middle-aged flab, grandchildren, too much money, boredom, death. He’d be faithful and conservative in old age, blind to his privilege. When Sallie stopped crying, she found herself alone, the cold draft of the window at her neck, and on both sides the rows of doors went on and on, diminishing to nothing at the end. [ . . . what fun it is to ride and sing a sleighing song tonight, oh! ] But glories! Mathilde came; and though she appeared to be the selfsame sweet girl Sallie had been afraid of, she was not. Sallie saw the flint in her. Mathilde could saveLotto from his own laziness, Sallie had thought, but here they were, years later, and he was still ordinary. The chorus caught in her throat.
A stranger hurrying as fast as he could over the icy sidewalks looked in. He saw a circle of singing people bathed in the clean white light from a tree, and his heart did a somersault, and the image stayed with him; it merged with him even as he came home to his own children, who were already sleeping in their beds, to his wife crossly putting together the tricycle without the screwdriver that he’d run out to borrow. It remained long after his children ripped open their gifts and abandoned their toys in puddles of paper and grew too old for them and left their house and parents and childhoods, so that he and his wife gaped at each other in bewilderment as to how it had happened so terribly swiftly. All those years, the singers in the soft light in the basement apartment crystallized in his mind, became the very idea of what happiness should look like.
—
A LMOST MIDNIGHT and Rachel couldn’t get over the ceiling. What chutzpah had made Mathilde gild it! Their bodies echoed, globs in the brightness above. It did transform the room, shining elegantly against the dark walls. On this frigid last day of the year, it seemed a hand had peeled back the roof like the lid of a sardine can and they were standing beneath an August sun.
It was unbelievable that this was the same empty white space that she had walked into on the day of their housewarming party more than seven years earlier, with its wild roil of bodies and beer stink, the glorious sweaty heat and the garden radiant with early-summer light out the windows. Now there were icicles shining in the streetlights. There were orchids around the Buddha, overgrown money plants in the corners, Louis XIV chairs covered in French flour sacking. It was elegant, overstuffed, too beautiful. A gilded cage, Rachelthought. Mathilde had been short with Lotto all evening. She no longer smiled when she looked at him. Well, she barely looked at him. Rachel was afraid that Mathilde, whom Rachel loved as dearly as anyone, was about to bust out of it all in a commotion of wings. Poor Lotto. Poor all of them if Mathilde left him.
Rachel’s new girlfriend, Elizabeth, a girl so pale of hair and skin she seemed made of paper, felt Rachel’s nerves ratcheting up and squeezed her shoulder. The tension went out of Rachel. She took a wobbly breath and kissed Elizabeth shyly on the neck.
Outside, the swift passing of a cat body on the sidewalk. It couldn’t be the tabby owned by the old lady from upstairs. That cat had been ancient when Lotto and Mathilde had moved in; last Christmas it starved for three days, until Lotto and Mathilde got ahold of the landlord vacationing in the British Virgin Islands and had someone investigate. Poor rotted dead Bette. Lotto had to take a hysterical Mathilde to Samuel’s apartment for a week just to get her to calm down while the fumigators were in. Strange to witness composed Mathilde lose it; it made Rachel see her as the thin, big-eyed little girl she must have been, made Rachel love her even more. Now there was a couple with a new baby up there, which was why this New Year’s Eve party tonight was so small. Newborns, apparently, dislike noise.
“Breeders,” said Mathilde, out of nowhere, Mathilde, who could read minds. She laughed at the astonished face Rachel
A stranger hurrying as fast as he could over the icy sidewalks looked in. He saw a circle of singing people bathed in the clean white light from a tree, and his heart did a somersault, and the image stayed with him; it merged with him even as he came home to his own children, who were already sleeping in their beds, to his wife crossly putting together the tricycle without the screwdriver that he’d run out to borrow. It remained long after his children ripped open their gifts and abandoned their toys in puddles of paper and grew too old for them and left their house and parents and childhoods, so that he and his wife gaped at each other in bewilderment as to how it had happened so terribly swiftly. All those years, the singers in the soft light in the basement apartment crystallized in his mind, became the very idea of what happiness should look like.
—
A LMOST MIDNIGHT and Rachel couldn’t get over the ceiling. What chutzpah had made Mathilde gild it! Their bodies echoed, globs in the brightness above. It did transform the room, shining elegantly against the dark walls. On this frigid last day of the year, it seemed a hand had peeled back the roof like the lid of a sardine can and they were standing beneath an August sun.
It was unbelievable that this was the same empty white space that she had walked into on the day of their housewarming party more than seven years earlier, with its wild roil of bodies and beer stink, the glorious sweaty heat and the garden radiant with early-summer light out the windows. Now there were icicles shining in the streetlights. There were orchids around the Buddha, overgrown money plants in the corners, Louis XIV chairs covered in French flour sacking. It was elegant, overstuffed, too beautiful. A gilded cage, Rachelthought. Mathilde had been short with Lotto all evening. She no longer smiled when she looked at him. Well, she barely looked at him. Rachel was afraid that Mathilde, whom Rachel loved as dearly as anyone, was about to bust out of it all in a commotion of wings. Poor Lotto. Poor all of them if Mathilde left him.
Rachel’s new girlfriend, Elizabeth, a girl so pale of hair and skin she seemed made of paper, felt Rachel’s nerves ratcheting up and squeezed her shoulder. The tension went out of Rachel. She took a wobbly breath and kissed Elizabeth shyly on the neck.
Outside, the swift passing of a cat body on the sidewalk. It couldn’t be the tabby owned by the old lady from upstairs. That cat had been ancient when Lotto and Mathilde had moved in; last Christmas it starved for three days, until Lotto and Mathilde got ahold of the landlord vacationing in the British Virgin Islands and had someone investigate. Poor rotted dead Bette. Lotto had to take a hysterical Mathilde to Samuel’s apartment for a week just to get her to calm down while the fumigators were in. Strange to witness composed Mathilde lose it; it made Rachel see her as the thin, big-eyed little girl she must have been, made Rachel love her even more. Now there was a couple with a new baby up there, which was why this New Year’s Eve party tonight was so small. Newborns, apparently, dislike noise.
“Breeders,” said Mathilde, out of nowhere, Mathilde, who could read minds. She laughed at the astonished face Rachel
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