The Unfortunates (31 page)

“You’ve lost someone. You’re depressed,” Jean says, the first week of March. “That’s called depression.”

This is untenable. “You have an obvious mind,” CeCe answers.

Standing on the narrow, black point-ends of the hands of the clock, trying not to fall. Where would she go if she did? Out of dimension. Out of favor. Out of range. The clock’s minute hand, owned once by pain and now by side effects, moves on its own unpredictable schedule, too slow or too fast, whereas the hour hand moves steadily toward meals. (Is it possible she misses the pain? Does she not remember how to organize her soul without its interruption?) Her father, who at his end could not breathe, said it felt like a lung full of storm.

“Thank you,” Jean says, and laughs.

“No, by
obvious
, obviously you don’t understand me. What I mean is, you might be a bit of a disappointment to—I don’t know to whom. Your parents? A boyfriend? Do you have a child?… Oh, dear, do you not yet have a child? But how old are you? What are you feeling now, dear? Is it depression?”

That was the last she saw of Jean. For a week or three, she’s not sure how long, she doesn’t answer the phone and doesn’t call anyone back.

When she finally dials Esme, her husband answers. “She’ll be so glad you’re calling. We’ve been worrying and worrying. Wait one second.” There is the sound of the phone’s being dropped into something soft, then Esme: “Cecilia!”

Two days later Esme arrives, holding her duck boots in a plastic grocery bag so as not to drip snow, having changed into dry sneakers in the hall. They embrace, and how good and familiar Esme smells! Lemons and bread.

Esme will hear nothing from CeCe until she’s straightened the bed, straightened the pile of newspapers on the table. She bustles around CeCe’s room as much as a person with a limp can bustle. She shakes the curtains—to evaluate their cleanliness rather than to clean—makes a sound of disapproval, and takes a seat at the table across from CeCe, putting her thickly ringed hands on the knees of her ample jeans.

“Why didn’t you call for so long?” Esme says. “I am not happy.”

“I’m sorry.” CeCe cannot, bathed in such kindness, remember why she kept Esme away. “I didn’t think I’d still be here.”

“No one comes, what’s happening to you is no big deal. That’s what explains it.”

“Did I tell you Pat had her baby?”

“The grandson. About time! But we’re talking about you today. I come every week from now on. Mondays.”

“Too far. I forbid you.”

How has she hardly thought of Esme and missed her all along?

“The decision is not yours anymore. I go where I like. You haven’t got a say.”

And after this she doesn’t, for Esme embarks on an update on the doings of her husband and son and niece and on the state of CeCe’s house—in January, a snowstorm knocked a branch from the willow tree into the window of one of the upstairs guest bedrooms, but Esme oversaw the window’s replacement and the tree is fine. Esme interviews her at length about the food she eats and the company she keeps. CeCe tells her about Dotty, and even though she doesn’t cry, her fists are clasped tight under Esme’s patting hands. She feels better.

“I don’t see jazz hands,” Esme says, for Esme is the only nonmedical professional to directly address her tremors, which she calls a variety of comical dance terms and, when it had been bad,
going to the big dance
.

“I’m doing well. I think it works. I’m only waiting.”

She gets up from the table and walks a steady circle around the room, turns her neck side to side, raises her arms over her head and behind her back, and sits back down again.

“Wonderful!” Esme says.

The following visit, Monday as promised, after less amiable chatter than usual, Esme says, “Now we have to talk about you not answering George’s calls.”

“You’ve seen George?” She’d watched Esme and George grow apart when he was in his teens. She never knew why.

“No, Iris. Iris is worried. Now I’m worried too. You know about his play? That it came and went?”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw it. Iris’s third time, my first. Front row. We had our night of it. I don’t get to the city much. It was a special night for me, very nice. But the show closed. Quick-fast. Two weeks.”

“How is it possible? Where?”

“Manhattan.”

“But where?”

“Not where the action is. Near where the tourists go. The—what is it called—South Street Seaport.”

“I wouldn’t help him. I was sure no one would. What did you think?” she asks, hoping it might not be what she heard. Transformed, maybe, by outside direction.

“I think it’s impressive to make the people come together and sing with the costumes and the music and the sets.”

“I’m sorry to ask, but do you know how he did it?”

“Speak to Iris.”

“Just tell me.”

“Iris says the bank likes you so the bank liked George. Now she’s having trouble with the payments. Credit cards too. I believe her that she didn’t know. She’s very worried and very surprised.”

“But you say the opera’s closed. That’s good. I’m sorry, Esme.”

“Why sorry?”

“Well, it’s rude. The opera. Offensive. You know that.”

“It’s okay.” Esme nods and shrugs at once.

“And—is George all right?” Every call, she’d almost picked up, almost called back. But then she would remember the feeling of how he put the headphones over her ears. His calls stopped. Iris tried twice after that, asking how CeCe was, asking for her to please be in touch. These CeCe also ignored. For reasons beyond her, Dotty’s death cemented her resolve.

“I don’t see him. He’s in their house. Iris comes out, he stays in.”

“He’ll need time. At least it’s finished.”

“Not yet. I don’t like to give you these, but you should know. My son helped me with the Google.”

Esme unzips the nylon bag and hands CeCe some tidily paper-clipped printouts. The first is from the website of the
New York Post
. She reads:

There’s not much to write home about
The Burning Papers
, a new opera at the Abbott, written and produced by son of New York royalty George Somner.

She skims over the opera’s god-awful plot summary and resumes:

If you’re looking for some silver spoon schadenfreude, this production doesn’t disappoint. Somner has responded to accusations of racism and sexism by claiming
The Burning Papers
is misunderstood. According to a tweet from his hastily opened and closed Twitter account, it is an “engaged response to the alls [
sic
] of contemporary society.” Prior to opening, this nutso project’s press material stated
The Burning Papers
is “confidently anticipating” a national tour. Only hours after speaking with us, however, the production’s publicist, Simon Padgett, released a statement of his own: “The nature of this material and its presentation were not accurately represented to our firm. We do not condone or promote projects that traffic in negative stereotypes of any kind.” This reviewer agrees: eventually, the unpleasantness of the music and its message is so over-the-top you can’t help but giggle—or leave.

“How is this the first I’m hearing of this? No one called me for my comment? Not that I’d have given one.”

“You’re not taking calls for three weeks, remember? That’s how. They called your house. They called and called. They even called me.”

The next review is from what must be a blog, because Esme’s son has thoughtfully written
BLOG
across the top.

Highnotes.com

The Burning Papers

The Abbott: 425 Water Street

In Previews show times TBA

tickets at www.ticketwicket.com

As I endured this mad dream conceived and produced—or perhaps committed—by George Somner, I could not but ask, why? This opera is described by its composer, Vijay Muller, as an “experiment in dislocating boundaries and borders,” and the night I attended,
The Burning Papers
tested the boundaries of a palpably uncomfortable audience. A variety of conceits, including a group of feuding eunuchs whose status, in this dystopian future, is determined by their skin tone, as well as ugly portraits of enslaved women and homeless “gypsies,” are so jaw-droppingly weird, obscure, and offensive it was difficult for me to focus on the musical composition itself, but I can report that the original score is both jarringly scattered and numbingly dull. Particularly misguided was the use of chains and shackles as frequent costume elements for the women: it was unclear to this viewer if their clanking was an intentional or unintentional addition to the score. Rumor has it the show’s director, Bernard Lieber, quit the production several weeks before previews began in what may have been a career-saving move, citing that old standby, “creative differences.”

Not Recommended.

And the next, from the
New York Observer
:

PRODIGAL DONE

Amid fresh claims of chauvinistic misadventure, the terror-and-apocalypse-themed
Burning Papers
, a new opera at the Abbott—a venue just blocks from the Freedom Tower—has closed.
Papers
launched its creator, George Somner, onto New York’s classical music scene with a bang, though probably not in the way he hoped. Although the production was only seen by a few lucky—or unlucky—audiences in previews, it remains a hot topic in New York’s social circles, prompting many to wonder what his mother, Cecilia Somner, thinks of the opera’s Queen. Those in the know imagine that Lady Somner—who in all her years of high-profile philanthropy has famously granted only one interview, to a seventh grader at a school her foundation built, must not be enjoying the publicity.

Somner junior, a scion of the American Rubber fortune, describes himself as a contemporary librettist who is “not afraid of challenging material.” A neighbor to the Abbott Theater, Helen Gomez, said she had not heard of the opera, and while she “supports freedom of expression,”
The Burning Papers
“does not sound like something [she] personally would go out of [her] way to see.” When told the show was closing, she added, “Tough town.”

She can’t read any more.

*   *   *

“There aren’t any legitimate reviews? Nothing in the
Times
?”

“My son said Google has a lot. But mostly other people making copies of the first thing, the
Post
.”

“Nothing more measured in tone? A profile? A process piece?”

“This too shall pass,” Esme says, putting her bag on her lap to signal her departure. From the door she says, “I see you next week. Call George. Get out of this room. Cold outside is no excuse. Now your friend’s dead, you go make another.”

“I hardly knew her and she wasn’t interesting!”

But Esme is already down the hall.

The next day CeCe screws her courage and calls Nan to ask how much people are talking.

“It’s pretty bad,” Nan says.

Tonight, the moon is full and catches in the ice hanging off the trees. It glows so brightly on the iced lake it’s as if the lake were another moon. There’s a drifting fog. The weather is turning. Remembering Esme’s admonition, CeCe forces herself to have dinner in the dining room with the rest of the waxworks.

She chooses a seat by the window, next to Mr. Townsend. He would prefer for her to call him Carl. She does not honor his request, Carl being a name she finds deflating. His skin is thin and mottled on his high, hairless forehead, and he has the bright, energized eyes of advanced sickness. His feet swing under his chair. He and a woman she does not recognize are in the middle of a conversation.

He turns to CeCe. “You enjoy the movie?”

“The movie last night,” the woman says.

“Yes, very funny,” CeCe lies. She hadn’t left her room, but she remembers from the schedule it was
The Seven Year Itch
.

Esme wants her to forgive George. Esme is looking out, worrying ahead to who will take care of CeCe. But he’d come only for the money. And there is the matter of her own shame. Her son’s ugliness, in the papers. All this time, she’s let no one visit. Look how he’s gone and humiliated her, ten times what any hospital room or wheelchair might! What are they saying about her, right now? Who is always blamed? The mother is who. The mother, right or wrong. They’ve probably dusted off her divorces. Probably gossiping for the first time in thirty-five years about her unfortunate choices. They’ll assume he learned his odious prejudices at her knee. That her good work was only made to increase her influence and is no reflection of her spirit. They’ll decide either he learned his intolerance from her, or that she neglected him so thoroughly she warped him out of all compassion. Too much or not enough, one or the other! How dare they? Maybe she doesn’t want to return after all. She certainly won’t be calling on anyone in the musical philanthropic circles. She’ll need to call the John Stepney Somner Library, hear their concerns. The institutions she supports that combat discrimination too. How unpleasant those conversations will be. Will they still be able to use her name? Her name, which attracts the other donors, the name she’s established so carefully for just that reason? Maybe she’ll stay in this terrible facility forever. She will increase her donations to the various causes of music and art and justice she already supports. Quietly. She’ll call Annie in the morning.

Carl turns again to CeCe. “Did you enjoy the movie?”

Poor man. “Yes. It was funny. Did you?”

“Funny? Funny to think a movie like that is funny. It was sad as all get out!”

“Which movie are you thinking of?” the woman asks. “Not last night’s. Are you thinking of a different night?”

A hazy cloud has settled over the moon, turning the lake yellow. The light from the dining-room windows stretches away from the building, yellow too, long bars over the snow.

“Whom do you ask, him or me?” CeCe says.

“Well, either,” the woman replies.

“If there’s one thing I know, it’s movies,” Carl says. “Please pass the branches.”

CeCe looks around the table. She slides over the tray of asparagus and rises to retire to her room.