The Children(13)

“She’s a bit of a villain, love.” He said it reflexively.

“Oh, shut up! You will give me my year. I gave you Venice, now it’s my turn. We have nowhere to go, you’ve burned every bridge, I want my year. The kids’ll roll with it. One year off the grid won’t kill them. It’ll be good for them, actually. They love it here. I love it here.” Her anger cracked open, just a little. “This place inspires me, Llew. I know I’ll be able to write here, I just need time. Have some faith in me, okay?”

In a tight voice he said, “Alright. Fair is fair. I’ll call Alan tomorrow, let him know the new timeline.” He paused. “But, Edie? Save some of your time for the kids, yeah?”

Guinevere mashed her ear to the door.

“Please don’t start.” Edith sounded very tired. “They’re fine. I would’ve given anything at their age to have what they do. A sibling and an endless backyard. And they like you better anyway.” Guinevere could determine nothing from the way she said this: whether she was sad about it, or angry, or relieved. “I’ll be able to spend more time on them once I’ve written my book.”

“They need you now, love.” His voice was soft. “They’re little now.”

“They have me. I’m here. Why do you think I need to do this? I want to be someone they can respect, not some . . . child bride. I didn’t have time to figure myself out, remember? Instead I met you. Pervert.” She snapped the word like gum. “They’re gonna do the math one day. And what’ll they think of us then?”

“Edith.” His voice was dangerous. “Stop.”

“Oh, you don’t like that? How about this?” A thick stretch of nothing. Her voice came back, dark and low: “That you like. See? You’re a dirty old man.”

He said something too quiet to hear. And Edith laughed.

There were other sounds, unidentifiable. They didn’t speak again.

Slowly Guinevere walked back to her room. Of all the things she’d heard, this was what rattled in her head: They need you now, love.

It was confirmation of something, though she wasn’t sure what. It was connected to the pit she felt in her belly when Edith forgot to say good night, or when she looked at Guinevere with a kind of hard incomprehension, as if waking from a daughterless dream. And the feeling of looking back, tracing her mother’s lovely face feature to feature, searching for what she could not and would not find.

Guinevere lay in the dark. She felt like she’d swallowed something sticky and thick, spoon after spoon.





Eight

Five days until Mother




The B train’s A/C barely dented the fug of a couple dozen sweaty New Yorkers. The walk home was worse, heat rising in a visible wobble over the sidewalks.

But when Guin saw the woman waiting in front of her apartment, her body coursed with cold.

She recoiled, as if from a vision. It really was her: Candace Street. Gutter punk collage artist turned artist’s assistant. Artist’s watchdog, nanny, acolyte, stirred into the Nolita foot traffic like a raven among wrens. She’d been Ennis Sharpe’s right-hand woman for over a decade.

Guin stopped a few sidewalk squares away. “You’re here,” she said stupidly.

Candy had to be sixty and she still dressed like Siouxsie Sioux. Like a time traveler from a different New York, before cannabis kombucha and the STD-like spread of Blank Street Coffee. She grimaced, peering off to the left. “You got a minute?”

“Not really.” The timbre of Guin’s voice was traitorously erratic. She’d last seen Candy seven years ago, and the memory wasn’t good.

The older woman fumbled around in her pocket. Briefly, ridiculously, Guin thought, Knife. Candy pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Benson & Hedges? Seemed like an overcommitment to the bit.

“Talk to me for one, will you? That’s all I’m asking.” She shook the pack enticingly, like a perv offering candy. “Come on. Help yourself.”

Curiosity got the better of Guin. She took one.

Together they moved to a bench outside a coffee shop. Lately Guin had been on a half-hearted health kick. As she took a drag she pictured smoke running through her system like men in dirty work boots, stomping over clean white floors.

Candy held her cigarette like a dart, European style, ready at any minute to throw it in somebody’s face. On an exhale she said, “A memoir, huh? You running low on blood money?”

Lest she thought Candy had gone soft. “Better talk fast.”

“Ennis didn’t send me, alright? He doesn’t know I’m here.”

That got her attention. “You’re not working for him anymore?”

“No, I am.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I’m worried.”

Guin bit the tip of her tongue, released. “About?”

Candy shrugged. She’d figured out where Guin lived, come all this way, waited on the street for her as long as it took. Still she couldn’t bring herself to talk. The habit of protecting Ennis from his own sister was too deeply engrained.

“Is it the lawsuit?” Guin said disingenuously, testing her. “Not sure what you think I can do.”

Candy made a plosive sound, laugh-esque. “That won’t stand up. It’s just free publicity.”