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  For Mom and Dad,

  and my brothers,

  and for Robert, the boy on the mountain

  part one

  parents

  so long, farewell

  november 30, 1983

  Mathilde’s father, James Spicer, had been the last person she’d known to use a shoehorn and a handkerchief, archaic tools gone the way of arrowheads and telegrams. He’d been an art dealer. Mathilde’s father, who’d been polite when sober, was square-headed with big and fat feet. Who’d worn a camel-colored coat and hat, which he’d always tip in elevators. Mathilde’s father, who’d smelled like ash, pastrami, and melancholy.

  They had a routine. Every work evening she’d hear the door unfasten in their apartment. She’d yell, Daddy’s coming home! He’d say, hello, Boots, because of how he’d claim she was only as tall as the tops of his boots. Her mother, Judy Spicer, would hover in the next room like a minor character in a play.

  Daddy’s coming home!, and he’d open the door, and he’d come home.

  Boots, he’d say, what was the very best part of your day? He’d pull her onto his lap. He’d squeeze between the backs of her shoulders—the place where wings would have sprouted, if humans grew wings.

  Mathilde would say, this minute. She loved him as fiercely as a daughter could love her father, even one who was acquainted with his flaws—such as the nights he came home knee-deep in his scotch, burping, and slurrily calling her Roots instead of Boots.

  Daddy’s coming home!, and he’d open the door, and he’d come home. If she were lucky, he’d be sober. She wasn’t always lucky. Regardless, it was good to have a father in the house.

  When Mathilde’s father suffered a Heart attack on the 2 train coming home from work, she’d been in the middle of a rehearsal. Mathilde was sixteen, and her father had been forty-four. She was Liesl in the Lycée Français de New York’s production of The Sound of Music. She was lucky because Jack Jetter was cast as Rolf. Rolf and Liesl were in love.

  Mathilde had always fancied Jack, who was a grade older, but truly fell in an incurable love at their high school homecoming dance. This was four months before. The song playing in the background had been the Supremes. “Baby Love.” Jack had pressed his cheek against hers, half a head and a mouth taller. When the song was over, he kissed her forehead, sputtered a raspberry on her left ear. You’re going to make some man very lucky someday. I’m already jealous.

  Someday a man would love her. Mathilde couldn’t imagine making anybody lucky, let alone a man. - Maybe he loves me, - she fooled herself. - Except why can’t he be that man? -

  The next morning, Mathilde heard the same song on the radio, her favorite golden oldies station, counting the times Diana Ross sang baby. There were twelve different babys Diana crooned after the other, twelve babys clunking like pennies, waiting to be wishes at the bottom of a fountain. Baby baby baby, Mathilde shimmied, at home with the silvery superfluousness of her own voice. Twelve was the magic number. If Jack’s picture appeared in the yearbook twelve times, it meant he loved her. If she saw him twelve times that week in the hallway, it meant he loved her. But twelve was an unkind number, spare and rationed. In order to get to twelve, you had to go one and two and so on, and before you knew it, you lost it to thirteen.

  Mathilde wasn’t sure if each baby referred to a different beloved, whom Diana must have loved at some point but now could not differentiate from the next baby, or to just one sweetHeart she felt compelled to repeat twelve times over. Some wheeling form of melodic echolalia sent infections masked as energies through Mathilde’s eardrum. Had Mathilde really fallen in love? Mathilde thought of each baby crying in her arms, twelve babies calling her a naïve little schoolgirl who should not even pretend to know what love was.

  Jack fed Mathilde’s fancy the next four months during rehearsals, insisting they get into character by repeating dialogue that Liesl and Rolf would have said to each other but that wasn’t in the script, calling it method.

  Liesl, Jack told Mathilde, I love you. Sometimes, if she really pretended, it was Jack saying it to Mathilde, not Rolf to Liesl.

  Rolf, Mathilde told Jack, I can’t live without you. His eyes were bright and uncomplicated, like bridge lights. Every minute she loved him more.

  They’d been rehearsing “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” the day her father died. It was Mathilde’s turn, to sing about how she needed someone older and wiser telling her what to do, and at last Jack sang, you are sixteen going on seventeen; I’ll take care of you. That was Mathilde’s favorite line in the play. Her father was dead. She had one hour left to find out.

  When they finished, Jack pulled Mathilde aside and asked if she had time to go over the scene where Rolf, a member of the Nazi Party in the second act of the play, tries to shoot Liesl’s father, The Captain.

  Practice your face, Jack told Mathilde. You don’t look convincing enough.

  Mathilde tried to look forlorn, her teeth tingling as Jack studied her face. To limit her arousal, she thought of filth. A documentary of the Vietnam War that had been on TV the other night. Roaches the sizes of half-dollars. The girl in her grade who always said sorry for raising her hand in class, who smelled sometimes like clay.

  Why are you smiling? lisped Jack, burbling like he would with a mouthful of pulp, what, is this part too cerebral for you?—the very worst of his insults. Jack’s opinions were immaculate.

  It’s not like that, said Mathilde. I’m just punchy.

  You can do this, Mathilde, said Jack. You have to. But the more Mathilde held it in, the more her pure and flustery pubertal love wanted to husk itself out of her.

  They practiced the scene with Jack insisting he wouldn’t be leaving until they had no seams left. He ministered until their guidance counselor came in. Mathilde, your mother just called. Can you come into my office?

  the mathilde who was not herself

  1987

  Of all the roles she’d ever play in her life, Mathilde’s most ambitious character was a lead in a Scottish play called Textbook Case. Mathilde was twenty, an acting major at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, studying abroad at the Wimbledon College of Arts in London for a semester. Mathilde was Milla, a damaged, rash, and unabashed orphan placed in foster care her entire small life. To perfect her role she shut herself in her flat for at least five hours a day, accessing her darkest parts.

  For if she wasn’t suffering for her art, what was she suffering for?

  She’d start by announcing, pleasure to meet you. I’m Milla. This was the ritual she’d repeat for all of her characters. After her introduction, she was jettisoned of herself, no longer Mathilde.

  As Milla, Mathilde forced herself to think of her parents at their worst. The times when they’d be late to pick her up from school or parties. The moments she’d look into her father’s face and register an eerie nonentity. Not enough energy for love, or not enough prioritizing that love. His life was defined by more important things than his children. (Mathilde had a younger brother, Sawyer.)

  Her parents used to have earsplitting fights, as loud as the Old Testament god. Her father would say to her mother, you have some set of morals, toots, resorting to sarcasm when livid. His worst words could have been misconstrued as sweet had they not been delivered with a tone that could make anyone suppurate—christening her mother sweetHeart, baby, precious, when thei
r arguments were the dirtiest, forever ruining these words for Mathilde. Whenever anybody would call Mathilde by an endearing nickname, her feelings would be hurt, and she’d curdle a desire to squish her hands together.

  It was too bad, for she was commonly nicknamed by innocuous octogenarians. Here’s your change, honey, a man holding a newspaper once told her when she was in her twenties. He looked like a retired firefighter or a Depression-wizened businessman who spent his life making money for his next four generations.

  - Fuck you, - thought Mathilde but said, thank you.

  Mathilde figured if the average person was about 50 percent selfish, then her parents had been 75 percent: the kind of people who probably shouldn’t have had children but did anyway, who did a halfway decent job but were by no means outstanding parents. Her father had vices—drinking, smoking, gambling. Her mother was more interested in being a wife than a mother. She was also greedy—the only person Mathilde ever knew who didn’t believe in charity.

  Mathilde poisoned herself with her thoughts for hours. - My parents would probably rather have three million dollars instead of me. I have a life that only looks fine on the outside. -

  The troupe toured Europe and America that summer. Mathilde played Milla to different audiences in different theaters and festivals, ending in a converted abandoned hotel theater in Manhattan. While the rest of the cast went their own ways, most of them back to Europe, Mathilde stayed in New York and finished college.

  There’s this one part in Textbook Case where Milla asks another orphan, won’t you beat me, so I know I did something wrong? These words came back to Mathilde in quieted parcels later in life. On her twenty-fifth birthday, as she opened a gift, Mathilde thought, - won’t you beat me, so I know I’ve done something wrong? - At twenty-nine, when she accidentally set off her car alarm she thought, - won’t you beat me, so I know I’ve done something wrong? - Once, when she was in the shower washing her hair, Mathilde asked herself, - won’t you beat me, so I know I’ve done something wrong? - At thirty-six, as her mother lay in the hospital with a cancer quiet in her body, Mathilde thought, - won’t you beat me, so I know I’ve done something wrong? -

  not a love story

  (though it tries)

  september 10, 1988

  As Mathilde grew up on the Upper West Side of New York City, Claudio was growing up in a wasteland suburb of Detroit. Mathilde grew up with a comfortable amount of money; Claudio with no money. When Mathilde graduated high school, Claudio was graduating the University of Michigan with a degree in business. The night of his graduation, he paid twenty dollars for a Greyhound to New York. He had four shirts, sneakers, sunglasses, three pairs of underwear, blue jeans, a well-deserved bank account, and plans to open up a vinyl store. He was sort of crying when he got off the bus, but he wore the sunglasses.

  He’d been able to afford Michigan only through the scholarship he’d received. The bank account was a result of waiting tables throughout high school and college. The best part about going to college there was not needing to take out student loans or borrow money from anybody. One of Claudio’s true loves was music, which made sense after having spent his entire youth saving his money. Vinyls he could borrow and lend with friends. The songs caught in his head were free. He rarely made transactions for anything tangible—never clothes, nor meals in restaurants, nor tickets to elsewhere. - Music is air, - he thought. - You can recycle it. -

  Claudio had neuroses about the amount of money he spent, feeling infelicitous if he thought about it too much. - Why the fuck did I buy that overpriced fish dish; why did I ask the bartender for top-shelf gin? - It always added up. To indulge himself, Claudio listened to music all the time—in the shower, as he slept, while he talked on the phone. Music made him wealthier.

  Claudio grew a beard and hand-rolled his cigarettes and ate only black bread and trusted no one when he moved to New York. He wanted to appear older than he was but couldn’t help attracting college students as friends, who’d come to his store and pick out records for their parties. Eight-tracks had long been out, and CDs were new, but neither sounded as good, as emotionally reviving, as the records. Claudio banked on nothing being better quality than records for a long time, risking his whole fiscal life on this.

  He’d never even been to New York before. - Get out, - he’d told himself. - Never come back. - He’d have to make his own luck, which was fine. He’d never felt at ease depending on others. He’d only needed to find some people he could employ for family.

  How’d you guys meet? folks would ask.

  Claudio always said, we made out at a party on St. Mark’s.

  Mathilde always said, we met through friends.

  What really happened was they attended a party in an NYU undergraduate’s apartment where vodka was dispensed through feeding tubes hung from the wall. The undergraduate, a friend of Mathilde’s, had bought a Hall & Oates record from Claudio’s store and thought that the way Claudio smiled with his tongue sticking out of his teeth while ringing her up was cute in a grainy way, so she invited him to her place.

  Claudio drank vodkas because he didn’t know anybody. Everything around him started to look like glass. The apartment had two floors with a steel staircase in the shape of fusilli and narrow circular steps, which Claudio fell down, responding to his own plunge with Jesus H. His ass smarted. All over the wall were hundreds of cookbooks. Adjusting himself right side up, he noticed a pair of thin legs, then the woman attached to them. Have mercy. Mathilde looked mature. Maybe she’d be too grown up for such foolishness.

  Nice rings. Claudio scanned her hands. She wore two rings, but the left wasn’t a diamond, so he could try his own hand with hope. Is that where you live?

  I’m sorry?

  Where in your body do you spend the most time?

  Well, my head, said Mathilde. You? She thought, - won’t you beat me, so I know I did something wrong? - And then she thought about a line from a play she did two years ago, titled Pretend It’s a Party. The line was - I’m tired of you laughing at me. -

  No wonder, Claudio said, you look so much in la-la land. Anyone in particular you’re thinking about?

  Nobody too special, admitted Mathilde. She’d been thinking of Milla from Textbook Case, whom she’d left in her brain with the rest of the characters she’d played. Milla didn’t know how to read or write. She had no outlet outside of her head, and fear crowded her thoughts. Considerably speaking, Mathilde was much luckier than Milla. How she missed her!

  Milla wouldn’t have been so shy around Claudio. By this point, Milla would have been touching Claudio’s arm, laughing at his jokes, feeling his swinish body hairs stand for her attention. Claudio would have thought Milla was more fun than Mathilde. A firecracker. - You’re making the wrong choice, buddy, - Mathilde felt like saying.

  She was being classic Mathilde. Thinking of her characters as though they were friends of hers. How could she tell Claudio that the people she missed most of all weren’t real or that they were part of her?

  Besides, Claudio would be sure to dislike her once he found out how juvenile she was. Mathilde had light-years of maturity when it came to cognition—she could probably hold court with MENSA members—but when it came to her kinesthetic sense, she was childish. She mixed up her right and left, cried during happy moments, laughed during sad ones, and didn’t know temperance when it came to corporal needs like falling asleep or needing to use the bathroom. Whatever she felt, she could not wait to do. Her body held all of her clout.

  The party overflowed with people and expensive talk. Two a.m. in the city was like 10:00 p.m. anywhere else. You need some water or something? yelled Claudio. His word water came out as waw-duh. Lately and astoundingly he’d heard himself already start to have a New York accent, pronouncing forest farrest and almond ah-min.

  Soft fingers of smoke curled around their faces, an effluvium infection of their hair and clothes. This was pre-Giuliani, a time when everyone smoked indoors and felt their surroundings made the
m stronger.

  Mathilde suggested they find someplace quieter, and so they came across the fire escape. Claudio opened the window and pinched the loose skin between her pointer and middle finger. Hand fat, he joked. Mathilde stuck out her tongue.

  Here, we can fit, said Mathilde.

  You sure you’re relaxed? asked Claudio, watching his breath in front of his face. He felt like a cool smoker.

  It’s New York, said Mathilde. You get good at being comfortable in tiny and risky places.

  The time felt necessary at the end of the party for Claudio to ask Mathilde, do you want to go for dinner sometime this week? He squinted and shook his head, as though Mathilde had already rejected him, though they’d Eskimo kissed for almost an hour atop a pile of coats. The effort was there: Claudio made moves but let Mathilde feel like she had some control over the situation. And Mathilde minded Claudio, letting him touch the side of her back as he asked, letting his reticence fade. Touching her back felt firm, filling, sufficient.

  Oh sure, said Mathilde.

  Mathilde had no way to know this, but the word sure rubbed Claudio wrong. He thought it beget a lackluster quality, that people said it when they didn’t take things seriously. Maybe he’d made the wrong decision? - Oh, come on, - he thought. He never really dated in New York, just had girls he’d talk to, go to concerts with, and occasionally sleep with.

  The last had been a lawyer named Viola. Viola with the barbed cheekbones and the body starry with moles. She ate his leftovers, held her own at parties, and they were a fit in terms of maturity: Claudio needed to feel older, and Viola liked to say she was born forty. Viola was okay. But for some reason he and Viola had always been in a fight. He didn’t know how—it wasn’t as if he ever looked for trouble. How did people go about having relationships? What kind of process was it, and how organic? He would’ve loved to date a girl had he known precisely how.