.
For a few days, she’s quiet. He asks if she wants to talk. He’s really glad they went out there, he tells her.
“Yeah,” she says, absentmindedly.
She knows she did the right thing by leaving home, but, fuck, it feels so wrong.
They go to Little Italy one night for comfort food and red wine. Their table is in the corner of the big-windowed restaurant, looking onto Grand and Mott. The snow coming down vanishes once someone steps on it. The footsteps of the few walkers are exact.
They get a bottle of Chianti, and their hustler-waiter winks at Jamey and points to Elise, pantomiming that she’s too beautiful, he’s too lucky. He makes a hundred flourishes in turning the corkscrew, and they’re so enchanted someone could easily pick their pockets, but the performance is just the cherry on top of dinner. He flips the corkscrew closed and tosses it in the air and catches it behind his back, slips it into his apron.
Over clams linguini, Elise gets misty.
Jamey steamed the window and wrote their initials.
“I love you more than life,” she says.
“You’re drunk,” he chides her, but he likes it when she says things like that.
Before work, he decides to drop off Teddy’s gift—a Canon 35mm camera for Teddy and Claudia’s birdwatching trips upstate.
Martin mans the door, and Jamey greets him on the icy sidewalk, squints to see if Teddy is at the desk.
“No sir,” Martin says without looking at him.
“Shoot,” Jamey says. “Think I could leave this here for him?”
“Teddy doesn’t work here anymore, sir.”
Jamey gets queasy. “What?”
“He—well, sir. They let him go.”
When Jamey walks into the apartment the next morning, the camera, bow on top, is under his arm. “They fired Teddy. For coming to our wedding. I know it.”
Elise sits heavily at the kitchen table. “Are you serious?”
The trees make bony shadows on the cabinets.
“Yup.”
Jamey takes off his coat, suddenly too hot. He stands behind a chair, holding its back with knuckles facing out, shoulders high. They look at each other.
“I didn’t want to go to Bridgeport,” Elise confesses. “I just felt guilty. Now word’ll spread I married a rich boy.”
“I’m not a rich boy anymore.”
“You’ll always be rich deep down.”
“Fuck you!” he says sort of playfully.
“Trust me, there’s family of mine could show up.”
“Oh come on,” Jamey says halfheartedly.
“What are we going to do?” Elise asks.
Jamey rolls his sleeves, takes out a skillet. “Let’s fry some eggs.” He can’t look at her.
New Year’s Eve. They feel too heavy-hearted for partying, but Jamey at the last minute buys paper hats that say HAPPY NEW YEAR! and rainbow-foil blowouts.
“We can’t not celebrate,” he chides.
So they plan to go to Times Square, watch the red apple drop, kiss strangers, stay warm by crowding against bodies. They hit the streets, which feel like anarchy, people meeting one another’s eyes, daring to connect, intoxicated, jacked-up.
“You got any resolutions?” he asks.
Elise’s hands are deep in the white fur, top hat at an angle, as they turn onto Sixth Avenue. Someone throws a Champagne glass from a window to break on a car.
Thumping music from a kid strutting by with a boom box.
“Maybe I’ll quit smoking,” Elise says.
They’re paused, shivering, while she lights a smoke, when Jamey’s eyes wander down Twenty-Second Street to a dark clump of motion, distress.
“Hey!” he shouts, and moves in that direction.
The clot of people freezes, and Jamey starts running, and three silhouettes vanish in the opposite direction.
Elise chases Jamey, and they arrive at a boy, sequins torn from his shorts, feathers from wings, blood trickling from his mouth.
“Oh my God,” she panics, kneeling.
His blue eyes pop open, one false eyelash askew. “That’s what I get,” he says wryly, “for being an angel.”
“Who were they?” Jamey asks.
“Strangers. Fuckers.”
This kid is now anointed with violence, his glitter stuck to those boys’ hands. This was the finishing touch to his costume.
They take a cab to a Ninth Avenue address Frankie gives the driver, holding a tissue to his mouth.
“Where you going?” Elise asks as they drive.
“You guys should come!” he says suddenly, clapping. “I’ll take you to the best party in town.”
They hold him as he hobbles to a door (wedged open with a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales), and into a freight elevator. “We’re going all the way up, if you know what I mean,” he says.
The elevator door opens, and they’re about to climb an iron ladder when Frankie asks how he looks.
“Divine,” Elise says.
He grins, showing a lost tooth.
And they ascend, into the night.
Into a forest of recycled Christmas trees on the roof, woods inhabited by unwashed beasts of art and vaudeville—grown-up delinquents—who glued and spit and stitched (with dental floss and shoelaces) a world. The seams are invisible at night.
“Welcome, welcome!” says a guy roller-skating through the crowd, tossing iridescent dust.
&
nbsp; His nose is giant and chin minimal, and he skates into the arms of his Hawaiian girlfriend, twice his size with gold rings in her lip. But like the other misfits here, their faces are not hidden or corrected. Instead the features glitter and shine, transmuted into authentic humanhood and transcendent character.
Jamey and Elise make their way through the woods, past a bar carved out of ice, past a DJ whose turntable blasts remixed Bananarama, and Frankie introduces them to someone in a pink wig, robed in seashells.
“I’m Neptunia of the Netherworld,” she says, brandishing a trident.
“Hey!” Frankie points to the stars.
The moon is new.
Many hours later, Elise and Jamey go home, after dancing and fire-juggling and ice queens, and they never see Frankie again. He was reunited with his tribe. Everything that was odd and ungainly about him became beautiful in the right crowd.
Maybe Elise and Jamey are their own tribe, and they belong to no one else, to nothing larger than themselves. Can we live like that? Elise thinks about this question as she wearily unlaces her black sneakers, soles coated in gold.
JANUARY 1987
One of the first mornings of the year they hear sirens down the block, and the sirens don’t end. Later on, Elise walks by news crews camped in front of a building.
“These ladies were torturing a little girl,” an onlooker says, hugging his shoulders.
She and Jamey watch the TV, eating lasagna at their coffee table, but soon they can’t eat, and dinner congeals.
The reporter braces against the wind in her scarlet coat, the camera light glaring at her.
“Leticia Broadman is being accused today of killing her only daughter, six-year-old Shawna Broadman, with an exorcism gone awry. A neighbor here at 152 Second Avenue heard screaming, but when the police arrived, the damage had been done. Leticia Broadman allegedly made her daughter drink Drano, according to sources inside the police station, because God told her to. This is Cindy Drecker, Eyewitness News.”
Shawna’s school photograph comes on the screen. She’s beaming, hair braid ending with a red plastic ball on the elastic. The blue “sky” is mottled behind her.
Elise’s seen that kid at the corner, carrying a giant laundry bag.
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