Ways and means, p.46
Ways and Means, page 46
Mark could count on one hand the number of times he’d spoken to his family since last July. He’d learned, he’d told Maura, that his father had eventually sold his company for $30 million (Maura struggled to wrap her mind around the fact that this was perceived as a “humiliating” figure), and he’d learned that his brother, Eddie, had done ninety days in rehab. But beyond collecting these few updates he made no effort to talk to them. He loved them, he’d told them, always had and always would, but, to adapt Elijah’s logic, he didn’t need to be part of their lives.
Elijah had found a job substitute-teaching studio art at a magnet high school in Queens. He had no credentials, and his administrative observers didn’t love his freewheeling pedagogic approach, but the students liked him so much that the school had been all but forced to bring him on full-time. He had no desire to make it a career, he claimed, though it was preferable to graphic design—he wouldn’t be making anything even resembling art ever again. Eventually, though, he’d have to find something else. The kids, he explained now, after the three of them had ordered, drove him up a wall.
“Summer session has become the boob session,” he said. “Lot of boobs, lot of butts, altogether just a lot of down there. They’ve discovered that you can paint porn and call it a nude and be ‘classical.’ ”
“Are they wrong?” Mark asked.
“I try to make it a lesson in proportion,” Elijah said. “Why is the man’s penis longer than his leg? Why is the woman’s breast three times the size of her head? But they’ve also learned about expressionism, so they have an answer to that.” He sighed. The more he tried to force his students’ hands, he told Mark and Maura, the more he felt it was futile, even counterproductive. If he’d learned anything in his life—and he’d learned almost nothing—it was that you had to let people make their mistakes. All you could do was hope they learned from them and be there for them whether they did or not. He’d teach one more year at the most, he said. If he had to critique another “nude” with a four-foot-long phallus he didn’t know what he’d do. But the more he talked about his students the more it became obvious to Maura that he loved them, loved teaching, was possibly never more at home than in a room of sixteen-year-olds, had found his calling.
“Isaac doesn’t do summer session,” Elijah said, “so he’s living vicariously through me.”
“Isaac is Elijah’s new boyfriend,” Mark explained.
Elijah looked at Mark and smiled carefully. “Six months may not be eight years,” he said, “but I wouldn’t call him new.”
“He teaches history at the same school.”
“And he’s teaching me,” Elijah said. “He has me reading. I’ll give that to you, Mark. You took me as I was. Never tried to change me.”
“What’s there to change?”
“Well, Isaac is continually amazed by the amount of things I don’t know,” Elijah said. “Which admittedly is a lot. And he doesn’t buy my defense, which is that I lived history. I had a front-row seat to it.”
Maura turned her gaze out the window. While she was ostensibly here in recognition of Herve’s trial she’d been hoping to avoid mention of that topic, and she’d been hoping to avoid politics in general. But in the summer of 2017 that was tantamount to avoiding the weather. Last August, after details about Herve’s project had become public, Maura had hoped that the news would be a nail in the coffin for Trump’s campaign. No sane person could read about what Herve had been planning and not conclude that under Trump there would be more Herves, more foot soldiers, and that they would grow more numerous and more emboldened. But Trump, in his moronic genius, had weathered the controversy capably. He’d disavowed Herve and his operation. He’d said that he, unlike his opponent, couldn’t be bought by “special-interest billionaires.” And though the investigation into Herve and his project continued to generate headlines it very soon had to compete with other headlines, other campaign controversies, other Trumpian shocks. The man’s genius, Maura felt, lay in the calculated chaos with which he buried one bad news day under another. And the sorry fact was that while there were many sane people there seemed, every day, to be more and more who were not. When Election Day rolled around, in November, Maura was less surprised by the result than most. And the only person who could have comforted her was gone, and all he’d left her was a pile of money.
Maura had mixed feelings about the million Alistair had set aside for her, just as he had mixed feelings about the million he’d set aside for himself. But Maura suspected that the recipient of the third million Nikolai had given Alistair was altogether content with her good fortune. Last summer, after Alistair had left, Maura had followed the instructions he’d laid out. She’d called the offshore bank, transferred the money to a domestic account, hired a lawyer to put half of her two million into a trust, and then asked the lawyer to notify its beneficiary: the girlfriend of Andy McCurdy, one Amber Osgood, of Whitney Point, New York. Maura knew nothing about this woman or how she was spending her money, and she didn’t care to. All she knew, because Alistair had told her, was that she had a baby son. And over the past year it had brought her small and occasional comfort to imagine Amber and her newly broadened horizons. Amber didn’t have Andy anymore, but she had her son, and she had a whole lifetime of that romance ahead of her.
For Maura that romance was now over. Alistair was never coming back, even if, as she’d told him when she’d visited him in late April, he risked nothing by returning. The FBI agent Maura had met with at the Bureau’s outpost in Binghamton had stated the case plainly enough. If he materializes, we’ll have to question him, he’d said. But he helped us greatly. He did his country a service. We’re certainly not going to go looking for him. But Alistair wasn’t staying away for fear of arrest. He’d made a mess of his life, he’d told Maura in April, he felt he’d ruined it before it had even started—he remained her melodramatic son. The things he’d been fixated on repulsed him now, and until he figured out what to make of himself next he wanted to remove himself from reminders of the person he no longer wanted to be, from the rapacity and ambition he no longer wanted to be prisoner to, and from the country that fostered these things with special insistence. And he was tired of burdening her. She’d lived her whole life for him and it was time she started living it for herself. He loved her too much to love her in the consuming way he always had, and to let her love him in the consuming way she’d always loved him. It wasn’t until Maura boarded the plane home that she realized she’d been effectively broken up with.
When their meals arrived Mark returned to the subject of Elijah’s teaching. “I see why the kids love you,” he said.
“Because I let them paint erotica?”
“Because you don’t make judgments. You’re open-minded. That’s the great thing about you.”
Elijah raised his eyebrows. “Based on my experiences last summer,” he said, “I think I can be a little too open-minded.”
“The opposite is no better.”
Elijah smiled impishly. “On that note, though,” he said, “there is some news. If you’re interested.”
Mark looked at him warily. “What has he done now?”
Elijah’s smile widened. “An article about him came out last week. In the Grift, by that same guy. ‘The MAGA Maverick, One Year Later.’ I couldn’t bring myself to read it, but Isaac gave me the gist. Apparently Jay has done a one-eighty. He’s posing as this die-hard anti-Trump crusader now. I checked his Twitter, and it’s true. He has a ‘resist’ hashtag in his bio. And a Venmo link: ‘Help me stop Trump!’ I guess maybe he’s trying to make a career out of it, though as far as I know he’s still back in Richmond, working at the cidery.”
Mark’s face had paled. “He’ll do anything.”
“Is it possible he’s sincere?” Maura asked.
“Literally neurologically impossible,” Elijah said. And yet his expression shone with kindness. “I hope I never hear from him again, truly. But I can’t help it. It makes me laugh. He’s still himself, always will be. He’s right back at it, the old chameleon. He’s so sick, so sad, so hollow, but I love him. I just do.”
“What about Howie?” Mark asked.
“Last I heard he moved to Miami,” Elijah said. “Now that Herve’s assets are frozen I think he had to sell the penthouse.”
“How terrible,” Mark said.
When the waiter collected their plates and returned with the bill Maura took it from him. She enjoyed the little fight she had with Mark and Elijah about the check, she enjoyed signing her name and treating them, her boys, and she felt again the shade of betrayal in her enjoyment.
Afterward they stood on the sidewalk, shielding their eyes from the sun. Elijah hugged Maura and Mark goodbye.
“I hope Alistair doesn’t feel too bad about me getting stabbed,” he said to Maura.
“I’m sure he does,” Maura said. “And I’m sure he knows you’re not mad.”
“And I do appreciate that he came to the hospital that night, even if I wasn’t conscious.”
“In his hat and sunglasses and everything,” Mark said. “Interrogating the doctors, making sure you’d live.” He looked at the ground. “And then off again.”
“Please let me know when you’re in the city again,” Elijah said.
“That could be a while,” Maura said. “But you’re always welcome in Binghamton.”
“You know,” Elijah said, “the way Alistair talked about Binghamton sometimes reminded me of the way I talked about Mark. This thing you hate because you can’t stop loving it, no matter how hard you try.”
Mark stared at Elijah and gave him a smile—a private smile—and then they parted ways.
Maura and Mark walked south for a while before turning west toward the river. From behind her sunglasses Maura studied her fellow pedestrians. Every block added another hundred faces to her repository, fed in great big spoonfuls her building curiosity. After tomorrow she didn’t know when she’d see Mark again, and her renegade thought persisted. What was the point anymore? What was the harm in breaking her promise? She could see only one way of easing Mark’s loneliness, only one way of easing Alistair’s, only one way of forcing herself to move on. Alistair longed for Mark, as much as he tried to forget about him. He’d made Maura promise not to tell Mark where he was because he refused to let him give up his life for him, just as he refused to let Maura do the same. But Alistair’s longing for Mark, Maura felt, was deeper than his longing for her. He was a man now, and he wanted his man, not his mother. Their romance had ended, and she could think of only one way to make its conclusion definite.
As they crossed Eleventh Avenue Mark pointed to a tower with a facade of brick red and cream. “That’s where Nikolai lived,” he said. “I actually thought about going to Bulgaria for the funeral. But I couldn’t face it. Not even a body to bury.”
“Understandable,” Maura said.
“I bet Alistair misses him.”
“I’m sure,” Maura said. She knew, in fact, that he did, very much.
When they reached the river they sat on a bench, a few blocks south of the Intrepid.
“Apparently this is where Alistair and Elijah hashed out their plan,” Mark said. He gestured back in the direction of Nikolai’s building. “I’ve been scouting settings.”
“For what?”
Mark turned up one corner of his mouth. “You must know what my book is about,” he said. He opened his hands. “I’m writing this.”
Maura looked toward the river. She had other things on her mind. It was getting late, the sun was setting, she was running out of time. She reached into her purse and took out the photograph she carried with her always. She’d gone through the trouble of having it printed; she liked to touch its surface. And now she handed it to Mark.
“There he is,” she said.
Alistair, insistent that no one find out where he was, had let her photograph him only from afar. But he was easily distinguishable, the only blond boy on the beach. There he was: in a white T-shirt and blue shorts, facing the water, hands on his waist. Maura knew the landscape beyond him was unmistakable. She knew this was mostly all Mark would need, and she knew it was mostly all she would give him.
“You can keep it,” she said. “I have copies.”
Mark stared at the photograph dumbfoundedly.
“I went in April,” she said. “We broached the idea of my moving there. But we knew it wouldn’t work. I figure I’ll go once a year.”
Mark turned her way and searched her eyes. “Does he know you’re showing this to me?”
“No,” Maura said. “And he’d be very angry. And I don’t care.”
“He doesn’t want me to come,” Mark said. “If he did he would have contacted me.”
“He doesn’t know what he wants,” Maura said. “None of us do.” She put her hands in her lap. “I’ll tell you two more things. I’ll go only so far in breaking my promise.”
Mark listened.
“He goes to the beach almost every day at sunset,” Maura said. “And he takes the same street there every time, the one he lives off of, Rua Teresa d’Ávila. He walks directly onto the beach, and then he sits.”
“Almost every day,” Mark said. “Rua Teresa d’Ávila.”
Maura nodded.
“Are you sure you want to tell me this?”
“No,” Maura said. “But I had to.”
Mark walked her back to her hotel. That night she slept soundly, more deeply, somehow, than she had in many months. In the morning she picked up her car from the garage and, after surviving the scariest traffic she’d ever experienced, left the city. For a while, as she coasted through the greenery of New Jersey, she felt buoyant, newly energetic, oddly liberated. Maybe she was only happy to be out of New York. But she suspected something else, something larger and a little frightening, had begun working through her. It had begun working through her the moment she’d handed Mark the photograph.
Her mood plummeted when she saw the first sign for Binghamton. And so, with the lightest, easiest, sublimest turn of her steering wheel she decided simply not to follow it. Instead, after Stroudsburg, she stayed on route 80. According to the map on her phone this would take her west, toward Cleveland. At any point she could turn onto another road and go wherever—wherever. What else did she have to do?
For forty-seven years she’d lived in this country and had never seen it. For half her life she’d grieved for her husband and worried obsessively for her son. For decades she’d forced the vastness of her love into the pinhole of his blond face. She’d kept her house in good order, fed Alistair and taught him, tried to protect him and failed, waited for him and sheltered him, forgiven him for everything, absolutely everything, pressed every fiber of her being into her devotion to him. And now he was gone, her little boy was gone, and she had two choices. She could either let her love shrivel or she could cast it around, spread it, let it travel as far and wide as it would.
She was now on roads she’d never driven before. The cross-beamed telephone poles to her right looked like crucifixes. She had few clothes but she could buy some; she had no destinations in mind but she could pick some. She’d do this for a few weeks, maybe a few months, maybe a year. Pay every corner of her troubled, magnificent, still very young country a visit. She wasn’t worried, and she’d made her decision already.
Renounce, renounce! It was the hardest and simplest thing to do. Renounce your object, abandon your singular infatuation, give up whatever yearning blinds you to everything but its endpoint, diverts your energy away from everything but your pursuit, justifies whatever harm, whatever waste, your quest entails. Renounce, renounce, and see how your love flourishes.
She stared ahead. She was an ordinary middle-aged woman, and her possibilities were limited. But right now, as she sped west under glorious high clouds, she felt as young and naive, as hopeful and terrified, as free and foolhardy as a girl.
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Mark flew to Rio de Janeiro two days later. He told his job he was sick; he packed most of his clothes. He’d stay as long as it took.
His flight landed at night—too late for scouting. He got himself a room at a hotel in Leblon. He spent most of the next day on his little balcony, in slow-burn amazement at the city’s landscape. Blink and it was still there, improbable in its majesty.
In the evening he waited for four hours on the beach, just off Rua Teresa d’Ávila, and didn’t see him. The next evening he had no luck either. He understood why Maura had declined to give him a phone number: she wanted to break her promise as minimally as possible, and if Mark had called beforehand Alistair might well have retreated into the shadows, as he was so good at doing. The people Alistair loved had already done so much for him, and he didn’t want to cause them any more hardship. But after the second evening Mark wished he had a number. He wished Alistair understood how much of a hardship life without him had become.
He saw him the third evening. Instinctively he shuffled away on the sand and turned his body. He watched Alistair walk to the shoreline, put his feet in the water, and then retreat to the middle of the beach and sit, knees up and arms around his shins. Occasionally he looked down the beach, briefly and aimlessly. Mostly he stared at the horizon, and Mark stared with him. There was no hard place for Mark to rest his gaze, no concrete point on which to fix his attention, and he felt frustrated at first and then, eventually, serene. He didn’t need to wonder what exactly Alistair was looking at. He was looking inexactly, at everything and nothing at all.
