Authors: Chase Novak
Alex walks the streets of New York looking for any sign of his children. His eyes sweep the crowded sidewalks left to right. He sees everything and everyone. His jacket is unbuttoned. He takes deep sweet breaths and when he exhales, long plumes of exhaust stream from his nostrils.
He thinks of Xavier, whom he has already tasted, marinating in his own juice in the holding pen. The thought sends a shiver of delight through Alex, a ruffle of pleasure in the pit of his stomach. It reminds him of how he felt as a young, young man when he thought about having sex, and just the dream of it could send a fandango of sweet pleasure all the way through him, as true as a tuning fork; just the thought of it, the fantasy, the possibility… He stops. A memory! When was the last time he had a real memory? When had his mind sifted through the debris of the past and found something to seize upon? Memories are what make us human… and he is having one.
But as quickly and unexpectedly as memory comes, it departs, leaving him blank, confused. He finds himself standing on the corner of Fifty-Seventh and Fifth, with the businesspeople and the shoppers and the blind pencil seller with his delicious-looking dog.
Where am I?
he thinks. He wipes his nose with his sleeve. Looks around.
Oh, yes.
It comes back. He must find his offspring.
Seeing her sister after all these years has jolted Leslie back to a state of near humanity, and she sits with her now in the kitchen, weeping openly, so overcome with sorrow, and worry, and a swirl of other, unnameable emotions that it is nearly impossible to speak.
Cynthia watches her sister weep into her own hands. She surveys the kitchen with ever-increasing revulsion and alarm. The sink is full of dirty dishes—no: filthy dishes. Dishes that might be impossible to scrape and get clean and would be better thrown away. The floor is not so much dirty as oily, greasy. It is a trial even to walk from one part of the kitchen to another. How do these people live like this? It’s no wonder the children have disappeared—they are hoping to escape the gross microbial infestation of this place! It’s a wonder they weren’t removed! The dopey calendar on the wall is a year out of date. The only nod toward an existence beyond sheer animal survival is a vase full of cut flowers, but even here the gesture has turned rancid: the flowers are dead and blackened, and the water in the vase is dark green and has a putrid smell.
How can Leslie—who as a girl refused to drink soda from a pop-top can because the tab went down into the can, possibly bringing with it an avalanche of germs—how can she live this way? How?
“I’ve tried so hard to be a good mother,” Leslie says.
“I know, I know,” Cynthia says, though the only knowledge she has of the quality of Leslie’s maternal efforts is the state of this house, which suggests the profoundest sort of neglect.
Leslie uncovers her face, slaps her hands once, rather briskly, against her cheeks. “You know, I never really wanted children.”
“I know. I didn’t either. We’re not the breeding kind, it seems.”
“But you stuck to your guns,” Leslie says.
“I didn’t have an Alex pressuring me.”
“We can’t blame Alex. People are when they are.”
Cynthia furrows her brow.
People are when they are?
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“I mean
where,
” Leslie says. “No.
Who.
” She lowers her eyes. “I’m very tired.”
“What are the police saying?” Cynthia asks.
Leslie’s eyes widen, and she looks as if she is going to say something but stops herself. “Nothing,” she finally manages. She tries to look directly at her sister, but it is more than she can do. Her eyes, instead, take in the disorder of the room. “Sorry the place is such a mess,” she murmurs.
“Do you mind telling me what’s going on?” Cynthia says. “Where is all your stuff, for God’s sake?”
“Oh, Alex sold it. Most of it. Some of it… you know, just sort of wore out.”
“And do you mind telling me why Alex is suddenly selling antiques that have been in his family for generations?”
“Because we need money. Things aren’t going so well at work. For either of us, really. The economy and all. And this place… it’s expensive keeping it up.”
“Yes, I can imagine. You have a whole house in the middle of Manhattan. Why don’t you move to something smaller? An apartment.”
“Privacy, I guess. You can’t put a price on privacy.”
Suddenly, as if to prove her point, howls rise up through the floorboards, muffled, distant, but unmistakable.
“Leslie!” Cynthia says. “What the fuck?”
“What?” Leslie says, as if she cannot imagine what the matter might be.
“What do you have down there?”
“Oh, that… Yeah. Our dog. Some of the soundproofing came down. It’s so difficult getting people to do anything, and Alex and I have to do everything ourselves.”
“Why do you need soundproofing for a dog?”
“Well, yeah, dogs. More than one.”
“How many?”
“Two?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“Three,” Leslie says. She shifts in her chair. She swallows.
“What is going on here, Leslie? I am exhausted. I’ve come clear across the country. And I did it for you. I did it because you are my sister and I love you. I love you in spite of…” She gestures toward Leslie’s face, her body, to indicate the damage done. “But now I want some real answers.”
“Don’t pressure me, Cyn.”
“What am I hearing down there? That’s not two dogs, or three…”
“I feel cornered, Cyn.” A note of hysteria has entered Leslie’s voice. She flexes her hands, stretching her fingers to their full length, relaxing them, stretching them again.
“I’m asking you what’s going on.”
“You’re asking and asking and asking!” Leslie screams. She leaps up from her chair, and her eyes dart this way and that, as if she fears something is about to come after her, or perhaps she is looking for a way to escape.
“Leslie! Sit down. You’re acting—”
“Don’t tell me what to do! My children are missing.” Leslie picks up the vase filled with dead reeking flowers and throws it against the wall, smashing it to pieces. Her face is contorted, her eyes two red wounds. She lunges for the sink and begins to empty it, smashing cups glasses plate and platters. “My babies! My babies! I have to have my babies!”
Cynthia cringes in her chair and her heart begins to race. She covers her ears against the nerve-racking sounds of all that shattering glass combined with the wails of her distraught sister. And—what’s this? Howls from the cellar. Louder than before. Louder than ever, as if the beasts caged below are rising on a ladder made of their own yowling agony and will be in this very room in no time.
Suddenly, Leslie is still. Drool pours from her mouth. Her eyes are cast down, and she breathes heavily, trying to calm herself. Gradually, inch by inch, she lifts her eyes and turns to Cynthia. She is breathing through her mouth.
“Something’s happening,” she says.
“Leslie,” Cynthia says.
“Something’s happening.”
“Shhh… shhh… sit down.”
“I’m changing,” Leslie says. “Oh dear God, please help me.” She sits down and covers her face with trembling hands.
“Leslie!” Cynthia cries. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
But as suddenly as Leslie ceded control of herself to the hunger and the rage within, she regains her composure.
“I need you to do me a favor, Cynthia. And I know—believe me, I know—you do not owe me anything. I have been a horrible sister. I have been a monster.”
Cynthia’s eyes fill with tears. Despite everything, it’s unbearable to hear her sister talk like this.
“What do you want me to do, Leslie?”
Leslie wipes the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. Slowly, she rises from her chair and makes her way across the kitchen. She pulls one of the cupboard drawers out—but with so much vigor that the entire thing jumps out of its track and she is left holding it as various carving tools clatter onto the floor, making their terrible racket. Leslie reaches for the largest of the several knives and carries it back to the table.
It is deeply frightening to Cynthia to have her sister approaching her with a weapon, and she is only marginally less frightened when Leslie slaps the knife down onto the table.
“Pick it up,” Leslie says, sitting down.
“All right,” Cynthia says, grabbing the knife. She feels safer with the knife in her hands. The blade is two feet long, eight inches wide. It looks as if it was made to carve an elephant.
“Now what?” Cynthia asks.
“Use it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean use it. On me. Get me out of this. Please.”
“Leslie. You’re not in your right mind.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? I lock my children in their rooms at night. And you want to know why? Because I’m terrified of what I will do if I see them.”
“What do you think you’ll do?”
“Devour them. Rip the flesh from their bones.” Leslie lifts her chin, pulls her shoulders back; there is a note of defiance in her voice. “And now they know it too. Kids, they know everything. You really should have had children, Cyn. It’s an amazing experience. There’s nothing like it.”
“This is crazy talk, Leslie. I’m going to get you some help.”
“There is no help for me, Cynthia. I can’t even kill myself. I need you to do it. I’m begging you. Please.”
“Leslie…”
“Just do it. You’ve got the knife. Now use it. Use it! Use it, you fucking stupid cow.”
By now, Leslie has risen from her chair. She seems almost to be levitating, riding the current of her own fury. Her eyes show no white whatsoever. The veins, stiff and straight as chopsticks, bulge from her neck, and her face is crimson. Afraid for her life, Cynthia clutches the knife tighter and holds the point toward her sister to stop her from getting any closer while Leslie lets loose with an unending and almost indecipherable torrent of obscene insults, calling into question everything about Cynthia—her looks, her fertility, her truthfulness, her smell.
But after emptying this sewer of invective and seeing that no matter what she says she cannot incite Cynthia to use that knife, Leslie sinks back into her chair, closes her eyes. In the sudden silence, both women hear the distant muffled howls from the cellar below.
“Come on,” Leslie says, “follow me. I’ll show you how bad it’s gotten.”
Davis Fleming paces his office, silently mouthing the words of the address he will give next week at the Berryman alumni dinner, which, in what strikes him as a kind of kick-up-your-heels, devil-may-care snubbing of Berryman tradition, will be held
downtown
at a newly opened Italian restaurant called Trattoria Gigi. Normally, this dinner is held at a venerable Upper East Side venue called Wittenborg’s, but even the most dyed-in-the-wool Berryman traditionalists have begun to notice and discreetly complain that Wittenborg’s food has become somewhat tired, and some would say inedible. This downtown Italian restaurant has garnered enthusiastic reviews and it serves the kind of trendy delicacies the younger alumni seem to crave. The tuna carpaccio has garnered a great deal of praise, and one food writer has remarked that no one in town can foam a Jerusalem artichoke quite like the chef at Trattoria Gigi. Fleming could not care less. His only concern is making up some of the school’s battered endowment, which is still depleted in the aftermath of hideous stock-market fluctuations. So if the younger alumni crave Jerusalem artichoke foam, then Jerusalem artichoke foam it shall be. These fresh young zillionaires have weird tastes—in parenting, in clothing, and in food. And my God, do they fret over food. It is so odd to Fleming how much emphasis some people put on what they eat.… He himself goes for the basics, just like his father and his father before him. Give him a piece of meat, a half a potato, a green salad, and a glass of ice water, and he will be fine. Maybe a scoop of strawberry ice cream, a cup of coffee—and never mind if it has been organically shade grown!
Thinking of ice cream and coffee somehow eases Davis into a kind of reverie, and he stands now in his office, holding a triple-spaced copy of his remarks, gazing out his window, seeing without actually
seeing
the familiar view of the wrought-iron fence surrounding the school and the sidewalk and pedestrians and street and cars beyond. Then something
does
jolt him out of his dreamy, slightly sleepy state: he sees Michael Medoff walking slowly toward the school, his face stern and unshaved, his gloved hand holding a coffee in a to-go cup.
“Oh no,” Fleming says. How can this be happening? He thought he and this idiot had an agreement.
He drops his prepared remarks onto his desk and charges out of his office, putting his coat on in the quiet corridor as he races for the front entrance.
“Mr. Medoff!” he calls as soon as he is outside. Fleming’s voice is rich with bonhomie, but his smile has all the warmth of a hacksaw. Medoff is lurking near the entrance, though he shows no sign of intending to actually enter the building, which somehow makes his presence near the school even worse, and more irritating.
“What are you doing here, buddy?” Fleming says, slowing his pace as he approaches the young teacher.
“Doing?” Michael says. He looks around, as if just now realizing where he is. His hair is tousled; the whites of his eyes show little lightning bolts of red. “I’m… just walking.”
Fleming glances up at the dank gray sky that looms above them like a chilly platter of raw fish. “Really? Out for a walk?”
Michael nods.
“I thought we had an understanding,” Fleming says. He gives Michael’s shoulder a couple of vigorous pats. “I thought you understood what’s at stake here.”
“I have done nothing wrong, Davis, and you know it. The Twisdens are making me the issue when the issue is clearly them. Have you called CPS yet?”
“The point is, Mike—”
“Don’t call me Mike. Okay?”
“The point is that in a school atmosphere—especially an elite institution—where there is smoke there is fire.”
“Did you just come up with that?”
“You know what I’m talking about. The Twisdens are going to make this about you.”