The Border of Paradise

DAVID (1935–1954)

I’ve never known a man who has taken his own life, and so I’ve never read a suicide letter, seeing as how the final words of such uncelebrated and self-condemned souls are so privately guarded. Still, I can’t help but think such letters all must be the same, because what else can be said but, over and over again, Sorry, sorry, I am so sorry, in the way that someone newly smitten can only say, I love you, I love you, I love you, like one of the Wellbrook patients I grew accustomed to in my incarcerations. In particular I am thinking of a schizophrenic woman with chin-length, ashen hair, stooped in her wheelchair, who repeated the word plum, such that the hum of that word faded into the background of everything, including the screams of other patients, the soft rush of water, plum, puh-lum, until the word shed its meaning, becoming nothing but sound.

This motel room is not as depressing as I thought it would be. Someone has taken pains to make the place palatable; I have yet to see a cockroach. Only one or two flies the size of kidney beans occasionally dive-bomb the air. The bed’s comforter itches, but is printed with an assortment of nice English roses. Note that a man conflicted about his suicide will reflexively stop and smell the proverbial roses. The cheap blue curtains let the light through, and when I first walked to the window to pull them shut I saw that one of them had been carefully stitched near the edge, where I’m assuming it was once torn, and in the end I take this all to mean that this place is as good as any to die. I didn’t want to end things anywhere near the house, where my wife could find me — or, even more horrible to consider, my children. If I had my way, I’d hang myself peacefully from one of the trees in our wood, but that seems more blasphemous than this, somehow, and I’m grateful to this humble little Motel Ponderosa of no significance, which is a small grace.

I had breakfast this morning miles from here with my son, William; my daughter, Gillian; and Daisy, who is my wife. We had bacon, and fry bread cooked in the grease, and eggs fried in whatever grease was left. I watched William sop up the yolk with a crust of bread. I watched Gillian scrape her plate, her hair in a little topknot tied with a red velvet ribbon. I watched Daisy, whose face in the light was worn smooth like a rock under the same persistent current of worry. Click, click, click, I thought, committing them to memory to be preserved and then destroyed, because even in my moribund state I could see the simple beauty of it, and silently I asked the Lord to bless my family, even if neither he nor they will ever forgive me for my desertion. Those three were persistently beset by trouble, and worse, they still loved me; so how this can be anything but a betrayal and an unfairness, I don’t know.

I’ve been returning to The Confessions more than to the Bible these days, but it’s become difficult to understand what I mean to accomplish through any style of confession. I have sinned, and I had hoped to expose and atone for my sins. I hoped to cast them out, as Christ cast the demons into swine, so that the Lord might take pity on my soul — this, despite the saying that God never gives a person more than he can handle — but what about despair? For so many years I have thought I ought to be able to handle this, and the only refrain that returned to me was I’m in pain, I’m in pain, I’m in pain. “Spare Thy servant from the power of the enemy,” said Augustine. And yet Augustine achieved sainthood, an achievement for which not even I am insane enough to dream.

I was born with good fortune, the only son of Francine and Peter Nowak; and my father, whom I called Ojciec, was the president and owner of the Nowak Piano Company. Nowak pianos are less known now. For a handful of decades they were nearly as well known as Mason & Hamlins, or even Steinways, because of their combination of quality and affordability. Our name was significant in a city full of significant names. But for most of my childhood we were at war, with our manufactory building gliders to carry troops behind enemy lines, and during this time we made only four pianos, sent overseas to the troops for entertainment’s sake.

War meant instability. I was only four when the war began, and I can’t recall life before it, but I had absorbed enough to know that the war shoved everything off-kilter. The radio threatened us with new forms and styles of entertainment as much as it threatened its listeners with news from the front. My parents refused to buy one on principle, which meant that news reached us a beat after it hit everyone else, or else we caught snatches and bits of it from family friends; but this, too, seemed to be a purposeful, buffering act. Ojciec visited the factory as though our lives were no different. In watching the rib press, he peered over his glasses at the torque wrench, which had already been double-checked by the workers; he paced vigilantly in the gluey conditioning room and examined the bridge press for inaccurate gauges; he came home smelling of instruments pregnant with music, of chemicals and wood. He came home tired, but the factory also gave him substance. To Ojciec, being the paterfamilias of the remaining Nowak clan meant little if it didn’t involve our pianos as well.

A slender, fair woman with a bump in her thin nose, my mother, whom I called Matka, was primarily occupied with caring for her only son, and secondarily occupied with spending money, albeit in an abstracted, halfhearted way. She brought me with her to estate sales in Blenheim, in Lysander, in Hastings, where we sifted through abandoned belongings and plundered what we wanted, returning to our brownstone with armfuls of yellowing Edwardian dresses and stuffed toys worn with love before being left behind like Moses in the reeds. As I headed up the stairs to my bedroom after such excursions, my arms laden with toys, my mother would put her cool hand on the back of my neck, lean down, and anoint the top of my head with a kiss. It wasn’t as though we were oblivious to what was happening overseas, although I see the oddity now of what Matka and I were doing: buying up the belongings of the dead while the dead piled up away from home. We did, financially and emotionally, feel the pinch of war less than most of Greenpoint. We were utterly grateful to Our Lord for this.

Very early on I realized that I was not like other boys I knew, or not as good at pretending to be anything other than what I was. What energies I had were sadly misdirected, scattershot, toward obscure targets. While I ran around with the other kids in McCarren Park, getting my shoes muddy and looking like any other golden-haired son of Polish America, I was also fretting about my bunny Flopsy’s left eye coming loose as his right one had, until I had to stop and catch my breath, a rising panic looming in my chest and forcing me home. While playing stickball I made myself ill, and even vomited in the grass, from dwelling on Leo the Lion’s head, which had fallen off its crumbling spring. I’d attributed to these dolls a kind of anima or animus. I wouldn’t say that I believed them to be truly living, but I did invest enough of my emotional attention into each one that they may as well have been alive. I kept them in the bottom dresser drawer, away from Ojciec’s disapproval, and dressed them fastidiously in the mornings and again at bedtime. Leaving these chores undone would undo me; it was the beginning of my so-called neuroses, though at the time I had no word for it.

Generally, I tried to mind my p’s and q’s when I was with my fellow children, putting up the best front I could. I threw rocks at Louise Bielecki, for example, and I called her snaggletoothed, the memories of which are enough to make me weep into my hands.

At the age of ten I borrowed a slender volume from the library, titled The Man Who Loved Wolves—a tell-all biography about William P. Harding, the infamous National Geographic writer and photographer who lived for years among wolves, and who was known best for being the first man to expose the phenomenon of wolf cannibalism. On the cover Harding posed in a runner’s crouch atop a cliff, with his hands on the backs of two large, sitting wolves. His facial expression suggested a deep-seated anguish extant since birth. What drew me to this book was not the cover, however, but Harding’s quote on the dust jacket: “Man and wolf are the same creature — brutal, beautiful, and not meant to be alone.” But while I sprawled out on my bed, slowly paging through the saga of Harding’s life, the scenes of wilderness and wolves gave way to a lurid depiction of his alcoholism and suicide, and this I could not comprehend. To be sure, my parents drank; but they had never fallen down a flight of stairs and broken four ribs and an arm, as Harding had, nor had they even considered (I was certain of this) leaping off a cliff to be picked at by vultures for days before their rotting corpses were discovered, again as Harding had.

Remembering it today, my bafflement is almost touching. That a man could purposefully end his own life, and in so doing give up his most beloved things, was truly beyond my understanding. Yet from my childish, perhaps preconscious aversion to the idea of Harding’s suicide, I can discern an attraction — an inability to let go of the horror, as I had failed to set aside my concerns for Flopsy and Leo.

I can safely say that William P. Harding was solely responsible for my becoming a preadolescent insomniac. My attempts at sleep tangled with images: Harding’s plummet; a pack of wolves swarming upon its weakest member; blood spurting thin as water, leaking thick as honey. Panicked, I ran to my desk, grabbed the book, and shoved it into my trash can, beneath the tissues and papers, but even that wasn’t enough. I snuck the can outside my bedroom door and closed myself in. I remember holding my hand palm-out as some kind of protection. I know that such inclinations and incidents may not seem like much, and that they are not my fault, but the fault of circumstances beyond my control. But to this day, I suspect that I planted the seeds of my own suffering without having any notion of consequence.

The doctors rarely used clinical terms to address my sleeping problem. They said I had nerves, and recommended to Matka pharmaceuticals with futuristic names. I never told anyone about William P. Harding because, from the beginning, they seemed determined to be the ones with the answers; I’ve never known any profession to be surer about its own expertise than the one with the stethoscope.

There is a possibility, although I try not to think about it, that my children will inherit this madness. In other ways I’ve given them the most I could. I wanted to give them everything. I tried to teach William and Gillian about the Bible and Virgil and the importance of language, which is not easy to do with their mother being the way that she is; but they are quick studies, and I can tell they have the potential for outstanding intellects. It’s too early yet to tell if there’s something unsavory lurking, but if there is, I haven’t seen it. No one deserves this, least of all those two. If I could do anything, anything at all, I’d ensure that their realities remain strong as bricks, as solid as diamonds.

Naturally, insomnia interfered with my schoolwork, which I became too dull-headed for; and when Matka, upon receiving my report card, tentatively visited my bedroom after dinner to ask if everything was all right, I vaguely gave a half-truth, which was that I was having trouble sleeping. A groove folded between her eyebrows. She sighed, the paper in her hands creasing into her lap, and said, “I’ll have to tell your father.” She meant the grades, of course, never the insomnia. And Matka turned to me and smiled one of those smiles propped up by many things, but not by happiness. She loved me all her life, but I did wonder how many children she would have wanted if she’d been able. At that age I knew only that I’d never have a brother or sister, let alone a pack of them, but not why. She did tell me later, when I returned to Greenpoint with Daisy, that she’d had a near-fatal hemorrhage when I was born, and everything had been removed — uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries — which saved her, but meant I would always be her only child. She said this bitterly, tapping a cigarette into the sink, her hands trembling so that she almost dropped it in with the dishes. That medical crisis also made her sick, I realized later, as a consequence of depleted estrogen.

Insomnia. Wolves. Matka’s concern for me. My grades. The war had ended by then, and the atmosphere at home and school seemed perpetually on the brink of a great unraveling. No one close to us had died. My parents’ closest friends, the Pawlowskis, were childless, though apparently Mr. Pawlowski had a nephew from Long Island who lost a leg in combat, and some of the kids I knew from St. Jadwiga had lost a brother or had a brother newly, and I assumed happily, home. For us the end of the war meant that the Nowak Piano Company would return to making pianos, although whether those pianos would then find buyers was a new anxiety to be conquered. This question gave Ojciec ulcers, which I’m sure Matka was disinclined to make worse with my disappointing report card.

But as she’d said, she did have to tell him, and he was unhappy. I’d always been decently athletic and scholastically impressive, and the new Cs and B-minuses bewildered him.

“What’s gone wrong with you?” he asked at breakfast. “It’s not a girl, is it?”

“No.”

Ojciec was a small man, not where I got my height; he was compact and had a thin flop of dark blond hair across his pate, which he managed with pomade, and wore a pair of small, round wire-rimmed glasses that were always slipping down his nose. And he was always hot — standing near my father, you could feel the energy radiating off him. He put down his fork with a clatter and said, “You’re growing up, David. It’s important that you learn to take responsibility. As you get older, the responsibilities you take on will be more than letters on a piece of paper.” He nudged my report card. “Screwing up ends up meaning losing thousands of dollars, means losing your shirt. And the older you get, the more ways there are to screw up.”

That was the end of his lecture. He pushed his plate away and stood, hurrying to ready himself for a day of factory oversight. Matka, who had been putting away dishes, walked Ojciec to the door, her hand on his back, saying nothing.

But the following week he announced that I was to attend an important meeting with him because I was growing up, and thus needed to go to the manufactory with him. He said that I needed to see how the pianos were put together because the Nowak Piano Company was a family business, and had been since my dziadek had passed the business to him, as Ojciec would to me; I was responsible for carrying it on as the last child of the Nowak line. I’d need to learn every aspect of the company’s operations, including how to manage the workers so that they would only go so far as to gripe about their wages and hours, but would not rebel or leave or, worse, unionize; how to recognize whether a piano was finely tuned or no better than any heap of wooden garbage thoughtlessly nailed together. I needed to understand the intricacies of voicing. I would watch my father negotiate with new dealers, who were cads and cheats in comparison with the men who had known my grandfather years ago, and used to treat the Nowak name with respect, but were now out for themselves because they, too, had suffered when the war came, and shrewdness mattered more to them than decency. If I continued to “refuse to grow up,” as he obliquely referred to my slippery grades, and to behave no better than a modern-day boy without a shadow, I’d never be a capable successor. He would bring me to an important meeting in the coming week. “It will be part of your education,” my father said.

I had no say in the matter, and little understanding of what it really meant to be a Nowak son. The myth of the Nowak Piano Company — a Polish immigrant arriving in America with nothing but a Bible, a tuning fork, and a knife! The notion of an affordable, but still beautiful, piano! The immigrant’s ingenuity and his consequent success as a piano maker in an inhospitable land! — this tale was as essential to our family as the story of the birth of Christ. When it came to the modern-day workings of the company, my understanding of their importance came from my parents, who spoke of our pianos as though they, and thus we, were crucial not only to the esteemed world of music, but to America itself. I believed this not because I saw with my own eyes, on the way to the park or school, a Nowak piano in every living room window, or because of other children’s reactions upon hearing my name; I never saw such a thing, or heard any envious tones. I believed in our importance only because my parents overtly stated it all my life. And I was proud to be a Nowak, and relieved that my father still considered me the company’s heir, because it was essential that I honor my parents. It was necessary that I should have the chance to demonstrate my ambition, and to put my smarts to work as their son.

But I made sure that my children would grow up without this on their backs. They believe that the pianos in our living room state our names because they belong to us, in the way that a mother might carefully embroider a shirt label with EMMA or MARK.

Oh, Gillian, my little Artemis: you would not be surprised to hear that you are my favorite in the family. I think that became clearest when I began to teach you taxidermy, but William is fussy in a way that you are not. I have always been proud of the way you handle yourself around blood and viscera. Do you remember the first time I had you make your own rabbit’s foot? Your delicate fingers moved with such confidence, and when your small hand wrapped around the penknife I thought, How powerful she is! I have always been proud of you.

Though we were well known in Greenpoint, only a few were truly in my parents’ circle. George Pawlowski was my father’s right-hand man, and had been since my dziadek passed on and willed the company to Ojciec. Vicky Pawlowski was by default my mother’s closest friend, though Matka never seemed quite intimate with anyone who didn’t live under her roof; and when Mrs. Pawlowski and Matka did socialize at our home, their conversations were full of halting pauses that made me squirm. But for my mother, it was clear that Mrs. Pawlowski served a crucial purpose — the woman tethered her to society. Once, and only once, did I overhear Mrs. Pawlowski’s sobs as she spoke in a roundabout way about infertility. This explained the Pawlowskis’ lack of children, and perhaps also the bond between Mrs. Pawlowski and my mother.

Mrs. Pawlowski was the first to note the Orlichs’ appearance in the neighborhood. From the beginning, she was unconvinced, as she put it to my mother. Their only boy, Marty, was my age, thirteen, and he began to show up in my classes, more often than not sitting next to me because of the alphabetical rows. Marty quickly became infamous for his foul mouth, which simultaneously titillated and unnerved us, his peers. He was of average height and build. He had a sharp face, with a pointy chin and nose and slashes for eyebrows, and when he smiled it was like he was leering at the world.

At the dinner table my father said, “You know that new family, the Orlichs. Well, Benjamin stopped by the manufactory today.”

“Oh?” Matka said.

“Yes. It was shocking what a ridiculous little man he revealed himself to be. He introduced himself, briefly. Apparently he’s an accountant, and the whole family is from Chicago. He came to ask if he could buy a baby grand for three-fourths the price.”

“Three-fourths? What on earth would make him think you’d say yes?”

“I said something to that effect. He said, ‘Because our sons are in the same class.’ As if this made us family. David, do you know his son?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And what do you make of him?”

“Marty? I don’t know him well. He gets in trouble a lot with the nuns, I guess. He’s stellar in Latin.”

“Well,” Ojciec said, sawing into a pork chop, “if he’s anything like his father, I’d say you’d best stay away from him. It would be one thing if Mr. Orlich were merely foolish, but I could tell from ten paces that the man has a temper. Though he knew better than to duke it out with me.” He shook his head. “Imagine! As if we were a charity.”

“I loathe Chicago,” Matka said. “It’s so cold there in the winter.”

“Whenever a new family moves in, it’s like a roll of the dice,” said Ojciec.

Yes, it was a roll of the dice, or can we say it was Fate that brought the dysfunctional Orlich clan to Greenpoint. It was Fate that the Orlichs should have a daughter, too, named Marianne, whom I would love, and still do love, with my utterly fallible — my utterly human — heart that is still beating.

The first time I saw the Orlichs as a family was at Christmas. Our little clan — at first just Daisy and I, then with William and, later, Gillian — has had a number of Christmases, but the sort of Christmases I had as a boy were nothing like the ones we’ve enjoyed. These were loud affairs. Crowded. Upward of eighty people were invited to the Pawlowskis’ Christmas party on a yearly basis, and everyone who was invited came. It was a lavish show for George and Vicky Pawlowski, especially for Mrs. Pawlowski, who used her pent-up maternal energy spending days decorating their home in tinsel, votive candles, glass ornaments that broke if you so much as gave them a stern look, and a gigantic tree by the staircase, which hung heavy with what she explained every year was inherited Mazowsze glass. When I was very young I saw the Pawlowski party as a family obligation and a bore, but the older I became, I sensed that there was a desperation that haunted the Pawlowskis, and this desperation came to a shrill plateau from Advent to Epiphany. The hunger for adoration, for festivity and friends, was played out in the party itself, with too much high-pitched conversation and people posturing, and the tension dissipating only when all hosts and guests had imbibed a healthy amount of booze.

On that particular Christmas we were the Pawlowskis’ first guests, and Mrs. Pawlowski immediately descended upon Matka as I drifted into the sitting room.

“We invited the Orlichs,” Mrs. Pawlowski said.

“Oh? Are you friendly with Caroline?” Matka asked, and there was a tinkling of wineglasses in the kitchen.

“No, I don’t know Caroline, and George barely knows Benjamin — I mean Bunny. They sort of invited themselves. You know how the Christmas party is our special occasion, but they approached it as though it were the ball drop. A sort of ‘come one, come all.’ I didn’t know how to say no. I didn’t want to be impolite. I fear it will be strange for everyone else, though. No one really knows them. No one in our circle, I mean.”

My mother said, “So many people are coming, though. It won’t make a difference.”

“Caroline basically insisted that her daughter sing at the party. She flat-out assumed that we would want to hear her sing. So now her daughter is going to sing ‘O Holy Night,’ I think.”

“I love that song.”

“I do, too. It’s my favorite carol. When done well, it makes me cry. I honestly shed tears, real ones. But you should have heard her, Francine. She said, ‘Well, Marianne is an excellent singer, and she’d be honored if you had her perform at your party.’ I was so shocked! Really — inviting yourself to a party, and then inviting your daughter to perform, too? It was like she’d heard about the party for years and finally decided that it was high time they make the list. Before I could figure out what to say, she said, ‘She does a truly beautiful “O Holy Night.” She’ll be so pleased.’ And by then it was too late, they were as good as invited by George himself.”

“Goodness.”

“Maybe they won’t show,” Mrs. Pawlowski said. “Maybe they’ll get in a horrible car accident. Did I just say that? I’ve been drinking wine all day, just sipping while cooking, and I don’t know what I’m saying anymore. But we’ve known each other forever, haven’t we? You won’t tell anyone?”

The doorbell sounded. “Oh,” Mrs. Pawlowski said, and went down the hall. She peered through the peephole, and then she opened the door for the Orlichs. Coming in was balding Mr. Orlich, who had absurdly round cheeks, and Mrs. Orlich, who held the wine. There was Marty, who was now taller than I was, although I would be quite lanky and nearing six feet by the end of senior year, and he had on a lumpy red-and-white-striped wool hat that I presumed a relative had knit for him.

But Marianne. That moment in the sitting room was the first time that I found myself paying any attention to a girl, let alone a girl slipping into the shape of a woman. If I was neurotic about stuffed animals as a child, as an adolescent I was even more neurotic about girls, who seemed not quite human to me. Yet here she was, a sylphlike fourteen-year-old, wearing a red angora sweater with a matching skirt and low heels with girlish white stockings, and there was her startlingly white-blond hair, which had a slight wave to it, and here was a broad smile that spanned her round face. I invented none of that; that is exactly how Marianne looked that day when she walked into the Pawlowskis’ house.

She followed her family into the sitting room, where they hovered over the canapés, and chose their cucumber sandwiches and treats, before settling together on a love seat kitty-corner to mine. Marty stuck his tongue out at me. I did not respond.

“Does anyone need anything?” Mrs. Pawlowski asked.

“No, no, everything looks fantastic,” said Mrs. Orlich, “this is quite the spread you’ve got here.” She looked at her daughter. “Marianne? Isn’t there something you wanted to ask Mrs. Pawlowski?”

Marianne stared at her mother for a moment, and then asked Mrs. Pawlowski if she could sing “W Zlobie Lezy” before dinner was served.

“Oh yes, of course — George and I are dying to hear it. I can even accompany you on our Nowak grand.” She looked around. “Please, everyone, enjoy the hors d’oeuvres. There are plenty more in the kitchen. Caroline? Benjamin? Something to drink?”

I kept watching Marianne, unaware of how strange I must have looked, but when Mrs. Pawlowski took everyone’s beverage requests and returned to the hallway, Marianne stood and followed her, saying, “Excuse me,” and I was alone again.

Soon the house was crawling with people. Most of them came from our church, St. Jadwiga, but many of them were neighbors who knew Mr. Pawlowski because he was an affable man and the sort who knew everyone. One of the Stopka children, a six-year-old named Emily, took it upon herself to attach herself to me, her pigtails whipping as she swung her head with her tongue out. My memory of six-year-old Gillian is so different from my memory of Emily Stopka, so much brighter. As I searched for Marianne I gave Emily a paluszki to eat, to keep her occupied, but she maintained her attachment as though she were in love, and the adults were too busy socializing to pry her from me. Emily followed me into the enormous piano room when it was time for Marianne to sing, and put her small hand in mine. I was irritated at the time, but now when I think about that little blond girl I feel the need to cry. I’ll lie down for a spell, while the feel of candy-floss hair lingers still in my hands, and I’ll say a few prayers, too. There is a bit of sun soaking the curtains, I’ve noticed. Marianne sang; I was enchanted. That’s all there is to say about that kind of beauty.

As soon as I could escape the postprandial hubbub I retreated to the library, which was Mr. Pawlowski’s great pride, and was floor to ceiling with books in musty jewel tones rubbed pale by many fingers. I was slipping Phaedrus back into its place when Marianne came up behind me. She tapped my shoulder, and when I turned she was crouching, eyes bright, looking as though she had happened upon a prize.

“Sneaky you,” she said. “But I won’t tell. I don’t like parties, either.”

“Why not?”

“They make people lose control of themselves. I like to know that everyone around me is in their right mind. Why are you hiding?”

I shrugged.

“Maybe we can find an atlas,” she said.

We searched for a while until I finally found one low enough for me to reach and heaved it onto the floor. She knelt and randomly opened it to the Orient. I showed her the Silk Road, tracing its route with a finger, and named as many spices as I could think of. I spoke of Magellan. I worried that she would leave if I failed to keep her attention, but I was wrong about Marianne’s capability for patience: her eyes never drifted, she didn’t interrupt.

When I stopped, she said, “Men are always exploring. Adventuring. I’ve been reading about the Gold Rush — it’s interesting how much men are willing to put themselves through when they think there’s something to gain.”

“‘That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire,’” I said.

“California. The land of gold and fire,” she answered. And then she asked, “Have you been abroad?”

“No. I haven’t even left the state. Why, have you?”

“No. But I think about it.” She drew a circle on the page with her finger. “I wouldn’t go to Paris or London, though. Somewhere in Egypt, where they need missionaries and nuns. I’d like to do something useful like that. I’m not interested in going to some posh bistro and toothpicking snails out of their little shells.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Glamour doesn’t interest me.”

“I’m not sure I really understand glamour, not being a woman and all,” and when I said this, I was thinking of my mother, who wore rouge and daubed carmine on her lips.

“Men can be glamorous, too,” Marianne said. “Look at this library! It’s all a show, a show of going beyond the ordinary — Mr. Pawlowski wants this house to be glamorous as much as his wife does, even if her view of it means ornaments and tinsel, and his is leather and wood. Do you see what I mean?”

Her tone pricked me. After all, I lived in a fancy brownstone, and my parents were not only wealthy but famous; granted, Marianne had never been inside our home, but it would be easy enough to guess that we had original paintings by esteemed artists on our walls, or that we laid elaborate Oriental rugs on our floors. But Marianne saw my discomfort and apologized, putting her hand on mine. “I say things without thinking,” she said. “It’s a fault. One of the few things I have in common with Marty.”

“You don’t curse as much as he does,” I said, very aware of the feel of her hand on mine, and she laughed.

“No,” she said. “I don’t. He gets that from our father.”

“Did he — Marty — say anything about me?”

She said, “He told me you were a bit strange.”

But why had Marty said this? Could he have been watching the bloat of my sagging eye-bags, the same eye-bags that evidenced my nights of insomnia? Were there not infinite reasons for not sleeping? Did I betray myself more than I thought I did? Why did I already care so much about what Marianne Orlich thought of me?

“Strange? Really?”

“He did. So far, I don’t see it.”

“Did he say why?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “He says whatever comes into his head most of the time.”

We fell into a natural silence. Finally she removed her hand, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “If you are crazy,” she said firmly, “that’s not so bad. So many of the saints were thought to be insane. Only later were they canonized.”

“I’m not a saint,” I said. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“I didn’t say you were.” She laughed. “You’re a very serious kid, you know that?”

“Yes. I don’t know why — it makes life difficult.”

She turned the pages of the atlas, stopping at Egypt. “Here,” she said. “Someday, I’d like to go here.” We stared at the full view. I tried to imagine her there, a missionary of some kind, her milky skin gone leathery from sand-soaked wind. She would ride camels and pet the trunks of elephants; she would be exotic beyond my American imagination.

That winter — an unusually cold one — was the winter of the Orlichs. I saw Mrs. Orlich at the butcher’s, clutching her purse to her side. I saw the family at church. Here and there they appeared, all of them holy by virtue of being related to Marianne. Even Marty shone. Here he was, her brother, who had seen her grow up. Who had probably bathed with her as a child.

Caroline Orlich was Marianne writ large, taller and with thicker bones and a face covered in cracking makeup, including her lips, which were heart-shaped like her daughter’s and peeled in the winter. In the dawn of my ardor I saw Caroline as the future version of her pious daughter, so I loved her, too. I did think of it as love; what else could I call the connection I’d felt so immediately, and with nothing like it before her? I barely knew the girl, but it was this precise fact that made her so easy to adore. She was a churchgoing, compassionate girl, and I took this to mean that she had deep thoughts about morality, God, and how to live. But I did worry. Her accountant father, through social manipulations like those committed by her mother, began to play weekly poker with Mr. Pawlowski, and I assumed that Mrs. Orlich gleaned any and all information about me through her gossipy husband. And while I tried to keep my neuroses hidden, there were certain things that I absolutely could not help. I won a Winter Latin prize in the first week after the holiday, which was as much a triumph for Ojciec as much as it was for me; yet my mind had grown increasingly confused outside of my fascination with Marianne. Already, back then, there was a sickness growing. I worried about my body and its dividing cells, because the idea of my skin covered in invisible pores repulsed me in the way that gaping stomata repulsed me in biology; and then I became afraid that my soul would leak out through those holes, and the abandonment would leave my body a shell for me to prop up through the endless, terrible days. I popped my pimples till my skin was spotted with scabs, and then I picked those scabs with the conviction that immaculate skin would be underneath, but such ministrations only made my face painful and wet and inviting infection.

Nothing looked right on my newly gawky body, either. At times I peered at myself in the mirror, and reflected back at me was a dwarf stretched squat, wide, and obese, and no matter how I turned and posed, I couldn’t make the horrible image change. How could I have gone for so long without knowing that this was what I looked like? The first time, I ran to the bathroom and double-checked my reflection there, not knowing what I would see, and there I was, seemingly myself without the distortion; but the feeling that I had transformed, or been lied to, remained. Was there any way that I could know for certain if any mirrors were honest, and how had I gone through life believing that these flat and magical pieces of glass would reflect my true self? I describe the expression of these neuroses with the bewilderment of someone who still can’t understand them, and the embarrassment of someone who knows how ridiculous they sound — but if I didn’t check the mirror, pick the scabs, change in and out of clothes in hopes of winning back a normal body, and so forth, the problems would only multiply. The only control I had over them was to be watchful and to attend to them.

But why these strange rituals? I was able to dress for school easily; thanks to the uniforms, I had no conflict or confusion about what to wear on weekdays. Weekends, and particularly Sundays, were another story. The idea of choosing clothes appropriate for Mass seemed almost an insurmountable task. What should have taken a few minutes dissolved into hours. Increasingly, Matka had to pull me out of the room, rushing me downstairs where my father watched the clock, and me, dubiously. Even though we both knew I was too old for it, Matka took to organizing my Sunday clothes for me on my bed. In some ways, her suggestions only made things worse, and we suddenly found ourselves tussling over my wardrobe, my mother fighting with her adolescent son as if he were a toddler. When I finally refused to go on a grim, late January morning, my father said nothing, and he and I both watched as my mother trudged disconsolately out the front door, which Ojciec next shut behind him without so much as a glance in my direction.

Would it be so unlikely to claim that I didn’t want to attend Mass, I didn’t want to worship, I didn’t want to sit with the waves of Latin rolling over me, I didn’t believe in God, and God knew — as well as my dead relatives, including my grandfather, rest his soul — that I was making up this ridiculous problem that wasn’t actually a problem, what with my hidden loathing for God and all that was holy, this secret blasphemy hiding so deeply within me that I could delude my conscious self, though I could not delude my parents, and of course not God, which would inevitably lead to damnation? Such convoluted explanations allowed me to make some sense of my idiosyncrasies, but my beliefs and behavior were ultimately attributed to a disordered mind rather than some kind of religious antipathy. I am not sure which is preferable.

While I fought with my clothes, poor Matka, who had no idea what to do with her strange son, removed the mirror in my room (“Boys don’t need mirrors anyway,” my father snapped), and I sensed my body stretching like taffy while I simultaneously feared Hell, or feared that I was already in it.

My February and then March absences from Mass spurred the gossip machines to begin whirring; such chatter finally alerted the Orlichs, and in particular Mrs. Orlich, that something was wrong with me. My parents’ friends ran the gamut from purely cultural Catholics to the extremely religious, most of whom were immigrants born and bred of the Polish Catholic denomination, and while neither of my parents was strict observers of the faith, my parents prayed, said grace before meals, never missed church, and were self-conscious about how they were perceived in the churchgoing community. That they’d given up on trying to get me to attend meant that I was lost, despite my efforts. I sat in my underwear atop the covers on Sunday mornings next to a pile of cast-off clothing, daring myself to try on another shirt. Just go ahead! I told myself. Just go ahead and try to take it off — I’ll knock your teeth in! But I always took it off, my parents left, and when my paralysis let up I wrapped myself in Matka’s terry-cloth robe and went to the kitchen, where I sat at the table and waited for my parents to come home.

On one of those days I was sitting on a stool in that robe when the bell rang. I got up and peered through the peephole at Mrs. Orlich. The fish-eye effect of the peephole made her look like a Kewpie doll in an enormous camel coat.

“Hello?” she asked. “Francine?”

“No,” I said.

“Oh! David? Are your parents home?”

“They’re not back from church yet. They’ll be here in a little bit.”

“Oh.”

I wondered if she wanted me to invite her in to wait. Not wanting her to, I didn’t ask, and she didn’t inquire. Finally she said, “Do you think they’ll be very long? I’d like to speak to your mother.”

“They should be back soon.”

“All right.” She turned to look back toward the street. It wasn’t snowing, but she must have been cold, because her nose and ears were bright pink, and she shivered even with that coat on. She didn’t seem to want to leave. “I’m praying for you,” she said. Then she hurried away, and I watched her leave with astonishment. Praying for me? Did the Orlichs chat over dinner about how David Nowak was damned? Did they speculate about whether he still said his prayers? (I did, fervently, daily, nightly, as if to make up for my lost Sundays.) What must Marianne think? I began to chew on my lip, shortly feeling the hot sting of a wound. I’d convinced myself that Marianne, whom I hadn’t spoken to since Christmas, hadn’t noticed my absence, but if Mrs. Orlich was praying for me…

My parents came home soon after. I was still at the kitchen table. “What’s wrong with your lip?” Matka asked, unbuttoning her coat.

I said something about biting down wrong on a piece of toast.

“It looks like it hurts. Put something cold on it.” She removed her coat and hung it in the hall closet. “We have leftover pot roast.” She glanced at my father, who climbed the stairs without acknowledging either of us, and in his silence I was certain he blamed me. All of Greenpoint knew that the heir of the Nowak Piano Company was ready for the funny farm, thanks to my sartorial prohibitions.

“When did you have your toast?” she asked.

“Breakfast.”

“You still want pot roast? Your father is probably going to want to eat soon.” She entered the kitchen. “And you’re wearing my robe. I don’t know why you do these things — these things that you know Ojciec won’t like.”

I tugged at the belt. Finally I said, “Mrs. Orlich stopped by.”

Matka opened a cupboard. “What did Caroline want?”

“She wanted to talk to you, but she didn’t say about what.”

“Did she leave a message?”

“She didn’t say much,” I said, and hoped that would end it.

“You mean you don’t want to tell me what she said. Go on.”

“She really didn’t say anything to me,” I said. “She said she would come back and tell you herself.”

It was true. Hours later, my father was hidden away in his study, my mother was cleaning the kitchen, and I was in my room, reading, when I heard the doorbell. Mrs. Orlich had returned. Sensitized to the sound of my name, I put down my pen, went to my open bedroom door, and stood in the hallway to the left of the top of the stairs, which allowed me a view of Mrs. Orlich’s cobalt hat through the railing.

“Please, come in and have something to drink,” my mother said.

“No, no,” said Mrs. Orlich. “I’ll be out of your hair in a moment.” She said something else, so quietly that I couldn’t hear, and then: “Francine…”

“Yes?”

“I want you to know that I don’t think ill of you or Peter at all. Not because of David. I know that you’re doing the best that you can with him.”

“That’s kind of you, Caroline.”

“I mean it. I wouldn’t come to your house, in this weather, without Bunny, if I didn’t mean it. I–I know you’re good people. I know that David is a good boy. You see, I think that his type of neurosis is only temporary. I know an analyst who says so. Now don’t worry — I didn’t mention your family by name, of course, but I’m acquainted with an analyst, a very good one, and I took it upon myself to ask him what he thought of the situation as I presented it in the abstract. He said that David was unlikely to have any serious, permanent neurosis. A phase. Hormones. Adolescence. Boys, especially very bright ones, are so likely to have trouble.” In a louder rush she added, “I also wanted to let you know that my Marianne has taken an interest in your son. I think he made quite an impression on her at the Christmas party. I know she’s been looking for him in church; I guess you could say she has an infatuation. And I know they’re still young, and these matters are so far off, of course, but I’ll let you know right now that I’d be happy to have Marianne marry your son one day. Out of all of the boys in the neighborhood, you have such a sweet, good-looking boy. I don’t think ill of your family in the slightest.”

I was afraid that my mother would climb the stairs and see me, so I ducked back into my room and sat in my chair, staring at my World’s Fair poster with its painted, abstract sphere. In my room the walls were a patchy white, and there was a single window above my bed for the moonlight and the nightmares to come crawling in. As I’d guessed, I soon heard Matka’s footsteps, and then she was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed.

“My bug,” she said, though I was too old to be called that childhood nickname. She studied me for a while as if deciding something, and then she left. I hadn’t said a word, but my mind was shouting, Marianne! I even found myself smiling. And then, in the middle of all that happiness while I dazed and dreamed, I heard my mother shriek my name, and as if waking from a deep sleep, I staggered down the hall and into their bedroom.

My father was lying on the floor, pulling his shirt from his chest and moaning. I’d never heard him make such a sound; it was like a noise that I’d think a moose would make, but it was Ojciec crying out, and it terrified all the happiness right out of me. My mother screamed my name again, and told me to call our doctor.

As my mother drove us to the hospital behind the paramedics, I thought of things to say and then discarded them. When you’ve got so many things to say, you end up saying none of them; there’s never any way to know what is the right thing to say, and I didn’t want to upset her further. But the truth was that I resented Ojciec for interrupting my tiny moment of triumph — one that even Matka could share in.

He’d had a heart attack. The stress of reviving the manufactory after the war had done a number on him, and Dr. Herms said it was nothing to sniff at. But my father’s “ticker,” as Dr. Herms called it, could last Ojciec to old age if he took better care of himself. He listed a number of suggestions, which Matka took down in her notebook. God willing, Dr. Herms said, Peter would live to see his great-grandchildren’s christenings. I couldn’t help but daydream that those great-grandchildren would have Orlich blood in them, mixed with mine. What kind of son thinks these things in such calamitous circumstances?

I thought Matka would burst with joy as we walked to St. Jadwiga. She’d sneak looks at me, making sure I was still there, and then look at Ojciec as if to say, Look, I have done it. I’d been to the Cloisters with my parents on occasion, more for “tourism within New York” reasons than anything, on par with visiting Lady Liberty, but St. Jadwiga was the holiest place that I knew, and entering the double wooden doors was obviously my return as the prodigal son. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know who would treat me as though I had never left, and who would act as though my afflictions — whatever they knew of my afflictions — were contagious. I was afraid that someone would accuse me of heresy, or possibly worse. But I came in flanked by my parents, and immediately we were greeted by the Orlichs, who descended like a flock of friendly gray pigeons, including Marianne, who had on an ashy sweater glittering with beads. “David, it’s so good to see you,” she said, her face brightening, and she grabbed my hand. I was so surprised by her warm skin that I flinched and almost pulled away, but she drew me close to a pew, and let go to briefly kneel and make the sign of the cross before scooting deep into the center, where she patted the wood beside her for me to sit down.

My parents were still talking to the Orlichs. As I moved closer to Marianne, while still maintaining a safe distance of about a foot and a half, I saw Mr. and Mrs. Pawlowski approach them. The group enfolded my parents, and everyone immediately looked at me. Their voices lowered even though I couldn’t hear what they were saying to begin with, and in their murmur I heard someone say “immense disappointment.” The phrase leaped out at me like a jackrabbit.

The church began to fill — the hefty butcher, straining in his suit, with his wife and three girls like something out of a fairy tale; the moron with a flattened face, who brought his widowed mother sorrow, and who also had a persistent cough that often interrupted holy contemplation; the Stopkas with young Emily and her older, tomboy sister, who was at that time twenty-two and neither married nor dating, and who I am sure is a lesbian somewhere now and surely happier than I am — all the people came in, and Marianne put her hand in mine, and I squeezed it, mostly from terror, but hoping that she would interpret it as affection. “Look,” she said, the interior falling to a hush, “let’s make room for our families.”

Though she never said so, my return to St. Jadwiga also sparked Matka’s next suggestion: that I spend time tutoring Marianne in Latin. She was interested in Latin, and the local girls’ school, St. Agnes, wasn’t an institution that placed much importance on the education of young women other than to make them amiable brides, or maybe nuns. And I’m sure that Mrs. Orlich had a hand in the arrangement, too, ending in a conspiracy of study sessions that doubled as playdates, with Marianne and me being lightly supervised in living rooms while our mothers sat at someone’s kitchen table and drank tea or wine.

In the beginning there was the bright spark that was Marianne; next there was the magnetism that drew us together and prickled my skin; and then, finally, the intimate conversations that served as kindling for a bonfire.

She wasn’t naturally gifted at languages. Her grammar was awful, and she found it difficult to retain almost any amount of vocabulary. Still, I liked spending time with her, this girl who brought beauty into my life and kept my afternoons from being long and empty. Later I realized that this — to not have to ask for anything from a person, and to be contented still by her existence — is a great gift, and one that I wish I’d appreciated more when I had it.

On one of those infinite, limited days, in the early weeks of summer, Marianne asked, “Do you think I would make for a good nun?”

“A nun?” I thought of the nuns at my school in their habits, smacking students with rulers. “I can’t imagine you living that kind of life.”

The corner of her mouth twitched, and I hurriedly added, “But what do I know? The only nuns I know are the ones at school, and I’ve never known anyone who’s become one.”

“I know how ridiculous it sounds.”

“No, not ridiculous,” I said, knowing that I’d disappointed her, and she rolled her eyes at me.

That summer, Marianne spent an inordinate amount of her time in St. Jadwiga, praying for hours, and when she wasn’t praying, she was helping Father Danuta with feeding and clothing the poor. Marianne didn’t tell me any of this herself; I learned of it from Mrs. Orlich, who had become attached to Matka, and now came to our house two or three times a week to see my antisocial mother.

“That girl,” Mrs. Orlich said, “will be the death of me. Of course, we consider ourselves as observant as any other family in the neighborhood, but this is an extreme Bunny and I just don’t feel comfortable with.”

Matka said, “It can’t hurt for her to do some charity.”

“It’s not just charity. Of course I’m fine with charity and good works, but she prays for hours, too. The amount of time she spends praying, she might as well be praying for everyone in Greenpoint, one at a time. And she keeps mentioning joining a convent after she graduates.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that. It’s not unheard of for girls to be intrigued by a religious vocation when they’re young. I imagine it’s a phase.”

“What if it’s not? She’s a beautiful girl. She ought to be going on dates and daydreaming about what to name her beautiful children.” Mrs. Orlich sighed. “At least she’ll have less time for these things when school begins again.”

In the meantime Marianne would call, rarely and randomly, and ask if she could visit. I always said yes. When she arrived on the stoop, her forehead damp and her armpits charmingly sweaty through her blouse, I’d fall for her all over again. The thought of her in a convent, unreachable, gave me a knotted stomach and a sudden inability to breathe.

On one of these visits she followed me into the kitchen, where I poured her a glass of iced tea. She had a few swigs. “Where’s your mother?”

“Headache. She went up to bed a few hours ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“She’ll be all right — she gets them in summer when it’s too hot out, and I bring her damp washcloths for her head. How’s your day been?”

She said, “I helped Father Danuta for a few hours, cleaning out the Sobczak house. Then he told me to skedaddle before I got heatstroke.” Her glass was now empty. “Thanks for the tea.”

Mrs. Sobczak had died a few days prior. I knew her as the old lady who wore the most elaborate hats in church, and had been a widow since she was barely twenty and saddled with two kids, who later died in the Great War; I doubted Marianne knew anything about her. But I was proven wrong when she continued: “I tried not to get depressed about it. Father Danuta said she was beloved by so many people — and so she wasn’t lonely, even though her husband and sons had died — but as I was going through her house I kept thinking, This is the hallway she went down every day, or This is the stove she boiled hot water on, and I couldn’t help but imagine her in that house, doing all of those things alone for so many years.”

“I think about growing up and being alone all the time,” I said. “You’re my only friend.”

When I said this, I was certain that I was also Marianne’s only friend, and yearned to hear her say so in return. Instead Marianne continued, as if she hadn’t heard me: “When I told Father Danuta what I was thinking, he said, ‘Well, Mrs. Sobczak had Christ with her. She had faith to keep her company, just as all of God’s children do.’”

I’m not sure what I said to her then. I probably waited for her to change the subject, or maybe I put her glass in the sink and went to the broom closet for a box of checkers. I knew better than to ask her if she believed fully that Christ kept Mrs. Sobczak safe in all that emptiness. I wish I could tell that girl now that mortal love is no bulwark against loneliness.

Those curious months came and went like the seasons I’d marked them with. One moment she was the Church Girl, which was Marty’s unclever nickname for her, and the next she was no closer to the religious life than any other neighborhood girl. My neuroses loosened their grip — on Sundays Matka still picked out my clothes, but I no longer needed her to dress me. I grew brave enough to glance at myself in mirrors, or shop windows, and see my true and rapidly maturing self. I attributed these blessings to Marianne, my guardian angel, whom I would walk to my house from St. Agnes for Latin and board games and whatever else entertained us. I interpreted her change from Church Girl to regular Jane as a sign that in the battle between the nunnery and the sacrament of marriage, the latter had won; I only hoped that it meant I had won, too.

Then during geometry class one of the sisters came to fetch me, a rare interruption. I was too nervous to ask her why. The halls were long and empty, dotted with too-short water fountains, and we silently walked through clouds of foul air erupting from the boys’ bathrooms.

Mr. Pawlowski was sitting on one of the leather benches outside of the principal’s office. He stood when he saw me.

“Davy,” he said, “I’ve come to take you to the hospital. Your father’s had another attack.”

“You’d better go,” the sister said, and put her hand on my shoulder, which made me flinch.

After Mr. Pawlowski started navigating his Rolls-Royce away from the curb, I expected him to say more. He did not. Finally I asked, “How did it happen? Is he going to be all right?”

Mr. Pawlowski sighed. “Your mother is already at St. Mary’s” was all he said, and we sat in silence while I fretted.

When we got to the hospital, Matka saw me and stood, and she blinked in confusion as though trying to figure out why Mr. Pawlowski had brought a monkey to see her.

“How is he?” Mr. Pawlowski asked.

She looked at him and shook her head. Obviously she had been crying. Her thin arms wrapped around me, and she put her head on my shoulder. She said, “He’s alive, Davy. It will be all right.”

We entered the new decade with my father in a coma — and yet instead of getting worse, my neuroses seemed to be abating. Father Danuta had been making appearances at our home for months, going up the stairs with his bag, and for hours he sat with my father and mother in their room, praying. I prayed, too, with them and alone; yet Ojciec remained in his hospital bed, which had been moved into our house by loyal factory employees, as December of the previous year came and went. The fact that we had skipped the Pawlowskis’ Christmas party that winter weighed on me more than I’d expected it would. Marianne told me that she’d sung again for the party, and she sang the carol again for me alone when my mother went upstairs, her voice breaking in parts from the softness of it.

One day she and I stopped on the way home from weekday Mass. I was still fourteen. She was still fifteen. On the wet bench I touched her pale, cold knees. It felt like early spring and the snow was melting into its customary dips and hollows, and when Marianne asked how my father was doing I was afraid to answer, because the more times she asked, the more I felt the unkind passage of time. She looked at me expectantly, her eyes the same mossy hue I see at the bottom of the river when I swim with the children. I said, “Father Danuta and my mother say it’s in God’s hands.”

“Of course it is.” She put her hand on mine. “Don’t you like me, David?”

I almost said, Do you need to ask? but laughed instead. We’d been such a curious neighborhood twosome for years, with each having no friends but the other, so I did the bravest thing I’d ever done: I kissed her. I want to say that she tasted like sugar, but she didn’t taste like anything. Kissing her was like dipping my lips into the rising stream of a water fountain, and perfectly blissful. I kissed her again and again with my fingers in her hair, and she kissed me back until she gently put her hands to my shoulders and pushed me away.

“Not here,” she said. “Let’s go somewhere more private. I know a place.”

As we walked, Marianne asked, “Do you think you’ll marry me?”

I tried not to stop dead, forcing myself to keep walking as I said, “Why, do you want me to?”

She smiled. “I asked, didn’t I?”

I held her hand. She led me down streets and familiar alleys till I saw that we were going around the back of St. Jadwiga, where there was a ladder attached to the side, leading to the flat part of the roof. She began to climb with determination; I followed without arguing. I could see up her skirt and saw that she was wearing a pair of white panties with lace trim, and I saw her caramel-colored pubic hair sprouting from the sides. Immediately I paused on the ladder, embarrassed and excited by my body’s reaction. She hauled herself over the side.

Next we were on the small roof. All of a sudden we were closer to Heaven, and I was lit up with hormones and fireworks, and closer to jumping, too. I had never felt my blood beat so hard. I could see the neighborhood all around, its bricks and streets and parked cars, and the people milling about with their hats on heads and jackets buttoned tightly around themselves, and I saw stray cats prancing into alleyways. Then she turned and beamed her bright smile at me, and I loved her. I reached for her hand and kissed it. I said, “I love you,” and she laughed in a manner that could to my ears only mean Yes. We stood on the roof and looked out at Greenpoint. She pulled me to her, biting my bottom lip with her square teeth, pressing a thumb into the side of my neck, and I thought I would turn to ash and fly away on the wind.

The roof is where we rendezvoused then, both of us taking great care to preserve her innocence. I never even kissed her on the neck, which seemed like one dangerous erotic breach of many. To think of putting my hand or hands on her breasts or thighs was out of the question. I took care to be a gentleman out of gratitude and respect; I was also still feeling the remnants of a disgust with my own body, so I was happy with what we had — butterfly kisses, mouth kisses, embraces. Mild Marianne, my girlfriend, was the most stable thing in my life. For most of the year I went to school and she went to school; then I accompanied her to daily Mass; then we went back to the Orlich house and I tutored her in Latin until six o’clock, which is when Mr. Pawlowski came to fetch me, and I ate dinner with him and my mother in our dining room while my father was comatose in his bed upstairs. In the summer Marianne and I had even more free time to ourselves, and then came fall again, which is when Marianne insisted on celebrating my birthday because no one else, including Matka, had remembered its passing. There was a surprise yellow cake, which she had baked and carried in a wicker basket. We ate cake on the roof, saying very little to each other, though she did sing the Polish equivalent of “Happy Birthday to You.” “It’s a song that means ‘May you live for a hundred years,’” she said, and put her hand on my thigh for a moment before tucking it back under hers.

I worried, in the meantime, about Mr. Pawlowski. As my father was indisposed, Mr. Pawlowski naturally took over certain aspects of the manufactory. He’d served as my father’s assistant since my grandfather died, and I’d turned a mere fifteen in the year Marianne sang to me. All responsibilities therefore fell to him, but purely in duty and not by name. There was the chance that my father would return to us, and his name, after all, was the one embossed above the keys. Still, I feared that Mr. Pawlowski would usurp my position as the owner of the Nowak Piano Company when I was the only son of Peter Nowak himself.

So it was a miracle when, in the middle of one Tuesday night, I was awakened by a flurry of activity in the master bedroom. It was the Polish nurses and my mother, who slept in a cot beside my father; they were all exclaiming that Ojciec was awake. When I entered the room, Matka ran to the door and grabbed me. “Davy, look!” she cried, her face wet. “Our prayers have been answered!”

I did look. He was propped up in the bed now, his gaze watchful. Soft bags drooped beneath his eyes; the lamps drew blobby shadows across his face. He was also looking directly at me, unblinking, and then he beckoned me to come closer. He smiled and said, “How have you been, David?”

The room went quiet — the nurses, who were scrambling for a glass of water; Matka, who was weeping — everything silenced itself.

“I’ve been well,” I said, which sounded ridiculous in its ordinariness. “It’s good to see you’re awake.”

He nodded. “Good marks in school?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Do you remember what the pin block is for?”

“It holds the tuning pins in place.”

“And what kind of wood do we use for our pin blocks?”

“Beech,” I said.

He nodded again. “Good. Good.”

“Ojciec,” Matka said, “I’m going to call Dr. Herms.”

“All right.” Ojciec closed his eyes. One of the girls tapped his shoulder, then lifted the glass of water to his lips, dribbling water on his chin.

The prognosis was not good. Ojciec went to the hospital and returned with pills and the knowledge that it was very likely that he would have another attack, and whether he would survive that one, no one could say. He was stoic as he faced the possibility of a premature death. There were matters to be attended to, one of those matters being the question of the factory and its ownership. It was as much of a surprise to me as I’m sure it was to Mr. Pawlowski when Ojciec insisted that I be named the owner of the Nowak Piano Company without delay. The act of signing papers with a lawyer was both ordinary and momentous; I, the only son of Peter Nowak, had triumphed, but the context for my triumph certainly wasn’t a celebratory one. I was shocked to find that I felt no better — no prouder, no loftier — after being named the company’s president. I was in tenth grade, and still going to high school. What kind of company president wore his school uniform to the office, and came in each afternoon after school was out?

“You like it here?” Mr. Pawlowski asked. We were in his office after a week into my new position. The radiator was broken; I could see his words forming clouds in the cold air. He was planning to move up to my father’s office, which I’d wanted for my own. We were talking about how it would be better, in his opinion, if I took his soon-to-be-former room so that I could learn how to keep my eye on things.

“I like it fine.”

“Managing your school and work responsibilities all right?”

I resisted the urge to scoff and simply nodded. I was irritated that he wanted to take my father’s office. It was supposed to be mine, regardless of how little I knew or how much authority he commanded over the workers. At the time, I believed that were I really strong enough to be in charge, I would take control of the situation and tell him that he couldn’t have it — nonsense, in hindsight, for a young man following a full-grown adult every day like a mule.

“You’ll love this room,” he said. “Ah, the things I’ve done here. The conversations your father and I had. The decisions. You’re lucky to be getting a head start in the business world, Davy. You’ll learn a lot from me. I owe it to your father to help you out, same as he helped me out after your grandfather died. You do need help, you see. Running a business is no small potatoes. You don’t think it’s small potatoes, do you?”

“No.”

“Because that would be a mistake. Learn from me and you’ll learn from the best. I know you’re the one with the keys to the kingdom. Don’t think I don’t. I have to admit that I was a little bit hurt”—and here he held up his hand to indicate a centimeter of space between thumb and forefinger—“to know that you were taking over. But no hard feelings. You’re his only son — of course he would let you take over. Selling to me — well, he’d never do that, come to think of it — he’s too proud. The only thing — the only thing that surprises me — is that he gave you the company when you’re so young. That’s really the only thing. What other people say about your problems, your personality, that’s not something that I bother with. It’s really the life experience that I’m thinking about. But with me on your side, that won’t be a problem at all. I’ll guide you as though you were my very own son. Have I told you that I think of you as my very own son? If you like, I’ll tell Vicky to help you decorate your new office. She’s got an eye for the aesthetic. In fact,” he said suddenly, “since I think of you as my son, I want to ask you something. I don’t mean this to hurt you, and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. I mean it in the way that your father would be caring for you if he could. Davy, you seem quite fond of that Orlich girl.”

I shrugged, though I was cringing inside. He meant well; I already knew this, but I suspected something unpleasant coming as he thumbed the underside of his chin in upward strokes.

“Because — and again, I hate to say this, hate to even suggest this — but the Orlichs are not, shall we say, the most trustworthy of people. You know that they aren’t on the same level as we are, financially, and they have a certain amount of envy.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“It isn’t even Marianne who is being devious, most likely,” Mr. Pawlowski said, “but her parents. At one point, none of us knew them. They were new to our neighborhood, and we gave them every opportunity to belong. But almost everyone sees their true selves at this point. They’re interested in — how shall I put this — what your family has, and what they do not. They live off of Mr. Orlich’s accounting income, which is serviceable, but they also live beyond their means. You can see this by the way they dress, the things they have. And the way that they can best get at a different life altogether is through Marianne. She seems like a good girl and loves her parents immensely, I would imagine, and probably would do anything that her parents tell her to.” He paused. “Do you see my point? You see my point. I don’t mean to burst your bubble. Your bubble isn’t burst, is it? Like I said, Marianne is a good girl. And that’s all I’ll say about that,” he said. “You just think about that. It’s part of growing up. You see eyes through the life of business and that’s when everything becomes business, everything as transaction. Are your hours up for the day? Should I drive you back home?”

I wanted to walk. The trip from Manhattan to Brooklyn, with all the public transportation included, would take a long time, but I didn’t want to be in the same small space with Mr. Pawlowski anymore, and especially not in his Rolls-Royce, which reeked of pipe smoke. As I walked, I was not following the rules of New York sidewalk etiquette; people practically shoved me into the street as they bustled by. But a movie reel was unspooling itself in my mind, with kisses and songs. I knew Marianne so well that I could summon, as though she were standing beside me, her reedy laugh. Frame by frame I asked myself, Is this a lie? Could it be possible that Mr. Pawlowski is right — if not wholly, then at least partially? He was a businessman. He’d acknowledged his own cynicism. He didn’t understand that Marianne accepted me without reservation, and so what if the piano company was a part of that? We gave and we took and we received mutually. We spent our afternoons running through alleys, chasing each other, the chaser always kissing the chased. The roof at St. Jadwiga, our second home and a safe haven. She wrote me letters, long letters, and signed them in slants and loops: May our hearts be ever blessed. I trusted her; I wanted to believe her, so I deliberately refused to believe that our love could be a lie.

My father died in November of my senior year. As the pallbearers lowered him into the ground I watched Matka shrink into herself like a blooming flower in reverse, nothing but a bud afterward. My mother took a three-month-long holiday in Minnesota, where she drowned her anguish in the twenty-below chill with her sister, the “Midwestern harlot,” as my father had called her. Who knows what he would have thought of his wife hiding in a snowdrift town called Monserrat, drinking vodka out of the bottle and swaddled in fur. It was after Peter died, everyone said, that she lost her grip on her natural eccentricity; after all, what kind of mother would leave her son for three months after such a tragedy?

She came back at the end of winter. Her suitcase was gone, and so was the coat. She’d given both of them to Penelope, she said, who had barely anything. Gosh, you’ve never felt that kind of cold, she said. She was wearing a lot of makeup, but I could tell that she looked awful underneath. Her foundation didn’t quite match her sallow neck. Have I mentioned that my mother’s once-placid face, after my father’s death, now had a perpetually bewildered expression, as though to say, How did I wind up here? After she came back from Minnesota I was under the impression that she had become absorbed in the cold there, and that it was impossible for her to materialize fully as flesh and not frozen, fluffy water.

I am confident this is where the true sorrow — sorrow? I lack the correct word — began, when I learned that it is possible for I hurt, I hurt, I hurt, I hurt to be my only heartbeat. Puh-lum. Puh-lum. Of course, it seemed natural for me to grieve. Matka, after all, was grieving. My peers and teachers at school knew that Peter Nowak had died, and his son, David, who had just inherited the Nowak Piano Company not so long ago, surely must be grieving as well. Marianne, God bless her, particularly mothered me. She had a gift for not making me feel like a child even as she sat with my head in her lap, stroking my hair in silence.

All of this in hindsight seems ordinary. It was ordinary and then — when I realized I was mourning something more than my father — it turned into something monstrous. My despair sprang from an awareness that whatever I had suffered from before, whatever neuroses had been dormant for this brief period while my father slept and Marianne walked tall and golden by my side as my only companion, had returned. It was a feeling that eventually metamorphosed outside the realm of human emotion. This unnameable thing I eventually called “vitaphobia” as a feeble attempt to get at the nastiness that was neurosis turned inside out — the fear of everything else turned into the fear of actually being alive. In simplest terms, vitaphobia was the fear of the sun shining or not shining, of opening my eyes or keeping them closed, of eating or not eating, of eating too much or too little, of darkness and light, of all the colors and hues of the rainbow, of every texture that my body could touch. Everything that I could register caused paralyzing fear, and the only solution to this that I could think of was to be dead. I am trying to keep this from becoming maudlin as much as I’m compelled to just open the window and scream, or writhe around on the floor right now. I ask the Lord, Do you know what you’ve been asking of me for all of these years? But of course. And how can you ask me to continue? All those nights in the woods, praying, hoping for an answer I could use!

Yet I didn’t kill myself then. There was something keeping me alive that I’ve since lost: a pessimistic optimism. One frantic afternoon I tied a belt around my neck in my bedroom and yanked hard, but I choked for only a second before I pried the pathetic noose away from my throat and threw it across the room. I didn’t tell Marianne. In the worst of it, I wanted to protect her, which was my first adult instinct; but not telling someone that you’ve got vitaphobia is like telling someone that you’re not covered in blood when you are — it doesn’t work, and you look the worse for denying it. She came to my house and I could see the fear that slipped over her face like a mourning veil. I lay in bed and she prayed at the foot of it, usually the Memorare, over and over, but I slept through most of it, and even my sleep was painful and shallow. I dreamed of Matka. Where was she? When she spoke, hovering over my face, I smelled the faintly sweet burn of vodka on her breath, her teeth the color of piano keys. I conflated her and the Virgin Mary as she cradled my head in her lap. Eventually I was my old self again — though hardened and glossy, having gone through a crucible — and later, as an adult, the doctors would explain to me that this was the natural course of my illness; even unmedicated, there would be times when I was well and times when I was sick, but I didn’t know that for years, and I attributed my wellness or lack thereof to whatever seemed an appropriate precipitant, like the seasons, or, later, the ups and downs of my marriage, or a nasty encounter at the K & Bee Grocery. It wasn’t a spiritual illness, they explained to me. And what are your spiritual beliefs? I asked them in turn. One said he was uncomfortable disclosing such a thing to a patient. Another said he was Lutheran. There were a few more, but even the Catholic one didn’t put his hand on my shoulder and say, Go, then, to a priest, and have yourself exorcised.

“I did,” Marianne informed me toward the end of my senior year, “talk to Father Danuta. I said to him that you might be possessed. It was naive, of course, but he was kind. He listened to the things I said, and then he asked me some questions, like a doctor palpating a pain. He said that you were very sick, but that you weren’t possessed by the Devil, and that the Church performed very few exorcisms to begin with. Is it strange to say that I was—”

“Disappointed?”

“No, not that…” (But she was. At least a demon could be cast out.)

She finally said, “I was afraid for you. I didn’t know what to do for you but pray.”

Eventually I was functioning again, but what had happened to my mind left me hobbled, as if I’d been hit by a car instead, and with poor healing to show for it. I graduated with mediocre marks; I suspect I avoided failing entirely only because adults pitied me, couldn’t help me in any other way, were too embarrassed to offer a kind ear, and so raised my grades. Good for you, I thought as I stared down at some written exam of mine, too beaten down for truly enthusiastic sarcasm. At the top was written 70.

And Mr. Pawlowski, my surrogate father now, squeezed me almost entirely out of any company matters, having me sign here and there on various dotted lines on papers I never read — not that I blamed him. What could he do, when I was the one who really owned everything, but could do almost nothing. Nothing, that is, but sell the company.

“If you’re going to sell, sell to George,” Matka said. “He knows what he’s doing.” But I still couldn’t forgive him for what he had said to me about Marianne, so I nodded and said, “Of course,” with no intention of following through; Matka would love me no matter what, though selling the company would give us both more than enough to live on for the rest of our lives.

There was a businessman from Maine who was interested in moving to New York. He was willing to keep the name intact, and offered $10 million for the factory and everything associated with the factory, including its workers and unsold pianos. I tried to get more because I was proud and hurt, which is a terrible combination for partaking in a business deal. He said, “Don’t you have an adult to handle these things for you?” I said, “Fuck you,” and hung up.

I thought there would be more offers, and there was one man who had dealt with my father before and seemed serious about making a purchase. There were two caveats. First, he would change the name of the company to Norris & Sons. Second, he would pay $8 million for the company, and no more. Having said no to the previous man, I felt compelled to say no to this one as well.

Mr. Pawlowski, then, having heard about my pathetic attempts, offered $20 million, and he would keep the name. I had always known he was wealthy, what with his extravagant car and lavish parties, and what funds he did need to raise were easily coaxed from his multitudes. What did I care if he took my place? I’d lost my marbles, or I was possessed. Either way, there was no hope for the future of the company with me at the helm. I made the choice to sell the factory, the brand, and the whole rest of a mess of it to Pawlowski. This is where the Nowak fortune is from. Half of it went to my mother, and the rest to me. This is the money that I’ve been living off of; this is the money that will be left behind for Gillian and William and Daisy when I’m gone, which ought to bring me a modicum of comfort.

News of the sale must have spread quickly, because it was only two days afterward that Mr. Orlich came to our door, his face flushed and blurry through the peephole like a poorly taken photograph, and I knew that if I opened the door I would only be inviting more of the bad fortune of which I already had an abundance. He rang the bell over and over, and then he resorted to banging with his fist. I had every intention of waiting him out. He could stand there and throw a tantrum if he wanted, I decided, and then I went upstairs, where the sound of his undoubtedly drunken anger continued to rage.

“What in God’s name is that?” I heard Matka call from her room. “Who’s there?”

“No one,” I said.

“Well, tell no one to go away.”

“He’ll go away when he’s tired.”

I had underestimated Mr. Orlich’s capability for persistence. He continued his campaign to have the door opened while I debated calling the police, and then I remembered that he was still Marianne’s father. To sully his name would do no good. For Marianne to know that I’d been the one to sully it was no better.

Finally I opened the door, and there he was, barking, “Why have a goddamn doorbell if you’re not going to answer it?” I couldn’t see Marianne’s face in his at all. He was, in fact, the exact opposite of her: the picture of a face so accustomed to scowling that it had hardened into cruelty.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I heard you sold your family’s company,” he said. “I heard you sold it for a substantial sum.”

“I did sell it.”

“And you want to marry my daughter. My Marianne.”

This was not how I had imagined asking for Marianne’s hand in marriage. I stuttered yes.

“What are your plans for this money you have now?”

I said nothing, noticing that he hadn’t asked to come in. I was grateful for this because I had no intention of letting him in, even if he was Marianne’s father. He smelled like liquor — I was becoming accustomed to the smell, thanks to my mother, and it made me anxious — and he seemed to be rapidly approaching some point.

“So what are you going to do with yourself? All day long, day after day.”

It was, in fact, a good question. My plans were to live off the money and try not to lose my mind, but Heaven help me if I allowed honesty to dictate the conversation.

“You’ve been after Marianne for some time now. She has known no other beau, as I’m sure you are aware. She is a pious, hardworking young lady. She is going to provide a home and children for you. That is your expectation, I guess?” He was gasping now, spluttering with rage and unwept tears and the desire to tear me limb from limb. “And what will you do then? In this home my girl provides for you? Have you considered it? Are you going to sit there in your fancy house, counting your money, and thinking of ways to embarrass her with your insanity? Because that’s all I can imagine you doing with no company, no job, no responsibilities.”

I opened my mouth and closed it. He was right. I was worth less than nothing, and would be worth less than nothing to his daughter. But I loved her, and I selfishly wanted to be with her no matter what this furious, drunken man was saying to me, even if it was the truth.

“So, then, David Nowak,” he continued, “why did you sell your family’s company? Because you’re a lunatic. Everyone knows that you are fundamentally incapable of living a functional life. And still we supported you. Gave you the benefit of the doubt. When people talked, my wife and I insisted on giving you a chance to prove yourself. To take forward everything your father has built. You dare insult me, my wife, my son, my daughter—my daughter! — by doing this — giving up the one thing that could save you. And now you think that you can be my son-in-law. Is that what you think?”

I was not going to say yes. I was not going to say no. I began to close the door, but Bunny Orlich was a quick drunk. He hurled himself against the door, and before I could realize what was happening his fist was slamming into my face with a noisy cracking sound, which sent me blindly backward and clutching at my nose.

“Do you hear me? Leave her alone, and I’ll leave you alone. But I find out you’re an even bigger idiot than I think, and your poor mother will be all alone in this big house of hers, with no husband to sleep next to and no son to see her on Christmas, and with two gravestones to lay flowers on.” He stared at me, flapping his punching hand. Had Matka heard? Was there even a commotion? There were drops of blood on his fingers. Matka in Monserrat. Matka underground. Please, never let her know about my Motel Ponderosa. Let her be dead.

Something was visibly wrong the next morning when Marianne came to my home, the sky blue-black behind her. Surely it pained her to be there, but she was that kind of girl — and I say “girl,” but she was a woman dressed in a floral blouse, a wool skirt; the girl whom I had loved was already grown, and the boy who I had been was still halfway in front of her and hardly a man.

“Your nose,” she said. She reached out as if to touch it, and then drew her fingers back. “I can’t believe he did that. And your eye. Oh, it looks so terrible. Is your nose broken?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.”

She began to touch my cheek with the very tips of her fingers, patting the skin.

I asked, “Did you sneak out of the house?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. I’m so sorry.” She told me that she was leaving for Chicago. It was her parents, of course. They didn’t want her in Greenpoint anymore, never mind that I hadn’t attempted to see her since Mr. Orlich came. Better to assume the worst of me. She was so beautiful, and was growing only more beautiful by the day, I was certain of it. Her eyes had a perpetually soft sleepiness to them; her silvery hair was mixed with cream. Already I was ticking off her attributes in my mind—good-bye, good-bye…

I said, “That’s ridiculous. They don’t own you. You’re an adult. We could marry. I have more than enough to sustain us financially.” Briefly I thought of Mr. Pawlowski. “You’ve always known this.”

“You want me to marry you. You think we can have a full and happy life together.”

“Yes. Of course. Why not? Isn’t that what you’ve thought all this time?” But when she raised her eyes to me again I saw how sad she was, and how plain her doubt was at that prospect, perhaps imagining herself as a nursemaid to me as I disappeared further into lunacy; then I felt the gentlest flicker of hatred in my rib cage, where all my love for her was living, and soon we were both crying out of stupidity and helplessness and uncertainty.

“Come in.”

“I — no. I do, I want to, but I don’t think I should.”

“Just come in. For God’s sake.”

“Why? What difference does it make?”

“To talk. To figure something out.”

“No, it’s all set up, I don’t have a choice. It’s my parents, I swear, it has nothing to do with how I feel.”

“You’re going to Chicago? And where will you go after Chicago?”

She wiped her eyes. “I don’t know! I don’t know anything. He said he would kill you. No matter where we went, David, he would find us.”

Quickly Marianne turned around and hustled her solid body down the stoop. I watched the back of her head and its inelegant, lopsided bun travel, bobbing slightly of its own accord, moving like a head gently agreeing yes, but it was only hope, I was frozen, it was only a dream, and I finally called out, sure that she could still hear my voice: “I love you. Write to me.”