Brood (3 page)

T
oby has parked the Town Car in an underground garage a couple of blocks from the apartment where he and his crew are living, and now, as he walks slowly up Riverside Drive, he tears up the parking stub—it's a stolen car, after all, and he has no intention of reclaiming it. What is he, stupid? He is in no hurry to return to the apartment and face Rodolfo's fury over his failure to deliver the twins. (Everyone in the crew knows that Rodolfo is fucking obsessed with little Alice, though Toby for the life of him can't figure what he sees in her—she basically looks like her brother, chest and butt included.) There is no question that Rodolfo is going to be mad. The only real question is what he will do to Toby. You never knew with R. Sometimes he was totally cool about things and did not hold himself above you, did not judge, and just went with the flow. And then other times he was totally insane and you'd end up getting shoved against a wall or slapped in the face, and once two guys had even been kicked out of the apartment, kicked out of the crew, and were left to make it on their own, and no one knows what happened to either Ulysses or Menachem; maybe they were dead, maybe they were somewhere in Central Park or upstate or—you never knew—living large in the Hamptons, sleeping in the scrub oak forests during the high season and maybe squatting in some mansion when summer was over and all the princes and princesses were back in Manhattan.

The sky is full of little clouds, like sailboats in a harbor. Toby stops to look. Usually the New York sky didn't have those puffy little clouds; usually it was just one color or another. A long alligator-shaped cloud was chasing a bunch of lamb-shaped clouds due north, straight up the Hudson.
Come on, guys, book,
thought Toby, urging on the little clouds.

When he lowers his eyes, he sees a man walking toward him. Tall. Mushroom-colored. Maybe thirty years old. Lonely-loser type. Short dark hair spiked out in all directions, greased up and shiny in the sunlight. He wears black pants, belted high, and a Yankees T-shirt that looks as if it were being worn for the first time. He carries a beat-up black book—maybe a Bible?

Toby can tell by the way the guy moves he isn't just out for a stroll. He looks as if he is walking right over to Toby—and in this, Toby is right.

“Good morning,” the man says. He stands on the sidewalk close to Toby.

A couple of child-care workers walk by, pushing strollers and speaking to each other in Spanish. Toby and the man make room for them, stepping off the sidewalk for a moment.

“May I show you something?” the man asks.

“If it's you's junk, me kill you,” promises Toby.

The man smiles. His teeth are small and lusterless, perhaps from a vitamin deficiency.

“Something much more interesting,” the man says. He seems to have some kind of accent, and then a moment later he seems not to. The man holds up the black book.

It's not a Bible after all. Thank God for that! But on closer inspection, Toby sees that it's a photo album, chock-full of plastic pages. Is this guy going to show him some gross picture?

“Me's not interested,” Toby says. He pushes past him.

“Oh, you will be,” the man says. “I promise you that.” He stops Toby, grabs his upper arm.

Toby wonders:
Does this guy even have a clue that I could tear him to shreds?
He yanks his arm away and is surprised at the strength of the man's grip—not strong enough to hold Toby still but a lot stronger than Toby would have guessed.

“What kind of pictures?” Toby asks. The guy's got him curious. And Toby is in no hurry to get back to the apartment.

“Family photos,” the man says. He pronounces it strangely—“pho-toes,” with a long pause between syllables. “Here, look, just this one.” He opens the book, pages through it while humming softly. “Yes. Here. This is interesting.”

Still holding the book, the man shows Toby a page of slightly faded snapshots, the colors gone soft and blurry, a world of melted crayons. They are pictures of a man and a woman in an office of some sort—a medical office, judging by the poster of a skinless figure illustrating the human circulatory system. The man has a widow's peak, sunken eyes, a long nose. He looks supremely uncomfortable. The woman has a young, rather melancholy face and a graying ponytail. She is shapeless, as are her clothes.

“How'd you get these?” Toby asks. He clears his throat.

“You are recognizing them?” the man asks.

“Yeah. Me's mommy and daddy.” Toby reaches out as if to touch them but thinks better of it, withdraws his hand.

“And what about this?” the man asks, turning the page. Here there is a photo of the couple, the man with a beard, the woman exhausted and leaning on a cane, both of them looking very much the worse for wear, standing in front of the Museum of Modern Art with a four-year-old boy between them, holding their hands.

For a moment, Toby is unable to speak. His eyes mist over. He clears his throat again, dries the corners of his mouth with his knuckle. “Little man cub,” he whispers. “Taken back in the day when me's not scared yet.” The look of pain on his face suddenly turns to suspicion and anger. “Who's you? Why you's going around with snaps of me's old folks at home?”

“Would you like to have it? For a memento, a keepsake?”

Toby would like to have that picture of him standing between his parents, but he is reluctant to say so. It's been four years since he's seen them. He's not even certain they are alive. They were living on the edge last he knew; they could be anywhere, in California, six feet under, or just across town. Yet he cannot altogether refuse the man's offer. His hand remains suspended, hovering over the photo album.

“Would you like to know how I have this?”

“Because you's a fucking pervert?”

“No. I'm a man of science who works with other men and women of science. Come. We'll find a bench across the road in Riverside Park. We'll sit and you'll hear the story.”

He pats Toby on the back, rather hard, between the shoulder blades, as they cross Riverside Drive.

Toby feels a stinging, a nasty little pinch, where the man patted him. He reacts for a moment, but as quickly as the little twizzle of pain appeared, it vanishes. He looks over his shoulder, making certain they are not too close to his apartment. The last thing he needs is for Rodolfo or any of the crew to look out the window of their rambling nineteenth-floor apartment, with its views of Riverside Park and the Hudson River, and see him sitting on a bench with some stranger when everyone has been waiting for Toby to deliver Alice and her brother.

“Let's walk a little bit this way,” Toby says, turning south and indicating a bench a hundred feet away.

The noise from the West Side Highway sounds like a gigantic angry hornet.

They pass a chubby old man in shorts walking a dog that strains at the leash and visually checks each tree for squirrels. That little painful spot between Toby's shoulder blades starts to act up again. It is devilishly placed so he can't reach it no matter what angle he comes at it from. At last, with much straining and twisting, he manages to touch the sore spot with one fingertip. It's wet! He quickly pulls his hand out of his shirt and checks his finger, wondering if he'll find blood. But no. The wetness is like tears, devoid of color.

Maybe me's popped a pimple, he thinks. He sniffs his fingertip. Weird smell, a bit like burning rubber. Oh, well. The pain has subsided…

They sit on a bench, their backs to the Hudson, the apartment houses of Riverside Drive lined up like massive gravestones in front of them, and the man makes himself comfortable, laces his fingers behind his neck, crosses his ankles.

“First, Toby, Toby Whitaker, let me tell you my name. My name is Dennis Keswick. I work for a company called Borman and Davis. We are a bioengineering company and we are very, very interested in special young men and women like yourself.”

“Weird,” notes Toby. He tells himself,
Get up,
but his brain seems to be speaking a different language than his legs.

“There is—or was—a doctor in Europe, in Slovenia, actually, who made it possible for you to be born.”

“Me's know this,” Toby says. His voice is muffled, as if it must make its way through layers of gauze.

“Good for you, Toby. You're a smart lad.”

“Me's not smart,” Toby says, lowering his eyes.

“Of course you are. You're just…unique. And we want to find out just how unique. You understand? That doctor used a formula to help your parents conceive. His fee was very high, and the procedure was painful, so we must assume that your parents tried every known fertility treatment in the world before seeing him.” Keswick pauses, pats Toby's leg. “It must be quite wonderful to be so wanted. In my little life, it was not the case. My father never wanted a child; in other words, he did not want me.” Keswick's laugh has all the merriment of gravel being shaken in a tin can. “But my mother resisted his entreaties to abort. She was a good Catholic girl. And a punching bag for an ignorant baboon.”

“Me's can't get up,” Toby murmurs.

“Yes, I am sorry about that.”

“What did you do to me?” He twists his arm and reaches to touch his back, but the movement is awkward, exhausting, and he gives up after a couple of tries. “You stuck me.”

Keswick smiles, nods approvingly. “Smart boy; you don't take all day to put two and two together.”

Again, Toby tries in vain to stand up.

“Don't be upset,” Keswick says, almost crooning. “You're about to make a great contribution to science.”

“Me's not liking science,” Toby says, barely audible.

“Oh, it's good to make a contribution.” Keswick lowers his hand to his book of photographs, as if he is being sworn in before testifying in court. “My rocky beginnings—well, they prevented me from excelling in school, and by the time I was your age, it was already too late for me to go to MIT or Stanford and receive the kind of education someone needs to compete in the world today. The men I work for—and women, by the way, women too—they're geniuses. I don't dispute that. But they have also been the recipients of untold advantages. Oh, well, we do what we can. Isn't that right? And now it's your turn. It should make you feel good, Toby. Because up until now, let's face it, your life has been meaningless. I know how you live. I know where you live. I know what you do to stay alive.”

“You don't know shit,” Toby says, but without much conviction.

“You sell your blood. That's very foolish, you know. You can get in trouble.”

“We's already in a lot of trouble. Rodolfo says you can't drown a fish.” Toby dries the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Those two you were giving a ride to today, Toby. The twins. Alice and Adam.”

Toby looks at him blankly.

“We'd like to work with them. They are of particular interest to us.”

Toby shrugs, looks away.

“It's okay. We know where they are going. We'll see what we can do to convince them to help us out.”

“What you's wanting?”

“Everything, Toby. Everything. Bloodwork. DNA. Psychological testing. Anything that will give us the means to duplicate what makes you all so special. Fountain of youth? Maybe. Fertility? Well, that's already been demonstrated. Whatever it is that you kids have in you—it makes testosterone look like a cup of weak tea.” He runs his fingers over the back of Toby's hand.

“No.”

“For a boy with such a rich beard, you're not very hairy elsewhere, are you,” Keswick says. “Your hands are smooth. Your arms—not too bad. How about your legs?” He reaches down, yanks the cuff of Toby's pants, lifts it. Dark down covers the shin, not remarkably different from what you'd expect on a teenage boy. “Good! You may be very important to our research.”

“Me's feel like crap,” Toby manages to say. He reaches back, runs his hand over the top of a large bush behind the bench. His hand clenches, and he pulls several little leaves off the bush, each delicate one the size of a mouse ear. In an attempt to revive himself, he shakes his head vigorously and tries to stand up, but his legs refuse to cooperate. Everything within him—his blood, his breathing, his thoughts—seems to be going slower and slower and slower and slower. Except for his heart, which is pounding with fear, racing as if it wants to outrun and escape his failing body. “Hey, me's needing some help here.” He takes hold of Keswick's wrist.

“Hang in there, son. Your ride's here.” As Keswick says this, he gestures to a battered white van parked at the curb. By all appearances, it's a van belonging to a plumbing contractor. It says
Watertight Plumbing
on the side, and there is a drawing of a faucet with a single drop of water leaking from it.

Keswick hoists Toby up and half drags him to the back of the van. “We're going to fix you right up, son,” he says. “You don't have a thing to worry about.”

D
inner. Cynthia was certain she could cook to the taste of any twelve-year-old, but cooking to the taste of a twelve-year-old who is certain that calories will trigger puberty, and puberty might be the beginning of some practically unimaginable beastliness—that's a whole other matter. She prepares what she hopes is an irresistible meal for the twins in her new, astonishing kitchen—so spacious, so well stocked with everything and anything a semi-ambitious amateur cook could desire. First of all, her signature popovers, simultaneously buttery and light. Burgers grilled. Her own variation of macaroni and cheese, with an herbed bread-crumb crust. Fresh-made lemonade. Cookies from a nearby bakery—at thirty-five dollars a pound, they had better be
legendary
cookies!

The twins sit uncertainly in front of their plates. Their napkins are on their laps. Their hair is brushed, their faces scrubbed, they look obedient, compliant, painfully well behaved. She wants to tell them,
Relax! You're home!
But—as they say in the Rooms—one day at a time.

“Dig in, kids,” she says. She hears the excess of gaiety in her voice and reminds herself to keep things light. To a child, all adult emotions are outsize. Adjusting what you project so as to be tolerable to a young psyche means bringing the intensity down several notches, like an actor going from the stage to the screen—what worked on Broadway seems like pulling faces and shouting at the multiplex.

The twins put exceedingly modest amounts of food on their plates, leaving the platter of burgers untouched.

“This is really good,” Adam says, taking a cautious nibble at one macaroni.

“This looks like a hat,” Alice says, holding the popover.

“Careful,” Cynthia says, “it might be hot.”

Alice shrugs, as if nothing could be of less concern.

“Are those meat?” Adam asks.

“The ones on the left are regular hamburgers,” Cynthia says. “The ones on the right are chopped-up veggies. I heard you guys talking about maybe becoming vegetarian.”

“Yeah, we might,” says Alice.

“Animal rights,” calls out Adam, holding up his fist as if he were at a PETA demonstration.

“I guess I should do that too,” Cynthia says. “How would that be? I have plenty of vegetarian recipes. San Francisco, where I used to live? A lot of people there don't eat meat. It's probably the wave of the future.”

The twins look at each other uncertainly.

“I guess that would be okay,” Adam says finally.

“Do you look like our mother?” Alice asks, breaking the popover into pieces, letting them fall onto her plate.

“She was a little younger,” Cynthia says. She has been preparing for quite some time for questions about Leslie, but suddenly, faced with the reality of the children and the nearly palpable sense that in each frail chest beats a severely broken heart, she is at a loss for what to say. “She was very pretty. You both have her looks.”

“You're pretty too,” Adam says.

“Oh, everyone always said your mother was the one who got the looks. I was the studious one. But thank you, Adam. It's very nice of you.”

“So, do you?” asks Alice.

“Look like Leslie? Oh, I suppose so. Similar height. Similar build. She had redder hair. And those eyes.”

“What eyes?” There is a lightning strike of alarm in Alice's voice. And it reminds Cynthia: the children's most recent memories of Leslie's eyes are probably terrifying—eyes blazing with animal hunger.

“Emerald green, flecked with gold,” Cynthia softly says.
How to change the subject?
“Oh, kids, I almost forgot. I made lemonade. Fresh lemonade.”

In the kitchen, Cynthia takes the pitcher of lemonade out of the Sub-Zero fridge. She sets it on the counter and takes a deep, steadying breath. The smallness of those children, their startling skinniness, their helplessness, their aloneness. Her own love for them is suddenly so bright a flame that it burns away even the pity, leaving only love's purest ember.

She gathers herself. They don't need to see their new mother with weepy eyes and a red nose. Once upon a time, she would have suppressed this rush of emotion with a stiff drink, and now, as has been her habit for years, she thanks God for her sobriety. She is here. She is present and accounted for. She has embarked on the greatest journey of her life.

When she walks back into the dining room, the twins' chairs are empty. They must have left just a few seconds ago. She can hear their little footsteps scurrying up the stairs.

Cynthia is in her bedroom, which used to be her sister and brother-in-law's bedroom and which Cynthia initially had not wanted to make her own. But in this sixteen-room house of four levels, with a library, three parlors, a game room, and enough sleeping quarters to accommodate fourteen people, it is still the best bedroom, with plenty of sunlight in the daytime yet angled in such a way as to protect it from street noises at night—New York is not only the city that never sleeps but also, she has come to realize, the city that doesn't want you to sleep either. It's a city that would like you to keep it company during its endless insomnia. The master bedroom is an airy, spacious room, majestic, really, with a white marble fireplace, parqueted floor in a starburst pattern, and, the one modern touch, a huge, hedonistic bathroom with a steam shower, a Jacuzzi, heated towel racks, and full-length mirrors that must have broken Leslie's heart to look in after those fertility treatments wrecked her once-beautiful body.

Like all old houses, the town house on East Sixty-Ninth Street speaks its language of thumps and twitters and creaks and squeaks, especially at night. It takes getting used to. If you let yourself get frightened by all the odd noises, you'd never have a moment of peace. It's a little after eleven at night, and they've lived here for a week.

A full moon sails over the spires of Manhattan, almost unreal in its brightness and perfection, and it seems to pause for a while to send its cold silver light through the slats of the shutters on Cynthia's bedroom windows. Cynthia, wearing an old T-shirt and underpants, sits yogi-style in the middle of her bed, sipping from the tumbler of Saratoga water. She sips, swallows, and listens, wondering if the twins are sleeping. They had both been in foster homes where bedtimes were early and inflexible, and Cynthia had expected them to celebrate their homecoming and their new freedoms by staying up late and keeping to a helter-skelter schedule.

But they seem creatures of habit, and as the grandfather clock in the second-floor parlor strikes ten each evening, they are already making their way up the stairs to the third floor. And how deeply they sleep! Every day, they sleep later. It seems the more comfortable they become, the more tired they are. They are like travelers who have been waiting to come home, yearning like sailors on a distant sea.

And now they are home. To Cynthia's surprise, they both insisted on sleeping in their old rooms—Cynthia would have guessed they would rather have slept on the porch or the roof than spend a night in rooms into which they'd once been locked (night after night after night) and from which they had once been forced to escape. But no, they wanted their old rooms back, and that's where they are sleeping right now.

She places her water glass on the bedside table and picks up her journal and her old Montblanc ballpoint.

Three times in her life, Cynthia has kept a journal. The first was when she was ten years old and her father disappeared, never to return. She wrote in her diary for a few weeks, but she was so consumed by the worry that either her mother or her sister would find it and read it that she wrote the entire thing in code, and the code itself was so complicated that even she couldn't really understand what she had written.

The second time she kept a journal was many years later when Gary Ziltron, her boyfriend at the time and her partner in Gilty Pleasures, also disappeared. But whereas her father disappeared like a lost sock, Gary's leaving was explosive. He left a crazy, mean-spirited letter that undermined her sobriety, said rude things about her body, and all but announced he had never loved her. On top of all that, he took about three-quarters of their cash on hand. The post-Gary journal lasted for nearly two years, and she credited her eventual recovery from the pain and the shame of Gary's leaving her to all that stream-of-consciousness writing.

Now, in New York, she has purchased a beautiful notebook at nearby Dempsey and Carroll, the navy-blue cover fashioned from heavy linen paper, each page faintly watermarked with the company's logo. Her life right now is strange and thrilling to her, and lacking people with whom to discuss it, she has quickly come to find solace and even a weird form of friendship in her journal.
Maybe I always wanted to be a mother,
she writes, and then stops, smiles, remembering that in the seven days she has been writing her thoughts into this notebook, she has already written that sentence seven times.
I always felt sorry for the mothers I knew. Always so preoccupied, so drained. Kids are like vampires; they suck the blood out of you. Or so I thought. But now in the silence of this beautiful house, savoring the late hours when my thoughts are my own, I can hardly wait to hear their footsteps, their voices. Tonight's dinner was not a total success, but still, it was something, a first step. I know I can do this. I know we can get this right. I can hardly wait for morning to come when I can meet them in the hallway as they pad down the steps from their bedrooms on the third floor. I can hardly wait to ask, Anybody hungry? Who wants breakfast? I love them. I love them so much. It's like a fever that you pray will never break.

She turns the page.

It's amazing how well they've adjusted. All those days and nights apart, living in foster homes. However it affected them, they have buried it—at least for now. Mainly, they are delighted to be with each other. Sometimes I feel almost jealous—no one in all my life has loved me the way those two love each other. Need to read up on twins!

I know they are thin—frightfully thin. But that's going to change. And they look sort of great, to be honest. Like little models.

I also need to take it slow. They are not going to bond with me overnight—no matter how much I would like that to happen.

The project of getting them out of the house is still on the old to-do list. They will sit on the porch and watch the passing parade of people—which never stops, by the way. New Yorkers walk everywhere, and they are out and about day and night. But in terms of exercise for the kids and real fresh air (if there is any to be had in this city!)—forget it. I have tried to tempt them,
offering to take them shopping or out to eat (yeah, right), but so far all they want is to hang out with each other in the house. Arthur Glassman mentioned a couple of times that I might want to keep them out of Central Park, but so far, it's not an issue. My issue is how to keep their cute little behinds off the sofa and their lovely brown eyes from staring for hours at the TV, which I should never have bought in the first place. And would not ever have brought into our lives if I'd known what video junkies those two little angels were going to be. The only good thing about the TV is that they sometimes snack while they watch—if you can call cucumber slices in seltzer a snack. But who knows? Maybe it will lead to something with a lot of high-fructose corn syrup in it.

At least they don't watch violent shows. Mostly Cartoon Network and family sitcoms. They go for the real super-gentle high-sugar-content fare, the shows where the studio audience is always going
Awwww
when one of the kid characters says something adorable or a puppy pokes his little head out of a basket or someone learns a lesson and a hug-a-thon ensues.

She hears a noise. It is something not in the house's usual nightly vocabulary. This actually sounds as if someone is on the porch, trying the door. She lifts the pen off the page, holds it midair, listens with all her might.

Silence.

A distant rumble. Someone speeding down Lexington with a faulty muffler.

She waits another moment, shakes her head.

Tomorrow morning, Adam has therapy. Wednesday, Alice. They've been seeing therapists since Child Protective Services took over. And of course, of course. They should have that, they need it. Both their parents dead and everything else they've been through. Some of which I doubt I will ever know. But I worry about these shrinks and their theories and I most of all worry about
how quick some of them are to put them on meds. I don't want that. All those medications have side effects. Suicide, especially. Both their parents killed themselves, right? So why would any responsible doctor want to risk the twins' safety like that? I don't even know if most of those so-called wonder drugs work anyhow. I'm not sure they're not mainly cash machines for huge pharmaceutical firms.

This is where I put my foot down. I have that right. I get to decide. I am their mother.

God, it feels so strange to write it.

But it's true.

I am their mother.

Dear God, please guide me. Please help me do the right thing.

Again: that sound.

It's more disturbing the second time. Cynthia holds her breath, cranes her neck, tilts her head. It's the door, the downstairs door.

But why would it be?

She goes to the window, unconcerned that she wears only a T-shirt. She lifts one of the slats of the interior shutters and peers through. But what makes the master bedroom the best room for sleeping also makes it the worst room for surveying the outside world. Her only view is the back of a few town houses on Seventieth Street—pastel blue and gray by day, black by night—and her own garden, lush now with wild grasses.

She tells herself that she is just nervous. She tells herself that the city's million sounds are freaking her out. She tells herself that right now, the best thing to do is climb into bed, switch off the light, and have a long, delicious sleep.