Jack said, "She"s gone."
I didn"t say anything.
"I couldn"t read her last night. She was so drunk." He halflaughed and said, "She said she loved me, do you believe that s.h.i.t?"
"No," I said.
I felt him shift.
"I don"t believe it either. You know why?"
I closed my eyes tight.
"Because you"re the only one who"s ever loved me," he said. "That"s why. You"re the only one who"s ever loved me and Pm the only one who"s ever loved you." His hand slipped under my neck and pulled me into the crook of his arm. I let myself be pulled. "That"s all there is. That"s all that"s true. Nothing else matters."
For a long time I didn"t trust myself to say anything.
"Are you okay?" he said.
Does your brother do this?
Jack said we could.
But Jack would never.
"No," I said. "Pm not." My throat felt cracked and raw.
"You will be." His voice was confident and sure. "You just have to move past it. Let it go."
I wanted to scream.
"I was calling for you," I said. "You should have been there. Where were you?"
I felt his arm tighten around me and then relax. "Smaller sister," he said. "Pm here now."
Jack"s cure for my ills was the same as it had always been: get good and drunk. But for the first time in my life I didn"t have much appet.i.te for drinking. The smell of alcohol made me think of ferrets. Most things made me think of ferrets. I had nightmares about ferrets, moving over me in a furry gray wave, poking and prodding and biting me.
Two days pa.s.sed and the nightmares got worse. My hand wasn"t healing the way it should; the initial sharp pain had dulled to a constant hot throb. The edges of the wound were inflamed. When I poured rubbing alcohol into it, it was like putting my hand in fire.
The television weathermen were predicting a heavy snowstorm coming in from the west; it would be the first one of the year. A night, a day, a night, another day pa.s.sed, and no snow.
One night we sat on Lily"s roof terrace, wrapped in coats and scarves from her closet. Jack said, "It"s nice to be alone again, isn"t it?"
I didn"t answer. I cradled my wounded hand and stared out at the cold dreary city.
"She"ll go on more vacations," he said. His breath made fog in the air. "h.e.l.l, I shouldn"t complain. We have everything we want."
"We have everything she lets us have."
Jack put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. "Why the dire thoughts, little sister?"
My gaze was fixed on the skyline. "Must be the storm coming."
The street below us was empty. Maybe people were staying indoors, waiting for the snow.
Jack tried to make his breath form a ring and failed.
"No snow yet," he said.
By nightfall, there was still no snow, but the sky hung low over the city, heavy with cloud cover. The meteorologists a.s.sured us that the snow was coming, it was only a matter of time. My sleep, when it came, was fitful. Jack slept next to me but it didn"t help.
When the sun came up on the third day, it was raining. After the rain stopped, Jack found a pair of ice skates in Lily"s closet and decided we"d go skating in the park. They were girl"s skates, with smooth white boots and clean laces. The blades were still sharp and they fit me perfectly.
But the rink was too crowded. The line at the rental counter looped all the way around the rink and people were standing four deep at the rink"s edge. I shook my head. So we walked around the park instead, buying hot chocolate from the snack bar by the zoo. Jack had a little flask that he"d found somewhere and taken to carrying, filled with vodka. He put a little into his cocoa and I slung the skates over my shoulder, tied by the laces. Jack watched me fumble with the knot. "We look like we"ve gone, anyway. Does your hand still hurt?"
The throbbing pain in my hand had become a familiar companion. The pain burned steadily at night, when Jack"s breathing was soft in sleep, and was still there when I woke up in the morning. I"d been keeping it to myself. It had to get better eventually. "It"s fine," I said.
We walked toward the Ramble, where our stroll turned into a hike. The rain that had come instead of snow had made the steep hills treacherous. Last summer I"d liked the Ramble; if you ignored the dog walkers and the joggers and the distant sound of traffic, it was a little like walking in the woods on the Hill. In the summer, there was the rich green light and the low humming of insects in the air; there were the rough, unpaved paths looping back on themselves and making that part of the park seem larger than it really was. Sometimes it was hard to find the right path out of the woods.
But that afternoon, the leaves were off the trees, the buildings on Central Park West were all too visible through the bare branches, and the Ramble seemed stark and sinister, with its twisted switchback paths that came to sudden dead ends in pockets of marsh. After a few minutes it began to feel like a bad dream, as if we were trying to perform some simple task like crossing the street and couldn"t figure out how to do it. My hand ached, and the skates that I"d slung jauntily over my shoulder were banging heavily against my rib cage.
Jack took my good hand in his.
We turned a corner and found ourselves on a small stone ledge overlooking one of the marshy parts of the lake. In the summer it would have been buzzing with insects. Now it was empty and lifeless. The water was as smooth as gla.s.s. The clouds overhead drained the scenery of color. None of the other paths were visible from where we were standing.
My brother stared out over the water. He was wearing the leather jacket that Lily had bought for him. His hands were jammed in the pockets and his eyes were faraway.
"Jack," I said.
He looked at me.
"Did you talk to Carmichael and Joe that night? Did you-did you say anything to them?"
"No," he said. "I never even met Joe." He shook his head. "Every time I look at your face, I want to kill them. You know that."
I lifted a hand to the side of my face where it was still bruised and sore. I shivered.
"You know I could never stand for anyone else to touch you. Even in Erie. That Michael guy," he said. "You know I"d do anything for you. I"d kill those guys, if you wanted me to. Even that."
I shook my head.
His eyes snapped. "I would. I"d do it. You only have to say the word."
I wondered. Joe and Carmichael were Lily"s friends. "It wouldn"t change anything," I said.
When we got back, there was a postcard from Lily in the mailbox, an arty black-and-white shot of misty steps and bare trees against a winter sky. On the back, she"d written, "This is exactly what I needed. Hope the two of you are having as much fun as I am!"
"What do you want?" Jack asked me the next day, over coffee and rolls at the diner down the street. "What do you want, more than anything else in the world?"
The fingers of my right hand were stiff and uncooperative. I had trouble tearing open the packet of sugar for my coffee. "To leave New York," I said, and it was true: what I wanted more than anything else in the world was to leave the city and never come back to it. Once, I had found the anonymity of the crowded city comforting. Now I felt as if I were constantly biting back screams that would force people to turn and stare at me, to acknowledge that I was there.
"Leave?" he said. "Why the h.e.l.l would you want to leave?"
Because there is a searing pain in the only part of me that was ever truly mine. Because someday I"ll go to a bar and sit next to Carmichael, and you"ll sit across the table from me and smile. I said, "Because it"s expensive, and difficult, and we don"t have any money-"
He gave me a pained look. "Since when have we ever worried about money?"
I didn"t answer.
"You really want to give up everything we"ve worked for here," he said, "everything we"ve managed to do, because of one bad night."
One bad night, I thought. "Never mind, Jack," I said.
"At least we"re not in G.o.dd.a.m.ned Janesville," Jack said. "You know what Crazy Mary used to say when something went wrong? She"d say, "We"ll fix it. We"ll figure out a way, Jacky. The greatest force in the universe is the power to think for yourself." And when I asked her what that meant, she"d say, "It means, at least we"re not in G.o.dd.a.m.ned Janesville."" The light in his eyes faded a little. "No worries, young sister. Things will end in happy places. They always do with us."
I thought of Lily"s apartment, a cold, charmless pocket in a tall building that was a hive of cold, charmless pockets, and said nothing.
Jack signaled to the waitress for more coffee. I said, "Did you know that ferrets are illegal in New York City?" I had learned this from a flier posted in the window of the local pet shop.
"No. So are mountain lions. So what?"
"Mountain lions are big, though. Why would ferrets be illegal? They"re like guinea pigs."
"It"s too easy for them to survive here," the waitress said as she poured our coffee. "Give them a month or so, we"d have ferrets instead of rats in the subways."
I imagined it: standing in the subway with Jack, waiting for the No. 2 train. Winter. A flash of tawny pelt on the tracks. Rustling in the litter at the end of the platform. They"re everywhere, even crouched at the foot of the stairs. We"re surrounded.
The night Lily was due back, Jack and I lay side by side in bed, not touching.
"You fall off a horse, you get back on," said Jack, who had never been on a horse in his life, to the ceiling.
Next to him in the darkness, sore and silent, I said nothing, and soon he fell asleep. I wasn"t really sleeping at all anymore, just dozing and dreaming thin pain-dreams that seemed real. Eventually I was aware of the pale winter sun coming through the window. I was alone in the bed. Lily was laughing in the living room.
When I saw her curled up like a spoiled Persian cat in the armchair, with her bronzed skin and her newly dyed brown hair, I realized that I hated her. Listening to her chatter set my teeth on edge. After spending a day with her friends in Paris, they had all decided "on a whim" to go off to Greece for the rest of her time abroad, and she"d had such a wonderful time and met so many wonderful people, and it had all been so rejuvenating, so incredibly fabulous-the food, and the music, and the beaches, and the parties, and the scenery! I sat there on the couch in the endless blur of her prattling, empty of everything except the throbbing in my arm and my seething rage.
Lily"s eyes widened when she saw the bruises on my face, which had faded to a dull yellow. She glanced quickly at Jack, who sat next to me on the couch with one of his arms flung across the back of it, his fingers barely touching the back of my neck. He was smiling but his eyes were grim.
"And you two," she said, pulling up one trim leather pant leg so that she could unzip her high black boots. "You had a good time?"
"It was fine," Jack said. "We didn"t do much."
"As long as you enjoyed it." Lily peeled away the cashmere socks underneath her boots to reveal tanned, pedicured feet. There was a silver ring on one of her toes.
Jack said, "Let"s go have dinner." He stood up as he talked, went to the closet, and took out his black leather coat.
Lily stretched her legs out and gazed at her glossy, sh.e.l.lpink toenails. "Maybe." She swung her legs up over the side of the armchair. "But first I want to take a nap. I cannot wait to sleep in my own bed." In one motion, she sat up, swung her legs down to the floor, and stood up. She yawned prettily. "I"m exhausted. Can you try not to wake me up?"
Her bedroom door closed with a small, smug noise and Jack and I were left together in the silence that fell instantly over the rest of the apartment. He came to me and we stood together.
When Lily awoke, she expressed concern about my arm, which was swollen and angry-looking up to the elbow by then. I told her that I"d cut it opening a can of olives.
She told Jack to forget about dinner, to take me to the emergency room.
"Josie"s okay, aren"t you, Jo?" he said. I wasn"t; I could hardly bend my wrist, and I couldn"t move my fingers at all. But I nodded.
"I"ll take you tomorrow if it"s not better," he told me. "Just not"-his eyes flicked to Lily-"now."
When he was out of the room Lily sat down next to me and said, "What about your face?"
"Born with it. Nothing to be done."
She gazed steadily at me for a moment. "Did Jack do it?"
"Jack would never hurt me," I said.
"I know what he can be like," she said evenly. "I know how he can get."
"The difference between you and me, Lily, is that I don"t get off on it," I said, instead of telling her that it was none of her G.o.dd.a.m.ned business. I sounded so much like Jack that my stomach lurched.
She didn"t blush and she didn"t look away. Her dark eyes were serious, for once.
"You"re smarter than that, Josie," was all she said.
That night, her first night back, she went out for a drink with Maris and came back late. I went to bed early and sank immediately into the familiar dream-haunted, fitful sleep. I was aware of Jack lying down next to me and getting up again, as restless as I was.
He was sitting on the edge of my bed when we heard Lily"s key in the lock. It was only after he went to greet her that I realized that he was wearing only his underwear. I wondered what she would think, and why I didn"t care.
No noises came through the wall that night. All I heard were voices, Lily"s and Jack"s, rising and falling and rising again. More than once I was pulled out of a half-sleep by Jack"s angry voice, but I couldn"t ever make out the words. Then Lily, quiet and sibilant, hushing him, calming him.
Finally I woke with a start to find my room filled with bright light and swirling cigarette smoke. Jack was sitting next to me, propped up against the white headboard. There was a cigarette in his hand and a highball gla.s.s full of b.u.t.ts on the table next to him. His gaze was fixed blankly on the wall but the set of his mouth was angry.
"We have to leave." His voice was toneless. "She wants us out."
Still not fully awake, I asked, "When did this happen?"
"Last night," he said in the same cheerless monotone. "She said she decided while she was away. She"s going to her parents" house in Maine Sat.u.r.day morning. She wants us gone by then."
"Is that what you were fighting about last night?"
"I let her win. Told her she was right, after all." Then he turned to look at me, and his green eyes were as cold and expressionless as his voice. "You always hated her, didn"t you?"
I shrugged. I didn"t care.
"I"ve always hated her, too," he said. "From the moment I saw her."
On Friday, Lily made herself scarce. Jack brooded, and smoked, and drank. Once I said, "Something will come up. It always does," and he said, "Sure it will."
"We"ll go to California. Like you said when we first got here."