Black & White (25 page)

Clara does as her mother asks. She wraps the blanket around her shoulders.

“No, darling. Take off the jacket and your nightgown—”

That old feeling descends upon her. The numb floating—not altogether unpleasant, really. She can leave the shell of her body behind like those cicadas she’s seen littering the ground in Hillsdale. She can shrug out of her skin, the same way she now shrugs out of her denim jacket. She then—quickly, quickly, before she can form a thought about it—pulls her nightgown over her head. The June breeze hits her ribs, the soft flesh of her buttocks.

“Like this.” Ruth wraps the blanket around and around her. Mummifying her.

“I can’t move!”

“Let me help you.”

Ruth cradles Clara in her arms, then lowers her to the ground. The moist spring earth is cool and damp. Clara can feel it, even through the layers of the blanket.

Ruth takes a couple of steps back, frames the image with her hands.

“Beautiful,” she says quietly.

She works quickly now, setting up her tripod on a flat patch of grass. She knows exactly what time the moon will be at its fullest, setting in the western sky. There are no pole lights tonight, no generator running power through thick electrical wires. Just this: the enormous, yellow moon, bathing the park in its glow.

Clara tries to breathe. The blanket is tight—too tight. She concentrates on the moon, watching thin clouds drift across its face. When she was a little girl, she always used to be able to find the man in the moon. Now she doesn’t see him, no matter how she tries.

“Mommy, I feel bugs in my hair!”

She’s not just saying it, she really does feel something creepy and crawly, moving up the back of her neck. Her arms are trapped inside the cocoon of the blanket, so she can’t even reach up and swat whatever it is away.

“You’re just imagining it.” Ruth fiddles with the lens of her camera. “Don’t move, Clara. I have to take these pictures very, very slowly, so it’s important that you—”

“I’m not imagining it!”

This wasn’t Hillsdale either. This was the city—the place where huge rats darted across Broadway at dusk, where cockroaches scattered when she opened the kitchen cabinets late at night. Clara’s heart starts to pound against the wall of her chest.

“Mommy!”

“Okay!” Ruth is trying not to look mad. She strides over to where Clara lies and crouches down, combing her long fingers through Clara’s hair. She rubs the back of Clara’s neck, her touch more efficient than warm.

“Is that better?” she asks.

Clara nods. It is better. She takes a deep breath, tries to relax. She needs to find that floating, suspended feeling again. To lose herself entirely. Someday—when she is a grown woman with a little girl of her own—she will realize that she has never forgotten a single one of these moments. They are what remains of her childhood, a worn deck of cards that she can shuffle through, again and again. Here—under her mother’s lens—is where she is certain she exists. See? In the sharp outline of her pale body in the white blanket, set against the bed of leaves, the rough, knotted roots? This night happened.

“Keep completely still. Close your eyes, Clara.”

The shutter clicks. Something is tickling the inside of Clara’s nose, and she blows hard, trying to get rid of it.

“You moved!”

Clara opens her eyes.

“But you were finished taking the picture!”

“No, I wasn’t. I have to do this at an incredibly slow speed. Each shot takes four or five seconds, because of the light.” Ruth shakes her head, as if irritated at having to explain. “Let’s try again.”

She walks over to Clara, moves her legs a bit to the side. She musses up Clara’s long dark hair, then places a few strands across her cheek.

“There, that’s better. A bit askew.”

“What’s askew?”

“Never mind.”

Clara closes her eyes again. She tries every trick she knows to stay still. She counts backward from one hundred, slowly, inserting
Mississippi
between each number. She hears the shutter click once, twice. The sound of her mother turning the ring around the camera’s wide, fat lens.

“Now turn your head the other way, sweetie,” her mother says. “Perfect—now stay just like that.”

Seventy-four, Mississippi.
She’s having a hard time floating away—weighed down by the blanket, the way that her arms are pressed to her sides and her legs are stuck together.
Seventy-three, Mississippi.
How long can she do this before she explodes? That’s what her body feels like—something ticking. A time bomb. Her blood is raging, her heart thrumming like a small, frightened animal’s.
Seventy-two, Mississippi.
She can’t do this for another second—she just can’t.

Her eyes fly open. Her mother is towering over the tripod, a shadowy figure lit from behind by the moon.
Mommy,
she starts to say. But then the moon starts spinning in the sky—the whole park fragmented, like the inside of a kaleidoscope—and Clara begins writhing, trying to free herself from the blanket.

“Clara!”

“Get this thing off of me!” Clara screams.

“Okay, sweetie, okay—calm down—”

“I can’t calm down!”

She’s screaming and screaming now. Lights turn on in the apartments just across Riverside Drive, the outlines of people peering out their windows.

Ruth unwraps the blanket, her hands shaking.

“Jesus, Clara, stop. Somebody’s going to call the police—”

“I don’t care!”

Maybe Clara’s Angels will come. She’s never met any of them, these strangers who have decided she needs defending. Maybe one of them will swoop down from the night sky, gossamer wings flapping madly, hoping to save her.

“Here, put this on. Quick.” Ruth pulls Clara’s nightgown over her head.

For the first time in her life, Clara senses her mother’s fear. Ruth’s whole face is tight, her eyebrows knitted together. She hands Clara her denim jacket, then closes up the camera bag. Her hands are still trembling.

“My God, Clara, you didn’t have to—you could have just—”

Clara is beyond hearing her. The screams have died down, but now she can’t stop crying. Ruth hoists all her equipment onto one shoulder, then holds Clara’s hand, half dragging her away from the park.

In the distance, a siren. The flashing red and blue lights of a police car racing down 78th Street. Ruth grips Clara’s hand more tightly. The car stops at the corner, just as they’re crossing Riverside, and a young cop rolls down his window.

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

“Yes, officer?”

Never has Clara heard her mother sound quite so obedient.

“There was a report of some screaming—a child screaming?”

The officer looks at Clara, her long hair matted to her wet cheeks.

“Is everything okay, ma’am?”

“Absolutely,” Ruth says. “Thank you.”

The officer is still staring at Clara. He’s not sure whether to stay or go. Is the red-faced girl in front of him the one who was screaming? Is he missing something? Or is there a terrible thing happening—right now—deep inside Riverside Park?

“What’s your name?” the officer asks.

It takes a few seconds for Clara to realize.

“Me?” She points to her chest.

“Yes, you.”

“Clara.” Less than a whisper.

“Clara, are you all right?”

She can feel a pulse beating in her mother’s hand. She thinks—in quick succession—of her father in London, her sleeping sister at home, Clara’s Angels hovering above her like wispy clouds in the darkness. Does she even think it?
I could ruin everything.

“Yes,” she says more strongly. “I’m fine.”

“Okay then,” the officer says. His window glides up, cutting him off from them as he engages his siren again—the sound makes Ruth jump—screeches around the corner, and up toward the park’s entrance.

E
ACH DAY
, as the dawn light filters through the east-facing windows over Broadway, Clara has a moment—a split second—of wondering:
Where am I?
A curiosity that quickly turns into a vague but unmistakable nausea. She hasn’t felt sick to her stomach with such regularity since she was pregnant with Sam.

She shifts on the sofa and opens her eyes. Sunlit beams of dust hang in the air, as if from a movie projector. A thin film covers everything. The coffee table, the piles of art books, the ornate black fireplace mantel—all are slightly gray. She looks across the living room at Jonathan and Sam, sprawled on the futons they bought at Laytner’s Linens the day they got to New York.
The only way we’re sleeping here,
Clara had said at the time,
is if we’re sleeping together.
And so together they’ve slept, for three nights running now. Ever since Rochelle, the hospice nurse, made it perfectly clear that Ruth could not—under any circumstances—be left alone.

“She’ll try to get out of bed herself,” Rochelle had said. “She won’t follow instructions.”

“And so?” Robin had asked Rochelle. “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Squinting into her BlackBerry. Multitasking.

“The worst thing that could happen? Okay. Well, she could fall. Break a rib. Break a hip. Be lying on the floor all night, with no way of—”

“All right,” Clara quickly interrupted. “We’ll call the agency. Ask them to send someone over for the evening shift.”

“Mom’s not going to go for that,” Robin said flatly. “No way.”

“Well, what do you think we should do?”

Robin looked up from her BlackBerry.

“I don’t know, Clara. Here’s a radical idea—why don’t
you
decide?”

“Hey,” Jonathan said. “Is that really necessary? Everyone’s a little tense here. Can’t we just—”

“Sorry,” Robin said. “But honestly, I’ve had it.”

She pushed back into her chair, then rummaged through her purse.

“Where’s my goddamned lipstick?” she asked. Her head was bent forward, her mouth tight. She looked as if she might cry.

Maybe Peony can
—the words lodged themselves in Clara’s throught.
No. That’s not right.

“We’ll stay,” Clara said quietly.

Jonathan and Sammy both looked at her.

“Really?” Jonathan asked, hesitant. “Honey, are you sure you want to?”

Clara looked at him, the wall behind her eyes crumbling into nothing.

“There’s no choice,” she said. Finally—it was oddly liberating—no choice.

Sam stirs on her futon. An arm thrown over her eyes, blocking the light. She’s been sleeping soundly every one of the three nights they’ve been here. Sleeping better, eating better. She is—Clara has to admit—a happier child. A weight lifted. A heaviness, an emptiness, gone. Clara hadn’t understood this; she still doesn’t entirely understand it. How could Sam have felt the absence of something she hadn’t even known existed? How could a secret have gathered so much power over the years, rolling into every corner of their lives, gaining strength and velocity with each passing day? And worst of all, how could Clara not have seen it?

“Good morning.” Jonathan sits up, rubbing a hand over his face. He’s wearing his one pair of striped pajamas; Clara’s not used to seeing him like this. At home he sleeps in the nude.

“Hey.” She stands and stretches.

Sam’s still out cold.

He comes over to her and pulls her close. She can feel his heart beating. He smells different, away from the materials of his work. Guest bath soap, Ruth’s old shampoo, the lemony scent of laundry detergent.

“Do you know something?” He speaks softly.

They haven’t had five minutes alone since they got here.

“What?”

“I’m proud of you.”

She pulls back, looks at him.

“Don’t be.” The room is suddenly blurry. “I fucked up completely.”

“No. You didn’t. You’re fixing it. Our being here—it’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that, Jon.” Tears are falling freely now. She swipes at them. It’s too early in the day. If she starts crying now, where will she go from here?