John and I use some of the money to buy an apartment in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan. We sell the land the cabin stood on but keep our house in town—I still go upstate to teach two days a week during the academic year, though John mostly stays in the city. In our new lives, we watch the baby while Sid and Alexis work. We take him on slow walks in Fort Tryon Park and I look at all the bodies of all the people and concentrate on their beauty. We go to physical therapy. We go to the 92nd Street Y. We itch. We get memberships to Off-Broadway theaters. We rub prescription-strength cream on each other’s hard-to-reach places. We become “friends” of museums. We go to film festivals at Lincoln Center. We complain of numbness. We plan a visit to Hungary. We get along, we’re too frightened of what might happen if we didn’t. We talk about art and ideas. Burns come with long-term complications. Of course, it sometimes hurts to move.
Vladimir writes a novel about a younger man’s tender affair with an older woman. She dies in a fire in a cabin in the mountains. There are many descriptions, similes, and metaphors that concern the loosening quality of her skin. The book is deemed well-written but “bleak” and does not do well, though he is long-listed for a few awards.
Cynthia’s book is a surprise national bestseller, a word-of-mouth hit that wins a National Book Critics Circle Award. She explains to me that “national bestseller” doesn’t mean as much as it used to, now that nobody buys books. Vlad tells her that at least she recouped her advance, jealous but proud. She says, you will be next, baby, with generosity. It is like an ice floe has chipped off her, she is secure at last, or for now. They buy a renovated Victorian in the middle of town. When I go on semiretirement, Cynthia is offered and accepts a tenure-track position.
John finishes his epic poem, submits it to a major poetry publication. They publish it, but it is immediately met with objection by young writers of the community, who deem the poem objectionable due to its sexual content and his history. John takes up pottery making. He likes the feeling of damp clay between his hands, soothing and cool.
After a year or so I begin to write once again. I email my work to myself after every session. The book is a painstakingly researched, fictionalized account of Sadie the Goat, a female pirate from the nineteenth century who wears her own pickled ear, bitten off years prior in a barroom brawl by Gallus Mag, enclosed in a locket around her neck. I write very slowly, and very little, every day. I am skeptical, now, of the flood. I am not nicer or more appreciative than I was before. But I am more measured. This is a kind of peace, or a warning.
Sid’s baby is beautiful, and smiles all the time, a clear sign of intelligence. He lies on his mat and I read Shakespeare and Dickinson aloud so that he may absorb the benefits of their cadences. As a mother, Sid surprises me; she is natural, temperate, tender. I cannot think of any baby more lucky than he, having the parents he has.
So many systems disrupted. So many knots untangled, undone.