White Fur

by Jardine Libaire

Collision—the spermatozoa dig through the outer layer, headfirst, flagella waving behind them, carrying a library of identities.

  Elise’s dad, picking almonds in Adjuntas, is joined with Tory’s mother listening to Eisenhower on the wood cabinet radio. Binkie as a teenage girl crosses a ballroom floor, dropping one pink glove like a petal. Denise swims in the cold lake, blind underwater, safe for an afternoon. Denise’s dad watches farm fields unfold beneath a bomber plane. Trembling, Tory studies her first headshots, paid for with babysitting money. Elise’s grandfather, tall and slender in a dark room, watches Elise’s father delivered from a dying woman’s thighs. Alex bleeds from the ear on a New England football field in the dying sun. Denise’s Dutch-Irish mother wakes up in the tank again, and the lady officer knows her name, hands her an apple for breakfast. Tory’s dad is a teenager driving through Pennsylvania woods, elated, beer bottle between thighs, deer strapped to roof. Bats is ten, smokes his first cigar in a hotel room in Havana with his lilywhite uncle.

  This is the hour of blood-binding.

  Elise wakes up later to piss, sitting on the cold toilet seat—she had an extravagant dream. She’s tired from dreaming. She wishes she could remember it.

  MARCH 1987

  If she does feel funny, dizzy or off-kilter, ravenous for pickles or cream puffs, she doesn’t notice. Because Elise heads to work one day, ratty fur belted tight around her, and gets a surprise.

  It’s an arctic morning, and she envies the woman on the train with a floor-length down coat that moves like a bell. She can’t feel if her nose is running, because her face is too cold as she stands in line at the coffee cart. Her numb fingers can barely count out the right change, and she and the coffee guy joke about that.

  The site is still open at the top, no roof, no walls up there, and she squints at it as she approaches. Rays of sun pierce the structure, gild the steel girders.

  She makes her way around chalky dumpsters, but when she walks into the office, she gets silence instead of the usual fist bumps.

  Tommy Bricks holds up the National Enquirer, March 3, 1987.

  The headlines: Tatum O’Neal’s Trouble; Princess Stephanie’s Rock Album; How to Live Forever; Losing Weight in the Winter; Dynasty’s Bloody Plot Twist; and:

  Hyde Heir Marries Ghetto Girl, Slumming in Style!

  With a photograph of Jamey in sunglasses, arm around Elise in her white fur, emerging from the Dugout after a liverwurst sandwich and root beer, both of them—very obviously—in love.

  Dawn breaks into the lobby with shards of yellow light, and Jamey stews in disbelief—Elise brought the paper to him this afternoon. Then at four a.m. a man supposedly delivering Indian food snaps a shot of Jamey at the front desk and runs, leaving curry on the lobby floor.

  Now Bessie sidles out of the elevator in a mohair dress, and slaps down Page Six of the Post. “Well, good morning.”

  Finance royalty James Balthazar Hyde, whose mother, Tory Boyd Mankoff, and father, Alexander Hyde, battled in one of the bloodiest divorces NYC ever saw, has taken up with Section-8 Princess Elise Perez, whose criminal record is as long as Jamey’s tuxedo coattails, and she’s apparently gotten him to shower her with Tiffany diamonds and Moët et Chandon even as they slum it up down in the East Village. Word has it they’re cooking more than caviar in the spoon.

  “You’re a secretive boy.”

  Jamey pulls his doorman cuffs. “It’s a long story.”

  Claire from management arrives in a houndstooth coat, her face ruddy with discomfort. “James, can we talk in the office?”

  They stand among file cabinets and umbrellas.

  “We can’t have people taking pictures of the doorman,” she says.

  “Well, that won’t last.”

  “I wish you told me, coming in.”

  “Told you what?”

  “Who you are.”

  “I did.”

  “You know what I mean,” she says, flustered.

  He looks at her. “Yeah. I do.”

  He walks out, numbly high-fiving Gregory, who smiles ruefully at Jamey, and he disappears into the pastel city.

  Elise is eating lunch at White Castle when she gets flash-bulbed.

  “What the fuck?” she says, spilling her Diet Coke.

  The camera catches her face for the world to relish.

  She goes back to work in soda-wet jeans. The construction guys aren’t mad—their women (like Godiva and Mercedes, stars at Billy’s Topless) get in trouble all the time. These men enjoy policing the site for stringers, and protect her like Bullmastiffs.

  “How’s our ghetto princess today?” they call out affectionately.

  “This was bound to happen,” Jamey says as he mopes around the apartment, smoking too much. “I could feel it coming.”

  Elise sits on the couch and stares at him. “Really?”

  “It’s never-ending.”

  “What’s never-ending?” she asks, annoyed.

  He lights another of her Newports, winces when he inhales.

  She watches him look out the window—at Puerto Rican ladies walking Chihuahuas, at skateboarders, at old Cadillacs double-parked with flashers blinking.

  “What I really don’t get is why you didn’t tell Claire to fuck off,” she says.

  “I don’t want to work there anyway,” he says.

  “But you need the job,” she tells him sourly.

  He won’t answer, just looks at the street.

  Over the weekend, she and Jamey cook mac and cheese and eat Cheerios from the cupboard. They don’t even order delivery because Jamey doesn’t want to open their door.

  “What are you scared of?” she asks.

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “Saying what?” she says, playing with her sweatshirt zipper.

  “That I’m scared.”

  “You’re scared of everything.”

  She goes to eat alone at the pizzeria, watching Star Search on their TV, and pushing red pepper flakes around the tabletop with her fingertip. Nobody looks twice at her.

  One evening, she puts hands on hips. Jamey’s unshaven, reading in bed before the sun has even set, and the apartment stinks—he hasn’t been out once.

  “Let’s go to Wo Hop,” she says. “I’m gonna be fucking crazy if we stay here one more night.”

  He looks at her, his dimple coarse with stubble.

  “Duck lo mein…” she says in an enticing voice. “Dumm-plingssss…”

  He finally brushes his teeth, throws on a trench coat and borrows her mirror aviators, and they hit the street. In the crushed, steamy, loud restaurant, they’re so invisible, he feels stupid.

  “And besides, I got dissed,” she says, licking plum sauce off her thumb. “You’re the rich boy, I’m the grifter.”

  His cheeks redden. “It’s not like I feel sorry for myself,” he says.

  “But?” she asks with impatience.

  “It’s—that—” he falters.

  “Fucking what?”

  “I keep putting you in—these situations,” he announces. “I just feel guilty.”

  Her face softens, and she finishes the last emerald shreds of bok choy in silence.

  After dinner, they wander by the East River.

  There’s an old man with a pole, a newspaper spread on the ground so he can filet his fish before packing it in recycled plastic containers. Pearl drops of light glisten fuzzily on the bridge.

  “It’s good to be out,” Jamey admits.

  An ancient Chinese lady with a man’s blunt haircut walks by—a shirt with tiny flowers under her jacket, ivory cane glowing in one hand, and her other arm looped through her daughter’s elbow.

  “Yeah,” Elise says, and loops her own arm through his. “It’s a pretty night….”

  Saturday feels like spring—it’s in the low fifties but the sun is sincere.

  “Maybe we could go to the park?” Elise says in a carefully noncombative way.

  Jamey nods. “Let’s do it.”

  T
hey take the subway, in hats and sunglasses, and get out at Eighty-First Street. They walk by Belvedere Castle scrawled with hieroglyphics, look at the scummy lake.

  Central Park delicately offers its first crocus, a couple daffodils, forsythia opening their yellow buds, a few dangling snowdrops.

  Jamey and Elise sit on grass, which dampens their asses. They eat hot dogs glopped with mustard and relish. The day is chilly enough to warrant sun on their faces, and sunny enough to need the breeze. A push and pull, petals falling occasionally, birds working in the sky. It’s the thrift of March, measured-out abundance. She needs to tell him she hasn’t gotten her period, but she keeps putting it off, and before she knows it, they’re walking home in twilit streets.

  Someone knocks, and Jamey looks through the peephole, and hesitates before unlocking the door.

  “Tory!” Jamey says, when he can finally speak.

  “My poor child,” she says, hugging him. “Dragged through the mud. I’ve been there—I know how it feels.” And she keeps hugging him.

  Annie hovers in the grim staircase. Outside, a white limousine trembles.

  Elise raises her palm in an Indian How so they don’t touch her.

  Tory claps her hands together. “I have a surprise. We’re going to France. Get you out of the limelight, away from these assholes.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jamey says, after a moment.

  “We are going to France. All of us! Today!”

  Elise and Jamey look at each other. “I have to work,” Elise says unsurely.

  “I’m sure you can get off for a few days!” Annie says benevolently—Annie who never had a job. “The plane is on the tarmac, and the house is ready, and the trip is all planned!”

  Jamey frowns at Elise. “You don’t even have a passport.”

  “Oh, yeah. I don’t.”

  “We can’t go,” Jamey says brightly. “It’s a great idea, but some notice would have been helpful.”

  “But it’s a surprise!” Tory says somewhat disingenuously.

  “Thanks but no thanks,” he says.

  “It’s your birthday,” Tory insists.

  Elise touches his arm: “You know what, babe? Go. What’s a few days?”

  “A few days is a few days,” he says to her with meaning.

  “Honestly? I could use some time. Clean house, get my head straight. Go,” she says, fingering the bandanna holding her braids back.

  He looks at her, confounded. “What’s the story, Elise?”

  “There is no story,” she says as sweetly as possible, kissing him quickly. “I’ll miss you like crazy and want you to come back. Please go.”

  Tory might barf. “Okay, then, it’s settled!”

  On the plane, the ladies snuggle in red blankets monogrammed for Annie’s mother. Jamey sips club soda while Pilot Dick Keye gives the safety speech, politely flirting while also presenting an unexcitable, militaristic competence. He links his fingers and uses his fused hands to gesture. He is God, father, and servant, all in one buff, trim, diplomatic fellow.

  They eat steak au poivre with golden forks. Then the ladies pop pills, turn chairs into beds, and mask their eyes.

  Jamey opens his shade because he can’t sleep, and sees a vast and spawning field of so much nothing—or so much something.

  Delicate night. But is it night? It’s just a darkness. Night loses meaning when separated from time, and the whole thing seems random.

  The cabin feels like a chamber of ethylene, and Jamey suddenly pictures himself striking a match. Don’t, he tells himself gently, even think about it.

  They get picked up at the airport by a Frenchman with criminal eyes but very silly buckteeth. He drives with what seems like bitter, silent pride—but could just be distraction—through dark hills in a Peugeot.

  “I’m so happy we’re here together,” Annie says.

  To Jamey, this sounds like Chinese. Is he “happy”? Are they “together”? Why or why not? Who are “we”? Is this beautiful or violent, that he’s in the French countryside, on a starless ride, with no control?

  The car radio is tuned to the news, and the news sounds more serious here. He tries to imagine what they’re passing: lavender? Goats?

  When they arrive at the house, the staff take bags and run baths. Jamey’s brought to his room. A portly woman turns down his duvet. She does a desperate ballet, saying “wah-ture” when indicating the bedside bottle, then speaking French when showing him the bidet and the steam cleaner.

  “It’s hot,” he says, flicking his fingers as if burned to show her he knows what she means, and she grins and holds his hand, squeezes it.

  Jamey feels ill from flying. His stomach is bloated with gas. When she leaves, he drinks Perrier and burps quietly. Something moves and he flinches, then recognizes himself in a mirror, broad shoulders in a tattered black cable-knit sweater, circles under his eyes, his white chinos stained with red wine. It took an opulent room for him to see what he looks like these days.

  Elise pisses on the wand. She doesn’t understand how this could be—she’s taking the Pill! One day she forgot then doubled up the next morning—but that can’t really matter….

  Buck watches as she waits. He licks her knee once because he can tell she’s anxious.

  When she sees the result, she puts her hand over her mouth, crumbles to the floor, silent, not even rubbing Buck’s face.

  At breakfast time, the trio wakes crankily.

  “How you doing?” Tory asks Jamey.

  “Fine, thanks. And you?”

  “You don’t look so good,” she tells him.

  “Well, I guess I don’t feel great.”

  “Try to feel better. We didn’t bring you here to feel bad.”

  “Right,” he says, privately amused.

  He remembers his first jet lag. The phrase was so odd, and the sensation was sinister. It was profoundly different from being tired. Someone was dragging him down through the bathtub, through the hotel-room floor, and the hotel rooms below him, through the London sidewalk, through the hotel’s basement, into hell. He was six. His father instructed the nanny to keep him awake all day, no matter what, or the trip would be ruined. “It’s crucial,” Alex said. The nanny nodded, and so ensued her ridiculous day of dragging the boy through Harrods, putting candy in his mouth, buying him a tartan scarf and tying it around his neck while he stared drunkenly at her, walking him through parks, patting his face in a way that wasn’t friendly.

  Jamey butters his croissant. “You must have known Elise didn’t have a passport.”

  Wide-eyed. “I thought that might be the first thing you’d do for her upon getting married,” Tory retorts. “Loved finding out in the paper that my son is married, by the way.”

  “She did think Elise would have a passport!” says Annie. “Your mother really believed Elise was coming and would be with us today.”

  It’s hard not to love Annie—she accepts everything, except cruelty to animals and nuclear war. She soothes, chiming and making music of conversations. Her face is like a plate or a clock—no mystery but very useful. She can lie without knowing it.

  “Annie, come on,” Jamey says gently.

  Elise goes to the Passport Office on Hudson Street. She arrives early, and stands in line for three hours.

  Finally a weary man with a ponytail hands her the booklet. “Check to make sure it’s your correct identity.”

  She looks angry in the square photo, chin up and eyes narrowed, the white fur shoulders tapering into the unseen, the gold E glimmering on her sternum. She likes it.

  At home she looks at the blank pages, turning them, one after another.

  Coming back to the villa after strolling unbloomed gardens, Tory and Jamey have the Big Conversation.

  “Baby,” Tory begins. “I just don’t want you to make the mistakes I made.”

  “Which of your mistakes do you mean?”

  “You should get what’s yours. You’re a Hyde.”

  “But you hate them. Why
would you want me to take their money?”

  “Because I hate them! What, do you think it’s dirty?” she asks facetiously. “Money is what you do with it. It has no inherent character, James.”

  Sitting on a chair upholstered with black damask, Jamey traces patterns in the silk with one finger, and he doesn’t hide his boredom.

  “When I demanded my share, they called me a gold-digging whore. They claimed they wanted custody for your sake. And then did nothing to raise you.”

  “I did somehow get raised, though,” he points out.

  “They just didn’t want to lose the game.”

  “I wish it was a game.”

  “They’ve mastered the art of looking like the good guys,” Tory continues, not listening to him. “They know how to cover their tracks, boy.” She lights another cigarette.

  “But I don’t care anymore.”

  “Come on. You can’t flick off emotions like a light switch.” Tory tells him about the detective the Hydes hired during the divorce. “He got pictures of me in private bathrooms in private houses. They’re shameless.”

  “I’m aware of that,” he says softly.

  “And you will never get away from them,” she warns, seething.

  “Tory—”

  Suddenly she starts to cry, eyeliner running like watery paint. “Leave me alone, Jamey. Go.”

  Jamey looks around, and remembers again that he’s in France.

  That she commandeered him here.

  And now she wants to be alone.

  Denise calls to Elise’s window. The late afternoon is murky, and her mother’s pale face looks up from the street. Elise takes the stairs, barefoot, opens the door and rocks her, won’t let go.

  “Shit, girl, wow, good to see you too.” Denise cackles, snapping gum.

  Elise sees her mom did her makeup, eyebrows drawn, rouge on the monster cheeks.

  “Thank you for coming,” Elise says.

  Upstairs, Elise offers tea.

  “What’s with the tea?” Denise asks contemptuously and lovingly.

  “It’s from England,” Elise jokes.