Goldengrove

by Francine Prose

  He said, “Remember you told me the story about you and your dad going to the strip mall where that cult went to be raptured? I’ve been thinking about painting it. The strip mall and all the people—”

  “What people?” I said.

  “Sort of like a Sienese painting, or like the stuff the Shakers did. But this time the angel does show up to take them up to the sky. Appropriation, Nico. You know what that is, right?”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “I’m appropriating that painting you like. Saint Nicholas of Tolentino. Or maybe it’s more of an homage.”

  It was the first time I’d heard the word homage since my sister died. It felt like a gift, but so did everything Aaron was saying. I was so happy that he could do something with our sad little visit to Disappointment Hill, that he could take our wasted morning and turn it into art. I was thrilled to be even a tiny bit responsible, if in fact I was.

  Aaron said, “I’ve never worked figuratively before. It’s a new thing for me.”

  “I can’t wait to see it.” The staircase spirit whispered, I dare you to say something lamer.

  Aaron said, “It’s still in the embryo stage. I probably shouldn’t even be talking about it.”

  “Then don’t,” I said. “Finish it. It sounds great.” Great, repeated the spirit.

  “Maybe I will,” said Aaron.

  The fireworks began as a subsonic tremble, then a rumble I felt in my stomach before I heard the first pop. A rocket shot up, and two yellow spheres hovered above the horizon, twin suns that exploded in a hail of orange. A glowing palm tree appeared, shedding green fronds that changed into clumps of parrot feathers sifting toward earth.

  “Excellent,” breathed Aaron.

  “Really excellent,” I said.

  Aaron said, “You can say that again.”

  “Really excellent,” I said, and we laughed, and then stopped laughing as the geysers of light shot up to form a Liberty Bell. A tolling boomed, as if from inside the sky, and a crack in the bell appeared, and the bell split open and showered us with streamers of red, white, and blue.

  Aaron said, “Did she ever play you that Leonard Cohen song?”

  “I love that song,” I said.

  “I Always thought that song should be our national anthem.”

  “That’s what I always thought,” I said.

  Pop-pop. Hailstorms of comets crossed. A fizziness frothed up inside me. From time to time, I glanced at Aaron and caught him looking at me. I knew he was looking for Margaret, but I didn’t mind, or tried not to. The way the lights trembled before they broke up reminded me of her smoke rings. If I’d said that, he would have known what I meant. I didn’t say it. I didn’t have to.

  Then everything exploded at once, so fast that if you blinked, you missed whole galaxies, Milky Ways, flaming planets, and shooting stars. It was like having a ringside seat at Armageddon.

  A new volley of pops and booms signaled that the end was approaching. I tried to memorize every light, to hold on to it longer, but each flash erased the one before it, until the explosions stopped. We waited for more. There was no more. The last Roman candles had left a bright green smudge on the blackboard of the sky. We stared at it, without talking, until it disappeared.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” Aaron asked.

  I said, “I don’t know. Nothing.”

  He said, “Maybe we could hang out. You could come over to the studio and watch a movie.”

  I said, “I could do that. My parents aren’t getting back until tomorrow night.”

  “You could see my painting,” Aaron said.

  “I’d love to,” I said.

  “Can we meet early? Around eleven?” Aaron patted my shoulder. Or maybe he was just stroking the shirt, and my arm was inside it. No one had ever touched me so gently, but my skin burned where his fingertips had rested.

  I said, “Elaine’s waiting. I’ve got to get back.”

  It took him strangely long to hear.

  Then he said, “Let’s blow this clam shack,” and started up the van.

  Fourteen

  I KNEW THAT IT WAS SUNDAY BEFORE I KNEW WHERE I WAS. Why was I lying under the ceiling, and whose ceiling was it? For an instant I imagined I’d levitated and gotten stuck in the air. Then I heard Tycho snurfling in his sleep, in the bunk bed beneath mine. I lay perfectly still, trying to extract some oxygen from the coffin of space and convincing myself that I could get through another Sunday. I’d play video games with Tycho, watch a DVD with Elaine. Somehow I’d manage until my parents came and got me.

  None of which accounted for the faint thrum of excitement, an echo from a time when I still looked forward to things. Until a flare of fireworks burned off the last wisp of fog. I was looking forward to something. I was spending the day with Aaron.

  He didn’t call until ten thirty. But this time I didn’t worry, or anyway not as much. This time Elaine let me answer the phone. When I told her I was going out, she seemed disappointed, as if she’d been looking forward to spending the day with me. Or maybe she wasn’t disappointed so much as alarmed by some signal she was picking up from my secret life.

  She said, “Isn’t that the shirt you went home to get? Didn’t you wear it last night? Don’t you have anything else?”

  “It’s my favorite shirt,” I said.

  “You smell good,” she said. “Is that perfume?”

  “Aromatherapy oil,” I said. “It calms me down.” I gave her a look meant to remind her why I might need calming.

  “Have fun,” she said. “But please, promise me. Get back soon in case your parents come home early. How would it look if I didn’t know where their daughter was? I’d hate for your dad to fire me for being such a lousy babysitter. Er . . . chaperone.”

  Liar, I thought. Slut.

  “Thanks,” I said. “See you later.”

  Outside, the hot air clung to my skin like scraps of cellophane. By the time I biked to our meeting place, my armpits were soaking wet. I penguined my elbows against my sides. But the second I saw Aaron, my hand shot up, and I waved. I could tell he was glad I’d worn Margaret’s shirt without his having to ask.

  He gave me an awkward hug and let his hands linger on my shoulders. He said, “I don’t want to mess up your shirt.”

  I had to recover from his saying “your shirt” before I noticed that he had paint all over his hands. I sat next to him on the tailgate while he finished his cigarette.

  “I guess you’ve been working,” I said.

  “A little,” he said. “Pushing paint around on canvas.”

  “Can I see? Hey, if you want to paint this afternoon, we could hang out some other time—”

  Aaron shook his head. For an artist who’d just started working again, he didn’t seem as cheerful as I would have expected.

  “There’s not much to see. But sure. I’d like that. No one else has seen it yet. Now for the bad news. Ready?”

  I nodded.

  “The air conditioner in the van is broken.” Maybe that was why he looked glum.

  “That’s fine. I like the heat,” I said.

  “Right,” said Aaron. “See if you still feel that way in a couple of minutes.”

  We drove with the windows open, the hot wind slapping the windshield like those fat soapy strips in the car wash. A band of dust hung over on the fields. The corn was parched and stunted. I’d always slumped down in Aaron’s passenger seat, hiding, but now I sat up straight. No one was out driving or walking or mowing their lawns. We passed a few houses with lines of cars parked out front, but the heat had driven the guests inside or around to the backyard pools. Whiffs of charcoal and charred meat were the only signs of human existence.

  A neutron bomb could have fallen during the night. Or maybe Martian invaders had used the fireworks as cover for their attack and kidnapped our neighbors. I thought about my father, wandering around the doomsday parking lot. Maybe the end times had come and gone while he and Mom were in Boston.

 
Of course, the world hadn’t ended. Aaron’s parents’ cars were in his driveway. He hit the horn—beep beep, hello—and drove to the cabin out back.

  The heat made the cabin smell worse than it normally did. I thought how little it took to make the most putrid pigsty seem like a refuge, like home. It was cool inside. I was glad to be safe indoors and out of the roasted dead world.

  Someone had cleaned up the cabin since the last time I was there. All the junk had been herded into lumpy mounds under sheets. Light streamed in from the glassed-in porch where, from the doorway, I could see an easel and a table with brushes in coffee cans and tubes of paint lined up in rows like bright, exotic candy. The scraps had been swept off the floor.

  “Can I go in?” I said.

  “Please. Please do,” said Aaron.

  I edged into the studio. One wall was covered with a patchwork of postcards and reproductions from books: Last Judgments, Resurrections, Ascensions, angels descending from heaven and saints rising up to meet them. Everywhere were blue firmaments dotted with cottony clouds and winged cherubs, like fleshy pink blimps, hovering in the air. It reminded me of Margaret’s room, but more animated and sweeter.

  I said, “I can’t believe you put all this stuff up since . . .”

  “That’s just research. Go ahead. Look.” Aaron nodded toward the easel.

  At first all I saw was syrupy black, but as I approached, dabs of color appeared, and two figures—a man and a little girl—hopped out of the background. They were looking up, with their arms raised. The sky was stitched with fireworks, and the man and the girl seemed to be trying to gather the light in their arms. It didn’t resemble us all that much, but I knew that it was me and Dad wandering around the blacktop on Disappointment Hill. Except that, in the painting, we had seen the heavenly sign. The rockets were the volley of the angel army come to save us.

  Aaron said, “I had most of it sketched out. And then last night, after the fireworks, I stayed up all night, and it kind of came together.”

  “You didn’t sleep?”

  He shook his head.

  That explains it, I thought.

  “What’s wrong? Don’t you like it?” Aaron said. “Maybe I should tear it up and quit even trying.”

  “No, it’s beautiful!” I said.

  “Beautiful?” said Aaron. The staircase spirit chortled. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  “I mean it’s really beautiful,” I said.

  “That’s better,” Aaron said. “I don’t want to put you on the spot, but you’re the only one who’s seen it. I need to know what you think.”

  I wondered whom he was talking to. Nico or her sister? I focused on the painting and tried to forget he was there. Once more I poured my energy into crossing the border between the real world and the picture, and becoming that girl in the landscape. But the problem was, I’d been her, and it wasn’t like that.

  “I love it,” I said. Which I did. So why did I sound so fake? Aaron would see into my heart. He would know what I meant.

  I said, “What movie are we watching?”

  Aaron said, “Jesus, Nico. This is the first work I’ve done since . . . and I show it to you, and you want to know what movie we’re watching?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Forget it,” Aaron said.

  “The painting’s really great,” I said.

  Really great. Really great.

  “Right. I got it, Nico. Listen. There’s something I want you to hear.”

  Across the porch from Aaron’s worktable was a portable CD player. He rolled up a chair and motioned for me to sit down and came around and stood behind me. Close behind me. Too close. I kept thinking he’d move away.

  For a moment, I was afraid that he was going to play a recording of Margaret. The final stage in our experiment. I didn’t want to hear it. But Aaron would never do that, not without asking me first. Aaron would never hurt me. He cared about me. He was good and gentle and kind.

  He hit the remote, and for a moment we stared at the silent speakers. I heard some static, then a few timid notes. Someone tinkling around on a piano. A deep voice said either, “I’m going to eat it,” or, “I’m not going to eat it.” A murmur rose from the crowd, which seemed to know something awful was coming. At least it wasn’t Margaret.

  “Where is this?” I asked.

  “Tokyo,” said Aaron. “Hardly anyone in the audience speaks a word of English.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Don’t talk,” said Aaron. “Can’t you do that, Nico? Can’t you keep quiet and listen?”

  I did what he said. I tried not to wonder why he sounded annoyed. I recalled that he’d been edgy before, and it hadn’t been about me. The piano repeated the same arpeggio. The singer kept missing his cue, or maybe he was stuck like those drivers who panic on freeway entrance ramps.

  “My Funny Fah-leen-tine.” The crowd made a sound that somehow managed to combine a scream, a moan of pleasure, a snicker of disbelief. Did the weirdly familiar voice belong to a man or a woman?

  Aaron was still behind me. I could feel the heat from his hips and the brush of denim through Margaret’s shirt. Was this supposed to feel sexy? I guessed it did, in a way, the sexiness of being singled out, the hot light of his attention. At the same time I felt trapped. A wide belt banded around my chest, pulling tighter and tighter. I was glad I’d found out that my heart was okay.

  “Who is it?” I said. “I know that voice. Tell me—”

  “Listen,” he said. “Just listen. Relax and let it wash over you.”

  I turned back toward the music. Where had I heard that singer? Margaret had played me every version of “My Funny Valentine.” Ella Fitzgerald, Chet Baker, Nina Simone, Rickie Lee Jones. I would have remembered this one.

  The voice was broken and wobbly, with a heavy accent. “Vaaah-len-tine . . . loffable . . . unphotogroffable. . . . My favorite verk of art.” The words were only vehicles for the desperation, the reaching and stumbling off pitch, the loopy crescendos on “favorite” and “smile,” the bravado or terror with which the singer got louder just before the phrases I listened for, dreading the gap between the right note and the note I was going to hear. The voice kept trying to punch through the song, the voice had burned through everything else, and there was nothing left. No sex, no age, no home, no time. Ashes. Sorrow and courage. Alcohol, drugs, cigarettes. Recklessness, there was that.

  The piano tried to pretend it knew where it was going as the singer lurched along. But on one of those high notes—“When you O-pen it to speak”—the voice was off by so far it knocked the piano off, too. After that the piano stumbled around in the dark as the voice let the ballad beat it up. I felt proud and embarrassed for the singer slicing through to whatever made the song so tragic. My mother was right about those being the cruelest lyrics, ever.

  I said, “Is that person dying?”

  Aaron gave me the thumbs-up sign. Meaning, I assumed, good question. Or anyway, good enough to make him hit the pause button.

  “Not at the moment,” said Aaron. “But soon. Soon after this show.”

  “Who is it?” I said, almost pleading. “I know that I know.”

  “Listen.” Aaron hit the play button again. “Shut up.”

  And now it was like hearing someone actually dying of whatever ruined that voice in the first place. When my sister sang the song, it was all about love and sex, but this version was pure death. When the voice sang, “Stay little valentine, stay,” it was pleading with life itself. Or maybe the singer was crooning to laughable, unphotographable death, asking it to stay, which put a whole new slant on things—a song like a suicide note. Not even my mother could object to this, because no one could imagine that the owner of this voice could feel superior to the weakest mouth, the most un-Greek figure.

  “Who is it?” I repeated.

  The voice limped on. The accent thickened. “Each day is Fahlintine’s day.” The piano attempted a chirpy exit and failed. The audience app
lauded.

  Aaron said, “They sound like passengers clapping when the plane lands after a bumpy flight.”

  “Who was it?”

  Aaron said, “You know.”

  I hadn’t wanted to know. I didn’t want to think about someone with my name turning my sister’s song into a serenade from hell.

  “It’s Nico,” he said.

  “I know that,” I said.

  “I knew you did, Nico,” said Aaron. “It was one of her last concerts. Not long before she died. She was riding a bike and had some kind of aneurysm, and her brain exploded.”

  I said, “I saw Nico Icon with Margaret.”

  Aaron said, “You did?” Everything stopped for a second. Then he said, “It’s a rare recording. I listened to it the whole time I was working on the new painting.”

  I was ashamed for having imagined I’d inspired Aaron with a silly story about me and my father playing Ghostbusters in a strip mall when Aaron’s real inspiration was a German junkie’s love song to self-destruction.

  I said, “Did my sister ever hear that?”

  “She played it for me,” said Aaron.

  “How come I never heard it?”

  “Maybe because it’s so fucking depressing. Maybe she was protecting you. Did you ever think of that, Nico?”

  “Did she like it?”

  “She hated it. But she thought it was kind of great.”

  “It is kind of great.”

  “Are you going to cry?” Aaron said.

  “I’m trying not to,” I said.

  “Don’t,” said Aaron. “I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t cry.”

  “Okay, I won’t,” I said. It was time for him to move away, to back off and give me room. Aaron’s nearness radiated into my back and shoulders.

  I heard him say, thickly, “Sugar.” I was afraid he’d called me something he used to call Margaret. Maybe he had, because he stepped back and spun my chair around and looked as if he was wondering who I was and how I got there.

  “Excuse me?” I said, meaning, Me. Nico, the girl whose parents named her after that voice. I pictured my mom and dad window-shopping on a tree-lined Boston street. I willed them to imagine me in this steamy cabin with Aaron. But they couldn’t, they didn’t need to, they couldn’t get here in time. I wanted to play the song for them, not to make them feel what I was feeling but to ask them why Aaron would want me to feel this way. Screw loose, said my father. Little Adonis, said Mom. Freaky, said Margaret. Watch out.