—
To enter into the deepest fears, to enter the house of the dead, is not really a matter of confrontation. It is a matter of holding on, grasping slippery walls in the dark, waving arms in the blackness, stumbling, finding a fallen wire, a thread of meaning. Surrounding that thread is an emptiness stretching outward, and upward, in every direction.
In that emptiness is the place beyond fear, beyond hope, where the last thought tries to rise and goes to die. Its charred and broken feathers whisper down.
34
STEVE HAS ALWAYS been the first one to wake, if he sleeps at all. This morning he hoists himself up, a beast rising, lumbers to the bathroom, his legs spindly in proportion to his massive torso, folds of Roman emperor flesh cascading as he moves. As he gets ready he is still half asleep, dreaming, he was dreaming about Poppy, days when she was little and he would wake up early with her. She might even have had the distinction in those days, over ten years ago, of getting up before him. He would peek into her room, find her playing, watch her unnoticed, wonder at the intricate games and the fantastical drawings. Was she working through the loss? Would she ever be okay? He asked these questions because he had loved his sister, and now his niece-turned-daughter, wildly, uncharacteristically, in a way that made no sense to him but which he could not deny. Poppy’s long little-girl hair fell to the floor as she sat and sang. Eventually she noticed him, did not stop singing, and they went to the kitchen together.
In those days he might make the two of them breakfast. In those days he would lift her up onto the counter, her nightgown puffing out around her knees as she elevated, sailed, in his arms.
He finishes dressing. Patrizia is still asleep. The boys are asleep. Neva’s door is closed. He knots his tie as he roams the hallways, finds himself in front of Poppy’s door. It is ajar. He imagines if he pushes it open he might find her sitting on the floor, singing. Or stretched out on the bed, drawing. One light turned on in the dim room. Her thoughtful face intent, her big eyes narrowed, concentrating. Her little-girl self preserved, not ghostly but immortal.
At the same time as the door swings open from his push, several images flash across his mind. Her cherry-red nose on the plane back from London when he told her she could not come to work for him yet. Her name printed in the documents he had had Ian sign that day in his office. Memories of attempting to protect her. Had they been misguided? More controlling than loving? He didn’t know. Couldn’t know. Those questions lay outside the bounds of his personality.
The room was empty.
Although the questions lay outside his ability to ask them, they did exist, somewhere, in his unconscious, in his deepest recesses of feeling, in his body.
The bed had not been slept in.
She might have slept at a friend’s.
But this had been a school night.
Of course she was practically finished with school, no college to go to next year; he brushed aside his disappointment.
The room was empty. It felt especially empty.
What was that sensation? A nausea, an ache in his shoulders, a wave of sickening remorse.
It was wrong that the room was empty. Wrong that she was gone.
—
The nausea blossomed as he rode down in the elevator. It bloomed up from his stomach to his chest, his neck, throughout his head, growing in lurches and grotesque fast-motion spurts of evolution, becoming different species of plant, of toxic flower. The ride down seemed uncomfortably long. As the flowers twisted and wrapped around his skull he noticed that the dull throbbing ache in his shoulders had become a verifiable anguish, a shooting prismatic cutting as if from a sharp diamond, a mineral slicing. He grabbed his head with his hand, as if he were trying to extract the guilt, the pain, by removing his face. He had done what he had thought was right but it was not enough. Or perhaps it had not been right. And he knew, instinctively, that he had pushed her away. Farther than away, he suspected. Somewhere he did not want to consider. He felt the sick logic of his life click into place. His hand fell limp at his side as the elevator doors opened, and he walked, much to his surprise, several steps.
—
Seized by a feeling, a question, and an answer all at once: “It’s so cold. What am I doing? This is it.” A reflection in the shape of a candle glanced off a mirror. The candle’s flame elongated, flared brighter than ever, lit up everything, shrunk, grew dim, and then returned to the hard silver of the mirror. A heavy door slowly swung shut, cutting off the warm wind and leaving only an air-conditioned chill.
—
Steve died in the lobby in the doorman’s arms. By the time the ambulance arrived it was over. While it happened, Neva was dropping off the boys. Patrizia was back in an examination room, dressing. Jonathan, Miranda, and Alix rushed to the hospital, meeting Patrizia and Neva there, but they were all too late.
Later, back at the apartment, everyone assembled except Poppy. No one could find her. The school had no record of Poppy’s arrival that morning. Patrizia’s assistant was trying all the numbers listed in the school directory. She couldn’t find a Jasmine Carpenter in Brooklyn. Maybe Patrizia had misheard the name. Poppy wasn’t picking up or answering texts. In the hectic disorganization of death, shock, grief, and stupor, a slow-moving confusion dictated the tone of events, settled on everything like a blowing ash. Individuals enacted their roles with no understanding of their meaning. People’s concern for Poppy surfaced and then sank, repeatedly, throughout the day. Amid all the upheaval and arrangements her absence was not forgotten, but overlooked.
—
No one knew that Steve had thought of her, would have been thinking of her had he been alive.
—
A haze clouded the proceedings although the day was sunny. Objects that stood out took on absurd significance, all out of proportion to their actual importance. On the way to pick up the boys from school, Neva felt she could see every leaf distinctly on every tree. The metal clip in Patrizia’s hair threw off bullets of sunlight as she hurried a bit ahead of Neva on the sidewalk. Patrizia had come with her, to tell the boys herself, sitting them on a park bench not far from school, hugging them and then nodding to Neva to help her get them home. Back in the apartment, Neva noticed Felix’s pants, crumpled on the floor of his room, and she thought the folded forlorn softness was a dog and she would never forget it, imprinted on her brain like a real memory. A blue dog, whimpering, on the rug. As she held Felix, and rocked him, she looked at the dog. Patrizia was contending with Roman, who had locked himself in the bathroom.
—
Sitting next to Felix on his bed, Neva felt the glide of wheels beneath her. She would go on. She kept a constant vigil in her mind to go on. Nothing felt final, only endless.
I’m going to miss Dad, said Felix.
Of course, said Patrizia, who had just walked into the room, taking his hand.
We all will, said Neva. And we will never forget him.
Felix lay his head down in Neva’s lap.
—
Remnants blew through her mind. The singed debris that drifts on the wind after a ruinous catastrophe. She stood in memory in his study that was empty now. Where once she’d watched him handling the sharp glass trophies, the deal totems, on his desk, holding them lightly in his enormous hand. Where she’d placed her fingers on his back when he’d stood with his hands on his knees, coughing, with weeping eyes. The amber light pierced her memory. My heart, my heart. Her eyes did not weep.
—
Miranda walked slowly down a hallway to use the restroom. Her ballooning belly preceded her, covered in a thin black tunic that fluttered around her thighs. The hot breeze through an open window, insisting on summer. Jonathan, uncharacteristically gallant, asked her every now and then if she needed anything. His face was pinched, and for the first time in his life he looked confused, thought Alix. He kept walking from the living room to the library to the kitchen, wandering around the huge apartment, pressing numbers into his phone and hanging up,
checking messages which she didn’t entirely believe existed. He could not inhabit the world without their father. She could, but Jonathan would flounder. She stepped out onto a balcony to get some air, to breathe in the city fumes, to check her messages, and realized that she had not told Ian. He deserved to know.
—
When she heard his voice she started crying.
It’s a nightmare, she said, as she explained. We’re all in the apartment together for some reason. Really a nightmare.
It must be, he said.
I hate to admit it, but I wish you were here with me.
I wish that too.
Apparently, Dad left instructions in a safe in his study. He wants to be cremated. I keep picturing his ashes blowing around and rising up into a gigantic gray version of him telling us that we’re doing this all wrong. He scared me.
I know. He could be scary.
She kept crying.
He was even scarier in my mind though. Why was that?
People are not just who they are. They are histories, feelings, mistakes, what we imagine them to be.
Thank you for saying that and not just saying he was a monster.
They were quiet. Cars honked from below. Ian said:
Can I ask: How is Poppy handling it?
Poppy isn’t here, Alix said, wiping her face with a tissue-thin scarf, sliding it up underneath her sunglasses.
Isn’t there? Where is she?
We can’t reach her. She was at a friend’s house and isn’t picking up or answering.
Well, who’s out there looking for her?
Patrizia’s assistant is on it.
On it? What the hell is she doing?
She’s making calls.
Has she called the police?
Ian, don’t get hysterical. You’re like an overprotective father.
No, you guys are crazy. You’ve abandoned her. As usual.
Hey, that’s not fair. We’re a medicated, barely functioning disaster here. Just trying to make it through this.
That’s what you always say.
Fuck you. My father just died.
Maybe it will force you to grow up. Where is Neva? Is she with the boys? Can you put her on? Put her on.
—
Alix got Neva and Ian explained how to trace Poppy’s cell phone. He knew it had a locator app. They traced it to someplace in New Jersey. The phone had been on a winding itinerary, from way out in Queens, to Brooklyn, to Staten Island, and the last spot they could locate was in New Jersey. He told her they should call the police.
You do that, Neva said. And I’ll go myself.
What? he said. That’s not a good idea.
She quietly ended the call.
—
She did not want to alarm Patrizia, Felix, or Roman. She calmly explained that she had news from Poppy and that she would go and collect her. Felix lifted his head, bleary. He said: Yes, please, get Poppy. Patrizia asked: How will you do that? And then turned her attention to something else, and Neva left the apartment and went to the garage. She knew the attendant.
She held the keys and sat in the driver’s seat. She said out loud: I will never forget you. She started the car.
—
Would you save her if you could? Go back to the worst moment and rescue the foundling you, the orphan, the girl? Of course you would. For you, to know and to act are the same thing. For you to go on, to continue, means to save her and, by saving her, save yourself, save them all. For you the whole world exists on top of that mountain, clouds turning, fire sparking, voices low. Go back to that moment and the clouds reverse their course, the fire quiets, the voices stop.
—
It begins with a child.
35
ON THE HIGHWAY she had not gone far when she started thinking about what might have happened to Poppy. There was no point in not imagining the worst. The problem of Poppy was an extension of the worst, as it unfurled, leaden, gray, like the highway itself. Cars pulled ahead, fell behind—mostly behind because she was speeding—some colorful, like occasional toys scattered along the road, odd moments of macabre joy on the journey. The joy did not take away the pain, and the pain did not take away the joy. There was some comfort in that. Some.
—
Along the sides of the highway the green trees blur and it always seems that there is something hidden behind the screen of color, some magnificent estate, some gleaming sculpture in a garden, some last idyllic tree behind the trees. Its bright fruit glistens. Its leaves dangle down. The rushing of the green gives the illusion that there is another world, and maybe there is, but as soon as you stop the car and get out to look for it the rushing ends, the trees separate, and you cannot find this garden.
—
The traffic gathered and slowed as she approached the bridge. Cars drifted like dead bodies on a river. The bridge loomed, at once majestic and ordinary. The water below, as she crossed the bridge, flowed molten and ferocious, forging on, implacable. Stalled in traffic she checked the GPS for directions to the spot in New Jersey, the gray circle where the app had last located Poppy. Neva knew that Poppy would not be there anymore, but she would probably not be far away. She would find her.
How are you going to do that? a voice in her head asked.
The same way I have done everything.
How is that?
By not worrying about myself.
You’re very brave.
No, I’m not. I’m just determined.
Or out of your mind.
No, I’m in my mind. Very deeply in my mind.
—
She followed the line on the little screen. Watched it curve and turn and imitated its movements with her hands on the wheel. First she encountered tall apartment buildings, some houses. Factories, machinery. An endless road. Was this the Pulaski Skyway or the New Jersey Turnpike? She hadn’t driven in so long. Angel had always done the driving. She could feel his presence as if he were in the seat beside her. Angel’s daughter had asked to visit Neva and the boys. Her mother was too distraught to play with her anymore. Neva and Felix had entertained her with games and a walk in the park. She’d ridden the carousel. Saddled up on the orange pony with a turquoise bow in her hair, the bobbing and circling an outsize distraction, a celebration. She’d visited the sea lions, watched their bulging shadows as they leaped. She’d wondered at their muscular, flexible necks. Felix had taken her by the hand and they had marched, happy soldiers, underneath the turning clock with the bronze animals.
—
They say all roads lead to Rome, but on the globe today do all roads lead here, to this hotel with the smeared glass fish tank in the wall, the back room, the hidden business of buying people? Jonathan made it possible for Warren and Wolf to use some of the Zane properties without Steve knowing, at least for a little while. He probably would have found out, but Jonathan was willing to take the risk, to risk everything. Steve had set this in motion, that was how Jonathan looked at it, and perhaps he was right. But neither Steve nor Jonathan understood how complete the circle came, how perfectly circular was this globe. Neither of them saw Poppy sitting in the van that pulled up at the hotel, saw her get out with the others, saw her huddled in the back room, her fate the same abandonment, the same shipwreck, as the others’, all oceans pouring into this dirty fish tank.
—
It’s here, in the hotel, that you can see even more clearly what is going to happen, that you can feel the vibration, the distant rumblings, of the fall of the House of Steve. They can’t see it clearly, don’t really know it is happening, are not able to witness it, can’t feel distinctly the trembling, or hear the avalanche.
—
Clouds race across the mountainside. In the fields, stalks whip back and forth. In the bright glade, animals rush by, darting out from their places. A bat, disoriented, flies through the window of the mansion in the daylight. Flaps frantically in the rafters. Wraps itself in a curtain, entangled, thrashes and whines. Knocks over a lamp fr
om a desk. A bulb breaks. A hot wire touches paper. A flame alights.
—
She is dismissed from the hotel. Only a few girls needed today. She rides back in the van and weeps without letting anyone see because she knows now that her fate is unimportant. This is the depth of despair and the height of wisdom. But she feels neither despair nor wisdom, just a hollowing out of her hopes, whatever hopes she had left.
—
Through her teary reflection she sees the gritty unspectacular landscape of stores and multiplexes, restaurants and gas stations. Perhaps this is no different from what the world would look like after an apocalypse. She remembers someone telling her that she was already living postapocalypse, and she remembers remembering that thought and agreeing with it at a later time, but all of that seems like another life, as if she were only now actually, truly experiencing the end of the world. Maybe this is what the end of the world felt like? A continual rediscovery that it was ending.
—
Poppy had the dullest sense that at one time she would have found this idea humorous. Here, she found it sad, and she had no way to distract herself from the sadness. She realized that she used to pick and choose what she saw but now she saw all of it. The sweeping waste, the orphaned towns. They rolled through her reflection, rolled right over her, inside her, ruminating, brooding. They seemed to be the only things that wouldn’t leave her, wouldn’t leave her alone. It was as if her body had become a computer and the external world streamed across her skin, a three-dimensional screen in the shape of a young woman, bearing a constant flood of images that did not reflect her thoughts and feelings but replaced them. If she’d had the strength she could have seen herself as a beautiful machine, still capable of thought and feeling, ready to run like some fantasy action hero in a movie across this landscape of devastation and exact some justice. But she did not have the strength, not now. She was a screen in the shape of a person and she had been hacked.
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