Burning Down the House (8 page)

P
OPPY PAUSED
outside the door to the psychiatrist's office and looked quickly down Park Avenue where the buildings extended endlessly in a long façade of brownish-grayish brick and stone, emotionless and without affect. The east façade looked at the west façade in some kind of schizoid staring contest that had been going on for almost a century. Poppy looked at the door. She buzzed and was buzzed back at and entered an empty waiting room, decorated in 1966, a room that time had passed by and then caught up with again. The midcentury discomfort—which had looked sexy and original at one point in history—now seemed both antique and familiar and not unfashionable but decidedly unsexy. Poppy attempted to shrink her lanky self into the sleekly shaped well-worn couch with no side arms. Her knees bumped against a low, sad, dark wood coffee table. In a few moments a slender older woman appeared before her and gestured for Poppy to follow her into another room.

Poppy arranged herself again, this time in a slightly more comfortable chair facing the doctor.

Poppy shimmied out of her coat and released the straps of her bag, letting them fall like loose reins onto the floor. She pushed her hair behind her ear.

She dove right in.

So what I was wondering is what can you give me that would go with the other stuff I'm taking? Some cocktail but that won't kill me.

The doctor looked at her like one of the Park Avenue buildings.

I mean I understand that you can never be sure how these things will interact and affect you, but I'm okay with that. There are risks with anything, right?

The doctor nodded and began listing the medications Poppy was already taking.

But you told me those were all very low doses?

True, said the doctor.

Poppy pointed her thumb up at the ceiling a few times in a universal gesture of “bump it up a little.”

Let's talk first.

About what?

About how you've been doing.

Poppy twisted in the chair and stared at the wooden blinds. They were slightly open, letting in some sour afternoon light. Beyond them, taxis and black cars slid invisibly by, like fish you knew were in the water but couldn't see. The doctor was looking patiently at her through the watery gloom. The doctor had an unattractive face, leathery, loose, her unbearably kind eyes like soft stones in a tide pool on the beach.

How's school?

Unbelievably boring. The only thing anyone talks about is applying to college. You would think applying to college was the highest, most noble aim of human beings. The goal of our existence on this planet.

How are you feeling?

Like an idiot.

Just because you don't want to apply to college?

I thought I'd be able to go work for Steve.

But he didn't go for that.

Poppy looked right at the doctor.

No. He didn't.

What about that other job?

The psychiatrist closed her eyes slightly. Her eyelids were crepey and nearly translucent. Perhaps she was going to take a nap or perhaps she was threatening to or perhaps she merely wanted to concentrate on Poppy, her silences as well as her words. The doctor wore practical, quietly elegant clothes and very good shoes. She moved her foot just barely in the silence.

Didn't you tell me that you had another prospect? In the theater world?

Poppy widened her eyes and looked like some fucked-up celebrity besieged by the paparazzi.

The doctor jolted awake and widened her eyes, for her, and made a fake, slightly mocking gasp. She looked at Poppy.

You had an offer, yes? Some kind of internship? In the afternoons, after school, this year?

Poppy stared. You want me to take the thing with Ian? she said. That's sick.

The doctor didn't say anything.

I don't mean sick as in cool. I mean sick as in messed up, said Poppy.

I understood, said the doctor.

Poppy pushed her hair behind her ear.

What was the job? asked the doctor.

No one spoke.

Poppy made a low groan.

Didn't he say you could work for him on his show?

Yes.

A musical, correct? Based on the songs of that rock group from the 1990s?

Eighties.

Well, that sounds promising.

Look. First of all, it's a jukebox musical, totally contrived. It's Jane Eyre set to the music of the Talking Heads, which is a genius idea commercially but seems pretty artistically bankrupt if you ask me. And second: Ian is twice my age. At least. I think.

What does that have to do with anything? He's the director. It makes sense that he's older than you.

Poppy rolled her eyes. I told you: he has a huge crush on me. Hair pushed behind ear again. What? You don't believe me?

I didn't say that.

The psychiatrist inhaled deeply. She exhaled. She was quiet while the taxis whooshed past outside.

Narcissism, she said.

She gestured toward the window, to the great world of Park Avenue and beyond. The world of buildings and highways and forests and oceans all somehow tainted by corruption and stained with blood. She took a deep breath and reached for a water bottle on the table beside her and took a sip and screwed the top back on the bottle—she was a careful person—and swallowed.

Poppy stared at her. She gazed as the doctor twisted on the plastic bottle cap. When the doctor spoke again it was not directly into Poppy's eyes but to the blinds on the windows, and she seemed to be speaking to the universe.

I pray. I'm not a religious person, but I pray. To whom, I have no idea. But I pray for this world and for you.

She leaned forward in her chair and put her elbows on her knees and clasped her hands and looked intently into Poppy's eyes. She looked down for a moment and then up to Poppy and lowered her voice. You are a fine young woman, Poppy, if only you would believe that. You truly are. But there will always be selfish people, people who try to take advantage of you. You cannot hide from the world. You will have to be very strong. They talk about post-apocalyptic movies? We are living post-apocalypse already. You will have to be strong to survive. It's up to you to not let the world take advantage of you. I'm not saying it's easy.

She unclasped her hands and reached for the bottle and unscrewed the cap again and took another sip.

So…what are you saying?

The doctor leaned back in her chair and did that thing of almost going to sleep again, but she seemed, in some still way, more awake than ever.

I mean, she said, that you are not such a little girl. You can set limits. Draw a line! So what if he has a crush on you! That's his problem. Not yours.

Isn't it sort of my problem?

What, is he going to attack you? The doctor was sitting upright again, eyes open.

Well, no, but he is the director.

Now the doctor rolled her eyes.

And so you have to flirt with him?

Why are you blaming me? That's blaming the victim.

I'm not blaming you, I'm asking you. And stop thinking like a victim. Nothing's happened anyway. So: do you have to flirt with him?

No. I guess not. I mean of course not. Poppy blushed.

I'm not naïve, said the doctor.

What?

I know you have a crush on him too.

What?

You are going to have to grow up faster than you want to.

Poppy was utterly perplexed by now but she was beginning to feel a little better.

Oh, she said.

Break away from Steve, said the doctor. From that family of yours. Do something different.

Like what?

Go, said the doctor. Live your life.

How? asked Poppy. Where?

How: like a mature young woman. Where: out there.

There? Poppy looked at the light streaming in through the slats of the blinds. It was a brighter shade of sour now.

Really? Poppy said.

Really, said the doctor. Where else are you going to go?

When Poppy left the office she had a slightly higher dose of her preferred Benzodiazepine in her pocket. She made her way down the exceedingly clean Upper East Side sidewalk in the now less sour but chillier afternoon, the sky white the color of a lightbulb when it is not turned on, opaque and flattening so that Poppy felt she needed sunglasses but could find absolutely no real evidence of sun. She turned off Park Avenue and headed toward the Met. She felt better for a little while and then like an idiot again. As she sat on the steps of the museum she thought about the fact that somehow the doctor had known her feelings for Ian, more clearly than even she knew them. Was she, Poppy, just such an obvious mess to everyone but herself? No, she thought, she knew she was a mess. But what kind of mess? That was the question. The doctor seemed to know. Poppy had no idea.

She did not see Alix until Alix's gray pants were right in front of Poppy's face. Alix had made her way up the steps of the museum cocking her head and waving to Poppy without response.

Did you honestly not see me? Alix looked down at Poppy from a great height, bleached sky pasted behind her head.

I guess not. I guess I was thinking.

Wow. Are you okay?

Nice.

Alix sat down next to her on the steps.

No really, are you okay? You seem more out of it than usual.

I was just wondering what kind of a mess I am.

Same kind you've always been.

No, it's getting worse.

How so?

Should I go work for Ian? Do some kind of internship? After school and on the weekends? Maybe start now?

It was my understanding that you had declined that offer.

Poppy's hair blew around her head. She was slumped in a thin tweedy coat. Her legs in tights. Short boots tucked a few steps below her. Her bony knees up near her face.

That was probably stupid of me.

Probably.

Alix regarded her. She detested and adored this kid who right now looked like she might never leave the steps of the museum, who might just stay there, wondering and sad until she fell asleep and rolled into the gutter.

Actually, I'm sure he'd give you another chance.

Poppy stared out over the river of Fifth Avenue. Her delicate symmetrical face made Alix want to hit her. And to cry for her.

Why is it getting so windy? said Poppy, the prettiest little wrinkles like a series of commas across her brow. It's only September.

C'mon, said Alix. Let's go inside.

Once inside the museum they seemed to forget that they had arranged to see the latest show of the Costume Institute and instead began wandering the halls in the same random way that they had when Alix had taken Poppy to the Met as a little girl, Alix babysitting for an hour or so while the nanny was out. The paintings on the walls marched past in a carnival procession of color and feeling and the people shuffling around the galleries seemed to be museum pieces too, as if they had stepped out of the paintings and were now lost.

Poppy and Alix landed eventually on a long polished wooden bench facing a historical painting,
The Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar,
by John Trumbull, 1789, and the violence that had been imagined on the steps would now take place. Poppy left her bag on the bench, she was always leaving her bag somewhere, and stood up close to the painting and read its accompanying description:

This painting depicts the events of the night of November 26, 1781, when British troops, long besieged by Spanish forces at Gibraltar, made a sortie, or sudden attack, against the encroaching enemy batteries. The focal point of the painting is the tragic death of the Spanish officer Don José de Barboza. Abandoned by his fleeing troops, he charged the attacking column alone, fell mortally wounded, and, refusing all assistance, died near his post. Trumbull portrays him rejecting the aid of General George Eliott, commander of the British troops.

There were two sides of the painting, the Spanish on the left and the British on the right. The open-necked flowing white clothes of the Spaniards contrasted with the uptight red coats of the British. The sky above them all was a lurid pink and yellow, hideous in its shimmering twilight. On the ground lay the dying Don José de Barboza, rejecting the somewhat coldly outstretched hand of General Eliott. Poppy thought that the painting was stilted and ugly and pretentious and stale, but she was drawn to it. It brought her to a place beyond judgment—beyond herself, beyond itself—even as she recognized the painting's limitations.

Alix stood up from the bench swinging Poppy's vintage Balenciaga bag by its long thin straps, nearly mopping the museum's floor with it.

Eventually someone's going to steal this bag, said Alix.

What do you think of this painting?

It's ugly.

I think maybe that's why I like it. You must understand that, that ugly/beautiful thing, said Poppy.

Alix had stopped swinging the bag by now.

You're sure you want to say that to me? said Alix.

Why not? said Poppy.

You're sure?

Why wouldn't I be?

How will you ever have a real friend? said Alix.

Poppy had no idea what she had done to offend Alix, no idea that Alix had assumed Poppy was referring to Alix's appearance as opposed to her aesthetic appreciation of an object, and so Poppy had no recourse but to hear Alix's remark as an insult, which, of course, it was. But under other circumstances she might have been conscious of the pain that was behind it.

I guess I won't have a real friend, said Poppy. Ever. So I can grow up to be just like you.

Two thick blobs of salty water welled in Poppy's eyes. Through the blur of them she could make out Don José de Barboza rejecting General George Eliott's offer of help. The don was turned away from him, looking at a dead soldier, and holding a glinting silver knife. Poppy could almost understand that she and Alix had just enacted a scene very like the one in the painting, one of rejection, wounding, and pride, but this awareness was more of a feeling than a consciousness and it had the effect of making her that much more hurt. How could people be so stupid as to act out what they saw in a painting just because it was staring at them? How out of control were human beings? And were they so out of control? Or had she and Alix landed in front of this painting because it was a depiction of their own private warfare? This was impossible, this trying to understand anything, this trying to communicate with anyone. It was getting too crowded in the museum. It felt as if all of the murdered soldiers in all of the paintings had risen from the canvases and were wandering around the halls: headless, steaming, ashen, stumped. Aghast, blackened, smoky. Alix and Poppy wound their way toward the exit.