The Laws of Gravity (3 page)

Later, when Mimi went upstairs to check on Julian—Daisy was curled up against his side, asleep, wrapped in his vampire cloak—her son put down his chapter book and asked, “What were you and Aunt Nicole singing about?”

“We weren’t singing, sweetie.”

“It sounded like cheerleading.”

“It was nothing.”

He nodded and stretched. He reached for the vampire fangs and put them in his mouth. Then, when she nearly reached the door he said, “Mom? Who is China?”

“China is a what, not a who. It’s a big country in Asia. Or it can be a kind of dishware, too.”

“Then why were you singing, ‘There is nothing wrong with my friend China’?”

“Oh!” Mimi said.

“Mom?” Julian said. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” she said. “There
is
nothing wrong with my friend China.”

Nicole posed the two costumed cousins outside Mimi’s sprawling house and took photos. The sun was beginning its slow early descent; it was still
light, but the peak of the day had turned. Now the colors shone out preternaturally bright and clear, crisp at the edges. This part of Glen Cove was so lushly wooded, it felt like stepping back in time. Inching along the expressway, you could easily forget that Long Island still had peaceful deep green corners like this, full of trees and meadows. Ari had created a full-length stretch of decorated pumpkins, alternating orange and white, a natural gate that ran the width of the property. He’d bagged his fall leaves inside orange plastic bags that looked like soft-sided pumpkins. The lawn was perfectly clean of loose leaves.

Daisy sat cross-legged and skinny next to one of the bags. Julian loomed over her, one cloaked arm around her, grinning fiercely, as if about to suck her blood. It was that time of day that Nicole’s father—an amateur photographer—used to call “magic hour.” The horizontal light touched every surface and made it gleam, fired up the colors in their costumes and in the changing leaves behind them. Even the black of Daisy’s dress glowed under her autumn-colored hair.

Walking in the streets, a few of the first trick-or-treaters were meandering back and forth across Glen Cove Estates like dressed-up drunks, weaving from door to door. A few went in flocks or couples, but many of the children walked alone.

“We’re so lucky,” Nicole said to Mimi, standing close by her side. Their shoulders touched.

Mimi followed her gaze. “That our kids have each other, you mean?”

“Not just them,” Nicole said. “We
all
do.”

Then she snapped the shutter. It seemed, in retrospect, like the last perfectly happy day on earth. That photo of the two young vampires hung brightly in the Greenes’ kitchen for years.

The Future

Justice Sol Richter lay awake beside his wife, Sarah, near dawn, his chin pointing at the ceiling, contemplating the year ahead. Looming up was his seventieth birthday, the age of mandatory retirement from the Supreme Court of New York State. He could picture himself lying there in the glimmering winter dark, arms crossed across his chest like one of the Egyptian mummies in the Metropolitan Museum. He’d taken Tylenol for his headache, and when that didn’t work he had opened Sarah’s side of the medicine cabinet and selected one of the small, flat pale-yellow tablets she took on nights when she could not sleep.

The judge had been frightened of the dark as a child. Often he’d crept into bed with Arthur, his youngest and gentlest brother. Sol’s older siblings had passed away long ago, and slept peacefully now with his parents in Woodlawn Cemetery, that vast granite city of the dead at the outskirts of the Bronx. There lay Otto Preminger and Oscar Hammerstein, Miles Davis, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, and Herman Melville. His siblings’ plots settled modestly beside “Our Beloved Bessie, Yiddishe Mama” and the imposing white stone belonging to Max Richter, Solomon’s stepfather.
He pictured Woodlawn, a peaceful place, inhabited by marble angels. One stone couple lay entangled in each other’s arms. It was especially beautiful in the autumn, when the granite glimmered beneath crimson leaves.

Now retirement was around the corner, less than twelve months away and the clock ticking. A lifetime gone in the blink of an eye. A few steps farther along lay Woodlawn and the plots that waited there. A man’s working life defined him. Which meant he was—what? He still wasn’t sure.

His wife Sarah slept soundly beside him, the overhead light turned down very low so you could just see a faint glow through the floral swirls of the milk-white lamp. Outside it had begun to snow lightly on the new decade. He wrapped his arms around her. She did not move. Her feet were icy cold, and he tried to warm them with his own—a small kindness given too late, and one she slept through unaware. She no longer looked like the young woman he had married; her skin at the chest was loose under her flannel nightgown. Yet she was still beautiful to him, still mysterious. She slept with her mouth slightly open, as if she had swallowed a disk of darkness.

“Happy New Year,” the judge told the darkness, hugging her tighter, pressing himself against the familiar length of her body, and finally he, too, slept.

Waiting

Nicole and Jay sat in the waiting room of the radiology department. He was reading
Sports Illustrated
, turning the pages with one hand, frowning in concentration, while the other hand clasped one of hers. Nicole did not read. She tried to ignore the soap opera blaring in a corner of the room. In an hour they had to pick Daisy up from school. They’d already been waiting forty-five minutes. Her heart was fluttering in her chest, fluid and ice cold.

“Maybe we should go,” she said. “It’s getting late.”

Jay looked up from the magazine and smiled reassuringly. He inched his chair toward her, and strengthened his hold on her hand. “They said it would only be another five or ten minutes.”

“Okay, but then we should go.”

He shook his head. “Relax,” he said. “Everything is going to be fine.”

When someone walked into the room, her head jerked up. It was not the radiologist, but someone else she knew. At first she could not place him, his round, pleasant face, the navy-blue watch cap—it was the crossing guard at Daisy’s elementary school, a man she knew simply as Angelo. He recognized her, too. His face broke into a wide grin, one gold tooth gleaming.

“Little Daisy, right?” He held out one hand to demonstrate the little girl’s height.

“Right,” Nicole said. “Jay, this is Angelo. Angelo—my husband Jay.”

He sat right across from her, dropping heavily into the chair. He rubbed one of his knees. She had noticed whenever he helped them cross the street that he walked with a slightly rocking gait.

Jay looked up, friendly but cautious. “How you doing,” he said.

“Angelo is the best crossing guard in the world. I once saw him charm a little runaway back into the school.”

Angelo laughed. “Happens all the time. What are you in for?” he asked. He gestured around the room.

“Oh!” she said. “Tests.”

“You okay?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I hope so. We’ll know better in about ten minutes.” Jay had gone back to reading his
Sports Illustrated
. They had dropped hands, but Jay kept one palm protectively over Nicole’s blue-jeaned knee.

“Doctors,” Angelo said. “Doctors and their tests. You can’t believe everything they tell you.”

“I suppose not,” she said.

“That’s what I keep telling her,” Jay said, looking up. He licked one finger and turned a page.

“I’ve got a bum knee,” Angelo said. “Two bum knees, in fact. One I hurt on the job six years ago, mowing that steep hill behind the school. Smashed my leg to pieces. The school didn’t want to pay. Made me go to court over it, but the judge was a true gentleman. He told them where to go. He says to me, Mr. Lucca, I understand you spent eight hours in the hospital waiting for the X-ray results. Can you tell the court why it took so
long? I says, that’s because to save money they sent the X-rays to Australia. Australia? he says. That’s right, Your Honor. The continent of Australia. You may have heard of it.”

Nicole laughed.

“Daisy is a real nice little girl,” he said. “Some of the kids, they were poking fun at me on account of my swarthy complexion. Hurt my feelings. You know what she says? She says, I think Angie is beautiful just the way he is. She stood right up for me. Bee-yootiful. I told my wife about it.”

“Sounds just like her mother,” Jay said, at the exact same instant that Nicole said, “She takes after her father.” They gazed at one another and laughed.

Angie looked from one parent to the other. “My wife says we should get your little girl a present. Wanted to bake her a batch of cookies. Trust me, you and your little girl, you’re both going to be A-okay.”

There was a burst of gunfire from the TV set. Nicole and Jay both flinched and turned to look at the same time. On the TV the music swelled. Angelo shrugged and laughed.

“If I’m going to find out I’m dying, I don’t want to do it to organ music,” Nicole said.

“Aw, now—” Angelo began.

“Mrs. Greene?” The radiologist was standing in the doorway, wearing pale blue scrubs. He blinked, as if surprised to find himself standing in the light. He wasn’t smiling, and he didn’t look directly at her. Instead he kept his eyes on Jay, who jumped to his feet, as if he were in the backcourt and could dart in front of her and shield her. She forgot sometimes how tall her husband was. There was a sudden roaring in her head as of rushing waters. When she stood, she tottered for an instant. Jay put out one hand; it closed protectively around her wrist.

“Good luck,” Angelo said.

“Mrs. Greene? This way, please.” There was a touch of impatience in the radiologist’s voice, though he tried to disguise it by smiling in her general direction. Still he had not met her eyes. Then he turned and disappeared back through the doorway. Jay was looking at her pleadingly. She would have kissed him good-bye, as they always kissed at every parting, no matter how brief, but the radiologist had already gone inside. She would have stopped time for Jay’s sake. She wanted to say something reassuring, but could think of no words. There was nothing for her to do but follow.