Daniel ignores them. “You really deserve a break, Mara, after . . . everything. Seriously. It’s your moral obligation to have fun.”
“That’s me,” she says deliciously. “Moral.”
Goose glides out of the kitchen with glasses and a ￡700 bottle of Caol Ila. Well done.
“Shall we?”
“I shall,” I say, allowing him to pour. We all do, in point of fact.
Pride is not an emotion I’m much familiar with, but at that moment, I think I feel it. Watching my girl and my friends like this, knowing I’ve made this moment. Chose these people to fill it with: Goose, from my past; Jamie, my present; Daniel, the brother I wish I’d had. I feel a steady flickering of happiness, separate and apart from being with Mara. The world is shifting before my eyes into something else, fitting into outlines I want to remember for however long I’m supposed to live. We’re taking on the shape of something, newborn and primitive. There’s a lightness, strange and alien but welcome, as we drink and laugh. But beneath it, always, is a vein of . . . separateness. Daniel and Mara are family. Jamie and Mara are best friends, bound by an experience I was responsible for but not part of. And Goose, familiar though he is, is still farther removed from me than the rest of them.
Everyone’s toasting and laughing in the living room, and, as planned, I take my leave, heading up the steel-and-glass staircase leading to the second floor. I don’t want to turn on the lights, as I’m not quite sure what can be seen from downstairs and what can’t, so I wander blindly, not sure which room I’m looking for until I find it.
It’s chaotic in here, with unopened boxes piled up on the edge of a riveted metal desk. I step over and around trunks of different sizes and ages; some centuries old, probably. Everyone’s still talking downstairs, and loudly, so I close the door and turn on the light.
Not about to start with the boxes. They look like banker’s boxes and likely contain financials and other shite I’ve no interest in at the moment. And the trunks—I’m wary. I’ve already spent enough time in the company of my father’s ghost. I’d prefer someone else’s.
A small trunk stands out from the rest, edged in silver and gold with a host of names engraved on the front—all female, I can’t help but notice. I open it and discover what appear to be congratulatory letters from what appear to be former conquests of some former relative.
Amusing, but not helpful. I look for a different one, hoping one will stand out, and one does. I cross the room; it’s battered but modern, something one might see at a military supply shop. Doesn’t look like something my father would’ve ever used—doesn’t appear Shaw-ish at all, which draws me to it. I slide my fingers beneath the hinges to lift the lid, only to find that it’s locked. Always something.
Returning to the desk, I open the drawers, all empty but one. Inside is a thick padded envelope filled with keys of every shape and size and, again, age, but one stands out. I feel like I know what’s inside the trunk before the lock turns.
My mother’s things have been packed away here by hands unknown. I recognise some of the books—Singer, Kerouac, Bukowski, and sifting through them I find Le Petit Prince, of course. I wonder if the photograph of Little Me is still inside, so I open it, flip through pages until the book itself settles on one, as if the spine had been cracked there, as if the book had been splayed out for years. My mother’s highlighted lines:
“To me,” she said, “you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me . . . . But if you tame me, then we shall need each other.”
The words call Mara to mind. Downstairs, oblivious to where I am, what I’m looking for—I’m not quite sure I know myself. Connections, I suppose. Between Beth and Sam. Between them and me.
I halfheartedly open my mum’s other books. Pictures slide out of them, many of her and friends—rarely do I find one of her alone. There’s this rare, magnetic thing about her that transcends the two dimensions of the photograph and catches me under my breastbone. It’s nearly impossible to look away.
Most parents, when asked why they want to have children, say that they want to raise a child to be happy. To be healthy. To be wanted. To be loved.
That is not why I had you.
Those are the words she wrote me, from the letter the professor had and sent to me. They’re branded in my memory. Her handwriting, elegant and frantic script:
Do not find peace.
Find passion.
Find something you want to die for more than something you want to live for.
Fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.
Speak for them.
Scream for them.
Live and die for them.
That was what she wanted for me. Not happiness. Not peace.
I shove her books back into the trunk, lock it, and pocket the key.
She certainly got her wish.
14
PLEASURES AND PAINS, THEIR KINDS
AS I LEAVE THE OFFICE, I run into Mara on the stairs.
“You,” she says.
“Me.”
“You vanished.”
“I did.”
“Pretty quickly.”
“That obvious?”
“To me,” she says, then rises on her toes to kiss me . . . or to look past my shoulder at the now-closed door.
“What’s in there?”
“I had some stuff sent over from England.”
“Stuff?”
“Papers and things. All the laughing and drinking downstairs made me a bit homesick.”
“Liar.”
“I take offence.”
“Keep taking it,” she says. “What were you doing in there, really?”
She knows me too well. “I thought I might go through some of it, see if I can find anything mentioning Sam’s family.”
“Did you? Find anything, I mean?” Her eyes dart from me to the door again.
“Not tonight.”
She tilts her head toward the stairs. “Everyone left while you were gone.”
I take a step closer to her. “Did they, now.”
“Goose went back to the Gansevoort for another night or two, and Jamie went back to his aunt’s. He’s going to think about it.”
“About . . . ?”
“Moving in.” She narrows her eyes. “You invited him to live here, remember?”
“Sorry, I’m rather tired.” I regret the lie as soon as I speak it—Mara sees through it immediately.
“What’s going on, Noah?” She twists a finger in the hem of her T-shirt, dark grey with a brontosaurus pictured below the words THEY’LL NEVER FIND US.
I run my hand through my hair. “I don’t know.”
“Are you ever going to tell me? What you saw?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
She bites her lower lip, but she’s really biting back words. I close the space between us and kiss her before she can speak.
Her body is stiff at first, but she begins to melt in seconds. Just as she reaches for the back of my neck, I pull away and ask, “Have you seen the rest of the flat?”
A single shake.
“Would you like to?”
A single nod.
“Follow.” I turn away from her and pass the office without opening the door.
We turn the first corner. “How many bedrooms did you say there are?”
“Six.”
“Which one’s ours?”
“Tonight, all of them,” I say, and stop. She crashes into me and I catch her, pulling her hair gently, leaning to kiss the hollow below her ear. “And the living room.” My hand slides up under her T-shirt. “And the dining room.”
She bites my lower lip. “The pool table.”
“The kitchen,” I say as she rakes her hand through my hair.
“Show me.”
Breaking apart is excruciating. I grip her small hand tightly enough to shatter it—she’s holding mine just as hard. I don’t even need to turn on the hall lights—the moon and the city are bright enough to guide us.
We take the stairs again to the top floor. There are two rooms; only one has a bed, I know, because the other, I tell Mara, is to be her studio, if she wants.
“What I want is you,” she says. She pulls me inside the bare room, the ceiling punched through with three skylights. The night is clear enough and we’re high up enough to see stars.
I tug her back out. “Come.”
“I’d like to, but—”