“You loved this place as soon as you saw it,” she says, our heels echoing on the hardwood through the foyer. “You said it was almost animalistic, how much it spoke to you. I remember that quote because it seemed so poetic.”
I step forward into the space. It is expansive, radiating light despite the dreary, depleted day, with soaring ceilings and that original brick wall and fireplace that Tina had told me about back in the pizza parlor. The beamed ceilings resonate somewhere inside of me, and I stare upward, wondering why they look so familiar, why this whole scene puts me both instantly at ease and entirely on edge. I move toward the wall of windows, with their view of the East River. The glass is streaked with threads of rain, and below, the river looks treacherous, roiling from the storm overhead.
I close my eyes and imagine. I can still hear the Smiths in my mind, providing me a sound track, a map to what I am dreaming.
“It’s not my home, it’s their home. And I’m not welcome no more.”
I must have first seen this place when? Five or six months ago? April. It would have been April, right on the cusp of spring. I open my eyes again and envision the river calm, welcoming, and then it comes to me.
Of course.
I remember it clearly, that summer. This wasn’t in the main house, it was…where? In my father’s studio. I know this on instinct. In my memory, the rug beneath my feet, it’s the same one that’s now in my living room. I am barefoot, and the fabric isn’t as worn as it is today, but still it’s soothing, tickling the rough skin of my arches. The Smiths, just like today, are thundering in the background, but I’m unsure if this is a crossover from my synapses or if this, too, is real. There is a picture window in front of me, swallowing up nearly the entire front façade of the workspace, and out just beyond it is a body of water. A lake? A river? It is a wildly beautiful, glorious day, and my thirteen-year-old self is itching to dive into it, so I have gone in search of my dad to come out and play. My dad…I search my brain as I stare out at the rain-soaked skyline and try to home in on my father.
There he is
. He is in the corner, leaning against the brick wall of his studio, pressed together like a ball, a fetus. He is sobbing, moaning, emitting sounds of an injured seal. There are pools of paint splattered every which way on the wall, a smashed easel at his feet. A lonely, empty dartboard has fallen on the floor just beyond the fringe of the rug. My childhood self watches him from just inside the door frame, and gingerly I take a step back, then another, creeping so I don’t betray what I’ve seen. I take one step more, and my ankle gives way, rolling under itself until I, too, am crashing to the
floor. A baseball bat—
the picture in my album
—spirals next to me, and I hear my dad jolt from the other room. Suddenly, he is over me, his shadow casting a pallor from the bright rays brought in by the outside sun. He is pale underneath his goatee; the circles under his eyes are etched in black.
“Get out of here, Nell,” he says, his voice weary, with no malice behind it.
“Don’t be sad, Daddy.” I push myself to a stand.
“Some things can’t be helped,” he says, already turning and moving to fold himself back into the corner.
An explosion of thunder roils over the East River, and as quickly as it came, the memory is gone.
On the way out,
after Tina has bolted the door and stuffed her cartoon-size key chain back in her bag, I remember my own set of keys. I dig into the front pocket of my purse.
“You seem to be an expert in locksmanship,” I say, placing them in her hand. “These. In your opinion, what are they from?”
She flips each one over in her palm, inspecting them like a biologist, running the tip of her index finger over the grooves.
“They’re house keys,” she says. “Nothing like this is from a New York apartment, and they’re too big for a safe-deposit box or locker or storage facility.”
“But I don’t have a house,” I say flatly.
“Well,” she says, just as the elevator plunges us downward, “someone does.”
23
J
amie and I convene on Saturday for our next interview for
American Profiles
. The producers want to take advantage of the perfect blast of October air by shooting in Central Park.
“They want to get that melancholy stroll with the leaves crunching in the background, your face looking pensive,” says Anderson when he picks me up in the town car that the show provides. He’s insisted on coming, to stand by and ensure that I’m not in over my head—after all,
you’re the girl who saved my life,
he says, our little inside, though still truthful, joke—and that Jamie doesn’t take advantage, even though I’ve assured him that he wouldn’t, that he won’t.
“Still won’t reconsider?” I ask Anderson. I know that Jamie has implored him once again for a sit-down, told him that, like it or not, he is part of this story, part of my story.
“Still won’t,” Anderson says. “No more press. No more unnecessary press.”
“You realize you sound a bit like an ass when you say that. Like you’re beating them off with a stick.”
“In case you haven’t read, I am a bit of an ass.” Anderson shakes his head. “Or I was. I’m trying to be better. Not believe the hype. Remind myself that being the star of a now-canceled television show and a few so-so movies really isn’t all that, not bringing world peace or anything.”
“Though Spielberg
is
calling,” I say, scooting closer, resting my head on his shoulder, letting my eyes float shut under the weight of my exhaustion. The phone rang three times last night between 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m.—hang-ups each time—and I never fully ebbed back into sleep. Instead, I lay there and wondered who was on the other end: Wrong number? Ginger?
No, no, not Ginger
. My father? That last one seemed the most preposterous, but still, I wondered. At 4:00 a.m., I gave in to the insomnia, furious at myself for even indulging in the fantasy that my mother was wrong—that my dad, after all these years, was extending himself. I rose and brewed the strongest coffee I could stomach. Since five o’clock, I’ve been sitting on my couch, staring at my father’s painting over the mantel, waiting for Anderson to arrive.
The driver drops us off at the Sixty-sixth Street entrance near the old Tavern on the Green. Three horse-drawn carriages wait in the cul-de-sac, the animals looking both annoyed and depressed, their owners smoking cigarettes on a nearby bench. The sidewalks and abutting curbs are littered with gourd-colored leaves, and the air smells like burning pumpkin, like someone on Central Park West has fired up his wood-burning stove high enough to scent the whole city. Jamie is standing by the traverse with my mother and Rory, both of whom will be imparting their own versions of my story on air. They wave in unison, and we cross to meet them.
My mother kisses Anderson hello and pulls me into a tight
embrace. I swallow what smells like patchouli oil and clamp down on my gag reflex.
“Are you nervous?” she asks. “Because I remembered something you used to do when you were nervous as a girl, in case you are, in case you need to relax.” I pull back and look at her. “It’s nothing, just something small. An idiosyncrasy of sorts.” She bats her hands, and I can see that clearly,
she’s
nervous. “Anyway, you used to sing to yourself. Made-up songs. All sorts of here-and-there melodies and lyrics. I’d come into your room on the first day of school or before a swim meet or whatnot, and you’d be staring out the window, just lost in your own place, singing.”
“That’s sweet, Mom.” I kiss her on the cheek. I can sense how that might put me at ease, how music could have been my balm, and I’m grateful that she’s offered this to me. It’s not so difficult to have gratitude, I realize. Even as the new me and the old me struggle to find a middle ground, still, I can evolve somewhere in that space between them. I kiss my mother again, riding this wave of appreciation for her, for my life.
“It’s not much,” she shrugs. “But maybe it will help soothe your nerves.”
“I’m not nervous, but thank you all the same.”
I wave to Rory, who gestures nonchalantly back at me and sort of wrinkles her nose at Anderson as a way of greeting. He mirrors much the same back. There’s a strange tension between them, has been since the gallery show, and I narrow my eyes and assess.
“Are you two okay?”
“Okay,” Anderson bobs.
“Okay,” Rory bobs, too. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
My mother’s cell phone rings, and she croons hello to Tate, wandering
off to pet the horses while she talks. I can’t help but notice the massive mound of horse shit in the driveway and watch her dance around it on her way. That’s my mom. I almost laugh out loud. She can always sidestep the shit. I smile because now I can see how this might be admirable, how her optimism might have been her buoy through it all.
Anderson motions me over to a bench, casually shifting his arm around my back once we’re seated.
“So, listen, before you get started, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Paige.” We watch the camera crews finalize their lighting and map out my blocking. We’ll be solemnly strolling along the footpath between the east and west sides of the park, the better to capture both the changing seasons and our stoic expressions, the type you see on every news program when someone’s life has veered wildly into the crapper: the widower gazing out with arms crossed onto an open lake; the mother of a soldier walking through her neighborhood, her worries on display in the fine lines around her eyes, her brokenheartedness showing in her jawline.
“Paige who?” I ask.
“Paige Connor. That reporter who came by the gallery at the opening. From Page Six.”
“What reporter?” Rory has ambled over, curious about what was so private that Anderson opted not to include her.
“No one you know. And she wasn’t there for the show. Or the art,” Anderson retorts.
“Well, you don’t have to be an asshole about it,” Rory says.
“How am I being an asshole about it? What about that statement said ‘asshole’ to you?”
“I just didn’t appreciate the implicit suggestion that I’m some sort of media whore. And also, FYI, we sold every piece from the show—a new first for us.”
“What are you talking about?” he says.
“What are you both talking about?” I say, watching them, their figurative fur upended, a catfight imminent.
“Nothing,” Anderson says. “This has nothing to do with Rory.” He shoots her a look as if to say,
Shut the hell up and keep your nose out of it,
which she responds to by shooting him a similar look that says,
Get over yours, and who invited you into our business in the first place
. “But Paige. She’s a gossip reporter of the worst kind.”
“Is there any less worse kind?” I joke, but it goes nowhere.
“Actually, there is,” Anderson says. “My people won’t even talk to her.”
“Your people?”
He catches himself, then makes a retching sound. “Okay, rewind. Ignore that previous statement. The point is that Paige is vicious. She stops at nothing to break her story, even when publicists have done their best not to let her. You know: offered her better coverage in the future, or given her a scoop on someone else. She’ll run both stories. She’ll burn bridges. She wants to make a name for herself.”
“Is this about the fact that she’s run something on you at least once a week since we’ve been back?” I ask. I start to mention the latest—“Andy’s (Arm) Candy!”—but I can tell he’s serious, so I shut it.
“No, nothing about that at all”—he zips his vest up an inch—“though it goes to show how deep she’ll go. None of my friends are talking about who I’ve been with, what I’m doing. But she has sources out there on both of us, and she’s not afraid to exploit them.”
“So why was she at the gallery?” Rory says, offering a détente.
“I’m trying to figure that out. I’ve made some calls.”
“But what’s your gut telling you?” I ask, before it occurs to me that I stopped trusting my gut a long time ago, so why the hell should I trust Anderson’s?
“Unsure,” he says. “Only that wherever Paige Connor goes, a shit storm is sure to follow.”
My mother,
never afraid of drama, embraces her inner actor for the cameras. There is weeping when she speaks of our childhood, there is weeping when she speaks of the crash, there is weeping—subtle, stoic weeping—when she’s not speaking, when she is simply asked to stare at the nearby tree while the camera pans away from her. I observe her from the sidelines and pang with sympathy, not because I necessarily believe all of her tears but because clearly she has suffered, and for that, I suppose, she should be allowed her due, her right to grieve, even if it’s on national television.
“The Ice Queen is thawing,” I say aloud, though Anderson doesn’t get it and Rory is too far out of earshot to hear me.
A small huddle of spectators has gathered on the traverse to watch us unspool our melodrama, and Anderson has doled out half a dozen or so autographs, mostly to twenty-something women who push their breasts forward, even in their peacoats, and toss their hair over their shoulders when he stops to chat. He swallows up the attention but for less time than I’d have expected, and soon enough he’s bored, back over to me, back by my side.
“I thought you might want to take one home for the afternoon,” I say.
“Too early,” he says back. “I have a newly implemented no-sex-before-six rule.”
“Impressive,” I say. “High bar of moral standards.”
“I try,” he says, and we both smile because we know that he does, that he is. That six months ago, he would have tucked his hand
in the back pocket of one of the brunettes and hailed the nearest, fastest taxi.
My mother’s tear ducts do manage to dry up, however, when Jamie raises the subject of my father. He’d told me via e-mail last night, that they were going to have to address it. My dad was the elephant in the media room: nearly everyone who was tuning in now knew who he was. Thanks to me, he’s never been more famous. Rory confided last week that the offers she was getting on his remaining pieces were enough to fund our nonexistent children’s college funds, a comment I wholly ignored, as it spewed up a wealth of issues about my pregnancy all over again. I should have raised this with Liv, how I was stuffing these feelings down my emotional bowels, but, well, it seemed easier not to. Easier to pretend that Rory hadn’t said it, that my nonexistent children once very much existed, that life was stitching itself back up. If I opened myself up to more—the looming quagmire of the miscarriage and the pregnancy and what the hell I was going to do about both the baby and the marriage—well, it was like a row of dominoes: toss one over, and the rest were bound to falter sooner or later. And besides, now that things were mostly smoothed over, why upend them? Why stir up trouble when I’ve finally clamped the lid on it?