The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen (28 page)

“I already paid.” Tyler shrugs.

“All right,” Maddie says, getting to her feet. “But I'd better call and let them know.”

Them?
I mouth to Tyler.

He just grins and shoulders my camera bag. Annie flashes me a delighted smile, links arms with Maddie, and they stroll out of the garden together.

“Come on,” Tyler says, gesturing with his head for us to follow them. “Listen. You don't have another thumb drive, do you? This one's running out of memory.”

• • •

It's hard to believe, but in the six weeks I've been in summer school I haven't set foot on Park Avenue even once. I never had any reason to go. I mean, I'd heard it was the super fancy part of town, so maybe I would have gone before summer school was over, just to check it out. Now that I'm here, I'm not that impressed. If I didn't know better, I'd say the entire street was abandoned. Lights in the buildings are
off. Doormen linger just inside the doors, in the air-conditioning. There's not even a cab. It's so empty our footfalls seem to echo on the sidewalk.

“Maddie,” I whisper, trotting along on her heels. “Where is everyone?”

She sniffs at my ignorance and doesn't answer.

“They're probably all in the Hamptons,” Tyler mutters to me. He's trying to hide the fact that he's impressed, but it's not working. He keeps craning his neck back, looking up at the sedate brick faces of the plush apartment buildings. Marble entryways. Polished brass. Carved nameplates for plastic surgeons and psychiatrists. Annie's gawking, too, her head tipped back on her shoulders like she's never seen buildings so tall before. She sticks close to Maddie's side, their arms looped together. It was a long ride from the Village, past Gramercy Park, and Annie's eyes only got wider the farther uptown we went, murmuring once about how fast we could go without a horse to pull us. She cuddles closer to Maddie, matching her footfalls to Maddie's boot stomps, and more than once I catch myself looking at them with a pained expression on my face. I wanted to be the one to show Annie everything.

We finally arrive at a building that initially looks modest, with a forest-green awning and polite casement windows.

“I don't know what the Hamptons are,” I say to Tyler as we all stop and stare up at the face of the building.

“Now, listen,” Maddie says. “They'll probably try to talk to you guys. But don't say anything, okay? Just ignore them.”

Tyler and I exchange a glance. Who is she talking about?

“Okay?” Maddie presses us.

“Sure,” I say uncertainly. “Okay.”

Annie and Tyler both nod.

We walk up to the door, and on our approach it is silently opened
by a short, barrel-y guy dressed in a navy uniform coat and peaked hat.

“Good evening, Miss Van Sinderen,” the doorman says in Russian-accented English.

“Good evening,” Maddie and Annie say in unison, then look at each other and burst out giggling.

The doorman, who I can only assume doesn't see or hear Annie, and so is watching a punked-out teenage girl laughing by herself with two sketchy-looking guys walking two steps behind her, stays stone-faced. Like he sees everything and nothing all at once.

Tyler and I walk past him stiffly, both of us pretending like we're totally comfortable in this situation. I see the flicker of a smirk on the doorman's mouth as we pass.

“Dude,” Tyler whispers to me out of the side of his mouth. “What is it with you and the fancy girls?”

“Shut up,” I hiss back. The truth is, I'm worried I'm having a panic attack. My heart is racing, and I can feel sweat dribbling down my rib cage. My parents' house has wall-to-wall carpeting and a huge TV over the fireplace. Every year my mom puts an original of our holiday card photo in a silver frame that she buys at TJ Maxx, and she yells at me and my sister if we get fingerprints on them. I grew up thinking that our house was pretty nice. I had no idea what I was talking about.

This must be where Maddie had to go, when she left my room the other night. For her curfew. God, this place is plush. Why would she want to stay in abandoned buildings, if this is what she's accustomed to? How does it even feel to be accustomed to a marble-hallway kind of life?

We stop in front of an old-fashioned cage-style elevator, and Maddie presses the button. With a creak and groan the mechanism starts up, and an old analog floor indicator, the kind that's shaped like a fan
with the floor numbers on the edge, with an arrow pointer, grinds to life. Lights indicate that the elevator was on the top floor, the ninth. After a long pause while the elevator tries to remember what it's supposed to do, it slowly oofs down to the first floor and the door opens to reveal an impossibly old guy dressed in livery that matches the doorman's.

“Good evening, Clarence,” Maddie says.

When she speaks in here, her voice sounds different. Smoother. More polished.

Rich.

“Good evening, miss,” the old guy says.

We all pile into the elevator, which is so small and made of such delicate metal scrollwork that I'm frankly shocked it can handle all our weight. Maddie doesn't even tell him what floor she's on. Tyler and I both notice this absent detail at the same time, and Tyler's lined eyes are popping so hard they might fall out. Annie, meanwhile, is so busy marveling at the elevator that she's not paying any attention to us.

“Amazing,” I hear her whisper to herself. “It's like a climbing machine.”

The elevator rings to a stop on the eighth floor, and the operator cranks the doors open.

“Eighth floor,” he announces, as if we didn't know it, and we all load off.

“Maloulou? Is that you?” a woman's voice trills from very far away.

The elevator has opened directly into a softly lit foyer, painted dove gray with white egg-and-dart trim (Gran would be so proud of me, remembering that's what it's called). There's a worn Oriental carpet in the middle of the room, over a polished black-wood floor, with no furniture at all except a huge circular white marble table with a crystal bowl spilling white peonies over its lip. The flowers are fresh,
and they fill the air with a fragrance that's just a shade too sweet to be pleasant.

“Yes,” Maddie shouts too loudly. To us, she barks, “Come on.”

She strides straight across the room, leaving a trail of city grime behind from her combat boots. Tyler and I edge closer together, in the instinctive resistance of middle-class guys to environments in which they might break something expensive. I'm worried about even breathing in here.

“Maloulou? Darling?” the woman's voice calls, having drawn a room or two nearer.

“Dammit,” Maddie mutters.

We've only made it halfway down a hall that seems infinitely long, lined at sedate intervals by small gilt-framed landscape paintings, each lit with its own special spotlight. They're mostly images of the Hudson River or pastoral scenes of sad-looking Indians posed against the sky atop a dizzying waterfall.

A woman appears from some secret room and gives us all a look that she probably intends to be welcoming. She's dressed in cream slacks, a cashmere cardigan, and ballet flats that probably cost six hundred dollars, and her hair is the same shade of blond I saw on those women in Eastlin's shop. Like, the exact same shade.

“Well! Are these your friends?” the woman says. A tiny hand hovers under her chin like a hummingbird.

“Uh-huh,” Maddie says without breaking stride.

“Hi,” Tyler says, not making eye contact, and ducking under the woman's gaze like he's cheating at limbo.

“Hello, ma'am,” I say, sticking my hand out. “I'm Wes Auckerman.”

She stares at my hand with faint shock and distaste. She doesn't say anything.

“Um . . . ,” I say, not sure what I'm supposed to be doing differently. Something, obviously.

“We're going in the living room,” Maddie shouts. “Don't bother us.”

“Oh!” the woman exclaims. “All right.”

Annie moseys by her with an arched eyebrow, but the woman doesn't acknowledge her. She probably can't see her. Then again, she didn't acknowledge me, and I'm not a Rip van Winkle.

“I'll have Etta bring in some sandwiches.” The woman's voice follows us down the hall, uncertainly.

“God,” Maddie grumbles as we arrive at the end of the impossible hallway. She stomps around, slapping on lights.

“Is that your mom?” I ask, hesitating by the entryway. It's flanked on both sides by Doric columns, and the entire opposite wall is casement windows with a staggering view of the tops of the trees along Park Avenue.

“Please,” Maddie says, rolling her eyes. “
Step.
Number two.”

Tyler and Annie and I file into the room as Maddie pulls light chains here and there. I'm taking in everything—the chintz, the Lalique, the claw feet, and polished wood. Her living room looks like a hotel lobby. Except way nicer. It feels as big as a hotel lobby, too. Tyler can't contain himself, poking around, touching things. I'm afraid to even sit down. The couches look so deep and professionally fluffed that I might fall into them and never escape.

Finally, Maddie hits a light that floods a large portrait hanging over the fireplace.

“Annie,” she says, beckoning. “Come see.”

Annie's rooted in place. I can't tell if she's as struck by the sumptuousness of it all as Tyler and I are, or what. But she's frozen stock-still in front of the fireplace, staring up at the portrait with her rosebud mouth trembling.

It's a family group, a man, a woman, two girls, and a boy, gathered around a table covered by maps of New York State. The man
wears a dour expression, with a fat belly and gold watch chain, and he's pointing at the maps on the table. His wife looks just as awful. She has a pinched face, and sits across from him in a red satin high-waisted dress, resting a proprietary hand on his coat sleeve. One of the girls is seated between them, younger than we are now, with her hair done up in a weird pointy arrangement. The other girl stands behind them, with her hand on the first girl's shoulder. The little boy stands next to the seated man, dressed in forest-green velvet knee pants and a waistcoat, one foot crossed in front of the other, staring out at the artist with a challenging expression in his face. His elbow rests on his father's back, with his fingers hanging down.

Annie just stares, her hands balled in fists at her sides.

Maddie stands below the painting, arms crossed over her chest, staring up at it, too. “I didn't recognize you,” Maddie says.

I'm staring at Annie as she gazes at the painting, watching the minute expressions on her face change from surprise to confusion to mild wonder. I hear rather than see Tyler pull my video camera out of its bag and fire it up, making a record of the scene.

“That's . . . ,” Annie starts to say, but she trails off. She turns to Maddie in wonder. “We had this done last year. The corporation paid. It was to hang in Papa's office at the bank.” She steps nearer, reaching out as though to touch the canvas.

“Dude,” Tyler breathes from behind the camera.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “Is that supposed to be you?”

Annie turns to me, and my eyes jump between the real-life apparition in front of me and the waxy effigy in the painting. Annie, with her flushed cheeks and bottomless black eyes and delectable mole, looks nothing like the girl in the picture resting her hand on her sister's shoulder. There's no mole. There's no vibrancy at all.

“That's my great-whatever-grandfather,” Maddie says, pointing. “Who dug the Erie Canal. That's where the money came from. At first,
anyway. Later it came from shipping. And subways; they owned part of the IRT. I always thought he looked like kind of an asshole. And that's his son, my great-whatever-grandfather minus one. I don't remember their names. But I know they all died together, except for the boy.”

Annie's eyes go wide, and she steps nearer. “Eddie,” she whispers.

We all peer closer at the little boy, with his jaunty foot and impish smile.

On the index finger of his right hand, where it dangles down along his father's back, is an oval smear of red paint, with tiny flecks of gold.

“Oh my God, that's it!” Annie cries, pointing. “Look!” She rocks up on her toes, excitement vibrating off her, as though invisible fireworks are going off over her head.

“Wait. Are you sure?” I say, hurrying forward to see. I squint at the painting, trying to make the blur of paint resolve into a recognizable shape.

“Sure I'm sure,” she says excitedly. “It's my cameo!”

“But you said it was painted last year,” I point out. “You didn't have the cameo then.”

“Daddy had it restored at the Met conservation lab a couple years ago,” Maddie says, sounding sheepish. “They told us the boy had been repainted. Changed the color of his suit. Maybe he added the ring later?”

“Eddie.” Annie smiles, her eyes going soft. “It wouldn't surprise me, him being vain. And the cameo would've been too big for him to wear on the proper finger. He'd wear it that way instead. I must have given it to him.” She looks at me. “But why? Why wouldn't I give it to Beatrice? It doesn't make any sense. And what happened to them?” Annie paces back and forth in front of Maddie's fireplace, her fists pressed to either side of her head.

We all climb into the chintz sofas to think. Tyler starts to put a Chuck Taylor on one of the antique coffee tables, but stops himself.

“So, if Maddie's great-whatever-grandfather got the cameo,” Tyler mulls, my camera in his lap, “does that mean Maddie's mom would have it now?”

“Actually,” Maddie says, avoiding eye contact with all of us. “No. Not exactly.”

At that moment a bent-backed uniformed woman shuffles in carrying a heavy tray heaped with sandwiches.

“Good evening, Miss Malou,” the woman says with a raspy smoker's voice. She's as old as the elevator guy. I'm concerned the tray is too heavy for her to carry. My instinct is to get up and help, but that doesn't seem like what I'm supposed to do, so instead I sit and do nothing and feel like a jerk.