There was the sudden blast of a bell-the doorman's intercom buzzer, which rings like an old-fashioned telephone but three times as loud.
"Yes, what is it?" I shouted into the spray of holes in the wall by the intercom.
"Mr. Jacobs on the way up."
"Oh, Jesus," I muttered and turned to Henderson, who took what I could see was a final sip of coffee, set the mug down, and began moving sideways, crablike, to the front door.
"Aren't you lucky, my dear."
"He's five hours early."
"Absence is an incredible aphrodisiac."
"He's never this early. Sometimes fifteen minutes. Half an hour."
"You underestimate your charms, Sophy. Take a good look at me, because next time you see me, I'll look the way I did on my wedding day. I'll send you a postcard from the fat farm, if I have the energy to lift a pencil. You know that's why monks fast, don't you? Because it makes you so exhausted, you can't even think about fucking. All you want is food."
"Thomas Merton never said a word about that."
"Never wrote a word, but I'm certain he said plenty, in between the vows of silence. He was too weak to write about it."
There was the faintest knock at my door. Of course. Daniel felt sheepish appearing this way, his libido raging, his libido some bucking bronco he could not control-no fasting monk, he! If I'd been alone, I might have found it more winning to be dropped in on, but with an audience, even one as open-minded as Henderson, I was embarrassed to seem so available. Did he think I was there to service him at any hour of the day? And wasn't I? I swung open the big metal door, expecting to see him in his summer suit with a lascivious half-smile, the Times folded under his arm, something to read in the cab coming over here, his thoughts drifting lazily between Al Gore and 'me, me and my absurd willingness, the almost-divorced maid of constant hunger.
But it was nothing of the sort.
It was his daughter Vicki at my door. Not Mr. Jacobs, as I'd heard on the intercom, but Miss, age ten, approximately.
"What happened?" I said. "What's wrong?" All I could imagine was that she'd come to tell me the others had perished at sea.
"Nothing, Sophy."
"Are you alone?"
"Sure." She looked like an assortment of rich sorbets-wearing peach-colored shorts and a lavender T-shirt I had seen in the Gap Kid window on Broadway, and clutching a lime-green knapsack. I stepped aside to let her in and saw her look up suspiciously at Henderson. She was small for ten, but also for nine or eleven-none of the children had birth certificates; all their ages were ball park-and had to look up a long way. When I introduced them, she said, "Is that your first name or last?"
"My last, but people started using it as my first when I was twenty-one."
"How old are you now?"
"Fifty-three."
"Do you have any kids?"
"As a matter of fact, I do. A son named Philip."
"How old is he?"
"He's thirty-one. He has a son too. His sons almost five." He wasn't camping it up when he said he was going to look as he had on his wedding day. He'd married right out of college-missing Vietnam because of a high draft number-and was so determined to prove his heterosexuality, he convinced his wife to have a child right away. When the inevitable came, she expressed her rage and revenge by taking their son to her parents' Texas home to be raised among rednecks. Though his son's name is Philip, Henderson usually refers to him as Dwight D., as in Eisenhower, because he is military-minded and homophobic. Henderson is convinced that Philip became a career army officer not only to rebel against his father but to dwell at an address-Fort Bragg, these days-that would deter Henderson from ever visiting.
"Was the little boy born, or was he adopted?" Vicki said.
"They were both born," Henderson said. "My son and my grandson. What about you?"
"I was adopted. From Vietnam. You know where that is?"
There was the slightest pause in his reply, slight in seconds, though I knew the silence went deep; that was where he had lost his first batch of friends. "I sure do."
"Did you ever go there?"
"No. I was supposed to, once, but I-it's a long story. I'll tell you sometime if you're interested. Do you remember it well?"
She nodded. "I lived on a boat on the Perfume River. When I was little I slept in a basket that hung from the ceiling of the boat. Then I slept with my parents on the floor and we rocked all night because of the waves. Then my mother died. Then we moved to Danang. I remember a lot of chickens and my father's bicycle."
"Vicki, honey, how did you get here?" I was transfixed by her appearance, the sudden intimacy with Henderson, the backward glance to Vietnam, but alarmed by the thought that Toinette, the children's Haitian nanny, would soon discover her missing and panic. And that there might be a substantial reason for her coming here-something she had to show or tell me.
"I took a taxi."
"How did you get my address?"
"My dad's address book. The one by the phone in the kitchen."
"Does Toinette know you're gone?"
She shook her head.
"You two obviously have some things to talk about," Henderson said, "and I've got to finish packing. It was a pleasure meeting you, Vicki, and I hope to see you soon."
"I'm ten," she said, looking up at Henderson. "Approximately."
"Really?"
"I mean, I'm old enough to know that I was born and adopted. I was just trying to trick you."
"It was a good trick." I could see he was trying not to smile. "You had me fooled."
"Excellent," she said, and her sprightly inflection assured me that she was probably not here to deliver terrible news.
When Henderson left, I invited her to sit on the couch, said I'd find something for us to snack on, and tried to affect nonchalance. It occurred to me she had read too many of those books about kids with no parents who are emboldened by their hard lives toward reckless gestures. "So what's up, kiddo?"
"Don't tell my dad I came here, please, Sophy. The other kids are pretending I'm home in case Toinette looks for me."
What did nervy ten-year-olds need these days that they had to keep from their parents? Marlboros? Glocks? RU 486? Or would this turn out to be some bit of innocence: she needed help buying a birthday present for Daniel? I filled two glasses with orange juice and a small plate with biscotti, and as I carried them to the coffee table by the couch, I saw she had taken something from her knapsack and placed it on the corner of the table. A large handmade greeting card, I thought, like something I'd helped the children make.
"What have you got there?"
"It's for you." She handed me the card, and for a moment I was too touched to speak. My name was spelled almost right, S-O-P-H-E, written in purple glittery ink and surrounded by a chain of bright blue feathers.
"It's beautiful," I said.
"Open it."
It must have something to do with my birthday the week before. The ink inside was black and looked like Vicki's fairly grown-up hand, except for the signatures, which each child had done for him- or herself, in a variety of colors and sizes, at angles all their own, and it had nothing to do with my birthday.
We herebye want you and Toto
to live with us
forevere
please.
Sincerely, Vicki
Cam
Tran
Van
For the first time all day-an odd locution, given that it was only eleven-thirty in the morning-I was relieved to hear the doorbell ring. I turned away from all of Vicki's brave longing, and all of my own, and didn't ask who was at the door, didn't look through the peephole. My New Yorker's caution had not shielded me from any of the day's other bizarre intrusions. When I saw Jesús across from me in a dapper seersucker suit and glossy slicked-back hair, the two words that came to mind were "cognitive dissonance."
"We can do ten," he said.