Like Son (17 page)
I took my darling to the bedroom furthest down the hall. Hidden from the probing eyes of the estate sale staff who sat at the apartment’s front door waiting to catch people sneaking items, I tucked the photograph up my sleeve with a single swift gesture. A couple meaningless small items purchased at the front door to ward off suspicion, my affair began.
Paper cuts on the underside of my left wrist, the excitement of my heist making my hands tremble, safe out of sight from the apartment, two blocks away, I took the photo from my sleeve and wrapped my girl in the softest material I’d come to own that day, an embroidered handkerchief marked with a cigarette burn from fifty years before.
As I rode the train and walked home, one stolen moment at a time, I searched the photograph for clues. Draped in flapper threads, this Nahui was posed in, of all places, Tompkins Square Park. She’d been so close. Eighty years earlier, she’d stood dolled up within sight of my apartment window. Chances were she’d just come from Lansky Lounge on Norfolk with her gangster boyfriend. Her satin high heels were stained at the toe. Tipsy from all the brandy she’d sipped out of dainty Prohibition teacups, she’d splashed in a puddle in the back alleyway exit at Lansky’s. In the getaway car, she’d worn a platinum wig disguise over her auburn bobbed permanent waves. She was dangerous perfection.
Cherry on top, she’d posed for her photograph near the park’s entrance at Avenue A and St. Mark’s—at the Temperance Fountain. Drunk off her darling little ass, she’d leaned against the marble pillars of a public monument dedicated to the virtues of sobriety for her picture pose. It was all too fucking good. As I squinted to admire more closely my flapper, I noticed a slightly rusty indentation on the upper left corner of the photograph. The mark appeared to be the swirling pattern of a paper clip long ago removed. A relic if ever one existed, more precious than a drop of milk from any virgin’s pert breast, the missing paper clip likely sat upon a velvet cushion on an altar in some cathedral somewhere.
I almost could have wandered off in search of that damned paper clip. I would have loved to pack a bag and head out, stopping at every goddamned church from New York to California and down to Mexico, across all of Latin America, and through Europe. Why the fuck not? (The dough required to globe-wander was one issue, but money shouldn’t factor in escapist fantasies, so
whatever
.) In all seriousness, I probably should have gone off to find that Holy Grail paper clip, because the second I got to my empty apartment, I remembered. I was so fucking lonely.
In search of some perverted fun, I lay my flapper date face up on the kitchen table. Nahui, the
real
Nahui, watched from her framed retablo as I, with a single steady push of my palm, smoothed the flapper’s curling body. Photographic image and paper peeled away from one another. Corners of the flapper’s dress and bits of her face clung to my nervous damp skin— together she and I were exquisite ruin. I tucked what was left of the photo in my wallet. When I saw the flapper smiling her sultry smile at me from the wallet’s clear plastic pocket—that standard billfold feature designed for proud daddy photographic displays of wife and babies—I felt a momentary pang of guilt. But it wasn’t like the retablo of Nahui would have fit there anyway. And as for Nathalie, it was becoming clearer and clearer that the only accurate sweetheart portrait of her might be an empty frame.
27 November 2002.
I
n traditional Japanese movies, ghosts hop, they don’t float—this thought came from some obscure fold in my cerebral cortex as the front door opened and closed and a nearly silent stride made its way into the apartment and stopped directly behind me.
My brain had begun to do tricky things while Nathalie was gone. By the second week of her absence, when I tried to imagine her in my mind’s eye, the focus was fuzzy. I couldn’t recall specific details of her person, like which side of her lip had freckles and what her skin smelled like when we fucked. Losing her so quickly in my memory was unsettling. Especially because, at the same time, I could clearly imagine Nahui-the-flapper, my make-believe girlfriend, pinned under me, my hands slicked with her metallic sugar.
So, yes, when Nathalie entered the apartment and approached, I jumped, startled out of what had become nearly constant daydreams. I stood frozen, facing the sink of dishes I’d been washing. My pants grew tighter at the thigh. Heavier and heavier, dead weight pulled on my pocket lining. Solid clanking sound. Rocks. From the places Nathalie had been. Rocks she had collected for me.
“To ground you,” she explained.
Pretty fucking funny.
To let me know she thought of me always, she said. Little earthly delights. All the souvenir rocks transferred to my possession, Nathalie curved her body up against my back and pushed her mouth to my left ear.
“Happy anniversary, love,” she said.
It’s tomorrow
, I wanted to correct her. To scold her. Shame her. Punish her.
“Happy anniversary,” was all that came out of my mouth as I turned around to face her.
She’d been smoking again. Lots. The first cigarette of her renewed habit had most likely been justified as a welldeserved end to a particularly tough day. But that was just the first cigarette, probably smoked at some Greyhound station equipped with a snack machine that stole her quarters and a soda machine that would only give Mountain Dew. Blotches of deep violet shaded the thin and finely lined skin under Nathalie’s eyes. A matching set of bruises fanned out from near each tear duct. Allergic shiners. Self-inflicted lavender.
Lavender. Before Ivory existed all individually paperwrapped on store shelves, people smelled a little less human by rubbing themselves with lavender. Filling large tubs of hot water with the herb, they seasoned and marinated themselves like the edible mammals they were. Lavender. Nathalie’s lavender was different in that it was caused by the inflammation of her ethmoid sinus cavities—the honeycomb-intricate hollow pockets of warmed air in the moist patch of skull between her eyes had been strained by too much smoke. I knew this geeky factoid tidbit from back in junior high when my mother began her fright tactics to make sure I didn’t start smoking:
I’ll know just by looking at you if you’ve been smoking, Francisca,
she’d say with a totally serious and intimidating tone. Anyway, Nat on occasion gave herself temporary black eyes. I saw her dark circle bruising and wished I knew exactly what she had done while she’d been gone. All I really knew was that she’d been smoking again.
I hated feeling so shut out of three weeks of her life, but I feared if I let my discomfort show, she’d misunderstand my pain and think I wasn’t happy to have her home. So I played it cool. I put on my best Humphrey Bogart smooth attitude and fed her the in-control charmer line I’d prepared for her return.
“Doll,” I said, “I’m going to plant a forest for you.”
“You’re what?”
“There’s a pothole at 7th and B.”
“Okay …”
“But the forest will need your supervision.”
“I think it’d be fine without me,” she said, laughing.
I had missed that laugh so goddamned much.
I wished for a reality in which Nathalie and I could sit on the fire escape with our toes dug into the leaves of an evergreen forest I’d plant for us; together we’d watch it grow one inch, then one foot, then one story, then one mile up into the air.
“Seriously, I’m going to plant a tree,” I said.
“That’s sweet, Frank. Strange, but sweet.”
Nathalie didn’t believe me. She was humoring me. But I was absolutely serious. I would plant an entire forest if it would keep her home with me.
She reached behind me and searched through a bag of groceries I’d left on the kitchen counter from errands earlier. One skinny arm wrapped tightly around my ribs, she held a box of pink cake mix close to my face.
“This shit is poison,” she whispered into my ear, and pushed me hard against cheap cabinet compressed wood.
My lower back ached and my heart rattled. My girl was home again. And for that very second at least, every molecule of her imperfect being was all mine. Instant cake powder perfumed the air around us. The effect was stick and carrot combined. Right there at the kitchen sink, I fucked Nathalie. Hard. My skull crashed into her tangled crown. We bruised elbows and knees and pinched fingers in sliding drawers. A glass shattered on the floor. Nathalie nearly made me deaf with her screaming. I fell in love all over again. And in the midst of it, I cried.
Only two things had ever brought me to tears. One: my father’s death. And two: the way the three freckles on Nathalie’s left lower lip disappeared into a flustered blush when we fucked. Sick triggers to mention in the same breath, I know. But so be it. Those were the two things that made me cry. Nathalie. The only person I’d ever been able to imagine myself all shriveled up and gray and slow-walking old with. She was the one.
And so, her complicated self in my arms, I cried. I tried not to let her know. I think I got away with it. Maybe she didn’t know. But I did cry. And I willed my tears to stain. I wanted to claim her as exclusively mine. Properly embarrassed by this canine desire, I resisted leaving any literal mottled evidence on her willing neck. I wanted to mark Nathalie in ways regenerative white cells and oxygen would never erase.
We fucked. I cried. And then:
“Darling, I need a bath,” she said. And walked away.
Puppy me, I was loathe to lose Nathalie’s scent, her muddy hair and the bitter grapes behind her ears, the tart fresh-cut cactus taste she left on my hands. I detested that Nathalie would wash so much away.
That said, the heaven excellence that soon followed—days of road-travel scrubbed off, auburn locks slicked wet to her shoulders, her entire body streaked with beading water and ready for more adoration—was consolation aplenty.
You have your father’s blood in you
.
Rude interruption, my mother’s words echoed in my thoughts.
Nathalie stared at me with the slightest of smiles, her eyes relaxed and tired. Water dripped off her and onto the wood floor, her majesty warping the forests that lay themselves at her feet to be walked upon.
You have your father’s blood in you.
“Frank?”
I’d been staring at Nathalie for who knows how many minutes. The girl got me directly in my chest. Ribs simply shouldn’t be cracked open and separated by a layperson. Cardiac matter shouldn’t be touched but in the most pristine environments. Even then, complications are likely to occur.
“Nat, you’ve got my heart on a silver platter.”
Shy girl all of a sudden, she just smiled bashfully and tapped her toes in the micro-puddle that’d formed narcissus pond around her as she stood there goose-bump chilled and admired.
“Wait just a sec,” I said, and retrieved the thickest and softest towel we owned. I patted my darling dry. It was the least I could do. Whereas some might have found this subservient devotion pitiful, I knew that at least my father would have understood.
You have your father’s blood in you.
Duh, mother.
Damp bath towel dropped to the floor at Nathalie’s feet, I kissed the girl’s jagged skinny hipbones. I kissed her where the baby down hair of her belly turned coarse. I kissed the smooth skin of her thighs and trailed kisses to the crook of her knees. Kisses upon her feet, I bowed down before her in the only manner she deserved.
And I asked: “Nat, why’d you leave?”
“I love you, Frank.”
“Seriously, please …”
“Can we talk after I sleep a little?”
From her non-answer I knew that if I’d ever hear directly from her mouth why she’d gone, it wouldn’t be for a long time to come, much further into the future than the culmination of her nap. I tried to remind myself that three weeks of relationship breakdown in a span of nearly seven years wasn’t inherently some sort of deal breaker. I mean, really, what was I aiming for, prescribed
Leave It to Beaver
bullshit? The girl had needed time away. She hadn’t gone about getting it in the most considerate way, but she loved me, I’d get over my hurt, and she’d make it up to me. Mostly, I was relieved she was home again. I just wanted to get on with our life. So, we’d talk when we talked. There was no need to force anything. True, I could have insisted we have a marathon processing session without further delay. I could have said she had no right to make me wait for an explanation. But I didn’t. Instead, I tucked my girl in the narrow mess of our bed with a kiss. Back home after wandering to exactly where I didn’t know, finally home, mouth open and quiet rasping breath, Nathalie quickly fell into a deep sleep.
Not tired, I sat and watched her sleep for a long while. At one point, someone cruised by on the street in a pumped-up low rider and rattled me out of my daze. The roaring engine and rumbling bass triggered car alarms and our windows turned kinetic like marbles in a coffee can rattle. Sudden shallow breath and sharp limbs all frenetic, Nathalie tossed and turned momentarily before settling into deep sleep yet again.
Wanting to hold her, to crawl in bed with her and let the day be done, I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. When I reached into the cupboard for my bottle of pink pills, I found that it was empty. How that had happened without my noticing, without my realizing I needed to get a refill—well, I took it as a sign. I got dressed for bed and, although it took a long time, eventually I fell asleep holding Nathalie tight to make sure she wouldn’t disappear in the middle of the night.
28 November 2002. Thanksgiving Day.
M
y darling dearest woke me the morning of our seventh anniversary by perching on my lap and planting endless kisses upon my brow. This gesture had once been a familiar comfort between us. As was our old routine, I responded by rolling Nathalie up against the wall and fucking her quick and sweet. And then we lay on the bed sweaty and tired. I held her bony beautifulness. Even after what had been a miraculously long and peaceful night of sleep, we fell into a midmorning nap we barely intended to wake from. Then Nathalie decided she needed a coffee from down the street.
