Ghost Dance (42 page)

“Isn’t it lovely?” he asked.

His voice seemed to pulsate against the snow. As I looked out the window I felt myself to be disappearing.

“Jack,” I said slowly. I looked at our hands, our faces, our clothes; we, too, were white.

I felt myself giving in. There are days like this in every season, days of such sensual intensity that they threaten to erase all else. They invite us to surrender to a single moment, they invite us to die. And what choice do we have? Trapped in the blood colors of autumn, caught in impossible snowdrifts or drifts of heat that melt men into the pavement and weaken hearts until they collapse, what choice do we have? Ask for courage then, for it is best not to look away, not to close our eyes. It is best to let our temperatures rise with the sun, to lose ourselves completely in the rhythm of rain, to let it in, to push the limits of what it means to be human, to force our boundaries, to change shape. This was such an evening for forcing things—an evening of excess.

Tonight I thought, looking out the window, Jack murmuring something in my ear, that we would never see color again, never smell flowers, never feel warmth or rain.

He was telling me that the cold front had originated somewhere in Canada and was heading north when it suddenly changed direction and now whipped down the east coast. He spoke softly and it sounded to me like a children’s story. With the storm came sharp winds and heavy snow. Around Boston it picked up sleet and hail and by New York it had fully matured. Like a cartoon it raced around the skyscrapers, breaking the glass in the doomed Hancock Insurance Building and nearly blowing into the sky like kites the dogs that were out for walks. The storm was so bad, in fact, that it kept prostitutes from the street, moonlighters from the night shift, insomniacs from the coffee shops. “Imagine,” he whispered. Couples from the suburbs forfeited their tickets to Broadway plays. Underground the subway groaned to a halt between stations and a Puerto Rican woman with two children began to cry. Men on the Bowery without homes swore at the sky and futilely attempted to make fires. A young secretary took out her bunny fur jacket and laid it on the bed. Old women switched from one radio station to another for weather reports. Children jumped on their beds gleeful at the prospect of no school. Bachelors smiled, poured more wine, and dimmed the lights, knowing their dates would not be able to get home. Jack smiled, too.

Until now it had been a fairly mild winter—sluggish like the South. I thought Jack had begun secretly to prepare for a time when all the seasons would melt together, blurring into one another, impossible to tell apart. A coolish summer would turn into a muddy, green autumn. A snowless Christmas would begin a warm winter, and when spring came he would hardly even notice it. The mind would sleep forever in a homogeneous stupor, unchallenged.

But with this storm some hope for the diversity of the future was renewed in him. He seemed alive now with the possibilities. What had rested so long in him was now awakened. He paced around the room as if I were keeping him on this violent evening from some urgent, private calling.

Early on there had been signs that this would be an evening of supreme winter, irresistible winter, winter the Québécois know, winter the blind man sees. “Prepare,” the wind had whispered into my drowsy ear in the morning light as Sabine turned a corner and boarded her plane. “Prepare,” its freezing breath had said, but there was no preparing for what was to come. Those who assumed such a stance did so to reassure themselves and to calm those around them. I was reluctant even to feign a pose of readiness. Sabine had felt it, too, I thought. She had come just in time.

“Put on your coat,” jack said finally, going to the closet. He was clumsy in his boots and heavy clothing. Though he knew this place by heart, he bumped into things, as if he’d never been here before. Together we had explored every inch of my small studio. We’d been up against every wall, under every table; wedged between the police lock and the door we continued to reach new heights of ecstasy.

“But, Jack.” My voice curled around his chest attempting with its lowest and most seductive registers to pull him toward the bed. “It’s below zero.”

“I like it,” he said, putting his huge hand on the windowpane. “I like it a lot.”

“But we’ll freeze.”

“Put on your coat, Vanessa.”

“Where are we going?”

He held out the coat and I put my arms into the sleeves. I knew this was the night that all our other nights together had been a rehearsal for, preparation. Once my coat was on, I sat back on the bed.

“All right,” he shrugged. “I don’t need this. Don’t come. I’ll see you, OK?”

“Don’t leave me,” I said.

“Hurry up, then. Hurry.” He dragged out the word as he said it, in some way contradicting its meaning. I recognized the tone of his voice. He had spoken to me a thousand times before as I had clawed at his clothing. “Hurry up,” he had moaned, “please.” It was the way he sometimes told me to put in my diaphragm. His voice was a whisper, a cry. “Please, Vanessa, hurry.”

“Are those real boots?” he asked. “There’s three feet of snow out there already, Vanessa.”

“Kiss me,” I said with such authority that he obliged. As he slipped his tongue into my mouth, I could feel him beneath his coat, growing large. My hand moved through the layers of clothes.

“Not now, Vanessa,” he whispered. His mouth was hotter than any mouth should have been on such a night. “Not now.

“This is the night we’ve been waiting for,” he said, wrapping a scarf around my neck. Sure, I smiled, and locked the door.

Jack dragged me like one of those reluctant dogs through the crooked Village streets. “Isn’t this great? Isn’t this wild?” he kept asking. “This is what we’ve been waiting for,” he said, not without sadness, patting me on the back.

“You’re hurting me, Jack,” I complained as he pulled me across the icy park, “and I’m cold.”

“Don’t give up now,” he said. “You’ve come so far already.” His breath had shape; I saw three white pillars in the cold. “Let’s have a drink,” he said, motioning up the block. Light from a sign spilled through the snow. It blinked, “Corner Bistro, Corner Bistro, Corner Bistro.” Neon made me sad. It reminded me of people who had lost their way—drifters, the homeless. I was more lonely than I can ever remember being before, standing under that sign in the snow while Jack lit a cigarette. I thought we paused too long under it, and I pulled at his wool coat. I hated to think of that sign lighting the freezing night for no one. It was a small, inexplicable grief, an uneasiness that lingers long after the actual thought has passed and is replaced.

As we walked into the warmth of the bar, the few people inside turned and stared at us. Lonely, they seemed jealous of what they mistook in our faces for love. In the lines of our bodies they read a great romance, but they misread badly. They missed the point. It was something else that had brought us together, something far more immediate than love, less abstract.

Sitting at the bar, I thought I saw disgust, even hate, in Jack’s face, but it was only a passing shape. And in my face I knew there was great weariness: I wanted now only to rest.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked.

“I don’t want a drink tonight, Jack.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Are you sure?” In snow light I saw the passion that contoured his face.

“Yes,” I said. We slid along the freezing streets, moving more and more quickly. Desire was the terrible friction between our bodies. It syncopated our conversation. It propelled us into places we could not get out of. We followed it forward, dragging ourselves through dangerous terrain.

Who was he, I wondered? Whose life was this that I hung on to so tenaciously? He had refused to tell me even the smallest details of his life—what his real name was, where he lived, where he worked, what his family was like.

Did he have children? “Invent me,” he had said. “I will not exist if you do not invent me.”

It was snowing harder now and the wind kept changing direction. We were nearing the harbor. Our boots made black tracks in the snow. The ice was smooth and thick and treacherous.

“I can’t go any further, Jack,” I said, collapsing.

He pulled me up. “Believe me. You can.”

The violence of the seasons invigorated him. I pictured him energetic in the brutal heat of the city summer, concentrated in autumn’s excessive beauty, sexual in the torrential rains of spring. But we would never see the spring, I thought.

“Come on, Vanessa,” he said.

I was up to my thighs in snow. It was exhausting to walk through so much white. I was so tired. “You’re leaving me tonight, aren’t you? Why are you leaving me?” I said numbly.

He stopped. He was breathing hard. “Oh, Vanessa,” he gasped. “Don’t you see?” We had reached the water. “It is you who is leaving me.”

The wind whirled us in a convulsive dance. We staggered around each other in hopeless circles.

“No!” I cried, looking up at the ceiling of stars.

“Vanessa,” he said, weaving, swerving. “I have invented your life so many times. But usually the ending is sad.”

“It doesn’t surprise me,” I said. We neared each other, then pulled away. “I’m not surprised!” I shouted above the wind. We collided. He took me by the arms. “You can change the ending, Vanessa.”

We walked out onto the crystal pier. Water rose and fell around us in violent waves. I was freezing to death. I heard the lighthouse’s lonely snow tone. Ice floated by. “Look,” I said. “I see a white light.”

“Where?”

“Out there. I see a white light. A red light. A white light.” The water calmed.

“Yes,” he said. “I see it now, too.”

I was at peace. I turned around. Before my eyes the West Side Highway seemed to open like a field. I arranged the last few objects on the landscape. I looked at Jack. His eyes gleamed like ice.

The headlights of a car came up from behind. “No,” I cried. I felt something hug me like a vice. On impact the man in the car must have been hurled forward. I screamed and screamed, feeling some excruciating force enter me again and again in the snow. I was being slammed over and over. “Oh, God!” I cried.

“Live,” he said, “or die!”

There were flames everywhere: flames in my mouth, flames in my hair. There was no stopping this. Blue flames, orange, white—everywhere. “Why?” I shrieked with the last part of me before the brain closed down. “Oh, God,” I sighed. “Why? Why?”

I grew large and rose above the flames. “Did you think you could kill us just like that, you stupid bastards? Did you think we would just forget?” I laughed. “Did you think we’d be quiet forever?” My voice grew enormous, my body the tremendous body of rage.

“There is no getting away with it. There is no escape. We will speak and bear witness. You can poison us, you can hack us into little bits, you can burn us in your furnaces, and still we will live. We will never stop speaking. We will glitter in the palms of your hands forever.”

At some point we must have fallen because when I opened my eyes we were on the ground and covered with snow. All along it was what they had had in mind: Jack on my back with his teeth in my neck, his blue hands like claws curled around mine, my hair stuffed in his mouth, my mouth frozen open, caught forever in the center of a sigh.

“We’ll die here,” I said, sobbing, crawling from underneath Jack, separating from the beast our bodies made. I stood up and looked at him from what seemed a great distance. “Wake up,” I said to him. “Get up.” The snow seemed to muffle my plea, but he must have heard me because after a few moments he slowly opened his eyes and it seemed to me that he smiled. “I’m OK,” he said. “Go. Run now.” I saw myself again for a moment lying in the snow. “No,” I said, and pulled myself up, out of my mother’s body, which lay motionless in the snow.

I turned and moved away. I was waist deep in snow. I lifted myself out of her. The pain was terrible. I trudged forward through the snow. I moved as fast as I could but I did not know where I was going.

My body ached, my heart ached.

Far off on the horizon I saw something moving through the white on the line of the Hudson. I moved toward it. I gasped. It was beautiful and white and sailing toward me.

“Daddy!” I cried out as he pulled alongside me and I stretched out my hand, which he grasped, and I helped him ashore. “Daddy.” We stood together there in the snow. His clothes were singed. He held my hand tightly. He must have tried to find her withered hand and hold it, to touch what he sensed was her. “Why?” we said together, looking into the white sky. Why? He had seen the car in his rearview mirror, and it had seemed to float into ours as if in slow motion. “It could not have been going more than fifteen or twenty miles an hour,” he cried. It had entered her slowly and with a certain grace. But it exploded into fire anyway.

“Why?” we cried into the sky. “Why?” And with our chanting over and over of the word
why
, I saw Marta again, who had first taught me that impossible word. She had placed it into my mouth before I could possibly have comprehended its full meaning. She had given it to me far in advance, and now she too stood with us there in the snow. “Why?” we asked, the three of us.

“Where was the sense in it?” Grandma lifted herself from her shallow grave and shook her fist into the blurry air and asked for sense, demanded it. Surely, I reasoned, if we all stood there together and shouted in unison,
why
, the answer would come clear. Surely we deserved some explanation, something. We might even ask for her back.

And Sabine, too, stood up, up from the snow and walked out of her dress like she once did long ago and said to the sky, right alongside my grandmother, in her large naked voice, “Dites-moi! Pourquoi?” and certainly such a sad and angry chorus of voices in the middle of the snow, in the middle of the night, would have to be answered—if not in words, then somehow. Surely a streetlight would dim for a minute or brighten. Surely there would be some consolation, some solace, some way into this impossible question. Why? Why?

Sabine stood next to me and looked around for the missing one. “Fletcher is in New York, too, no?” she asked.