The Nobodies Album (9 page)

Excerpt from
CARPATHIA
By Octavia Frost
REVISED ENDING

But Cecily hadn’t asked about any of that. She had asked about the seagull, so this is what I told her:

The life belts we wore were white, and the morning after the great ship sank, the sea was dotted with bright, pale specks, like a flock of seabirds lighting on the waves. My father and Archie were almost certainly among them, though I didn’t know to look, because at that time we were still searching for their faces among the rescued souls aboard the
Carpathia
. I was left on my own for the better part of that day, my mother being wholly consumed with caring for the little ones and with making a home for the ballooning grief her life now contained.

I stood on the deck and looked out at what remained. I saw a barber pole floating in the water, and a deck chair, and a flight of wooden stairs. I saw the body of a woman clutching in her arms a small dog. And everywhere the mountains of ice like great meringues, making it seem as if we were floating in a very grim fairyland.

Seagulls: that was what the dead looked like to me that day. Seagulls balancing on the water, looking for food.

Cecily took my hand. We sat like that together for some time. When finally we stood to begin our walk back to the train station, she broke the silence.

“I’m still not sure I see it, Oscar,” she said. “Certainly the images seem to fit your own experience, but another person might see the same objects and think of something completely different. What kind of message do you think your brother is trying to send you? And why should I see the pictures, too?”

I didn’t have an answer for her then; perhaps I still don’t. But after that day, the pictures stopped appearing in my drawings—or I should say they stopped for a while. Because there was one more, nearly a year later. It appeared on a production cel I was working on for a Boots Byzantine short, the day before Cecily and I were to be married. I’d been sitting at my drafting table, drawing a spiral staircase in a castle tower, which was proving rather tricky. I got up to clear my mind, have a drink of water, and walk around the office, which I found was almost empty. Cecily wasn’t there, having been spirited away by some of the other girls for an impromptu bridal shower, and some of the men had gone to look at a new set of offices Langer was thinking of leasing. When I failed to find anyone to talk to, I returned to my desk, and there it was: the outline of a ship, written into the bricks on the wall. It was not the
Titanic
. I could see that at once. It was a long steamship with a single funnel. It was the
Carpathia
.

Seeing the image, I had none of the terror I’d felt upon confronting the bell and the oar and the seagull. I felt, rather, as if I’d been walking in an unfamiliar city and had chanced to meet an old friend. I understood at last that there was nothing sinister here, nothing hateful or destructive. If there was any meaning here at all, if it wasn’t just a grand trick of my imagination, it contained nothing but blessing.

It’s rare, I think, for a man’s life to be saved twice. But I’m happy to say it can happen. The next day, when I looked at Cecily walking down the aisle on her father’s arm, this is what I saw: Warmth after freezing. A ship growing nearer. Lights in the dark.

“I don’t talk about my family.”

Milo Frost, in an interview with
Esquire
, April 2007

Chapter Four

Joe and Chloe live in a big white block of a house planted on the vertiginous corner of one flat street and one lurching one. It’s a pretty building, more modern than Milo’s, if I can judge from the brief glimpse I got on the video, with unexpected angles and tall arching windows that I imagine must make the most of the city’s anemic sunshine.

I walk up a steep flight of steps and ring the bell. The woman who answers is tall and slender, with dark hair pulled into two tufty ponytails. They jut out of her head the way a little girl’s would, a toddler who doesn’t really have enough hair yet but whose mother can’t resist trying anyway.

“Octavia?” she says, smiling and studying my face. I imagine she’s looking for traces of Milo.

“Yes,” I say. “Are you Chloe?”

“Uh-huh. It’s so great to meet you, finally. Come on in.”

She’s about Milo and Joe’s age, or maybe a year or two older. She’s wearing brick-colored yoga pants and a black scoop-necked T-shirt. When she turns to lead me down the hall, I see that she has two small earring studs in the back of her neck. It takes me a minute to understand that they must be connected to each other by some sort of post that enters through one pierced hole and emerges from the other.

“Thanks for coming,” she says, looking back at me over her shoulder. We’re in a narrow hallway that opens into a bright kitchen. The walls and floor are white, and there are brightly colored accents: red table and chairs, an orange throw rug, yellow planters by the windows. It’s a big room, and one end of it has been turned into a sitting area, with a moss-colored couch and an overflowing toy box.

“You have a child,” I say. I’d read that, somewhere. A little girl, I think, from a previous relationship. How strange to meet someone and already know the facts of her life.

Chloe nods. “Lia,” she says. “She’s three. Can I get you some coffee or, let’s see, we have juice and water. Or a real drink, if you want. I’m sure this has been a terrible week.”

“Water would be nice,” I say. I sit down on the couch. “Thank you.”

Chloe brings me a heavy square glass; it feels expensive. These boys, I think, looking around me and remembering Milo’s lush funhouse: they’ve done well for themselves. I expect Chloe to sit down, too, but she doesn’t. She goes back into the hall and calls up the flight of stairs, “Jilly, could you and Lia come down for a minute?”

She receives some sort of answer and comes back to the kitchen. “Jilly’s our nanny,” she says. I nod and smile. Honestly, I don’t really want to meet her daughter. Children aren’t easy for me; being around them forces a plunge into the cold water of my own regrets. Little girls spinning in dresses like bells; little boys climbing onto any surface that will hold them. Speckled light penetrating the slats of my shuttered mind. All the things I ever did wrong. It’s unwelcome.

“I work from home mostly,” Chloe is saying. “I make jewelry, and I used to think I’d be able to do that and watch Lia at the same time, but it just doesn’t work.” She looks at me appraisingly. “It must have been the same for you, with writing.”

“Yes,” I say. Pleasant conversation feels creaky to me after all the time I’ve spent alone lately. “Well, sort of. I didn’t really start writing seriously until my kids … until Milo was a little older.”

Noises from the stairs as the little girl and her nanny come down. The nanny has an accent—Caribbean, maybe?—and I hear her say, “Hold hands now. Go slow.”

Lia and Jilly reach the bottom of the stairs, and Lia runs into the kitchen. “Mommy,” she yells, throwing her arms around Chloe’s knees. She has dark hair, like Chloe’s, but with some curl to it. She’s wearing a purple dress and a headband with cat ears. Chloe picks her up and sits with her in a yellow armchair. Jilly, a tall black woman, younger than I would have guessed from her voice, says hello, then walks to the other end of the room and opens a cupboard.

“Hi, sweetie,” Chloe says, kissing the child’s forehead. “I want you to meet someone. This is Octavia. She’s Uncle Milo’s mommy.”

Lia hides her face in her mother’s neck.

I give it a try. “Are you a kitty?” I ask. My voice sounds skeptical, though I don’t mean it to.

Lia nods. “I’m a baby kitty,” she says, her voice muffled. She pulls back and puts a hand on her mother’s face. “This is my mommy kitty.”

“I like kitties,” I say.

Lia turns her face to me shyly, pushing the side of her head into her mother’s chest. Big, searching eyes; an expression like she’s waiting for something. She juts out her top lip, then her lower one. She hasn’t yet decided if she’s going to smile.

Something happens to me. Somehow I’m still here, holding a glass of water, sitting on a sofa, but I feel like I’m falling, and suddenly I understand why I’ve been asked to come. That pursed mouth; those fathomless eyes. She looks like my own children when they were little. She looks like Milo.

I stare at her for what must be a very long time. I’m unable to speak. My eyes ache, as if my dry old body is unable to find enough liquid to make tears. Lia watches me back, and finally the corners of her mouth turn upward.

“Meow,” she says.

•  •  •

Later, after I’ve regained the power of speech and Chloe has put enough plates on the table for all of us, I sit and watch my grandchild eat. She uses her fingers, picking up cubes of cooked chicken, spirals of plain pasta, slices of pear. Chloe has found something more adult for us to have, leftover pumpkin risotto, but I love the simplicity of Lia’s meal. I love the care she takes in lifting each piece of food to her mouth, the way her steady ribbon of chatter gives way to silence while she focuses on the task at hand.

It’s not until the plates have been cleared and Jilly has carried Lia upstairs that I’m able to talk to Chloe and confirm that I’m not deluding myself. I sit again on the green couch, and Chloe sits across from me in the yellow armchair. She stares at me, and I stare at her.

“Her father?” I say finally.

She nods. “It’s Milo.” I look for something in her expression: Anger? Rejection? But her face is blank.

“Does he know?” I ask. A stupid question, I suppose. She wouldn’t tell me if she hadn’t told him. But to think of everything that’s been here all this time—this room, this child, this potential for joy—and to know he chose not to tell me … it’s very painful.

“He knows. And Joe knows.”

Yes. I suppose that would have been my next question.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch with you sooner,” she says. “Milo was really against it, and I figured I should respect his wishes, at least about his own family. So I promised him I wouldn’t track you down all the way across the country. But I said that if I ever found myself face-to-face with you, I wouldn’t lie.” She smiles. “So. Here we are.”

I smile weakly. I don’t mention that she called me and invited me to come. It’s not like we ran into each other at the supermarket. “So you and Milo … dated?” I know I’ve never seen a picture of them together, and I’ve been quite vigilant about following any gossip about Milo. How is it possible that none of this has ever been public?

“No, not really,” she says. “I was living in Italy, and one of my American friends there was a friend of Milo’s, so when Pareidolia came to Rome, a bunch of us went to the concert, and that’s how we met. It was just a brief thing. He was already with Bettina.”

I nod as if I’m absorbing all this, but I’m not really getting it. It’s too much information, and yet not enough. I mean, yes, I understand: they slept together, they conceived a child. That’s not the part I mean to dwell on. It’s the
story
I want, the narrative of how this child and this configuration of lives came to be: the scenes played out, the words spoken, the rooms walked through on the way to other rooms. There are so many gaps in my knowledge of Milo’s life, and they’re too big to be filled in with the skeletal details of who introduced whom.

And the fact about Bettina. I suppose I’d rather not have known it. It makes me unexpectedly angry at Milo, and my feelings about Milo are complicated enough right now.

“And when you found out you were pregnant …?” I ask.

“Yeah, I got in touch with Milo and told him. I let him know I was perfectly happy to just raise the kid on my own, but that he could be involved to whatever degree he wanted.”

“And what was his reaction?” Were “Don’t tell my mom” the first words out of his mouth, or did that come later?

“Um, kind of distant. He said he’d help support the baby and all that, but he didn’t really want to play a parental role in her life.”

I shake my head. My stomach is filled with stones. I keep waiting to hear something good about Milo, some bright strand to add to the tangled nest. But it’s not here.

Chloe’s watching me. “Yeah, I know. Way to step up to the plate, right?” She sounds slightly aggrieved, but then she shrugs. “But, you know, it hasn’t been terrible.”

I nod. I feel tired, and old. “And when did you and Joe start dating?” I ask finally.

“Well, I moved back here while I was still pregnant—I grew up around here, my parents are on the peninsula.” I don’t really know what that refers to, but I nod. “Milo came to see the baby a few times when she was little, and one time he brought Joe with him. We started seeing each other when Lia was four or five months old, and we moved in together when she was maybe one and a half. As far as she’s concerned, he’s Daddy.”

“And so ‘Uncle Milo’ was born,” I say.

“Yup. It’s just kind of the way it’s worked out.”

So casual. I like Chloe, but her attitude about all this is a bit cavalier for me. And the moment this half-negative thought enters my mind, I’m aware, in a cold rush, of the power this woman holds. She’s the mother of my granddaughter. And I’m nothing more than Uncle Milo’s mommy.

“I’m glad you came,” Chloe says, smiling at me. “I’d like Lia to know someday that she has a famous grandma.”

“Oh,” I say, embarrassed. “Well, I don’t know about that. Less famous than her father, certainly. Either of her fathers.”

Chloe stands up, rolls her head to stretch the muscles in her neck. “Tricky situation,” she says. “Wrong kind of famous, after this week.” She picks up my water glass from the table and carries it to the sink, then turns back to me. “You want to go visit your son?”

Warmth and fear, hope and panic. “Okay,” I say.

I get up from the couch and gather my jacket and purse. Something occurs to me. “I understand you’re the one I have to thank for the sugar bowl,” I say.

“Oh, yeah,” she says, brightening. “Joe told me the story once, and it became kind of a thing for me, you know? Like, how is it possible in this day and age that I can’t locate a simple piece of china? I was psyched when I finally found it. And now it’s served another purpose, too—it’s kind of led to this.” She draws a line in the air between the two of us. “You know, us getting together.”

I’m not sure I follow her logic, but I don’t want to get off topic. “Did you happen to look inside it?” I ask. “When it came in the mail? When I opened it up, there was a note inside that said, ‘Someone is lying.’”

She bursts out laughing. “Are you kidding?”

“No. So you don’t know anything about it?”

“Well, no, but I doubt it’s anything. I got the box, literally, like four days ago, and I only looked inside long enough to make sure it was in one piece. Who knows why anything else would be in there? But I doubt it had anything to do with you.”

“Oh,” I say. I feel strangely let down. “Okay.”

“But you know,” she says, “it’s funny. That’s something Bettina used to say. Like, if the guys stayed out all night and tried to give us a lame excuse or something. She’d say it in this funny way, like she was imitating someone. It was kind of a private joke, I think, between her and Milo.”

“Huh,” I say. I have no idea whether or not that’s relevant. I follow Chloe back down the hall. She takes a sweater from a hook by the door.

“Ready?” she asks.

I shake my head. “Probably not,” I say.

“It’ll be fine,” she says. She opens up the door, and we step outside.

•  •  •

The last time I saw Milo, as I think I’ve mentioned, he was getting ready to board a plane. That’s the way I tell the story in my mind, incidentally; those are the words I always use. I’ve often wondered if writers are the only ones who feel compelled to narrate their lives as they live them, to stand in the shower and wonder whether there’s a less predictable word than “lather.” I used to think it made me a good writer—look at me, honing my craft as I stand here to pour a cup of coffee, drafting and revising my descriptions of the mug, the smell, the sound of the hot splatter! Now I just find it tiresome, though it doesn’t seem to be something I can stop. An end to narration: that’s what I imagine death will be like.

In any case, this sentence is as good as it’s ever going to be: the last time I saw Milo, he was getting ready to board a plane. It was the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and we’d had a good time together. That’s the unhappy irony; if we’d had the kind of visit we usually had, tense and angry and haunted by old ghosts, then the next link in the chain of events might never have been forged. But Milo was in a good mood and, presumably, feeling rather generous about the foibles of his old mother; at least, that’s the conclusion I drew from the terse note he sent the following week. Like thousands of travelers every day, he stopped at the airport newsstand to buy a book. And for the first time in his life, he decided to pick up one of mine.