I left the bedroom and went back to my chair by the windows. In the faint lamplight, the paintings on the surrounding walls seemed alive. Like ancestor spirits, they crowded around me—works that I could have sold to enable Nathalie to be treated in New York. Here they remained, however, because she preferred her French medical team and because I so resented the nature of her illness and its miserable source.
Nathalie had great regard for France’s system of health care, and maybe she knew best for herself. She had contracted the disease in Paris; she had heard the curt diagnosis months later in a seventh arrondissement clinic. It seemed only right to deal with the infection there. She and her doctor could smoke their unfiltered cigarettes as they discussed her prognosis; they could quote literature back and forth to ennoble the long, gruesome course of her treatment. She seemed to feel, if not well, at least resigned to the illness in her native environs.
So, after two years of IVs and bedpans, of catheters and MRIs, Nathalie died there in her precious homeland, with a Gallic disdain. Near the end, she spoke of death as an obnoxious intruder, a foreigner—one who would drag her off to some alien uncultured country.
After the burial, where her French friends dropped single roses onto the casket, I returned to New York to live among our early Rymans and Scullys, those stylish abstractions looming with silent reproach now on the white walls around me.
Back then, Philip thought I should simply forget about Nathalie, let loose, and run a little wild for a while. He didn’t much lament the end of my marriage, or see why I should either. How could he? Nathalie was a bad case, the bitch. But she was my bad case, and I loved her. Maybe I loved her because she was such a bad case. Maybe the anguish she gave me was what I wanted most in the world. At least it made me feel alive, and now, for a long time, I had scarcely known if I was living or dead.
I drank one more scotch and listened to the wind in the cornices of the buildings next door, while I carefully catalogued the night sounds along Wooster Street—the rustling of a homeless man going through garbage bags, the slurred voices of late drinkers looking for cabs.
All the time I sat there, I concentrated—at the deepest level—on the blond sleeping girl, telling myself that I must not cross the loft again, must not approach the narrow, flimsy door that stood between myself and Melissa.
And, remarkably, I did not.
Instead, I sat by the dark windows and very methodically drank. I don’t remember how much or how long. At one hazy point, I thought that I heard Missy’s voice, far and muffled, speaking my name. But it was probably just some terrible longing or fear. Finally, as my eyes were beginning to droop, Angela telephoned.
“Everything all right there, Jack?”
“Fine. Melissa is sleeping.”
“It’s been a god-awful day. Philip won’t let anyone else feed him now. I do nothing for hours but read aloud and wait for him to feel hungry again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s rather lovely, in an exhausting way. I need a couple more hours here. Will you just look in on Melissa to see she’s not having one of her nightmares?”
“Does that happen often?”
“From time to time, ever since the Amanda thing.”
“Kids imagine too much.”
“It’s gotten even worse since we moved back to the city.”
“What should I do if she’s awake?”
“Just talk to her. Speak softly and rock her.”
“Like a baby?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. Melissa won’t admit it, but she likes to be held when she’s scared.”
“You think it’s what she wants?”
“I know it. I’m her mother, Jack. I know what’s best for my child.”
“Yes, you must.”
“She’ll fall asleep in your arms.”
“All right, then. I’ll go check on her now.”
“You’re a dear.”
Once I hung up the phone, I stood in the middle of the empty room for a couple minutes, feeling the scotch gather at my temples and begin to seep deeper into my brain. Then I walked for an eternity across the loft.
At the door of the guestroom, I tried to listen for Melissa’s breathing, but the wood was too dense.
I pushed the door open, letting the faint hallway light spill in. On the lower half of the bed, one bare leg, sleek and gleaming, lay fully extended on top of the covers. The girl’s chest rose and fell regularly. She needed to be tucked in, to be covered.
When I approached, Melissa’s respiration changed.
I stood over her—watching and guarding, I told myself. But I was a little too drunk to be entirely sure. Across a great abyss, I reached down and touched Missy’s forehead, sweeping back a wave of fine hair that draped across her left eye and cheek. She gave a subdued moan in response. Then a single word came out of her slumber.
“Daddy?”
“No.” I answered her under my breath: “No, honey. It’s Uncle Jack.”
“Oh good, I’m not dreaming. It’s you.”
“Your mother asked me to check.”
“She did? You didn’t want to see me yourself?”
“More than you know.” Groping in the dark, I found the tangled blanket and sheet. I straightened them with my good hand, guiding her leg underneath.
“That feels so nice,” she said.
“The covers?”
“Your hand, Uncle Jack.”
“I’m going now.”
“No one ever stays with me. Why?”
“Maybe someday, Missy.”
“Someday you’ll stay, or someday I’ll know why you don’t?”
“Yes, one of those.” I took a step back and paused, listening as her breathing deepened.
“Night, night, love,” she said. “Kiss me.”
My own breathing slowed.
“I did once,” I lied. “You’ve forgotten already.”
“Oh? I’m sorry. One more.”
She was not really awake, and I did not bother to explain. What could I say, anyhow?
“Please, Uncle Jack.”
It was her last plea, arising out of a dream. As she sank into sleep again, I turned and closed the door of the bedroom behind me and walked back to the dim living room.
Settling, depleted, into the chair, I poured another scotch and watched the liquor turn the melting ice cubes to amber. I breathed in the fumes with each sip.
In this world, I thought, the world where Melissa sleeps, there has to be limit, a boundary you don’t cross.
Well, obviously, I had done as well with that resolution as with all the rest. Face it, Jack, the crossing begins the moment you first imagine, too vividly, just how the encounter would unfold, what you would see, how forbidden and good it would feel. The beauty, the excitement. That was sin. Even if you’re an artist—or, like me, an artists’ pimp.
And I’m not even the worst. I thought of the Virgin Sacrifice audience, those eager perverts watching expectantly for the climactic moment, fast-forwarding to El Burro’s clinch. At least I had never rooted for someone with Paul’s disease to succeed, never waited with delirious longing for the violation to occur. Which is more than some people can say, including those who might presume to judge me.
I was losing count of my drinks.
Oddly, intoxication was my small moral victory that evening. It distracted me. In my hour of greatest temptation, I did not yield to the worst urgings of my impure heart.
Are there virtues of inaction, I wondered, just as there are sins of omission? I would have to ask Hogan.
One thing was certain, no one will ever know the pain it cost me—that simple act of forbearance on a cold night at the end of November years ago. Was it a great accomplishment? Was it even worth mentioning? Probably not. But it has enabled me to look back at my life without utter revulsion.
I got up and paced the room, touching small random objects, forbidding my feet to turn toward the guestroom and Melissa.
I ended up by the high windows, looking out, seeing nothing. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? That was one of the verses Hogan had e-mailed me from that damned bible he reads too much, the black leather-bound volume that almost falls apart in his hands. Now the words were stuck in my head.
Well, I had an answer: I can know it—my desperately wicked heart. After so many nights lying alone in the dark, sleepless, I have gotten thoroughly familiar with its every weakness and quirk. I know my deceitful heart very well.
Better make a list of all your little moral victories, Jack. No, not later. Right now.
Surely there had to be some.
Let’s see, I may have failed my wife, terribly, but at least I had acted—or failed to act—out of emotional injury, not out of malice. Over the years, I had even managed to do a proper thing or two with Hogan, for people like Mandy, Angela, and Melissa. I felt I could meet Philip’s criterion: my accounts were square.
That was all. Still, it seemed like a reasonable tally for a guy in the world I inhabited—a flawed man adrift among faithless lovers and hustlers, in a vast city, alone….Or so I thought as I stood by the windows and watched the wet snowfall and waited for Angela.
Just as I turned and started to walk back across that enormous dark room, I heard a knock at my door.