“She’s some kind of new age self-help guru,” Tai explained. “She left me a copy of her book, but I haven’t looked at it. Whoever she is, she’s very popular. We’re planning on a big crowd for her talk.”
“‘Many Worlds, Many Minds,’” I said. “What does that mean?”
“Apparently, she applies a theory from quantum mechanics in physics to her psychotherapy practice. It’s about how we’re all part of an infinite number of parallel worlds. Every time we make a choice, a carbon copy of ourselves makes the opposite choice in a different universe.”
“Parallel worlds?” I said skeptically.
I couldn’t wrap my brain around the concept. Maybe that’s because I was focused on the other two words she’d used.
Carbon copy. Like a double. A twin. A man in a storm.
“That’s what she says,” Tai replied. “When Eve was signing the contract for the ballroom space, she told me that an entirely separate universe had already been created in which she didn’t sign it.”
“What did you say to that?”
Tai winked. “I said to make sure that she lived in the universe where she paid the bill.”
CHAPTER 3
On my way to meet Edgar at the Art Institute, I stopped in the museum’s south garden, near the Fountain of the Great Lakes, where the water flowed from clamshells over the bodies of five beautiful bronze women.
This place was flush with memories for me.
I’d sat with Karly here once on a spring afternoon, holding hands among the honey locust trees and listening to the bubble of water. We were still in our early days then, when we knew we were in love but before we’d shared all our stories. Karly wore a long-sleeve green sweater and a plaid skirt that made her look, to me, like some kind of Irish rebel. A woman for all seasons. Her skin was ivory pale, with a few freckles. Her eyes had a way of changing color with the light, and that day, in the cool April shadows, they were a sad country-song kind of blue. A single brass stud adorned the top of her left ear. Her blond hair, jaggedly chopped off at the shoulders as if she’d done it herself to show the world she could, smelled like a fresh sprig of rosemary.
I remembered that particular day well, because that was when I’d told her what my father had done to my mother. She knew what had happened, of course, but not the details, not what I’d actually seen from the corner of the bedroom. Other than Roscoe, I’d kept that secret to myself. I’d told Karly I had something important that I needed to share with her, and although I didn’t say what, I was sure she’d already guessed. That moment from my childhood was a gaping hole in what she knew about me. Even so, as we sat together by the fountain, I found myself struggling to talk. Somehow, I couldn’t switch on the clickety-clack of my mental projector and go back to when I was thirteen years old, my eyes wide, smelling the smoke and seeing the blood on the floor. There are simply places in your past you don’t want to visit again.
Karly gave me space. She didn’t push me, hoping I’d tell her without prompting. When that didn’t work, she told me one of her own stories to get me started. Most of Karly’s stories had to do with her mother.
“Did I tell you that Susannah’s first business failed?” she said. She always called her mother Susannah, not Mother or Mom. “Before she started Chance Properties, she went bankrupt. Not many people know that.”
“Oh, yes?”
I didn’t know why Karly had chosen that story for that moment, but she always had her reasons.
“Yeah, this was years ago. She and her best friend split from one of the big commercial houses and went off on their own. Small time, just the two of them, but you know Susannah, she had big plans. They were pretty overextended. Her partner—Bren was her name. I liked her a lot. We had a little apartment on Devon back then, and Bren would always bring me takeout from Superdawg when she came over to meet with Susannah.”
“How old were you?” I asked.
“Eleven, twelve, something like that. Like I said, I really liked Bren. The two of them were the same age, and their relationship went back for years, but Susannah was definitely the boss. I guess Bren just kept trying to please her, but even as a kid, I already knew that was a no-win game. Anyway, the business was only a year old when Bren screwed up. I mean, it was a big screw-up, but Susannah signed off on it, too, so it’s not like it was all Bren’s fault. They closed on a series of commercial properties south of Milwaukee, because Bren had inside information about a big corporate headquarters relocating out of Chicago. This came right from the CEO. It was solid. But as it turned out, the tip was just a ploy to get the city to shell out more tax breaks. Susannah and Bren wound up holding the bag. They’d been played. They lost everything.”
Karly stopped. She studied the women in the sculpture pouring water, which was meant to symbolize the flow of the water from Great Lake to Great Lake. A cardinal landed on the very top of one of the women’s heads and trilled about what an amazing spring day it was.
“Bren came over that day, and Susannah laid into her,” Karly finally went on. “Blamed the whole debacle on her. She said they were ruined, that Bren was a failure, that she should never have trusted her to do anything right. It was one of Susannah’s most impressive performances. And Bren just sat there and took it. I mean, she walked into our apartment knowing what she was going to get, but she came over anyway. She even remembered Superdawg for me, too.”
I watched Karly steel herself. I didn’t understand the emotion I saw in her face, but I knew there was a twist to this story. Bren was important to her, and that was why she’d picked this moment to tell me about her. While I was struggling with my own past.
“Karly?” I asked softly. “What happened?”
“That night, Bren killed herself. She cut her wrists in the bathtub.”
A little strangled gasp of air escaped my throat. “I’m so sorry.”
“She actually left a note apologizing to Susannah. Can you believe that?”
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
“I love my mother, Dylan, but you have to understand that there are times when I hate her, too. She can be so thoughtlessly cruel. To be honest, I’m always afraid that I’ll turn out like her. That she’s in my genes and I can’t escape my destiny.”
“I understand.”
Because I did. I knew exactly how she felt. I’d spent my life afraid of turning into my father.
Karly wiped her eyes and waited. I knew what she was waiting for. She’d done her part to help me pry open a locked door. To give me a safe space. If she could share her pain, her fears of who she was, then I could share mine.
In the long silence that followed, I gathered my strength. I said, barely louder than a whisper, “My mother was packing a bag.”
Karly didn’t need an explanation, didn’t need me to tell her what this was about. She reached out and took my hand, and her eyes held on to me with the fiercest, deepest of stares. My breathing got ragged; my heartbeat got faster. I could still see it all in my head, because it was always there. My father, drunk out of his mind, his face beet red, wearing an old leather biker jacket he’d had for years. Me, watching the two of them, my knees up to my chest as I sat in the corner. I could see it. I just needed to drag out the words so Karly could see it, too.
“My mother was packing a bag,” I said again. “She was in a hurry. She was getting us out of there, and she wanted to be gone. We were going to live with one of her friends on the force for a while. That’s what she told me. A cop friend, a man. I had no idea she was having an affair with him. My father knew, though. He knew.”
I remembered the things my father had said about her, the names he’d screamed in her face, but I couldn’t repeat them. Not to anyone. They were too vile.
“Her gun was on top of the dresser,” I went on. “I don’t know why she left it there. I guess she was rushing, and she didn’t think. My father was shouting at her, and she just kept putting clothes in the suitcase as he got madder and madder. Until he grabbed the gu
n. I saw him do it, like it was slow motion, you know? He hesitated with the gun in his hand, but not for long, maybe a few seconds. Then he cocked it and fired. The blood flew, all over their bed and the wall. Mom collapsed, dead, just like that. My father looked at her body in a kind of shock, like even he couldn’t believe what he’d done. And then he looked at me.”
I felt Karly squeezing my hand, as if I were dangling from a bridge and she was the only thing to keep me from falling.
“He saw me in the corner. I knew what he was thinking. I read his eyes. Me next. Kill me, too. I saw him raising the gun and aiming it right at me, but I was frozen. I couldn’t move. Something must have shifted inside him, watching me. He kept bending his elbow up until the gun was under his chin. Then he gave a little whimper. I remember that so clearly, this whimper, like a dog when his master dies. And then he fired.”
Karly was bawling. Not making a sound, but crying so hard she could barely breathe. Not me. Back then, I was cried out.
“I should have been able to stop it,” I said.
She threw her arms around my neck and told me what people had been telling me for years. “You were a kid. You were just a boy. What could you have done?”
Yes, what could I have done?
I’d asked myself that question every day since I was thirteen. I’d never been able to find an answer, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I had. No matter how much you wish or pray, there are no second chances. All you can do is make peace with your mistakes. Unfortunately, there’s no manual to tell you how to do that.
Now, years later, I felt as if I were living in a kind of infinite loop. They’d all died because of me. My mother. Roscoe. And Karly.
Every time. Every single time it was the same.
I should have been able to stop it.
Edgar and I met every Thursday at lunch in front of Edward Hopper’s classic Nighthawks. My grandfather and I didn’t agree on much, but we agreed that this was our favorite painting in the Art Institute.
For years, when I stared at Hopper’s three customers in the late-night diner, I would see myself as the lonely man with his back to the artist, the one whose face you couldn’t see. That was me, alone in Chicago. Then, after I met Karly, I began to see myself as the other man, seated next to the redhead in the slinky red dress. I liked being that man. I liked his cigarette and his hat and his suit, and most of all, I liked the woman with him.
As I stood there, I heard the thunk of my grandfather’s cane on the wooden floor of the gallery. Edgar came up beside me, his right foot dragging as it had since his ministroke seven years ago. He wore a Cubs cap backward on his head, along with a V-neck Hanes white T-shirt that exposed his curly gray chest hair, baggy tan shorts, and black, well-shined dress shoes with black socks. Yes, Edgar had his own sense of style, and he didn’t care what anyone else thought about him. He didn’t acknowledge me. Instead, he exhaled with a sigh of satisfaction as he stared at Hopper’s painting.
At ninety-four, the fact that my grandfather was still alive was sort of a miracle. He’d been a heavy smoker his whole life, existing mostly on a diet of Chicago dogs and Budweiser. We used to be the same height, but he’d shrunk over the years and was now three inches shorter than me. He didn’t leave the apartment much anymore, and Karly and I had hired a nurse to stay with him several days a week, which he hated. But every Thursday, regardless of rain, wind, cold, or snow, Edgar still hopped a bus and headed downtown to meet me at the Art Institute. I was never sure if he was really here to see me or Nighthawks.
“Did I ever tell you that I’m the reason this painting is here in the museum?” Edgar asked.
This was our routine. He asked me the same question every week and told me the same story. I didn’t know if he’d forgotten that I’d heard it a thousand times, or if he didn’t care.
“I was six years old,” Edgar continued, listening to himself talk as he adjusted the volume on his hearing aid. His voice carried to the entire gallery. “My parents had taken me to Chicago to see the Christmas windows at Marshall Field’s. We were at the corner of State and Randolph, and I saw this man with a huge white beard near the store. I was absolutely sure it was Santa Claus. I took off running, and I collided with a man who was just about to cross the street. Knocked him completely off his feet! Well, don’t you know, at that moment, a grain truck went screaming through the intersection. If I hadn’t knocked that man down, he would have been killed for sure. And do you know who that man was?”
I smiled. “Who was he, Edgar?”
“His name was Daniel Catton Rich. He was the director of the Art Institute. That was Christmas of 1941, and the very next year, Rich acquired Nighthawks directly from Edward Hopper. It’s been here ever since. If it weren’t for me, who knows where that painting would be?”
Edgar shuffled on his feet, looking pleased with himself, as he always did.
I let him study the picture awhile longer, because I was hesitant to raise the subject of Karly. I didn’t know how he would react. When the crowd around us had thinned, I finally said in a low voice, “Edgar, do you remember my call? Do you remember what I told you?”
My grandfather took off his Cubs hat and scratched his scraggly gray hair. “About what?”
“About Karly. About what happened.”
I didn’t see any recollection in his eyes. Facts had a way of coming and going in Edgar’s mind without hanging around for very long. He put his hat back on and stared at the painting again. His brow wrinkled in frustration, as if he knew I’d told him something important and he should remember what it was.
“She died,” I reminded him, my heart breaking as I said it.
He thought about this for a long time without replying. After a while, I wondered if he’d even heard me. Then he pursed his lips to tell me what he thought.
“You’re better off without women,” he announced, with a dismissive sharpness in his tone. “Nothing but backstabbers. My wife left me for another man when I was fifty. Never saw her again. Good riddance.”
“Edgar,” I sighed, not wanting to hear another diatribe. Not today.
“She said she didn’t know who the hell I was anymore! What does that mean? I was the one putting food on the table, that’s who I was. Someday you’re going to realize you’re lucky, Dylan.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. My fists clenched as I struggled to control myself.
I’d like to tell you that this was Edgar’s age talking, but in fact, he’d been this way most of his life. He was a cantankerous son of a bitch and the king of mean jokes. Pick any “ist” you like, and that was Edgar. Narcissist. Racist. Misogynist. I never met my grandmother, but I was sure he didn’t treat her well, and that’s what led to her packing up and leaving for California without even a note.
All that anger Edgar felt covered up a lot of pain. And guilt, too. People were always blaming him for what my father did, and on some level, I’m sure Edgar blamed himself, too. When your son murders his wife, you can’t help but ask yourself what you did wrong. Plus, with my parents both dead, Edgar was stuck raising a teenager on his own. He was already in his seventies when I moved into his apartment. I didn’t make it easy on him, that’s for sure. I was hurt and angry, and I hated the world and him, too. I made sure he knew it.
We made a hell of a family tree. Edgar. My father. Me. But I wasn’t going to stand there and let him tell me I was lucky because Karly was dead.
“I’m going to walk around a little,” I said in a clipped tone, swallowing down my desire to shout at him. I just needed to get away, or I’d say something I’d regret.
“Yeah, whatever. We’ll get a hot dog later, right?”
“Right.”
“Is Karly coming?” Edgar asked. “She’s a keeper, that one.”
This time it really was Edgar’s age. He’d already forgotten.
“No,” I replied, not wanting to say it again. “No, Karly can’t make it today.”
“Too bad. You don’t deserve a girl like her
, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
I left my grandfather in front of Nighthawks. He didn’t need me to stay with him. He’d be there for hours some days, staring at the painting and telling everyone who came up beside him the story of Daniel Catton Rich.
I had nowhere in particular that I wanted to go. I just needed to breathe, but that was hard to do in here. It was a crowded day inside the museum, with tourists crushed in front of the standards like American Gothic and Water Lilies. I wandered from wing to wing, barely stopping, my chest heavy. When I went into the men’s room to wash my face, I turned on the faucet at one of the sinks and realized that just the sound of water was enough to make me hyperventilate. Even the barest trickle crashed through my head. I had to turn it off and grab the counter for balance, and my reflection stared back at me, still as opaque as a total stranger. I staggered back out of the restroom in a sweat.
Faces stared at me wherever I went. That was how I felt. I imagined eyes on me everywhere. The people, pushing around me, blocking my way, all looked at me as if they were murmuring under their breath, “He’s the one. His wife died.” Even the paintings haunted me. Warhol’s Elizabeth Taylor flirted with me from behind her red lips and blue eye shadow. The younger of Renoir’s two sisters studied me curiously from under her flowered hat. They were so close, so vivid, so bright that I expected them to come to life.
I know what you’re thinking. I was in the midst of a panic attack. That’s the explanation for what happened next. My grief, my anger over Edgar, my hyperventilation, my face in the mirror—it all came together, and I began seeing things that weren’t there. Maybe you’re right, but that’s not how it felt.
It felt real.
As real as it had been when I was drowning in the river.
I was in the room with Seurat’s enormous pointillist masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, ten feet wide, nearly seven feet tall. I’d seen that work a thousand times, probably more. I could tell you the details from memory: the long pipe of the man in the muscle shirt, the monkey with the perfectly curved tail, the parasols all in different colors. It was one of the museum’s most famous works, and I couldn’t get anywhere close to it because of the crowd, so I stood at the back of the gallery, eyeing the painting over the heads of thirty or more people clustered in front of it. They made a kind of Grande Jatte themselves, different ages, races, heights, sizes, clothes, all frozen in wonder by the art.
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