City on Fire (2 page)

Love, as Mercer had heretofore understood it, involved huge gravitational fields of duty and disapproval bearing down on the parties involved, turning even small-talk into a ragged struggle for breath. Now here was this person who might not return his calls for weeks without feeling the slightest need to apologize. A Caucasian who waltzed around 125th Street as if he owned the place. A thirty-three-year-old who still slept until three p.m., even after they started living together. William’s commitment to doing exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, had at first been a revelation. It was possible, suddenly, to separate love from being beholden.

More recently, though, it had started to seem that the price of liberation was a refusal to look back. William would talk in only the vaguest terms about his life pre-Mercer: the period of heroin dependency in the early ’70s that had left him with his insatiable sweet tooth; the stacks of paintings he refused to show either to Mercer or to anyone who might have bought them; the imploded rock band whose name, Ex Post Facto, he’d annealed with a wire hanger into the back of the motorcycle jacket. And his family? Total silence. For a long time, Mercer hadn’t even put together that William was one of those Hamilton-Sweeneys, which was sort of like meeting Frank Tecumseh Sherman and not thinking to inquire about any kinship to the General. William still froze whenever anyone mentioned the Hamilton-Sweeney Company in his presence, as though he’d just found a fingernail in his soup and was trying to remove it without alarming his tablemates. Mercer told himself his feelings wouldn’t have changed one jot if William had been a Doe or a Dinkelfelder. Still, it was hard not to be curious.

And that was before the Lower School’s Interfaith Holiday Pageant earlier this month, which the Dean of Students had stopped just short of requiring all faculty to attend. Forty minutes in, Mercer had been trying to distract himself with the program’s endless cast list when a name had leapt out at him. He ran a finger over the type in the weak auditorium light: . He generally kept to the Upper School—at twenty-four, he was its youngest teacher, and the only Afro-American to boot, and the littler kids seemed to view him as some kind of well-dressed janitor—but after the curtain calls, he sought out a colleague who taught in the kindergarten. She indicated a cluster of ecumenical sprites near the stage door. This “Cate” was apparently one of them. I.e., one of her own. “And do you happen to know if there’s a William in her family?”

“Her brother Will, you mean? He’s in fifth or sixth grade, I think, at a school uptown. It’s coed, I don’t know why they don’t send Cate, too.” The colleague seemed to catch herself. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason,” he said, turning to go. It was just as he’d thought: a mistake, a coincidence, one he was already doing his best to forget.

But was it Faulkner who said that the past was not even past? Last week, on the last day of the semester, after the last dilatory scholarship girl had handed in the final final exam, a nervous-looking white woman had materialized at the door of his classroom. She had that comely young-mother thing—her skirt probably cost more than Mercer’s entire wardrobe—but it was more than that that made her look familiar, though he couldn’t quite pin it down. “May I help you?”

She checked the paper she was carrying against his name on the door. “Mr. Goodman?”

“That’s me.” Or That’s I? Hard to say. He folded his hands on the desk and tried to look non-threatening, as was his habit when dealing with mothers.

“I don’t know how to do this tactfully. Cate Lamplighter’s my daughter. Her teacher mentioned you had some questions after the pageant last week?”

“Oh, geez.” He blushed. “That was a mix-up. But I apologize for any …” Then he saw it: the sharp chin, the startled blue eyes. She could have been a female William, except that her hair was auburn instead of black, and styled in a simple bob. And of course the smart attire.

“You were asking about Cate’s uncle, I think, whom we named her brother after. Not that he’d know that, not ever having met him. My brother, I mean. William Hamilton-Sweeney.” The hand she held out, in contrast to her voice, was steady. “I’m Regan.”

Careful, Mercer thought. Here at Mockingbird, a Y chromosome was already a liability, and no matter what they’d said when they hired him, being black was, too. Steering between the Scylla of too-much and the Charybdis of not-enough, he’d worked hard to project a retiring asexuality. As far as his coworkers knew, he lived with only his books for company. Still, he relished her name in his mouth. “Regan.”

“Can I ask what your interest in my brother is? He doesn’t owe you money or anything, does he?”

“Goodness, no. Nothing like that. He’s a … friend. I just didn’t realize he had a sister.”

“We don’t exactly talk. We haven’t for years. In fact, I have no idea how to find him. I hate to impose, but maybe I could leave this with you?” She approached to place something on the desk, and as she retreated a little pain rippled through him. Out of the great silent sea that was William’s past, a mast had appeared, only to tack back toward the horizon.

Wait, he thought. “I was actually on my way to the lounge for coffee. Can I get you some?”

Disquiet lingered on her face, or sadness, abstract but pervasive. She was really quite striking, if a bit on the thin side. Most adults when they were sad seemed to fold inward and age and become unattractive; perhaps it was some kind of adaptive thing, to gradually breed a master race of emotionally impervious hominids, but if so, the gene had skipped these Hamilton-Sweeneys. “I can’t,” she said finally. “I’ve got to get my kids to their dad’s.” She indicated the envelope. “If you could just, if you see William before New Year’s, give him that, and tell him … tell him I need him there this year.”

“Need him where? Sorry. None of my business, obviously.”

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Goodman.” She paused at the door. “And don’t worry about the circumstances. I’m just happy to know he’s got someone.”

Before he had time to ask her what she was implying, she had withdrawn. He stole out into the hall to watch her go, her heels clicking through the squares of light on the tile. Then he looked down at the sealed envelope in his hands. There was no postmark, just a patch of corrective fluid where the address should have been and the hasty calligraphy that said He hadn’t known there was a Roman numeral.

HE AWOKE CHRISTMAS MORNING feeling guilty. More sleep might have helped, but years of Pavlovian ritual had made this impossible. Mama used to come into their bedrooms when it was still dark and toss stockings engorged with Florida oranges and gewgaws from the five-and-dime onto the feet of his and C.L.’s beds—and then pretend to be surprised when her sons woke up. Now that he was theoretically a grown-up, there were no stockings, and he lay beside his snoring lover for what felt like the longest time, watching light advance across the drywall. William had nailed it up hastily to carve a sleeping nook out of the undivided loft space, and had never gotten around to painting it. Besides the mattress, the only concessions to domesticity were an unfinished self-portrait and a full-length mirror, turned sideways to parallel the bed. Embarrassingly, he sometimes caught William looking at the mirror when they were in flagrante, but it was one of those things Mercer knew he wasn’t supposed to ask about. Why couldn’t he just respect these pockets of reticence? Instead, they pulled him closer and closer, until in order to protect William’s secrets he was, perforce, keeping secrets of his own.

But surely the point of Christmas was to no more turn aside and brood. The temperature had been dropping steadily, and the sturdiest outerwear William owned was the Ex Post Facto jacket, and so Mercer had decided to give him a parka, an envelope of warmth that would surround him wherever he went. He’d saved fifty dollars out of each of his last five paychecks, and had gone into Bloomingdale’s still wearing what William called his teaching costume—necktie, blazer, elbow patches—but it seemed to make no difference in persuading salespeople that he was a legitimate customer. Indeed, a store detective with a rodential little moustache had trailed him from outerwear to menswear to formalwear. But perhaps this was providence; otherwise Mercer might not have discovered the chesterfield coat. It was gorgeous, tawny, as though spun from the fine fur of kittens. Four buttons and three interior pockets, for brushes and pens and sketchpads. Its collar and belt and body were three different shades of shearling wool. It was flamboyant enough that William might wear it, and hellaciously warm. It was also well beyond Mercer’s means, but a kind of enraptured rebellion or rebellious rapture carried him to the register, and thence to the gift-wrapping station, where they swaddled it in paper stamped with swarms of golden B’s. For a week and a half now, it had been hiding underneath the futon. Unable to wait any longer, Mercer staged a coughing fit, and soon enough William was up.

After brewing the coffee and plugging in the tree, Mercer set the box on William’s lap.

“Jesus, that’s heavy.”

Mercer brushed away a dust bunny. “Open it.”

He watched William closely as the lid made its little puff of air and the tissue paper crinkled back. “A coat.” William tried to muster an exclamation point, but stating the name of the gift, everyone knew, was what you did when you were disappointed.

“Try it on.”

“Over my robe?”

“You’re going to have to sooner or later.”

Only then did William begin to say the right things: that he’d needed a coat, that it was beautiful. He disappeared into the sleeping nook and lingered there an inordinate amount of time. Mercer could almost hear him turning in front of the skewed mirror, trying to decide how he felt. Finally, the beaded curtain parted again. “It’s great,” he said.

It looked great, at least. With the collar turned up, it flattered William’s fine features, the natural aristocracy of his cheekbones. “You like it?”

“The Technicolor dreamcoat.” William mimed a series of gestures, patting his pockets, turning for the camera. “It’s like wearing a Jacuzzi. But now it’s your turn, Merce.”

Across the room, drugstore bulbs blinked dimly against the noon light. The tree skirt was bare, save for cat hairs and a few needles; Mercer had opened Mama’s present the night before, while on the phone with her, and he knew from the way she’d signed their names on the tag that C.L. and Pop had forgotten or declined to send separate gifts. He’d steeled himself for the likelihood that William hadn’t gotten him anything, either, but now William squired forth from the sleeping nook a parcel he had wrapped in newspaper, as though drunkenly. “Be gentle,” he said, setting it on the floor.

Had Mercer ever been anything but? A gun-oil smell assaulted him as he removed the paper to reveal a grid of orderly white keys: a typewriter.

“It’s electric. I found it in a pawnshop downtown, like new. It’s supposed to be much faster.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Mercer said.

“Your other one’s such a piece of junk. If it was a horse, you’d shoot it.”

No, he really shouldn’t have. Though Mercer had yet to find the gumption to tell William, his slow progress on his work-in-progress—or rather, lack thereof—had nothing to do with his equipment, at least in any conventional sense. To avoid further dissembling, he put his arms around William. The heat of his body penetrated even through the sumptuous coat. Then William must have caught a glimpse of the oven clock. “Shit. You mind if I turn on the TV?”

“Don’t tell me there’s a game on. It’s a holiday.”

“I knew you’d understand.”

Mercer tried for a few minutes to sit alongside and watch William’s beloved sport, but to him televised football was no more interesting, or even narratively intelligible, than a flea circus, so he got up and went to the kitchenette to do the other stations of the Yuletide cross. While the crowd whooshed and advertisers extolled the virtues of double-bladed razors and Velveeta shells and cheese, Mercer glazed the ham and chopped the sweet potatoes and opened the wine to let it breathe. He didn’t drink, himself—he’d seen what it had done to C.L.’s brain—but he’d thought Chianti might help put William in the spirit.

Heat built over the two-burner stove. He went to crank open the window, startling some pigeons that had settled outside on his winter-bare geranium box. Well, cinderblock, really. They fled down the canyons of old factories, now lost in the shadows, now exploding into light. When he looked over at William, the chesterfield was back in its box on the floor beside the futon, and the jumbo bag of gumdrops was nearly empty. He could feel himself turning into his mother.

They sat down at halftime, plates balanced on knees. Mercer had assumed that because there was a gap in the action William might turn the television off, but he didn’t even turn it down, or look away. “Yams are terrific,” he said. Like reggae music and Amateur Night at the Apollo, soul food was one of William’s elective affinities with negritude. “I wish you wouldn’t stare at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I killed your puppy. I’m sorry if today fell short of whatever was in your head.”

Mercer hadn’t realized he’d been staring. He shifted his gaze to the tree, already desiccating in its aluminum stand. “It’s my first Christmas away from home,” he said. “If trying to preserve a few traditions makes me a fantasist, I guess I’m a fantasist.”

“Does it ever strike you as revealing that you still refer to it as ‘home’?” William dabbed a corner of his mouth with his napkin. His table manners, incongruous, beautiful, should have been an early clue. “We’re grown men, you know, Merce. We make our own traditions. Christmas could be twelve nights at the disco. We could eat oysters every day for lunch, if we wanted.”

Mercer couldn’t tell how much of this was sincere, and how much William was merely caught up in winning the argument. “Honestly, William, oysters?”

“Cards on the table, sweetheart. This is about that envelope you keep trying to shove into my field of vision, isn’t it?”

“Well, aren’t you going to open it?”

“Why would I? There’s nothing inside that’s going to make me feel better than I already do. God damn it!”