Invisible Boy (2 page)

I
t was Sue who’d found our apartment originally, back when she was still a film student at NYU. I’d known her since boarding
school when she’d walked up and introduced herself to me one September morning because we were both class presidents that
year—her freshman and me junior, respectively. I’d asked her to look out for my little sister when Pagan came east with me
to join Sue’s class the following year.

The apartment was a prewar two-bedroom in Chelsea—West Sixteenth between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, no doorman. Sue now hustled
her ass off shouting into phones for a production company that made TV commercials, uptown, which taught her how to wring
maximum juice from the city on our pooled crappy paychecks.

She briefed us on who had the best Chinese delivery (Empire Szechuan Greenwich,
not
Empire Szechuan Village, though they were a mere block apart), the best bagels (H&H), and the closest place we could get
same-day dry-cleaning without paying extra if we showed up by seven and made nice with the counter lady.

Pagan and Sue shared the smaller bedroom, and when they’d needed new roommates in June, my husband, Dean, and I had schlepped
down from the Berkshires.

We’d come to New York hoping he’d get into a management-training program with the Transit Authority. He’d done contract work
on the subways during his Upstate youth, but to garner a permanent gig it turned out you needed an Uncle Vinnie in the union.
So now I was taking book-catalog phone orders while Dean sent out résumés and did odd carpentry jobs for our friends’ bosses
and parents around the city.

There was money to be made for any likely young man with a power drill, given the stunning proportion of shop-class flunkees
amongst Manhattan’s well-heeled—one guy even paid him fifty bucks to hook up a VCR—but the gigs weren’t exactly leading toward
anything Dean wanted to be when he grew up.

And then there was the whole bored-boomer-wives-ogling-the-strapping-young-blond-guy-in-coveralls routine, which didn’t sit
any too well with me despite my intrepid spouse’s continued reassurance that, say, being met at the door of a strange apartment
by some fifty-year-old StairMaster-fiend wrapped in nothing but a bedsheet left him rather more embarrassed than titillated.

I was explaining all this to Mom as I followed her into the lobby of our building.

“Not a
fitted
sheet, I hope,” she said, as we reached the stairs.

“Dean didn’t specify,” I said. “Except to say it had cartoon trains on it so he figured it was from her son’s room.”

“Trains? Good God… hardly seems as though she was even trying, does it?”

Mom laughed, but the idea of my marriage being even vaguely at risk made me dizzy with angst. Dean was my refuge, the bulwark
of my very sanity.

“That still means it was a
twin
sheet,” I said, my voice echoing in the stairwell as we climbed upward. “So she wasn’t exactly, like, swamped in fabric.”

My mother shrugged. “Probably didn’t have the figure for a negligee.”

“Way to be maternal, Mom.”

Having been raised in a landscape of divorce-shattered families, I considered matrimony a construct of gossamer fragility—equal
parts swan’s down, lighter fluid, and willing suspension of disbelief.

Mom and I had reached the landing and I opened our apartment’s front door, following her into its narrow front hallway.

“I’ll just put the cake in your icebox,” she said, ducking around a half-dozen trays jammed with the tiny paper cups from
Sue’s dentist that awaited vodka-spiked liquid for the evening’s Jell-O shots.

I thanked her for buying the cake, which I hadn’t expected, and wandered toward the living room.

Pagan and Sue were rolling on a second coat of the paint we’d picked out that morning at Janovic, up near Twenty-third, Sue
precarious on the top rail of a stepladder, Pague balanced all nonchalant on one thin arm of the hideous seventies-Danish-tweed
sofa that had been gleefully abandoned by the previous tenants.

A stranger would’ve pegged me and Sue as the sisters. We weren’t each other’s long-lost secret twins or anything, but we both
had green eyes, darkish blonde hair, and beaky noses.

My actual sibling, meanwhile, was brunette like Mom and looked straight out of Gauguin, had the man ever happened to paint
the girl’s All-Tahiti soccer captain carrying her surfboard down the beach.

“I still can’t believe we chose this stupid color,” said Pagan, pushing a lock of hair off her forehead. “‘Desert Blossom’
my ass.”

I considered the rancid pink-orange walls. “More like ‘St. Joseph’s Baby Acid.’ ”

“Pepto-peach ass-baby,” said Sue. “But it looked
totally
apricot back at the store.”

“
Ass
-baby?” said Pagan. “What the hell is an
ass
-baby?”

“Fuck off,” said Sue.

Mom stepped into the room and squinted at the glare. “Did you guys take the paint chip outside and look at it in the sunshine?
They probably had fluorescent lights.”

“Maybe it will fade?” I asked.

Mom shook her head. “Reminds me of the time I tried dyeing the turnips blue for Thanksgiving. Complete disaster.”

“That
was
nasty,” I said. “Crème de la hippo.”

“Crème de la hippo
shit
, more like,” said Pagan.

Sue stepped down off the ladder for a re-dip in the paint tray just as a car alarm went off outside. The shock of noise made
her drop the roller, splattering fat plops of orange up the legs of her jeans.

“Fucking yuppies,” she yelled over the flamenco yelps and Bronx cheers. “I’m practically ready to bash in
all
their windshields just to get it over with.”

The noise died down and Mom looked around the room. “Keep the lights dim tonight.”

“And you’d better put extra vodka in the Jell-O shots,” said Pagan, pointing at me. “This is like meeting your hangover before
you even start drinking.”

Dean rang up from out front, needing help wrangling the keg and a case of Smirnoff upstairs. Sue buzzed him in and propped
the front door open.

The elevator dinged a minute later, and Dean walked a hand truck backwards down our narrow entry hall, ducking his golden
head a reflexive inch to pass beneath the living-room doorway’s lintel.

At six-five, my strapping farmboy spouse was scaled too large for city life. We were lucky to have this much space—a studio
apartment would’ve felt like sharing a starter aquarium with Godzilla.

I trailed my fingers along his hip as he wheeled past, which made him turn toward me and grin.

“Hey, Bunny,” he said.

“Hey back.”

Then he saw the new living-room color and winced. “Don’t tell me—All-You-Can-Eat Peyote Day up at the paint store?”

I helped him muscle the keg into a dryish corner. “Nah, we figured it’d be cheaper to shove Oompa Loompas through a woodchipper.”

“Hardy har
har
,” said Pagan, climbing down off the sofa.

“I may have just contracted a new disease,” said Dean, shading his eyes with one hand.

“What?” I asked.

“Sno-Kone blindness.”

“Fuck,”
said Sue. “We forgot
ice
.”

“I should get going,” said Mom. “It’s a long way back up to Maine.”

“You sure we can’t convince you to stay for the party?” I asked.

“I’ve been invited to crew in a regatta tomorrow,” she said, “on a Hinckley.”

Only those with suicidal tendencies dare stand between my mother and a boat. She’d been, like, the Mario Andretti of sailing—even
winning the Women’s Nationals immediately after marrying my father.

Dad sat out their honeymoon on the beach at Coronado. Mom made
Sports Illustrated
. The woman is still so psycho-competitive on the water that by fourth grade I’d joined Pony Club in self-defense.

Pagan’s the yachty kid, along with our baby half-brother, Trace. But Pague and Mom are the only ones who still routinely bet
each other a hundred bucks to see who can tie a bowline faster. I credit this to my sister being named after Mom’s first boat,
a Snipe she’d sunk off Cooper’s Bluff in Oyster Bay trying to ride out a sudden squall in 1957.

Trace had traded in sailing for surfing, now that he was living with his dad on Oahu and trying to graduate from the fourth
high school he’d attended in as many years.

I kissed Mom’s cheek.

“Wear sunscreen,” I said, “and don’t scare the lobsters.”

Pague and I walked her to the door.

Mom glanced back at us from the top of the stairwell.

“Talk to strangers!” she said, twinkling her fingers in farewell.

Sue and I had just finished pouring the final tray of Jell-O shots when Dean joined us in the kitchen.

“I’m taking dinner votes,” he said. “So far we’ve got one for Benny’s Burritos and one for Indian delivery.”

“I
hate
Indian!” yelled Pagan from the living room.

“Philistine!” Dean yelled back.

“Let’s do pizza,” I said. “I’m totally broke.”

“I’m down with pizza,” said Sue. “We want delivery?”

“Let’s walk it,” said Dean. “We can just get slices.”

“Cool.” I picked up the finished Jell-O tray and shouldered the freezer open.

Sue shook her head. “Not enough room in there.”

“Sure there is,” I said. “Just grab that thing of Bustelo.”

She snaked an arm past me to pull the yellow coffee can clear. “Still not gonna fit. No fucking way.”

“Way,”
I said. “Five bucks.”

Sue took my wager with a nod. “Sucker bet.”

I raised the tray to eye level, then tilted it with care—two inches down toward the right. Syrupy Jell-O flowed toward the
lip of each little paper mouthwash-cup, bulging but not spilling over.

I slid the tray slowly home, its upper left edge shaving a pinstripe of whiskered frost from the freezer ceiling.

“Son of a
bitch
,” said Sue.

“Surface tension,” I replied, closing the freezer door. “Kiss my ass and buy me dinner.”

I may lack the nautical gene, but don’t ever play me for money.

The party was roaring by nine o’clock that night. Somebody’d brought a strobe light, and we had a little vintage Funkadelic
cued up on the CD player, “Maggot Brain” throbbing out our open windows into the sultry-for-September night. There was a gaggle
of people doing bong hits on the fire escape, and dozens more smashed up against each other in the living room, hallway, kitchen,
and both bedrooms.

I’d just made the circuit back from the bathroom and was now stationed next to the front door, cold beer in hand. Not like
I had to drive home, but six Jell-O shots was nearing the limit, even for me.

Sue’s friend Mike buzzed up from the lobby, and I held the door open for him, sticking my head out into the cooler, quieter
air of our second-story hallway.

His blond head soon bobbed up behind the staircase’s horizon, and I watched the rest of his skinny frame bounce into view,
a foot at a time, until he’d stepped onto the landing’s chipped and gritty tiny-hexagonal-tile floor.

“Madeline,” he said, “I think I just got mugged in your vestibule.”

“Um, Mike? How could you not
know
?”

He smiled up at the ceiling fixture. “This guy at work had some great acid. So it’s, like, entirely possible that I just hallucinated
the whole thing?”

“Do you still have your wallet?” I asked.

He patted his jacket pockets, then checked his jeans, fore and aft.

“It’s gone,” he said, grinning even wider. “What a relief!”

“Dude, your pupils are like Frisbees,” I said.

He pointed at my red plastic cup. “Hey, is that a beer?”

“Last time I checked.”

“Would you share some with me?”

“If you come in, you can have one of your very own.”

He patted me on the shoulder. “I’m
so
glad I know you.”

I took his hand and led him gently inside.

Sue stood in the kitchen doorway, and the music was even louder.

I leaned toward her, yelling “Mike’s tripping and he just got mugged and I think he needs help finding the keg” about a foot
away from her ear.

“I’ll take care of it,” she yelled back.

“Keep him away from the Jell-O,” I said, just as the living-room speakers boomed out A Tribe Called Quest chanting “Mr. Dinkins
will you please be my May-or?”

Sue gave me a thumbs-up and propelled Mike toward the living room.

The buzzer went off again and I didn’t bother trying to identify the persons at the other end of the intercom before pushing
the button to let them in.

If it was the muggers, we could all jump them and get Mike’s wallet back, worst case.

Luckily, it was instead my college pal Sophia and a friend she’d called about bringing along for the evening.

Scarlet-lipped Sophia leaned forward to hug me hello, her mass of dark curls tickling my cheek.

“This is Cate Ludlam!” she yelled near my ear. “The one I told you about! Your cousin!”

I dragged them both into the kitchen. Cate introduced herself again, holding out her hand to shake. She was a little older
and a touch shorter than me, with straight brown hair and eyes that made me think of Edith Piaf.

“Sophia thinks we might be related,” I exclaimed over some newly blasting B-52s song.

Cate shrugged her shoulders and smiled, pointing to one ear. The B-52s chanted, “
What’s
that on your
head
? A
wig
!”

I closed the kitchen door. We could still feel the thump of the bassline, but at least the overall decibel-age had dropped
from “skin-blistering” to a mere “painfully loud.”

“That’s
so
much better,” I said, pulling a fresh tray of Jell-O shots from the freezer and offering them around.

I said
L’chaim
and we each tossed one back.

“What were you asking just now?” asked Cate.

“Whether the two of you might be cousins,” said Sophia, passing Cate a second little paper cup before taking one herself.

“One of my middle names is Ludlam,” I explained. “After my great-grandmother.”