27

It was the fifth day.

Peter stood outside the closed door of Caroline’s apartment, holding a small elegant paper bag. For a moment he wondered whether or not to open the door without ringing, and step inside, like a family member. For he was a family member; at least a member of his family lived here. It was hard to lose the habit of intimacy, the sense of natural domain. But no, of course he should ring, he knew that. He had no place here. He dreaded this visit.

He pressed the button next to the door and waited. The button was small, brass and highly polished. The door itself was black and glossy, and the floor was a black-and-white marble checkerboard. The ceiling was high, with plaster moldings. Peter had never seen this new apartment of Caroline’s. Her father had died a few years ago, and she had come into some money. It had been during a dip in the real estate market, and Caroline had bought this snappy place at Seventy-third and Madison, where the doormen were tall, and wore hats and gloves.

Tall doormen were a sign of status, he supposed. Doormen were drawn from the most recent wave of immigrants, and they hadn’t grown up on American vitamins. Their children would be tall, but they were not. For years, New York doormen had been Irish; then the Hispanic wave had begun. Now they were short and broad and impassive, with dark Aztec faces. Those Latino faces: Peter had seen a man, on a crowded midtown street, whose features he had seen carved over and over on the walls of a temple outside Cuernavaca. It was a stone-age emperor’s face, flat and pitiless, with long narrow eyes and a broad brutal nose. The man on Fifty-fourth Street wore a white chef’s jacket; he was delivering pizza.

You never saw black doormen. Peter wondered if that were racial discrimination, and if so, which race was doing the discriminating. Poor blacks wouldn’t take menial jobs, nothing domestic: it was hard to understand that, hard to sympathize with it. Poor Latinos took any job they could get. Koreans kept those corner markets open twenty-four hours a day. The kids washed vegetables, swept floors, kept their grades up, went to Harvard. The blacks did nothing like that. But before civil rights and television, poor black people had worked hard: what had happened to the work ethic? Maybe all the ones who’d had it had left, and were living in the suburbs now, sending their kids to Yale. Maybe there was no one left in the ghetto except lost souls, nothing there but despair. It was America’s worst problem, the trapped black underclass, impotent, enraged.

The newest wave was Russians. Peter’s West Side garage was run by pale-skinned men, hawk nosed, with wild liquid black eyes. They spoke a broken and explosive English, and radiated a predatory cunning. With them it seemed that everything was negotiable, not in the mild, accommodating way of Italians but in a dangerous, threatening one. Peter was never quite sure, when he arrived at the garage, if he was going to be given his car or held up at knifepoint.

Peter pressed the bell again. There had been no audible response, and now he wondered if the bell worked. This time he held the button down for a long commanding buzz. He felt a silent sizzle under his finger. He listened for Caroline’s footsteps, his heart sinking.

He had not seen Amanda since the accident. By the time he had reached New York, that awful day, she had been sent home from the hospital. She had a broken collarbone and contusions, nothing more. She was told to rest. Peter had spoken to her every day on the phone, but this was his first visit.

Behind the door he heard sudden footsteps. The door opened, and Caroline stood there in red silk and pearls. She looked sleek and impeccable, as though to remind Peter of her competence at life, even without him. Her head was high, her mouth was set.

Peter nodded. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Caroline said, stepping back with a militant sweep. Her perfume was new, strange to him. Inside, the front hall was dark, polished. A large gilt-framed mirror he had never seen before hung over a mahogany table. Carefully, Peter did not look around.

“How is she today?” he asked.

“She gets tired easily,” Caroline said. Her voice was harsh. “She gets up in the morning and she’s exhausted.”

“She should rest,” Peter said, nodding. “Not overdo it.”

Caroline made no response. She stood, her hand still on the doorknob.

“Where is she?” Peter asked.

“In her room,” Caroline answered. She still did not move.

“Can I see her?” Peter finally asked, vexed that she’d made him.

Caroline shut the door and turned without speaking. She walked down a carpeted hallway.

Peter followed. He’d known she would be rude. She had been rude to him for the last eight years, offhand, dismissive, contemptuous of his ideas. Sometimes, at the end of a conversation on the phone, she would say abruptly, “Good-bye,” and hang up before Peter could reply. Each time she did this he felt a brief flush of anger, though he never responded. He mustn’t rise now, he told himself. The last thing he wanted was a fight with Caroline. He had said all he had to say to Caroline. He was here to see Amanda. Caroline opened a door and went in, without looking back at him.

Amanda’s room was square and good sized. Chintz curtains hung at the tall windows; a good mahogany bureau stood against one wall. There was a pretty needlepoint rug on the floor. The place was a shambles. Lying haphazardly on the carpet, as though hurled there, were shoes, clothes, magazines. The closet door stood open, and the closet light was on. The bureau top was messy. The bedside table was crammed with magazines, wadded Kleenexes, dirty glasses. A big television stood on a low bench by the window. The picture was on, but not the sound. The screen was angled to face the four-poster bed. In the bed lay Amanda, propped against a pillow. She held a magazine in one hand. Her other arm was in a white sling. She looked at Peter over the top of the magazine.

“Hi, Nanna,” Peter said. His heart, crowded with anger, moved painfully at the sight of her. She looked so dreary, in this cluttered messy room, surrounded by the sad trashy debris of sickness.

Amanda waved the magazine at him, a slow flap.

Peter crossed the room and sat on the end of her bed. The bed was a hodgepodge of rumpled sheets; the blankets and bedspread were sliding off one corner.

“Can I sit here?” he asked, suddenly anxious. Perhaps she was fragile, perhaps he would upset some tenuous physical balance, sinking down on the mattress. “Is it all right?” He asked the first question of Amanda, but turned to her mother for the second: Caroline was in charge, after all.

It was disturbing, being here, so deep within Caroline’s territory, seeing his daughter so stricken. And feeling such hostility from them both, such a hot sullen tide of it. Feeling hostility toward them as well: wasn’t he as much the injured party as Caroline was? And how dare Amanda act angry? Hadn’t he more reason for anger than she did? But he was not here to blame, he reminded himself. He was here to comfort.

At his question, Caroline nodded indifferently. She stood in the doorway, her arms folded, as though on guard there.

Peter turned back to Amanda. “How are you feeling?”

He put a tentative hand on her shin, muffled by the sheet. He wondered at once if he should: a teenage girl’s body is such alarming and complicated territory. At his touch, Amanda’s leg twitched, and moved reflexively away, sliding sideways.

“Sorry,” Peter said.

Amanda shook her head. Her face was pale and puffy, her eyes seemed small. There were dark greenish shadows beneath them. There was a brownish patch, a healing bruise, on one cheekbone. Her hair, with the pale green streak, looked flattened and lifeless.

Peter turned to Caroline. “Is she still on painkillers?”

Caroline shook her head. “That was only the first day,” she said. She sounded disapproving, as though this was something Peter should have known.

“She’s not in pain now,” Peter said.

Pain: he saw Tess’s bruised face, the closed eyes.

“No,” said Caroline. “She’s recovering from shock.”

“When do they think she’ll be up and around?” It was easier to talk to Caroline, despite her hostility, than to Amanda, who was closed to him, distant.

“Next week, they think,” said Caroline. “Doctor Kornfeld wants to see her on Friday.” She used the doctor’s name like a boast, an accusation: here was her ally. “He says it’s important that she doesn’t push herself. He doesn’t want her to have a relapse. But she gets bored. She feels fine in the mornings. She gets up, then collapses.”

Peter nodded. He turned back to Amanda, who lay still, as though she waited only for him to leave. She was damaged, he reminded himself. She was still suffering from shock. She had been in a car crash. At the thought of the crash he felt a choke of rage, quelled it. He was not here to blame her. He was her father, she had been hurt.

“I brought you something,” Peter said. He held up the small brown bag. Amanda did not move, so he took out of it a dull gold box, tied with narrow gold twine. “Godiva.”

“Thanks,” Amanda answered. Her voice was a shock: so empty of energy.

Peter held out the box of chocolates and she took it without speaking. She leaned over and set it on the floor beside the bed.

A sudden gust of anger hit Peter and he leaned forward.

“If you don’t want it,” he said, “give it back. I’ll give it to someone who does.”

Amanda stared at him and did not speak.

Behind him Caroline said, “What did you say?”

Peter turned to her. “If Amanda doesn’t want the chocolates, I’ll give them to someone who does.”

“I can’t believe you said that,” Caroline said, taking a step toward him. She sounded choked.

“If Amanda cares so little about what I took the trouble to bring her that she can’t even bring herself to look at it—”

“She is in shock!” Caroline interrupted. “Your daughter is in shock! She’s been in pain! Can you grasp that? Is that something you will ever, ever understand?”

Peter stood up, away from the disheveled bedclothes. “If she is in pain, Caroline, it’s not my fault. Not everything in Amanda’s life is my fault.”

Caroline laughed angrily. “I see. Who do you think is responsible for the pain in Amanda’s life? What do you think has made her so unhappy?”

“I think you and I are equally responsible. You’re as much to blame as I am.” Peter’s voice rose. They shouldn’t fight in front of Amanda, he thought. He moved toward the door, but Caroline did not follow him.

“I see,” said Caroline. “Which of us was it that walked out on the marriage?”

“We’ve been through that before,” Peter said, stopping. He glanced at Amanda but she lay with her face turned away from them both. “What I did was in response to what you did. We both played parts. But I also don’t think it’s important, now. It was almost ten years ago.”

“Don’t tell me it was ten years ago,” said Caroline. “I don’t care when it happened. It’s just as true today as it was then. You walked out on us. You’re still gone.”

“Look,” said Peter. “Time passes. Things change. You can’t stay in the same place forever. I think you’re stuck. And I don’t think blaming is the way to live your life. That’s all you do now: you blame me, and you tell Amanda to blame me. You tell her everything, everything, is my fault.”

“I have never told Amanda that,” Caroline said, drawing herself up in a fury of self-righteousness. She folded her arms, standing in front of the bureau.

“Not in so many words,” said Peter, “but you make sure she knows it’s what you think. You’ve made it clear that your life was poisoned when I left, and you’ve tried to make sure that her life is poisoned too.” It was a relief to say this.

“Get out,” said Caroline, smoking with anger. She set her hands on her hips. “Just get out. You despicable slime. I am not trying to poison my daughter’s life.”

“You teach her that your lives were ruined because I left. The despicable dad. You don’t think that’s poison? Children want to love their parents. You make it impossible for her to love her father. Why don’t you think of her, instead of yourself, for a change?”

“You are telling me to think of Amanda instead of myself? Who were you thinking of when you ran off with Miss Teenage Atlantic City? I don’t think it was Amanda.”

There was a long pause.

“No,” Peter said finally. “I was thinking of myself. It was selfish. I’m sorry for the pain I caused you both.”

Again there was silence.

“It’s not enough,” Caroline declared.

“It’s all I can say,” Peter answered. “It’s all I can offer. It happened. We’re divorced. We can’t let it ruin Amanda’s life. She’s young. We can’t let her be ruined by this.”

“What do you care!” hissed Caroline. She leaned forward, nearly spitting at Peter. “You sanctimonious shit! You’re asking me to protect your daughter from your selfishness. You act as though I’m your partner in this, as though the two of us together will keep all this from our daughter. I’m not your partner. You made that clear years ago. You’ve betrayed and humiliated me. I owe you nothing! And I’m not going to cover up for you. Amanda should see you for what you really are.”

“Caroline—” Peter began. He stopped.

He remembered seeing Caroline, that first day at Barney’s Joy, when he could not imagine her angry. He remembered looking at her smiling face. It had been years since he had heard her voice unlaced with anger.

Caroline said challengingly, “What are you doing to make sure her life isn’t ruined?”

“I love her,” Peter said.

“So do I,” said Caroline, “but I didn’t let her sit around smoking dope all summer.”

Enraged, Peter answered, “Do you think she wasn’t smoking dope before? Do you think she had to come to Marten’s Island to discover marijuana? She’d never seen it in New York City?”

“Stop.” It was Amanda.

Peter and Caroline looked at her. Amanda’s free hand covered her eyes, and her face was turned away from them both, toward the wall.

“Go away,” she said.

There was a shamed silence.

“Do you want your father to leave, Nanna?” Caroline asked, stepping closer to the bed.

“Both of you,” Amanda said, her voice muffled. “Go.”

For a moment neither spoke.

“Nanna,” began Peter slowly. He had made a mess of this.

“Just go,” she said, and then she began, horribly, to cry. The sound struck at him. Amanda was breaking down, she could no longer hold out. She sounded finished; it was unbearable to hear.

“Amanda, please don’t cry,” he said, and bent over her. He felt his own throat close as he spoke.

“Why shouldn’t I cry?” Amanda asked, sobbing. “Why shouldn’t I cry?” Her voice was hoarse and racking, as though she were not sobbing but choking, as though something were preventing her from breathing.

Peter knelt beside her bed and put his arms around her. He laid his head down on the sheets next to her. He held her. He felt her shaking within his arms. He felt his own throat tighten, felt a stinging behind his eyes, felt himself begin to cry. He closed his eyes and saw at once Tess’s face, battered, silent. Rage filled him again: he was furious. Amanda lay sobbing in his arms. He kept his face turned away from Caroline, he could not bear the sight of her standing, triumphant, her arms folded. He saw again Tess’s face, mute, closed, perhaps forever. He could not help himself, he felt his anger at Amanda rise up in him, felt it rise into speech as he sobbed. He had never been so angry at anyone.

“How could you?” he heard himself weep against Amanda. His voice was part of his weeping. “How could you do it?” He heard his voice rise higher, louder. “How could you?” He felt himself rocking Amanda in his arms, but the rocking turned harder, more vehement. He felt himself shaking Amanda, shaking her hard against her own bed, her own pillow. He felt her limp and unresisting. He wanted to shake her more and more violently. He wanted to force her to look at him, listen to him, acknowledge who he was, accept him. He wanted to break her down and make her yield, yield to him. He wanted to shake her in some mighty and terminal way, until she gave in, stopped, ceased altogether. He heard his voice become a howl.

“How could you do it?” He was screaming.

Amanda lay in his arms, crying. She didn’t return his embrace, didn’t hold him. Peter felt Caroline tugging at him, crying out something, but he barely heard her. Close to his ear he heard Amanda speak, through sobs.

“I’m sorry,” she said, crying. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”