The same routines but a newfound sense of significance. He moved intentionally that morning, attuned to the angle of the light, as if a film had been stripped from his eyes while he slept. Nothing rote about today, no. Feels like a court day, closing arguments, every nerve focused on the moment when you’ll rise to deliver the oratory. The dread, the fear—it was a panther you were stalking; you allowed it to stalk you, too, you lured it closer, listening for the crackle of a leaf, the tensing of muscle before the death leap, and you kept vigilant, knife out. Routine was your camouflage.
A morning different in other ways. Erica had not cleaned the apartment. One day of the week she was off in the morning, but she straightened up first. No, not today.
And then Saltwater had not come, unusual after so long. It was Monday, yes. But he shouldn’t have expected Saltwater, no. The week before, he had failed the test and the avalanche that would end him had slipped loose and begun to build speed.
When Erica moved in, Tracy and Fil’s children, in the city for a Sunday afternoon visit with Grumps, had conducted a thorough sweep of her chest of drawers, closet, bed, bedside table, medicine cabinet, and turned up nothing that indicated secret habits or perversions, after which Beatrice, age thirteen, had declared her to be a banality in a world of bores. Bea’s own nanny had kept a stubby bottle of olive oil and dog-eared copies of The Sensuous Man and The Sensuous Woman in her bedside table. Upon examination, both books had turned out to be disappointingly even-toned—educational, even—devoid of throbbing members or diamond-hard nipples. The olive oil, it turned out, was for her elbows and knees. Bores, all. The grandchildren hadn’t bothered to go back to Erica’s room again.
So it was that the day of the blizzard, wondering where Erica was, and unable to get a straight answer out of her father, Tracy intended to conduct a sweep of her own, though she’d only made it as far as the kitchen. She’d gone back and indicated to Fil that something was up. Fil rose, followed her—Albert tracking her with his eyes but still talking—into the kitchen.
Where are you going? he shouted after they’d left the room. I should address myself to the paintings now?
In the kitchen there were dirty dishes everywhere and bags of trash on the floor. See? Tracy said.
Don’t look so happy about it, Fil said.
I’m not happy about anything, Tracy said, though she was weirdly pleased that the evidence was for once so obvious, when everything else with their father was a labyrinth.
Hm, Fil said, crossing back through the dining room, foyer, through the French doors, to her father’s desk, where she began rifling through his mail.
Daddy, she said, where’s Erica?
Excuse me, Filomena?
Tracy this time: Daddy, where is Erica?
Who in hell is Erica?
The girl who lives here, Daddy. The one who helps you. Long black hair, about yea high?
What are you talking about? How should I know where she is? Albert said, threading his fingers together beneath his chin.
You would be the only one who knows, Daddy.
Of whom are you speaking?
No, Daddy, Tracy said. Not this game.
Albert had to think for a minute. I don’t see anyone else here, do you? Ergo, whoever you’re looking for is not here, he said.
Daddy, what happened in the kitchen? Fil said.
How should I know? Albert said. The girl handles that.
So, again, Daddy, Fil said. Where’s Erica?
I suppose she’s no longer in my employ, Albert said.
Is that so? Fil said. According to?
According to her employer, that’s who! Albert boomed. According to? According to whom do you think?
Take it down a peg, Daddy. You fired her? Tracy said.
She’s not here, is she?
So you don’t know what happened to her? Tracy said. Or are you pretending not to know?
Who’s the caretaker in this scenario? Albert said. Now I’m supposed to keep track of some fifteen-year-old? You’re asking me to speculate on her motivations? How would I know what the hell she was thinking? She made clear that she no longer enjoyed the terms of her employment and I suggested that she exercise her right to leave. She packed up her things and went. She relieved herself of the position. I’m sure she got a better offer.
Daddy, first of all, she’s twenty-five, and she would have called me if she had found something else. What did you do to her?
I did nothing.
Bullshit, Fil said. What did you say to her?
What could I have possibly said to her? Albert said. She never listened to me for a second! She was like a cow. A fat, stupid cow with big black eyes, standing in a field chewing cud.
Fil couldn’t entirely disagree. There had been something harmless in Erica’s eyes, to be sure, the cultivated emptiness some girls exchanged for entrance into the world of men, and compared to Bea, who was a decade younger but nursing an adult-sized ulcer, Erica looked positively childish. Her clothes strained at the seams. When she sat, the placket of her shirt gaped between the buttons like little mouths. Her softness was that of a child bulking for puberty, her breasts folds of flesh atop her chest, her chin low, cherubic. She had a pug nose and lips that lacked the thin, adult severity of Bea’s. Most of the time it wasn’t a cow to which Albert compared her. He thought she looked more like a cartoon of a person than a person, a point she wouldn’t have disagreed with. In fact, Erica would have laughed about it. She felt she had yet to take her permanent form. Her body was seeking itself in the birthright passed down from her mother and grandmother, the former a bowling pin, the latter a bag of leaves. No need to worry, you, she told herself. Not yet. In the meantime you do what you can. In a few years the clay would set, but for now she was between states, unsettled, intrigued by her own potential.
It was also true that she was not a superb listener. She was a monologuist, a skill she’d honed while caring for her mute, bedridden grandmother, and her primary subject was the neighborhood outside the Apelles’ gates. To Albert’s annoyance, she delivered her speeches in the tone of a tourist who, having returned from an expensive trip that had gone wrong in every conceivable way—boat sunk, hotel burned, passport and money stolen—insisted that the experience had been enlightening, even terrific in a way, a real learning experience. He hated her relentless optimism, the flood of naïve revelations about the kindness of the bums on Broadway and the shocking yet wondrous dangers of Riverside Park, the fascinating conversations she overheard when the old Jewish men settled in at the Cosmic’s counter for their morning coffee. Oh, what a world, what a world. Albert wasn’t shy about telling her to shut up, but given his facility with insult, he was surprisingly polite about it. Perhaps even Albert was softened by her wide-eyed delivery.