But that’s the netherland of night distorting what she knows by day, which is that she is back in the middle of life, the roiling, muddled middle, and it’s hers. Mine, all mine. She is grateful to Morty for leaving her all that he did, and she will think of him every day from now on, that much is certain, but none of what she embodies or owns or watches over is his anymore. Not even his secrets.
Six months ago, when she flew to Arizona to meet with the woman who would oversee the creation of Ivo’s House, Tommy carried with her, in a pocket of her purse, Reginald’s street address. After lunch and a long afternoon with Juanita and her colleagues—including the contractor who would convert an old rope factory into a rec center and bunkhouse, the social worker who would design the programs, even the grad student from Tempe hired to write grant proposals—Tommy climbed into her rental car and punched the address into the GPS. It was her third and final day in this unfamiliar city, and still it surprised her that a place could be so warm yet fall beneath the blanket of such a dark night so early in the evening. And the Christmas decorations—poinsettias and pine wreaths against the dusty pink adobe walls—still made her laugh.
So the sky was a vivid striation of coral and cobalt when she pulled up across from the ranch house. A compact mouse-colored car was parked in the driveway. Enough light remained that she could see how the stucco hide of the house was cracking and crumbling, the ground out front little more than bare dirt. Blunt-roofed and low, this house and its nearly identical neighbors all looked as if they were struggling against an unseen force from above, a great invisible hand attempting to bully them down into their arid, colorless yards.
Through several windows along the street, lights were coming on. Tommy saw Christmas trees, no different from those she would see through the windows of Orne or Manhattan.
The tree in Reginald’s house was aglow. If someone comes into that room, she told herself, I will go up to the door.
She stared so hard that her eyes began to water. Lights strung along the eaves of two other houses blinked on as she waited. Five minutes went by, and then someone—was it a man or a woman?—entered the front room. His or her back to the window, the person stopped to face the tree for a moment, perhaps admiring its ritual glitter.
Tommy got as far as opening her door. But what was the point of this meeting? Was there anything she needed to know? And what good could possibly come of it? She did not have to reread those letters to know that she would be reopening a wound for the man who might or might not be the person standing in front of that tree. She did not need to learn one more unpleasant thing about the life Morty had buried for so long and then, seemingly on impulse, revealed in such a public way. But now she knows why he did: because the time had come to take control of that past, to write and illustrate the story as he wanted it to appear before the world—because if he didn’t, someone else might. Morty was always one step ahead of the people around him, even when they didn’t know it. He was never going to be duped again, not by fate, not by family, not by lovers or friends or caretakers. Was there anyone he ever really trusted?
At Seventy-ninth Street, Dani cocks his head to the right. “We’re thisaway,” he says, using his dad voice, and now he’s the one to reach back for her hand, whether he means to or not. Tommy takes it as they veer east. After crossing Madison, they stop, in unison.
It’s impossible to miss, the poster framed behind glass on the wall of the bus shelter: Nicholas Greene’s profile sharp against a cerulean sky, his bronzed hair swept back, tangling with the vines and foliage and fanciful flowers of Morty’s imaginary jungle, which looms mysteriously, alluringly, behind him. Out of the trees, straight toward the viewer, bounds Ivo, as if he’s escaping the confines of the actor’s brain, about to burst through the glass and careen down the street toward the park. The poster is so large that Ivo is nearly the size of an actual boy.
Tommy saw a smaller version of this poster at the screening, but to see it like this, out in the bustling world, in broad daylight, comes as a shock. The reflections on its glass face—passing taxis, a jogger with a dog, the splintered dazzle of sunlight—create the illusion of movement, the possibility that art will burst out into life. She isn’t sure if Dani has seen it anywhere. She is reminded of the day, long ago, when she was returning home from school and first saw Colorquake, copy after copy filling the bookstore window.
“Look,” Dani says. “It’s your other boyfriend.”
“Right,” says Tommy. “Not even in my dreams.”
“And me, there’s me. Famous all over again.” Before Tommy has time to deflect whatever bitter remark might come next, he says, “Secretly famous. Which is the best kind of famous, believe me.” Releasing her hand, he launches into a series of Ivo-inspired leaps. Half a block away, he halts and pivots to face her. “Hey, slowpoke. I don’t have all the time in the world. Do you?”
“I do not.” Tommy’s left hand burrows into her bag, just to touch the actor’s delicious scarf. Then she turns away from the poster and catches up with her brother. The sun is so high overhead that their hastening figures cast but the shortest of shadows.
Acknowledgments
I begin, as always, by wondering what I would ever do without Gail Hochman and Deb Garrison. They have steered me through the publication of every book I’ve written so far and cheered me on through all the months and years between. The generous and insightful Marianne Merola, Michiko Clark, Altie Karper, Maria Massey, and Kristen Bearse have been loyal allies, too. And this time around, I am equally indebted to David Ebershoff, an essential reader—wise and kind and funny—at the stage when I felt as if I could no longer see straight.
Thank you to the members of the Stonington Village Improvement Association, who take such tender loving care of the James Merrill House and welcome writers to live and work in its uniquely inspiring rooms. I wrote a hundred pages of this novel during the exquisite October I spent there as a solo resident. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I am nonetheless grateful to the poet and his companion, David Jackson, whose passions and idiosyncratic tastes linger among the furnishings and books in that colorful sanctuary.