And Sons. David Gilbert
mess. He moved back to New York and rented his own place in Cobble Hill, landing a job teaching videography at the New School, thanks to an old professor from Yale. He reconnected with friends (we even had a drink). He dated around. He thrilled his mother with his mere presence and managed an occasional meal with his father. Jamie did all of these things in hopes of—well, he wasn’t sure except to say that when the hour and the minute were in the range of 12:01 P.M., he hoped he might give that lifting darkness a decent response.
Myron grabbed the rope. He waited for Jamie to grab hold too.
What sort of witchy thing had she done to him?
On three they pulled.
“I’ll come back in the spring and fill in the hole,” Myron said.
The camera was heavier than Jamie remembered.
“You have to promise to send me a copy,” Myron said.
As he pulled, Jamie had the sensation of bringing up something from the bottom of the sea, a trap loaded with creatures, crustaceans with multiple legs crawling all over the cage, bottom-feeders feeding on thoughts of his father, his mother, his brother and half brother, the familial bait of one-way entrances, the forty-three years with nothing to show, nothing to feel, but the recorded evidence of this suffering world, right down to the first woman he ever loved, dying and dead and—
The camera reached the surface.
Once free and clear, Myron aimed his flashlight down into the hole, but before his curiosity could be answered, Jamie swatted his hand. The flashlight, knocked loose, landed with a thud on the Plexiglas, briefly swaying back and forth, its sideways beam seesawing over paint still bright and vibrant: part of a small house, smoke curling up from its chimney.
IT WAS WELL PAST EIGHT when I showed up at 2 East 70th Street carrying two suitcases and an old backpack, a weary traveler of twenty blocks. The doorman announced my arrival via intercom—“Philip Topping is here”—but the permission to rise took longer than was comfortable. I stood there, forcing a smile, thinking I should have called ahead and reconfirmed, while the doorman—Ron was his name—waited for the answer like a noncommissioned officer serving the higher ranks, prepared to stop even the best-dressed bullet. Across the street was the Frick, and I surveyed its exterior as if appreciating the opportunity to reacquaint myself with its architecture. Truth is, I’ve always loved the place, with its collection of Turners and Titians and Vermeers. It’s a grand home but a small museum, its economy multiplying its pleasure, much like a play without an intermission. Each visit yields a new favorite: Bellini’s St. Francis, I’ll think, then months later, no, no, no, El Greco’s Purification of the Temple. Right now Jan van Eyck’s Virgin and Child holds the title, its finely considered details, like the brocade Oriental carpet, the crisp backdrop of a cityscape, the blond Christ child with his round belly, like my own boy at that age, Ashley taking on the bodeful Mary role, they restore me. Art seems to be the only thing that makes me happy nowadays—happy being the wrong word, less miserable, perhaps. Staring at that van Eyck I can feel my eyes peering into the murk of creation, at the glimmer down near the lower depths. We all live. We all die. Even the great ones. Funny how that can be a comfort. The shifty-looking donor in the painting might as well be me. Tonight the Frick was in party mode. Town cars shadowed the properly parked Civics and Corollas, and a clutch of young smokers clouded the front door, costumed in high Belle Époque style: men in top hats and waistcoats, long white gloves for the ladies in silk evening dresses trimmed with embroidery and a velvet fringe. I was once one of these people. I hate them now.
After seven minutes Doorman Ron got the okay and let me up.
“Thank you,” I said.
I would have waited a month.
The Dyers had lived here for as long as I could remember, a sprawling duplex on the sixth and seventh floors; the elevator opened onto a private vestibule, the orchid-themed wallpaper losing its hold along the edges, like a slow change of seasons. Before I could decide between knocking and ringing, the front door swung open and there was Gerd Sanning. Her grin was both polite and distrustful, like a character in an Ibsen play receiving an unexpected visitor. “Mr. Topping,” she said.
“Please, Gerd, call me Philip. It’s been a long time.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” she said, flushed. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” She was dressed in a white T-shirt and pajama bottoms, obviously ready for bed, though I always imagined her sleeping in the nude, on a bed of straw. Gerd was in her late thirties, blond and blue-eyed, of solid proportions, hardly a curve on that slab, yet despite this, she managed a sneaky allure, as if within that plain box lay a wonderful ergonomic piece of Scandinavian design. She had begun her career as the baby nurse for Andy but then evolved into nanny, into cook, into secretary, and finally into official woman of the house, a sort of secular feminine spirit. At Buckley she attended every one of Andy’s school functions: the plays, the performances, the athletic events, even the parent-teacher conferences. “She might as well be the mother,” Andrew insisted, all matter, no fact. I think this employed maternity made Andy self-conscious, and brought up the question, What did she do for love and what did she do for money? Was there a line? The feudalism of fourth grade in fifth gives way to latent capitalism.
“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” Gerd said.
“Thank you.”
“He was a very nice man.”
We walked into the main entry. The parquet floor was long neglected, strips of wood cracked or missing, loosened by that first set of heavy-footed sons. I saw the curving staircase that stood in my mind as a prop for a series of stuntman falls, Jamie throwing himself down with annihilating grace—backward, forward, shot, stabbed—until Richard came along one day and decided to ride him like a sled and busted Jamie’s chin on the bottom. I tried to recall when I was here last. Twenty years ago? Nothing much had changed except for the added burden of time, which colored the atmosphere with uncertain guilt, the furniture sitting about like characters in an Agatha Christie mystery. The divan in the living room looked particularly suspicious. We all know how memories of a place can tower over us but when revisited decades later might barely reach our knees, yet here was the opposite effect: what once struck me as normal-size now struck me as grand. Upstairs had four bedrooms with three bathrooms and an attic’s worth of closets, while downstairs had a living room, an eat-in kitchen, a maid’s room, where Gerd lived, a pantry that led into a dining room, and finally, down a short hall with a bathroom on one side and a wet bar on the other, behind a thick mahogany door, A. N. Dyer’s inner sanctum, with wood paneling and built-in bookcases, an Aubusson rug, two club chairs posed around a fireplace, and an old partner’s desk, all these things conjured by his mother, who closed her eyes around the fantasy of being a writer and decorated the room accordingly. The apartment was her wedding present to Andrew and Isabel.
“Is he around?” I asked Gerd, peering down that hall.
“Yes, but he’s working.”
Did she notice the change in my posture, like a dog listening for his master?
“He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s working,” she told me.
“Of course. I understand. I’m the same way with my writing.”
“He’s been working very hard lately. Too hard, if you ask me.”
“Really?”
“He barely eats, barely bathes, barely leaves his desk. I’m forbidden from entering. I hate to think of the mess in there, and the smell. I’ve been trying to get him out and about, especially with Andy home, but he refuses, just stays in that room, typing away, even sleeps in there.”
I was intrigued.
“If he refuses to see you, don’t take it personally.”
“I won’t.”