The Unfortunates (20 page)
“Magnificent,” George whispers.
“I still think it would be a hell of a lot easier if you gave them names,” Aleksandar whispers back, leaning in from the row behind. “Look at this. Press, already.” He hands George his phone.
“Hmmm.” George says, squinting. He reads:
As talent even now continues to defect from the once robust New Orleans Opera … soprano Judith Havemeyer … taking contract roles in independents such as this year’s mysterious vanity project
The Burning Papers
… In an unusual choice of venue, opera newcomer George Somner is staging his original production in New York’s South Street Seaport area …
“‘Vanity project’? I can’t believe this. This is
hateful
.”
“It’s not great,” Aleksandar says. “But that’s how it works.”
Panic twists through George from gut to ear. “Fire Judith,” he says, his voice unexpectedly breaking.
“Listen, it’s just a gossipy side-item in a trade rag. Our content isn’t public yet.”
“So?”
“So all they have to talk about is the casting and the lease.”
“But it’s spiteful!”
“You prefer they start with a positive angle we have to live up to? Let them start negative.”
“Judith draws unnecessary attention. She called them, I know it.”
“
We
called them. Our PR called them. Don’t pretend to be naive. Take a breath. Stop sulking. Unsquinch your face. That’s bad energy. You’re like an angry little raisin! You know all press is good press. You know we start low and little. You’re the business guy. This is 101.”
“
I’m
the business guy? I hate that!”
“Taking criticism is one of your roles as producer. You’re our captain, George.”
“Then as your captain I order you to lower your voice. Rehearsal is
in progress
!” he cries, folding his arms over his chest.
“We’re a small potato. In our case, all press really is good press. With my heart, I believe that. But I will lock down the publicity if you only want sunshine. Do you only want sunshine?”
“No, I understand. It’s good to be written about.”
“Hey, look. Your name. Those are real pixels, my friend! Zoom in. Blow it up. Yum. Hello, Mr. Somner.”
“There it is, huh?”
“There it is.”
George has to get back to the office. He nods to Judith, sitting in the first row, drinking her ginger tea with honey. He waves, and as they do sometimes, the group erupts into scattered applause. He raises his hands in the air. “Not me, you. You, you, you!” He exits the dim theater and strides out into the bright day, scanning the street for a taxi back to midtown, the warm cobblestones of old New York under his heel.
“Well, hello! You surprised me.” Iris is killing the evening in the supermarket, inspecting a fan of kale.
“Did I?” Bob replies. “Good thing that was my plan.”
“I haven’t seen you since the boat, have I? How are the twins?”
“Taller and louder. Back to school, thank God.”
“Of course. I forgot. September still feels like summer to me. County Day?”
“No, we moved back to the city. George didn’t tell you? Sixty-Third and Second, right between the boys’ school and work.”
“Convenient.”
“Sure is.”
“How’s Martha?”
“Fine. What the hell’s happened to George? Haven’t heard a bark from him in a month. More than a month. I miss my drinking buddy.”
“He’s so busy. He’s consumed. The opera’s in rehearsal. It’s all he talks about.”
“Lucky Iris.” Bob laughs, reaching his big hand idly into her shopping cart, lifting out a yogurt. “You must be short on company. You a fan of opera? Between you and me.”
“We went a few times last year. It’s not my thing, but I get having the bug. I was in bands as a kid. I’ve never seen him so—driven, I guess is the word.”
“Look at you! Slick. Nice and evasive. You’re learning, kid. Sounds like George doesn’t know you ain’t froufrou enough, am I right?”
She can’t help smiling. “Bob! I
am
learning. About opera. Maybe you’re a little right. He’s excited. I’m excited for him. Really.”
“And I’m excited three. Now, how about I could use your help? If you don’t mind.”
“My help?”
“Let’s say George was in the doghouse. What would he buy you here to cheer you up?”
“Here? At the supermarket? I don’t know about here.”
“All the other shops are closed. So early, these small towns. It isn’t even dark. I’ve been visiting a client, but by the time I get back to the city, all
those
shops will be closed, see?”
“They have flowers up front. But they’re tired. You could go across the lot to the wine shop.”
“Could we take a look?”
“At the flowers?”
“Wine gives Martha a headache.”
They move to the front of the store. A few plastic buckets of roses and daisies sit among mixed bouquets already rolled in tissue paper and tinted plastic.
“I don’t know what to do,” he says, looking at the daisies.
“Let’s try to fix something together.” She pulls two clumps of browning pink roses from the water and then four bunches of lilies. “Hold these.” She pulls the baby’s breath from the roses and plunks it back in the display bucket. She removes the browned outer petals from the roses and puts the little pile in her cart. She gestures for Bob to unwrap and loosen the lilies.
“I’m going to hand you a few roses at a time. Mix them all up and make them fall together,” she says.
“You can’t be doing that,” a cashier calls from the register.
“It’s okay,” Iris says. “We have two bunches of roses and four lilies. We’ll be right over.”
“What do I do next?”
“You hold it and I’ll wrap it up. The plain white paper from the roll. See? Not so bad. The twine, not the ribbon. Fancier the girl, plainer the string. I only learned that recently.”
She pulls the six neon price stickers from where she’s saved them on the back of her hand and holds them out to the cashier.
“My hero, Iris. Why don’t we all have dinner? Guilt George into it. Next week.”
“You think Martha will have forgiven you by then?”
“Hope so.” He raises the fat bouquet and they say goodbye. When she turns at the far end of the aisle, she sees he’s right where she left him, still under the surveillance of the checkout woman. Iris wonders what keeps him from stepping forward to pay, what it is he forgot.
Something isn’t right. It’s hard to breathe. She sees a rolling hill of daffodils. It is in her eye. She is aware—there’s a flickering, a bird flying close to her over the field, a red hawk torquing low, too close to her face—oh, it’s not the wing of a hawk but her own eye coming open. A flat field of dandelions—dandelion, daffodil, dandelion, daffodil, but which is the yellow word? Over there—is it? The black button lost off her sweater, shining in the field. She will sift the field and catch the button up. But now everywhere is white. Is it snow? No, she’s so hot it can’t be snow. White with blue. Not lines. Dots. Dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot—dots make a line. Cloth. A gown. A hospital gown for sleeping. Yellow again, rolling past, skipping under the side of her eye. The floor. Oh, no. The floor is sick! Poor sick floor! I are lying in a bed and I are moving. There are people by her side and they are moving too. Now they’re in a metal—she—a freight elevator? It clangs! Gurney.
Gurney
is a word that must be related to whatever is going on. Out of the hot refrigerator and down a hallway. Small windows at the top and gray pipes in the ceiling. Basement. Underground! Bags of trash, passing a pile of black bags of trash. She cannot hear! Air, a swinging door—a different hall, brighter. Woosh, another hall, brighter still. A room. Stopped. Something beside her breathing like an animal, wheezing like a dog, but made of plastic. The dog is bright red plastic! A man giving an order. In the fluorescent she sees two silver spears, one under each of her hands. Now, why are they so silver? Someone puts a mask over her mouth and nose. It’s blue and hard and attached to a tube. It hisses and makes mist into her nose and throat and tastes bitter and is frightening and what, she tries to say, why? The silver spears must be for her to save herself. They are beautiful. But why can’t she gather them up? She must pull, like Arthur. She pulls but they do not come free. A man—a doctor?—directs her: “Get up! Borrow the arms and legs of your children for that is why you made them!” No, she pleads, that’s not why I made them. I don’t know why I made them. I didn’t have a reason! Guardrails. So stupid! Stupid, stupid. Guardrails in the sides of the bed.
Someone puts a clipboard on her chest for a long, a very long, time. She forgets. There is a nurse whose head is a balloon tied to the silver rail of her bed. Through the mask she tells the nurse, where there are rules, there are secrets, nurse, where there are rules, there are secrets! But the nurse does not notice and the effort exhausts her and—here’s the hawk again, the awful ripping sound of a hawk and her arm has been caught up in its talons and—it’s not a hawk but another nurse, holding a knife or a pen or a spoon to her arm and she knows: this woman is communicating something to me. This is a secret way of giving me a message. But what does this nurse try to say? Ah, the nurse tells her, through the spoon pressing the inside of CeCe’s elbow—You’re not white, didn’t you know? You’re black. And you are very young and plump and you are here to make some babies! She looks down at herself and sees, yes, indeed, she is young and plump and black—why, she’s Patricia’s friend from school, that dear fat friend, and she is there to have some babies. How lucky for them to be having babies the same time! And it’s not just Pat who loves her, there is a man who loves her too, and he will come and sleep with her and then they will have the babies, which is why she is at the hospital, for there is no glad reason to be in a hospital but the coming of babies, and why didn’t they tell her this right away? Happiness and peace envelop her—she’s hot and it’s hard to breathe but it’s all for babies. And! She’s free to be anything she likes, young and black as she is, and what will she become—a singer, like that woman in Paris with the beguiling name? But in peace there is danger, for—she almost forgot them, they are so slippery—now have arrived the men in the suits. There are three of them and they are trying to kill her. Their suits are dark gray. They come when no one else is in the room. Ah, they are lawyers! They talk to her like she is a little baby. They push a pen against her hand and want her to sign a paper. She wishes one were her son, but none is her son. There’s something she is thinking she must tell Patricia. Dear Pat, where have you been? But it’s not Pat, it’s the woman with the spoon. The woman says, There, there. But where does she mean? She looks there and there, and the dog, the wheezing red dog is still beside her. He is very unnatural. And! He’s found her button in the field of daffodils. He’s going to the clapboard shed at the edge of her property to meet her and to give it back. The shed is very low. She crouches inside. She is naked and there are a pair of oars and a wooden box of heavy iron hinges and gate hooks and door knockers and lock tumblers and the window is broken and the dog is there and he stands atop the pile of rusted license plates and he has the black button from her sweater for his left eye. Here is your button! He shakes his head and out it comes. Why aren’t you at home? he says. Go home. You are safer at home. If you stay here, the man who stands outside the window and watches will come to the bed and eat you. Oh, Dog, she tries to say, I am so thirsty! But when she looks around the shed and tries to read the license plates, not anywhere can she find the word
thirsty
and her button has rolled away. Esme, help me, Esme. Now she is so mad at Esme! Why didn’t you clean upstairs like I asked? It’s dirty upstairs and because of you I have to live down here in the basement. What am I paying you for? Bring me water, and bring my husband a Scotch and flat ginger ale, his stomach is bothering him. Esme, please-oh-please. Esme—no, it is the woman with the spoon. Thirst is the most terrible madness! She must make the idea of thirst come through her eye because her eye is all that’s left of her mouth. Other people are in the room too, but none of them listen.
Night, it is night. Bed, she is in a bed. Something beside the bed. A bag. A red plastic bag that is big and has words on it she can’t read. Stupid as always. Her legs are locked but they want to be unlocked. It is always shameful in the dark. The men in the suits are under her bed. One of the men has left his violin case on the chair. It is filled with birdseed. She will kick it away. A violin case filled with birdseed is an evil thing. Red, red, she must be inside her own eyes. Open. Maybe it is Son who is across the room. Son is sitting in the dark, watching her, far away. George! George, look at me, I am here! George is not looking at her. Inside her racking tremor there is no tremor. Inside where there is no tremor, there is a child. She is in the hospital, and she will have a batch of babies, and after she has them her hair will turn white. Come here, Son, come to me. I am having a nightmare. Son’s face is a stone that waits for water. Hands at her throat. Not the lawyers, but her own hands, the sides of her hands are beating up against her throat. Hands, do please take this mask off me, hands, oh, please. Son in the chair so far away. My son, what has happened to your legs that you sit and do not come to me? Son must be hurt! Son would come flying if he still had his legs. Oh, so sad. She is so sad for her son. How did this happen to her George, did they never tell her he was in the war? Now it is day. So bright her eyes will not open. Back in her room upstairs! She was this close to firing Esme. A man at the window. Green in the glass rectangle. Green at the bottom and blue at the top and the man in the middle. A lawn. Green and sounds like
hrrr hrrr hrrr hrrr hrrr.
There is a helicopter. Walter is in it. Walter says, evil is made of all the things you forget. Walter says, the more you forget a thing, the more beautiful it can make itself in the dark. A hand in her mouth. Cleaning. Fingers inside her mouth. Water. Water on her forehead. She’s on the beach. She has slid down the sandy dune. Here is her tremor. Racking every limb. She looks into the sky. Walter’s helicopter is gone. She stands where the surf has made a white line of sputum. They will never let her get out of bed. She will lie and shake until she is a paper husk, and rising on her own, she will tear like the shell of a dried chrysalis.
