Visible City (2 page)

“It’s more than that,” Claudia said.

Their daughter, Emma, had called a week earlier to tell them that she’d broken her ankle jogging and wanted to stay with them until it healed. Her fiancé was going to be away for most of the summer at a writers’ colony, where he planned to finish a novel. Claudia was happy to have Emma home, but she was unable to allay her concern that something more was wrong.

After giving her a few more baffled looks and offering further reassurances that Emma was fine, Leon left the bedroom. Claudia thought about calling him back, to talk more about Emma or explain her behavior, but having another conversation about their daughter would only make her feel more concerned; instead of feeling Leon had understood her need to scream, she would only feel embarrassed.

Claudia went back to the window, which was now vibrating from the level and proximity of the noise. She screamed once more, though this time any feeling of relief eluded her.

In the living room, Leon was talking to Emma, and Claudia strained to hear their conversation, both relieved and disappointed when they failed to mention her screaming. She went closer to the living room, standing quietly outside the entryway.

“What time is it?” Emma asked as Leon opened the front door, surely trying for a quick escape.

“The crack of dawn,” he said.

“No, really.”

“Were you out here all night?” he asked, and Claudia had to hold herself back from rushing into the room with her own list of questions.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Emma said.

“Why not?” Leon asked.

“My ankle was hurting. You wouldn’t believe how tight this cast is. It hurts worse than the break itself.”

On the surface Emma’s voice was light and cheerful, and Leon fell for it. He might be the therapist but Claudia knew her daughter better than that. Leon walked out of the apartment as though nothing was wrong, in a hurry to perform the bizarre urban ritual of alternate-side parking. “You’d sit in your car even if you didn’t have to,” Claudia once quipped, and he’d had to agree. If there were no law requiring him to move his car to make way for the street cleaners, he’d need to invent one. Once she had asked him what he did while he sat in the car. “I read the paper. I watch people,” he had said. She’d always understood that he preferred to see people this way, from an observational perch, or else in his office where clear boundaries were in place. Though Emma had both their last names—hyphenated as though it were so easy to connect two people—Leon deftly stayed on the outskirts of any family issue. She had long ago accepted the fact that she bore primary responsibility.

“So when did Steven leave?” Claudia asked, entering the living room where Emma was sprawled on the couch.

“I was asleep. He didn’t want to wake me.”

As Claudia scrutinized her daughter’s face, her worry flared once again. Her daughter looked uncharacteristically withered, pale and skinny even by Manhattan standards. She had been wearing the same black sweatpants for days, a departure from her typically colorful ensembles. Even the brightness in her eyes was dimmer, and her long curls, which usually haloed her head and boldly announced,
Here I am,
seemed deflated.

“I thought we could go out later. Have you been to Georgia’s, that new café on Broadway? I’ll call Dad. Maybe he’ll come too,” Claudia said. She wanted to grab her daughter into a hug and tell her how much she loved her, but Emma would take this unexpected gesture as a declaration of overbearing concern.

The prospect of a plan roused Emma. Sitting up, she shook off some of her weariness, and a glint of the old Emma peeked out. Claudia was used to her daughter full of action and energy. After a few post-college years spent finding herself, Emma had decided to pursue a PhD in French literature at Columbia, which Claudia took as an affirmation of her own academic work, as though by following in her footsteps her daughter had purposely paid her the highest of compliments. She had to restrain herself from asking to read the dissertation chapters Emma had written or offering too much advice about the best way to tackle so large an endeavor. But nothing could quell her pride in her daughter’s accomplishments. Claudia’s own career as an art historian had been marked with disappointment and struggle, but it was clear that Emma was destined for success.

Feeling more hopeful as well, Claudia helped Emma to her bedroom where clothing was strewn on the floor. Unwashed plates were piled on the dresser, the kind of chaos that Emma’s presence had always generated. They had grown used to the way she swept into the apartment, in the throes of conversation, upending everything in her path. When Emma was young, Claudia used to go into her room at night and create order so that Emma awoke to her clothes and toys returned to the shelves, night the great restorer of all that had come undone during the day.

“Did you and Steven discuss the possibility that he would stay home until you were better?” Claudia couldn’t help asking. Steven had been the latest in a long string of boyfriends, but this was the first whom Emma hadn’t tired of after a few months. She hadn’t been surprised when they announced their engagement—this was the first time her daughter was so visibly smitten. She liked Steven as well and was proud at the prospect of having him as a son-in-law. When Emma first told her whom she was dating, she had hurried to read his short story collection, published when he was only twenty-seven, because how often did you get such uncensored access to your daughter’s boyfriend?

“I wanted him to go,” Emma said.

“I would think you’d want him with you.”

“Mom,” Emma scolded.

“I was just wondering,” Claudia said, while folding two of Emma’s shirts.

“You know that’s not what you were doing,” Emma said, but her expression clouded. Wishing to believe what her daughter was saying, Claudia had a moment’s yearning for the young Emma who always told her exactly what she needed. With her small hands on her face, Emma had looked her in the eye and said, “I love you the whole world.” By the time Emma was two, she sat with them at restaurants, sampling whatever they placed before her. It had been hard not to treat her like an equal member of their threesome, Emma between them, a hand in each of their hands. Even years later, when she and Leon walked down the street with her, Claudia couldn’t hold back a stir of pride:
This is who we are. This is who we have made.

“Emma, honey, are you and Steven okay?” Claudia asked.

“Of course we’re okay,” Emma said, trying for a smile but not meeting her eye. She pinched her mouth shut, and Claudia was certain that if Emma’s ankle had allowed, she would have jumped up and fled.

In the morning, both couples had disappeared from view. The only signs of life were the sounds of jackhammering from the construction site across the street, then a voice screaming,
Shut up,
shut up,
shut the fuck up!
Nina looked out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the face behind the rage. Once again, she was alone with the kids. Jeremy had come home sometime during the night and by the time she woke up, he was already gone for the day. Last night, like every night, he’d promised to leave work earlier yet was delayed for one reason or another. She had grown accustomed to a phantomlike figure coming into the darkened apartment, slipping beside her into bed when she was already asleep.

She was pulled away from the window by an eruption of need, Max wanting his truck, Lily needing to nurse. One demand let loose a cacophony of other demands. Nina picked up Lily with one hand, while with the other she foraged among the pile of toys for the missing truck. Hungry now as well, Max began pinching Lily’s foot; Nina detached Max’s fingers from Lily’s toes and pulled the red battery-operated truck from under the couch. As Nina latched Lily onto her nipple, Max grabbed the truck and drove it across her lap, over her shoulder, into her hair, which became entangled in the mechanized wheels.

“Is my truck broken?” Max asked as the truck dangled from her hair. “Did you break it?” he screamed.

Was it too late to call her law firm and beg for her job back? She’d worked until Lily was born and then, instead of returning after her maternity leave, had given notice of surrender. Nina ripped the truck out of her hair and handed it back to Max. A tuft of hair was wrapped tightly around the wheels, but it would take a better mother than she to patiently pick out each strand.

She had to get outside. She would walk them to sleep, to the end of Manhattan if necessary. After packing up the kids, Nina maneuvered the double stroller into the elevator, hooking a sharp turn to make it through in one try. Otherwise she’d have to back out and reposition herself, while ignoring the impatient looks she got from the less encumbered passengers. These same people looked strangely at her when she used the elevator ride to comb Max’s hair with her fingers or to remove the sleep encrusted at the corners of Lily’s eyes. Her neighbors didn’t want to see the inner workings of her life this close up. But she tried not to care what they thought. She’d made it out of the apartment, and that alone was an accomplishment. The first time she ventured out with both kids, she had expected the doorman to applaud.

Her upstairs neighbor was inside the elevator and Nina cringed. Either out of loneliness or intrusiveness, this woman regularly penetrated the scrim of friendly anonymity that was the building’s code of etiquette. Standing too close, talking too loudly, she liked to apprise Nina of all the things she was doing wrong.

“It’s very damp out,” the neighbor said, then turned to Max. “What do you think? Is your mommy smart to be taking you out in weather like this?”

Nina could point out Max’s fireman raincoat and matching hat, both bright yellow with the sheen of patent leather, which, in the throes of a fireman obsession, he wore every day. But her neighbor would find fault in whatever she said. She may as well say that Mommy is planning to take them outside naked, to dance in the rain.

She grasped Nina’s arm. “Cherish every minute,” she said. “It goes so fast.”

Nina dawdled so she wouldn’t have to walk out with her and listen to more. She checked her mailbox and read a sign that another upstairs neighbor was posting by the elevator.
Several items of my clothing were removed from the laundry room.
If you took my garments by mistake, please return them immediately. If you took them intentionally, then I may not know WHO you are but I do know WHAT you are.
At the bottom he’d signed
Arthur Grayson, Apt. 14B.

It was the third flyer he had posted this month. The previous two had complained of noise in the stairwells and of garbage cans whose lids weren’t replaced securely. He was often around during the day, talking to the doorman and lingering on the front steps of the building. In her mind, she had come to think of him as Dog Man—both he and his dog were thin and tightly coiled, as though they were about to pounce, and their short black hair seemed cut from the same bolt of fabric. He’d lived here for a few years, but she tried her best to avoid both him and his dog because though Lily hadn’t yet discovered fear, Max was terrified of dogs.

“I don’t suppose you know anything about my missing laundry,” he said as she tried to make it outside.

“I see you around, but I don’t think we’ve officially met,” she said, to ease the discomfort.

“I know who you are. I hear you in my apartment, every single day,” Arthur said. Her irritation rose. Forget her attempt to be friendly. He was still Dog Man to her. She pictured him and his dog wearing matching black capes as they saved the building from domestic peril. He didn’t stand idly by when neighbors failed to replace the garbage can lids. Dog Man passed himself off as an ordinary tenant, but really, he was a force of civic neighborly beneficence.

Outside the day widened. The morning’s springtime dampness had given way to sunshine. Nina glanced at those she passed. Had any of her neighbors woken to the sound of screaming? Had anyone else been awake last night, watching, as well? Even if they had, no one would admit it. They would offer complaints and advice, but none would say,
I happened to be up, I happened to look out.

She grew up in New Jersey, in a house in a suburb where it was so rare to walk that many of the streets didn’t have sidewalks. It was a neighborhood where every lawn was well cared for, every house sprawling and gracious. From the outside, her parents’ lives were equally pristine and immaculate. She and her two older sisters had always been well behaved and studious. Her sisters, both married now with three kids apiece, lived ten minutes away by car from their parents. They lauded Nina’s choice to stay in the city as valiant but one that was sure to fail. “As soon as Lily starts walking,” they assured her, “you’ll be dying to move to the suburbs like everyone else.” Whenever she went back home to visit, she took the kids for walks around her parents’ neighborhood, longing for the city’s spectacle of people, the press of noise and light. It was why she resisted the promise of backyards and closet space. She didn’t want to live in a place where the streets were empty, the adults walled inside their houses, the kids fenced inside backyards.