The Last Romantics(51)
“What did Joe do?” Renee said. “Do you get it now? Do you see?” There was concern in Renee’s voice but also anger. Anger directed at me.
And then Renee’s face changed into a wide, automatic smile, and I knew without looking that Noni had come up behind me. It was then I noticed a tall man standing beside Renee. His left hand and arm were wrapped in a pristine white bandage and supported by a sling.
“Fiona, Noni,” Renee said, still smiling. “Meet Jonathan.”
Chapter 8
After the speeches and my failed reading, the party shifted into a higher, more potent gear. There was more alcohol, louder music, dancers in the living room, smokers on the terrace. People laughing behind closed doors. A long, snaking line at the bathroom. Ace on his phone.
“I should get home,” Jonathan whispered into Renee’s ear. He’d met Noni and Joe and watched Renee greet some old Bexley friends.
Renee nodded. “Just give me a minute,” she said. “I need to talk to my brother.”
She found Joe outside on the balcony. The view stopped Renee for a moment: the sky so clear, Central Park West like a sparkling red artery separating the neat empty block of the park from the glittering mess of the West Side. It amazed Renee how desolate the park looked from up here, the black heart of the city gouged out, scraped clean, a crater.
Joe was smoking a cigarette with two of the waiters, college students both, who ducked away as Renee approached. The night had turned cold, and Renee shivered without a coat, but Joe was sweating. Dark stains marked his blue shirt under the arms and down the back.
“Having fun?” Joe asked. He exhaled smoke over the balcony railing.
“No, I’m not,” Renee answered. “We need to talk about your drinking. And the drugs, whatever it is you’re taking now. Should I ask Ace?”
Joe snorted. “You’ve had it in for Ace ever since we were kids,” he said.
“That’s not true.”
“He’s not a bad guy.”
“He’s a bad influence. He’s not your friend.”
“Jesus, I’m not ten years old anymore. I can take care of myself.”
Renee took a step closer to Joe. “I want to get you some help,” she said.
“Oh, Renee. Help?” Joe held out his arms wide like a T, as though to indicate all of it: the balcony, the city, the park, the sky. “I’m fantastic. Did you see Sandrine? Isn’t she fucking gorgeous? I can’t believe this is my life. Here. This. I’m doing great.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“You worry too much.” He smiled, and the dimples came up. In the dim light of the balcony, he did look like a kid, an oversize kid dressed up in his father’s clothes. “Go home, Renee. I don’t want you here. I’ve never wanted you here, hovering over me.” Now he fluttered his hands like moths. “You’re not my mother.”
To the east a plane descended toward JFK, its red lights blinking steadily, without urgency, and Renee thought for a moment of all the people contained inside. Eating, sleeping, listening to music, staring out at the night, waiting to arrive. The interminable descent and how shocking it always felt, how impossible, when the plane landed with a jolt and the transition from sky to earth was complete. There were moments in the ER that stretched on like that, past the end of Renee’s shift, past a four-hour night of dreamless sleep, into the next day and the next, on and on until another moment replaced it. Over the course of her medical career, there would be hundreds of these eternal moments. A girl with two black eyes, one broken arm, no shoes. The young woman, a lump in her breast the size of a lemon, the texture of stone. A boy, his name was Alexey, his right hand plunged into boiling water. He is very bad, the father said. How else to teach a lesson?
Here with Joe on the night of his engagement party, looking past him to the glittering lights of Manhattan and the plane, obscured now by a ragged scrap of cloud, was not one of those moments. Her brother was right: look at all that he had. There was pain in the world, so much, and she had the capacity to ease some of it. Just a fraction, but still.
Renee turned and left our brother on the balcony. She found Jonathan and rode with him in a cab first to a twenty-four-hour pharmacy and then to his apartment, where she watched as he took his medicine. Then she put him to bed, and then, finally, after thirty-one hours of wakefulness and half doze, Renee was home in her own bed. Asleep.
*
How long was it before Joe called me? Perhaps two weeks, perhaps three. Every day that passed felt like a slap. Every day a reminder of the reading. Those minutes on the stage in Kyle’s apartment played again and again in my mind, hot and embarrassing.
When Joe finally called, I was getting ready for work. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I held the phone in my hand and watched Joe’s number flash on the screen. For me to accept an apology, I thought, it must be lengthy and sincere, perhaps even tearful. The poem was long gone, the paper thrown away, the file deleted from my computer. I would never write another word for Joe. Nothing for the wedding, nothing for a christening or graduation. This was what I planned to tell him, as though it would be the greatest insult, the harshest punishment.
I answered the phone. “Hi, Joe,” I said, the syllables curt and sharp.
“Fiona—” Joe’s voice sounded strange, strangled, as though he were trying to swallow but could not.