When You Don't See Me (28 page)

I held her hand and pretended not to notice the tears streaming down her cheeks. At least until she turned and hugged me for the tenth time. Except unlike before, she didn't let go for a while.

“Okay,” she finally said and pulled away.

“Okay? You sure?”

“I'm okay. I'm glad you warned me. It must have been quite a shock for you to find it on your own.”

“It was, but it made me happy, too. In a weird way.”

“It's not weird,” Gwendy said, turning again toward the mural. “Explain the parrot to me. What I know about art could be painted on the head of a pin.”

What you know about birds, too,
I thought. “The quetzal's a rain forest bird. Sacred to the Mayans. They called it the god of the air. To them the quetzal represented freedom. Unfortunately, it was such a symbol of wealth that it was hunted until it was almost extinct. Roberto's always been fascinated by the quetzal. One time he told me…”

When I trailed off, she returned her gaze to me, her eyebrows raised. “What?”

“Sometimes the female quetzal leaves her children, but Roberto said the male is just as nurturing, so he steps in to take her place.”

Gwendy's mouth twisted in a reluctant grin, and she said, “Blaine would appreciate that part. I want to tell Roberto that I've seen it and it made me feel good.”

“I haven't told him yet that
I
saw it. He's only been off probation a year. What if he gets caught? What if some building owner wants to press charges? What if his career goes down the toilet?” I stared into her untroubled eyes. “Am I making a big drama where there is none?”

“Oh, who doesn't do that? Maybe this was a onetime tribute. Or maybe Roberto's gone back to street art. I don't know. I can say that if he gets caught, or the next time you get caught with something like a fake ID, would you just call me? What's the point of having an attorney in the family if you don't use me?”

“Again with the freaking fake ID,” I mumbled. “That was ages ago.”

I realized my mistake too late when her eyes flashed at me and she said, “Which goes to show how long it's been since I saw you. Why have you stayed away from Fifty-seventh so long? Where have you been? What's going on with you?”

“Nothing. Nowhere. I'm just working. You know. But it's all good. I like my job. I like living in Harlem. My roommates are cool, and I've made other friends. That doesn't mean I don't miss everyone. I do. But I'm mostly just working.”

“It wouldn't kill you to pick up a phone and call someone once in a while, you know?”

“Okay, okay,” I said sheepishly. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be sorry, just don't keep giving me reasons to make you feel guilty.” She smirked as if acknowledging a job well done.

“Did you bring the camera?”

“Yeah. I forgot I had it.” She reached into her pocket and handed me the camera.

I removed my gloves and took photos of the mural. Roberto's color choices on the brick would look great with the snow providing contrast.

“The thing is,” Gwendy said thoughtfully, “if it's been here since September, chances are no one's gotten too worked up about it. Who knows? Maybe he had permission—”

She broke off, looked at me, and we both shook our heads. Getting approval wouldn't be Roberto's style. It defeated all the emotion and intention behind street art.

When she took back the camera, we both stared at Gretchen for a while in silence. Finally, I asked softly, “How do you do it?”

She didn't pretend not to understand me. After a few seconds, she said, “I don't ever mind talking about Gretchen. Why don't we walk to keep warm?”

I fell in step next to her. I figured we wouldn't walk long before she'd catch a cab back to Midtown, if for no other reason than to get out of the cold. I wondered if I wanted to go home with her. I didn't think so. Not yet.

“You know I'm not one to mince words.” She broke into my thoughts. “Was it our fault you disappeared?”

“I didn't—whose fault?”

“Mine. Blaine's. Did we heap too much responsibility on you with Emily? You basically took over, and we let you.”

“I wanted to be useful. You'd lost Gretchen. You couldn't get back into the Tribeca loft and were stuck staying with us. You and Blaine had to deal with all those agencies and attorneys and people asking you questions. I wanted to help. So I took care of Emily. After you got your apartment in our building and Kruger moved in, you didn't need—I didn't—”

“You felt like you got dumped, didn't you?”

“No. I just…You know, I had school and friends and shit to do.”

“Uh-huh.” After a pause, she said, “There's something I never told you. I don't know if it makes a difference.”

“What?” I asked anxiously. I tried not to panic over all the things she might be about to say. Things I'd worried or wondered about. Questions with answers I didn't necessarily want to hear.

“You helped me in a way that's hard to put in words,” Gwendy said. “See, everyone else knew me or Gretchen before we were a couple. But for you, it was always Gretchen and Gwendy. Everything you did or said showed that you completely respected our relationship.”

“You mean other people didn't?”

“Not always. Maybe it wasn't intentional. For example, it never crossed your mind that Emily wouldn't stay with me. To you, I was Gretchen's surviving partner. Emily's mother. But some people assumed Blaine would take Emily because he's her biological father, whereas I'm not her biological mother.”

“Uncle Blaine didn't feel that way, did he?”

“No. Neither did Daniel. There was never a question that they saw me as Emily's parent. Just like there was no question in my mind that she and I needed them. That's why I used the first insurance money to buy in their building. We've created our version of a family, and it works for us.”

“It's a lot healthier than what some people call normal families.”

We'd walked another half block when she surprised me by asking, “When did you cry, Nick? You were only seventeen, just a kid yourself. I was so lost in my own grief that I didn't think about yours.”

“It's okay,” I said. “I promise. I'm fine.”

“I want to know what happened. I feel like there's something we missed. Something that pushed you to drop out of college. To move out of Blaine's.”

“I needed to figure some things out,” I said. “You didn't do anything. Neither did Blaine.”

She had on her attorney face, and I knew she was thinking back to January. Her instinct was good, but her timing was off. I wasn't going to pinpoint it for her, or remind her that I hadn't wanted to go back to Wisconsin the previous Christmas. Gwendy hadn't really wanted to travel by air, either, with Emily. In the end, we'd all been flown there on a jet belonging to one of Blaine's bosses. Not going commercial had been a compromise. But nobody had considered that I might not want to stay at my parents' house, or deal with my father.

“Whatever it is, you need to snap the hell out of it,” he said after my grades came in the mail. “If this is about Blaine's—whatever she was—that happened over a year ago. It's time that you—”

“Gretchen,” I said. “Call her by her name. She's the mother of your niece.”

“I'm not heartless. I don't blame that little girl for being the result of science taken to an unnatural extreme. If you want to think of her as your cousin, go ahead. But her mother was never a Dunhill. It's not like you lost a relative. She's just somebody who used your uncle's sperm to get knocked up because she wouldn't do it the normal way. And now she's somebody you're using as an excuse to fuck up. Dunhills do not fuck up, Nicky. At least not on my dime. Get it together.”

“Nick?”

“How do you do it?” I repeated my earlier question. “How've you done it? It must've been impossible for you, all this time without Gretchen. I miss her, but it has to be a million times worse for you. I'm sorry. It's not like I'm making it better.”

“Keep talking,” Gwendy ordered.

“There are times I can barely walk down the street. I hear a noise that's louder than it should be, and I practically come out of my skin. A low-flying jet makes me freeze. You're so together. You, Uncle Blaine, Daniel, and Gavin. Everyone. Everyone has it so together and I don't get it. Sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy because this stuff still affects me so much. I feel like I'm living on another planet. Or like I'm invisible on this one. Like I'm standing there freaking out, and nobody can see me.”

She reached for my hand, and we kept walking.

“Nick, the strong times, the weak times—they all come in waves. Trust me, none of us has it together. Just when I think I'm through the worst of it, I'll read something that sets me off. Or I'll dream about her. Last night when it started snowing—do you remember that blizzard we had right after Emily was born? It was the first time Gretchen let Blaine take Emily home with him. All last night, I thought about that day, how hard it was for her to be separated from the baby even for a few hours. And I sat by the window and cried my eyes out while I watched it snow.”

“I wish I
could
cry,” I said. “I've tried to make myself cry. It just doesn't happen.”

“So you keep it all in? That's not good.”

I shook my head and said, “Roberto. I can talk to him. Although I usually don't have to. He always just knows. Do you think I'm crazy? For freaking out over loud noises? Hating the subway? Not wanting to leave the island by tunnel or bridge? Even though sometimes I feel like the city's out to get me?”

She'd turned down Seventh, and we came to Greenwich Street. I wasn't sure if it was intentional. When I stopped, she looked around as if to figure out why.

“Oh,” she said. “I don't know what I was…See? We're all a little crazy.”

“What finally happened with the loft?” I asked, looking in the direction of the building where she'd lived with Gretchen.

“I sold it. I want to talk to you about that, too, but another time.” She started walking again, leaving me no choice but to follow her. “I'd think you were crazy if you
didn't
freak out now and then. You're not alone. Lots of us don't want to go on subways, be in tall buildings, or do things that we used to consider no big deal. We work around it. We go about our business because we have to. But you don't have to deal with it alone. We're here for you. It's okay if you come home once in a while, even when you're not okay. Especially when you're not okay.”

“When you don't see me, just assume I'm all right. 'Cause I am. It's been good, living on my own.”

She stopped and turned toward me, and I smiled when she smiled. “I think you're right,” she said. “You look good. It makes me feel much better to see you like this. I'm proud of you.”

“You and Sheila are the only people who've said that.”

“Really? I know Blaine feels the same way. The city's not an easy place to live, but you've managed to find and keep an apartment, get a couple of jobs, make friends. Are you in love?”

“No,” I said, and my expression made her laugh.

“There's time for that. That's the thing you have to start believing in again. The luxury of time. You can't maintain the intensity that comes after a tragedy. I don't mean you personally. I mean all of us.” Her eyes went past me, and her expression was thoughtful. “I can't step away from the reality that she's gone. The questions never end. My imagination…But the point comes when I have to stop driving myself crazy with it. I have to appreciate everything I had and still have. And the ways she provided for me and for Emily.”

“Do you think Emily remembers her?”

“I have no idea what gets embedded in a child's brain,” Gwendy said. “She doesn't seem to. We talk about Gretchen in front of her. She knows she had another mommy, Grandpa's daughter, who's gone now. Eventually there'll be questions. We'll deal with them then.”

I took a deep breath and said, “I don't want to keep walking downtown.”

“Me, either. I was thinking the snow would be nice in City Hall Park, but—”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You know what? Let's go skating at Rockefeller Center.”

“Really?” I asked.

“I love to ice skate. For just a little while, let's pretend the only thing crazy about us is that we're tourists who've come to Manhattan during the holidays.”

“Aren't we lucky it snowed?” I asked and took her hand again as we turned to walk back up Seventh.

December 12, 2003

Nick,

I'm glad we talked on Thanksgiving, since you probably won't be coming home for Christmas. Especially after the way things were last Christmas. They won't be any better this year. Maybe worse.

Mom asked me to clean out some of our old stuff. I found this big box of blocks. You probably don't remember that Uncle Wayne gave these to us when we were about five. They'd been Uncle Blaine's, and Grandma was going to throw them away when she was on one of her redecorating binges.

We used them to build all kinds of stuff. Cities. Bridges. None of the other kids who came over got it. They liked Legos and more exciting stuff that made noises or had flashing lights. We had all that, too. But it was the blocks we liked most.

I don't know if girls like stuff like this, but I think our cousin Emily has a birthday sometime this month. I figured I'd send the blocks to you. You can decide whether or not to give them to her. I didn't think they should be thrown away. It's kind of cool to think of another Dunhill kid playing with them the way we did. I kept one block for myself. You remember the big green one we used to fight over? I win.

Hope you have an all right Christmas, wherever you spend it.

Chuck