by Chase Novak
“Let’s dump her and go,” Adam says, a little more urgently this time.
“Adam!” Cynthia says. “I’m your mother now.”
“My mother’s dead,” Adam says, thumping himself in the chest. “You’re no one’s mother.”
“She got us out of foster,” Alice says, her voice soothing, as if she is trying to talk a cat down out of a tree. “And now we’re free.” Then, almost as an afterthought, she adds, “But she’s okay. Let’s not hurt her. Okay?” She touches Toby’s shoulder again.
Adam tries the back door. “Open it up and let’s get her out of here. And go.”
Toby hits the master switch, and the locks pop up.
“Stop here,” Adam says.
“Or wherever,” says Alice.
They are on Canal Street now. The owners of the shops selling headphones, old DVDs, Crocs, pot holders, plumbing supplies, household cleaners, plastic flowers, and weirdly deranged-looking baby dolls with red hair and mad eyes have dragged their wares onto the sidewalk and now guard them anxiously as thousands of pedestrians stream by. Toby pulls into a loading zone behind a feeble little truck from which two sad-looking, overworked Chinese women are unloading open cartons of shower slippers.
“All right, get her out of here,” Toby says.
“I’m not leaving,” Cynthia says. She jams her feet against the back of the front seat, locking herself into place.
“She probably wants her phone,” Alice says.
Toby glances at the phone on the empty seat next to him. “Fuck it,” he says, tossing it back.
Alice catches it, puts it in Cynthia’s purse.
“Go,” Alice whispers.
“Absolutely not,” Cynthia says. So this is what it’s like, parenting. Jesus Christ Almighty, it’s a nightmare…
“Flush her,” Toby growls. “Come on, we gotta bounce.”
The twins close their small but shockingly strong hands on Cynthia’s arms, and, despite her efforts and in spite of her cries and threats, they pull her out of the car. Will she ever see them again? Her mind is chaos, an explosion of words, terrors, and impulses. They have overwhelmed her, and the world throbs and spins.
The next thing she knows, she is standing on the street with the twins beside her.
“Let’s go, get in,” Toby calls out to Alice and Adam.
But the kids take Cynthia by the hand, Adam on the right, Alice on the left, and, holding on to her, they break into a fast walk, a trot, a run.
They hear Toby’s furious shouts.
The screech of tires as he guns the car into reverse.
“Subway,” Alice says.
“On the corner,” says Adam.
“Oh, kids, kids,” Cynthia manages to say. Her feelings are symphonic—strings, brass, pounding timpani—and she feels a love beyond any measure.
As they run toward the subway entrance, the children lift her hands and bring them to their lips and kiss the backs of them. One of them—she is too rattled, too confused, to say which—also licks her hand.
Rodolfo sits on the window seat of the rambling old apartment on Riverside Drive. He is trying to keep his mind occupied—there is so much to take care of, orders to keep track of, money to stash; his business has a hundred moving parts—but he cannot keep himself from continually checking the street below for signs of Toby and the twins, and now he has succumbed to his own preoccupation and simply sits there, waiting.
Alice.
Oh, Alice…
In the time Alice was out of the city, he thought of her often. And when he learned she was returning, his desire to see her became a kind of mania. To hear her voice. To touch her. He has waited patiently for this day. And now the day has come and he has no more patience. His mind races. He has so much to show her. The apartment. The money. The Sub-Zero Pro 48 fridge, perfect for keeping blood market-fresh.
Rodolfo hears footsteps behind him, click-click on the bare hardwood floors. He doesn’t want to be bothered and does not turn around. He sees from the reflection in the glass that it is Polly, just about the smartest and the least wild of all the cast-off boys and girls of Rodolfo’s crew—a crew that includes not only the nine people living here on Riverside but about a hundred others, spread around the city in squats, shelters, and parks.
Polly waits for Rodolfo to acknowledge her presence. A minute passes. Silently. Finally, she speaks.
“Maybe there’s a lot of traffic.”
“Maybe,” Rodolfo whispers.
She waits for him to turn around. She has always known she is not pretty enough for him.
“You can’t do her, you know,” Polly says. She is aware of the sneer in her tone, regrets it.
Rodolfo doesn’t respond and gives no evidence that he is even aware of Polly’s presence.
“Just saying…” Polly says. She turns to leave—but can’t. She still believes that misunderstandings can be cleared up with a sentence or two. “I hear she’s really sweet,” Polly says. “Alice. But, you know, all I’m saying is if you had an accident, the baby might be really…you know. Weird.”
“Well, here we are, kids,” Cynthia says, putting the long shiny key into the lock of the twins’ ancestral home on East Sixty-Ninth Street.
Because she has been supervising the cleanup of the house, Cynthia can now see it without being flooded with memories of Leslie and Alex and the life that once took place in these stately rooms. She can see it without recalling the museum-quality antiques, the profusion of heirlooms, the gloomy old oil paintings of long-deceased Twisdens. And she can also finally see the place without nauseating memories of the depths to which it had sunk—the clawed walls, the mildewed upholstery, the locked doors, the cellar filled with kennels that were also abattoirs.
She wonders, How does the house look to Adam and Alice? This is their home. But it is also the place where they were imprisoned at night, the place they risked their lives to run away from. As she opens the door and ushers them in, she is very glad that the air inside is cool and that the first thing they see is a vase full of white roses.
Yet something is wrong. She feels a presence in the house. She does not pause to think it over. She pushes past it, but the thought clings to her, like the smell of tobacco after you’ve walked across a smoky room.
“Well, kids,” she says, but that’s all she has time for. The twins have burst into the house, and now they race madly into its interior, their feet pounding on the newly varnished floors, their excited voices echoing against the high plaster ceilings.
This is the moment she has been waiting for, and she stands in the foyer clutching her purse to her breast and letting their joy infuse her. She breathes deeply. Though the house is nearly 170 years old, it smells new: untold hours of scrubbing, disinfecting, sanitizing; fresh paint, new plaster, sanded and varnished floors. This is going to be their home. This is where the healing will be done, and where they will be a family. A family! The word has never meant more to her than it does right now.
“Up here, up here!” Alice is calling.
“I’m coming!” Adam answers.
Cynthia listens to the crazy drumbeat of his feet racing up the stairs. Oh, to be young. To be able to recover so quickly, to seize happiness the moment it appears.
Cynthia’s eyes fill with tears. Like a fever finally breaking, her misgivings have disappeared.
And in their place is a joy like none she has ever experienced. She is not a religious woman, but the warmth filling her right now feels holy. Holy is the love of a defenseless child, holy is putting others before yourself, holy is the memory of her poor sister, holy is tomorrow, tomorrow, oh, beautiful tomorrow—the greatest of God’s consolations: time untouched, ours to make the world more perfect.
Chapter 4
Toby has parked the Town Car in an underground garage a couple of blocks from the apartment where he and his crew are living, and now, as he walks slowly up Riverside Drive, he tears up the parking stub—it’s a stolen car, after all, and he has no inte
ntion of reclaiming it. What is he, stupid? He is in no hurry to return to the apartment and face Rodolfo’s fury over his failure to deliver the twins. (Everyone in the crew knows that Rodolfo is fucking obsessed with little Alice, though Toby for the life of him can’t figure what he sees in her—she basically looks like her brother, chest and butt included.) There is no question that Rodolfo is going to be mad. The only real question is what he will do to Toby. You never knew with R. Sometimes he was totally cool about things and did not hold himself above you, did not judge, and just went with the flow. And then other times he was totally insane and you’d end up getting shoved against a wall or slapped in the face, and once two guys had even been kicked out of the apartment, kicked out of the crew, and were left to make it on their own, and no one knows what happened to either Ulysses or Menachem; maybe they were dead, maybe they were somewhere in Central Park or upstate or—you never knew—living large in the Hamptons, sleeping in the scrub oak forests during the high season and maybe squatting in some mansion when summer was over and all the princes and princesses were back in Manhattan.
The sky is full of little clouds, like sailboats in a harbor. Toby stops to look. Usually the New York sky didn’t have those puffy little clouds; usually it was just one color or another. A long alligator-shaped cloud was chasing a bunch of lamb-shaped clouds due north, straight up the Hudson. Come on, guys, book, thought Toby, urging on the little clouds.
When he lowers his eyes, he sees a man walking toward him. Tall. Mushroom-colored. Maybe thirty years old. Lonely-loser type. Short dark hair spiked out in all directions, greased up and shiny in the sunlight. He wears black pants, belted high, and a Yankees T-shirt that looks as if it were being worn for the first time. He carries a beat-up black book—maybe a Bible?
Toby can tell by the way the guy moves he isn’t just out for a stroll. He looks as if he is walking right over to Toby—and in this, Toby is right.
“Good morning,” the man says. He stands on the sidewalk close to Toby.
A couple of child-care workers walk by, pushing strollers and speaking to each other in Spanish. Toby and the man make room for them, stepping off the sidewalk for a moment.
“May I show you something?” the man asks.
“If it’s you’s junk, me kill you,” promises Toby.
The man smiles. His teeth are small and lusterless, perhaps from a vitamin deficiency.
“Something much more interesting,” the man says. He seems to have some kind of accent, and then a moment later he seems not to. The man holds up the black book.
It’s not a Bible after all. Thank God for that! But on closer inspection, Toby sees that it’s a photo album, chock-full of plastic pages. Is this guy going to show him some gross picture?
“Me’s not interested,” Toby says. He pushes past him.
“Oh, you will be,” the man says. “I promise you that.” He stops Toby, grabs his upper arm.
Toby wonders: Does this guy even have a clue that I could tear him to shreds? He yanks his arm away and is surprised at the strength of the man’s grip—not strong enough to hold Toby still but a lot stronger than Toby would have guessed.
“What kind of pictures?” Toby asks. The guy’s got him curious. And Toby is in no hurry to get back to the apartment.
“Family photos,” the man says. He pronounces it strangely—“pho-toes,” with a long pause between syllables. “Here, look, just this one.” He opens the book, pages through it while humming softly. “Yes. Here. This is interesting.”
Still holding the book, the man shows Toby a page of slightly faded snapshots, the colors gone soft and blurry, a world of melted crayons. They are pictures of a man and a woman in an office of some sort—a medical office, judging by the poster of a skinless figure illustrating the human circulatory system. The man has a widow’s peak, sunken eyes, a long nose. He looks supremely uncomfortable. The woman has a young, rather melancholy face and a graying ponytail. She is shapeless, as are her clothes.
“How’d you get these?” Toby asks. He clears his throat.
“You are recognizing them?” the man asks.
“Yeah. Me’s mommy and daddy.” Toby reaches out as if to touch them but thinks better of it, withdraws his hand.
“And what about this?” the man asks, turning the page. Here there is a photo of the couple, the man with a beard, the woman exhausted and leaning on a cane, both of them looking very much the worse for wear, standing in front of the Museum of Modern Art with a four-year-old boy between them, holding their hands.
For a moment, Toby is unable to speak. His eyes mist over. He clears his throat again, dries the corners of his mouth with his knuckle. “Little man cub,” he whispers. “Taken back in the day when me’s not scared yet.” The look of pain on his face suddenly turns to suspicion and anger. “Who’s you? Why you’s going around with snaps of me’s old folks at home?”
“Would you like to have it? For a memento, a keepsake?”
Toby would like to have that picture of him standing between his parents, but he is reluctant to say so. It’s been four years since he’s seen them. He’s not even certain they are alive. They were living on the edge last he knew; they could be anywhere, in California, six feet under, or just across town. Yet he cannot altogether refuse the man’s offer. His hand remains suspended, hovering over the photo album.
“Would you like to know how I have this?”
“Because you’s a fucking pervert?”
“No. I’m a man of science who works with other men and women of science. Come. We’ll find a bench across the road in Riverside Park. We’ll sit and you’ll hear the story.”
He pats Toby on the back, rather hard, between the shoulder blades, as they cross Riverside Drive.
Toby feels a stinging, a nasty little pinch, where the man patted him. He reacts for a moment, but as quickly as the little twizzle of pain appeared, it vanishes. He looks over his shoulder, making certain they are not too close to his apartment. The last thing he needs is for Rodolfo or any of the crew to look out the window of their rambling nineteenth-floor apartment, with its views of Riverside Park and the Hudson River, and see him sitting on a bench with some stranger when everyone has been waiting for Toby to deliver Alice and her brother.
“Let’s walk a little bit this way,” Toby says, turning south and indicating a bench a hundred feet away.
The noise from the West Side Highway sounds like a gigantic angry hornet.
They pass a chubby old man in shorts walking a dog that strains at the leash and visually checks each tree for squirrels. That little painful spot between Toby’s shoulder blades starts to act up again. It is devilishly placed so he can’t reach it no matter what angle he comes at it from. At last, with much straining and twisting, he manages to touch the sore spot with one fingertip. It’s wet! He quickly pulls his hand out of his shirt and checks his finger, wondering if he’ll find blood. But no. The wetness is like tears, devoid of color.
Maybe me’s popped a pimple, he thinks. He sniffs his fingertip. Weird smell, a bit like burning rubber. Oh, well. The pain has subsided…
They sit on a bench, their backs to the Hudson, the apartment houses of Riverside Drive lined up like massive gravestones in front of them, and the man makes himself comfortable, laces his fingers behind his neck, crosses his ankles.
“First, Toby, Toby Whitaker, let me tell you my name. My name is Dennis Keswick. I work for a company called Borman and Davis. We are a bioengineering company and we are very, very interested in special young men and women like yourself.”
“Weird,” notes Toby. He tells himself, Get up, but his brain seems to be speaking a different language than his legs.
“There is—or was—a doctor in Europe, in Slovenia, actually, who made it possible for you to be born.”
“Me’s know this,” Toby says. His voice is muffled, as if it must make its way through layers of gauze.
“Good for you, Toby. You’re a smart lad.”
“Me’s
not smart,” Toby says, lowering his eyes.
“Of course you are. You’re just…unique. And we want to find out just how unique. You understand? That doctor used a formula to help your parents conceive. His fee was very high, and the procedure was painful, so we must assume that your parents tried every known fertility treatment in the world before seeing him.” Keswick pauses, pats Toby’s leg. “It must be quite wonderful to be so wanted. In my little life, it was not the case. My father never wanted a child; in other words, he did not want me.” Keswick’s laugh has all the merriment of gravel being shaken in a tin can. “But my mother resisted his entreaties to abort. She was a good Catholic girl. And a punching bag for an ignorant baboon.”
“Me’s can’t get up,” Toby murmurs.
“Yes, I am sorry about that.”
“What did you do to me?” He twists his arm and reaches to touch his back, but the movement is awkward, exhausting, and he gives up after a couple of tries. “You stuck me.”
Keswick smiles, nods approvingly. “Smart boy; you don’t take all day to put two and two together.”
Again, Toby tries in vain to stand up.
“Don’t be upset,” Keswick says, almost crooning. “You’re about to make a great contribution to science.”
“Me’s not liking science,” Toby says, barely audible.
“Oh, it’s good to make a contribution.” Keswick lowers his hand to his book of photographs, as if he is being sworn in before testifying in court. “My rocky beginnings—well, they prevented me from excelling in school, and by the time I was your age, it was already too late for me to go to MIT or Stanford and receive the kind of education someone needs to compete in the world today. The men I work for—and women, by the way, women too—they’re geniuses. I don’t dispute that. But they have also been the recipients of untold advantages. Oh, well, we do what we can. Isn’t that right? And now it’s your turn. It should make you feel good, Toby. Because up until now, let’s face it, your life has been meaningless. I know how you live. I know where you live. I know what you do to stay alive.”