Sleight

  In the past weeks, T had been at Lark’s side at the beginning and end of each day. She’d started bringing lunches for her and Clef. Soups, basil and balsamic and mozzarella salads, homemade breads. And talk. T had talked and talked to Lark about nothing at all: T’s most recent homework—a new loft bed and built-in bookshelves for her bedroom, her New Year’s resolutions, the dissolution of her marriage, the weather. She asked questions. Clef sometimes sat with the two of them, listening, answering for Lark when she knew the answers, but more often she’d gone off to catch a brief nap on the zebra couch. She seemed content to let T brood over Lark during the day. T, noting the space between the sisters, was disconcerted one morning—after arriving at the chambers a half hour earlier than normal—to find Lark brushing and painstakingly sectioning and braiding Clef’s hair.

  T looked at Lark now, and the small jealousy ebbed. She felt a certain modest pride. Though the two things may not be related, she’d been calling her, and Lark had come back from wherever she’d been.

  Byrne had been in and out of the studios during the same two weeks. He’d been unprepared to see T and Lark together. More unprepared for how it made him feel. T looked kind. She looked good and whole and solar. He found himself thinking that Lark should be home with Nene. With Drew. He found himself drawn to T, to what she was doing. Her attention was a gift, the way she talked and listened to the way Lark didn’t speak. He was beginning to pity Lark, and the pity turned his stomach, focused as it was on a woman he’d once wanted to be within. He was suddenly ashamed of conceiving of women in these terms, as homes, cars, or paper: to be inside, driving, writing on. But Byrne took comfort—he thought if he were to see T in Marvel’s paints now, they wouldn’t work. No one else could cut a woman into pieces. Women carried their own blades—sometimes, bandages.

  Byrne looked at Lark now. She had come back from wherever she’d been. It all seemed too easy for her. His rock hand throbbed. How selfish she is, he thought, to be broken.

  Lark stood in front of Marvel.

  “Just paint them like you did before.”

  “It’s not my work.”

  “It will be, a little of it anyway. But mostly not, no. Tell me, how did you get my jars?”

  Marvel looked at her. He licked his lips. West answered.

  “Drew. Drew left them at my house.”

  “Drew wanted to punish me?”

  “To help you.”

  “And you …”

  “Gave them to Marvel. Yes, yes I did that.”

  Marvel grunted. “I asked where he’d gotten them. Bastard wouldn’t tell me. I needed more, but the colors were so fucking condensed, I mixed them with what I had. What the hell is this shit?”

  “Mine. My Needs. They’re almost gone—this is the last?”

  “I guess. Yes. They aren’t fucking working.”

  “No. They are. They finally are.”

  Marvel had little choice. There was no time to get other colors, and West—monitoring the process—seemed genuinely pleased with the white. Because it wasn’t white. The paints retained a vestigial tint. The sleightists’ bodies were crape myrtle trunks, green and terra-cotta hues beneath their wintering, or chalky riverbeds—russets and ochres promising a return with rain. The patterns were still there, though Marvel said the audience wouldn’t pick up on them, that he was wasting his time. He kept whipping his brushes against the wall in frustration, but he got all of them done. All but two.

  Of the sleightists, Clef he usually painted last because she insisted on it. Now she came up to West and Marvel and said, “I can’t … I won’t.”

  West didn’t exhibit the surprise she expected. Instead he asked, “Is this about the fetus?”

  She winced, but didn’t back down. “I know where this comes from, and I’m not putting it on my skin anymore. God knows what damage I’ve already done.”

  West studied her for a long moment before saying, “I understand.”

  “What?” Clef tried to get her bearings. She looked around the room. Where was Kitchen, she wondered, was he already onstage?

  West reiterated. “I said, okay.”

  Clef was still thrown, uncomprehending. Then she saw Marvel looking over at Lark, nearly salivating. West’s eyes were there too. He asked, “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  Lark avoided her sister’s face. “Yes.”

  Clef tried to not be angry—she didn’t want to perform. Not this. Anymore. She was hurt anyway, and so couldn’t stay backstage. She thought about walking along the river, but the temperature had dropped below the afternoon’s eighteen degrees. This was her sleight. This was also her weakness—not being able to extricate herself. Except for Kitchen. With Kitchen, she was winning. She dressed slowly. She concentrated on that—dressing. She had nothing appropriate, and her jeans were just beginning to stop gapping the way she liked, even after a day on the bus. She found a red sweater among her things that might be passable. Then she made herself up—offstage, she didn’t often. Eyes. Lips. At the last possible moment, Clef decided gaudy was better than meek and threw her scarf around her neck before heading to the lobby. It was there she saw, about to herd her family to a waiting usher, her old friend Bea.

  Bea squealed.

  “Clef! I was going to surprise you. Why aren’t you performing? Is it your ankle?” Two of Bea’s three children were weaving in and out of her legs. The third, Jay, was standing, in very adult embarrassment, next to his father.

  Clef kissed and hugged them all. The two men bravely but barely endured it. It was the last thing—their reticence—and it crippled her. She put on her gala face and lied.

  “No. Everything’s fine. Lark’s performing—I needed a break. She’s back, at least for this project. But Bea, I don’t have a seat and this thing is sold out.”

  “I know, I know. I’m so glad we got ours so early, though I’m sorry we won’t get to see your ‘unparalleled whatever.’ I can’t believe that your names are out there. I have no proof … the kids don’t believe I used to do this. Lark’s back? My god. You’ll sit with us, of course. Emmy’ll be in my lap the whole time, if she doesn’t make me take her out to the lobby.”

  “Thank you.”

  Bea’s hair was longer, and down. A soft curl nearly covered her serpentine tattoo—she’d styled it that way. The effort sickened the already lying and pregnant Clef, but she kept her tongue in her mouth.

  The curtain opens. Lights fade up. Lark stands far upstage right, facing away, aboriginal in her white paint. On the stage between her and the audience there is a roiling—limbs and the fiberglass flash of architectures. Lark maneuvers toward. Her architecture is a word in her hands, and then she speeds it up, and it is thought. No longer under her control. Its process pulls her into dialogue with the other sleightists, and the architectures manipulating them. It is the structures moving the sleightists now—puppeting them.

  Lark is alarming in her pale, painted skin, so violently, terribly naked. Her movements—angular, yanked. Marvel hasn’t mirrored her in the same way he did Clef. In fact, except for Kitchen’s and Haley’s, he altered all the patterns. Kitchen’s still encircles his waist, but because the mirrors can only bounce back black curtains or dark audience, he has no center. Haley has no face. Montserrat is without upper arms. Marcus has a reflecting worm where his spine should be. Marvel thickened two of T’s lines but left off the rest, cutting her just at the knees. And Lark has no heart. Marvel, with mirror shards, has removed an asymmetrical hunk of Lark’s torso: the left side of her rib cage, front and back. Clef cannot look at the disfiguration. The hack job. It is horrifically literal.

  Lark’s fingers are white.

  The audience is hushed, as they were in Africa, Greece, Italy. The links are working without color. The bodies are still emphasized, though not singular. When Lark wicks, the architectures do not keep articulating—they spiral beyond what was meant, having lost their ballast, their plumb. Their flesh-marionette. On their own, the manipulations are too
much, too open. It’s then that Clef sees Byrne above the rest. He is two hands only. Face. Two white claws, one gripping black rope, one around a stone. A dark mouth in the center of a stilled, white oval—façade of a face. Clef—whose practice it has always been to let the precursor wash over her, like lyrics—looks into this mask of Byrne and listens.

  FrancescaAbigailSlutMarekAjaxJackassChristopherDopeDick DeniseGilGusKikeStephanSpencerHowitzer

  She doesn’t understand. Was this what was raining down on her? This onslaught? Suddenly Marvel’s paints seem almost benevolent. But Byrne isn’t saying this, is he? He’s just saying it. It’s nothing. Precursors are kindling—they have to catch fire. Newsprint is kindling and it too says nothing.

  The wicking is growing closer, and Clef, punctured by the words, admits the beauty. Merciless. The links kaleidoscope over her—fracturing, multiplying. The architectures are lights on a radio tower, the sleightists—waves. Clef watches a structure contract a nebula, fitting it to the stage. She witnesses the molecular birth of a plastic. Clef sees a tree die, an entropic study of a cloud’s dispersal. At one point, all twenty-four sleightists link to affect the glint and stab of asphalt, in serenade of a star long dead. She feels strongly—design is here. Momentous configuration. Consequence.

  And then Clef remembers: this is hers, her navigation. She did this. And she had no plan, no plan at all. Just intention.

  The fetus inside her flutters. It is the first time.

  Two hours they watch. Bea’s children are dumb. Clef looks over at the stoic older boy. Jay’s mouth is hanging slightly open, his eyes are wet, tearing up—he’s not blinking enough.37 Clef thinks maybe she’s hearing a siren, but it isn’t a siren. Barely audible, what she is hearing beneath Byrne’s wrong words she hears more clearly during the wickings. She begins to know it—the low-level song. It is the scratchy recording of a trumpet—muted. Music. It continues, fading in and out for the next ten minutes, twenty. She knows better than the rest of the audience where they are in the sleight, but even for her, time is lost here. She has been in this dark theater for a day, month. A year. She has been in this theater since her mother’s death. Clef misses her parents, and is ashamed that she cannot miss them more than she did when they were both alive.

  It is some time Clef spends with the horn, trailing it through the sleight, in and out of Byrne’s words: JossElsieAssholeLardassKaelDjunaSpicJorieLilithRachel

  RetardHowardDonnieTammyStoneJaneJewboyLiselPashaKatanaBilly

  PrudenceStefanieHankRaeDerringerWinonaAnnRachelLesboTasha

  DarrylLugerMargaretRemiWinchesterOwenSolangeSterlingBitch

  LawrenceVedaDrillSloaneFileMaddoxHoraceDjangoFaggotRenee. It is some time with just the horn, the wickings deafening, and they must be nearing the end. Clef wants it to end. But West has made the end. And it is not yet.

  A flicker. On the scrim. A flicker on the scrim. The sleightists, mirrored? A flicker, nearly subliminal. The next one longer. Longer. Longer—movement. A film. Video. A strung toy. A puppet. Another. A monkey, a horse. A bird. A lion. Behind the sleightists, a film of white parts, strung together. At the top of the scrim, on the tape. A white hand in evidence. A wedding band. Above the scrim, Byrne’s face. Byrne’s hands clutch. A rock, a rope. The dark. Below him sleightists are spun, twirled, slapped. By architectures. Flung. The film behind them—children. The puppets are bone. Bone sleightists. Strings are architectures. Architectures, strings. Little crossed batons. Little crosses over strings hanging down. Frets. Playing. Miniature deaths. The dancing dead. The prancing, swinging, prowling, waltzing, pawing dead. The horn. Cloy. Sweet horn. A-sail above scratch. Scratch. Cadaverous lovelies. Cadavering. Staged. A preciously. Precocious. A postmortem. Baptism. A bris. Away. Adage. Skinless children are sinless children. Say it with me. Skinless children are sinless children. All gone, Mommy. All. Gone.

  It takes a few minutes to register. No one in the audience has seen this section of the Vogelsong tape; it wasn’t released. But the audience, all audiences, have a memory like a hunger for filth. This was, what, a few months ago? The animal puppets, the killer couple. Now, what was it they did? This film, then, on the scrim, this is children? The monkey, the horse? The bird? The lion? The audience moves. Shifts. It fidgets, uncomfortable, as if it were human.

  Emmy, beside Lark in Bea’s arms, claps her hands together. Points. “Mommy, look, a birdie! Mommy, look! Birdie up! Up! Mommy! Emmy want up! Emmy birdie, Mommy! Emmy birdie!” A woman behind them doubles over and vomits onto the floor.

  The audience begins to leave the theater. This—this zoo—it is not what they came for.

  * * *

  The end. Lark is barely there. She is in and out again and she is grateful. She feels the cold again. Deep, and all through her she ices. This is what she wanted. Out. To hate the sleight again—to remember why to hate. The word “plantation.” Hunger. I know I love my daughter. Know it. The other sleightists begin to leave the stage. Leave like Claudia. Like Newton. Jillian. Like Clef. Goodbye. Out. Then there is sound, it is warm like burning, and behind her a black-and-white fire. A house burning down, she thinks, on the scrim. Is she homeless? It seems right. Sad. To leave one’s home. Out. Necessary. Jillian needed. Nene needed. When home is sick, it’s right to leave. Out. You leave pain. You leave color because it, like pain, makes you feel. There is only black, only white. Red and blue and green impossible. Brown and beige impossible. Out. Not actual. It’s why she left my body. Out. Because I cannot keep color inside. I am only white parts. White parts it is right to kill. Out. Already infected. Yes, Jillian. Infected. See my red eyes. My blue fingers. White skin. It is not, Out, right to use the dead. To forget the dead. To use the dead. If I leave my body, Nene, then home, and I will be returned. Out. I will reach the other side and you can king me. The logic of it. For a moment Lark is worried—these ideas, they’re perfect, and that is always a sign. But she forgets of what. Out. Utopia. The word “plantation.” Out. Big house, instead of living inside the body. A body, instead of what? Out. During her next return she examines the theater. It is wrong, the theater. The theater is the test tube she has filled with disease. Out. Poor flies, glassed in. Out. The theater was rife with specimens and now is less. The people are not as much there. Wicked? Has she done it again? Were the audience hers? Did she hurt them? Out. Need them? She mustn’t hate them. She mustn’t hate them, though she knows she does. As herself. Out. As useless as that, Out, as needy. This is it—what must not. Out. Must not happen. But she did, she must have hated them because the wicking is gone from the stage. Out. Her responsibility, she drew it, Out, self-leeched it, and now it is Out, Out, Out in the theater. Perfecting. She would stop it. Out. Call it to her. Lark knows how to call things, how to pin them. She will, Out. She will fix the wicking down, Out, inside her bones. She will welcome all its cold. Out. What is perfect doesn’t move. It was never cold in Georgia, Out, like in Boston those summers. Out. The wicking, all inside her, all, Out, at once. The blue had always been right there, right at her fingertips. Drew understood. He had to. Out. Out. Here, finally, was something she could save.

  * * *

  Lark burned the house of her childhood down inside her. Lark did not mean to hurt, but needed to.

  * * *

  Clef stayed. It was the end of the sleight, and one by one the sleightists unlinked and left the stage. Only Kitchen and Lark were left now. And Byrne’s words:

  JudithYouTheodoreNowJustusYouTheScissorsNowDianeYouNowByron

  YouWhipLuciusNowYouVictorYouYouVerityNowYouTheScytheNowYou

  DotheadYouHurtKieranNowJadaYouMiguelBlythelyNowGlynisYouTake

  TheRockToReginaNowNowMacYouFuckUpTheHymiePatrickNowThe

  StickToSamboNowNowFatmanFallonHideoNowZoeTheLatheNowDieDie

  DieNowPleaseTheSickleYouAletteNowMeTakeByrneNowArtNowFaith

  NowThemAllofThemTakeThemDownYouEnolaDownItDropItNowNow

  YouCynthiaNowCynthiaYourTurnYouBeMachine

  * * *

  Lark flickery. Kitche
n fully. She was in his arms when she was there at all, the link a cradle-point. Kitchen juggling. Bone-juggler tossing his hard scarves again and again against harder air. Art. Lark and light. Lark and light. Lark and light. Then light and light and light and light.

  * * *

  The architectures spun. For three seconds. Thirty. The Vogelsongs’ tape kept showing, looped, in the space where once was Lark. No more words. No horn. Kitchen let his arms fall to his sides. The architectures went on weaving for another few moments. Fell. Several tubes reverberated from the stage, graceless, before settling into awkward hush. And there was a child—come out from a slow dragging through milk, held too long under too much of what gave him life: Kitchen. He stood, hands down in front of all the white animals and nothing, nothing in his face at all.

  * * *

  Clef rose in the dark. She said, “Kitchen. Kitchen, I’m right here.”

  * * *

  It was the end. And Byrne, looking down and seeing Lark gone, thought to blame no one. He closed his eyes. Unclenched his hand from his rock. The sky falling hit the stage behind Kitchen. Everything, littled. As Byrne undid himself, he remembered a Mustang engine, out on the block, and Marvel only eight or ten, standing on a chair beside Gil, gazing into it.

  * * *

  The end. West watched from the curtain as Lark went. West watched the audience’s slow hemorrhage from the theater. He spoke aloud, and loudly, and to no one in particular.

  * * *

  You Are Now Leaving the Site of an Atrocity—tell me, where will you go?

  37 It is not uncommon for some audience members, attending their first sleight performance, to develop dry-eye. Because of the mind’s inability to process the act of wicking, the involuntary act of blinking is retarded, or shut down altogether, in an effort to catch the sleightist mid-removal. A product called Natural Tears readily relieves the symptoms, and after a few sleight performances, the mind adjusts to sleight’s opacity and the condition no longer occurs.