Anthony closed the door behind us. The moist spring air played gently with the thin, parchment-like blueprints and floor plans on my father’s mahogany desk. My brother looked at me, and then lowered his head. I detected shame in his face.
I looked at this face, a face that had changed dramatically over the past week, as if adulthood had come to him overnight. His facial hair so out of place, his body large and more muscular than I’d remembered. He seemed grown up, capable, and I felt small next to him.
‘We don’t need Aunt Nell, we can take care of ourselves. You’re almost eighteen and they’ll let you take care of me.’
‘Stella, I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can. We can. Aunt Nell is nothing to us, I can hardly stand to look at her, and I wish she’d pack up and leave. The sooner the better.’
‘I can’t take care of you, I can’t. It’s not that I don’t wa-wa-want to. I ju-just, I …’ He started to stutter, something he hadn’t done in years.
Then he regained his composure, as if he decided that this childish affliction was uncalled for. His eyes were red and he paced the study, looking for words and a way out. ‘I’m going to a Military Academy. I’ll be leaving in two months.’ His words hung between us and sucked the air out of the room. The world was motionless, even the curtains had stopped wafting in the breeze.
My throat was sore, and every time I swallowed I was back in the dream where a blackbird slid down my esophagus in slow motion. Just as the dream pain of the beak ripping holes and tearing flesh lingered, so did the cruelness of his words. My heart pounded as if the blackbird was trapped in my chest, its wings expanding with every minute. I caught a glimpse of why Joan cut herself to get away from pain. If you replace one pain with another, it seems as if you’re in control.
‘It won’t be as bad as you think,’ Anthony said and I felt myself shifting, departing from my body.
An echo of heeled shoes tapping over the wooden floors came down the hallway towards the study, but then it quieted and I was no longer sure if someone was coming towards me or moving away. Either way, I felt nothing from that point on.
Dr Ari pushes a box of Kleenex my way. I’m crying, but there is no sobbing, just flowing tears running down my cheeks, my neck, in my mouth, and under my shirt. They taste like the tears I had cried the day of the funeral and I wonder if tears of joy taste any different. The memory of my parents’ funeral is strong, yet I don’t know why it still has such a fierce hold on me.
I keep my posture upright, trying to keep my pain inconspicuous. I’m not fooling Dr Ari, the ever-present hawk, spotting pain like prey, descending, striking.
‘I felt so safe in my sadness and I told myself it couldn’t get much worse. My parents were dead, my brother was leaving, and Aunt Nell was picking at what was left of our family and our house, like a vulture pecking away at shiny spilled guts. I thought I’d basically reached the lowest point possible. But I was wrong. So wrong.’
I look down at my hands, expecting to see that lump of clay. But my hands are empty. We have barely peeled away the outer layer and we both know there are many more layers left to tear away, wounds to be opened deeper until white bone shines through. I am done; I am not going to volunteer any more information.
‘I’m so very sorry this happened to you,’ Dr Ari says.
I hear a voice. It is my own voice, betraying myself. ‘Look at me. Just look at me, sitting here, trying to remember something that …’ I am searching for words, probing my mind, struggling to interpret the turn my life has taken. ‘What now? I don’t know where to go from here.’ Maybe I was just a kid who lost her parents and felt alone. Maybe my childhood was tragic, but my despair had started before the funeral, way before everything, maybe even the moment I was born.
‘Dr Ari, are some people born sad? I don’t mean introverted and withdrawn, but depressed? Did I emerge from my mother’s womb with a predisposition to … whatever it is … sadness? Is that possible?’
‘There is a genetic vulnerability caused by neurotransmitters and biochemical agents, but there are also developmental events, like the death of your parents. Grief is a very strong childhood stressor.’
For the first time I see myself through the eyes of people at the funeral. I was what? Just eccentric? Or did I fit the bill of a disturbed, maybe even crazy girl? It’s like looking in a funhouse mirror, only I’m not distorted. I am that way, a gloomy girl, sitting at the door, staring at people – that’s me.
‘To be honest, my glass has always been half-empty. Not only as an adult, but as a child. I don’t remember any specific moment I felt happiness. I don’t remember being just over the moon, elated, whatever you want to call it. After I gave birth I felt joy, I felt accomplished. The fact that I had a caesarean section in the end was irrelevant. That my body was capable of bringing forth this human being, that was joy. That’s the most fitting word I can come up with. And again, what was I supposed to compare it to? Feeling happy is almost something that I can’t feel, like I’m not made to pick up on it or something.’ I point at the digital recorder in front of him. ‘Like this recorder. It can only record audio, it can’t pick up on anything else. You can’t record the temperature of the room, you don’t know what the weather was like at the moment when you listen to it later on. Not sure if that makes sense.’
‘I beg to differ.’
‘About what?’ I ask.
‘That there were no moments of happiness in your life. Maybe you don’t remember every single one, but …’ He pauses and then his face lights up. ‘When I was a child, my grandmother taught me to play Petteia, a board game. A simplified chess game if you will. But you win by majority, not with a certain piece or move.’
‘Your grandmother teaching you a board game is happiness?’
‘It was not so much the game itself but the fact that she tried to teach me some sort of lesson. I remember that you had to somehow surround your opponent’s stones in order to win.’
‘So she taught you some kind of war strategy, is that what you’re trying to tell me?’
‘I never saw it as a war strategy, just the fact that patience is always rewarded. But mostly I remember the clicking of the stones on the board. The scent of the tea, the jingling of her jewelry. Her patience while talking me through the moves, explaining the strategy. And she always allowed me to redo a move if it proved crucial. She was a kind and wise woman.’
‘Do you still know how to play the game?’
‘Barely. I don’t think I ever really mastered it.’
‘So … the lesson here is?’
‘There are moments of joy in everybody’s life. Happiness, like sadness, comes wrapped in many layers.’
‘Just like memories.’
‘Just like memories,’ he says.
‘I just have to find those moments.’ I pause for a while and consider the ratio of sadness and happiness in my life. ‘Sad moments are right on top, but the happy ones seem to hide.’
I turn my head towards the wall to my right. A file cabinet takes up the entire space, small drawers strategically concealing its utilitarian purpose. Smooth-sliding pullout drawers filled with obsolete paper files. Dr Ari’s awards hover in symmetry, under Plexiglas, anchored with invisible wall attachments. Does he not believe in signs of weakness in his constructed world; therefore even the frames must pretend they don’t need a nail to stay put.
‘Anthony probably doesn’t even know I’m here.’
Dr Ari raises his eyebrows, then flips over my file as if handling the folder gives him an illusion of manipulating my known past with his hands.
‘Maybe that’s a conversation we need to have soon.’ He pulls out his pocket watch as if he doesn’t trust the time-keeping abilities of the plastic clock on his desk. ‘For tomorrow I want you to think of the concept of happiness.’
‘Can one think of happiness?’ I ask.
‘A memory is a place you visit, not where you live. Happiness therefore is not a permanent state of bei
ng, but more a moment in time. Think of a moment for me?’
I shrug and remind him that our time’s up.
Later that night, as I write in my journal, and I reflect on Dr Ari’s story of his grandmother, I try to recall happy surroundings and details, more than the feeling of happiness. I try to think of past happy moments as having fallen into pieces and recovering them as a matter of putting them back together again.
Then an image pops into my head. The image of a building and its still beauty in stark contrast with the busy atmosphere. In that memory, my father wears a dark-blue suit and an overcoat. I wear a dress and black lacquered shoes that pinch my toes. My father has promised me a ‘well-guarded secret.’
We are in Grand Central Terminal for my tenth birthday.
‘When we leave the terminal,’ he says, ‘you’ll be one of a chosen few who know about this secret.’ His voice sounds conspiratorial; all that is missing is a black cloak and a magic wand.
‘You’re not serious, are you, Dad? You’re kidding, right?’
‘Estelle, I’m very serious. Do you know who Adolf Hitler is?’
‘Of course I know. The dictator of Nazi Germany. I hope this isn’t a history lesson.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s your birthday after all,’ he says and chuckles.
‘What does Hitler have to do with this secret?’
He lowers his voice, bends down, and whispers in my ear: ‘What if I told you that he sent spies to sabotage the secret.’
‘And did they?’
‘No. The FBI arrested them.’
‘The FBI is involved?’ This is so much better than anything else I could have imagined.
We reach the Main Concourse and Dad grabs my hand. I look at him and then follow the direction of his eyes upwards. We are standing under some sort of astronomical mural. The background is blue, the constellations gold. It covers the ceiling of the entire Main Concourse. I’m getting dizzy looking up. I lower my head and hold on to his hand.
‘What’s that?’ I ask.
‘That, my love, is a design by a French painter. How many stars you think there are?’
I’m feeling queasy. I decide not to look back up and I just guess what I conceive to be a fairly accurate number. ‘Five hundred.’
‘Two thousand five hundred stars. It’s supposed to be the Mediterranean sky. The larger stars are the constellations.’
‘What’s so special about it and why did the spies try to sabotage it?’
‘Oh, no, this isn’t the secret the spies tried to sabotage. We’ll get to that later. I just wanted to show you this because the painter made a mistake without knowing.’
‘A mistake?’ I scan the mural.
‘Yes, he used an old antique manuscript. Took them a long time to figure out the reason why he made the mistake. See, they ended up being backwards. Back then the cartographers displayed the zodiacs as they appeared from the outside looking in.’
‘Do you have that manuscript at home?’
He laughs and says, ‘Do we have the Mona Lisa hanging in our living room? I have a replica. I’ll show it to you when we get home. Let’s go.’
He tightens his grip around my hand as we walk to the back of the terminal. We reach an old service elevator. He pushes a button and the door immediately opens as if it had been waiting for us. We get in and the elevator descends, screeching and shaking.
Of course I have ridden elevators before, but I remember them to be dimly lit and creaky cages moving snaillike and deprived of oxygen. The feel of this elevator isn’t any different, yet the humming in the background seems mysterious and it might as well take me to another dimension. The fact that I am about to discover a secret is the most magical moment of my life and when it grinds to a halt, I want to beg my father again, again, again, but somehow that seems childish. Right before the elevator stops, my body feels weightless, as if the entire world pauses for a second.
When we get out, we are in a utilitarian part of the building. The room is huge, its ceiling higher than I expected a ceiling to be underground. One side of the room is covered with boxy metal containers with controls and the other holds old machines that look like colossal clock gears. The floor grates are large and vibrate through my shoes. I feel hot air blowing through them, and I hear giant fans underneath me.
‘Here we are!’ My dad is elated.
I don’t seem to understand, I don’t know what it is he sees, I feel like I’m letting him down, as if I’m supposed to know the significance of this room.
‘M-42,’ he adds.
‘Right.’ I don’t know what else to say.
‘This is a very important part of the terminal. Only a chosen few know about this secret basement. You’re standing in M-42, the secret sub-level. How about that?’
I look around and I have to admit that the large gears protruding from the ground are very mysterious. ‘That’s what the spies tried to sabotage? Why?’
He lowers his voice as if he’s trying to keep his answer a secret. ‘If the spies had disabled the converters, they would have shut down the entire terminal during the second World War. It was so guarded that anybody down here without permission would’ve ended up in jail. Or shot.’
‘Okay then.’
‘Do you know what that means?’
I don’t know what to say, and shrug.
‘It means that you’re standing in a spot that isn’t on any map, any blueprint. Every building ever built has a blueprint, every building has to be designed on paper before the builders put brick on top of brick. Walls hold up the roof, floors hold up the walls, that sort of thing, and architects calculate and plan every inch of a building. You’re in a room only a few people know about, yet millions pass over it every day without knowing. Pretty fascinating, isn’t it?’
I ponder it for a while and I’m starting to understand his enthusiasm. ‘I guess I shouldn’t share this secret with anyone then, right?’ I say and add a conspiring wink.
His brow furrows, but only for a moment. Then he smiles at me. ‘It’s our secret. One day, maybe ten or fifteen years from now, there’ll be guided tours, TV specials. And then this place will no longer be a secret.’ He checks his watch. ‘But for now, it’s our secret. What do you think?’
‘It’s pretty cool, actually. All those people upstairs in the terminal don’t know about this, catching trains, going to work or home, unaware of this place. And the fact that we get to see it while it’s still special.’
‘I think so too. I knew you’d love this place,’ he says and hand in hand we walk back to the elevator that will take us back upstairs to the main terminal buzzing with people, insect-like, fulfilling their destinies and a complexity of tasks, demonstrating what a wonder the world really is.
That night, as I lie awake and stare at the ceiling in my room, I try to understand what has happened, not the details or minute particulars of Mia’s whereabouts, but my possible part in the direction my life has taken.
I close my eyes and travel back to my childhood, I feel the chenille bedspread under my fingers and hear the old oak tree scratch the windowpane. The only filter people have is their childhood and as my parents’ ghostly apparition materializes, I concede my parents were physically there for me; they fed me, clothed me, and provided for me.
And then it hits me. My father never pulled me off a ledge, never ran into the street after me to save me from an approaching car. I don’t remember receiving any physical affection from my mother but I assume that she sat with me when I was sick as a child, and I’m almost sure she made my Halloween costumes.
But once I look for more than the average proof of affection, I come up empty. It all comes down to this: I don’t know how to judge my parents’ love for me. Life never prompted them to take extraordinary measures, never urged them to declare the depth of their love beyond genetic affection. They cared for me. Beyond that, it was run-of-the-mill obligation. And again, my satchel holds no jewels. Just rocks.
Chapter 14
<
br /> ‘Tell me about Jack,’ Dr Ari says.
We have finally arrived at the chapter named Jack, the man I married only a year after we met. Speaking of him starts to unsettle the ground. Jack, all in all, is a warm memory, yet I feel cold inside. It seemed I went from my parents’ house in Bedford to Nell’s house in Jersey, and then off to cheap apartments in basements. After I married Jack I was off to his apartment on William Street. It was perched on the 36th floor of the Gotham Tower Condominium Building, with its unsettling echo between the walls. It seemed like a castle and I got to live in its tower, complete with a spiral staircase. I somehow knew there’d be a price to pay to live there.
‘This is a big place,’ I had said and had tried, unsuccessfully, to keep my heels from clattering on the slate floor.
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’ Jack took off his coat and sat his briefcase on the enameled lava countertop. The gesture was an indication of things to come; when I think of Jack now I see him either putting on a coat or taking it off, coming or going, but never really being there.
‘What’s the price of admission?’ I asked lightheartedly, eyeing the tin ceiling promising to last a lifetime.
Jack stood by the window, enthralled by the stunning view of the city. ‘Your soul,’ he said jokingly, his shadow disturbing the perfect sheen of the hardwood floors.
I remember how months before we had walked by protestors in front of an abortion clinic. Jack had frowned and ‘Baby killer,’ he had said, ‘abortion makes you a baby killer.’ Those were his words.
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