When all was said and done (and signed and notarized and taxed), it turned out that his stubborn, contrarian wishes could be fulfilled without selling off too much of his prime work. If he had wanted to see his own deification as an all-or-nothing proposition (he was Rembrandt or he was no one!), he hadn’t left instructions tyrannical enough to see it through. Nor had he anticipated that Tommy would defy him—within the letter of the law. Did widely disperse mean divide a hundred ways or send to a few carefully chosen, mutually distant points on the map?
She follows the path that bends through the zoo. Even here, Morty once held court, when he was asked to join a tongue-in-cheek advisory panel convened by New York magazine to offer suggestions on how to cure Gus, the resident polar bear briefly renowned for his neurotically obsessive swimming. The magazine had drafted an executive from Steiff, the company famous for its stuffed toys; a woman who designed organic baby footwear under the label Bearpaws; and a wrestler nicknamed Kodiak. To round it out, Morty’s editor was asked to enlist a children’s illustrator. After Tommy passed the phone to Morty, she heard him say to Rose, “I don’t even draw bears. Have you noticed?”
But Soren insisted he accept. “It’s all about the cute factor. And you are nothing if not cute.” And wouldn’t it make a great excuse to book a room at the Pierre, overlooking the zoo, for the night or two after Morty’s media moment? Soren was still healthy then, still eager to scheme as much time in the city as Morty would tolerate.
So Soren went along in Tommy’s place, saying he could handle the logistics. It wasn’t a disaster—even Morty admitted that the piece in the magazine was charming—but when he returned home, he said to Tommy, “You would never have permitted those idiots to lock us up in the putrid penguin house for nearly an hour. Where was Soren? Barneys. Lunch at the frigging Stanhope.”
When she passes under the archway with the clock, she sees that she is going to be late by nearly half an hour. She should have taken the subway. One rule of city physics she’s learning all over again: the farther away your destination, the more likely it is that the subway will get you there faster.
Dani came to her, over the winter, to tell her about his idea. He might be able to get a grant from the park conservancy, but he needed a loan. His credit had been “cooked,” as he put it, by his first business partner’s devotion to drugs. He showed her his idea for the kiosk design, the estimate from the friend who had designed the racks for the shop. Of course, Tommy said, keeping her answers simple. Franklin helped him go through the licensing process and draw up contracts for two employees. I’m so grateful, she told Franklin, who let himself be taken out for dinner.
The kiosk is an electric tropical-butterfly blue, an umbrellalike contraption holding bicycles, large and small, suspended in rows above the ground. On top of the whirligig structure, a bright orange sign reads KICKSTAND, in smaller letters Rent—Buy—Lessons. From across the pond, it looks as if a tiny spacecraft has landed off to the left of the Wonderland statue. The first time Tommy saw it, she imagined the Times headline: “Alice Abducted by Aliens.” The Post: “From Rabbit Hole to Black Hole.”
As she hurries along the rim of the pond, she sees three parent-child couples waiting for their turn, circling the kiosk, inspecting the colorful choices. But the young man helping them isn’t Dani. He’s too short.
Has she made a mistake? Today’s not the day or, worse, she’s supposed to be downtown in that park on the Hudson, at the other Kickstand.
But no—there he is, sitting on the edge of the bronze mushroom, backed by Alice and her cohorts, face tilted up to the sun. Tommy stands immediately in front of him, nearly touching his knees, before he opens his eyes. “Hello,” he says, smiling, unstartled. “Hello there, Sis.”
“Sorry I’m late.”
Dani extends one leg to prod Tommy’s hip with the toe of a sneaker. “But you come with a feast…yes?” He eyes her bag.
“I forgot the sandwiches. I’m sorry. Maybe a hot dog?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Sorry.”
“I get the bigger half,” he says.
“Dani, I’ll buy you your own. Two of your own. With a pretzel. A Dove bar. Have you lost weight?”
“More like two or three years of my life.” He slides off the mushroom. She waits while he speaks with the boy in the blue apron. Still stirred by the anxious thrill of her rendezvous with Nick, she isn’t in the mood for meeting anyone new.
She lets her brother lead the way. Around the first bend in the path he chooses, they see a cart. While Tommy negotiates food, Dani checks his phone. “Jane says hi.”
“Hi to Jane.”
“Joe is giving her a workout. Did you know a bookcase can double as a ladder?” He puts his phone away to take his food. “Visions of backyards dance in our heads.”
They sit on a bench beside the path.
Dani eats quickly, licking mustard from his fingers. Tommy eats slowly; she has yet to finish her single hot dog when he’s already done with two.
“Man, did that hit the spot,” he says.
She listens to him talk about Joe’s latest words and physical feats, Joe’s new sitter, Jane’s job at the clinic. The only complaint they have about their new neighborhood is that it lacks a good playground or decent grocery store. He wakes from dreams featuring the joyful discovery of lawns and ponds where, in real urban life, acres of deserted railyards await purchase by some deep-pockets developer.
“Are you saying you’re headed to Connecticut now that I’m back here?”
“God, no. But now I get Connecticut. Conformicut. Predictable, right? Change of subject required….So Franklin. Franklin. How is Fraaaanklin?”
“Franklin and I are partners. We are business partners.”
“He’s a good catch. For an old maid like you.”
“That isn’t funny.”
“Come on, Toms. Loosen up.”
“Or it is, but not always. Not today.”
“What’s up today?”
“Nothing. The Indian-summer blues.”
“Please don’t start making up a song. Please.”
“Oh God. Last week, dealing with more paperwork, I thought of the one he wrote when they were audited. ‘Tasmania, Taxman?’?”
“Stop right there. What’s scary is that I remember all the words to those songs. So do not get me started.” Dani stands up. “Take a ride in my truck? I have to go downtown. I’ll drop you.”
“Sure.”
Heading back east, they walk without speaking until they reach the avenue.
“Dani, can I ask you something?”
“If I say no, will that stop you?”
They wait at a crosswalk. “Dani, do you ever think of visiting Mom and Dad? Where they’re buried?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean? You don’t know if you ever think of it?”
The light changes; it offers up that newfangled countdown for crossing. Modern life, at least in the city, seems designed to minimize suspense.
For an instant, Tommy has the impulse to reach for her brother’s hand. He spares her this embarrassment by stepping off the curb ahead of her. Glancing back, he answers, “No, smart-ass. What I mean is that I feel like I should, but I don’t know what I’d do when I got there. Lay down flowers? Sit on the grass and contemplate their lives? Like that? They didn’t bring us up to believe they’d be hovering around in some kind of limbo, waiting for us to join them.”