Ben produces his wallet. “Ring us up for one, please.”
They return to the street.
“Do you think Sunshine the Dragon will learn trapeze?” Sarina says.
“I have a feeling everything is going to be fine.” Ben winks.
Sarina’s blush swells from her neck into her cheeks. They reach the place he knows, a cigar bar in the basement of a restaurant. She no longer cares about the train. She will take a cab. Or sleep in a stairwell on a pile of rats.
“What is going to happen to that little girl?” Ben says.
Sarina knows he means Madeleine, who she hopes is home, sleeping under a heavy blanket. She speaks with an optimism she doesn’t feel. “Everything is going to be fine.”
11:00 P.M
Mark Altimari stands in the doorway of Madeleine’s bedroom, watching her sleep. Her fists are clenched beneath her chin as if even in dreams she must protect herself against foes.
Corrine, Madeleine’s mother, is in the kitchen, making one of their simple dinners. Mark can hear her distracted singing. Madeleine is three.
Mark wants to drink wine and dance to his new record. He wants to palm his wife’s full rump. He wants to order pizza. But Corrine believes in saving money, in slow meals and something to eat while you’re cooking them. She cuts slices out of a peach while the sauce simmers. Billie Holiday plays. Mark flips through his record collection to select the next album.
They are good at being together. Leaving space. Leaving notes. Bringing home slabs of Locatelli, her favorite cheese. His tangy smell.
They were in the first wave of young couples to settle near Ninth Street, bringing new energy to the Old World market. Mark would have preferred a house in the country but Corrine said the city would be their daughter’s best teacher. They bought a shop and Mark sold handmade cheeses. Corrine manned the cash register and worked at The Courtland Avenue Club at night. They were respectful of the other shop owners, who in some cases had been there for fifty years. Their business grew so Mark bought another shop, across town. Then another. Walking home every night, a wedge of Locatelli or a fistful of lavender tucked into his apron pocket, he tried to shake the dread fortune produced.
Corrine’s knife stills, as if she has detected a kink in the air. “What’s that sound?” she says.
Mark places his nose in the space where her shoulder meets her neck. Steals a slice from the cutting board. “No sound, dear.”
“Listen,” she insists.
Billie Holiday’s voice has been twinned. He looks to the record player for explanation.
“You don’t think,” she says, but interrupts herself to place her finger over her lips. He lowers the volume. Billie’s voice recedes. The other gets louder. It is coming from Madeleine’s bedroom, but it couldn’t be their daughter, who has yet to say her first word. She doesn’t seem interested in talking and trails kids her age in verbal skills.
I hear music, mighty fine music …
A gust of air, a sudden shove. As if all of the house’s atoms had been paused on the brink of propulsion and this is their cue. The silverware drawer bursts out of its track. The forks and spoons rise into the air. The plate lifts, each peach slice orbiting it like a private solar system.
Corrine releases her grip on the knife. It stays in the air. She turns her shocked eyes to Mark.
The singing is unworried and clear. The saucepan lurches, in fits and starts leaving its heated place, skirts the stovetop, and falls to the ground. Corrine lunges to catch it but misses. The sauce ruins itself over her arms. She squeaks and plunges them under the faucet’s cold water.
The glasses in the cupboards, the cookbooks, the recipe box, hover a foot off their perches. The dish towels ascend above their wooden rods.
“What is this?” Corrine says.
The voice is oblivious to the mayhem it’s causing.
Mark stumbles into the back bedroom to find their baby clutching the bars of her crib. She is singing. He halts, scared to approach this unfamiliar creature. Madeleine holds the last, joyful note. Mark lifts her out of her crib and returns to the family room, where everything is collapsing. Corrine dodges the kitchen items that have been abandoned by their arrangements with gravity. Mark silences the music.
Finally, everything is still. They gape at Madeleine, who bounces and claps in Mark’s arms. “Order a pizza?” Mark says finally.
Corrine laughs. “What I wanted to begin with.”
When Madeleine sings, everyone gets what they want.
Almost everyone.
Every morning Mark wakes up thinking Corrine is still alive. Every morning he finds her side of the bed empty and suffers the loss again.
Madeleine has her mother’s formidable nose, the brown eyes that always seem on the verge of tears. Mark wants to love his daughter, but being around her makes him miss his wife more. Madeleine is only what is left. Mark glides a book underneath his sleeping daughter’s hand. History of Jazz, Volume Two. When she wakes, at least there will be something good waiting.
11:05 P.M
Lorca palms his son’s shoulder. “Come outside with me and smoke a cigarette.”
Alex blanches at his father’s touch. Laughter shivers through his friends. “I’m fine, Pop.”
“Alex,” Lorca says.
Aruna says she’ll come too, but Lorca stops her. “You will stay here in this bar while I go outside to speak with my son.” He leads Alex through the vestibule where well-dressed people fight their coats off. He rattles his pack, but Alex doesn’t want one. The Second Street Bridge is lit in green and red. Alex is taller than him but would be no match for a gust of wind.
Lorca remembers what it’s like to be sixteen and feel bigger than the city. “You coming by on Christmas?”
Alex doesn’t meet his father’s eyes. “Of course, Pop.”
He has practiced this aloofness, but Lorca knows he cries at movies if an animal is injured. “I’ll cook. Roast chicken.”
“Since when do you cook?” Alex says.
“Since never.”
“Will Louisa be there?”
Lorca kicks at the grass snarling out of the sidewalk. “Louisa left me.”
“She told me,” Alex says.
In the doorway, one girl asks another if there’s a cover. “Beats me,” her friend says.
“There’s no cover,” Lorca calls out.
They stop, blondes in tweed coats, and glare at him.
“I know you don’t like her,” Alex says. “But can I bring Aruna?”
“It’s Christmas. Everyone’s invited.”
“I keep forgetting it’s Christmas.”
“You and me both.” Lorca smells the brine of the river. The swipe of his son’s cheap cologne. “A cop came by this morning and told us that unless we pay thousands of dollars the club will be closed.”
“Sonny told me,” Alex says.
Lorca sighs. “I guess he told everyone.”
Alex stiffens at the word everyone. “All the same to me,” he says. “Not like I can play here anyway.”
Lorca has again said the wrong thing, forcing up the wall between them. A pummeled feeling leans against him. In every apartment on every street in this city there are better fathers, but not one of them has a more gifted son. “How old are you?” he says.
“Sixteen.”
“How old?”
Alex spits. “Sixteen, Pop. I get it. I’m too young.”
“Alex.” Lorca’s gaze is even. “Someone might ask how old you are tonight and if they do, what do you say?”
Alex swallows hard. “Twenty-four.” If he celebrates, his father will change his mind. He innately knows his father’s moods and tendencies the way you know on a flight, even with your eyes closed, that a plane is banking. So he races to the door. His hand slips on the handle because his body won’t let him go as fast as he wants.