Love Maps Read online

  “You’re going to love Gus, sweetie.”

  “Who’s Gus?”

  “I never told you about Gus? He’s a friend of mine, an artist. You’ll like his sculptures. They’re made out of old car parts.”

  “Weird.”

  “Where did this weird come from? Everything’s weird these days.”

  Max pressed his face against the window. “I don’t know.”

  The cars were zooming, zooming, hogging the lane for the Cloisters exit, not letting the Buick in. Okay, no Cloisters. She sighed as she passed the exit. Immediately afterward, a space appeared in the right lane. She dove in before it was swallowed up. The next exit sign appeared: 155th Street. This one she made, curving off the parkway into a once-familiar corner of northern Manhattan. She sucked in her breath as they drove past the Cervantes statue, the old Indian museum, the park that used to be fancy but was now blurred with dull graffiti, paper coffee cups, needles, if she cared to get out of the car and look. But the streets—they weren’t that different; the ratio of house to road, the narrowness and shabbiness. It had been shabby then too.

  “Max.” Her voice trembled. “This is my old neighborhood.”

  “I thought we were going to Maine.”

  “We are. But Maine’s north. We’re doing a detour.”

  “Red light, Mom.”

  She braked, the sweat pouring out again, but she’d only gone a couple of feet over the line; it was the kind of mistake anyone could make, and there were no other cars. She backed up and waited for the green. “Your seat belt’s on, honey?”

  “Yes, I told you.”

  “How can it be with that sleeping bag?”

  “It goes over, see?”

  She checked the mirror. Indeed, the belt stretched over the sleeping bag. He was a strapped-in caterpillar. The light turned green. She passed a parking spot to her left, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop. The Buick was pulling her deeper into the neighborhood.

  “Who are we going to write messages in a bottle to?” Max asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You said when we got to Maine, we could write messages and stuff them in bottles and send them out to sea. Who are we going to write them to?”

  “What about Grandpa Max and Grandma Grace?”

  “They’re dead. Dead people can’t read.”

  “Since when did you get so sensible?”

  “I’ve always been sensible. Just like Dad.”

  “Oh, for god’s sake. Who ever said your father was sensible?”

  “You.”

  “A sensible person respects the senses, doesn’t run away, doesn’t sacrifice everything for some skewed idea of holy fucking perfection.”

  “You said he was sensible. You said he was the three S’s: square, straight, and sensible.”

  “No I didn’t. I said he’s a hero and he’s wandering the planet.”

  “Square, straight, and sensible. Sss—the snake in the garden.”

  She had said something like that, but not to him, to Carlos. He must have been listening. “No way,” she said. “If I ever said something like that, I was wrong. If you’re too sensible, you become insensible. You can’t understand anything that doesn’t make sense.”

  The streets were too narrow for this. Concentrate. She edged the Buick between double-parked cars. The left tires rose up on the curb. A woman standing on her stoop eyed her warily. Yo gringa, whatcha doing here? Yo yourself, I’m no gringa. I’m a displaced homegirl, and where’s the el? She had taken Philip here years ago, the year they’d crisscrossed Manhattan, exploring Philip’s architectural marvels and her childhood places. He’d hardly said anything, eyeing the grit-encrusted mortar, the crumbling wedding cake plasterwork, the broken windows, the sagging staircases, the sodden coupons in oily puddles. He’d felt sorry for her. It had made her furious. She’d been trying to show him something that she’d loved.

  She stopped at an intersection, and the kids on the corner, down-jacketed and smoking, sussed her out. What’s the score, lady, what d’you want? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she had to keep going and she had to be careful. Her kid was in the backseat. The telephone wires sagged and a man raised the gates of a bodega. She winced at the clattering metal. Too loud, everything was too loud. The air buzzed. She tried to turn left, but the street was blocked by orange and white sawhorses. A Con Ed chimney puffed great clouds of smoke. She wiped her forehead and turned the other way. At the next intersection, an old man dragged a poodle by a leash. She rubbed her eyes, so out of place the man looked. He was terribly proper, with a trim gray mustache and a feather in his tweed hat. The poodle stopped to pee at the curb, and the man glanced up at the sky, as if to disassociate himself from something so base. Sarah wanted to shout an obscenity. She rolled down her window but then stopped herself.

  “Listen, Max, I have something to tell you. We’re all animals. That’s how we were made. Only an idiot’s embarrassed by it.”

  The car behind her honked. She jerked forward then penitently braked. There was a lesson she’d taught when she substituted for the history teacher. A sermon given by one of the early Puritans that defined love as a ligament, what bound the parts together, toe to foot, rich to poor, high and eminent to mean and in submission. Not some painful, ungraspable mystery. A bond, that’s all. Elmer’s Glue. She’d been lecturing the class, maybe a little smugly, you silly kids with your crushes and your bubble gum lyrics, it’s not what you think, you’re already bound up in it, there’s no escape. Then Milo had raised his hand.

  “Yeah, but if it’s just a bond, why does he say, For to love and live beloved is the soul’s paradise?”

  The class had stretched out in front of her, the students at their desks, Milo with his stringy hair, white light coming in through the bar of windows.

  A film of water pooled on her eyes, more and more of it. She could barely see. She pulled over, gasping, tears cascading. Philip. Why had she been so hard on him? She clutched her knees, her shins pressed firmly against the steering wheel. She was shaking so hard that the Buick trembled with her.

  “Mom?”

  She gasped for air.

  “Mom?”

  Max’s hand hooked over the seat and rested on her shoulder. Its warmth brought on a fresh attack of tears.

  When her eyes finally cleared, she saw the building across the street. This was what she’d been searching for. Sooty bricks. Lopsided stoop. A banged-up metal door with a porthole window. It was the apartment she’d lived in as a little girl, where the el used to go by, although there was no el anymore. They’d dismantled the tracks. Outside what would have been her parents’ bedroom window, someone had hung a threadbare beach towel on the fire escape to dry.

  “Sweetheart,” she said, wiping the snot from her nose. “Look up here, in front of us, this is where I grew up.”

  He glanced at the building. “I like our place better.”

  She nodded, too hollow and exhausted to speak.

  “Mom,” he said, shaking her shoulder, “right down the block there’s a donut shop.”

  There had been a donut shop. She used to go there Sunday mornings when they weren’t on tour, bring back a dozen in a waxpaper-lined box. She twisted around in her seat. It didn’t look much different, the windows decorated with a checkerboard band, the neon shaky. The u had gone out completely, making the sign read Don t instead of Donut. “We could see if they’re open,” she said, cutting the engine. A crumpled sheet of coupons skittered at her and clung to her calf. Max ran ahead, open-jacketed, down the sparkling sidewalk.

  A bell tinkled wanly when she opened the door. Max was pressed to the counter, eyeing the trays, while the woman who worked there talked to him. “You must be his mother,” she said, nodding at Sarah. “I was just telling him, lucky for you all I opened early. Used to be I opened even earlier. People would come around before work. Six, six thirty. Five thirty sometimes. They knew how to work back then … Now they roll in, nine, ten, slump over, leave their
napkins on the floor. The neighborhood’s on the skids. But I’m glad to see some folks still got it together.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Sarah.

  “How many can we get?” asked Max.

  Sarah joined him at the counter. The donuts seemed to go on forever. “I don’t know, sweetie, what about six? We can have a couple here, and take the rest on the road. The woman unfolded a box and looked at her expectantly. “Two plain cakes,” Sarah said, “and some coffee. He can choose the rest.”

  Max paced along the counter, considering his decision. The woman poured Sarah’s coffee. “Milk?” she said. Sarah nodded. The woman leaned to open the refrigerator, then stood up, rubbing her back. “Tell you the truth, that’s why I opened early. This damn back. Couldn’t get any sleep. Took some Tylenol and this bark that my neighbor told me about, you soak it in milk. But it didn’t work, neither of them. So I said to myself, Listen, H.T.—” She looked at Max. “H.T. You know who that stands for?” Max peered up from a tray of chocolate-glazed and the woman repeated her question. “Harriet Tubman,” she said. “Do you know who that was?”

  “Yes,” said Max. “She worked on the Underground Railroad.”

  “Good.” The woman handed him a Boston cream. “This one’s on the house.” She turned back to Sarah. “Anyways, I said to myself, Listen, H.T., you might as well get out of bed. Better to stand up and mind your business than lie on your back moaning.”

  Sarah nodded. Max scooped a glob of yellow cream onto his finger and held it out to her. “Do you want a taste? Hey! What happened to your forehead?”

  Sarah tapped the bruise gently. It was swollen and tender. “It’s all right. I was just raking.” She licked the cream off Max’s finger. “Thanks, sweetie. It’s delicious.” If she had told Philip about Max, Max might have grown up on the road as she did—but sleeping in refugee camps instead of roadside motels. Why hadn’t she told him? She couldn’t remember anymore. Out of spite? Had she been that mad? The secondhand on the wall clock turned around. It seemed to be moving in slow motion. It was an ancient clock with an aquamarine border and a sticker supporting an old Caesar Chavez grape boycott. Philip, if he were going through with it, would be on a train pulling into Grand Central at this very moment.

  “Ma’am? You don’t look so good. You want to sit down?” The woman came around the counter and guided her to a chair. “Here, now, you have this coffee. Maybe you got up too early. Maybe we should all sleep more.”

  “Thank you,” Sarah mumbled, and lowered her face to the coffee steam. She groaned. Right before leaving, she had stuffed the Gilgamesh papers in the dishwasher. What was she doing? Home is the place that you run away from. Her father had said that when she’d asked him the name of his shtetl. But he had said it with unspeakable sadness. It was not a directive; it was his greatest regret.

  She reared up. The box of donuts waited on the counter. It was too small. She ordered six more, three white-frosted, three chocolate-frosted.

  “You take care of yourself,” the woman said, handing her the boxes.

  “Thank you. You’ve been very kind.” Sarah took another look at the clock. Outside the wind had stopped and the sky was clear. Max gazed at a string of sneakers dangling from a telephone pole. “Come on, sweetie. We’ve got to get going.”

  “Why are we in such a rush?”

  “I’ve made a terrible mistake,” she said.

  She fastened his seat belt, then double-checked it. She was still in no condition to drive, but it couldn’t be helped. The train would get in at 10:23. She didn’t realize until they’d left the neighborhood that she hadn’t even taken a final glimpse at her old building. Well, she could always go back. But she didn’t think she would. She drove over the bridge, blocking everything out but the grim lines of the road, the distance between her and the other cars. An accident had stopped incoming traffic, but the outbound side moved swiftly. They passed Pelham Park and Co-op City, the reedy wetlands, the drawbridge. She didn’t take 95 this time. She took the Hutch to the Merritt. The Merritt exited nearer to the train station. It was jammed up around Greenwich. She gave Max another donut and crossed her fingers. It was ten o’clock, on the dot. If they didn’t make it to the station, he’d probably take a cab to her house, be greeted by the Batman welcome mat, not know if he was in the right place. She gunned the engine.

  “I guess I could be a caterpillar,” Max said, wiping a crumb from his mouth. “Did you know that Salima Carpenter has a butterfly collection?”

  “No,” Sarah said, eyeing a cop on the other side of the parkway. She couldn’t slow down. 10:06. They rose over the crest of a hill, and in spite of her concentration and hurry, she was struck by the beauty of the trees, the sunlight hitting the leaves, the vitality of the colors, so flagrant they were almost obscene. How do you paint that? For the first time in years, not just her mind but her fingers tingled with an old-fashioned urge.

  “You can make me antennae,” Max said.

  “What?”

  “For my Halloween costume.”

  She knew she’d won a point, but she couldn’t remember what the point was. “Great,” she said nervously.

  10:10.

  “Max, we’re not going to Maine, not today.”

  “But what about the horseshoe crabs?”

  “What?”

  “You said that we would pick up horseshoe crabs on the beach.”

  “We will. Only not right now.”

  Max sighed. The water tower, which was only a mile or so from the station, rose up beyond the trees. Sarah held her forearm to her nose, hoping the smell of alcohol wasn’t seeping out of her pores.

  “Does this mean I have to go to school?”

  “I don’t know what it means.” She exited the parkway and accelerated up the last hill. The whistle blew and the long gray snake of the train pulled out of the station. She zoomed down to the parking lot and curved around to the side of the platform. He was there, on the platform. He was there. He was there.

  She stopped the car. His hair was bright white, his body slim. He held his hand against the sun and scanned the parking lot.

  “Holy fuck.”

  “Mom! What are we doing?”

  She didn’t have lipstick. She didn’t have powder. Her bruise was purple in the rearview mirror. “Your father’s here.” She tried to make her voice gentle. “I’m sorry I didn’t warn you earlier. I wasn’t sure he’d really come.” Half a dozen passengers moved toward the steps, Philip trailing them. Sarah got out of the car. “Come on, Max.” Max looked pale, frozen. She undid his safety belt for him. “Come on. Don’t you want to say hi?” She pulled at his arm. He shook her off and stepped onto the pavement himself.

  Philip saw them. His hand shot up, an assertive signal that made her stand straighter. He came toward them, his eyes on Max. She could tell from his expression that Max was not a surprise. She had been right. He had not come back for her or anything she might have said in that hole. Damn. She held Max in front of her, her fingers clamped into his skinny shoulders. Philip stopped at a respectful distance. His eyes moved up to Sarah, those same eyes, grave and steady. She looked back, aware of the cold air on her cheek, the quiver in Max’s shoulder.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi, Sarah.” It felt strange not touching him, but Max was in the way, and even if he hadn’t been, she might not have had the courage.

  “You must be Max.”

  “Say hi, sweetie.” She nudged him toward Philip. Max stumbled and she felt badly, but he caught his footing. Philip nodded, just like Conningsby would have, a perfect Western nod, barely noticeable but there. Max nodded back, mimicking him.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Philip said, holding out his hand. Max shook it.

  “You were in Africa?” asked Max.

  “Yes,” said Philip.

  “Did you see any gorillas?”

  “No. Just people.”

  A gust of wind shook the trees. Bright colors flew through the sky and
leaves skittered along the pavement. An orange maple leaf with splotches of red and yellow landed at her feet. She picked it up, twisting the stem between her fingers.

  “Here,” she said, offering it to Philip.

  He took it from her, their fingers finally touching. “Nice,” he said. He showed it to Max, who made a show of scientifically examining it. “Thanks for picking me up.”

  “No problem,” said Sarah.

  “So …” said Philip. “Pancakes?”

  “No!” Max shouted with a spasm of excitement, and ran to the Buick. “We brought donuts!”

  They ate them there, leaning on the hood of the car, the trees arching above them. The engine was hot from the drive, and it felt good, the warm metal against the cool air surrounding them. The last of the other cars drove away and the pavement stretched out with its clean white lines.

  Max brushed the crumbs from his face and ran out to claim all that space. “Look!” he cried. “Look at me!”

  “We are!” said Sarah.

  He began his kata. His first punches were wobbly and Sarah realized with a pang how nervous he was. As if he were auditioning. Philip watched him with a quiet attentiveness. Max recovered, his next punch confident and level.

  “Don’t applaud,” said Sarah. “He hates that.”

  “He’s beautiful,” Philip said. Sarah nodded warily, but Philip seemed pleased. He gestured to her bruise. “You okay?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  He shook his head, and there was his old crooked grin. She felt herself responding, a smile overtaking her face, a warmth inside.

  He leaned toward her, gently. “What were you thinking?” he whispered.