Academy Street (16 page)

Her new apartment was on a quiet street in the 170s, not far from her aunt Molly’s
old home. The residents were older, more sedate, than those on Academy Street. There
was a school at the end of the street and through her open window she heard the cries
of children in the playground. She named the kitten Monkey, because of his antics.
She began to talk to him. She did not like to leave him alone for long. She let him
sleep on her bed, waking early to his soft purr vibrating against her temple. Sometimes
she kissed him. She had not known such reward could come from so insignificant a
being.

In the early years of her grandchildren’s lives she experienced sudden frequent
longings to see them, but a natural reserve—and the fear of becoming a nuisance—prevented
her from ever visiting, uninvited, her son and his wife. She attended birthday parties
and Thanksgivings at their home but otherwise she did not think she had the right
to ask. Occasionally, out of the blue, Theo would drop by with the children. Her
bell would buzz and then, his voice.
Hi Mom
.
Her heart leapt at the thought of his
face, the thought of the children. She bought them toys, clothes, books. She, in
turn, received a steady stream of gifts, more than she’d ever received in her whole
life—sweaters, scarves, books and, once, a stereo sound system, which brought a new
dimension and richness to her life. On weekend nights, she put on her music, cooked
and ate her dinner and drank a glass of red wine, content. The image of Theo setting
up the speakers in her living room often returned to her. And the image of him in
a store, choosing the system for her.
Giving her thought
. For a few minutes, for
a specific time, he had given her thought. At times, a gap of several weeks would
open during which she did not hear from him. She felt very unsure of her place in
his life then, assuming that, in the midst of his and Jennifer’s busy routines, they
had forgotten her. She had always felt separate from people, and lately she had the
sense that when she was out of view she disappeared entirely from the minds of others.
At such moments she siphoned off images from the past and used them to imagine herself
back into existence.

‘The King of Persia is dying. Oh, Tess…what am I going to do?’

She was back in her
old neighbourhood, in the diner she and Willa had often sat in when the children
were small. Now, together, they cried. ‘Lung cancer. From those damn cigarettes…and
all those years in his underground train. It’s not natural, that…’ She shook her
head. ‘A subterranean man—that’s what Darius was.’ She looked at Tess. ‘Six months,
they said. Oh, Tess.’

She put an arm around her friend. She called up words to give hope. She cited new
treatments, cases she’d known in the hospital that had turned out well. Willa shook
her head. ‘No, Tess, it’s not good. I just know.’ She closed her eyes and sighed.
‘I’ve known him so long—since I was sixteen years old. We never spent a night apart,
except when I was giving birth.’ She looked out the window onto the street. ‘How
will I go on living without him?’

In the library on 179th Street, one evening in September, she found a slim book of
poetry. On the front cover there was a portrait of a man with fixed haunted eyes.
Years before she had thought poetry beyond her. She read the biographical note and
the introduction. Then page after page—sonnets for Orpheus, the raising of Lazarus,
a requiem. Her deepest nerves were touched, sudden mysteries given sanction. Outside,
the light began to fade. She looked up and out of the high window. If I could just
live here eternally, she thought, at this desk, in this light, with this poem. The
librarian touched her arm, whispered, ‘Time.’ She checked out the book and stepped
onto the street. Under the twilight the lines repeated themselves.
Who, if I cried,
would hear me among the angelic orders?
She walked to their beat, the words in harmony
with her feet, her feet in harmony with her heart.

Something brushed her arm, pressed against her. She felt a jolt and looked up. She
had strayed onto the wrong street. A shadow darkened over her, and faces, all black,
closed in on hers. Teenage boys loomed above her, bearing down on her.
An open mouth,
teeth close up to her face, roaring obscenities. She tried to speak. Cold eyes glared
at her and she shrank backwards, another body, like a wall, behind her. Then her
arm was tugged and her bag wrenched. No, she begged, my book. She held fast to the
strap.
Bitch.
A violent tug and she lost her footing, and as she went down she saw
a boot, black, high, being raised. She put her hands to her face and covered her
head. She waited. And then it came, not a blow to the head or the stomach, but a
boot on the small of her back, left there for a long moment, and then pressed. She
held her breath, numb, until she heard footsteps running away.

A man and a woman knelt beside her. The woman dialled her cell phone. Trembling,
Tess began to rise.
Stay, stay
, they urged. She pushed herself onto her knees, rose
and fled. She lurched to the right, then left, along the pavement, lost. She looked
up, searching for signs, landmarks. At a corner she halted, traffic whizzing by.
She stepped to the edge of the kerb and raised a feeble hand and hailed a cab.

Willa took her to the hospital, stayed for the x-rays, took her home again, remained
with her through the night as she drifted in and out of sleep. She heard a foghorn
in the distance, dreamt of ships, rain, a burning bush. In the morning she stood
before the bathroom mirror and cried.

All day she slept. In the evening Theo came. When he entered the room she struggled
to sit up. ‘Shh,’ he whispered. ‘Go back to sleep.’

She lay back. In the faint glow of the night-light they were silent. She felt his
presence, mightily, in the room.

‘I’ve been lying here…thinking,’ she said. She could not look at him. ‘There’s so
much I regret, so much I wish I’d done differently.’

They were silent for a long time.

‘I wanted a strong mother,’ he said. ‘Like Mary O’Dowd. Or Willa.’ He was speaking
into the dark. ‘I had no father and…you were always so…afraid.’

He sounded wounded, like an injured animal.

‘You were all I had,’ she said, pleading. ‘I did my best.’

She began to cry. He stroked her arm for the first time.

‘Shh, don’t cry…I didn’t understand then. I was only a kid. I didn’t know anything…and
you never talked much. We never talked much.’

‘We can talk now.’

He shrugged, looked away. The past flooded back. She brightened.

‘You know, I think I got you wrong,’ she said. ‘I
thought
I knew you. For instance,
I always thought you’d choose a career—a life—in the arts, or science. You were so
creative when you were a child. And then you chose business!’ She was smiling at
him, like he was a child again. ‘Does it suit you? Do you like it?’

Again he shrugged, but softer. ‘I buy and sell. It’s not really business as such…I
deal in risk. Chance. The mathematics of chance. Yes, I like it.’

‘Once, years ago at a PTA meeting, your Math teacher said you could solve problems
without being taught.’

He smiled. ‘I never understood why the others couldn’t! I
don’t know…I probably got
those things intuitively. You see… there’s such logic and truth in Math. And beauty.
People don’t see the beauty. They don’t know that actually it’s in Math that beauty
is
told
.’

She loved to hear him talk like this. ‘What do you mean? How? How is beauty told?’

He searched, for a moment. ‘Let’s take risk, chance. In Math it’s probability. In
probability truth is clearly told. The beauty of probability is that truth, however
vague, is logical. One outcome, that is possible out of so many,
happens
. People
are amazed by that! Amazed by that chance. But why shouldn’t it? In the very long
run everything happens. Everything is inevitable.’

The night grew dense around them. She drifted in and out of sleep. When she opened
her eyes he was still there, in the chair.

‘What time is it?’ Her voice was young, like that of a girl. She remembered nights
long ago, waking up when someone tiptoed into her room for something. He whispered
a gentle reply. He was like a father now, watching over her.

Hours passed. In the dead of night she woke with a start, feverish, sweating. He
was still there.

‘Did you ever find him? Your father.’

He looked into her eyes, and nodded.

‘When?’

‘A few years ago.’

There were so many questions. The enormity of everything, of Theo’s life, hit her.

‘How will you ever forgive me?’ she whispered.

The silence deepened. She could feel him recall it all. He leaned forward, his arms
on his knees, his head down, and she grew afraid. When he lifted his head his face
was soft, lighted. ‘You’re my mother,’ he said. ‘It’s easy to forgive a mother.’
She sank back on the pillow. He got up and took off his shoes and lay down on the
bedcovers beside her. ‘Shh, go back to sleep now. We’ll talk tomorrow.’ She did not
know if she was dreaming or living this moment. She closed her eyes. She felt his
breath on her face, sweet, the promise of peace. He left his hand on hers. The night
drained away and the whole world slept.

In the morning he was gone. Monkey was in his chair. He had left a glass of orange
juice on the night stand beside her. She listened out for sounds in the corridor,
for the ping of the elevator. She got up, fed Monkey, walked around the apartment.
The building was eerily quiet. She was besieged by loneliness. She wished she were
back in Academy Street, hearing doors slam, shouting in the corridors. In the kitchen
she tried to be busy. She made coffee and sat at the table. The minutes passed slowly.
She felt old and alone, the years yawning before her, a graceless old woman with
sagging flesh and clammy skin. A woman in decline. There was nothing to be done about
it. Tomorrow would be the same.

Monkey jumped onto her lap and settled down and began to purr. She stroked the little
head, cupped the tiny face in her hand. Poor little creature, she said. The eyes
looked into hers,
clear, green, shining. Theo was right. She had been too afraid.
She had always been waiting for something to take, for the veils of abstraction to
lift and reveal the life that was meant for her. There was a time, when Theo was
small, when she thought
he
had cured her. He had been enough.

She grew distraught. He would forget what had occurred in the room last night. There
would be no breakthrough. He would be his usual self the next time, and she would
wonder if she had dreamt it. It was impossible to know the truth. So many feelings
between people were encoded in gesture and silence, because words fell short. A time
might come when words would be extinct and all communication conducted in silence.
The line between sound and silence might simply dissolve.

A time might come.
A time might come.
A feeling of foreboding began to rise. She
had the clear lucid thought that something was wrong. She put a hand on her heart.
She took her pulse. She touched each breast, pressing, searching, self-examining
for lumps.

Willa came later. ‘It’s normal to feel this way, Tess,’ she told her, ‘after what
you’ve been through, the attack. You’re not going to die! You’ve come through worse.’
She set down a cooked dinner before Tess.

‘How is Darius?’ She needed to remember others now.

Willa sighed. ‘We took a little walk this morning. The boys carried him downstairs
in a chair.’

Tess thought of all that was before Willa. We could set up house, you and I, she
thought, like two spinster sisters. Care for each other, call to each other when
we’re frightened in the night.

∼

That night she barely slept. At dawn she dozed off. Later, she woke to the phone
ringing by her head. A cheery male voice tried to sell her a multi-channel TV upgrade.
She hung up and left the phone off the hook. The tone hummed on, then died. She got
out and opened the window blind. A brilliant sky this morning, pure blue, without
blemish. She hoped Theo would come again. She knew now there were only a few moments,
ever, in one’s life, when one is understood. She remembered a novel she had read.
Michael K, a silent disfigured man wheeling his sick mother out of the city on a
makeshift wheelbarrow and, after her death, wandering the desert, surviving on almost
nothing. His mind growing emptier by the day. She had worried for him, as if he were
real and in her life. She would have liked to have him as a son, have him mind her,
mourn her.

She was living too much among books and memories, and this room had become a sick
room. She would go out later to the food store, the library. The day would herald
a return. She would sit in her favourite café and eat a toasted English muffin with
blackcurrant jelly. But first, she would sleep. She got back into bed. As soon as
she lay down, yesterday’s pall returned. She felt herself floating close to hazard.
A vague intimation, a premonition, that there was more to come, that the end was
nigh, and she would soon die. She leaned out and opened a drawer and took two sleeping
pills and a mouthful of orange juice. Then she lay back.

A medley of sounds mingled with her dreams. Distant
traffic, banging doors, her name
being called. She was standing on a corner downtown. A voice behind her said ‘Look!’
and she looked up and saw water—a circular shower amid the sun, with thick glistening
drops enclosed in tiny membranes, and she was transfixed by their beauty. Then someone
laughed and she turned, thinking they were laughing at her, frightened that she
had lost her mind. Above it all she heard the sea.

She woke to a terrible gloom, and a knocking on the door. She was drunk with sleep.
The air was dense and stale, the heat of the afternoon weighing down the room. Outside
the sky was still blue. She felt someone in the apartment, footsteps in the hall,
voices. Alarmed, she tried to rise.