City of Strangers
Authors: Ian Mackenzie
CITY OF
STRANGERS
IAN
MACKENZIE
STRANGERS
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ISBN 9781409076964
Version 1.0
Published by Harvill Secker 2009
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Copyright © Ian MacKenzie 2009
Ian MacKenzie has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
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First published in Great Britain in 2009 by
H
ARVILL
S
ECKER
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London
SW1V 2SA
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The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
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is available from the British Library
ISBN: 9781409076964
Version 1.0
For my mother and father
. . . cities are, by definition, full of strangers. To any one person, strangers are far more common in big cities than acquaintances. More common not just in places of public assembly, but more common at a man's own doorstep.
Jane Jacobs,
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Sunday morning. The exhausted, somnambulant city hasn't yet risen, although there are exceptions. People with heads still brittle from last night's alcohol toss uneasily in foreign beds, lean on elbows and study new companions for signs of life, listen to the plunks and groans of unfamiliar apartments, search for water. In SoHo and the East Village cafes open for business, laying out trays of glossy pastries and turning on the heat; early-waking joggers in Central Park heave their legs against the bleak air, elevating their heart rates, hoping to add a year or two. The unshaven men who run the all-night delis haven't slept. Weekend visitors, impatient to get out before the cholesterol of automobiles clogs every lane, roll up the F.D.R. and the Henry Hudson and then over the bridges, back to Connecticut and Massachusetts. The light is gray. The buses are a quarter full. Delivery trucks prowl the island. And it's the hour of church – mothers and fathers march young children, clothed in suits they will soon outgrow, toward the high doors. From the opposite side of the street, the crowd is a tessellated sea of backs, a dark, undulating mosaic. They blow into fists, press knees together; it is the middle of February and still quite cold. Snow snags in hair but vanishes on the pavement. At the entrance the priest clasps shoulders and lifts children to examine them. Behind a pair of heavy eyeglasses he wears an expression of waxy, pious delight; eruptions of pink skin, squeezed out by the tight collar, bulge under his chin. One of the parishioners says something that amuses him and his outsized laugh explodes from the doors of the church.
Paul Metzger, who has paused to watch, and who grips a cup of coffee with both hands, now walks away, up the avenue and toward his destination, a doorman building tucked into a tree-lined block on the Upper West Side. Like each of Manhattan's territories, one feels, its character starts to form at the edges, in the creases of adjoining neighborhoods, a penumbra of affluence; as one walks north on Amsterdam or Columbus, the glum, stocky housing projects and discount drugstores delicately fall away, revealing the bright, scrubbed memory of a European epitome – chaste, elegant, Italianate. This isn't unfamiliar territory for Paul, who has spent almost his entire life across the river in Brooklyn, yet when he's here he can never quite shake the feeling of being a guest. Its shops cater to habits of dress, diet, and leisure he hasn't got the money for. Even the buildings in which people actually live, with fronts of chalky stone and apple-colored brick, dollhouse doors and wrought-iron roof trim, suggest permanent, historic value. They press out from the smoke-white sky, as heavy as paint. Christmas lights, out of season, thread the bare branches.
He reaches the address he wants and stands for a moment at the entrance, his face fragile and cold, and his body angled against the building in a posture of vaguely hostile indecision. Finally, he goes in and speaks to the doorman, and then, taking the elevator, sails up through the building's core before being made to wait at a second, locking door in the foyer. Its bolts come out with snappish reluctance, and the man who gloomily fills the door frame claps Paul with a hard look of recognition. It has been three years, at least. The math of those years, the additions and subtractions, is immediately apparent, and startling to see in someone more than twenty years older than himself: the crest of thick black hair now sports a prominent white surf; his face is newly lined around the eyes, and in certain places newly indistinct, even soft. He wears glasses. He has the barren, guarded look of a man who hasn't been getting sleep. Paul's mind struggles as it revises the outdated memory. But much has stayed the same. He is tall, sturdy, broad-shouldered, affluently solid at the waist. Paul says something about running late. This isn't the case, as far as he knows, but in his brother's presence he always feels the need to apologize for something.
'I still don't know why I agreed to see you.'
'Jesus, Ben. I'm not even in the door yet.'
Ben, expressionless, watches him, then steps aside. He asks Paul to remove his shoes, a point of etiquette that wouldn't occur to him in his own apartment, and Paul, in socks, feels awkward and vulnerable. His brother points him toward a sofa of immaculate white, a soft island amid the modern, industrial furnishings: the long and heavy-looking mirror that hangs above his head, the glass coffee table, the metal bookshelves. Framed photographs add a grace note of life. Ben goes to the wall and flips something, which starts the whirring of a tiny, delicate motor; as the light shifts around him, Paul realizes that the curtains are parting. He looks out across Central Park, beyond which are the museums and craggy avenues of apartments, and beyond those the outer boroughs – brown, low, wrinkled, gray. The windowpanes are teary with snow. In the room's center stands Ben, his arms crossed like a buckle.
'How bad is it for you?' Paul asks.
Ben moves to the window and, with his back to Paul, touches the glass. He runs a hedge fund and has lately come under investigation for insider trading, but Paul, who has never had much of an interest in Ben's work, knows only what he's read in the papers – that reporters are interested at all attests to the seriousness of the affair.
Ben says, 'Are you still in that place by Prospect Park? You've been there what, a year?'
'Ten months.'
'You're all settled in? The rent is reasonable?'
'The rent's fine.'
'You should wait to buy – prices are through the roof. Only an idiot would invest right now.'
'I wasn't contemplating it.'
Ben rubs his jaw. 'Good.' After a pause, he asks, 'A woman?'
He means a girlfriend. Ben has been married to the same woman for two decades; the ambiguity and reversals of unmarried romance are long behind him. His friends no doubt all have wives as well, even if, in a world like Ben's, a few of them must entertain the occasional uncodified sexual encounter.
'No,' says Paul. He hopes this ends the discussion.
Ben nods. 'That's sensible. It's only been a year.'
'Ten months.'
'Right. Somebody in your situation has to move slowly.'
Unlike most brothers, at least as Paul imagines them, he and Ben have no reservoir of shared experience to fall back on, no fixed mold of conversation into which to pour their anxieties when they meet. They were born a generation apart. When Ben was ten his mother divorced their father and he went to live with her; later he took his mother's maiden name, Wald, as his own. She died five years ago. At Ben's instruction, Paul, who met her only once, didn't attend the funeral. He tries asking about Ben's son.
'He's fine,' says Ben. 'Starting his sophomore year at Yale.'
The last time Paul saw Jake was at his bar mitzvah. He remembers the day well: it's the only bar mitzvah he's ever attended. Ben, a convert, and his wife belong to a Reform temple, and the proceedings were far less tedious than Paul had anticipated. At the door he deliberated briefly before accepting the yarmulke he was offered – better secretly to offend the God he did not believe in than openly to offend the believers in his presence. For the duration of the service he kept reaching up to make sure it hadn't fallen off. His nephew was stiff with nerves at the altar. At the party afterward Paul had too much wine and in the late stages submitted himself to a lecture from Ben, one of the many occasions on which he reminded him that they are only half-brothers; that they share a father but not a mother.
Elsewhere in the apartment a door closes.
'Is Beth home?'
'She's out with her sister.' Ben waits a beat, floating his lie, then walks to the other side of the room. 'You said you wanted to talk about Frank.'
'He isn't doing well. We're talking days, not weeks.'
'So you said.'
'I'm going straight to the hospital from here.' When Ben says nothing, he adds, 'He's your father, too.'
A tectonic movement in Ben's face suggests the turning of inner gears as he suppresses the things he could say. Even as he approaches sixty, Ben remains formidable. His back is straight and he still has a wrestler's chest. When he speaks, his eyebrows, thick as paintbrushes, flex sharply beneath the promontory of his brow – an outward indication of a mind as strong as the body. One look at this man, in his home, surrounded by the things his life's work has earned him, the order and the cleanliness, the framed photographs of a handsome family, the good furniture and expensive electronics, the authority that comes from living well and treating the people he loves decently – one look, and Paul knows it's hopeless. His brother has no reason to leave this. He has no reason to come to a hospital and watch the man he hates most in the world die.
'I've never asked you to be my brother. I'm not asking that.'
'This isn't about you,' says Ben.
He removes his glasses to rub his eyes, almost grinding them down, as he gathers and sorts his indignation.
'What do you want me to do, sit shiva for him? For Frank? Frank had a sick mind, a wicked heart. He can die. I don't have any pity for him. I don't have anything I need to tell him.'
'What does Beth say?'
'Beth? What else would she say? My wife is Jewish, born of a Jewish mother and a Jewish father, who themselves were born of Jewish parents – what do you think she would say?'
Ben crunches his hands into fists and takes a step toward his brother. Paul knew he would strike a nerve by mentioning his sister-in-law, but the reaction surprises him; his own body tenses instinctively. Ben comes no closer. Instead he places one hand on his chest and closes his eyes. With great effort, he hauls in a long breath.
'Are you all right?' asks Paul.
He watches as Ben lowers himself into the protective palm of an armchair. It's a frightening sight. He's accustomed to thinking of his older brother as invincible, the stone he cannot move. Ben breathes deeply as he regains his composure.
'It's my heart. I'm not supposed to get agitated.'
'Jesus, Ben.'
'Just give me a minute.'
Paul goes to the window. The bare trees of Central Park are collected in emaciated bunches around the dead lawns and their gray crusts of snow. Flakes of snow dance in the wind like gnats. He turns at the sound of his brother's voice.
'I'm not a kid anymore. A year ago I had a little hiccup, and since then it's been doctor's orders. I've been vigilant for salt, fat, sugar, caffeine. I read nutrition labels. I've renounced the poisons that make food worth eating. But my life isn't in any danger, as far as I know. I'll be here when Jake graduates from college, I'll be here to look after my wife when she's old. Do you understand that? I'm not going to fuck it up by letting Frank stick a monkey wrench in my heart. And I'm sure as hell not going to let you do it. You can come see me again, or not. It doesn't really matter to me which. But not until he dies. I know you're my brother, but sometimes that's just a word.'
Ben kneads his temples. His face is screwed into an expression of agony. Gray light fills the room.
'We haven't even talked about the will.'
'That my lawyer can handle.'
'Ben, be reasonable.'
'Am I not being reasonable? Then let me at least be clear. Unless he is dust and bones, don't come here again.'
Paul takes the train to the hospital in Fort Greene. He has a paperback, but glances away every few sentences to rifle through the incoming faces. He notices a woman, not quite his own age, who seems much more absorbed in her own book. When she turns the page he catches sight of the title: it's one he's read, but years ago, and he doesn't remember it well. She turns another page, and Paul studies her fingers – no ring. Unexpectedly, she looks up; she holds his gaze, a little defiant, but not resistant. The aluminum handlebar pounds in his grip as the train roars across a rough patch of track. Her eyes suggest solitude, a desire for novelty. She smiles briefly and goes back to her book. Paul returns the smile, too late for her to see. At one time he might have been able to make use of such an opening; he might once have had the energy. When the train pulls into the next station, he loses sight of her as a fresh assortment of passengers troops aboard. Soon after, his own stop arrives.
His father's body has been made strange by its diminishment; skin bunches awkwardly at the elbows and makes Paul think of the paper on a gift a child wraps for his mother. Machines do most of his breathing, and it takes long minutes of staring in silence to be convinced that his father's chest moves at all. If you pick up his arm, as Paul did, once, when the nurse was out of the room, it falls back to the bed without the slightest sign of struggle. They say his father is alive, but what's alive about him? He can't even express disgust at his own condition.
The doctors and nurses, who come and go in daily expectation of death, tell him to speak to his father. They say he can hear. Paul doesn't believe them and hasn't tried. He suspects the advice is for his own well-being, not his father's. Funerals, too, are for the living. He dislikes such pieties. When his father was in good health they spoke rarely; Paul knew him as a locked trunk whose contents revealed themselves by no more than the occasional rattle and scrape. It isn't that he wouldn't like to speak to his father. Childless at thirty-six, Paul now has an even greater curiosity, one that rises almost to anxiety, to know the man who raised him, or sporadically made the gestures of raising him – who was, at least, there. Above all to understand the man his father was in his youth, to hear him speak in the past tense. 'I thought' or 'I felt'; 'I wanted'; 'I believed.'
A nurse appears. She nods at Paul, the minimum gesture, and begins to check the machines.
'What do they tell you?'
She glances up from her clipboard.
'These machines.'
'Your father's vital signs, that's all. His blood pressure and pulse, his temperature.'
'His brain?'
'It's functioning.'
'How can you be certain?'
'If you put a light in his eye, his pupil responds.'
She purses her lips and returns to her ministrations.
'Do you know who my father is?'