It’s a bad day for the beach, overcast with intermittent thunder. I like the cool wind off the water, clouds changing shape as they move across the sky. The Coast Guard used to store artillery here. The old fort is covered in graffiti. Condoms and bottles cover its sandy floor. It’s the kind of place where they find bodies on cop shows. A man fumbles with his girlfriend’s zipper and trips. There, in the dark, lies a decomposing corpse.
Despite the damp, the graffiti looks fresh: uranium greens and popping oranges outlined in silver. None of it is beautiful or artistically rendered, not like the subway trains of my Manhattan childhood. Today’s spray-can artists shoot and run. They leave tags or simple logos, rudimentary marks of existence, poorly rendered self-promotional campaigns. No one takes the time to stencil belabored visions. This is art that captures the ephemeral moment; you can see, in the fluidity of the lines, the speed with which one gets from A to B. One thing I have now is time.
I spread the blanket and we sit, me on the blanket, Olivia suspended on the band of linen stretched between my knees. I’ve begun to dress like the women in the catalogues that arrive on my doorstep unsolicited. My colors are earth tones and muted blues. My fabrics drape loosely and flow. Beneath them, The Suit™ hugs my skin. Its aerating system lets the breeze inside.
I rock my daughter in the hammock of my skirt, attempting to match the ocean’s laps, which swing in a kind of ideal cursive, both slack and exact. Olivia smiles. Spit pools at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes follow the path of a drone on the shoreline. Seagulls scatter.
The Suit™ measures my body’s mechanisms: its waves and punctuations, the regulated movements of water and blood. This information bounces off satellites and towers. It swims invisibly through the air. Once the data leaves my body, then it’s no longer mine, and, in a sense, I find that freeing, like a purge or a cleanse. What, after all, do these numbers mean? They are immaterial representations. I retain the fleshly stuff of life.
The beach’s only other occupants are a couple of young men who wear bathing suits despite the sky’s sunless state, and a female counterpart, fully clothed. I can’t tell if any of them wear Suits™ beneath. Not everyone does, though it’s much more common among the young.
The trio look like they’re having fun. They drink canned margaritas and kick a semi-deflated soccer ball. The men bury each other in sand. When the ball becomes too deflated to kick, they take turns wearing it on their heads. Olivia likes their laughter. I like hers.
The trio reminds me of Michael and Ricky and me. Michael walking on his heels in hot sand to protect the tender balls of his feet. Ricky wearing my sun hat and doing Audrey Hepburn. I wanted to wrap them around each other and fit myself in the alcoves. I wanted to love Ricky because Michael loved him. I was a different person then, laid across those hours, half burnt, half in love.
The drone circles back and hovers just overhead. I’m used to surveillance. I like to imagine Lucas stationed at a monitor, observing his daughter’s growth. He hasn’t reached out. I’m not certain he knows she exists.
The last time I saw Michael in person was after Greg’s keynote at DisruptNY. I watched his physical reaction when I told him: body falling under gravity’s pull, a sharp increase in the speed of his breath. Michael fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around my calves. For a moment, he said nothing. Then he stood. He stepped away and paced, building speed as he circled the room, nearly tripping over Greg’s scattered clothes.
A few seconds later, he came to a halt. He spoke in a modulated voice. He said that it—my betrayal—didn’t matter. He understood why I’d done it. He was upset and he was mad, but he said he understood.
Michael kept insisting we could make it work. We were both in tears. I told him I was sorry, that I was so sorry. He asked if I still loved him and I said that I did. But, I said, love doesn’t mean wanting to make things work. And I was tired of the effort. I was tired.
Michael’s face resembled our daughter’s in her minute of life, the look of desperation as she tried to clear the fluid from her lungs. They had the same almond eyes.
I’d later learn that Michael left, the following day, for Montreal. He went looking for Broder. He returned, months later, bearded and alone.
I know about the beard because I saw him last week on the TV news, seated in a courtroom beside Donnell Sanders. Michael, it seems, has used his new fortune to retain, for Sanders, an elite defense team. To the courts, Michael has offered Ricky’s SD bracelet as evidence of Sanders’s innocence. For these altruistic deeds, the media has deemed him a crusader for justice. I imagine his new beard helps with this image.
But on the news, Michael looked downcast and bedraggled. His eyes were bloodshot. His suit was unkempt. My guess is that he spends his nights lying sleepless, blaming himself for Broder’s disappearance and his own failure to find him up north. My guess is that, despite the media’s portrayal of Michael as Donnell Sanders’s pasty white savior—a role he always fantasized he’d play—Michael knows that the prosecution will capitalize on Broder’s absence. He knows that, unless the jury returns with a not-guilty verdict, no expensive legal team, or exonerating bracelet, or heartfelt testimony, will make up for Michael’s initial mistake.
We’re only one week into the trial, but a not-guilty verdict is already looking unlikely. The prosecution managed to pull the jury from Ricky’s Tribeca neighborhood, meaning it’s mostly made up of wealthy Caucasians. Three of the jurors work in finance. Two have personal ties to the police. Jay Devor will testify as a prosecution witness. And the prosecution claims that the gun Michael found contained Sanders’s fingerprints. According to a piece I read in this morning’s Times, accusations of police misconduct are incredibly difficult to prove. It has been reported that Sanders’s attorneys have requested that their client plead out to a lesser charge—murder in the second degree.
Shortly after The Suit™ launched, a story surfaced, blaming me for fabricating Ricky’s patronage of a nonexistent small-business grant and his support of GLAAD. Lillian wasn’t mentioned in the article, nor was Communitiv.ly’s Project Pinky campaign. In fact, nothing connecting Communitiv.ly to The Suit™ has surfaced. To distance the company from the scandal, Lillian let me go. My severance was more than fair. I’ve rented a little place here in the Rockaways. It doesn’t feel like New York, so much as a small town filled with transplanted New Yorkers.
Michael sold our apartment, and has begun to pay off our various debts. He reimbursed my father for the money he lost in the crash, and I’ve been assured that our divorce settlement will leave me in an adequate financial state. I have no doubt that Lucas would provide if I were ever in need, though that’s a position I don’t plan to be in. I’m trying to live simply and to be self-sufficient. I’m a Type One employee; I don’t wear a helmet. I want Olivia to see my eyes.
I don’t think Michael knows about her yet. We communicate through lawyers. I don’t know where he’s currently living. The only friend I see is Penny from the vape bar. She offers to babysit, but I have nowhere to go that I can’t bring Olivia. Instead, Penny and Sean take the train down and we walk along the water. Sean’s a sweet kid. He’s gentle with the baby. Sean and Penny sometimes dine with my father, Ellen, and me on Friday nights. We light the Shabbos candles, a new ritual that Ellen introduced. Sean knows all the blessings. He’s not Jewish but has been to half a dozen bar mitzvahs.
I can’t help thinking that Michael would do well as Olivia’s father, that his parenting style would be energized and demonstrative and would complement my own. This is not something I would ever ask of Michael: to wet his head in the stream of my betrayal and suffer for Olivia’s sake.
Wind sends sand into our eyes. Olivia communicates her discomfort with a cry. I’m in love with her need. I feel useful. I lick my fingers and ever so gently wipe at the corners of her eyes. Her mouth forms an O. She makes a sound that is not prelingual so much as part of a distinct and communicative language. The sound is like, Ga. I unzip and free a breast from my customized breastfeeding model of The Suit™. The product can be customized for any number of conditions. This gives the consumer the illusion of control. I have no illusions.
The Suit™ notates the time and length of this feeding. When I zip back up, sensors in my built-in bra cup will measure the difference in the weight of my breast and use that data to assess the volume of milk I’ve dispensed, accurate to within an eighth of an ounce. What is done with this data, I can’t be sure. Yesterday, I saw a piece online by someone whose Suit™ had detected a tumor. He’d had it removed before the cancer could spread.
The men to my left do their best to ignore me, but I catch them sneaking looks. My milk-filled breast is obscenely oversized. Olivia tooths down to make her claim. As if threatened, the female of the group stands from her towel and removes her jeans. She wears a bikini bottom beneath, the kind that ties on the sides, exposing her hips. She folds the jeans and lays them carefully in a tote bag, bending away from the men. She leaves her sweatshirt on. There is something of a tease in this ensemble, top half covered while her legs stand bare. Her legs are long and muscled. I imagine she’s a runner, a former college athlete who does charity 10Ks twice a year. Or maybe a pole vaulter. I can picture her mid-vault, arcing over the bar. She walks toward the water. Her friends no longer look my way.
Ciaran in the bodega is a bald, old Irishman with nose hairs long enough to be mistaken for a mustache. His grown children work the night shift. One, Timothy, goes to City College. A Type Two employee, he’s saving to buy his girlfriend an engagement ring. The other, Ciaran Jr., is always in trouble: drugs, fights. He mocks his brother’s helmet. Ciaran thinks he steals from the register. I don’t doubt it; I’ve seen this son, a freckled lump of muscle. With me, Ciaran’s style is somewhere between flirtation and paternal worry. The balance is right. I like listening to his stories, the local gossip. He knows everyone in the neighborhood, who they’re screwing, what they owe the bank. I can’t put faces to names but it doesn’t matter. I find the smallness of life here refreshing, though maybe that’s condescending. The store smells like cat litter.
“Wendy,” Ciaran says. He was born in Galway, and still has the trace of an accent despite forty years in New York. This neighborhood used to be Irish, but Brooklyn’s a free-for-all these days, a mad rush to beat the market.
“Large coffee, two cream,” says Ciaran. I love the pride he takes in knowing my order. He often gives me small gifts: chocolates, hard candy, lollipops. I leave the gifts in a pile on my kitchen table. I kept the furniture that came with the apartment. Eventually I’ll decorate. I don’t plan to leave. I never eat the chocolates, but I like having them there.
I sit down on a high stool and hold Olivia in my lap. I drink the coffee as slowly as I can. I make a game of it, seeing how long I can pause between sips. I’ve traded my smartphone for an old-fashioned flip that doesn’t have Wi-Fi. I feel more present this way, and the hours feel longer, which I like. Even at home on the laptop, I don’t check my statistics. The knowledge that this freedom is a willful delusion doesn’t make me feel any less free.
I eat a vegetable sandwich that includes the avocados Ciaran’s begun to buy at my request. He sits next to me and makes faces at Olivia, who laughs. She’s an easy audience. The skin on Ciaran’s face is loose, as if he bought the wrong size shirt for his skull. He smells of cat shit. He tells me his wife always wanted a daughter. The ginger cat struts along the counter, one foot crossing over the other. It’s unsanitary. I don’t say anything. The cat likes Olivia and I sense the affection is mutual. I’m afraid of the cat, as I am of all animals. Olivia shows none of my fear.
“Look at her,” says Ciaran. He points at the cat. “I took her to the vet for her yearly checkup, and the vet says that if Ginger were a human she might be a gymnast. Isn’t that funny, a cat being a gymnast?”
I smile. Ginger sniffs around Olivia. Olivia laughs. Ciaran lets the cat lick an empty tin of tuna. He’s gentle with the animal, stroking its fur in a way that reminds me of my mother brushing my hair before bed. Maybe the cat and I have ginger affinity. Sometimes I say Nina when I mean Olivia. She’ll never know. I’m not sure to which she I refer.
There are plenty of seats on the subway. That’s one nice aspect of living this far out. I like to watch Olivia, imagine things from her perspective. I examine her features for signs of my own. People say she looks like me but I don’t see it. I don’t see Lucas either, though I’m always searching. Nina was my mother’s name. Olivia’s name belongs to no one. I imagine she’s free of the burden of history, but each time we leave the insular paradise of our apartment I know this is not the case.
We switch at Fourteenth Street. The busker who’s been here for decades is still singing the same Beatles songs over the same wrong chords and grinning. I find his smile upsetting: its width and consistency. I used to hate his voice, the way he reached for inaccessible notes. Now I think I’d miss him if he disappeared.
We wait a long time for a train. Someone’s selling churros caked in powdered sugar. Olivia’s face looks blotchy. I worry she’s developing a rash. Two teenagers remind me of Ricky and Michael. They sit across from me on the train and I can’t help staring. They’re wearing shorts and their legs are hairless. They seem almost afraid of Olivia, as if looking might turn them back into babies themselves.
I don’t get off at Fifty-Ninth. Something about the crowds outside Columbus Circle, the heat of exhaust pipes, manure from Central Park, people smoking outside the mall. Instead we ride up to Seventy-Second and walk south. There’s a new storefront on West End, a bookstore. This is an interesting development. There hasn’t been a nearby bookstore in years.
The new store was formerly a flower shop. I once went with my father to pick up roses for my mother. He bought her flowers every Friday. Only now I can’t remember if the flowers we bought that day were for my mother or her grave.
The light inside the store is low. People must come here to hide. The store carries an impressive amount of small press books and poetry. I imagine it’s a Columbia hangout, or maybe it’s where writers come to browse after nearby sessions of psychoanalysis. I wonder if Michael still sees Dr. Becker. If so, he might be just down the block. He might walk into this store and see Olivia and me. This would happen in a movie. He wouldn’t be mad. He’d tell me Olivia was beautiful, that I was beautiful.
It’s a nice thing that this place exists. Bookstores are disappearing. Ever since they put Wi-Fi on subways, people read even less than they did before. But some people must; this store is testament with its posters advertising author events and its shelves of Staff Picks. The woman at the counter is reading Anne Sexton, studying the old sadness. It must seem ancient, absurdly unmedicated. She underlines in pencil.
I scan the fiction, not even looking for new novels. Instead I pull down books I own, or have previously owned. I often feel this urge to re-purchase, as if reading a new copy means I’ll experience the book again for the first time.
The bookstore I’m in has a large children’s section. I guess they must have to. People still buy books for kids as birthday gifts. A picture book on display is called My Daddy Wears The Suit™. Adult nonfiction has a number of titles on the subject as well. For or against, they’re all cashing in.
A sign advertises weekday story time with a young guy who plays the French horn and has puppets. It would be nice to bring Olivia. She reaches for a stuffed monkey that sits in a basket with books about Curious George. The monkey and my daughter are the same size. I place the monkey in her stroller. Olivia rests her head on its chest.
I read aloud from a pop-up book about public transportation. So many of the books are New York–based. The store must traffic in tourists. Or maybe it’s that children feel secure seeing familiar locations depicted in print, reassurance that the world is a solid and permanent place. I know Olivia doesn’t understand what I’m saying, but it soothes me to read aloud, to trace my finger along the illustrations, wind the cranks and gears, push her fingers across the plush fabrics. As we’re leaving, I skim the periodicals. I like the images on the covers of the style magazines, the fierce eyes of the models. These young women seem built for this world.
Olivia’s hungry again and needs a change. I buy the Curious George book and an Edith Piaf postcard for Penny. Up close, I can see the clerk’s tattoos. On her arm is a list of men’s names. Each name has been crossed out. I relate to the sentiment. The crossing out can’t erase the names, it can only obscure them. The names are still on her arm, reminders of moments in time and their obliteration. I imagine my own arm marked with Michael.
“What’s her name?” asks the clerk.
“Olivia.”
“A little blonde heartbreaker, huh?”
I say, “The hair is her father’s.”
My father isn’t at his apartment. He and Ellen drove to a farmer’s market in Tarrytown this morning. They were supposed to be home by now. Maybe there’s traffic. Tonight, I’ll cook for the two of them with whatever they bring back. Lots of nice things are in season.
I’ve come around on Ellen. They seem happy. They’re planning to buy a place in Brooklyn. I’ll miss this old apartment. It’s my main point of connection to my mother.
I open the windows and take off The Suit™. I’ve worked enough hours today. At first, I took care to hang the garment in the closet. Now I let it fall. I like to feel the air on my chest as Olivia feeds.
After, she quickly falls asleep. I cover myself with a light cotton blanket. The overhead fan circulates air. When my father and Ellen get home, we’ll eat bread and olives at the kitchen table. They’ll coo over Olivia and take pictures on their phones. Ellen will try to teach my father to post the pictures to Facebook for the hundredth time until he gets frustrated and she does it herself.
A soft sound comes from Olivia’s mouth like the lowest setting on an air conditioner. Her ears wiggle. I hold a hand to her forehead. I hold a hand to my own.
On the floor sit the sealed boxes that contain my clothes and Michael’s. There are ten boxes in all, a life in four square feet. Penny and I picked them up from storage last week. I haven’t opened them yet, though I can’t say why. I should bring this stuff to my own apartment. I should throw it all away.
There’s a box cutter in my father’s hardware drawer hiding beneath Ziplocs filled with loose batteries and ancient screws and nails. The box cutter’s handle is the orange of warning signs. I cut into the packing tape and brace for bedbug holocaust. I picture dozens of the insects crushed between skirts and T-shirts, more falling loose with each item removed.
Not so. Only my clothes are in the package, neatly folded. Michael’s must be in another box. He shoved his in. I folded mine. I was preparing for this moment.