A Book of American Martyrs(151)

Your visit with me will be more than just this subject, I hope!

It had been seven years—more than seven years—since Naomi had seen Madelena, at her father’s funeral. At the time she’d had only a confused glimpse of the woman, stylish black clothes, silver hair obscured by a black hat with a curving brim, skin very white, stern and dry-eyed amid the gathering of mourners of whom many were vocal and emotional.

Naomi recalled the surprise, disapproval—that, soon after the funeral, Madelena had left Ann Arbor. She’d made no arrangements to stay overnight. She’d declined invitations to stay with Jenna or with Gus’s friends. She’d been coolly courteous with her ex-husband Clement—of course she’d declined his and Adele’s invitation to stay with them for a few days in Birmingham, an hour’s drive from Ann Arbor.

She’d spent some time with Jenna. Not in public but in private.

What had they talked about? Naomi wondered.

Jenna would have been very reticent. Confronted with stronger personalities like Madelena, more willful and dominant individuals like her husband, Jenna often lapsed into silence.

Naomi couldn’t recall Madelena speaking with her, Darren, or Melissa at the funeral or at the reception afterward. Probably she’d avoided the children of the deceased stunned and stricken like young zombies.

For what is there to say to children whose father has been murdered? Even if they are your grandchildren? Other adults had tried, clumsily. But not Madelena Kein.

But Naomi’s grandmother had not ceased to be aware of Naomi altogether.

At Kennedy Airport Naomi had been greeted at the baggage claim by a uniformed limousine driver bearing a white cardboard sign—NAOMI VOORHEES. Madelena had insisted upon hiring a car for her, as she’d insisted upon paying for Naomi’s airline tickets.

Naomi was touched. She was made to feel privileged, cherished. She had never seen her name so conspicuously displayed.

In Ann Arbor she was highly conscious of her name. It seemed to her a beautiful name, and a significant name—Voorhees, at least. But there was relief to assume that, in New York City, the name would mean nothing.

It was winter break at the university. She’d told no one where she was going. She had not told her Voorhees grandparents in Birmingham knowing that they would disapprove, or feel hurt, subtly insulted—thinking that after they’d been so generous with Naomi, as with their other grandchildren, had done so much for her, her allegiance should be to them, and not with the selfish “career” woman who’d scorned the role of grandparent.

Her Matheson grandparents, in Evanston, Illinois, were not much in her life any longer. She wondered how often they saw Jenna, or rather how often Jenna chose to see them.

Of course she had not told Jenna. Since the disastrous telephone call of the previous March the two had not spoken.

And she had not told Darren. She was trying to telephone her brother less frequently. Her emails to him were very belatedly answered, if answered at all. She had to accept—He is moving away from me. I remind him of what he wants to forget, and who can blame him.

In a state of intense anticipation she’d stared from the rear, tinted windows of the car hired to bring her into the city. She had not been to New York City more than a few times, with her parents—not for a long time. The drive was slow and halting and her view was truncated by lanes of traffic, heavy-duty construction equipment making a deafening racket, elevated railroads, girders. Billboards, fleeting patches of sky. Highway ramps, bridge ramps. More elevated railroads, girders. More traffic, slow and halting. Her head began to ache with the strain of anticipation. She had packed only a few things but she had not forgotten her camcorder. She was wearing her heaviest winter jacket and layers of clothes beneath. It was January, that cheerless month. In Michigan, snow had accumulated in dunes like slag.

In New York there was much less snow. From the rear of the hired car she saw patches of dirty white like soiled Styrofoam.

She tormented herself with a fantasy of arriving at the address on Bleecker Street her grandmother had provided her and finding—nothing.

A barren lot, an abandoned building in a derelict urban setting. And slow-falling snow to obscure her tracks.

It was a malevolent fairy tale. She did not want to think of her life as a malevolent fairy tale.

And then, the car was moving swiftly onto a ramp—across the Williamsburg Bridge—was this the East River below? High-rise buildings loomed above the choppy water. The sky was mottled with cloud, a deep bruised sky of myriad layers as in a painting of El Greco that had been one of her father’s favorites—A View of Toledo.

Her heart lifted, she began to feel hope.

The driver continued to Houston Street. Her grandmother’s apartment building was located near the intersection of West Houston and West Broadway, near Washington Square Park.

At LaGuardia Place were three high-rise buildings, with vertical panels of glass. There were nothing like these in Ann Arbor.

She gave her grandmother’s name, and her own name, to a doorman. Again the fleeting thought came to her—It is a mistake. I am not expected.

Ascending then to the thirty-first floor in an elevator.

And there, waiting by the elevator, her beautiful silver-haired straight-backed grandmother Madelena Kein—the woman who’d made it clear years ago that she had no interest in being someone’s gram-muddy.

“Naomi! Welcome.”