Infinite(9)

My grandfather took off his Cubs hat and scratched his scraggly gray hair. “About what?”

“About Karly. About what happened.”

I didn’t see any recollection in his eyes. Facts had a way of coming and going in Edgar’s mind without hanging around for very long. He put his hat back on and stared at the painting again. His brow wrinkled in frustration, as if he knew I’d told him something important and he should remember what it was.

“She died,” I reminded him, my heart breaking as I said it.

He thought about this for a long time without replying. After a while, I wondered if he’d even heard me. Then he pursed his lips to tell me what he thought.

“You’re better off without women,” he announced, with a dismissive sharpness in his tone. “Nothing but backstabbers. My wife left me for another man when I was fifty. Never saw her again. Good riddance.”

“Edgar,” I sighed, not wanting to hear another diatribe. Not today.

“She said she didn’t know who the hell I was anymore! What does that mean? I was the one putting food on the table, that’s who I was. Someday you’re going to realize you’re lucky, Dylan.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. My fists clenched as I struggled to control myself.

I’d like to tell you that this was Edgar’s age talking, but in fact, he’d been this way most of his life. He was a cantankerous son of a bitch and the king of mean jokes. Pick any “ist” you like, and that was Edgar. Narcissist. Racist. Misogynist. I never met my grandmother, but I was sure he didn’t treat her well, and that’s what led to her packing up and leaving for California without even a note.

All that anger Edgar felt covered up a lot of pain. And guilt, too. People were always blaming him for what my father did, and on some level, I’m sure Edgar blamed himself, too. When your son murders his wife, you can’t help but ask yourself what you did wrong. Plus, with my parents both dead, Edgar was stuck raising a teenager on his own. He was already in his seventies when I moved into his apartment. I didn’t make it easy on him, that’s for sure. I was hurt and angry, and I hated the world and him, too. I made sure he knew it.

We made a hell of a family tree. Edgar. My father. Me. But I wasn’t going to stand there and let him tell me I was lucky because Karly was dead.

“I’m going to walk around a little,” I said in a clipped tone, swallowing down my desire to shout at him. I just needed to get away, or I’d say something I’d regret.

“Yeah, whatever. We’ll get a hot dog later, right?”

“Right.”

“Is Karly coming?” Edgar asked. “She’s a keeper, that one.”

This time it really was Edgar’s age. He’d already forgotten.

“No,” I replied, not wanting to say it again. “No, Karly can’t make it today.”

“Too bad. You don’t deserve a girl like her, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

I left my grandfather in front of Nighthawks. He didn’t need me to stay with him. He’d be there for hours some days, staring at the painting and telling everyone who came up beside him the story of Daniel Catton Rich.

I had nowhere in particular that I wanted to go. I just needed to breathe, but that was hard to do in here. It was a crowded day inside the museum, with tourists crushed in front of the standards like American Gothic and Water Lilies. I wandered from wing to wing, barely stopping, my chest heavy. When I went into the men’s room to wash my face, I turned on the faucet at one of the sinks and realized that just the sound of water was enough to make me hyperventilate. Even the barest trickle crashed through my head. I had to turn it off and grab the counter for balance, and my reflection stared back at me, still as opaque as a total stranger. I staggered back out of the restroom in a sweat.

Faces stared at me wherever I went. That was how I felt. I imagined eyes on me everywhere. The people, pushing around me, blocking my way, all looked at me as if they were murmuring under their breath, “He’s the one. His wife died.” Even the paintings haunted me. Warhol’s Elizabeth Taylor flirted with me from behind her red lips and blue eye shadow. The younger of Renoir’s two sisters studied me curiously from under her flowered hat. They were so close, so vivid, so bright that I expected them to come to life.

I know what you’re thinking. I was in the midst of a panic attack. That’s the explanation for what happened next. My grief, my anger over Edgar, my hyperventilation, my face in the mirror—it all came together, and I began seeing things that weren’t there. Maybe you’re right, but that’s not how it felt.

It felt real.

As real as it had been when I was drowning in the river.

I was in the room with Seurat’s enormous pointillist masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, ten feet wide, nearly seven feet tall. I’d seen that work a thousand times, probably more. I could tell you the details from memory: the long pipe of the man in the muscle shirt, the monkey with the perfectly curved tail, the parasols all in different colors. It was one of the museum’s most famous works, and I couldn’t get anywhere close to it because of the crowd, so I stood at the back of the gallery, eyeing the painting over the heads of thirty or more people clustered in front of it. They made a kind of Grande Jatte themselves, different ages, races, heights, sizes, clothes, all frozen in wonder by the art.