You are the only danger in the dark
Chapter 13 of The Lost City of Desire, an illustrated novel
{This is chapter 12 of my serialized, illustrated novel. You can read previous chapters here. For the curious, here is a synopsis of chapters 1-11: Sarah, 16, lives in Manhattan decades after an event that depopulated the city. Two other young people, Joe and Carmen, arrive from up the Hudson. Together, the three explore the city, hunting ducks and turtles in Central Park, wondering about the spiritualists in Radio City Music Hall, and becoming quick friends. They spend an evening with Terence, an illiterate librarian, who fills them in on all that has happened, and where they might want to go in search of Sarah’s parents, who have disappeared.}
We walked out of The Libray just as the sun disappeared, suspending Manhattan in a calm violet darkness. I could see down the street, but at the same time I could not see down the street. Was it dark or was it light? Am I alive or am I dead? Bats darted above us, thousands of them, darting for mosquitos.
My mother’s letter had taken me by surprise, upending everything I’d been told. I had never heard of my grandparents, let alone that they were technologists. I’d always thought – been led to believe? -- my father had been kidnapped and that my mother had gone to find him. Not this, that they’d both gone to rescue my mom’s parents. I felt hot with this information and the night looked otherworldly as I stared, dazed, up the sidewalk.
“Is it dangerous in the dark?” Joe asked.
I laughed a little bit. The question took me by surprise.
“Nothing’s dangerous around here.”
“Oh,” Joe said.
“Yeah, buck it up, you’ll be fine,” I said, pointing him in the direction of the boat.
I didn’t feel nervous at all, and why would I? The city was just a big old empty place, safe and free. Home to me. But he wasn’t used to it.
“It’s only dangerous if you fall into a hole, or down into the water. So keep your eyes open,” I called after him.
I set off towards home in the cool night air. Spring was about to give way to summer, and the night felt rich, my life full of promise.
Near my house Carmen called to me from across the street.
“Hey, Sarah!” she said.
She was flushed and happy.
“Hi. I thought you were over at the boat -- Joe just left.”
“No, I had a wander.”
“See anything good?”
“I saw how peaceful it is here. Not at all what I expected a few days ago. I felt safe everywhere, which surprised me. That was nice.”
“Yeah, it’s a big boring place.”
“Actually, I went to see the…I just kind of wandered all around. It was great.”
“Good for you,” I said.
“I should get back to the boat so Joe doesn’t worry.”
She headed west to the river, and I walked up the stoop, still carrying my gutted ducks.
My aunt and uncle were in the backyard getting a fire going to roast some of the new potatoes and carrots we’d harvested the day before.
“Hey darling,” they both said, one after the other. It was either super cute, or super creepy. I’ll choose cute. It was clear they were worried about me coming home late, but weren’t going to say a word.
“You hungry?” they said, almost in unison and a little off pitch, which was a dead giveaway that something was up.
They often said the same things at the same time when they had an announcement to make, and, generally, they sounded alike when they did. Tonight they even looked alike, with their jeans and t-shirts, their leather boots on this hot summer evening.
“Boots prevent tetanus,” they’d often told me, even though none of us had ever stepped on a nail, barefoot or not.
“Look what I brought,” I said, holding three of the ducks up by their webbed feet.
“Not bad, not bad at all,” said my uncle. He loved good food.
“And you already plucked them – wow. I love you! I hate cleaning birds,” said my aunt.
She had a hard face sometimes, my aunt. She worried too much. She always spoke softly, but you knew that inside she often was tormented. I noticed this in couples that had been together a long time. Sometimes one in the pair just seemed kind of beaten down, as though they’d lost the battle for dominance that was their love affair. I was never going to let this happen to me. Ever.
I went to the roof and showered the sweat and duck blood off my body. Someone on a roof a few blocks up was flying bright white kites that reflected the moonlight. My aunt had washed my clothes, and there was clean underwear, a t-shirt, and shorts laid out on the bed when I came down from the roof wrapped in a towel. I was a little spoiled, and it made me smile. But still.
My uncle roasted the ducks on a grill, and while they cooked my aunt sliced some tomatoes and dressed them with pear vinegar from last summer, tart and sweet at the same time, and dusted it all with cracked pepper that had lost most of its taste over the years, but still looked good on food. The moon was so bright that we cast shadows on the table.
“Are you ok?” she asked me.
Her eyes looked at me curiously. Then she raised her eyebrows. Uh oh, I thought. She’s up to something.
“Well, sure,” I said. “What d’ ya mean?”
She paused for a moment. She took a breath.
“I guess I’m not being very direct,” she said.
I just looked at her, kind of hoping she wouldn’t continue. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what she had to say.
“It’s just that I sense a difference in you lately – I mean it makes perfect sense that you’d be more independent. That you’d be finding yourself a bit – you’re getting older after all….”
What was I supposed to say? I mean, adults never quite get it, which was a lot of the reason I was starting to think I needed to get out of there. But I loved my Aunt. So I decided to try.
“Sometimes I feel a little trapped here,” I said.
She looked stricken.
“I don’t mean here in this house,” I lied. “I mean just in the city – always the same.”
“And your new friends – do they feel the same?”
“They feel the same way where they live, but not here. They feel pretty good here.”
She gave me one of those “I understand, I used to be a kid too,” looks. And then she totally surprised me.
“I think you’re one of the most capable people I’ve ever met,” she said.
Behind her my uncle smiled at me and nodded a little, and then he clapped and said “Bravo.”
She turned and they held hands.
“We support you one-hundred percent -- we just want to see you grow up and be able to take care of yourself, no matter what happens,” she said.
Wow, I thought. I’m free
.
And then I thought, Shit, what am I going to do?
And finally, I felt the deepest thought.
“I really love you guys,” I said. “You saved me when my parents couldn’t take care of me. And now I know I’ve got to go find them.”
This last part really surprised me. It was like the words jumped out of my throat on their own, without my brain getting involved. Just my heart.
“What?” said Uncle Raymond. “What do you mean?”
“I think I’ve got to go find them -- mom and dad.”
It felt funny to say those words, mom and dad. I turned to go inside, to get some salt, to start cleaning up, to do something I didn't know what, but I couldn’t leave them. Instead, I turned back and embraced my Uncle, hugged him like there was no other hug to come, ever, this was the last, and my Aunt Jane joined in so the three of us embraced until all the energy between us flowed evenly from body to body, from him to her to me and back to him. We were one.
When we let go of each other there was a long moment of sweet silence that was so slow to get awkward I thought the awkwardness might never come.
We took our meal to the front stoop and sat there eating in the fading light. We were formal, correct in our eating, careful. Everything had changed -- and none of us were accustomed to the new feeling.
I was on the bridge between childhood and whatever came after that. For the first time I understood the beauty of taking that first step off the edge of the nest. The beauty in the fear.
“Are you sure you want to do something as risky as that?” my uncle said.
“What if your mom and dad aren’t there,” my aunt joined him.
“Yes, and IDK,” I answered.
“What’s IDK?” my uncle asked.
He knew what IDK meant. He also knew what had happened to my parents. I could feel it. I’d always suspected there was a secret.
Were my parents dead? Had they betrayed us? Had they joined the cult of the Hard Fork? My aunt and uncle were withholding something right now, and they always had.
My warmth drained away on the stoop, the air suddenly cold. I went inside to get a jacket, but just stayed in my room.
I would leave this house and never return to it. What reason did I have for ever seeing my aunt and uncle again? All my life I’d been the first to say my aunt and uncle were wonderful people -- look at all they’d done for me, urchin that I was. An orphan. A stray. Sad as fuck, right? Well, it’s good to be an orphan now, because I want to be on my own.
“I am an orphan,” I said to myself, over and over. “That’s a good thing.”
I had to say it because really, I felt so sad. I wanted my mother and my father. The real mother and the real father.
An image of Joe leaning back on a couch with a cigarette in his hand flashed through me. Holy crap! In my fantasy that was our couch. Our living room. Our life together. Where did that come from? He was a stranger.
Crazy thing, the imagination. I was, like, dreaming a magazine story about the American family I had never seen -- I must have come across it at the Libray.
As the night got dark and silent I left my room. Suddenly I was on our stoop, looking at this door I’d passed through so many times before. I wondered if I could ever leave. Would my heart ever give me the space to go off on my own? This shiny black door and all that was behind it was pretty much all I knew. I opened the door and entered my life as a free person. I walked down to the Volvo, smoked a few and then fell asleep in the back, my head curled on a folded up jacket.
