For this was how their relationship had developed: into something loving, yes, but also scratchy, fractious, and that was his fault, she said, for she was all in, had been from the beginning, she was an all-or-nothing person, but he was somewhere in between.
“Yes, I love you, this is why we are living together, but you don’t own me, your family knows a lot about owning things, but I’m not property, and you need to understand my freedom. And besides, there are important things you aren’t telling me about yourself, and I need to know those things.”
When she spoke like this a dizziness came over him, as if the whole world was flying apart into fragments, and he was very afraid of the fragmented world and what it meant for him, the song was right, life was a whirlwind, un tourbillon. But he had told her everything, he pleaded, he had spilled the family secrets to her like a child at his first confession. “I don’t even know why I went along with what the old man wanted,” he said. “Leaving there, coming here, changing identities, all of it. It wasn’t my mother who died at the hotel. It wasn’t even anyone I liked. I don’t even know who my mother was, she vanished, so it’s like he killed her long ago. Or like a Z-Company boss had her killed.”
“That’s what, Z-Company?”
“It’s the mafia,” he said. “Z is for the godfather, Zamzama Alankar. Not his real name.”
She shrugged. “You want to know why I have the gun in the drawer? I’ll tell you. It’s like a bad TV show. My father Zachariassen got drunk and murdered my mother when I was home for Thanksgiving and I ran out into the street yelling help police and he fired at me as I was running and shouted I’ll find you, I’ll hunt you down. By then he was a full-blown psycho. He used to be an airline pilot for Northwest but after the Delta merger the carrier was looking to downsize and his up-and-down moods got him fired and then he started drinking and they got worse and he became a scary person. He was living with my mother in Mendota Heights, Minnesota, which is a pretty well-off first-ring suburb of the Twin Cities, above his pay grade. My mom was an orphan, her parents had died and left her money, so she had bought the house and car and I grew up there and went to a good school but after he lost his job they were struggling. By that time I was done with college, I put myself through Tufts on a scholarship and different jobs, and I was working here in the city, and after the murder I left Mendota Heights fast and closed that chapter forever. Except that I keep the gun. He’s gone to jail for like a million years without possibility of commutation or remission but I’m not getting rid of the weapon.”
She played the song on the guitar some more, but didn’t sing.
“So my sob story is better than yours,” she finally said. “And I’ll tell you why you agreed to your father’s crazy plan. You agreed because there, where you came from, you weren’t free to be who you need to be, to become who you need to become.”
“And what is that.”
“That is what I’m waiting for you to tell me.”
It’s the thing she keeps coming back to ever since he told her about it, what he did to his stepmother, her humiliation, her near-suicide. You are a loving person, I see that, she says, but this I don’t understand, how you could stoop so low.
I think, he says, that hatred can be as strong a family tie as blood, or love. And when I was younger I was full of hate and it was the bond joining me to the family and that’s why I did what I did.
It’s not enough, she says. There is more.
The limo arrives at a warehouse in Bushwick where she needs to inspect some South Asian artifacts that the Museum of Identity has been offered. Come, she had urged him, at least two of them concern the visit of Dionysus to India, so you’ll be interested. She doesn’t trust the dealer. She has been sent paperwork certifying that the items were legally exported from India but these documents can be illicitly obtained. In the old days before the Indian Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, she says, it was actually harder to smuggle stuff out, because people were not sure whom to bribe. But since 1976 the exporters know which inspectors to deal with, so it’s more straightforward. Acquisitions are complicated by such questions of provenance. Still, worth a look.
There is a painting of Dionysus surrounded by panthers and tigers and she has no interest in it. The other piece is a marble bowl around which a triumphal procession has been carved and it is exquisite, a riotous crowd of satyrs, nymphs, animals and at their heart the god. See how feminine he is, she says. He’s right on the gender borderline, you almost don’t know whether to call him goddess or god. She’s looking penetratingly at D as she speaks, an unasked question in her eyes, and he shies away.
What, he says. What is this. What do you want.
This is almost certainly an unauthorized export, she says to the dealer, handing back the bowl. The documentation is unconvincing. We can’t acquire.
They are in the car on the way home. Construction work on the approach to the Manhattan Bridge, slowing the traffic to a crawl. Come on, she says, you didn’t come to me by accident, you didn’t just show up at the MoI because you had zero interest in what we explore there. And your stepmother, maybe there’s something in you that wants to die, some part of you that doesn’t want to be alive anymore, and that’s why you pushed her to the edge of death. Here’s what you need to tell me about. Why did you want to step into her shoes? What part of you wanted to be her, the mother, the housewife, with the household keys, in charge of domestic duties? Why was that need so imperative that you did such an extreme thing? Yeah, I need to know about all that. But before me, you need to know about it yourself.
Let me out of the car, he says. Stop the fucking car.
Really, she answers without raising her voice. You’re going to get out of the car.
Stop the goddamn motherfucking car.
Afterwards he found it hard to remember the fight, he just remembered the sensations her words provoked, the explosion in his brain, the fogged vision, the pounding heart, the shaking caused by the obvious absurdity of her accusations, the insulting wrongness of her attack. He wanted to call upon an almighty judge to declare her guilty, but there was no eye of heaven watching them, no recording angel to be summoned. He wanted her to apologize. Damn it. She had to apologize. Profusely.
He returned in a fury to the house on Macdougal Street, saying nothing to anyone, wrapped in a storm that warned everyone to leave him alone. Riya and he didn’t speak for four days. On the fifth day she called, sounding like the composed adult she was. Come home. I want company in bed. I want…Zzzzzz Company.
He began to laugh, couldn’t help it, and then it was easy to say sorry, sorry, sorry.
We’ll talk about that, she said.