We Are Not Ourselves(193)

He was now a favorite son among the doormen. He had helped deliver the super’s kid to the doorstep of respectability. There would be privileges attached to his new status, something subtly easier about his experience on the job. And something like a home was available in the building—in the lobby, in the locker room in the basement, in this, the super’s apartment. He could come over for more of these dinners. He could live through Peter for at least four years, guiding his decisions, giving him the benefit of his perspective, sending him off to a good college on a scholarship. And when Peter came home from college, and later when he came up to visit from his loft apartment downtown, when he pulled up in front of the building in the company town car, dropping in for dinner with the folks, Connell would open the car door without resentment, because by then he would be old enough not to feel resentment anymore. All he had to do was bide his time. Everything would get simpler once enough years had passed. He wouldn’t need to go anywhere; he could stay in the lobby and the years would come to him.

If you had to pick a perch from which to watch the world go by, Connell thought, the lobby wouldn’t be the worst—especially on quiet summer evenings when you had all the doors open and you got a nice breeze going and dusk was overtaking the city, the setting sun reflecting off the windows on the other side of Park.

When Mr. Marku proffered the coffeepot, Connell held his hand over his mug. Mr. Marku looked determined as he asked if Connell were sure he didn’t want another cup. Mrs. Marku cut another piece of cake, and a queasy feeling of betrayal set in as Connell watched it cover his plate. He knew it was only cake, but it took on a strange, almost numinous power. It felt as if he would be giving up on an idea he had of how his life would go if he ate it. He would be declaring a new oath of allegiance. They were buying his future off for so little: a home-cooked dessert, the promise of further intimacy, a hint of family, an elder brother status of sorts. He had no energy to fight them, not when he had nothing better to argue for. His hand was drawn to his fork and he pressed down into the cake, watching a chunk separate from the rest. He took his hand away from the mug and let it be filled. Peter looked on quietly, taking everything in, an observer more than a person observed. Connell was surprised to suddenly see, with a piercing keenness of perception, that this was no longer his own experience. He was in the middle of an experience Peter was having. He hadn’t seen the usurper coming.





96


When Eileen was a teenager, she had dreamed of going to Death Valley and sleeping under the night sky and its canopy of stars. As a fifty-eight-year-old woman, she compromised and stayed at the Furnace Creek Inn, a luxury resort.

She went in February, during the cool season, because she’d never been able to stand the heat and didn’t want to bake her pale skin in the sun. Despite this precaution, after the first day, when she took a walk out into the immense emptiness of the desert and felt spooked, she found herself indoors most of the time. She stayed on the resort’s grounds, splitting time between the dining rooms, the fireplace lounges, and a deck chair by the heated pool.

One night she went with a group into the national park. She stood on the Racetrack Playa, which was cracked and dry enough to resemble the skin of a lizard. She didn’t need a guide, or even a rudimentary understanding of astronomy, to know what she was seeing when she looked up, because it was simply and unmistakably the Milky Way. The guide pointed out sailing stones: wandering rocks, he said, pushed along their lonely way by means that had never been explained to anyone’s satisfaction. One of the tourists held forth about how the movement of these rocks might be due to the effects of wind or ice. His grip on the science was shaky, Eileen could tell, his knowledge anecdotal and obviously derived from popular magazines, a pale shade of Ed’s earned erudition. Ed wouldn’t have spoken unless he knew what he was talking about. She would have enjoyed watching him soak it all up, the flickers of a theory in his gaze. She could have taken a lesson from his patience with this nattering tourist. He would have liked the way these stones left a long trail, never coming to rest, defying explanation.





97


On the first anniversary of his father’s death, Connell took the train to Bronxville to go to the Gate of Heaven Cemetery. His mother picked him up at the station and drove to Tryforos & Pernice.

“Get something nice,” she said.

He was overwhelmed by the choices and selected a premade, mixed-bouquet arrangement. When he returned to the car, his mother was annoyed.

“They didn’t have any roses?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just got what looked nice.”

“Those are mums and daisies. You should have gotten roses.”

“You didn’t say anything about roses.” His mother looked genuinely upset. “I can go back and get roses.”

“No, those are fine,” she said. “Your father wouldn’t know the difference anyway. He probably would have picked the same ones you did.”

? ? ?

Gusting winds rolled across the burial yard. His mother cleared her throat.

“Dear God,” she said, “watch over the soul of my dear husband Ed.” She looked at Connell. “Let him know that we miss him and love him.” She looked at Connell again. “I’ve never been much good at prayer. If there’s a heaven, your father is there. That’s one thing I know. Ed,” she said, turning back to the grave, “there’s not an hour goes by that I don’t have you on my mind. Maybe you know that already. Maybe you can listen in on my thoughts. If so, that’s a nice thing. That means I probably don’t need to speak at all. But I can’t stop talking now that I’ve started. Sometimes it feels like you never left. I go to tell you things and you aren’t there. I fold the paper down to tell you about an article and you aren’t sitting across from me. Connell misses you. I’d catch you up on everything that’s happened in the last year, but if you can hear me, then you know it all already. If not, I’d just be talking to myself. I love you dearly. I guess we’ll say the Our Father now.”