The Girl in Times Square (42 page)

And he would come on Saturday morning, drained like low tide and help her, and then sit wanly in his own folding chair at her table, and the women who would buy her paintings would say, “There he is! There you are—her muse.”

There I am, Spencer would inaudibly mouth.

Lily painted a series—seven small oil on canvas paintings that went together called “Whisky in the Hands.”

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, each day different hands clutched around the glass of whisky, or around the bottle, the glass empty, full, broken, the hands bleeding. An extremely well-dressed, serious man bought the whole lot without saying anything to her other than, “I’ll give you ten thousand dollars for all of them.”

“Spencer?” Ahem. “Do you know I’ve never seen Bruce in concert? He’s doing ten shows in Madison Square Garden. I hear Saturday nights is the best time to see him. Ah, well. Tickets are completely impossible to get.”

And because NYPD was providing police detail for Bruce, Spencer got seats, in the first row to the right of the general admission pit, and took Lily on a Saturday night on the First of July to see Bruce Springsteen play his last concert in Madison Square Garden. For three and a half hours, she jumped for joy, she sang along to twenty-eight songs, she danced through two encores, she was wiped out, she was alive.

But all of it was nothing,
nothing,
compared with the best one
of all, the charm of them all, even better than cancer. “Ahem, Spence, I’m so scared to be here in my apartment alone. After seeing the face of that Milo, I’m just sick in the stomach. What if he comes? Do you know the other day, I needed milk, and I was so scared, I nearly called the police to escort me to the supermarket.”

“Liliput, I
am
the police. Call
me.
”

Pause, pause, pause. “I’m calling, Spencer.”

When he came, he brought his clothes.

At the start of July, DiAngelo did not come for Lily’s Sunday arsenic injection. She felt his absence acutely; it was like spending a day without a glass of water.

On Monday morning he came early, without Joy, without joy, his mouth barely able to form into a smile. But it formed somehow.

“Let’s call your sisters and your brother, Lil. Let’s see if they can match marrow for you.”

Many things have left me, Lily thinks, in the present tense, as she looks at the doctor, at her doctor, who is looking so defeated, and she doesn’t know what to say because he doesn’t know what to say.

Lily’s white blood count is increasing in exponential mathematical equations, inversely proportional to how fast her platelet count is decreasing.

The war still rages where you think you can’t see it, in the middle of a summertime New York, a beautiful, comfortable, peaceful life, and the drum roll please! warns of impending bloodshed ahead. Lily closed her eyes. Lily held her breath.

“Spencer invited me to the Benevolent Patrolmen’s annual picnic in a few weeks time,” she said.

“I wouldn’t make too many plans, Lil,” were the words DiAngelo finally spoke. “The marrow transplant is the most important thing.”

He stopped the arsenic and moved Lily back to his own Mount Sinai and started with outpatient moderate combination drug
therapy again—to have something in her. Moderate, because it was the only kind her body could take.

Spencer shaved his own head again, and then shaved hers. Difference between then and now—when he was done and she was bald, he held her head between his hands and kissed every square of her bristly scalp.

Lily was not allowed to go to the movies, sell her paintings, walk in crowds, go to restaurants. She painted when she could get up. Spencer put up a chair in front of her easels. When she couldn’t get up she painted on the floor. On Saturday morning it was he who went down to 8th Street, and sat at the table and sold her art, and some of the women who came, they cried. “She’s going to be okay,” he said. “She’s just on bed rest. Look—she’s still painting.” Painting Love.

Lily’s Love—Spencer on the couch, very big, and Lily on his lap, see-through and receding, and exceedingly small.

Lily’s love—A brown-haired beautiful woman, sitting on a bench in an overgrown village, in the summer, close to a small blonde girl.

Back home on her bed Lily lay, surrounded by clocks ticking time away. July. Warm July, the trees full of summer.

Oh, life. Riddle me this. Who am I? I don’t want to die and not find out.

I don’t want to die.

Amanda returned early from camping in Montana to give her marrow sample.

Anne came in to Mount Sinai but not before she cornered DiAngelo and asked for Lily’s prognosis.

DiAngelo couldn’t get her counts right. She was all topsy turvy—in the double digits for platelets, in the seven digits for white blood cells. Her red cells were kept steady with near constant transfusions. Why did DiAngelo not want to utter a single word of this to Anne? “She is a brave girl. She doesn’t complain,” he said.

“What’s the prognosis, doctor, what’s the
actual
prognosis?”

“Mrs. Ramen, your sister needs a sample of your marrow to see if you can be a possible match for her transplant. Let’s deal with the vital, and then deal with the trivial.” He sped her on to the hospital’s blood lab.

“Prognoses are now trivial?” Anne said. “Since when? Isn’t prognosis essential in determining treatment?”

“Yes, we have only one thing to do, and that is to get her what she needs to live—a transplant. So let’s get going with that.”

“But the odds, doctor, the odds?”

“I think the odds, despite a difference in temperaments, are very good for a donor match, very good indeed.”

Lily is Marcus Aurelius, hands pressed together at the fingertips in a zen-like teepee. She is a philosopher.

Flinch not, neither give up nor despair.

Suit thyself to the estate in which thy lot is cast.

Remember this: the longest lived and the soonest to die have an equal loss, for it is the present alone of which either will be deprived.

Lily is calm, even tempered, takes it all in stride. She is a stoic.

Until one afternoon, after the Fourth of July weekend, Spencer comes during the day while she’s getting her outpatient chemo and brings her flowers, white lilies, and his white Lily takes them and hurls them on the floor, and says, “Don’t
ever
give me flowers again.” And then turns her body to Marcie.

At first silent, Spencer then asks Marcie if she can give them a minute. When the door shuts behind the nurse, Spencer picks up the flowers and throws them in the garbage. There are tears in Lily’s eyes as he turns to the bed. “What happened?” he says. “Andrew is coming tomorrow to give a marrow sample. Everything is okay.”

“Everything is not okay. It’s not okay. Where have you been? Have you seen what’s been happening to me?”

He is so sad for her, his shoulders quake with it. “I won’t bring you flowers anymore,” he says.

“That’s right. And get your things out of my apartment.”

Pause. “Okay.”

“And don’t come here anymore. I’ve got Joy, I’ve got Marcie.”

“Okay, Lil.”

She tries to sit up on the bed but she can’t without his help. He helps her, and she clenches his suit jacket in her fist and shakes him feebly. He sits with her on the bed, holding her while she thrashes against him.

“Tell me this, Spencer O’Malley,” Lily says, grasping him around the neck, pressing her head to him, and then pushing him away and looking desperately into his face, “tell me this—you sit here and pretend in front of me that oh, ho, ho, all is well, and this transplant is going to work, and everything is going to be just hunky dory, but tell me—why did you refuse to sell my art on the sidewalks of New York last Saturday? You hide behind your bottle, but tell me why you refused to go and sell it?”

Spencer blinks—and gets off the bed, taking a step back from her, and feels that this is too much for him, that he can’t take it either. He couldn’t sell her art. After he learned the arsenic was a bust, Spencer can’t sell Lily’s paintings anymore. He wants to say, I’ll sell them this week, Liliput, but it’s a lie, he won’t, she knows it. He won’t, and didn’t, and can’t, because he fears that that art will very soon be the only thing left of her.

With gritted teeth, Lily says, “I wish I was hit by a fucking bus. This is worse than anything. I wish I vanished like Amy. Instant, immediate and irreversible. In many ways I feel like I have been, yet I continue breathing. The people around me have been acting like I’ve been dead for a year, and they’re just waiting for my body to catch up.”

“
I
act like that?” Spencer takes another step back.

“When you bring me flowers though I’m still living, when you bring my art
here
instead of selling it
there,
when you tiptoe around me, not touching me, yes. Yes. You’re thinking, only a little while longer. And then all will be normal again. Well, go to hell. I’m not your penance, Spencer.”

“Lily…” he says, barely able to speak her name.

“What, I’m not being fair? I know—this is excruciating. Give me a car crash, a plane crash, Amy’s sudden and permanent disappearance. Give me that any day, so you can get on with your life and not be burying me with white lilies.”

“Amy’s mother has gone on with her life?” Spencer doesn’t mention himself, and the last two decades of his own life.

“If Amy is ever found, she will.”

“Death is death,” says Spencer, mentioning himself obliquely. But Lily doesn’t hear.

“You know, DiAngelo is going to stop chemo for me. He says it’s not doing me any good and is making me sicker. That’s right. Did you give him some of your advice? Didn’t you once tell me that if I wished to drown, I shouldn’t torture myself in shallow waters?”

“That wasn’t my advice. I was telling you a story about something else.”

“You must have told it to DiAngelo. Because he listened. No more chemo. And look at me, I’m not alive, I’m not dead, what am I? What am I without my Hickman? They feed me intravenously, they give me transfusions every five minutes, I can’t make a single red cell on my own anymore. My liver, my kidneys are not failing fast enough. Talk about shallow waters. I’m on dialysis, on electrical monitoring of my heart, I just—! I know—this is how I spent the first twenty-three years of my life, at arm’s length away from all feeling, but I was so happy then! God, I would have lived another hundred-and-twenty-three years not having life be this close to me. All I want is—” Lily breaks off, her hands no longer in a zen-like teepee but pressed together in prayer. “To be stupid and unknowing,” she says finally. “Go to the movies, sleep, paint, sit in Central Park on Sunday, smell rain, live like everyone else—as if I’m immortal. I don’t want this anymore.” She sinks into her bed. He can’t come near her.

“What do you want, Lily?” whispers Spencer.

“I don’t want anything. Just to live.”

Andrew came to Mount Sinai to have his marrow drawn, and then knocked on Lily’s door. Miera was with him. Two Treasury agents were by his side. He was thinner than ever before, and very gray, and he turned ashen when he saw her, and she must have been thinner than ever before, and very gray also, and ashen.

He brought Miera with him!

This was just unbelievable.

Lily and Spencer stared at each other, and then he stared into his hands.

Lily pointed at the Treasury agents. “Why are they always with you now, Andrew?”

“For my protection. I’ve stopped feeling safe,” he replied.

And Spencer said, “I think that’s wise.”

Andrew without even acknowledging Spencer, asked if they could have a
minute
alone, and Lily said, “Andrew, can Miera give
us
a minute alone?”

“Miera is family,” Andrew said.

“You know what, Spencer’s not leaving.”

“Then
I’m
leaving.”

“This is just great, Andrew,” said Lily. “I haven’t seen you since November and you’re
leaving
?”

Spencer got up. “I’m leaving.”

“No!”

“Lily, I’ll be just outside.” He leaned deep in to her and whispered, “If he knows what’s good for him, tell him he better not upset you.”

“Shh,” she said, but by the way Andrew glowered at the departing Spencer, Lily wasn’t sure he hadn’t heard.

“Lily,” said Miera, coiffed and high-heeled and Armani-clad, “you’re not looking too bad.”

“You were expecting worse?”

“I don’t know what I was expecting. We knew you were sick. But you don’t look—” she broke off. “I’m just trying to be nice, Lilianne.”

“Thank you.”

“So how are you, Lil?” Andrew said, taking her hand.

“Fine, thanks.” She sighed. “How are
you
?”

“I’m okay. I’m hanging in there.”

“Me too.” She struggled to keep her voice even. “I’m glad to see you.”

Andrew sat on the edge of her bed and embraced her. “Liliput,” he whispered. “Liliput.”

She was calm. On slow cytarabine drip today. Sick. Tomorrow home. She patted his back. She waited.

“Miera, could you give me a minute, please?” he finally said.

Thank you, Andrew.

“Andrew, but you said—”

“I know. Just one minute, Miera.”

After she left, Andrew lowered his voice and an audible groan came from him. “I’ve made a horrible mess of things, Lily. It’s
all
my fault. I hope my marrow matches. Look at you. I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me?”

“Forgive you for what?”

He pulled back. “For not coming all these months.”

“Oh. That. I forgive you.”

“I’ve been too ashamed to come, Lil. Too ashamed to face you. I would have come if I could’ve. I just couldn’t.”

“I knew that. I told Spencer that.”

“Stop talking about him.”

“You mustn’t be so hard on him. He’s just doing his job.”

“No, he hates me beyond all call of duty.”

“Andrew, that’s not true.”

“Look I don’t want to talk about him with you. You’re sick, let’s just get you better, and then we’ll see about everything else.”

Lily turned her head away from her brother, despising herself for her weakness, wishing herself strong, unable to talk to him about the only thing they needed to talk about. Why did she think Andrew would tell her anything?

He wasn’t letting go of her. “What are all these things going into you?”

“Well, my heart is attached straight to the poison in that little bag right there.”

“What’s in the other bags? Attached to your arm IV?”

“Antibiotic, glucose.”

Andrew started to cry.

“Please,” said Lily, patting her brother’s back. “It’ll be all right. Really. Don’t be upset.”

“Can I pick you up? Can I pick you up in my arms?”

“You’ll yank my chains off of me.”

He picked her up very carefully, and sat on the bed, and cradled her, and rocked her. Her head was against his shoulder.

“Liliput, do you remember how I used to carry you?”

“Andrew, please…my heart’s not strong enough.”

“Oh, Lily,” he said. “There are so many things I can’t talk to you about—because of him. I know you feel I’ve betrayed you, I
know
that, but you must know that I have felt betrayed by you, no, no, don’t protest, you’re a child, how could you understand the motives of grown men. I came here with Miera as protection against you, but I didn’t want to leave, seeing you like this, without letting you know one important thing about me and Amy.”

“What thing?” she said inaudibly.

His voice low and throaty, he said, “Lily, how could you have
been so blind? Haven’t you figured it out yet? I was in
desperate
love with her! I was going to leave
everything
in my life for her. I loved her more than I have ever loved anything. More than my job, my career, my future, my family. All 1 loved in the world was her.”

Clarity was still myopic, amblyopic in the one uncorrectable eye.

“You did?”

“Of course I did. She came into my life, and altered it beyond recognition. I didn’t expect it. She certainly didn’t expect it, I don’t think, me to fall for her like that. I think it surprised even her. She thought she was strolling in to have a little affair with a powerful man. Everything under control. And suddenly there it was.”

“So if you loved her, why did you end it?” Lily struggled. “Did you…end it?”

“I didn’t. In April she told me she didn’t want to see me any more.”

“She did?”

“Yes. Completely out of the blue. She said…she didn’t love me anymore and didn’t want to continue.”

“Did you believe her?”

“Not at first. I thought it was a ploy. Perhaps to get me to leave my wife faster, or not run for the Senate. I didn’t know. I was devastated. But, eventually, I came to believe her. She convinced me that she didn’t love me anymore.”

“How?”

“She just did. With her actions. She was very cold. She cut me out of her life. With her words. She said some things that made me believe it.”

“Like what?”

“Stop it, Lil. You’re my sister, not a detective. Stop talking like one.”

“So why didn’t you tell this to him?”

“I don’t know if you know this about him, but he manages to
turn every single personal thing I’ve ever said and use it against me.”

“Oh, Andrew.”

“Lily, trust me when I tell you my side—me and Amy had
nothing
to do with you. I know it’s hard to believe, and you feel betrayed. We did deceive you for so long. But I just fell in love—and lost my head. Everything else fell by the wayside. If you tell your friend anything, tell him that.”

“You know, Andrew, Detective O’Malley keeps his own counsel on all matters.”

“Frankly I think that’s probably best under the circumstances.”

“Me, too.”

They smiled.

“I’m sorry, Lil. That it’s all gone to hell like this.”

“Me, too, darling Andrew. Me, too.”

“Is the policeman with you all the time now?”

“When I’m not here or with Joy, yes. More or less.”

And then another incomprehensible out of Andrew: “That’s good, Liliput. That’s good.”

After Andrew left and Spencer walked back into the room and sat on the chair next to her bed, Lily reached over, took off his glasses and pressed her hands to his eyes.

“What are you doing?” He didn’t move away.

“Get that detective look right out of your eyes, detective. I’m not letting go until Spencer returns.”

He kissed her hands, he pulled away, he smiled, he put on his glasses.

“Stop looking at me,” she said.

“Your eyes are closed. How do you know I’m looking at you?”

“Because you’re always gawking at me for this, for that. Stop it.”

She lay on her pillows quietly. He sat in the chair by her side.

“So what are you doing now?” he asked.

“Nothing.” There was a smile on her face. “Following your
heartfelt advice, I am freely exercising my American right to remain silent.”

Spencer brought a sandwich for himself and soup for Lily, and she ate slowly, sipping teaspoons of her soup so as not to upset her intestines, so easily upsettable.

After she was done with the soup, she said, “All right, you want to know what he told me?” She closed her eyes, trying not to get upset. These days she was so easily upsettable.

“Dear Lily.” Spencer brought her hand to his lips. “You want
me
to tell you what he said, coming in here? He told you that Amy reached down his throat and grabbed his heart, pulled it out, threw it on the floor, stepped on it with her high heels, spit on it, shoved it in the oven and cooked the shit out of it. Then she sliced it into little pieces, slammed it on a hunk of toast and served it to him, and then expected him to say, thanks, honey, it was delicious. And he did.”

She opened her eyes. Stared at him in disbelief. Spencer, his piercing blue eyes piercing her, trained on her, was thoughtful. “Spencer…”

“Lily, I never thought Amy loved Andrew. I always suspected it was the other way around.”

“Why? Why did you think that?”

“A number of reasons.”

“Give me one.”

“Because she gave away the jewelry he bought her.”

“What?”

“Yes. You don’t give the Tiffany jewels the man you love bought you away to a bum in a homeless shelter unless you don’t love the Tiffany giver and love the bum.”

“Okay, you have gone mad. Amy loving Milo is the most absurd thing I have
ever
heard.”

And then she said, “You know what else is wrong with you? You don’t understand women at all.”

“Thank you for that.”

“
You
may be immune to my brother’s charms but no woman
can resist him. Amy may have flung her auburn hair into his heart, but he has tricks, too. It’s impossible not to fall for him.”

“So what are you saying? I’m just not seeing the love?”

“That’s right.”

“Show me Amy. Find me her. In any form, and you’ll make a believer out of me.”