The First Day Page 14

  We should have a coffee, Philip is saying. I hear now. A coffee, Sam, eh?

  I am shaking my head.

  A coffee, Sam. Jesus. Thirty-five years. Thirty-five, Sam.

  I have to go, I said, eventually. I have to go.

  Of course, of course, Philip said, still smiling. It’s great to see you. Sure I’ll come back tomorrow. We can have coffee when you finish. Like, five? Five-thirty?

  I moved off quickly. I felt his eyes on my back, his stare following me. I shivered, and wondered if he spotted it, the movement. The revulsion. On an impulse I walked on, past the exit door, out through another gallery, giving away, I felt, as little information as I could about where I was going. I was pleased with myself, at my calculation; surprised at my presence of mind. I found another of the staff exits in the north wing and looked around. He had not followed. I pushed through the doorway and took the stairs, already finding the measure of myself. It had happened and yet I was still there. Nothing had ended. As I walked I began to experience almost a joy, a thrill of accomplishment, as though I had willed and implemented a plan successfully. I looked at my watch and realised I had left the galleries five minutes early. I gambled I could get away with it, and stepped into a storeroom in case anyone passed. I waited: two minutes, three, in the musty stillness of the darkened space. A few statues sat awkwardly at varying heights, swaddled tightly in bubble wrap and cardboard. I thought of my family, what passed for my family: Anna, Orr, the boys. I remembered one of the early trips we took together, to an old country house somewhere. We had walked through rooms not dissimilar to this one, and I had pointed to the strange, austere busts that policed the long halls and likened them, laughing, to my brothers.

  I walked back out into the corridor a few minutes later and made my way to the common room. The mood at the end of the day was as it always was, a kind of subdued gratefulness, another day down. I scanned the faces for signs but everything was normal. Balthasar approached, but only grabbed me on the shoulder and said, Who’d have thought you could still slum it so well?

  On the way to the Met the next day I walked slowly through Central Park. Even New York was sleepy on a Sunday morning, subdued and lethargic. People moved more slowly, and there were fewer of them. I walked with purpose, or so I told myself. Fear abandoned. I had one more day on the floor. I had considered making Balthasar come up with another plan, getting someone else to work the shift—it wasn’t like it was my job. But I couldn’t just go and hide in the office. I am no longer a child, my inner voice pleaded, and I will not be afraid of Philip Orr, nor of anyone. He has left his mark—the phrase has always been alive to me—but the past is the past. God, my unconvincing monologue; like one of those yoga exponents continually telling others, repeatedly and manically, how meditation is the answer to everything as their own lives continue to unravel, like everyone else’s, around them.

  The Rubenses bloomed. The flesh practically fell off them. I had been right: threat, danger enlivened the experience of the paintings, made them visceral in a way the austere silence disguised. Maybe, in a week or two, I thought, I really will approach the management, propose it. Take the paintings into the city instead of getting the city to come in. Cézanne on the subway, Holbein in a pizza joint. Van Dongen in a strip show. I was pleased—proud, even—that I had not lost my love for such a useless art form. Painting died before you were born, one of the newer, younger assistants at the Met had said to me in the beginning, I having uncharacteristically let slip my fascination. Have you been in the Rembrandt room recently? I asked him.

  Still, I wondered, sometimes. Was I just holding on to the tiny sliver of the past I still had—my mother, weekends in the Antrim hills at seven, eight years old? How many of the opinions I held were my own? Did I love the early Matisse, like I said, or did I love that Curran loved the early Matisse, and had made Anna love the early Matisse, and so me too, inevitably, begat begat begat, myself?

  I moved tentatively the entire day, from gallery to gallery, expecting Philip at every turn. But Philip did not appear. When the end of the day arrived I walked through the top-floor galleries, detouring through to the Impressionists, finding Marcela, as always, in front of Cézanne. We acknowledged each other without speaking, standing in front of Mont Sainte-Victoire. In silence the painting did its work, colour becoming form becoming satisfaction. She slipped her arm into mine.

  We moved off, into the adjoining gallery, towards the stairs. Suddenly, raised voices. We turned and there he was, Philip, arguing with another guard.

  There, Philip said, pointing to me.

  I pulled my arm from Marcela’s.

  What is it? she said. Who’s that?

  I shook my head. Give me a minute.

  I’ll wait for you downstairs, she said, as I walked across the gallery.

  It’s alright, Hector, I said. Hector shook his head, clearly pissed off. He followed Marcela to the stairs, muttering to himself.

  Sam, Philip said. I got here late, sorry. They were trying to kick me out.

  The museum is closed, I said. It’s their job.

  I know, I know, he nodded. Anyway. Let’s get a drink.

  I heard the door close behind Hector. We were alone. At the far end of the galleries a woman was tidying the gift area. Two hundred and fifty feet, I guessed.

  I can’t, I said.

  I thought we’d made a plan, Philip said, his voice catching, reining something in.

  The paintings stared at us; the air thick.

  Tomorrow, then, he said.

  Tomorrow I’m off.

  Perfect.

  No.

  He shook his head. No? he said. He looked around, at the paintings, the heavy red walls.

  I have to go, I said. The museum is closed.

  He stared at me. I felt it again, and tried to refuse it. Fear. Jesus, shame.

  You have nothing to fear from me, he said, but I was already walking away. Sam, he called.

  I turned, held myself, blood hurtling towards the edges of me. No, I said. No.

  Alright, he said.

  I watched him walk slowly away. At the entrance to the gallery he turned. I’ll see you again, he said, his raised finger addressing me.

  I stood on my own for a few minutes longer, listened to his footsteps descend the marble stairs. The water pitcher shimmered.

  In the staff room Marcela was waiting for me. What was that?

  It doesn’t matter.

  You have love problems?

  I smiled. Not the way you’re thinking. I threw on my jacket.

  You look troubled, she said.

  Involuntarily, I lifted my hand to my face, my scar. I noticed Marcela noticing. I had always loved that she seemed one of the few people who’d got past it quickly, who seemed able to see me and not it. I was not unaware, even as I did it, that I was forcing her to look.

  I’m alright, I said, picking up my bag. But thank you.

  We strode out together, into the brisk late-summer breeze. A chill was already in the air, a foretaste. We bought slices of pizza on the corner of 78th and Madison, and ate as we walked south. I felt myself relax. We turned left at the Breuer, and walked past a crowd of elderly Japanese tourists chattering excitedly in front of the Ashton. As we weaved our way through them one old woman took a step backward, almost tumbling into me. I caught her, smiling, and a ripple of laughter spread through the group, a few cheers. The woman apologised, bowing her head to me in acknowledgement. I bowed back, smiling too, and as I lifted my head, about to move on, I noticed, fifty yards behind, Philip. He was following us.

  I took Marcela by the arm and pulled her towards me.

  What are you doing?

  Trust me, please, I said. We moved swiftly across the road, just before a slew of cars rushed by after us, and she turned with me to see Philip stuck on the other side of the street, waiting for a gap. We quickly rounded the corner on to Park and I dragged us into a run, thirty feet, before ducking into a bar. I moved to the darkened front
window, found a spot from which I could look out. Marcela stared at me. I motioned for her to sit down. The barman glared at us.

  I raised a finger in the air: one minute. I pressed myself against the wall, watched the street. Ten seconds passed, twenty. I saw him then, moving fast, passing the bar and moving south down Park. I watched him look around, this way and that, and keep moving, almost running now. I stayed put, another ten seconds, and then stepped out from the wall.

  Sorry, I said to the barman.

  He smiled. Nothing worse than bumping into your wife, he said.

  I told Marcela everything. From the beginning. Aside from Oki I had told no one. A scar at the hands of my brother tainted me beyond the physical mark itself; in the telling I was sure that some doubt would surely linger for the listener, a hint that, in some sense, I must have deserved it. It was a foolish idea, I knew, but persistent. Marcela sat silently. I told it all: my parents’ affair, Orr’s wife’s death, the toing and froing of my early years, Orr bringing Anna and me close and then pushing us away. Philip’s presence, the few memories blurred, uncertain, and then the one that became them all, a simple slash, more surprise than pain. I did not even know what was happening at first. I told her about moving to America, about the love and emptiness that followed, that went on following, that I could not seem to compensate for. Even as I spoke, for those few blunt moments in that shitty bar, I feared sounding indulgent; but the relief, in the speaking, spread through my whole body. I told her about bringing my father to America a decade before, about living with him then, blind and alert, still steeped in his God. And I told her about Philip turning up at the Met, on Friday, out of nowhere. Standing before Vermeer, looking at it like a script, like it mattered. Like an instruction. Like a crime.

  So you haven’t seen him since you were three years old? she asked, after I seemed to have finished.

  Hadn’t. Yes. Thirty-five years.

  Why is he here now?

  I don’t know.

  Perhaps he’s come to apologise, she said.

  Is that the sense you got?

  I hardly saw him, Marcela said.

  But is that the sense you got?

  She said nothing.

  We finished our drinks and left, both tenser now, but strangely composed. Ready. The city was loaded, the buzz that always pulsed now tuned sharper. The sun was setting; the tall apartment blocks caught the low light and threw it on to the streets below with seeming violence. We surveyed the sidewalks, but it was impossible to take account of everything, everyone. We walked to the subway in silence, her arm in mine. She offered to go home with me, but I declined her kindness.

  As I arrived at my apartment my father was leaving. We passed one another on the stairs.

  I’m away to pray, he said. Any requests?

  Still no joy with the last ones.

  They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, he said; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

  Yeah. I know.

  What is it, son? Orr asked me. You seem bothered.

  My father’s blindness had opened up, he felt, as much as it closed down. He found that the alertness, the sensitivity he was forced to develop—to simple sounds, changes in atmosphere, unexpected pauses in conversation—gave him something he had not had before. It was a harsh exchange, but it was out of his hands, and he had learned to take pleasure in the deliberate exercising of these new abilities, or dispositions, as he thought of them. I was a blur to him, he joked; but the subtle shifts in my mood, the times when I was sad, or frustrated, were not so easily hidden. It was not lost on me that there was an appeal in being seen and not seen at the same time.

  I held my silence, left him to it. I moved around the empty apartment, a dull threat lurking in every thought, every movement. The basic actions of life seem both enlarged and redundant. The monologue ratcheted up, deafening: What am I going to do, walk the streets in endless fear, hesitating on every corner? Who can live like that? And anyway, surely I am exaggerating everything, creating a monster where there is only a man.

  When Orr returned I was already in bed. I lay there, listened to him shuffling around the living room, making himself tea, putting some music on, the volume carefully low. If he knocks on my door I tell him now. In ten minutes I am asleep.

  I took two days off. Fuck the raised eyebrows. I did not tell my father, leaving early in the morning as usual but spending the day in cafés in the Village. I say cafés. I had spent my fair share of the last decade in Makeen’s, and The Gattuso; had caught the eyes of enough men passing by to satisfy a lifetime. I say eyes. Not for a few years though. One heartbreak may be regarded as misfortune, etc. Another story, I suppose.

  I also called Anna, talked around the topic enough to stir her frustration.

  Sam, she said. Do you want to talk about Philip?

  I’ve just been thinking about him recently, I said.

  Any particular reason?

  I wonder where he is, what he’s doing.

  I get it, Sam. I understand. But he is long gone. We would have heard something of him, by now, one of us. You know?

  I expect you’re right, I said, satisfied that she knew nothing I didn’t.

  I returned to the Met, and to the safety of my desk. The remove was a relief, but the awareness that I did not know what was happening below, that the floors now contained for me some menace, was almost worse. I could barely read the words on my screen. Every couple of minutes I walked to the window of the office and watched people mill placidly on the steps below. Two or three times I spotted him, and then realised it wasn’t him, and I returned to my desk, dragging, like a dead deer over a hill, my concentration back to the present.

  Day by day I wait, I expect. Day by day he does not appear. Or rather, I don’t know if he appears. I realise I am trapped; unable to move in any direction, self-enclosed.

  I began, at lunchtimes, to venture out, on to the floors. I walked from gallery to gallery, anticipating, steeling myself. In the African sections downstairs I expect him to show up at any moment, to step out from behind a bust or tomb; the masks from Burkina Faso and Benin and Cameroon, as I pass them, assume his spirit. But he does not appear. Marcela checks in on me every evening, and we begin even to enjoy the subtleties of our unspoken communication, a series of nods and glances that make us feel we are accomplices. After only a few days it seems unreal, as though perhaps I really did imagine it. I play and replay the two encounters, but they shift in and out of focus, phrases assuming lives of their own. I cannot think what they actually mean.

  Greenwich sucked me in again. Make of that what you will. I had left it behind, I thought, retreated to an online date or two every few months; a meal, a movie, laughter out of time. The serene benefaction of desire contained. So on, so forth. But those few visits reminded me (like I had really forgotten) of breath on my neck, skin on my skin. The danger of Philip, or whatever it was, reawakened other appetites, other vulnerabilities, and the complications of enjoyment they entailed. I believed in love as much as the next man, depending on who the next man was.

  I never stayed out all night, but late enough for my father to notice. I was there less, but I saw him more. I mean: I paid attention. The evenings I was home I sat and watched him, knowing he couldn’t see me, wondering whether he thought of his son at all, his eldest. Still I said nothing. On the following Friday, after an encounter without an outcome, I arrived home just after midnight to find him awake, sitting at the table by the window, practising braille. This was a new thing for him; having resisted for so long, it was as though he had decided that he was going to live long enough after all, and so had begun, slowly but concretely, to learn the language.

  You’re still up? I said, going straight to the fridge.

  These words are not going to learn themselves.

  Do you want a beer?

  It was a new thing, this drinking together. Orr had drunk rarely in Irel
and. He was not teetotal exactly, but had a precise awareness of a capacity within himself—learned through watching his own father—for relentlessness. With alcohol he had always exercised caution, largely from seeing the damage—relentless damage—it had caused in numerous families he visited. Now, however, here—in his new home, his responsibilities shaken off—he allowed himself a little more freedom. He had only a beer at a time, two at the most, and—so far as I know—only with me, in the apartment.

  I handed him the bottle and sat down opposite.

  You’re in a good mood tonight, he said.

  Get thee behind me, Satan.

  He smiled.

  Are you getting there? I asked.

  Dot by dot.

  We sat in silence, sipping our beers. I put on some music.

  Can I ask you something? he said. He didn’t wait for me to answer. Why do you never bring a lover back?

  I laughed. The alcohol, I was aware, had relaxed me. How do you know? I said.

  Do you think it would bother me?

  That’s nothing to do with it.

  It wouldn’t.

  I felt an anger, unspecific, rise in me. It’s nothing to do with you.

  He raised his hands.

  We sat another minute, saying nothing. The music floated around us, a piano piece by Schoenberg. Orr began to play his fingers on the table. I watched them, trying to locate the anger, hold it in place. It kept moving.

  What difference does it make to you? I said.

  He stopped moving his fingers. None at all, he said. I just don’t want you to think it would bother me. You can do what you want.

  Of course I can do what I want. It’s my fucking house. I necked the rest of my beer, walked to the fridge for another. You know nothing about me, I said to him. What do you know about your children? What was the point in even having them?