And Sons (13 page)

With the snow cleared, Myron banged his shovel on the turf until he received a hollow reply, after which he bent down and removed the square piece of sod that camouflaged a wooden trapdoor. Attached on the other side was a rope, which descended into that dark, surgical
hole. It was only six feet but might as well have gone a mile underground. Myron pointed his flashlight down. The sides were braced with wood.

“Hardly a bulge,” he said, admiring his work.

Over the last few months Jamie had had misgivings over this particular direction in the project, especially since this part was his own idea and done without permission from Sylvia or her family. It was meant to be a coda. A recapitulation. But as he stood over that hole, he lurched into full-blown What-the-fuck-have-I-done terrain. How did this ever seem like a good idea? Jamie remembered when she became bedridden and talked to her family with terrible, if sometimes incoherent, purpose, as if the rest of existence were last-minute stuff, and he sneaked in a few minutes before 12:01
P.M.
, sheepish yet determined to fulfill her wishes, and the girls dutifully moved aside, and big Ed glared, and Sylvia, even in her heavily opiated state, understood the time and she sat up, curling a stray lock of hair behind her left ear, just like she did in high school, her secret message to him, but what was she saying now, as she gathered up her breath and answered the question with force-of-will clarity, “I am fine, thank you, and how are you?” maintaining the pose until he stopped recording and exhaustion dropped her back onto the pillow—Jamie, near tears, knew he had to continue with this project, just for a little while longer, just to keep her, if not alive, then not totally dead.

Five days later she was gone.

By then Jamie had called a friend who shot nature documentaries, and he asked him about filming in dark, confined spaces over an extended period—“For a weird time-lapse thing I’m working on”—and the friend told him he had the perfect rig, a reconfigured Sony PDW-700 with all the bells and whistles, enclosed in a weatherproof housing with an exterior Li-ion polymer battery and lights—“We call it the crab pot: load it, lock it, leave it. It’s how we did the hibernating-bear thing.” The friend overnighted the camera to Vermont, and two days after the funeral Jamie returned to the cemetery with his new pal Myron. The first night they dug a hole and built a shaft over the coffin; the second night they carefully sawed away the mountains on the lid
and replaced it with a piece of plexi; the third night they installed the crab pot. After a few tests to set the lighting and frame the, well, frame the face properly—Jamie could barely look—they returned Sylvia Carne to darkness, except for six seconds a day.

“You need to check on it once in a while,” Jamie told Myron.

Myron saluted.

“You sure you can do this?”

“Absolutely.”

But the question was more self-directed, and over the following months, Jamie thought about paying Myron in full and leaving the camera and letting its memory run down to nothing. What an excellent find centuries from now: these crazed Americans even filmed themselves dead. The initial How-are-you? footage consisted of seventy-four consecutive responses, time- and date-stamped from late July to early October. In total, it was less than eight minutes of film, and Jamie had yet to watch a second. It didn’t seem complete to him. Not yet. He wanted the entire loss. At least this was his rationalization, that he wanted to peer into the absolute truth, to once again push boundaries. This is what happens, he would have told you, this is the final, not-so-stupid answer to that most banal but brutal question. But if you looked closer, you might have noticed a darker grip to his eyes, as if he was hauling a heavier load within. How are you? I’m confused, baby. I’m barely surviving. I’m a fucking mess. He moved back to New York and rented his own place in Cobble Hill, landing a job teaching videography at the New School, thanks to an old professor from Yale. He reconnected with friends (we even had a drink). He dated around. He thrilled his mother with his mere presence and managed an occasional meal with his father. Jamie did all of these things in hopes of—well, he wasn’t sure except to say that when the hour and the minute were in the range of 12:01
P.M.
, he hoped he might give that lifting darkness a decent response.

Myron grabbed the rope. He waited for Jamie to grab hold too.

What sort of witchy thing had she done to him?

On three they pulled.

“I’ll come back in the spring and fill in the hole,” Myron said.

The camera was heavier than Jamie remembered.

“You have to promise to send me a copy,” Myron said.

As he pulled, Jamie had the sensation of bringing up something from the bottom of the sea, a trap loaded with creatures, crustaceans with multiple legs crawling all over the cage, bottom-feeders feeding on thoughts of his father, his mother, his brother and half brother, the familial bait of one-way entrances, the forty-three years with nothing to show, nothing to feel, but the recorded evidence of this suffering world, right down to the first woman he ever loved, dying and dead and—

The camera reached the surface.

Once free and clear, Myron aimed his flashlight down into the hole, but before his curiosity could be answered, Jamie swatted his hand. The flashlight, knocked loose, landed with a thud on the Plexiglas, briefly swaying back and forth, its sideways beam seesawing over paint still bright and vibrant: part of a small house, smoke curling up from its chimney.

I
T WAS WELL PAST EIGHT
when I showed up at 2 East 70th Street carrying two suitcases and an old backpack, a weary traveler of twenty blocks. The doorman announced my arrival via intercom—“Philip Topping is here”—but the permission to rise took longer than was comfortable. I stood there, forcing a smile, thinking I should have called ahead and reconfirmed, while the doorman—Ron was his name—waited for the answer like a noncommissioned officer serving the higher ranks, prepared to stop even the best-dressed bullet. Across the street was the Frick, and I surveyed its exterior as if appreciating the opportunity to reacquaint myself with its architecture. Truth is, I’ve always loved the place, with its collection of Turners and Titians and Vermeers. It’s a grand home but a small museum, its economy multiplying its pleasure, much like a play without an intermission. Each visit yields a new favorite: Bellini’s
St. Francis
, I’ll think, then months later, no, no, no, El Greco’s
Purification of the Temple
. Right now Jan van Eyck’s
Virgin and Child
holds the title, its finely considered details, like the brocade Oriental carpet, the crisp backdrop of a cityscape, the blond Christ child with his round belly, like my own boy at that age, Ashley taking on the bodeful Mary role, they restore me. Art seems to be the only thing that makes me happy nowadays—
happy
being the wrong word, less miserable, perhaps. Staring at that van Eyck I can feel my eyes peering into the murk of creation, at the glimmer down near the lower depths. We all live. We all die. Even the great ones. Funny how that can be a comfort. The shifty-looking donor in the painting might as well be me. Tonight the Frick was in party mode. Town cars shadowed the properly parked Civics and Corollas, and a clutch of young smokers clouded the front door, costumed in high
Belle Époque style: men in top hats and waistcoats, long white gloves for the ladies in silk evening dresses trimmed with embroidery and a velvet fringe. I was once one of these people. I hate them now.

After seven minutes Doorman Ron got the okay and let me up.

“Thank you,” I said.

I would have waited a month.

The Dyers had lived here for as long as I could remember, a sprawling duplex on the sixth and seventh floors; the elevator opened onto a private vestibule, the orchid-themed wallpaper losing its hold along the edges, like a slow change of seasons. Before I could decide between knocking and ringing, the front door swung open and there was Gerd Sanning. Her grin was both polite and distrustful, like a character in an Ibsen play receiving an unexpected visitor. “Mr. Topping,” she said.

“Please, Gerd, call me Philip. It’s been a long time.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she said, flushed. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” She was dressed in a white T-shirt and pajama bottoms, obviously ready for bed, though I always imagined her sleeping in the nude, on a bed of straw. Gerd was in her late thirties, blond and blue-eyed, of solid proportions, hardly a curve on that slab, yet despite this, she managed a sneaky allure, as if within that plain box lay a wonderful ergonomic piece of Scandinavian design. She had begun her career as the baby nurse for Andy but then evolved into nanny, into cook, into secretary, and finally into official woman of the house, a sort of secular feminine spirit. At Buckley she attended every one of Andy’s school functions: the plays, the performances, the athletic events, even the parent-teacher conferences. “She might as well be the mother,” Andrew insisted, all matter, no fact. I think this employed maternity made Andy self-conscious, and brought up the question, What did she do for love and what did she do for money? Was there a line? The feudalism of fourth grade in fifth gives way to latent capitalism.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” Gerd said.

“Thank you.”

“He was a very nice man.”

We walked into the main entry. The parquet floor was long neglected, strips of wood cracked or missing, loosened by that first set of
heavy-footed sons. I saw the curving staircase that stood in my mind as a prop for a series of stuntman falls, Jamie throwing himself down with annihilating grace—backward, forward, shot, stabbed—until Richard came along one day and decided to ride him like a sled and busted Jamie’s chin on the bottom. I tried to recall when I was here last. Twenty years ago? Nothing much had changed except for the added burden of time, which colored the atmosphere with uncertain guilt, the furniture sitting about like characters in an Agatha Christie mystery. The divan in the living room looked particularly suspicious. We all know how memories of a place can tower over us but when revisited decades later might barely reach our knees, yet here was the opposite effect: what once struck me as normal-size now struck me as grand. Upstairs had four bedrooms with three bathrooms and an attic’s worth of closets, while downstairs had a living room, an eat-in kitchen, a maid’s room, where Gerd lived, a pantry that led into a dining room, and finally, down a short hall with a bathroom on one side and a wet bar on the other, behind a thick mahogany door, A. N. Dyer’s inner sanctum, with wood paneling and built-in bookcases, an Aubusson rug, two club chairs posed around a fireplace, and an old partner’s desk, all these things conjured by his mother, who closed her eyes around the fantasy of being a writer and decorated the room accordingly. The apartment was her wedding present to Andrew and Isabel.

“Is he around?” I asked Gerd, peering down that hall.

“Yes, but he’s working.”

Did she notice the change in my posture, like a dog listening for his master?

“He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s working,” she told me.

“Of course. I understand. I’m the same way with my writing.”

“He’s been working very hard lately. Too hard, if you ask me.”

“Really?”

“He barely eats, barely bathes, barely leaves his desk. I’m forbidden from entering. I hate to think of the mess in there, and the smell. I’ve been trying to get him out and about, especially with Andy home, but he refuses, just stays in that room, typing away, even sleeps in there.”

I was intrigued.

“If he refuses to see you, don’t take it personally.”

“I won’t.”

“Also if he gets mean for no good reason.”

Gerd led me upstairs to my room. What with the late hour and with A. N. Dyer locked away in his study, my gothic mind imagined her ascending those steps with a torch in hand. I recalled the second-floor hallway as being chockablock with family photos, thanks to Isabel and her ever-present camera: Richard and Jamie hung salon-style, babies, teenagers, toddlers, on vacation, during holidays, the summers on the beach, the winters on the slopes, Andrew and Isabel making their rare appearance, Andrew always posing like his author’s photo, as if he had only one look to give. I even had a place up there, posing with Jamie at our Exeter graduation, the two of us buddied together without conviction. Between the tremor of my smile, the fire of my acne, the tidal wave of my hair, I resembled the Lisbon earthquake, whereas Jamie was Candide. But I was touched to be included. Or once included. Only their silhouettes remained. Isabel must’ve taken them.

I asked if Andy was here.

“No,” Gerd said, sounding pained, “he’s met a girl.”

“I think I’ve met this girl. Jeanie Something,” though I knew Spokes.

“She’s older,” Gerd mentioned.

“I know.”

“Not sure if I trust her.”

“Luckily Andy’s not looking to invest money with her.”

Gerd stopped in front of Richard’s old room. “I hope this is all right.”

It was scrubbed of all things Richard except for the bureau, which was almost entirely spackled in Wacky Pack stickers. I gently recalled the era of Crust Tooth Paste and Rinkled Wrap Aluminum Fool. It was like a piece of folk art.

“This used to be my room,” Gerd told me, “before Andy got older. He had terrible night terrors as a boy. Wake up shrieking and I’d have to run in and try to settle him down. He also sleepwalked, or crawled, like he was looking for something, something tiny but important, like
a screw. He still does that, rarely now, thank goodness, but if you see him on his hands and knees just guide him back toward his room.” As she talked, Gerd struck me as someone too accustomed to the whims of man, like Eve if she had arrived in Eden first and formed Adam from her own rib, but after a few weeks Adam abandoned her, and so she offered up another rib, without condition, and soon enough this second Adam disappeared as well, and so another rib was plucked and she stooped a little bit further hoping this one might take. She asked if I needed help unpacking.