I pushed aside the Guard’s yellow NO TRESPASSING tape and ducked through a gap in the chainlink fence that surrounded the property. The building’s glass front doors and the steel roll-down barrier had been smashed, maybe the night of the outbreak, maybe by people looking for shelter later on. I found an opening big enough and squeezed inside.
Sunlight filtered down through the skylights. Most of the artwork had been evacuated by the Guard long ago, so the walls were empty. Just ghostly rectangles where the paintings used to hang. I felt my way through the darker hallways until I came to a door set in a concrete wall. The metal sign riveted beside it read RICHARD SERRA: TORQUED ELLIPSES.
I stepped through the doorway into that immense room.
The first time I’d seen the sculptures, that day we came to Black River on a house-hunting trip, I didn’t even understand what I was looking at. Twenty-foot-high walls of rust-colored steel all lined up in a concrete room. So what? It wasn’t until we got closer to the first one that I saw that its walls were curved. The wall was actually a ring with an opening on one side that led into an empty space that was easily as big as our apartment in Brooklyn.
I ran to the second ellipse—two rings, one inside the other. I got to the third one before any of you and discovered a maze of rings within rings, three or four of them, the openings staggered around their circumference, making a kind of spiral. It was bright inside when I first entered, but the way the walls leaned into or away from each other as they curved sent me from day to twilight and back to day again. I staggered along like I was on the deck of a sailing ship. When I was finally let out into the heart of the ellipse, I was so dizzy I fell right on my butt. The walls soared over my head, bending up and away toward the skylights. The sun made their brown steel seem warm and alive. I felt sure that if I laid my hand against one, I’d feel a pulse moving just beneath the metal.
And then the three of you came in, you and Mom a little giddy, Dad quiet. I remember how we all ended up on our backs in the middle of the floor, taking turns describing the ellipse. You said it was a carnival funhouse. I said it was the hull of a ship we were sailing through a storm. Mom said the walls were like the petals of an immense rose. When Dad’s turn came, he was quiet for a long time before he said that it wasn’t a rose, it was a prison, and we were all trapped inside.
Now I made my way through the dusty room, passing the other ellipses and going straight to the third. I found the rift and walked inside, curving around the spiraling walls, the palm of my hand skimming along the rough steel. When I reached the center of it, I dropped the Brotherhood comics in a pile and sat on the scuffed concrete floor. The skylights overhead were frosted with dust and bird droppings, turning the light into a spoiled-milk haze.
I pulled off my mask and lay flat on my back. The walls towered above me. I heard Freeman’s voice in my ear. What raw materials did you use to build Cardinal Cassidy?
The trip to Lake George was supposed to fix everything. I know it probably seemed out of nowhere when I first mentioned it that morning at breakfast, but the truth was I’d been planning it for weeks. Six full days in a two-bedroom cabin a hundred and fifty miles from Black River. All of us packed in together just like it was when we were back in Brooklyn. At first I was pretty sure Dad was going to flat-out refuse, but I guess the nudging from Mom helped.
I got more and more excited as the weeks stretched by. It was kind of like when you buy someone the perfect Christmas present and it feels like you’ll jump out of your skin if the day doesn’t hurry up and get there so you can give it to them. I think I drove you a little crazy, didn’t I? Admit it, in the weeks leading up to Lake George, the decision to save money by living at home instead of in the dorm your first year in college was seeming like a truly terrible one.
Anyway, the day finally came, and there we were, you and me and Mom. We’d loaded our bags into the car and were standing at the end of the driveway, waiting for Dad. Autumn had turned the slopes of Lucy’s Promise and the rest of the Highlands scarlet and gold. The air was crisp and smelled like dry leaves and fireplace smoke. I felt like there were fireworks going off inside my chest. I couldn’t stop talking.
“Did I tell you guys about the boats? You can rent them at the place and then take them all the way across the lake. They have rowboats and motorboats and those ones that have the pedals, like bicycles. Oh! And there are horses.”
Mom put her hand on my shoulder, as if she were trying to keep me from leaping into the air. “Yes, you told us about the horses.”
You rolled your eyes as you tapped away on your phone, probably texting that girl from your art class. “And all the great antiquing opportunities. Seriously, Card,” you said, “what sixteen-year-old kid gets pumped about looking at antiques?”
You were messing with me, but I didn’t care. Right then, I was invulnerable to it.
“You’ll see. You and me, bro. We’ve got us a date with some reasonably priced mid-century modern home furnishings!”