answer.
“Daddy!”
“Mm?”
“Why don’t you ever tell us about China?”
He stood motionless for a second or two, his face gone flat and vacant. “Nothing worth telling about,” he said, and resumed
his fiddling.
Across the street, a couple of older boys were squatting on the pavement, a square box top and two tiny bamboo cages between
them. They flicked open the gates to the cages and shook the contents onto the cardboard. Two dark specks let out an unnatural
screech. The boys watched, motionless at first, then more animated. The specks came together, one boy shoved the other. They
stared at the box top, where one of the specks no longer moved.
“Ah, shee-it!” The first boy raised his hand to his head as if to tear out his hair.
Old Mr. Wen, who some of the neighborhood kids called the Hundred Year Old Man, came shuffling from his stoop down the block.
Hepatted the irate boy’s shoulder. The boy reached into his pocket, handed his opponent a coin. Then Old Wen had the loser pick
up his cage and follow him back to his building. A few minutes later they emerged from Wen’s doorway. When the boy lifted
his cage, its new occupant let out a triumphal chirrup, and the boy grinned straight up at me.
I tried to lift the window, but it jammed. A second later the pigeon that had caught the smile flew off the rail of the fire
escape, and the boy turned back to his game.
“One good idea is all,” Dad mumbled as he worked. “Good enough to stop her jabbering, anyway. Jesus! The great connoisseur—should
have married goddamn Richard Avedon.” He looked at the wall. “One idea. That would get us out of here… maybe then she’d give
up the rest.”
“The rest of what?” The boy had long arms and a short neck. Like a spider. His cricket won this time.
My father picked up a pencil and sharpened it. The shavings spiraled down to his wastebasket. I wanted to believe he’d confide
in me, entrust me with secrets that no one else knew, but he acted as if he hadn’t heard, or maybe he didn’t want to confide
in me, after all.
I was trying to decide whether to repeat the question when he replied, “Your mother wants her brilliant, young artist back.
She doesn’t realize he was the fool.”
Mum, for her part, spent most days at the Foucault Gallery on East Sixty-third Street, two blocks from Central Park. It was
identified only by a polished brass plaque, and customers had to make an appointment to be admitted. Inside, plush vanilla-malt
carpeting absorbed noise so well that ordinary conversations were reduced to whispers. That was intentional, my mother said,
so the art would speak louder than the people who came to view it.
Those people had names like Vanderbilt and Amsterdam, but they couldn’t compete with the pictures, carpet or no carpet. There
were paintings of dogs with the bodies of women, men with apples forheads, trees studded with babies erupting in flame, and clocks melting into the sea. Those filled the first floor. On the
second were drawings and prints of those same unsettling images in pieces or variation, all personally selected by Mr. Foucault,
the gallery’s owner, who spent most of his time and a small portion of his enormous wealth buying art in the same capitals
of Europe that filled my mother’s dreams. Mum said he looked exactly like the screech owl at the Central Park Zoo. I couldn’t
imagine a screech owl loose in a place like this, but my mother seemed right at home.
I got to watch her in action on our Ladies’ Days. That’s what she called the occasional preschool days when I accompanied
her to work because Dad was too busy to look after me.
She’d make me climb into one of those precious Florence Eiseman outfits that made me feel about two—like the dress with rabbits
eating cherries and the matching hat with an elastic band that cut underneath my chin. She’d say I looked adorable. I’d tell
her I felt stupid and beg to
“Daddy!”
“Mm?”
“Why don’t you ever tell us about China?”
He stood motionless for a second or two, his face gone flat and vacant. “Nothing worth telling about,” he said, and resumed
his fiddling.
Across the street, a couple of older boys were squatting on the pavement, a square box top and two tiny bamboo cages between
them. They flicked open the gates to the cages and shook the contents onto the cardboard. Two dark specks let out an unnatural
screech. The boys watched, motionless at first, then more animated. The specks came together, one boy shoved the other. They
stared at the box top, where one of the specks no longer moved.
“Ah, shee-it!” The first boy raised his hand to his head as if to tear out his hair.
Old Mr. Wen, who some of the neighborhood kids called the Hundred Year Old Man, came shuffling from his stoop down the block.
Hepatted the irate boy’s shoulder. The boy reached into his pocket, handed his opponent a coin. Then Old Wen had the loser pick
up his cage and follow him back to his building. A few minutes later they emerged from Wen’s doorway. When the boy lifted
his cage, its new occupant let out a triumphal chirrup, and the boy grinned straight up at me.
I tried to lift the window, but it jammed. A second later the pigeon that had caught the smile flew off the rail of the fire
escape, and the boy turned back to his game.
“One good idea is all,” Dad mumbled as he worked. “Good enough to stop her jabbering, anyway. Jesus! The great connoisseur—should
have married goddamn Richard Avedon.” He looked at the wall. “One idea. That would get us out of here… maybe then she’d give
up the rest.”
“The rest of what?” The boy had long arms and a short neck. Like a spider. His cricket won this time.
My father picked up a pencil and sharpened it. The shavings spiraled down to his wastebasket. I wanted to believe he’d confide
in me, entrust me with secrets that no one else knew, but he acted as if he hadn’t heard, or maybe he didn’t want to confide
in me, after all.
I was trying to decide whether to repeat the question when he replied, “Your mother wants her brilliant, young artist back.
She doesn’t realize he was the fool.”
Mum, for her part, spent most days at the Foucault Gallery on East Sixty-third Street, two blocks from Central Park. It was
identified only by a polished brass plaque, and customers had to make an appointment to be admitted. Inside, plush vanilla-malt
carpeting absorbed noise so well that ordinary conversations were reduced to whispers. That was intentional, my mother said,
so the art would speak louder than the people who came to view it.
Those people had names like Vanderbilt and Amsterdam, but they couldn’t compete with the pictures, carpet or no carpet. There
were paintings of dogs with the bodies of women, men with apples forheads, trees studded with babies erupting in flame, and clocks melting into the sea. Those filled the first floor. On the
second were drawings and prints of those same unsettling images in pieces or variation, all personally selected by Mr. Foucault,
the gallery’s owner, who spent most of his time and a small portion of his enormous wealth buying art in the same capitals
of Europe that filled my mother’s dreams. Mum said he looked exactly like the screech owl at the Central Park Zoo. I couldn’t
imagine a screech owl loose in a place like this, but my mother seemed right at home.
I got to watch her in action on our Ladies’ Days. That’s what she called the occasional preschool days when I accompanied
her to work because Dad was too busy to look after me.
She’d make me climb into one of those precious Florence Eiseman outfits that made me feel about two—like the dress with rabbits
eating cherries and the matching hat with an elastic band that cut underneath my chin. She’d say I looked adorable. I’d tell
her I felt stupid and beg to
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