The boy knew the passive reaching fingers would never find it. The man would freeze. He would drown.
But why? Where was his other arm? Why was he not thrashing to save himself, where was his gasping mouth? Why couldn’t he struggle up to the surface?
Every morning, students assembled in the wood-paneled foyer. They ordered themselves by age, oldest in the back. Short for his age like his father and slightly built, the boy could usually only just see over the top of the head of the younger boy who stood in front of him. Each year, his part of the line moved back to make room for the new class of pupils. Each year, the boy stood at a greater remove from the place where the painting hung. But he always remembered what it looked like at close quarters. He always remembered the small, harrowing tragedy of that hand amid the greater disaster.
On the grounds of the school was a lake, calm and warm and not very deep. In the springtime the lower forms splashed and paddled by the shore while the larger, stronger adolescents rowed about in boats. The few boarders who remained over the summer holiday—as the boy always did—took swimming lessons by the wooden dock. The murky, opaque green water was perfectly safe, everyone told him, but thinking of the painting, he never dared venture farther than the bank. He bore the others’ teasing with patience.
How did Helen Nash know all this?
In letters home to his father, the boy would write about the painting and the thrall of fear it held him in. And he would grow up. He would leave the school, but he would never forget. He would tell his fiancée about his shipwreck dreams, and she would note this in her personal journal and someday, when he was famous, every scrap of paper that documented his life would be scrutinized by others, and those entries and letters—true stories—would be a part of the story told about him. People would say they explained why he turned out the way he was.
Always, the boy who became Ezra Sleight knew better than to enter dark water. Out there, something could pull you down.
As a man, he returned to the school and found the painting, which still hung there. He was shocked to see how small the hand was. It did not stand out starkly in the composition the way he remembered. Some onlookers would not have even noticed it. Still, it remained important to the man Sleight.
He didn’t know it, but the hand had saved his life.
“It’s art,” Hel finished. “It’s history.”
“But Ezra Sleight did die,” Angelene said. “So, the painting was never painted in this world, or what?”
“No, it was. It’s called The Shipwreck and it was done by George Lowery, a sort of obscure British artist living in Denmark in the 1820s and ’30s.” There was murmured acknowledgement from those listening. They were art people—did they recognize Lowery’s name? Hel continued. “The painting was completed and exhibited in Paris in 1828. It’s well documented up through the turn of the twentieth century, but as far as I can tell, no one knows where it is now.” Right around the time of Sleight’s death. She didn’t know how to end her story without placing an emphasis on Sleight and her theory of the first divergence that might make them write her off as a crackpot. “The Shipwreck is the kind of thing I’m talking about, for the museum, if it could be found. Not just artifacts from UDPs, you know. Things from here too, that relate to there.”
“It’s a good story,” Donaldson said. “May I?” Hel nodded her consent and the other woman lifted the book out of her hands, riffling its pages delicately. “You’re going to need to have more than an anecdote. Here—will you come with me?” Donaldson turned, heading toward the door.
Hel followed along in her wake, wondering if this was some kind of brush-off, if Donaldson meant to escort her out of the party, but no, Donaldson still had the book. Surely she would have passed it back if she wasn’t interested. They stopped in front of the table at the front. The flow of incoming guests had slowed; the employee at the table was now doing something on her phone. She seemed to sense Donaldson coming and looked up alertly. “Ayanna.”
“How’s it going up here?”
“Not much action. Hotel guy says the dining room is all set up. The silent auction ends in ten—they should be giving everyone a reminder in a minute—and then the cater servers will start herding everyone in to their tables.”
“Good work. Do you have a moment? I want you to meet Helen Nash. Helen, this is Teresa Klay, my intern. Teresa, Helen has an idea for an exhibit that I’d like to explore, in preparation for a presentation to the board. I thought you could help her do some research.”
Teresa Klay raised her eyes. She had dark hair that curled wildly, tied back from her face, and the style of eyeglasses that Hel had learned was worn by people who wanted to signal that they were serious. “Of course,” Klay said. “What’s the concept?”
“Ezra Sleight. He’s some kind of a cult UDP author who died as a child.”
“I wouldn’t say cult,” Hel broke in. “I mean, he was kind of a household name.”
“Helen’s a UDP,” Donaldson explained. She looked back over her shoulder at the people dancing and drinking and networking on the ballroom floor. “I’ll need you after the auction, Teresa, to supervise packing up the stuff. But for now, I’ll leave you two to work out the details.”
“Fine.”
“Hello,” Hel said. “It’s nice to meet you.”
The other woman didn’t respond. She was busy giving Hel a searching look, taking in, Hel imagined, her odd dress, her short-bitten nails, and probably the bags under her eyes—looking at her intently and unselfconsciously, as though, if she stared hard enough, she might find some bigger warning sign on Hel’s person, something on the level of Oliveira’s pincers that would demonstrate how radically she didn’t belong here.
Alien. That’s what they called people like her.
Don’t treat everyone like an enemy, her liaison officer told them at Reintegration Education.
Breathe deep.
“How do you feel about meeting at the Brooklyn Public Library?” Klay was saying. “I have an archivist friend there. I could do Tuesday morning, next week.”
“Tuesday would be fine.” Hel noticed that Angelene had joined them and was standing at Klay’s elbow with two more of the fizzy pink drinks, waiting for a chance to join the conversation.
“The library is in Grand Army Plaza,” Klay told her.
The worst thing about her displacement status, Hel sometimes felt, was being treated like an out-of-towner, a tourist in her home city. “Yeah, I know where it is. I can meet you at the main entrance, right outside the terminus.”
“The terminus?”
“Where the trolleys…” As soon as she began to say the words, she knew they were wrong. But it was too late.
“Girl, they really did a number on you, didn’t they.” Angelene extended one of the flutes to her.
Klay didn’t laugh at her mistake. Didn’t even look up. She sat at the table, entering the appointment into her calendar app, as if nothing had happened.
Hel decided to interpret this as a courteous gesture. She drank deeply. “I know where it is,” she reiterated. “I’ll see you there.”
Sure, I got wild and I did all those things to that old lady. Beat her. Made her eat salt. Cut her on the breasts. Then stabbed her and stabbed her till she died. I admitted to it in the trial, and I’m admitting to it now. I take full responsibility for my crimes ’cause I know I belong in the juice. I deserve it.