That night, she told Jack about the Bangladeshi writer called Islam.
“Remember when Christian lived on the eleventh floor,” Jack said.
They watched the Mets win their rubber game, a depressingly rare event, and sometimes she watched Jack and wondered if they really had a destiny with each other, and what if she left him or he left her. And what if she sent a postcard to the night-time man, like that girl. Graciously, he didn’t appear in her dream, a stranger did, Islam probably, who declared, “Ecstasy is a living language.” In the morning, when she spoke his name aloud, it was too big, too much. Islam had asked why she’d stopped showing her work. She didn’t know, exactly, she gave him reasons, but she thought she wasn’t an artist. She wasn’t committed enough, she told him, and not everyone has to be an artist. That’s over, that romance about being an artist. Some things were over, she acknowledged to herself.
Walking to work, she abjured scenes that had occurred years ago at one place or another, but even when a building had been completely demolished, the blighted memory wasn’t. Islam’s questions bothered her but she liked them, or appreciated them. In the past she’d documented many of these lost buildings; now, surprising new-old images were sprung free by involuntary processes. History pursues its psychic claims in disguise. She thought about photographing Islam, making a portrait of him. He had become entwined in what she’d renounced. First, Islam said he’d think about it, then he said no, and his refusal shut an unmarked door. She supposed she did have unwanted expectations. To appease her, probably, Islam invited her for a drink; Katherine said no. She wasn’t sure what she wanted from him, or he from her, except the obvious. Katherine was suspicious in ways she hadn’t been when she knew the night-time man. Maybe that was a sorry thing.
Her job involved her. She watched people carefully for unusual, even unique gestures and expressions, and listened thoughtfully. People were amazing, their stories amazed, saddened and disgusted her. Katherine was herself or wasn’t during these intake interviews. She recognized a person as a site of relationships, never just an individual, even when cut off from friends and family. But people felt miserably alone. Islam didn’t — Katherine didn’t think he did. He told her he was a beloved son, his mother’s favorite, the youngest, adored by his father and brothers, and he said it with such vivacity and pleasure, she believed him without jealousy. In the same meeting, he chided her. “You know, Katherine, you must know, I was playing you a little. I’m not really a minority, we’re not a minority, you are. You have more wealth, that’s all.” Then he smiled brilliantly, the adored son.
Sunday, Katherine was rambling in Central Park. The night-time man’s wife appeared in her path, and it wasn’t a dream. She wore an unadorned black jacket, slim black pants, slingback shoes, understated make-up. Katherine admired how well-composed her image was. The wife seemed bemused, chin held high as if loftily acknowledging something or someone in the distance. A girl walked beside her, their daughter, and when they passed by, Katherine felt a furtive intimacy with her night-time rival, like a fragment secretly attached. The daughter was taller, longer-legged, unsmiling — what had happened — her face similar to her mother’s, though much younger. Daughters manage fathers like him, and what do they tell themselves. What does he tell her. “I love your mother, this has nothing to do with you.” What does the girl feel. The daughter’s long, gold earrings danced at her swan-white neck.
Her mother’s charm bracelet. Katherine saw it flutter, a golden relic hanging from a bare branch. That would be a strange picture, she thought, not easily dismissed, uncanny even. But how would she do it, if she did. Startling, what gets kept.
The Shadow of a Doubt
Imperfect knowledge accompanied him across the field to a big tent. It was strange, it was just like the tent Thomas dreamed about the night before, with green and white stripes and billowing white flaps spread wide like labia. Inside the tent, a three-piece band played “All of Me,” a beguiling smell of gardenias insinuated itself, and five veiled women, their naked, fleshy bellies curling and uncurling — maybe the gypsy women from a small circus in southern Turkey — waved and pointed behind him, and there she was, Grace, his love, embracing him, lustily biting his lips. You’re eating me up alive, he dream-talked, and everything was right in the world, until he awoke.
Déjà vu all over again, Thomas thought, entering the tent. His dream wasn’t a flash of prognostication, he knew the ceremony and reception would be under a tent, so the dream made perfect sense, even if her marriage didn’t. Its inevitability had plagued him for months, especially since Grace had once told him she couldn’t be with him because she didn’t know how to love, couldn’t love, it wasn’t him, she said, downcast, she was incapable. Hers was a hopeless, existential condition. My mother, she explained, made loving anyone impossible. Her mother had disappeared one day, didn’t pick her up from kindergarten, and finally turned up dead, or was pronounced dead, it was murkily put, and that was all, she wouldn’t say more, so he didn’t prod Grace, assuming the disappearance was the result of another man, drugs, or alcohol. He doubted she’d died — her father kept the truth from her — but Thomas believed the terrifying, great loss and abandonment had diminished Grace’s capacity to trust, and desperate insecurity carved out her being. Grace left it, and many other matters, open to interpretation; her vagueness shaped their relationship, until, disastrously bent out of shape, it disintegrated.
Now Grace was actually marrying Billy Webster, a man — Thomas would’ve preferred a woman — a man she could love, presumably, unless she had other motives and reasons with which she’d tie her Gordian knot. Living gardenias cascaded down thick, moss-green plastic vines, but there were no women in veils, except for Grace, when she walked down the aisle next to her father, who looked just like the New Hampshire modern-day farmer he was. This was New Hampshire, Thomas reminded himself, glancing away from Grace’s swishing peau de soie dress, whose hem touched his foot as she walked toward the other man. But how much a dream tells and doesn’t, how it plays tricks, just like people. His only consolation was to attend her wedding the way he would a funeral for a colleague or a former friend, because it was required and ennobled him with easy virtue.
Thomas knew only a little about Grace’s dull or bright hubby who stood possessively by her side and appeared to sense subtle meanings in her every gesture, unctuous and fastidious in his affection, and grinned so broadly his eyes disappeared into folds of cheek, which looked to Thomas like abnormal growths. He’s assertive, Thomas decided, a wimp, or a geek, and probably impotent. Grace’s brand new husband produced CD-ROMs, a movie or two, some Broadway shows, and Thomas distrusted his dilettantism, his casualness. Thomas prided himself on his vision and application of skill to one cause, graphic design, whose requirements called for a refined eye, precision, and creativity within limits. He served others rather than himself, far better than making art that encouraged self-indulgence. Billy Webster was a grandstander. Also, Billy Webster had once performed magic, which was how he got into theater, and read palms and handwriting. Grace had mentioned this, as if they were worthy pursuits.
She met Billy Webster after they’d split up, she explained to Thomas, when she also informed him, too delicately, as if his feelings were womanly, of their upcoming marriage. That’s why she’d phoned him. It was chance, they were at a party, thrown by a close college friend she hadn’t seen since, but the friend had converted to Scientology, which Grace didn’t know until the party, when she heard a well-dressed group of men and women, all in their thirties, with too-bright eyes and eager, lubricious smiles, discuss E-meters and getting clear. She listened in, didn’t say a word, fearing intimidation, and that’s when she and Billy Webster found each other’s eyes across the room. The antidisciples soon absconded from the religious or cultish party, to a bar. They talked all night. Until dawn, she’d said, and soon Billy Webster had discovered her and she him, they found each other.