The Girl in Times Square (28 page)

Mid-March, another Tuesday, another blood test.

Lily usually waited about an hour. This time it was closer to two. When DiAngelo came back he said nothing at first. He was quiet, and Joy, though all gussied up, was quiet, and she wasn’t smiling, and he wasn’t looking at her. “Did I ever mention Alkeran to you?” DiAngelo asked.

“No, what is that?”

“Just a little pill. You take it three times a week. Important not to skip.”

“What’s it for?”

“Just to keep you all nice and clean inside.”

Lily said in a low voice, “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. Remember I told you this is a process? Well, sometimes the process takes a tiny step back. We’ve taken gigantic leaps forward. But your white blood cells are increasing again…”

Lily shook her head.

“And your reds are not producing as well as I’ve been hoping. You’re still on the low end for the counts on those. So a little maintenance therapy…”

Lily kept shaking her head.

“Don’t worry, this is why we check you every week.”

“That’s impossible!”

“I know. I’m sorry. But Alkeran is easy and very effective. You can take it by mouth with a little prednisone, it’s only for a few weeks, and it’ll fix you right up.”

“Please. It’s
impossible.
”

“Compared to what you’ve been through, it’s nothing.”

“Please, no. No, no, no.”

“Lily.”

She couldn’t take it.

DiAngelo and Joy sat near her bed, saying nothing.

Alkeran would make her nauseated again, and it had an unfortunate side effect of destroying the very bone marrow it was trying to save. It would reduce her ability to withstand infection—she’d be the girl in the plastic bubble tent again, afraid of a Kleenex in someone else’s hands. A white thin soft tissue scarier than
Scream
3. No more public places, no more movie theatres, lunches, parades. Possibly no more art sales on Saturday mornings.

Maintenance therapy! Maintenance therapy, as if Lily is an old car in need of an oil change, a tune-up, possibly new belts and hoses all around.

She stayed in the hospital through the morning for another aspiration biopsy, for a quick red cell transfusion. The biopsy showed that the marrow was once again producing blastocytes. Her sister Anne showed up, in an Armani suit paid for by the lottery money, and threw up her wool-jacketed arms. “I told you,” Anne hissed to the doctor out in the hall when she was outside of Lily’s hearing, or when she thought she was outside of Lily’s hearing, because Lily could hear. “I told you this three months ago. How long are you going to torture her? You gave her false hope, you kept her artificially healthy, and now look. Have you any idea how excited she was, thinking it was never going to come back?”

“I know she’s disappointed, but this is very normal, this is nothing to worry about yet.”

“Maybe not for you.”

“Mrs. Ramen, she’s got
cancer.
This is what cancer does. So we treat it again. And again if we have to. She’s entering a small relapse, we want to stop it. Lily understands that.”

“She’s only pretending to understand that! I don’t understand it.”

“Anne!”

Anne continued talking.

“Anne!” Lily called again. She walked out into the hall, dragging her IV stand with her. “Anne, can I see you at my bed, please?”

And inside the hospital room she said, “Stop it, this isn’t helping.”

“He told us it would be all gone!”

“And it was all gone. All except one little cell that the January biopsy couldn’t detect. And that one little cell is now two million. We have to do what we have to do.”

“Oh my God, oh my God.” Anne grabbed her hair as if it were she who was about to have more chemo. “When is this going to end? When is this going to be over? How long are you going to have to suffer like this?”

Lily turned away. Her guess was, until the end.

After she was dressed and released, she said no to being accompanied home, and slowly walked down Fifth Avenue by herself, pulling closed her red Prada rainslicker, and pulling her beret tighter over her head. She opened her huge red umbrella. It was raining.

Lily came inside the nearly empty St. Patrick’s Cathedral on 51st and Fifth and sat in the front pew. She took off her beret for respect, and cried because she thought the burning incense made her cry, and a priest in robes came by and sat next to her. It must have been her tears and her clumpy thin hair that drew him to her; he must have seen the things she could not express except through painting. “Are you a Catholic?” he asked.

“I’m a New York Catholic,” replied Lily. When he raised his eyebrows in a question, she said, “Means I haven’t been to church since my confirmation.”

“Ah, yes. Many people who come to me are like you.”

“So they do come, eventually?”

“They do. Looking for answers.”

He was an older priest, very kind, and gray, and soothing. “I saw you crying. And I wanted to tell you that in some of our churches during mass, the babies would cry, cry so loud that we couldn’t go on with the service, and so we would have a room for them where their mothers could take them, and they would spend mass there. It was called the crying room.”

And Lily said, “I wish I had a mother who could take me to the crying room.” For a few moments she said nothing else.

At last she spoke. “Trouble is, I think my mother went in there once herself and never left.”

“Many people who come to me are similarly afflicted,” said the priest. “The Bishop of Rome also goes into the crying room. Did you know that? Right before he puts on his papal robes. The mightiest, the mystics, they all go in.”

Lily listened, nodded, tried to understand.

“My advice is, whatever you can do to give yourself comfort, do. Whatever you can do. Isn’t there anything that brings you joy?”

Oh, God, why was she always eking out a long hour of comfort when what she desperately needed was an eternal moment of extreme distress? Well, she had her distress now, didn’t she? Lily glanced at him through the veil of her own emotions. Saw something familiar around his eyes, something Claudia Vail carried, a knowing weariness. “Do you know my grandmother?”

The priest smiled. “She is from the war generation then? Where we’ve seen things we can’t forget and these things-enable us to find comfort in the smallest things?”

“Well, if only the rest of us could’ve been starved and tortured. We’d all be better off,” said Lily without rancor.

“What’s your name?”

“Lily.”

“What a wonderful name. Lily, you’re upset about the things you don’t have? What about all the things you do have? What about all the things you don’t have that you don’t want?”

“I don’t know about any of that. I have too many things that I don’t want. I have cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My best friend has disappeared without a trace. I don’t want that either. No one can find her, no one knows where she is.”

“How awful for her parents.”

“Yes. But explain to me my mother. She has suffered greatly, yet can’t find comfort anywhere.”

“Ah, no. Your mother must find great comfort in her suffering.”

Lily struggled up. “I think she must. So where’s this crying room, Father? Take me there.”

The priest made the sign of the cross on her. “You carry it with you wherever you go, my child. That’s the mark of the afflicted. We all go inside. The question is, do we leave there? Do we remain there? Who do we drag in there with us?”

She came home and didn’t go into her studio, didn’t go into her bedroom. She took off her shoes, and went into the kitchen to get a drink, and was weighted down, pulled down by the anchors of her life, and suddenly she found herself on the floor, against the wall. She couldn’t get up.

The phone rang. Lily picked it up without looking at the caller ID. She thought it was Spencer.

But it was Jan McFadden calling to invite her and Paul and Rachel to an eighth birthday party for her two children. “With Amy not here, I think it’ll be better for all of us to see you kids. Will you promise you’ll come?”

Lily wanted to tell her about herself, but Mrs. McFadden sounded like she herself was down on the tiles of her kitchen floor. “We’ll be there,” Lily said. “Of course we will.”

She heard the familiar knock, and then the key in the door.
She heard his voice. “Lil?” He dropped the keys on the table, came into the kitchen. She was on the floor and didn’t look up. He stood silently in the archway, and then sat down on the floor by her side. “Hey,” he said.

“You must’ve heard,” Lily said dully.

“Yes, when I didn’t hear from you the whole day, I called DiAngelo. But what are you so glum about? So you take a little pill. I take twenty Advil a day, do you see me on the floor?”

Lily turned to him, her face wet.

“Come on,” he said, jumping up and putting his hands under her arms to lift her. “I’ll take you to Odessa, sparing no expense, and then
Wonder Boys
with Michael Douglas is playing at Union Square.”

Spencer helped her down the stairs. He was wearing his suit, a dark raincoat. He opened the large red umbrella for her, he held it over their heads. He gave her his arm, and this time Lily took hold of him as they walked to Odessa in the March rain. She told him about the priest and the crying room. Pensively he rubbed his chin, saying nothing but seeming to agree. At the movies he bought them just one popcorn, but ate most of it himself while Lily’s hands remained on her sad lap.

While walking back home, Spencer, who knew quite a bit about music from before her time, sang the Bob Dylan song from the movie, “Things Have Changed.” “
I’ve been trying/to get away as far from myself as I can…
” he sang.

Lily had dozens of requests for paintings of children, nurseries, dogs, cats, some fish and an anaconda. She turned most of them down. How to tell them that she was taking Alkeran every other day now, and any day Dr. D. was going to tell her she needed to go back into the hospital for an infusion of VePesid. She made self-portraits, of herself sick, losing her hair, bald, with a Hickman in her chest, and then just the scar, and then just eyes on a page with black anguish around them. Spencer took that one. And
gave her some advice. He said she was undercharging for her work, which was why she was drowning in requests. The next Saturday Lily started charging more and the requests died down a bit.

Lily, Paul, and Rachel took the train to Port Jefferson at the end of March to go to Amy’s siblings’ birthday party. Lily, who had stopped eating like she used to, and whose hair had stopped growing out at the same uneven but flagrant rate, was nonetheless holding up. Her good blood was being killed by the Alkeran, but her bad blood was being killed by it, too—so somehow it was all working out. The party was on a Saturday. When she saw Spencer two days earlier, she didn’t tell him she was going. She didn’t know why she didn’t tell him. Perhaps it was because she was entertaining thoughts of calling her brother’s house, which was just a few miles away from Amy’s. Maybe it was because Lily hadn’t seen the detective in Spencer’s blue eyes for a while and didn’t want to.

Lily found Mrs. McFadden to be in a particularly foul mood despite the fact that it was her children’s birthday party. The house was decorated, there were balloons floating about the living room, and the Carvel Cake was on the counter defrosting. The candles were on the kitchen table, the presents were wrapped, there was a Disney tablecloth on the dining room table and the potato chips were out. On the surface everything looked like it would in any other house where young children, a twin boy and girl, were
turning eight and the grownups were throwing them a party.

Yet in this house, the father of the children was sitting in front of the TV, barely glancing up when they walked in, and the mother was in the kitchen. When Lily, Rachel and Paul walked through, Jan put her highball glass down on the counter. Her face had no make-up on and she looked as if she was wearing a house-coat.

They said their hellos, Jan even remembered to ask them if they wanted something to drink. They held glasses of Coke in their hands and stood awkwardly. Paul hated awkward situations, and so immediately started talking about the kids, the yapping dogs, the hair salon where he and Rachel worked, anything rather than just stand there.

“How are you, Lil?” said Jan McFadden. “You’re looking…much better. I haven’t seen you in so long. I’m sorry I haven’t been to visit.”

“You’ve had a lot on your mind, Mrs. McFadden.”

“Yes, yes. But are you holding up?”

Lily nodded. “I’m holding up.”

“She’s still doing chemo, Mrs. McFadden,” said Rachel. “She was doing a lot better a few weeks ago.”

“Yes, Paul said you’re struggling.”

“A little bit,” said Lily. “But spring is here. I’m optimistic.”

Jan turned her face to the sink and ran the cold water to make fruit punch.

“At least you’re living, Lily. My Amy, she had not lived.”

But she had, Lily wanted to interject. Amy
had
lived. Amy lived big, and danced every weekend, Amy wrote essays and painted though she could not paint and sang though she could not sing. Amy colored her hair a different color every two months, courtesy of Paul. Amy went to a number of upscale, ritzy restaurants, and wore upscale ritzy clothes.

Amy skied and rollerbladed, and sat in the passenger seat of a single-engine plane over the Long Island Sound. Amy waterskied and jet-skied, and ran the New York Marathon and played
tennis. Amy studied hard, and partied harder. She drank, she smoked pot. Once she did stand-up comedy.

Amy loved. Amy loved when she was in high school and when she was older.

And more important, Amy was loved back. Amy, throwing her hair about in Central Park, adjusting her sneakers while she was trying to steal second base in a Sunday game of soft-ball; Amy, running three times around the reservoir in full make-up and brightest lipstick, was loved. She was loved! She had lived.

Lily didn’t say anything to Mrs. McFadden’s bereft back.

Paul, who didn’t like this kind of moroseness on a day of celebration, pulled Lily’s hair, slapped her behind, and said, “Let’s not talk about Amy today, this is supposed to be a happy day. And our Lily here has no choice but to come out of this whole mess flying, and do you know why?”

“Paul, stop it,” Lily said, trying not to laugh.

“I know why,” said Rachel, tickling her ribs. “Because she’s the mighty Quinn.”

“That’s right,” Paul said, starting to sing, “
And you ain’t seen nothin’/ like the Mighty Quinn!
”

Jan McFadden turned from the sink. “Amy used to sing that song for Lil,” she said, crying, a wooden mixing spoon in her hands.

“We
know
,” said Paul, rolling his eyes.

“I remember it as if she’s standing in this kitchen right now—it was the kids’ birthday three years ago. She’d been away for months and came just for their birthday. She’s standing here with cherry blossoms in her hair, singing ‘The Mighty Quinn’…” Sobbing, Jan put her face in her hands. “I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t do any of it. I can’t do my life. I can’t get up every morning.”

The ice cream cake melted over the counter. The twins were in the living room with dad, blowing party favor blowers, smacking each other with paddle balls, flying wooden planes, popping
balloons, yelling. The TV was on—loud. Jan McFadden was crying. Rachel was sitting down, looking into her hands. Paul was standing next to Jan. And Lily was sinking into the round table, looking dumbly at Jan, opening her mouth, trying to say,
Mrs. McFadden, what are you talking about? Amy didn’t know me three years ago.

But nothing came out of her mouth when she tried.

Her distress was obvious, though, even to Paul from across the kitchen. Rachel said, “What’s the matter, mama, you not feeling good? Sit.”

“Lil, what’s up?”

Amy didn’t know me in the spring three years ago. We met in our fall art class, two and a half years ago. I know that for a fact.

“Lil?”

Lily said the only thing she could say. “You have cherry blossoms here?”

“No, no. Amy had brought them from DC that weekend.”

Two years ago, the girls had gone down to DC at the end of March to visit Andrew, and Amy and Lily both put the cherry blossoms in their hair while strolling around the Tidal Basin of the Jefferson Memorial. They had walked the length of the long Mall to the Capitol Building. By the time they saw Andrew, they were flushed and panting. How happy he had been to see them.

Oh my God.

“Maybe you mean two years ago,” Lily said, holding on to the Formica table. “Two years ago, right? A year before she disappeared?”

Jan McFadden was still crying. “The twins had turned five. That’s why she came. It was a big deal. She came from DC with blossoms in her hair for their fifth birthday. She didn’t come two years ago. She didn’t come last year. It was the last time Amy was here for their birthday.”

Now Lily sat down. Fell down in the chair.

“What’s wrong, Lil?” said Paul.

“What’s wrong, Lil?” said Rachel.

Nothing was making any sense. How did Lily continue to sit, to say nothing, pretend to stretch her mouth into a pasty smile? Thank goodness for Cancer. She blamed it for the whiteness of her face, the numbness of her mouth and the loss of her speech.

Jim came in, Jan’s husband. He took one look at his wife, one look at Rachel, Paul, and Lily, and gritting his teeth and gripping the kitchen counter, said, “Your
other
children are waiting for you in the
other
room to throw them a fucking birthday party. Now are you going to do this, or are you just going to stand here like you do every other fucking day of your life?”

For the next two hours, there was some running around, some singing, some musical chairs, pin the tail on the donkey, some cake. Lily barely spoke at all, but right before they left, she asked Mrs. McFadden if she could make a local call, and went upstairs into the master.

Lily called Andrew.

Miera picked up the phone.

“Hi, it’s Lily,” Lily said. “Can I talk to Andrew?”

“He doesn’t want to speak to you,” said Miera and hung up.

Shaking, Lily called again. “Miera, please don’t hang up,” she said. “Please. I just want to say hello to my brother.”

“He doesn’t want to say hello to you. He doesn’t want to speak to you.”

“Why?”

“Oh, stop it. Just stop it. Look, you can keep calling back all you want, but I’m not putting him on the phone.”

“I’m in Port Jeff,” Lily said, her voice unsteady. “I wanted to see if I could come visit for five minutes.”

Miera laughed. “Are you kidding me? You’re not coming into this house, Lil. Not after what you did.”

The other line was picked up. No one was speaking on it.

“Andrew?” said Lily. “Is that you?”

Only a heavy breath from the other line.

“Andrew it’s me, it’s your sister. It’s Lily. Let me come and see you.”

“No, Lily,” Andrew said. “Stay away from me. Stay sharp, and for your own good, stay away.”

“Andrew! Miera, can I talk to my brother in private?”

“No.” That was Andrew. “Anything you want to say to me, you can say to me in the hearing of my wife.”

Not even bothering to wipe the tears from her face, Lily said, “Andrew, tell me, is it
true
?”

“Is what true?”

“You and Amy, were you having an affair
before
she and I ever met?” How did she get those words out? Miera and/or Andrew slammed down the phone.

Lily sat in Jan’s bedroom and continued to cry until Paul and Rachel came to get her. “Oh, what is going
on
around here?” exclaimed Paul. “Boy, this Port Jeff. It really knows how to throw a kids’ party.” They left Jan’s house, went to have dinner at Paul’s mother’s house, and took a late train back. Paul and Rachel stayed with her until four in the morning, plying her with margaritas, trying to make her feel better about the inconsolable.

Lily couldn’t go to sleep until dawn.

When Spencer came on Sunday, she was still asleep. He knocked on her bedroom door, and came in, and she was still in her bed. Parts of her may have been uncovered, legs, shoulders, back, perhaps. She couldn’t even remember if she had taken her clothes off. She did, yes. She was nude. Lily half-heartedly pulled the quilt up after Spencer was in the room.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” she said, staring at him.

“What’s the matter?”

“What time is it?”

“One in the afternoon.”

“Oh.”

“Were you out late last night?” he smiled.

“No. Well, yes. Paul and Rachel were over.”

He stared into her sleepy face. “Why have you been crying?”

“Not crying, sleeping,” Lily lied. She didn’t like lying to him. It felt unnatural.

“No, crying. Your lids are all puffy from the salt. And your cheeks, too.”

“Nothing gets past you, detective,” she said. “Well, let me get up, go grab a quick shower. Are you hungry?”

Lily had no defenses against his inquisitive stare, against his questions, against his persistence. When she was so clearly distraught, there was no hiding it from him. And there was no telling him either. Obviously. The knowledge would be used against her brother. She was in the shower forever, figuring out the impossibilities of her Sunday, and when she finally came out, Spencer was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper, which he put down, grimly looked her up and down in her robe and said, “You have been in there for forty-five minutes. Something is so wrong you can’t even come out and face me.”

“No, no, it has nothing to do with you, honestly.” But Lily couldn’t even speak these words without looking down at his feet.

Spencer got up, and went to get his jacket. “Lily, you know what, I make it so easy for you,
so
easy. Any time you don’t want to see me—”

“Spencer, but I do.”

“—Any time you don’t want me to come, you just call and leave me a message. Write me a letter, beep me, tell me through Joy. I can’t make it any simpler for you. But don’t stand here and pretend you’re not lying to me now when you can’t even look into my face.”

Lily tried to apologize, to tell him she was just hung over, not feeling well, nauseated, sleepy, she told him lies upon lies, all of them into his chest because she couldn’t look at him without spilling the thing she absolutely could not say. It was screaming so loud in her chest, how could he not hear? Ah, that was because
he was already down five flights of stairs and in the street.

AMY KNEW ANDREW BEFORE SHE MET LILY!

How could this be?

The credit cards, the cash, the ID, all lying on Amy’s dresser,
of course
, from the very beginning. Lily didn’t attach the memories to the years, but of course! From the moment Amy moved in, she would leave her life behind, and disappear for days, or go off on Fridays, and hum, hum that merciless song, from the very beginning, and Lily, so swollen with Amy’s affection, thought Amy had been singing it for her! Oh, the hubris, the childish idiocy! The Mighty Quinn indeed.

Amy knew Andrew
before
she met Lily. Amy was involved with Andrew, wore blossoms in her hair for him.

What then? Why then? How then?

How did she meet him? How could she know him?

And if she did, and met him somehow, and got together with him,
why
would she transfer out of Hunter into City College, enroll in Lily’s class?

Hi, is this desk taken? I don’t know how I’m going to do in this class, everybody else is so talented, my goodness, look at how well you draw, you must have a gift, so this desk is not taken then?

That Sunday night Lily tried again; she called Andrew once more. Miera hung up on her, but not before she said, “If you ever call here again, I’ll have a restraining order taken out on you.”

Even worse than Amy. Andrew. He had kept it all secret. Lily could tell it was true from its weight on her. He and Amy knew each other before Lily introduced them. They both practiced deception around her, kept up a false front, so that she would never suspect. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst was that Andrew was
still
perpetuating that falsehood for Detective Spencer O’Malley, that Andrew felt the need to lie and to
carry on
lying. If it was just a simple thing, a nothing thing—that Andrew and Amy were involved before Lily—why continue to lie?

Lily couldn’t paint that week, couldn’t call Spencer.