Slonim Woods 9, page 17
Immediately when I arrived at the airport, I realized I’d forgotten my passport—it just hadn’t occurred to me that I would be flying between countries. I felt like an idiot, and called my brother, who said he would buy me a ticket for the next morning. So I took the train back to Norwich, the bus to campus, draining the meager savings I’d scrounged together for this trip, grabbed my passport, said “Hi” to the flatmates I’d passed on my way in, laughing as I rushed out again, then back to London, then finally, finally, I was in line for my flight. I was rummaging through my toiletry bag, in which I thought I’d stowed my headphones for some reason, when my thumb went numb and an odd ache traveled up my knuckle. I knew I was bleeding before I even saw it, like my brain dropped into the bag where my thumb could be, for a moment, still whole. I pulled my hand out of the bag, and as I looked at my thumb, I felt a distant interest in the deep slice that mouthed open when I flexed, when I manipulated the digit, and the tiny curtain of red already running down my hand. I had touched, I realized, the safety razor I’d bought for myself at Larry’s behest, which must have come loose in my toiletry bag.
I looked up and down the line of people, but no one seemed to notice. I stepped forward in unison with the person ahead of me toward the gate and the beeps of accepted boarding passes, legally recognizable identities. I have to put pressure on it, my head said, and wanting to keep the other hand free for my boarding pass, I pressed the forefinger of the same hand down on the split-open thumb, with the other three fingers sticking out. Blood was dripping onto the floor, so I hid my hand inside my backpack. I got through the gate that way, figuring they would have a Band-Aid on the plane, and as I boarded, I revealed my hand to the flight attendant.
“Oh my god, your hand,” the flight attendant said, looking at the wound, then back at the line that stretched behind me up the Jetway. “I’m so sorry, I don’t think we have anything on board, but I’ll check for you.”
I shuffled to my seat, and before takeoff the flight attendant came back and confirmed there was no first-aid kit on the plane. Did I need to get off the plane? I shook my head no. I couldn’t imagine how my brother would react if I screwed this up further, and I’d spent the last of my meager funds on all these bus and train trips. This had to be it. It felt like major sections of my brain had shut down at some point, without me noticing—or maybe the parts of my brain in charge of noticing were the ones that had shut down. For the next couple of hours, I sat in a plane to Amsterdam to meet my brother, keeping pressure on the wound until the blood coagulated and my hand was glued into an A-OK position. When I arrived at the Amsterdam airport, I would take the train from the airport in the wrong direction, get off in the Dutch countryside, and nervously approach a confusingly beautiful Dutch person, who would explain to me that I had to turn around, buy another ticket, and go back the other way, which I did, now completely out of money, until finally I arrived in the city.
* * *
In my brother’s hotel room, I pulled my fingers apart, and the blood began to flow again. He’d let me in to drop off my bags, then had to go to a business meeting, so I had the city to myself. He’d also taken the hotel room key, of which there was only one—I guessed it was some arrangement with his work where he was supposed to be the only one staying in the room—so when I left, I’d be locked out. I didn’t have any money, so I wouldn’t be able to eat until he got back from work that evening. On a small glass table near the TV, there was a mountainous piece of cheese, almost a quarter wheel, which I guessed my brother had gotten that morning while he waited for me to arrive, probably thinking what an immature mess I was. The hotel room was modern and claustrophobic. I looked around for something to cut the cheese with but found nothing. There were two water glasses covered with little paper doilies next to the bathroom sink. I used my non-dominant, not-bleeding hand to scrape the lip of the glass against the hard cheese, carving out crumbled crescents. I ate until I felt sick, shaving away places I’d used my other hand to keep the block steady to hide the red prints.
Once my finger stopped bleeding, I walked around the city, admiring the narrow leaning houses reflected in the canals. Eventually, I discovered that Amsterdam was smaller than I’d imagined, and I’d walked pretty much everywhere, getting more and more tired from the cheese and the hunger underneath it, not to mention my inability to stop or sit anywhere because I didn’t have money to buy a coffee. Eventually, my brother called me—he was back at the hotel and could let me in—and when I walked into the room, he was changing out of his work suit into jeans. “Hey, man! How was your day? Let me take you out tonight.” I wondered how much my legs looked like his, or would in twelve years, the skin pale from being trapped in slacks all day, I guessed, and the black hair, which on my legs was more of a suggestion, closer to Velcro. Seeing him always felt like looking into a mirror and having trouble being able to recognize the person reflected—it threw me off balance.
“I’m kind of tired,” I said. I was sitting on the only bed. I couldn’t remember if we’d ever shared one before.
He ignored me, stuffing his wallet into his pocket. “I’d planned for us to have more time, but since you came a day late, we’ve only got tonight. Come on, we’ll go to the red-light district and walk around.”
* * *
I didn’t expect it to actually be so red. The red light behind each window rolled out over the street and then sank into the black water of the canals. My brother led me through crowds of milling tourists, the laughing groups of college-aged boys, my age, I realized, and occasionally we would turn down stretches of narrow alleyway where the lower-rent, more niche prostitutes swayed in their picture-frame windows. Occasionally we stood and looked, and I wondered if the red light was absorbing the flush rushing to my face, if it made the acne on my forehead blend in. My brother pulled me farther along, as if we had somewhere particular to be. We had gotten drinks and street food, and he’d paid for everything, which made me feel younger, and beholden. At least I wasn’t hungry anymore.
He walked ahead, a version of my future, lit red. After a few more turns, we stopped again, and the woman behind the glass in front of us beckoned. Through the light, between her legs, I could see a room. I hadn’t thought about it, but of course there was a room—and in it was a bed, and on the bed was a towel. The grid of windows, the people inside, the rooms—boxes into which you could disappear. It all felt so familiar; I couldn’t figure out why. I was afraid my brother thought I was a virgin, and he was going to try to pay for me to have sex. We stood for what seemed like a long time, and I felt awkward for the woman in the window, who had to keep writhing. I stared at the glowing ruby space between the woman’s legs, which came together and apart as she moved, her thighs blinking, revealing and then hiding the bed, the towel, the red. Open, close. Open, close. On, off. On, off. I wanted a way out of this life, out of this I.
“You want another drink?” my brother asked. He had walked a little ways down the alley, and was beckoning.
I followed him to a bar, which was like any other bar late on a weekend, burgeoning and loud. I stood up against the wall; my brother was snaking his way back from the bar, holding two beers above the crowd. At the same moment he arrived and handed me my drink, two men wearing business suits came up to us.
“Excuse me,” one of them said. He had a thick German accent. “You are Jewish?”
I felt immediately a kind of fear and confusion I wasn’t used to. Most of our family had died in the Holocaust, in Belarus and Germany and Poland, and we were the remnants of the few who’d crossed to America. Now I was back on the wrong side of the ocean. My mom had warned me about anti-Semitism in Europe, but I’d brushed her off. That didn’t happen anymore, surely. Without thinking, I told the men yes, we were Jewish. “Ah, that’s what we thought,” the other German businessman said. “We just wanted to say how we are sorry.”
They were standing there, expectant. “Excuse me?” I said.
The second man seemed prepared for this. He leaned toward me and dipped his head, a shallow bow, as much prostration as the crowded bar would allow. “We are German,” he said, by way of explanation.
“Oh. That’s okay,” I said. It came out automatically, the forgiveness. I didn’t know what to do, or who I was speaking for. We all stood there awkwardly. Then I turned back to my brother, and the men dissolved into the crowd.
“That was crazy,” my brother said, and we forgot about it, spending the rest of the night talking about our parents, and what I would do when I went home.
YOU DON’T HAVE ANY idea how this works, Danel. You come to a place like this, Ralph Lauren, Bergdorf, Louis Vuitton, and they understand how to take care of you. Look, sit in this chair. We used to come to the Ralph Lauren women’s store here all the time and I’d sit right there, they bring you a scotch, and I’d watch Talia try on clothes. I’d give her everything she wanted. That’s what a father does. Takes care of his baby. Teresa didn’t understand. Look at this one. This sweater. Feel it. Have you ever seen a color like that? In high, luxury fashion—you wouldn’t know this—it’s not about design. It’s about color. That’s what you don’t realize. Every year, they’re coming out with new colors. Really look into it, deep into it, the color, Danny, yeah, get close. Have you ever seen a color like that? No, that’s not the one for Tal this year. Come over here.
I want you to hold on to my bag, can you do that? Do not open it and stay in my sight. Good. Teresa didn’t understand that when you’re married, and you have kids, the relationship between parent and child supersedes the relationship between the couple. That’s natural. Once Talia was born, she was my whole world. Teresa couldn’t stand it. Isn’t this beautiful? This store. This is how life should be. How your life should be, too. This is what I’m trying to give you. Elegance, beauty. Look at this shelf. Every detail considered. Look at the grain of that wood. You’re used to ignoring everything, right? Details like that. I want to wake you up, Danny, and you’re close, you are. I can see it in you, you’ve been awake to these aspects of reality, but then something changed in the last few years, didn’t it? I bet you wonder what that was. I know, and I could tell you, but you have to find it for yourself. That’s the only way it works. Come here. Stop following me around, I swear you’re like a tumor sometimes. Come on. Talia would like this one. Do you know what you call that color? That’s right, cerulean, exactly. Very good, Danny. Here’s what I want you to think about—can you tell me what the difference is between an adult and a child?
We need to fix that mumbling problem of yours. Either say something or don’t. There isn’t one. You thought there was, didn’t you? That’s what’s been so important to me as a parent, to treat my daughters as adults. This one is perfect. Exactly what she needs right now. How do I know? You wouldn’t even be able to comprehend the millions, literally millions, of tiny decisions that go into choosing something like this and understanding how it will affect someone. You’ll see. Come with me back downstairs, bring my bag.
So many people make the mistake of treating kids as kids, as if they’re some fundamentally different being, as if their ability to form thoughts, to understand things, to be conscious, to be responsible, is different or limited. They have it all, already, inside them, it’s all right there—it’s them we should be learning from. They’re like the history of human society itself—all the knowledge we’ve ever had has always been contained inside us. There’s no difference between you and a person a thousand years ago, the same way there’s no difference between an adult and a child. And in the same way, there’s no reason that person a thousand years ago couldn’t, with the right combination of circumstances, become as advanced as we are now. I could teach you to become as advanced as humans will be a thousand years from today. The concern our society has with age is a puritanical construct. But, more importantly, we traumatize our children by treating them for the first half of their lives like they are crippled, broken versions of adults. Like they don’t have preferences and are unable to make choices. Thank you, we’ll take this one. Cash. Let me ask you: What makes an adult, Danel? You know this one. That’s right, preferences. I brought Talia to this store when she was very young, ten or twelve, and she wanted a sweater, just like these. Cashmere, knit, all of it, and you saw how much these cost, right? Thousands of dollars. For a sweater. Her mom flipped. Why? Because she thought Talia didn’t deserve it. Because, she said, a little girl would ruin something so nice, or have no use for it. But let me ask you this: Why wouldn’t I want my honeygirl to have something beautiful like this? She was expressing herself, her preferences, her adulthood, her personhood, and her mom couldn’t understand that at all. If I didn’t get Tal the sweater, I was saying this thing mattered more than she did, that she was worth less than a few thousand dollars. On the other hand, if I got it for her, and Talia ruined the sweater, well then I would sure as hell make sure she knows I care more about her than I do about a thing, no matter how much it’s worth. Did your parents make you feel that way, or did you constantly feel as if things might be more valuable to your parents than you were? Exactly, that’s what I thought. Don’t I know things, Danny? Besides, I trusted her. Ever since then, I got Tal one of these sweaters every single year for Christmas, just like we are now. She never ruined a single one of them. Of course she didn’t. Teresa hated that.
Come across the street with me, Danny, you might as well see the men’s store. I can’t believe you’ve never been here. Your parents never took you here, shopping on Fifth Avenue, not even once? Yes, the women’s and men’s stores are separate, whole buildings on either side of Fifth Avenue. Why would that be surprising to you? It makes sense, doesn’t it? It does look like Paris, that’s right. I spent some undercover time there, actually, I’ll have to tell you about that sometime. Let’s cross. Teresa couldn’t stand how I took care of Talia. When Talia would come in the house crying with her shins skinned because she’d fallen down on the sidewalk, you know how I’d make her feel better? I’d say, show me where that sidewalk is that hurt you so I can beat it up. And she knew I would. I would actually do it, to protect her. I’d punch the ground for her, you see? Her mom would blame her, would tell her she should be more responsible, would worry about the clothes getting scuffed up. Like that’s any way to treat a child.
Come upstairs. I really want you to admire the craftsmanship here. You are living inside a sliver of life, taking in one percent of everything. Open your eyes, Danny, think about how things work, the choices that have been made, how richly imbued every single aspect of the world is with meaning. Why is Ralph Lauren so successful? Every choice, no matter how small, has been made deliberately and with care. I am teaching you to be like that. You could be as successful as Ralph Lauren, but in any field you want, if you listened to me.
We have to cut to the inside of everything. I have to show you how it works. Look at the dark hardwood of these floors, the columns, and how that disappears into the white, vaulted ceiling. What does that make you think of? Right, it is kind of like a cathedral, exactly. At the same time it is like the inside of a very elegant closet. So what does that tell you? That what you put on your body, what you acquire here, is holy. Man is made in God’s image, but man determines what God’s image is. You see? It’s very rare for a mother to be abusive like Teresa was, did you know that? Don’t nod like that, Danny, you didn’t know that. But it’s more common than people think, it just goes unreported, under the surface. My own mother was abusive, terribly abusive. Do you know what a cat-o’-nine-tails is? She used to whip me with one of those. But I got her. When I was old enough, I walked out of that house—my dad had divorced her by then, and he was waiting by the car on the curb—and I turned around on the stoop and punched her right in her fucking face. That’s right. And Talia did something just like that, in a way, when she refused her mother’s custody. You never did anything like that in your life, did you, Danny? Wouldn’t you like to be a person who could do something like that, before it’s too late?
Look at this sweater. This color’s called cantaloupe. Do you like it? What do you mean “neon-y”? Danny, don’t make me hit you. You’re too afraid to wear bright colors. Learn to exist. Look at me, I’m wearing pink. I’m not afraid to be a man who wears an expressive color. I am who I am, I have my preferences, and you would never question me, would you? That’s right. You better not. I’m kidding, Danny, calm down, I’m not going to hit you in Ralph Lauren. Give me my bag back. You have to start expressing your preferences if you’re going to move forward. You like this sweater, don’t you? I’m going to get it for you. No, don’t worry about it. Try it on. See, I told you, the cantaloupe looks great. No one else in the apartment is afraid to wear bright colors, you notice that? Tal and me have been wearing color since she was born. You should let yourself shine to the world. Why do you feel the need to hide? Stop mumbling, Danel. Feel that. You’ve never owned cashmere before, have you? Most cashmere you see in stores isn’t even really cashmere. This is the real thing. It feels like something else entirely, doesn’t it? Like a material that doesn’t even exist. That’s yours now. Think about how that feels. That it’s yours and I’m giving that to you. You have to learn gratitude, too, if you want to be happy. I’m giving you the thing I would only give my daughter every year. Keep it on, wear it.
It’s good that they broke up, Santos and Talia. Good for both of them. You didn’t see how that went down. Scary, scary stuff, Santos. Talia’s like me, she’s going to have a tendency to want to help people, a compulsion almost, because she knows how extremely high-functioning and capable her mind is. She knows that she can help. The difference is that she can’t understand a mind like Santos’s. She doesn’t have the training. She can’t relate, you see. Thank you. No, that’ll be cash. Thank you very much. I felt the way she does now, once, unable to understand why people think the way they do, act the way they do. It seemed chaotic, nonsensical, until I trained myself deliberately to understand the illogic of so many human minds. That’s what I’m giving Tal now—training, so that she’s able to understand and help the way she wants to. I’m doing everything, letting my life get put on hold, my things get broken, my plans for a life with Tal get sabotaged. We have to protect her, Danny. Come on, let’s head back. You got that stuff? I’m calling the driver. Oh yes, Tal saw the darkness in him. She just didn’t know the extent of it.
