TODAY WHAT FASCINATES Felix is the history of the Zane family, about which he has been told nothing. When Poppy falls onto his bed, sleepy, hair in her face, looking a complicated combination of crazy and serene, she asks him to tell her what he is researching online.
Our distinguished forefather: “Ebenezer Zane was an American pioneer, road builder, and land speculator.”
You’re sure we’re related to him? I don’t think so.
It makes sense. He was in real estate.
Everyone is in real estate.
Poppy, is that true?
Just go on, keep reading.
With his brothers Silas and Jonathan—Jonathan!—he headed west and established Fort Henry in 1769. “During the Revolutionary War, Zane and his brothers defended Fort Henry against two Native American attacks.”
Interesting.
He had a sister!
No way.
Her name was Elizabeth. They called her Betty. “She was celebrated for her courage during the second siege in September 1782 when she left the fort to retrieve a much needed keg of gunpowder and sprinted safely under a hail of gunfire.”
Just like me, said Poppy. An American heroine.
Then he built some other stuff. A town in Ohio was named after him. He died of jaundice in 1811.
Our ancestor.
So you believe me?
No.
You’re so annoying today. So negative.
Wow, if you think I’m more annoying and negative than usual I must be really bad.
Not bad, just unhappy. I think, said Felix.
Who made you the most understanding person in the world?
Ebenezer Zane.
Well, I didn’t get those genes. And anyway he sounds like a militaristic land grabber to me.
I think it’s really cool to have a family lineage that goes back to the American Revolution. If you don’t think so that’s your loss.
Brother, I’m nothing but loss.
Poppy, don’t be so bleak. It’s not all grim.
You keep researching Ebenezer and our distinguished ancestors. You do that. I’m going to go back to my room to keep crying. Or maybe I’ll do it outside.
Poppy…
No really, I shouldn’t be bothering you.
I like having you here. Even when you’re a dark cloud.
She kisses him on the head and says as she leaves the room:
Excuse me, I have to go rain.
It’s there, in that moment, that she sees that she has gone away, been transported, is watching herself as if she were onstage. The sounds ripple from her mouth in waves she cannot comprehend. Her gestures are theatrical, otherworldly, seen under the light of a glowing moon, clouds racing across its surface, casting strobelike shadows on the player. Who is this girl so desperately unhappy, so transparent, so at odds with the world? This performance captures an essential, universal sadness, and it is too painful for her to watch.
She manages to toss some items into a bag and get herself out the door. She would have died if she hadn’t gotten out of the apartment. The spring air punches her in the face in a good way, she feels like a cartoon character, thwacked, with a blast of sweet smells and breezy nonchalance. But then she notices the chill, it is late afternoon, a cool day near the end of May, and she is pissed that she didn’t bring a jacket. Her arms are bare and cold. Her jeans have a rip. She walks downtown, half thoughtlessly, half intentionally, not knowing how such a mental state is possible but it appears that it is. She knows where she is going, but she doesn’t allow herself to really know. Such is her disorganized, post-traumatic-stress-disordered brain filled with the colors of the budding branches all soft and pastel and curving and bending, surging and dipping, like gentle fireworks, blurry, in slow motion, frozen in midair. The world is an explosion of pink and white, lavender and yellow, and she walks under the archway of trees along the park side of the street for several blocks until she turns eastward and heads in the direction of Not-Jasper’s apartment. He has been providing her with a steady supply of that pill he gave her the first time they met. And even though he sickens her, she hates him, he is evil, she cannot forget those little, well, actually they aren’t so little, pills. And now he hasn’t been in school for a few days, hasn’t returned her texts, and so she has been going kind of crazy. She thinks she remembers what building he lives in, something east of Second Avenue, a forgettable old structure squeezed in between two postwar buildings, a buzzer, a tiny elevator. She recalls the aroma of takeout Asian fusion and exterminator fluid that filled the cramped space as they rode up together. Now she waits outside while no one answers the intercom. She hunches over her phone and texts again, fingers whizzing over the letters, while simultaneously leaning against the buzzer. Normally she would not be so rude as to let the whiny honk of the intercom drone on but she figures his parents—Does he really even have parents? she wonders—are probably not home and he doesn’t deserve decent treatment anyway. He deserves to go to jail but she doesn’t know how to make that happen, is too ashamed to tell anyone what occurred, too enthralled by the pills, too messed up at this point to think clearly about consequences, values, safety, love…
His legs appear first, running down the stairs. Of course he wouldn’t take the elevator when he was alone, he’s too big for it. His torso shows up next and then he comes forward, disjointed by all the panes of thick glass in the double doors of the building. He arrives in pieces, fragments of a classical sculpture, only this one wearing a hoodie and sneakers, jeans, a wool hat. His eyes wary, narrow, stoned, angry.
Hey. What are you doing here?
The heavy glass door swings shut slowly behind him. He doesn’t invite her in. They talk on the low stone steps of the building.
Why haven’t you been in school?
He pushes his hands into his pockets, looks to the side.
I got kicked out.
What? It’s almost the end of the year. I thought that was basically impossible.
Well, I managed to pull it off. It helps if you’re on financial aid.
She pushes her hair behind her ear and shivers a little in the dusky shadows of the unexpectedly pretty trees that line the street.
Okay, whatever, I don’t even care why they kicked you out. But why haven’t you answered my texts?
I’ve been busy.
Busy? Are you kidding?
No, I’m not kidding. What do you want from me?
You know exactly what I want from you.
He steps down to the sidewalk and leads her to the side of the building. They walk to a darker spot, in the dimmest shadows, near a dripping air conditioner that sticks out of a first-floor window, held in by duct tape and rusted metal bars.
I’m out. I don’t have any more.
She closes her eyes and lifts her eyebrows in mock astonishment and real displeasure.
Nice. You get me into those and now you don’t have any more. Thank you.
He does a more contemptuous version of rolling his eyes.
You know I could tell someone what you did, she says.
It’s too late. You blew that one. And anyway, I’ve already been expelled for something else. What are you going to do?
I should send you to jail, you asshole. Tears in her eyes now.
He digs his hands farther into his pockets. He blows air out slowly, very slowly, she can’t believe how long it goes on.
He turns his head to the side again and says, I can take you to the guys who have it. I don’t have any money to get it myself but I’ll take you to them. He looks at her, his forehead creasing like a matinee idol’s over his unreadable eyes, and says: If you want. Then he looks away.
That sounds creepy, she says. Where are they?
He shrugs.
It’s a subway ride.
How long a subway ride?
Does it matter?
She gathers along the way that it is indeed a long ride. When the subway lifts up, elevating on its thin outdoor track, high above the streets, levitating, it feels like to her, and she looks out over the city vast and leviathan, the tangled, cluttered, seamless stretch of buildings and streets like the oceanic debris scattered across a whale’s back, the blinking lights arriving like stars drowning in the sea, the whale beneath it all sloping and drifting, the city an animal afloat on the water, half submerged, a dark living rock, she thinks she should exit, get away, turn back. Why didn’t she just give him some money and tell him to go by himself? Because she thought he wouldn’t return with the stuff? Because she was afraid he would rip her off? How crazy is that? He is more than a thief, more than a liar, she has put herself in peril and thrown her lot in with a bad guy, worse than a lunatic, an exploiter, a user, an amoral force. But the necessary strength to escape does not emerge. She finds herself fixed to the plastic seat, face pointed toward the view, the lights that looked like drowning stars now glinting like fires burning on a plain, the last pale haze of day having settled into early night. No, this is insanity, she tells herself. I am not watching myself on a stage. There is no moonlight. There is no magic that will save me; I am going to have to save myself. I do not want to ferry myself toward some false shore of safety, some story that I once believed in but now know better. She thinks of Felix, of Ian, of Steve. Steve, she once thought he would make her whole. Ian, she once loved him, can’t find that emotion anymore, only ache. Felix, sweet Felix, she hopes he never feels anything like this. All of the people she has thrown her dreams onto speed past in the darkening window, reflections of the stories in her head. Then she remembers Neva, and the strong presence—an emanation, a beam of light in her brain—gives her a rush of hope. The next stop she manages to haul her body upward and clutches her bag as she stands to move toward the doors. But his hand is on her skin. It encircles her arm above her wrist. A dread coagulates around her heart. The sallow lights come on inside the subway car, which is practically empty. He tightens his grip.
I don’t think so, he says.