The Secret of the Nightingale Palace

O
ne Sunday in the spring of her thirty-fifth year, Anna Rosenthal opened her eyes, sniffed at the air, and stepped back into the world after being away for a long, long time. Later she would describe May 29, 2005, as the day she “emerged from hibernation.” Such phrasing implies that Anna initiated the change herself, which was not the case. If the phone had not rung that morning, she would not have left her little house on Waynoka Avenue. And if she had known that it was her grandmother calling, she would not have answered at all.

At first glance, the day did not seem to herald anything dramatic. A storm had moved through Memphis the previous evening, and outside Anna's bedroom window, sticks and leaves lay scattered across the yard. The stems of waterlogged phlox, planted so conscientiously by her husband, were already popping back up in the morning sun, and the new leaves on the elm tree seemed to have doubled in size overnight. But these were the typical miracles of spring, sometimes tardy but always expected.

Not so expected was the voice on the other end of the line. Still groggy from sleep, Anna had not bothered to check the caller ID. “Hello?” she answered.

Her grandmother, Goldie Rubin Feld Rosenthal, was calling from New York City. “I need you to come up here,” she announced. Acquaintances often marveled that, despite having left Memphis more than six decades earlier, Goldie had retained her southern drawl. Anna never heard it as southern, however. To her, it was her grandmother's voice, grating as the screech of a garbage truck.

“To New York?” Anna asked, not bothering to sound friendly. She and Goldie had been particularly close throughout her childhood, but they had not spoken in five years. The reason lay in an ordinary family drama: despite Goldie's disapproval, Anna had chosen to marry Ford Pierce, a university librarian with, as Goldie saw it, “a nothing job, a nothing income, and a nothing life.” The breach led to a period of almost complete estrangement. Even when Ford died of leukemia three years after the wedding, all that passed between them was a brief phone conversation followed by a formal condolence letter from Goldie and Anna's reply with one of those printed acknowledgment cards that convey appreciation and nothing more.

“Well, of course New York. You think I'm in Alaska?”

Anna wished, as she often did, that a glass of orange juice would somehow materialize on her nightstand. Because it didn't, she pulled herself out of bed and, carrying the phone, walked barefoot into the dining room, which she used as her studio. Her drawing table sat by the window, its surface angled so that she could see her work as soon as she walked through the door. The sound of her grandmother's voice unsettled her, and she took comfort in looking at the six new panels of the comic she illustrated, which she had completed between the hours of 10
P.M
. and 3
A.M.
the night before. Graphically, she considered them ineffectiveâunfortunately, a long time had passed since Anna was able to appreciate the quality of her own workâbut she continued to draw, almost manically, nonetheless. “Are you sick?” she asked Goldie. She picked up an eraser to work away a stray pencil mark left in a corner of sky.

“No, I'm not
sick
.” Goldie's tone was acid, and filled with recrimination. “I need you to come up to New York and then accompany me somewhere.”

“Where?”

Goldie paused for only a second, but the delay undermined the urgency of her demand. Perhaps as a hedge, she sounded even more belligerent. “Is that important right now?”

Anna didn't bother to answer, as she had no intention of going anywhere with Goldie. “What about Dad?”

“He's fine.”

“Why can't he go with you?”

“Are you out of your mind? He'd be hopeless.”

Anna had to agree that whatever Goldie needed, her father couldn't supply it. He cared about his mother, but he didn't have many practical skills.

“What is this about?” Anna penciled in some cross-hatching on a stand of trees that suddenly struck her as thin and unformed.

“I haven't asked you for a single thing in five years. More than five years. I would have thought you'd be willing to do something for your own grandmother.”

It surprised Anna that Goldie knew so precisely how long it had been since their relationship had ruptured. Somehow the realization touched her.

“I don't need you to take care of me,” Goldie continued. “I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I just need your help with something. And you can spend a little time at your sister's before we go.”

Anna thought about the apartment of her older sister, Sadie, in Manhattan. It had carpets that felt like cashmere and a living room view that at certain times of the year put the full moon directly above the Empire State Building. Anna leaned down and brushed the grit off her feet. It had been Ford, not Anna, who said they needed hardwood floors. Every time she walked barefoot, she resented it.

Goldie said, “After everything I've done for youâ”

For a moment, Anna had felt herself begin to soften, but Goldie's tone reminded her of how much they disliked each other. She cut her off. “It's impossible. I'm on deadline after deadline. Sadie knows that.” Anna and her sister worked as a team to produce their comic,
Shaina Bright, Danger Ranger
.

“According to Sadie, you've finished five books ahead of schedule already.” Goldie sounded like she was accusing Anna of smoking crack. “I have no idea what that means, but your sister manages much more than you do, and she still has a life.”

“I have a life,” Anna said. It was true that while Anna's sole work responsibility centered on
Shaina Bright,
Sadie managed to write that comic and oversee the production of five others while at the same time building her business, Zing Girl House, into an increasingly promising publishing operation. It was also true that Sadie and her girlfriend, Diane, were having a baby this year and had recently invested in a downtown restaurant
and
gone backpacking in Greece. But none of that proved that Anna had no life.

“Sadie thinks you're a workaholic,” said Goldie.

“Sadie's a workaholic.”

“She used that exact word.”

If her sister had been present at that moment, Anna might have jabbed her with a pencil. For years now, Anna had managed the crises of her life with steady graceâsomeone had actually written “steady grace” on a condolence card. She was the one who, faced with a choice of caskets for her thirty-four-year-old husband (her
thirty-four-year-old
husband
!), walked calmly through the funeral home showroom while every other person in the family stood frozen in the doorway, wiping away tears. And now they were calling her a workaholic, as if she had a mental problem?

Something shifted for Anna then. In the two years since Ford died, she had tried to put the pieces of her life back together in a way that made sense. Did people see her, then, as failing at it? “I'm sorry. It's impossible,” she said, interested in nothing now except getting off the phone. Perhaps Goldie heard, across the miles and the years, the despair in Anna's voice. Perhaps she didn't. In any case, Anna felt a sudden, almost suffocating compression in her lungs, as if some massive unjust force had suddenly sucked away the oxygen she needed to sustain her.

After taking a few minutes to compose herself, Anna called her sister in New York. “What do you mean by calling me a âworkaholic'?”

“What are you talking about?” Sadie asked.

“Thanks for all your support. Thanks for telling Nana I don't have my life in order.” She couldn't literally jab her sister with a sharpened pencil, so she tried something similar with words.

“Oh.” Sadie finally put it together. “She said she might call you.”

Anna was still sitting on her drawing chair in her nightgown. She had pulled out her soft-leaded pencils and was adding foreboding shadows to a gathering of clouds. “Why didn't you warn me?”

“I didn't think she'd do it. She's always threatening to call you. Anyway, she just asked me how you're doing, and I gave my honest opinion.”

“You didn't
have
to give her your honest opinion. And why was that your honest opinion?”

Now it was Sadie's turn to sound irritated. “Have you decided it's my fault that she called you, then?”

“I can't believe you think I don't have my life together.”

“I didn't say that, Anna.”

“Not in so many words but, essentially, yes. You did say that. To Nana, too. Why would you say that?”

In the pause that followed, Anna concluded that her sister was smoking a cigarette. Sadie, four months into her pregnancy, had thus far failed to quit, and she often lied about it. She must have thought that Anna couldn't tell, but the extended lag in her responsesâjust enough to signal the satisfaction of a slow exhaleâalways betrayed her, especially since Sadie was, in every other aspect of her life, quite speedy. “It's probably not the best word,
workaholic,
” she finally said. “What I meant was, you put all your energy into drawing these comics, and you don't even like
Shaina Bright
. It doesn't seem worth the effort, really.”

Anna had gotten up and wandered into the kitchen. “I do like
Shaina Bright
.” The comic, which was geared toward an audience of ten-year-old girls, depicted the adventures of a coffee-swilling, ukulele-playing forest ranger (the eponymous Shaina), whom Anna drew as a cross between Josie (of
Josie and the Pussycats
) and Princess Leia. “And anyway, if you feel my âeffort' isn't valuable, then fire me.”

“I'm not saying your work isn't valuable. It's just thatâ”

“What, then?” Anna pulled last night's takeout Chinese from the refrigerator. She dug around in it with her finger, stuffed a piece of broccoli in her mouth, then quickly spit it out. It was too cold.

“Two years have passed since Ford died, and you don't do anything but work and sleep.”

“And eat!” Anna said, shoving the to-go box into the microwave. During Ford's three weeks of hospice, Anna had lost ten pounds. Since then, she had gained it all back and then some. These days she felt pretty chubby.

“I know this sounds corny,” Sadie said, “but I think you're ready to blossom a little.”

The microwave pinged. Anna fished out a piece of beef and began to eat it. She wasn't completely blind to the limits of her current existence, but she believed she had found a routine that worked for her. Privately, she tried to convince herself that her increased heft was a sign that she was coming back to life, despite feeling chubby. Sadie, of all people, should have understood how well she was doing. Sadie was Anna's boss. And thousands of fans loved their comic.

“Aren't you going to say anything?” Sadie sounded worried now.

“I'm chewing.”

Sadie waited. Anna decided that it was safest, at that moment, to focus on the oddness of Goldie's invitation. “We've barely spoken in five years, and now she wants me to âaccompany' her somewhere. Is she feeling sorry for me?” Anna asked.

Her sister laughed. “Pity doesn't motivate her.”

“Is she feeling guilty for how she acted?”

“Guilt doesn't motivate her, either.”

“Well, why, then?” Anna was losing her patience.

“Maybe she misses you.”

“Me?” Anna tossed the empty takeout box into the trash, then picked up a sponge and wiped a half-moon of oyster sauce off the counter. “She doesn't act like it.”

This time the lag in Sadie's answer suggested that even if she was taking a drag on a cigarette, she was also giving Anna's question serious thought. “I think she does miss you, even if she tries to hide it. And maybe she sees herself as the old widow reaching out to the young one?”

“I don't believe it,” Anna said.

For a long moment, both of them were silent. Then Sadie said, “I really don't get it, to be honest.”

The phone rang again an hour or so later. Anna had showered and dressed and even brewed some coffee before settling down again at her desk. With the window open, she could hear, from some stretch of nearby backyard, the whooping of children enjoying the first sunshine after days of rain. What was wrong with all this? Who was Sadie to judge it? And who was Goldie to say anything at all?

When she heard the telephone, Anna assumed at first that another member of her family was calling to express some new worry. Perhaps as a defense, she answered in a tone that was particularly effervescent: “Good morning!”

It was a relief to hear the voice of Pierre de Rosset, one of Ford's old friends. “Come over,” he said. “I'm having a pancake fiesta.”

Anna tried to gauge the time by glancing through the window toward the sky. The whole morning seemed to have slipped by already. “Isn't it kind of late?” she asked.

“This is
brunch,
” Pierre said, as if introducing a new word. “It can last all day. And anyway, I've got bacon.” Despite the evidence of French ancestry in his name, Pierre de Rosset was, in tone and manner, pure, well-bred Mississippi. When Anna met him ten or so years earlier, he owned a restaurant/gallery/movie theater off Oxford's square. Not long after Ford died, Pierre sold the place and moved to Memphis. These days he ran a firm that promoted southern specialty foods, like pickled okra, Charleston benne biscuits, and muscadine wine. The bacon, which Anna loved, came from a pig farmer in Holly Springs whose rashers, by comparison, made any other bacon seem tasteless and insubstantial.

“Sounds perfect,” Anna said. “I'll be right over.”

“Really?” Although Pierre always invited Anna to his parties, she rarely made an effort to attend. Most times, if he wanted to see her, he dropped by her house with a bottle of wine, and if she was willing to put down her pencils for the whole evening, they'd watch old movies on DVD.

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