The Children(69)

Marla Kaufman.

She pushed on anyway, stacking mile upon mile, not looping back until her limbs felt jellied and her stomach was roaring. When she got upstairs and checked her phone, she had a voicemail from Regina. She left it to listen to after her shower.

By the time she was dressed Regina had called twice more.

Guin felt a first trickling of unease. She inhaled a banana, a granola bar, orange juice from the bottle. When the gnawing in her middle had subsided, she sat at the kitchen island with her laptop. Probably she’d missed a scheduled interview. Better to figure that out before returning Regina’s call.

She opened her email and was hit with a rush of bad adrenaline. Her inbox was entirely in bold.

She skimmed the screen. Messages from journalists, from Hart & Crane. Penelope, the writer she’d met at the Hoxton, was in there, subject line: Follow-up chat? And Ennis’s ex, Arlene: We need to talk.

Even more troubling, there were messages from old friends, people who actually knew her. This was bad. Bad bad. Something to do with Ennis. She finger-stabbed a message at random.

It was from an old schoolmate named Sloane, a wannabe choreographer whose mother had been a Martha Graham dancer. Sloane kept the downtown artist act going right up until she married a finance guy at thirty and promptly bore twins. They were almost two and still as hairless as sphynx cats. In the photos Sloane posted they wore fat bows on elastic bands and glared at the camera with a dim fury, like a pair of jowly duchesses in fascinators.

Her email’s subject line: You okay bb???

Guinnie! the message began.

No one had ever called her that, not even Sloane. In a queasy rush redolent of Jo Malone and ironic Rumple Minze shots, Guin remembered why she’d let their friendship drop.

I’ve been thinking about you lately my lovely and when I saw the video I knew it was a sign to reach out. Sending lots of love and hoping you are weathering the storm as is your classic style ;) V excited for your new book and will pick it up at the shops as soon as I can. I’ll have to sneak some cheeky reading time when the twins are sleeping! If they ever sleep!! ? Drinks soon?? It’s been way too long lady xx





Guin couldn’t even savor her irritation over the Britishisms. The video. What video? Not her appearance on Samantha Brice, interest in that had come and gone. With a sense of creeping dread, she typed her own name into search. The top hit was from early that morning.

TikToker Shares Secret Recording of Literary Nepo Baby



Softly Guin pressed the fingers of her left hand to her mouth. With her right she scrolled to the embedded video, posted by an account called @NishaDaily. Guin allowed herself one breath to really let the self-loathing run through her, then hit play.

Nisha Dey sat in an indoor space with a brick wall behind her. She was lit the pillowy depthless white of a Glossier ad. Without preamble, voice affectless and face void of emotion, Nisha began.

“Last year my friend Marla Kaufman lost her life attending an exhibit by artist Ennis Sharpe, son of author Edith Sharpe. He has accepted no culpability. He has shown no remorse. Well, Marla was an artist, too. She was a brilliant screenwriter with a thousand stories to tell. She was a daughter and a sister and a friend and a complicated person, and a lot of people loved her very much.”

For a beat she looked down, then took a breath and resumed.

“Yesterday Ennis Sharpe’s sister, Guinevere Sharpe, contacted me. She said she wanted to talk, I assumed in defense of her brother. I agreed to meet her, and it turned out I was wrong. This is the conversation we had.”

She must have been filming herself on someone else’s phone. She held up her own, pushing play with one orange-varnished fingertip.

An atmospheric buzz came through first, a layer cake of recorded sound. She’d filtered out the matrix of background noise that made Guin feel protected—the yapping bourgeoisie, the slow-passing trucks. Only their voices remained, clarified by subtitles that appeared in chunky text over the bib of Nisha’s overalls. Her voice came first.

We’d been friends since the second grade.

Shit. I’m sorry. Hearing herself, Guin cringed. The words sounded glib, even though she’d meant them.

Thank you. So, what are we here to talk about? I assume you want to exonerate your brother.

The opposite, actually.

Sorry. What’s the opposite?

Guin’s chest hollowed out. The blow fell softly, in her own lowered voice.

What if Ennis is to blame? Not him, not physically. His art. What if there’s—what if there’s something wrong with it?

Meaning?

A long pause. Sitting at her laptop, jaw clenched, Guin waited for the rest.

The thing about Ennis’s art is it watches you back. I don’t understand how he does it. How he became this person making art that feels . . . bigger. Than I thought it would feel. Bigger than Ennis.

There were jumpy bits in there, places where Nisha made cuts, removing her own voice from the conversation and making the things Guin was saying sound unhinged. Where were Nisha’s statements on art, on Marla? The audio went on, damningly.

He’s opening another show. In Brooklyn, on Wednesday.

Nisha’s voice returned. I know. I’ll probably go. Aversion therapy, or something.

Don’t.

Why not?

Just don’t.

Do you think something’s going to happen? You do. You do think that. What’s gonna happen?