Burning Down the House (13 page)

T
HEY WERE STANDING
in the study not speaking when first Steve and then Neva moved toward the couch and sat down with perhaps ten inches between them. She couldn't tell what he was thinking as he was leaning back into the leather, breathing heavily. After a while she saw that he was sweating slightly and next she noticed a translucent cast to the skin around his eyes and she felt that he was not okay.

He was spent. Neva got up and left the room and came back in with a damp hand towel. She pressed it to his forehead. She patted it a few times and then moved it down to his neck. She left the towel resting against his neck as she unbuttoned his shirt. Then she patted the towel across the top of his chest, against his mingling black and white chest hairs. His breathing settled.

Can you talk? she asked.

He started coughing.

He sat up and leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He coughed and spat and she held the towel up to his mouth, and his spit was a little bloody. He finished coughing and the white glow from the sky cast his face in light and shadow as if he were made of marble. He looked at Neva.

They won't stop.

I know.

And they will retaliate.

I know.

Were you afraid? he asked.

Yes—but not that much.

I had a feeling they wouldn't frighten you.

They seemed small.

They have bigger guys behind them.

What are you going to do?

The only thing I can do.

Which is?

Protect myself. Make sure they're not on my property.

How?

He breathed out a long slow stream of air. He closed his eyes. It was as if there were a tornado spiraling and strengthening inside him and he was controlling the pressure by allowing a small stream to seep out. He fell back onto the couch, his shirt open, the damp towel crumpled in his lap, its monogram
SZ
illegible. His eyes heavy lidded, hooded, the slightest bit open.

I'm going to ask you to help me.

Why? What can I possibly do?

Neva picked up the towel again and began pressing it against his forehead. Strands of her black hair fell in front of her face. Her skin was pale, and her dark eyes questioning, receptive, concerned.

Reconnaissance, he said.

Neva stopped patting.

I don't know this word.

Check things out. See what's going on.

She held the towel in her hand. She gazed at him but he had closed his eyes again. She fell back into the couch herself and looked out the window. It was beginning to snow. She could picture it sticking to the long branches of the trees, like snowflakes on the eyelashes of a horse. She closed her eyes too. She could see the city as pure as she had ever seen it. Everything white but not blank, instead a radiance, gentle, spilling over the acres of park, floating over the buildings, the quieted cars, the trudging citizens. She felt as though she were inhabiting a headquarters of safety and from here something good was being attempted, some measure to stop the worst from blowing in, bearing down, taking over. She felt herself getting carried away and saw the snow falling like the softest ashes accumulating in a fire pit, a dog sniffing through them, and the ashes disintegrating into powder, the whitest dust. Her thoughts were disintegrating, floating randomly in her head. She was trying to sweep the ashes into a pile, sweep them away, when she heard herself saying:

You mean a kind of spying.

Not really. Just watching. Following up.

Don't you have people who would be much better at that? Trained? Smarter than I am.

He turned to look at her without lifting his head from resting against the couch. Their faces were nearly touching.

I don't know anyone smarter than you.

She looked back into his eyes for a long time.

Is it dangerous what you're asking me to do?

I will have someone nearby, looking out for you.

Why do you think these people won't notice me? Won't figure it out? Isn't it safer to send a man, a customer?

They expect that. That's the obvious thing to do.

So you want me to just go looking? See if they are there? In one of your buildings?

A hotel.

She shook her head: No. I've done that. Years ago. She looked at him. She altered the truth: I was a chambermaid. I won't do that again.

You don't have to do anything. You can just inquire. Pretend you are looking for work.

Her eyes were starting to well up.

People don't go looking for that kind of work.

Yes, they do. When they need it.

There was a tear sliding down the side of her face.

Just ask. Just find out if it exists.

Why would you want me to do something like this?

Because you can do something very few people can do, something good. I want to get these people off of my property if they are there, and I think they are. They are trying to make a deal with me so that I will look the other way, but I want to get rid of them. And I trust you.

Why? Why do you have all these ideas about me?

There were more tears now, drawing lines down her face.

I just do, he said.

We'll be in danger, both of us, she said.

Cut off from everyone else, he said.

Already, now, she said, we're cut off.

They continued to talk, to plan. Outside the snow was blowing in billowy smoky gusts, the aftermath of some mythic cannon fire, its thunderous discharge silenced by the enormous soundproof windows. In the vast apartment nobody could hear anything going on in the room, nor see the gleams of reflected metallic-orange lamplight shooting like arrows from the faceted corners of the glass boxes in which the model ships waited out the storm.

When Patrizia came home Neva was sitting with Roman at his desk, helping him with his homework. He needed to get up from his chair every five minutes to throw a ball or check sports scores or go to the gun store in a video game. He was permitted these breaks and while he was taking them Neva would gaze out the window and make note of the progress of the snow, which was piled high now on the roofs of the townhouses across the street. Roman's room did not have a park view. It did have a climbing wall, a basketball hoop, built-in bookshelves, this desk with a globe that Roman never examined, a video-game console, a bed with embroidered linens, and many other objects strewn by Roman and rearranged by the housekeeper daily. The room was connected to Felix's bedroom by a shared bathroom, and the doors to the shared bathroom were open on either side and Neva could see Patrizia come into Felix's room and sit on his bed for a moment while he told her about the book he was reading. Neva could view part of Patrizia's figure through the doorways, her midheel mahogany-leather boots with their fashionable detailing, her understatedly luxurious skirt and sweater, her solar system of rings and bracelets and necklaces glinting in orbit around her.

Patrizia was listening as intently as she could, intelligently, animatedly, enjoying Felix's unexpected observations and arrestingly mature remarks, yet there was an anxiety that permeated her every expression, which gave her listening the quality of talking, as if she herself were the one reading the book and commenting on it, not Felix. The very enthusiasm of her reactions to him, her overeager responsiveness, her head-nodding appreciations, became less a reflection of him than a magnification of herself, although this was the last thing she consciously wanted to do. She wanted to love him in the way he needed to be loved, but always an unnatural eagerness to please him, or to please some invisible spectator, animated her face when she spoke to him. Was it his preternatural wisdom that intimidated her? Or his unself-conscious intellect? The unfortunate effect was one of isolation, mother and son separated by a distance neither one of them understood. It was easier for Patrizia to relate to Roman. When she entered his room through the bathroom she swept him into her arms and he wriggled away and she laughed and said something about her little savage and he smiled and the air was easy between them.

Patrizia and Neva chatted while Roman took one of his breaks. Patrizia mentioned Angel, the family's driver, and how he had told her just now in the car that he wanted to be a crane operator. He'd been learning how to do it.

Imagine that, dangling hundreds of feet above the sidewalk! said Patrizia. I'd be much happier driving a car.

Some people like to be high up, said Neva, looking out at the snow. Isn't he from Quito? Maybe it reminds him of the mountains.

I suppose so, said Patrizia. Anyway, I'm going to say something to Steve, see if he can find something for Angel.

Steve loves Angel. He loves to talk to him in the car.

I know. He'll miss him, said Patrizia.

Patrizia watched the snow out the window and lost herself for a moment in the churning wave of white, mesmerized by the way the flakes appeared to regenerate themselves in midair. In the middle of her life she seemed to be having not a crisis but an awakening. Things she had always ignored, blocked out, now rushed to the forefront of her mind like the spinning snow, like planets in the credit sequence of one of those blockbuster movies which her sons, or perhaps only Roman, enjoyed. She found herself noticing things, some beautiful, some ugly—the dreariest stores on the streets, ones with limp, frayed awnings; a dirty plastic spoon convulsing in a trash can; the grime washing up the reptilian sides of the white brick buildings on Third Avenue—that she had previously edited away. But now she did not have either the energy to look away or the desire. She wished she could say she wanted to take it all in, could proclaim that with age she had matured into a saintly sage with a compassionate approach to every sentient and nonsentient being. But she knew what was more likely: that time had depleted the urgent will to organize and edit her world. And so, the silver lining: she noticed more, took in a wider and deeper spectrum of experience.

Of course this had its pitfalls. What had been perfectly acceptable if somewhat dull swaths of life suddenly burst forth with vigor in a violently colorful manner, the way a puddle in the gutter can look at one moment blank and metallic and the next brilliantly aswirl with oily ribbons of pink and green and blue and orange, a pool of photo-filtered blood to jump over as you cross the street. These puddles were the blind spots that in her forties now bloomed with detail and discovery. She had never considered herself naïve, but people whom she had known for years and taken for trustworthy or at least mildly empathetic had turned out to be neither honest nor even decent. Individuals she had assumed were well meaning were not even nice. This wasn't paranoia on her part, more a belated understanding of human nature, something that others had known much earlier, while she had been, presumably, learning things that they hadn't. However, at times she suspected this might not have been the case. She might have just been naïve. Her ambition had convinced her and others that she had understood the world, but now she saw that she had only understood a tiny part of it. Now she saw more variety, more color, and more ugliness.

So she was not unaware that her husband had fallen deeply for Neva, that he was engaging in a romance with her, if not of the body, then of the mind, or of the heart, that is insofar as he had one, she thought, her foot kicking an invisible soccer ball as she bounced her ankle while she pondered the snow and her marriage. She was upset, jealous, angry, but at the same time unconcerned. This duality was made possible by her ability to compartmentalize and her extreme possessiveness. If he was a monster, at least he was her monster. She had no doubt of that. Whatever his feelings for Neva they were not the same as his feelings for his wife, Patrizia was sure of this. In her awakening she was discovering that nothing was black and white. It was all silvery gray, glinting, iridescent, like the puddles that held a multitude of color. If he was sleeping with Neva, who cared? If he was in love with her, who cared? Was he Neva's husband? No. He was hers. And he was not about to leave her because quite simply he appreciated what she had to offer, even if it was not a meeting of souls. He appreciated her proprietary confidence, her aristocratic entitlement. He actually admired it and felt affection for it. He never ceased to be amused by what she had thought was her sophistication but which he had always realized was her superficial materialism and charm, like a flouncing girl in a fairy tale. She was a prize to him, a possession. And in this way Patrizia possessed him too, more inextricably than the way she owned the boots on her feet and the jewelry at her neck. Or at least she owned a part of him.

This is what Patrizia saw, understood, accepted, and found solace in: that Neva could never be owned by Steve. And so therefore Neva could never own him.

Roman was thrusting and spinning around in the middle of the room, in between the two women, playing Wii.

Oh well, sighed Patrizia, he'll get over it. Angel's been driving that car for a long time. If he wants to do something else, Steve should let him.

Yes, said Neva, I'm sure he will.

So, Patrizia said, turning her gaze to Roman who was now kneeling and sliding and twisting, how is it going with the homework?

That night Neva had a series of dreams. In one of them she was running, in another drowning, in another she had entirely forgotten who she was and someone was expecting her to explain herself. When she woke up, tormented, sweaty, twitching, she had the feeling that there was something urgent she was required to do, but she did not know what it was and she had a deadline. Gradually, as her heart slowed and her mind settled and she returned to her bedroom, she began to piece together the events of the day and to recall what had transpired between her and Steve and to understand why she was in this state of panic and dread.

She could not still herself completely. No matter how deeply she breathed or how many times she told herself that she was safe at this moment and that in any future moment Steve would be looking out for her, she could not untangle the terrible, writhing, screaming pain that lived behind her heart and slightly toward the middle of her back, between her shoulder blades, like one of those tumors that grows nails and teeth, screeching and clawing and insisting that it be allowed to survive, to live, and even to burst through her skin in some grotesque hatching. One instant she pictured it as a deformed squirming creature and the next she felt unbearable pity for this desperate helpless thing. Her pain. She held it. It quieted. The shrieking subsided. It did not go away, but it quieted.