Solos (27 page)

After Emily buys the Japanese dishes she splurges on a taxi back to Williamsburg because her packages are so unwieldy. When she gets home, she sits down to finish
Miss Mackenzie
, before the Trollope group meets the following night. She is particularly struck by the last sentence of the novel, in which Trollope assures his readers that his heroine Miss Mackenzie, now Lady Ball, accepts the life that comes her way “thankfully, quietly, and with an enduring satisfaction, as it became such a woman to do.”

18

Now eve, we're here we've won

It's Thanksgiving, and Emily is wearing her new shoes, her new skirt, her silver cuff bracelet, and a black silk shirt she has had since 1997. Marcus is wearing his one good shirt and his real shoes, not sneakers. He has walked two sets of dogs, fed a total of eight cats, and picked up two orders of vegetarian peanut curry at Thai Café on his way to Emily's loft. They have finished the curry and one bottle from Emily's brand-new case of champagne. They are now embarked on a second bottle, along with Grandma Mullen's cook's apple pie, baked by Anstice before she left for a clandestine weekend with Dr. Demand. The champagne has been poured into Emily's old champagne glasses, the thick and heavy ones from Dee & Dee on Manhattan Avenue. But the meal has been served on Emily's new black Japanese dishes.

When they first sat down to their Thanksgiving dinner, Emily told Marcus she had to make a terrible confession: She went shopping in Manhattan. She bought the Japanese dishes and the shoes and a desk lamp and a bunch of other stuff, and when she got home she had the champagne delivered from the liquor store in Greenpoint, and then she went on the Web and ordered four CDs and some books.

Marcus didn't tell her he knew all this. He had run into Gene Rae on Bedford Avenue, and she told him that when Emily got home from shopping she called her and said, quite seriously, “Help me, Gene Rae. I'm out of control.”

Marcus is nursing his sixth glass of champagne. Emily sits across the table, touching the rim of the small squarish Japanese plate in front of her as if she still can't believe she owns it. Marcus is meditating on the bizarre fact that the champagne, the black dishes, Emily's chic new shoes, even Emily's crazy guilt, are all the direct result of his disreputable father's wish to get hold of some money so he can relocate to Arizona and sell cowboy art.
If Hart hadn't asked me to kill Emily, would any of this have happened?
In other words, is his father a very bad man but a very good wizard?

Out of evil, Marcus thinks tipsily, has come good. And since the evil is such a lame, shoddy kind of evil, arising out of bad judgment, cold New York winters, and a weak understanding of the intricacies of property law, maybe it's not evil at all when the good (and here he looks at Emily's face, where the slow smile comes and goes) is indisputably of such a high caliber.

During dinner, they have thoroughly discussed Emily's finances, and Marcus's flat refusal to take a cut for his role in the Whack drama, and her decision to give Hart half of everything she takes in. Marcus has given up trying to convince her that a third would be enough. She insists Joe Whack would have wanted them to split it, and Marcus has to admit this is probably true. “I want to be like Miss Mackenzie,” she says, “who knew that the right thing to do was give half her fortune to her brother's widow.”

Thanks to the payment from Dr. Wrzeszczynski for four Whacks—Emily gave him a deal, before the paintings hit the market—Emily's bank account is fat and happy. And when she had dinner with Wrzeszczynski and his wife on Java Street, they presented her, as part of the transaction, with an eight-by-ten view camera once owned by Stieglitz, who was a friend of Mrs. Wrzeszczynski's father. Emily thinks she might start collecting old cameras to use in her “Disappearing Brooklyn” series. One of Dr. Wrzeszczynski's patients is a prominent Manhattan editor, born in Greenpoint, who comes over twice a year on the L train to have his gums attended to, and Wrzeszczynski thinks he might be interested in doing a book. Emily has an appointment with him next week, right after she sees the financial planner Anstice recommended.

“Marcus, are you asleep?”

“No.”

She pours more champagne for each of them and says, “Isn't it funny about the two thousands?”

“The two thousand whats?”

“Years.” Her voice is dreamy, over-champagned, and slowly, as if in a trance, she cuts herself a third piece of pie and drops a spoonful of ice cream on top of it. “The twenty-first century is not really working, is it? I mean—we're about to hit 2003, and we're actually going to call it two thousand and three. It's as if we used to say
one thousand nine hundred and ninety nine
. Like when you write out the amount on a check in words.”

“You mean it's time to just call it
three
.”

“Exactly. It is now
two
. In a little over a month it will be
three
. That is all we need.”

“So simple.”

“So economical. Even elegant.” Emily almost eats a bite of ice cream and pie, but doesn't. “Let's make a pact,” she says. “Maybe we can start a trend. Like everyone lighting just one little candle. You light one in Honesdale, I'll light one here.”

They clink glasses. “To three.”

“To three.”

“What did you think of your last Trollope evening?” Emily asks.

“
Miss Mackenzie
, or the group?”

“Group. I feel the need for some gossip.”

“It was funny without Luther and Lamont.”

“Yeah. I hope Italy will help.”

“The Elliot thing wasn't good.”

“No. It wasn't good.”

“I still don't know what to say about that. Maybe it's one of those things that there is no right way to think of, and the best way to deal with it is to forget it.” Marcus smiles. “So here's another thing. Did you notice the way Pat insisted the next book has to be
Ralph the Heir?
”

“What?”

“Didn't she sound maternal? I think she's pregnant.”

“Get outta here!”

“You wait.”

“You're so full of it. The oracle of Honesdale.” Emily props up her head in one hand and looks at Marcus through half-closed eyes. “Tell me about Honesdale, Marcus. Tell me a story. Tell me more about your dog.”

“You already know about my dog.”

“I know her name was Phoebe, she was killed when you weren't there, your father buried her in the woods.”

“That's all there is to say.”

“Is it?”

Marcus wants to say that he knows his father used to be her husband. He can't believe he hasn't said this yet, and he has a feeling she knows he knows. But does she know he knows she knows? During their long discussions about the Whacks, the legalities, and the amount of money Emily should share with Hart, she has never once called him by name: He is
him
, he is
my husband
, he is
my ex
. Mr. X, Marcus thinks. X marks the monster. Or does it?

“Yes,” he says. “That's all there is.”

“Then let me tell you about my dog Harry.” Emily rouses herself and sits up straight in her chair. “Harry was my first dog. My parents always had cats. I love cats. But I told myself I wouldn't have any for a while. I had just come to New York. I saw myself as a solitary predator, sneaking up on the city and taking its picture. A woman with a camera, not a woman with a cat, much less a dog. No ties. Then I met Harry over at the Pet Pound, and I fell instantly in love with him. It was so strange—like Swann and Odette. He wasn't even my type. I was a cat person who looked into the eyes of that scruffy little mutt and became a dog person. Converted in an instant, like St. Paul on the road to Damascus. I became a Harryite.” She sighs. “So. Then I got married. No—then I got Izzy. And
then
I got married. And one evening my husband had to walk Harry because I was sick in bed with the flu. Very bad. I had such a high fever Izzy refused to sit on my head. So my ex took Harry out. A rainy night. And when he came back he said Harry had been hit by a car, he was walking him off the leash, the dog ran into the road, he was dead. He took Harry over to the vet to be—you know. Cremated. He asked if we wanted the ashes, and he said no, that was okay, we didn't want the ashes, he thought it would be too upsetting for me.”

Marcus doesn't say anything. While Emily talks, he has been sipping steadily at his champagne, and he has just passed quietly over into drunkenness. But he is listening, and he has no trouble sorting out the
he's
in the story.

“I never saw him again. And I always—this will sound terrible—I always kind of wondered. My ex didn't like Harry, and Harry didn't like him. Harry bit him once. And he said I spoiled Harry, but what he meant was I paid more attention to Harry sometimes than I did to him. And that was true, I know, partly because—because that's sort of the way I am, and partly because Harry was more interesting. He was. He was a highly unusual dog. Marcus, are you asleep?”

“No.”

“Good. So I wondered. And then one night, a couple of weeks later, we were in Kasia's, eating borscht. There was a couple at the next table, and the woman kept staring at my husband. Finally halfway through dinner, she said to him, ‘You're the one whose dog was killed. You had him off the leash.' She turned to her husband. ‘I told you about this guy—do you remember? Had that little dog running wild down Bedford Avenue? Big surprise he crosses against the light and a car gets him.' Her husband goes all apologetic, he says, ‘Oh, my wife, this is her thing, dogs off the leash, she goes crazy,' and his wife goes, ‘Hey! It's against the freakin' law, isn't it? And you see what happens? That dog was on a leash, he'd be alive today,' and so on. My husband gets upset, he says, ‘That dog was always fine when he was off the leash, he was completely reliable, that was the only time.' He has tears in his eyes. But the woman wouldn't let up. Her husband was mortified. Finally we had to leave.”

Marcus is gripping the stem of his glass much too tightly. He sets it down. “Is that true?”

“It's true.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“It's a sad story. Isn't it?”

Marcus says it is, but he isn't feeling sad. He is feeling grateful that he has been given one more indication that maybe he is not, after all, the son of a heartless, psychopathic, murderous beast. That his father is not a sort of taller, older, differently disturbed Elliot C. He thinks of all the things he could tell Emily in return, things he feels sure she would like to know. About Summer, and the pies and cakes piling up on the kitchen counter, and the scary years after Grandma Mead died. The day he realized he had read nearly every book in the Honesdale Public Library; about Tamarind and the sonnets and Summer's blue mittens, and the time when through the window of his cabin he saw a hawk, in midair, snatch a smaller bird out of the sky and bear it away in its great claws.

But he doesn't say anything else, and after a minute, Emily says, “Can I tell you one more?”

“Sure. About what?”

“It's something I've never really talked about, and I don't know why I am now, except that—” Emily downs the rest of her champagne in a single gulp, like someone in a movie trying to gather the courage for a brave statement. “I'm drunk. And you're leaving.”

“So what is it, Em?” Marcus asks gently.

“My husband,” Emily says. “I think a lot of people wondered why I ever married him. I've wondered it myself. He was in some ways not a very nice man. He was cynical, and sarcastic, and sneaky. But, Marcus—” She smiles like someone smiling bravely through a bad case of flu. “I married him because I loved him. That's the simple truth. He was a rotter, but am I the first woman to love a rotter? It dwindled away after a while, of course. He did everything he could to kill it, and by the time he walked out on me, I think I was something like 78 percent over it, but I was still a wreck. He left an old shirt behind, and I slept with it every night for a month. I didn't give up the shirt until I got Otto.”

The dog hears his name, and comes over to where they are sitting. Emily puts her dish of apple pie and melting ice cream on the floor for him.

“I'm not good at admitting it,” she says. “I've never even said it to Gene Rae or Pat. It was too embarrassing. They thought he was such a jerk. And he was. I knew that. God, how he used to lie to me. About everything, anything. Just for the hell of it, I think. Or as if he just hated
clarity
, as if life were some peculiar experimental film. I almost had myself talked into the idea that I never loved the guy, but way back deep in my mind somewhere I knew that wasn't true. Like if you tell yourself, ‘You know, you're not actually a human, you're a dog,' and you could come up with a bunch of doggish characteristics in yourself that you'd observed so that it kind of made sense? But you'd still fundamentally believe you're a human. So of course I knew he was a rat, but it didn't matter.” Then she inhales deeply, as if she has just opened a window and leaned out. “And that's my second sad story, Marcus. And that's all I've got.”

She knows I know she knows I know
, he thinks, and he is aware this is the time to acknowledge that. He doesn't know what to say, but she is looking at him as if she expects an answer. He suddenly feels very young: This is his stepmother talking about his father. His stepmother is a glamorous photographer who is about to turn thirty-seven, wearing a black miniskirt and high heels. If it weren't for the divorce, the three of them might be sitting here eating Thanksgiving dinner together. There might even be a little kid at the end of the table calling Emily “Mommy.” His half brother or sister. The imaginary sister he used to dream about when he was a kid, but years too late.