Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) (12 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The sleet let up, leaving a thick mist hovering over Roosevelt Island and Manhattan. Inside the apartment the shadows reached Sam’s cage. Elizabeth had been holding me for a long time, maybe half an hour, maybe more.

“I wanted everything to be like in a book,” said Elizabeth interrupting the hush that had finally settled over me. She sat up and downed another hit directly off the Southern Comfort.

“What?” I also sat up, wiped my nose, and leaned against the bottom of the kitchen counter. I refused the bottle from Elizabeth.

“Like changing everything in an instant; like you read in books, in fairytales.”

“I don’t believe in fairytales!”

“No, of course not. It doesn’t happen that way. But it does happen. Only slower. Things change.”

“Not this face.” I brushed my hair off it.

“It’s not what you think. What did your husband think? He obviously loved you.”

“Obviously? I’m not so sure.”

“Well what did he think?”

“That I had some magical gift, that I could help people.”

“You’re helping with the research, you know, in the lab.”

I didn’t want to undervalue her work with my exaggerated mission. “It’s more like a curse. I’m oversensitive.”

“What else did he think?”

“It’s probably all in there —or a lot of it.” I pointed to the unopened box of Harold’s books. Why had I even bothered to bring it with me? It was an affliction.

“That box?”

“My husband didn’t get out much. But he read: Dickinson, Dickens, Poe. Mostly Dickens. Dark stuff. He quoted it
a lot
. Dickens was like a god to him. He said it was like Dickens understood the world and understood him.” I considered mentioning my experience in the hospital, how I’d used Dickens’ characters to ward off the doctors. No.

“Has that helped you?”

It’s like she read my mind. “Sometimes.”

“So the guy you met out there was Charles Dickens?”

“He looked real, but maybe I imagined—”

“Let’s imagine that you met a guy named Charles Dickens.”

“Don’t you see how absurd—”

“You’d better stop this or you’re gonna piss me off.” She lost her balance and grabbed for the floor. “Damn it.”

I put up both hands to appease her.

She settled, but she’d clearly had enough to drink. “Okay,” she said. “You talked to Charles Dickens, and . . . ?”

“He quoted Dickens. He wore a Victorian-style coat. You know, calf-length, formal. Mid-1800s, like Dickens would. Except for his boots.”

“D’you touch him?”

“God, no.”

“Was he
worth
touching?” Elizabeth could be lascivious.

“He was gross.”

She pouted, disappointed. “A celebrity, but not one of your beautiful celebrities.” She motioned to the magazines above her. “And what did he say?”

“He thought I was ghost.”

“And you thought
he
was a ghost?”

“At first.”

“Aah, so you started to believe he was real.”

“I guess so.”

“What did he say besides ‘you’re a ghost?’”

“He called me a banshee.”

“Whatever. Besides the ghosty stuff?”

“He talked like Dickens. I mean, kind of, I don’t know, some of it sounded familiar.”

“Familiar like what?”

“Stuff my husband read me.”

“Stuff from your husband —what was his name?”

“Harold.” I saw Harold’s face. I saw him wagging a finger at me, just like Momma. I saw him hanging. I saw the ragged v’s the noose had furrowed across his neck. And there was something more, something just out of my reach . . .

“Yeah, Harold, the guy in the box.” She waved at the cardboard box of his books. “Let’s have a look.”

She crawled over to the box, tugging the Southern Comfort with her. Using keys from her jeans, she ran one of them along the taped seam and opened it. “You kept a lot of his stuff.”

“Actually no, this is all I have. His books. His dad hates my guts. Thinks I caused his son’s death.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My husband committed suicide.”
That’s what the police determined
.

“Oh shit. I’m sorry.”

“How come you’re allowed to say ‘sorry’?”

“You’re right.” Elizabeth paused. “No. I am sorry. That’s heavy. Why?”

I shrugged.

“You don’t know?”

“No one knows. His family cut me off. They think I caused it.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Maybe I did, I don’t know.”

“No, I’m sure you didn’t.”

My history of causing pain —from Momma on— was quite extensive.

“Don’t you want to know?”

“I can’t go back. Let’s drop it, okay?” My face tightened.

“Okay.” With rheumy eyes Elizabeth hung over the lip of the big box and started combing through the books on the top. “Dickens . . . Dickens . . . Dickens. Geez, there’s lots of Dickens.”

“I told you.”

“What did Charlie Dickens say?”

“He talked about an asylum —all sorts of stuff.”

“What asylum?”

“I thought it was the hospital next door, but it was here, this building. In the 1800s.”

“That same period as Dickens? But he was English, right?”

“Harold said he visited here and wrote about his travels.”

“In New York?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Damn, I wish I knew more about lit-ra-ture,” Elizabeth swayed. She took another hit off the bottle. “Drink this,” she said, but I resisted.

Elizabeth fished around in the box, lifting books out, waving them over her head. “You tell me which books might be a journal.” She pulled up
A Tale of Two Cities
.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“
David Copperfield
?”

“That’s a novel.”

“
Bleak House
?
Hard Times
?”

“Not sure.”

“
Tell-Tale Heart & Other Stories by Edgar Allan Poe
?”

“That’s Poe.”

“Right. How about
American Notes for General Circulation
?”

“That could be it.”

Fuzzy, Elizabeth had a little trouble opening the book. “1842. Sounds about right. Go on, take another swig. Harold may have a message for us.”

“That’s not funny.” I pictured him holding out his hand to me. It made me queasy.

“Oh shit, yes it is.” Cross-legged on the floor, Elizabeth scanned the book. “What am I looking for again? Oh, right, an asylum. Depravity.”

I was reduced to a dull spectator. Elizabeth methodically turned pages for ten minutes, maybe a tad more, before her eyelids got heavy and her hand suddenly stopped moving in the fold of the book.

“Eliz?” I said gently. No reply. She’d passed out or fallen asleep.

I pried the Southern Comfort out of her left hand, lowered her carefully to the floor, pulled a small blanket off the high-backed chair, and covered her. Elizabeth snuggled in.

I whispered, “Okay Harold, I’m still gathering.” With a steady hand I lifted the book off Elizabeth’s lap and held it up to the light. She had reached Chapter VI. I rose to the high-backed chair and let my fingers glide effortlessly over this passage:

1842. Blackwell Island. “During my stay in New York . . . a Lunatic Asylum. The building is handsome; and is remarkable for a spacious and elegant staircase . . . I cannot say that I derived much comfort from the inspection of this charity . . . everything had a lounging, listless, madhouse air, which was very painful . . . the moping idiot . . . the gibbering maniac . . .the terrible crowd with which these halls and galleries were filled, so shocked me, that I abridged my stay within the shortest limits  . . .”

The very words the sickly Charles Dickens had spoken. “Harold, is that you?”

My well-organized apartment was mute. I wrapped my arms around my shoulders. I closed my eyes. It was all so untidy.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When I opened my eyes Elizabeth was on her feet, stumbling around at the freezer.

“What do you need?” I rose from the chair.

“Ice.” The Southern Comfort was back in her hand. ”I need fuckin’ ice.” She struggled opening the freezer door and grappled with the ice trays. “Shit.”

“You’ve probably had enough.” I reached for the bottle.

“Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do?” She held tight and wrestled it from me, the bottle leaping upward, slamming me in the face. Hard. My lip bled and a welt formed on my right cheek opposite my birthmark.

“See what you’ve done,” she said. “A drink is a drink.”

I tasted blood and touched my stinging lip. I licked my mouth, tried to play down my reaction. “Eliz, you’ve had enough.” But it was Momma all over again; the same disgust with myself for practiced forbearance and my co-dependent pissant lack of fortitude. I wanted to slap her back.

“I’m a big girl. I didn’t come from some podunk town in the tundra.”

Remember, she’s hurting.
“No, of course not. But I can help.”
Compassion.

“I don’t need help, and I don’t think you can help anyone.” She made a big show of taking another belt from the bottle. “Aaah. But it would be better with ice.”

“Let’s get you home, okay?”
Out of my space
.

“Yeah, I got ice at home.” She eyeballed down the neck of the almost empty bottle. She lowered it to her lips and finished it. “We’ll pick up a bottle on the way home.”

***

We pulled up to an older brownstone on West 78
th
Street. With Elizabeth draped over my shoulder I paid the cab driver. He said something derogatory under his breath as he pulled away.

At Elizabeth’s apartment door I fumbled with the keys while keeping her standing. The door swung open and an athletic man stood before me, skin the color of well-creamed coffee, late-forties or so.

“Who are—? Elizabeth, are you okay?” He reached for her.

“Oh, I’m really good. This my friend Eunis, from the lab.”

He took Elizabeth from me and walked her into the apartment. He seated her on the couch.

“Daddy, I found my homework!” Sydney trotted into the room, her plumplitude bouncing a little. She drew back when she saw me.

My face! Aching from jaw to temple, it was even more distorted thanks to the impact of Elizabeth’s bottle.

“Mommy!” The seven-year-old saw her drunken mother strewn over the couch. She ran to her. I remembered similar encounters.

“Your face,” he said, a gentle quality in the midst of pandemonium. “You okay?”

I put my hands up. “I’m fine.”

“I’m Jerrod Bloomfield, Sydney’s dad. What happened?”

I had no response, I just wanted out of the apartment.

“It was Elizabeth, wasn’t it?”

“I thought you were in New Jersey.” Eyes to the floor.

“Syd forgot her homework. We turned around. First grade. Gotta start right.”

“Will you look after Elizabeth?” I inched to the door.

“Of course. But can’t we—”

“Thanks.” I was out the door, down the narrow staircase, onto the street, into the dusk. The street was raw, damp, cloaked in darkness, everyone doing whatever he or she could to get off the pavement. I wanted someplace to wash my hands. I was overdue.

I followed West End Avenue down to 57
th
Street where I’d pick up the subway home. I wasn’t really in a rush to return to the apartment, but where else would I go? Then once again, the winter nightfall began to mute my feelings, familiar and reassuring. Maybe a small adventure, something I could control, something to divert a mounting anger.

“Eunis!” I heard his voice. “Eunis,” he repeated and ran up behind me. “Are you okay?” Jerrod.

Severe cracks in the pavement had forced a slab to heave. “I’m fine.”

Before I could even react he reached for my cheek and raised my face to his, a Chinese laundry sign illuminating me.

“Excuse me!” I jerked away. He lacked boundaries.

“Please let me see. I’m so sorry. Your lip. Your cheek.”

“I’m fine.” I stood out of the light, heat still rising at the incursion. I could’ve punched
his
face he was so presumptuous.

“Won’t you let me help?”

“I’ve got to go. They’re just bruises.”

“She doesn’t mean to. She’s . . .”

“I know.”

“Thank you for bringing her home.” He placed his hand lightly on my shoulder —another invasion— still surveying my face.

Swallows and peacocks with matching tail feathers are particularly healthy and preferred by potential mates.

I opened and closed my mouth once. “You’re welcome.” I walked away. Considering my tone I should have said
sorry,
but I hadn’t learned how to do that yet. On the other hand, I’d actually noticed myself in action.

The oddest part was how I felt. Turning south on West End, the anger had ebbed and my body felt hugged, hugged in the moist, warm Minnesota hillside, much like it had with Nemo. Head to toe. Restful. I turned back to Jerrod. He was more than a block away and, in the twilight, no more than my imagination. Stupid stuff.

I walked
.
I thought about the friends I’d had in my life —all three of them: a dog, a dead man, and now a drunk. Every one of them in pain. That’s who was attracted to me. Or maybe I was attracted to them. Someday, if I was successful, beautiful people would come from a lab, much of the pain built out of them. Then I’d have no friends.

I laughed at myself. I hadn’t done that in a while.

A gentle woman’s voice leaked out of the mist, droplets of delight in her words, though they were nothing more than murmurs to me. A couple in their thirties came toward me, arm-in-arm, and even in the shadowed light I could see the woman touch the man’s face. He pulled her closer. Nothing special, but together they were . . . fine. They passed by without noticing me.

I thought again about Elizabeth. It had been good to talk to her —like with Harold— but maybe like Harold she wasn’t what she seemed. She didn’t want to talk about her unhappiness. I guess I wasn’t one to pass judgment. But she was unreliable. Unstable. I touched my swollen cheek: dangerous. Unreliable was the worst.

I stopped. There it was, tingling at my heart,
that
feeling. I searched the low steel wool sky, nothing but dark trouble visible above me. The sky was agitated. I could feel the moisture coming. Within seconds the snowflakes broke the ceiling, dropping, not drifting, pelting my raw face.  Big icy ones.
180 billion molecules each, no two the same
. Pressing me for answers.
You recognize us
,
remember,
you and your sister?
they seemed to say.
This can’t continue.
Then just as hastily they fell away, turning to water the instant they landed, spilling over my cheeks like a creek. I know it sounds crazy, but for a split second I missed her, my sister. I missed the Bemidji woods. I missed Harold. The flakes blurred my vision but they weren’t tears. No self-pity. Just snowflakes, like those I’d predicted for Carly. A useless talent, but it made the most sense of all the things that didn’t make sense.

“It’s beautiful, ay sistah?” Standing in a brightly lit doorway, a mass of Jamaican woman smoked a cigarette, her head wrapped in splashy yellow, black and orange. Then she called to someone inside, over the steel drum music that spiked the air like icicles falling rhythmically to the pavement. She got a shout in return. She turned back to me.

“C’mon inside, sistah. Good stuff, truss me.” She waved me into the buttery light. She tossed the cigarette into the street and rubbernecked into the deli. “C’mon. Jerk sandy? We got it. Curry goat, yes m’am.  Squash cake. Patties. Oh the coco bread! All is good. C’mon now.”

The woman looked right at me. Smiling. She was . . .
albino!
“Well, sistah?”

I wanted no part of her and yet . . .

“Viva Cuba!” yelled a voice. And with a steady thud of the space, a young, dark cabbage-faced man bolted by and between us, swinging a boom box, breaking our connection. Propeller strobes of blue, white, red and purple revolved over the boom box; a walking carnival! The music loud, not exactly rap, not exactly reggae.

“El Yonki!” the Cubano yelled to the night, fist to the sky.

I waved off the Jamaican woman and moved on. She trotted after me, bosoms bouncing, and placed a box of matches in my palm. I kept moving. She called after me, “Next time, sistah doondoos. Disya place.”

Sister.
She’d looked right at me. Didn’t flinch
.
The albino sisterhood? More than I wanted to deal with at the moment.

The small matchbox was inscribed with the name and address of the deli:

Ruthie’s Roti

Food • Fortunes • Fabrics

“For the community.”

I’d never thought of community in the city, or really anywhere. She’d called me sister. My own sister would avoid that. The steady thumping of the boom box, the propeller lights and its human disappeared down the street. Happy.

Carly. My sister. Very much like a propeller. Once she started moving you knew she was there but you couldn’t see her. Moving so fast.

Who was she, really? I know, just a half-sister, but
nothing, no connection
? Discouraging, in a way that went deeper than most. And in the few moments when she stopped moving —like the time with the candlesticks, where she wasn’t sure if she’d gone too far with Momma or if she’d won— in that moment she was like an electron. You could know her position but you couldn’t know where she was headed.

Like Harold. Like Elizabeth. Maybe like everyone. This too, disappointing.

Searching for the sanitizer, my hand landed on my cellphone. Seldom used. Like I said, who would I call? I removed it from my coat and stared at it for a moment. I pressed the faceplate once, twice, a third time. Held the phone to my ear. It was afternoon in Mexico or Washington.

“Hell, yayes!” answered Carly in mid-sentence to someone else. “Who is this?”

“Carly?”

“Well, shit yes! Who were you expecting, Wayne Gretsky? Hello?”

“Carly, it’s Eunis.”

“Who?”

“Your sister, Eunis.” Suddenly I was afraid. I’d opened myself to more grief.

“My sister? Eunis?”

“Yes.”

“Well damn, it’s been over a year. More. What dya want? You in New York, is that what Mom told me? She’s pissed at you. But good for you.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, but make it quick, I’m kinda in the middle of something.”

“You still in Mexico?”

“No, back in Spokane. Is that all you wanted to know?”

I didn’t want her to go. “Are you happy?”

“What?”

“Are you happy? You always seemed so happy. Most people don’t seem to be.”

“Of course.” The wind roared over Carly’s phone, a wall of air. Then, “Eunis, you think too much. I gotta go. I’ll call you in a few days, okay?”

“It’s just that—”

“We’ve got a really bad connection. Catch you next week. Glad you’re doin’ okay in the big city.”

I was left surrounded by blotted sidewalk and bus fumes. Okay, nothing new, I was on my own.