POPPY STOPPED seeing her psychiatrist sometime in March. Their last session had been yet another rehashing of her relationship with Ian, trying to understand it, trying to sort through the memories which besieged her at uncertain hours, bits of glass in a sweet dessert, if by “sweet” one meant “escapist.” The doctor had provided several interpretations of Poppy’s actions and for her ensuing behavior, especially for the promiscuity and the drug use, and the various forms of denial, only some of which the doctor even knew about. But the sessions had become repetitive, wore Poppy down, until leaving the office and opening the door onto Park Avenue she would be slammed with a sugar low so deep she thought she might collapse on the sidewalk. She stopped going.
The chef, Kiki, having been given instructions that the whole family would be eating together at seven, finished putting the last touches on the oval dining table. Dinner was family style tonight, not plated or passed, a casual evening and a rare occasion on which both Steve and Patrizia would dine with the kids, and Steve’s older children would be present as well. The well-nourished clan, seeing the delectable offerings, approached the spread, each in his or her specific manner. Roman ravenous, Felix with a book, Patrizia unhurriedly, Poppy distracted. Jonathan and Miranda were joining tonight, he arriving at his place in a style both entitled and uncomfortable, she sliding into her seat self-consciously. Alix had come too. Steve sat down last, as if a conference were being called to order, figures to be reported, depositions to be read. He closed his eyes momentarily, in a reflexive, unconscious action that could have been interpreted as a private microprayer but which was in fact a response to anticipatory chest pain. He caught a glimpse of Poppy out of the corner of his eye and smiled at her, with just the tiniest curl of his mouth, and she didn’t see it, didn’t see in that moment his specific love for her. These days she sensed it but felt she had no proof and therefore dismissed the idea that she meant something distinctive, something special, to him. Was it because of his grandeur, his overpowering shadow cast over every interaction? Or was it because what she wanted was too much? She knew he did love her, in his way. He had taken her in, loved her as his own. But now his love for her did not seem to extend outward toward her in the warm embrace she needed. It was as though his love was a feeling that never quite left the depths of him.
Poppy scanned the offerings. It was impossible not to smile, slightly, involuntarily, at the sight of so much bounty, and beauty, the starched white napkins, the glistening plates, the food like a tapestry embroidered on the tablecloth come to life, animated and in 3-D. Poppy took all this in and served herself, answered perfunctory questions about her day, tasted the sweet and savory flavors expertly mingled, but the communal experience made it clearer and clearer that her feelings for this collection of people, compared with the feelings that had been aroused by Ian, were not exactly love. Perhaps for Felix what she felt was love, a gratitude and respect that grew into love. What she felt for Steve was fierce, foreboding, a passionate yearning for love. And what she felt for all of them was kinship, closeness, warmth, even when they were their most selfish, cruel, and cold. Everything about them had formed who she was, and she appreciated it. But her early struggles and losses, her particular mental machinery, these factors prevented her from feeling connected to these people in the deepest part of her heart. Everything about them demanded her attention, defined her existence, and more than anything she pitied them their paltry happiness, their chronic unhappiness, but all the force of her unsatisfied need for love, all her longing, had gone to Ian. What she had felt for Ian was what she now considered to be love. It was impossible to change that.
These thoughts were not conscious for Poppy. They rumbled far beneath the surface of her inner dialogue. But passing the shaved-fennel-and-artichoke side dish to Alix, she caught sight of Alix’s watch, a large man’s Omega, gold with a brown leather band, that she knew had been Ian’s grandfather’s and which had been given on permanent loan to Alix for one of her birthdays. The white numberless face marked with thin gold lines reminded Poppy instantly of Ian. Blank yet meaningful, unpretentious, solid, true. Suddenly she remembered who had been the cause of her current suffering, the instrument of her grief. She had not thought of him, consciously, specifically, for days. But now, seeing that timeless face, so familiar and so close to her, she experienced an unexpected wave of love for him.
But where was he? Why had he left her? How could he have done such a thing? she thought, reproachfully, as if their parting had taken place only moments and not months ago. She wanted to ask Alix about him, and yet she knew that there was no possible response that could please her. And Alix wouldn’t know to soften any blow because Poppy had concealed everything from her. Perhaps Ian had told Alix, but Poppy didn’t think so; he had made such a point of keeping their relationship a secret. She imagined Alix leaning over to her and whispering that Ian missed her desperately and wanted to see her. But then the real Alix pursed her lips and looked down at her forkful of wilted greens, unimpressed. Roman was explaining something about Minecraft to Miranda, who listened semipolitely. Jonathan was trying to get Steve to discuss a transaction while Steve ate silently and breathed with increasing deliberateness. He seemed to wince at Jonathan’s business suggestions, lowering his lids patronizingly, impatiently, but in such a way as to defy any accusation that he was not being entirely open to the ideas. Suddenly a painful thought occurred to Poppy: What if Ian had never loved her?
And, recounting events in her mind, she felt that there existed confirmation of this sickening thought in her every memory: in his hidden courtship, his devotion to his work, and even in his decision to cut her off completely, as if to avoid the very idea of her.
He should have never told me that he loved me, she thought. If I’d only known that I hadn’t mattered to him I wouldn’t be in so much agony now.
It had never crossed her mind before that his love for her had been a lie and now convincing herself of his indifference she came close to despair. Her struggle had seemed miserable up to this moment. Now it was agitating, excruciating, terrifying. She ate her soufflé with an aggressive cheerfulness, practically flirting with everyone at the table at one point or another. She waved the sparkling dessert spoon in the air as she spoke. She giggled desperately, almost defiantly, at Roman’s only mildly humorous remarks. She spilled cappuccino on the table. She understood nothing, felt nothing, loved nothing one moment, and then found herself wanting to provoke a scene. Before she could act on the unfortunate impulse, dinner had ended. Back in her room she located some texts that he had sent her long ago. Reading them over and over and over, she calmed down.
She’s still part of the family; it’s where her body lives. Its brutality, its coldness, feel essential to her. But in her heart she lives someplace else, someplace with him, someplace bordering on the unreal it seems so warm. Tropical in its lushness, enveloping. The slick and lanky palm leaves dangle down. The mad sun, feverish, melts against the water.
April 1 and the fools rushed into one another’s arms, squealing, some teary, sharing the news of where they would be going to college. Poppy watched and complimented and commiserated with people she had known since kindergarten, kids whose faces she remembered from when they were still unformed, shining, sweet and silly monkeys’ heads, children with whom she had refined the characteristics of curiosity and social aptitude that had enabled her to attend this school in the first place, boys who’d pressed against her at dances, girls who had viciously excluded her from parties and gleefully posted the pictures on Instagram, young adults who had debated mock congressional bills with her and who had explained over lunch in the cafeteria or while watching R-rated movies in their families’ media rooms more than she wanted to know about music and television and Internet porn. These were her peers and she felt a compatriot’s closeness to them, to their dreams and destinies, but she could not understand their deep, unquestioning, and devout desire to go to college. And they could not understand her refusal. Wasn’t this what she had worked for? Hadn’t she been a top student, give or take a few scandalous missteps? Didn’t she want to be set free? To mingle and daydream in echoing lecture halls? To attend off-campus parties? To speculate in the wee hours of the morning about what kind of work would possibly be left for her generation when it was belched out into the world, and to share the confusions of an uncertain future from the comfort of a wood-paneled, squishy-couched, leafy-viewed dorm room?
Poppy could see their point. She also recognized that some of them would continue their studies in a serious, genuinely academic, or even scholarly way and would go on to truly contribute to society, but for the most part she felt like a lapsed member of some highly ritualized sect, a sinner in the face of tithes or punishing ordeals or the very idea of the elect. She could no longer get on board, play the game, believe in the system, even if there was no other system. This put her in the awkward position of having to feign excitement or disappointment as her classmates told her where they would, or would not, be undertaking their higher education, as if she were a Native American listening politely to a Puritan explain a recent experience of awakening. Her position was also awkward because she had come to school a little drunk. And with several pills in her bloodstream. And with the feeling that today might be the day when she started mixing drinks in the Seniors’ Lounge or ran down the sixth-floor hallway naked or smeared herself with paint in the art studio and then swung from the basketball hoop in the gym. It was going to be a long day.
During study hall a big group of seniors decided to go out for a celebration, but Poppy spent the time in the library. She looked wretchedly elegant with her thin wrists sticking out of her long sweater sleeves and her now-cheekbone-length bangs fringing her big eyes. One other person, a junior, was reading in the library too, a boy who’d come in tenth grade and whom she’d never gotten to know, a cute, shy, stoner type who wore hoodies and seemed like he might be interesting if he weren’t younger than she was and so weirdly quiet. He raised his head slightly from his book and spoke without looking directly at Poppy. Why aren’t you out with the rest of them? he said.
Not looking up at all from her book she answered, Because I’m learning. I am actually interested in the classes I’m taking. This is the homework and so I’m doing it.
Cool, he said.
She lifted her eyes from the page to see him. He was too big for the chair he was sitting in and his legs stuck out like a promontory, thick and strong, in their beat-up jeans. He smiled the tiniest microscopic smile with one corner of his mouth. His hood shadowed his face. He dug his fingers into the pocket of his sweatshirt and took out a pill. He slid it across the table to her.
Oh, thanks, but I have plenty of those, she said, going back to her book.
Doubt you have this one. Brand-new. Exceptional. Guarantee it’ll make the story even better.
She eyed the round disk with a slash across its middle, a compacted powder of possibility.
No thanks, she said.
C’mon, he said. It’s a present. Take it whenever you want.
An hour later they were unexpectedly close friends and their hunger had motivated them to stagger out into the cold spring air in search of nourishment. By noon they’d had pounds of sugar and salt in various disguises and they sat on a brownstone stoop studying the stringy abstract shadows cast by trees against the side of a postwar white brick building. A chilly breeze blew down the street. Poppy’s mouth was dry. The city encircling them had sun and oxygen but seemed devoid of some essential element and there was nothing Poppy could do to feel necessary, needed, as if her progress mattered to anyone in any of the thousands of buildings that spiraled out from where she sat. The world fell away from her in volcanic chunks, as if an earthquake were in the process of decluttering the universe, breaking off pieces of New York all around her while she sat, her head on this boy’s shoulder, staring vacantly into the trunk of a tree. The travelers marching along the sidewalk moved erratically, seemed to walk up a steep hill, slid like marbles down a marble chute, flew by like the black-and-white characters that sailed past Dorothy’s window during the tornado in The Wizard of Oz. Consciously she knew that they were walking at a normal pace with an average speed on a flat surface, but she could feel their panic, and their movements appeared to her like a front, and she could see two worlds happening at once: the everyday scene on a side street in Manhattan and also the hallucinatory revolution that registered in her brain. In the moment it seemed to her that every moment existed this way, that this was reality, or a glimpse of it, this multiplicity of viewpoints, interpretations, experiences. As information entered her mind one variable at a time, color, distance, timing, perspective, and her brain reconstructed it along separate pathways to make meaning, she felt as though she were witnessing the process in action, the whole coded miscellany shattered to smithereens and then resurrected by the cells and synapses that each worked separately to create a whole. It was beautiful.
We should hide, the boy in the hoodie said to her. She thought his name might be Jasper, but she wasn’t sure. She would just think of him as Jasper.
Why?
Because they’ll find us, Jasper said.
Okay, said Poppy.
Where do you want to hide? asked Jasper.
I don’t know. Where do you think? How about here?
Here? We can’t hide here, he said.
Why not?
He laughed a short, instinctive, smug laugh. Because we’re already here, he said.
Okay, said Poppy. Where then?
My house is kinda nearby.
Can we hide there?
Yes, we can hide there, he said.
A spotlight pooled around Ian as the lighting designer played around from the middle of the audience and Ian and one of the producers talked about the show. They were sitting onstage, in a temporary version of the 1980s set, on a Jennifer Convertibles–type leatherette couch in front of a smoky-glass coffee table. A huge boxy television set sat like a vintage black spaceship slightly off center stage. A female dancer stepped nimbly down from the TV and left it alone, one corner illuminated by the outermost rim of the nimbus of white light that held Ian in its center. Ian was handling a legal pad and gesturing with a pen in his fingers. He told the producer that they were rearranging the order of songs. Now the show opened with “And She Was,” a lyrical number in which Jane Eyre was introduced. “And She Was” would be Jane’s theme. Next, “Slippery People” as her awful aunt and nasty cousin entered the story. The numbers “Life During Wartime” and “Wild Wild Life” would cover Jane’s boarding-school experience. “Once in a Lifetime” was Jane and Rochester’s theme. “Girlfriend Is Better” would be Bertha’s, Rochester’s wife’s, theme. “Psycho Killer” was the climactic curtain of act 1, when Jane glimpses Bertha. “Once in a Lifetime” would reprise at the top of act 2, at Jane and Rochester’s wedding. “Road to Nowhere,” when Jane leaves. “Heaven” for the time Jane spends with the missionary St. John and his sisters. “Making Flippy Floppy” as Jane is struggling with whether or not to marry St. John. “Burning Down the House,” of course, when Bertha burns down Thornfield. And “This Must Be the Place” for Jane’s return to Rochester. Reprise of “Burning Down the House” for the finale.
The investor nodded his head. He kept nodding for a few seconds.
So, no “Take Me to the River”? the producer said.
Well, you know, Ian said, shifting on the couch, that’s not really a Talking Heads song. It’s Al Green. It’s a nightmare to get the rights. Also, it doesn’t really fit into the story.
You had it in there before.
Yeah, I know we did, because you wanted it so much so we found a place, but I’m telling you it never worked. I hope you’re okay with that.
The producer nodded his head again. It’s my favorite Talking Heads song, he said.
It’s not really their song.
They recorded it.
True.
The lighting designer began trying something else, and now Ian and the producer sat in darkness. Without the glow of the spotlight Ian’s face looked shadowed and lined. To the producer he appeared to be a hardworking, exhausted director, but Ian knew that he was well past running on fumes, had only caffeine and Ambien and other pharmaceuticals in his veins, and nothing pumping in his heart but guilt and remorse and a terrible feeling like a bad memory, as if every night in his dreams he killed someone, buried them in a field, tried to escape, waited in some lonely farmhouse, and was eventually caught and made to dig up the body. He woke up shaking and terrified in the morning. Only work kept him alive. He was trying to work himself back to life. The producer said:
I invested in the show because of that song.
Because of “Take Me to the River”? That’s the only reason? I hadn’t realized that.
It was in the workshop version, wasn’t it?
No, no, it wasn’t.
Wow, I remember it being in there. You see, I know I’m only one of several producers…
Twelve, at last count.
And I know I’m not the lead producer…
That’s correct.
But that song really means a lot to me.
I understand.
The producer patted his suit pocket as if he were checking for a pack of cigarettes. The fine Italian wool of his jacket rippled in smooth, elegant curves. He blinked as he took out his glossy black leather, extremely thin wallet. Ian noted that it was really just a card case. The producer opened the slim case and took out a card. It was an old driver’s license. He held it up for Ian to see. Can we get a light over here? he shouted into the darkness.
A spotlight appeared.
This, said the producer, is my driver’s license from college. When I first started driving, you know what I played in the car?
“Take Me to the River.”
Yes, over and over. It is the happiest memory of my life. That’s the time in my life when I figured out who I was going to be. When I met my first wife. When I became myself. Driving, rolling along, windows down, listening to that song. That and “Thunder Road.” My two favorite songs.
“Thunder Road” might fit better into the show. Unfortunately, it’s not Talking Heads.
The producer smiled as he slid back his card. I know, he said. You can put away the light, he called out.
Back in the darkness he explained, So you can understand why this means so much to me.
I do.
So you’ll try to work it into the show?
We’ll think about it, all of us. But this isn’t an apartment renovation or a custom automobile interior. It isn’t just some luxury product.
Ian knew he should stop himself but he was too tired.
The producer raised his eyebrows and inhaled.
But you know that, Ian recovered.
Yes, he said. I know that. But we’re talking about entertainment here. It’s supposed to please the audience.
It’s a creative endeavor.
It doesn’t exist without the audience.
Well, let’s call it a collaboration then, among the artists, the work of art, and the audience.
Okay, I like that. Collaboration.
The producer stood up. The light was back on him, this time a purplish glow like a techno aura. So, you’ll think about it? he said.
Yes, Ian said, thinking that he, Ian, had never figured out who he was going to be. Did that happen? Did people do that?
Yes, he repeated. Absolutely.
In the theater after everyone leaves, the darkness is a deep shade of red. Maybe it’s from the red velvet seats. Maybe the glint of gold paint on the swirling ornamentation of the boxes and balconies gives off a reddish glow. There’s a smell of diffused sweat and old fabrics and wood, musky like incense. The silence is oppressive—the musicians, the actors, the dancers, all gone—and you can almost hear a whispering echo of their voices but then you realize you can’t and that’s when the lack of noise becomes a sound unto itself. Ian sits fifth row center in the dark with his feet up on the seat in front of him, just the way he sat that first time Poppy showed up for her internship. He goes straight in his mind to Poppy as soon as the lights are down. He imagines her sleeping, sprawled, her arms flung up around her head. Just a kid. He would like to wake her up, talk to her, ask her how she is, have a conversation. He doesn’t really talk to anyone anymore except for the people involved in the show. Or no one outside that circle talks to him. He has noticed a distant coldness from Jonathan, and from Miranda and Patrizia too when he last saw them. Even Alix has been preoccupied, too busy. Perhaps he was imagining the chill from Patrizia and Miranda and Alix but he knows that Jonathan has cut him off, knows that Jonathan was the one who found out, from the housekeeper who’d become suspicious and shown him the receipts, signed by Ian, Poppy’s mementos. He knows that Jonathan told Steve. And he doesn’t blame him. He also doesn’t actually miss him. But he misses Poppy. He thinks about Poppy, would like to see her and make sure she is okay. He worries about her, feels absurd and egotistical for worrying, as if his absence means anything to her, then realizes it probably does, and then senses a new relationship forming to her, and he allows himself to care and wonder. She’s probably out tonight with friends, he thinks, the others will be drinking although, since Poppy doesn’t like to drink, she’ll be having fun in a respectably debauched teenage way. Nothing too dangerous. Nothing too scary. But still he worries about her and wants her to be happy, suspects that she is not. I am not happy, he thinks. And I can’t be, he realizes, if she is not happy. I can never have that anymore, any happiness without her happiness. He thinks he is beginning to see some future for himself. He thinks he can safely say that there is someone in the world whom he cares more about than himself. Now he feels that he and Poppy are inseparable, in the sense that his life seems bound up with hers, that he is living his life for her. Not to be with her, but to care for her. He realizes that he is more alone than ever now, that he has left his old self behind, and that he is going, in some way, to put her life ahead of his. He doesn’t know how exactly this will happen. But that’s what he sees in the darkness of the theater, beyond the present, beyond the moment, past the stage. Into the hot white lights and directly through them, back out into the world.
The same distance separates the director and the teenage girl from the other people in their worlds. Both isolated, alone, tragic characters on an amphitheater stage, enacting some doomed, dishonorable story for the audience, as innocent as sacrificial goats, unaware of what the gods, DNA, destiny, the universal drive toward death, have in store for them. Ian feels himself gaining insight, reflecting, understanding. But he cannot yet fully grasp the fear he touches when he approaches the truth of what has happened. Is it a purely scientific problem or a moral one? An accident of nature or an intentional, ironic twist of fate?
That his mind keeps circling, circling around the problem, tells us something about him, tells him something about himself. He will never give her up, never abandon her. His absurd perseverance has in it valor, humanity, some grace.
She finds it a little strange that no one is home, but Jasper shrugs and says, Why? It’s the middle of the day. They’re at work. As if it should be obvious to her. She understands that it should be. It’s a small place. Dark carpeting. One wall of the living room is painted a charcoal and the other walls are covered with bookshelves. Objects everywhere, on tables, cabinets, a jumble of decors, only the disorderly logic of things accumulated and nowhere to put them. He leads her directly to his room and shuts the door. Then he locks it. She is still adjusting, looking around at his electronics, his books, the bed. It doesn’t register that he has locked the door. Then he fires up his enormous computer, it’s huge, some massive gaming console, and unzips his sweatshirt. A sound like a missile whooshing overhead and on the screen appear images of people doing things she has never seen or heard of before. Violent, deranged things. At first, it’s incomprehensible, and then, suddenly, from every satellite in space comes radiating toward her an unadulterated fear. She does not exist except as fear. She has known pain and regret and other innumerable miseries but she has never felt this exclusive fear.
Hey, she manages to speak up, Jasper, whoa.
Jasper? he says.
That’s when she remembers that she has given him the name Jasper, that she doesn’t even know his real name.
As he pulls down the shades he says: I don’t know who the fuck Jasper is, but there’s no Jasper here.
It was a mistake, a sickening error, and she was living it while in her mind existing someplace else. She could be in two places and no one had ever noticed; this fact had been concealed from her until now. She was playing dead. Or maybe she was dead. Her body was in the shaded room but her being was in Felix’s room, where it had been the other day, chatting with him about his latest philosophical excursions. Her limbs were contorted and her flesh abused, but her thoughts were with Felix, sweet Felix. He is telling her about Marcus Aurelius. I love ancient Rome, he’s saying, and he describes for her Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. And now Felix seems to have transported both of them to the Forum, to the Colosseum, orangey-pink light slanting through classical arches. Listen to this, he says, taking the small book in his small hands. I don’t totally understand it but it sounds so beautiful, it’s something Marcus Aurelius says in the middle of the book. I think you’ll like it. And he reads: “You may break your heart, but men will still go on as before.” I do like it, Poppy says, out loud, because Not-Jasper is making her say those words, telling her exactly what to say, but what she means is that she likes the line Felix is reading to her. I do like those words, she says in her mind again without saying anything out loud, and I’m glad that you don’t understand them, sweet Felix, but I get it. Believe me, I do.
The shame she feels when she gets home is a dark void, and she has the sensation that a chain reaction of decay is being worked out through her, a hideous visitation, a possession by a not-living version of herself. Her hair falls in her face, her head downcast. She tries to sneak in without anyone noticing her and leave no footprint, glide conspiratorially to her room. People should know this, she thinks, that this can happen, this horror. That someone can be alive and die. Being alive is not really a matter of breathing or pumping blood or even thinking. It is an unknown. There is so much that is unknown. You can be alive and exist in a void and therefore not really be alive. That’s when she sees Neva, walking back to her room. From where? Roman’s room? Felix’s? Steve’s study? She’s fully clothed although it’s very late, really the early hours of the morning. In her simple clothes and stoic bearing she conveys some sublime combination of cerebral, womanly, and strong. She looks Poppy directly in the eyes. She does not look away.
Neva stood like a sculpture, rigorous, pure, steely, confident, yet also fragile, full of secrets, slightly surreal. She did not need to do anything but look at Poppy, and Poppy fell wordlessly into her arms. Poppy cried. They did not talk. Neva just held Poppy while Poppy cried and then Neva helped her get into her bed. Neva did not suggest that Poppy wash her face or change her clothes. Neva did not ask Poppy to explain herself. She just guided her, like a spirit made of nothing but awareness, a beam of heightened awareness, guided her to sleep. The last thing Poppy felt before she allowed herself to sink into oblivion was Neva’s hand brushing her arm as it covered her with a blanket. A simple hand. A radiant move. A vitality.
You may break your heart, but men will still go on as before.