When God Was a Rabbit

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know it’s late.’

I’d just finished a magazine article, just got to bed and looked at the clock – three o’clock – and that was when the phone rang and that’s when I’d considered letting the answer-machine pick up but I could never do that, because I knew it was him – he always called at that time – and so I reached for the phone and said, ‘Joe?’ and he said, ‘Guess what?’ and I said, ‘What?’ and he did something unusual. He laughed.

‘What is it?’ I said, hearing the sound of people in the background, the clink of glasses. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Out,’ he said.

‘That’s great,’ I said.

‘Guess who’s here?’

‘Dunno,’ I said.

‘Guess,’ he said again.

‘I dunno,’ I said, feeling suddenly irritated. ‘Gwyneth Paltrow?’ (He’d actually met her two weeks before at an opening, and had forced me to talk to her on the phone like a fan.)

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not Gwynnie.’

‘Who then?’ I said, adjusting my pillow.

And he told me.

And on the line I heard a voice that might or might not have been him; a man’s voice, not a boy’s, surrounded by eighteen years of silence. But when he said, ‘Hey, little Ell,’ the thing he always said to me, I felt a sensation upon my skin as if I was falling through feathers.

Two weeks later, the sound of New York chatter and car horns rose from Greene Street as the sun poured through the large windows, filling the space with an abundance of light that seemed lavish and greedy. I rolled over and opened my eyes. My brother was standing holding a coffee, staring at me.

‘How long have you been there?’ I said.

‘Twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘Sometimes on one leg, like this,’ and he showed me. ‘Or like this,’ and he changed legs. ‘Like an Aborigine.’

‘You’re so weird,’ I said, and rolled over, tired, happy, hung over.

I’d landed quite late the previous night. Joe had met me at JFK as he always did, and held a big sign that said ‘Sharon Stone’. He loved to listen to the whispers of the passers-by, the gorging anticipation of the star-struck, and he loved to watch their mute disappointment as I stood in front of him, dishevelled and casual and oh so not Sharon Stone. He relished this statement meant for the masses, and delivered it with precision that verged on cruelty.

As the taxi crossed Brooklyn Bridge (the bridge we always asked the driver to take), I opened my window to the smell of the city, to the noise, and my heart leapt as the lights illuminated my welcome, urging me onwards as it had done to millions of others, those wanting a different life. My brother had been one of the lured; brought by the promise of anonymity, not of gold, where he could be himself without the label of the past; without all those workings-out and crossings-out, the things we have to do before we come to an answer, the answer of who we are.

As I looked towards the financial district I felt a surge in my chest – for my brother, for Jenny, for the past, for Charlie, and I could feel the gnawing inclusiveness again; the them and us of my brother’s world; the one where I was always an us. He pointed to the Twin Towers and said, ‘You’ve never been up there, have you?’ And I said, ‘No.’

‘You look down and you’re so cut off from everything. It’s another world. I went last week for breakfast. Stood against the window, leant against it and felt my mind pulled towards the life below. It’s awesome, Elly. Fucking awesome. The life below feels so far away when you’re there. The minusculeness of existence.’

The taxi pulled to a sudden halt. ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re fuckin’ killin’ me. Fuck you, asshole!’

We pulled away slowly and my brother leant towards the grille. ‘Let’s go to the Algonquin instead, sir.’

‘Anything you want, buddy,’ said the driver, and swerved dangerously into the inside lane. He reached down for the radio and turned it on. Liza Minnelli. A song about maybes and being lucky – even a winner – a song about love not running away.

His name had sat between us since my arrival like an odd chaperone, bringing a quaint propriety to our stories. It was as if he deserved a chapter all to himself, a moment when we turned the page and only his name was visible. And so with the drinks ordered, the bar quiet and our attention mutual and assisting, that chapter began when my brother finished chewing on a handful of peanuts and said, ‘You’ll see him tomorrow, you know.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘He’s coming with us,’ he said. ‘To watch me sing. Do you mind?’

‘Why should I mind?’

‘It’s just so quick, for us, I mean. You’ve just got here.’

‘I’m OK.’

‘He just wanted to,’ he said. ‘He wants to see you.’

‘It’s OK, I understand.’

‘You sure? He just wanted to.’

‘I want to, too,’ I said, and I was about to ask if they had become lovers again, but the martinis arrived and they looked perfect and tempting, and there would be time for that, and so instead I reached for my glass and took the first sip and said, ‘Perfect!’ instead of ‘Cheers!’ Because it was.

‘Perfect,’ said my brother, and he unexpectedly reached over and held me.

He had become like Ginger. You had to translate his actions, for they were seldom accompanied by words, because his world was a quiet world; a disconnected, fractured space; a puzzle that made him phone me at three o’clock in the morning, asking me for the last piece of the border, so he could fill in the sky.

‘I’m so happy you’re here,’ he said, and I sat back and looked at him. His face was different: softer; the taut tiredness that had hung about his eyes, gone. His face looked happy.

‘You are, aren’t you?’ I said, grinning.

The older couple by the palm looked at us and smiled.

‘So,’ my brother said.

‘So?’

‘Can I tell you all over again?’

‘Of course,’ I said, and he downed half his glass and started again from the beginning.

It was a Stonewall party, a charity party he always supported, and one that was going to be held that year in one of the large brownstones on the edge of the Village. They were intimate affairs that catered for the usual people, but which always made good money from the tickets and the silent auction, and the other silent auction that only the naughty ever knew about.

‘But you didn’t want to go?’ I said, rushing the story ahead to territory I knew nothing about.

‘No I didn’t. But then I remembered I wanted to check out their renovations, because I’ve got my eye on a new place and I need an architect; which is also another story because I want you to come and see this house with me tomorrow.’

‘OK, OK, I will,’ I said, and drank a large mouthful of vodka, feeling its flush in my head. ‘Now continue,’ I said.

A string quartet was playing in the walled garden and he sat outside most of the evening, gladly cornered by an older gentleman called Ray, who talked to him about the riots of ’69, and told him of suppers spent with Katharine Hepburn and Marlene, whom he used to know because he was involved in wardrobe at MGM and because he had association with von Sternberg too, because of his own German lineage (mother’s side). And then the light faded and candles arrived, filling the atmosphere with scents like tea and jasmine; fig, too. People deserted as the music stopped, headed indoors to hear the results of the auction and to sample the Japanese buffet orchestrated by the events caterer du jour. And that’s how they found themselves alone. There was no inappropriate suggestion, just the quiet familiarity of evenings he used to spend with Arthur, when they talked about Halston and Warhol and those seventies parties whose themes were as blurred as the preferences of the guests.

And then a man approached down the fire escape. A young man, it seemed, in the candlelit night; less young as he approached. But Ray looked over to him and smiled and said, ‘And who might you be, handsome young brave?’ and the man laughed and said, ‘My name is Charlie Hunter. How’re you doing, Joe?’

The waiter placed the second round of martinis down. I was hungry. I ordered extra olives.

They crammed years into those remaining hours before they tumbled out onto the sidewalks of the Village and wandered back to SoHo, happy and drunk and disbelieving. They spent the weekend at Joe’s apartment, cocooned in movies and take-out boxes and beer, and voraciously ate away at the years, the lost years that had defined one another’s name. And that’s when Charlie told him he shouldn’t have been at the party either. He should have been back home in Denver, but his flight had been delayed and a meeting had suddenly come up for Monday, and a business colleague he knew only as Phil had said, ‘Stay – there’s this party,’ and so he’d stayed and hadn’t seen Phil since; not since he’d left him by the silent auction, bidding for a dinner for two at the Tribeca Grill with an unknown celebrity.

Joe downed the remainder of his glass. ‘And guess what, Ell? I think he’s going to move to New York for good.’

And that’s when I really thought I’d asked if they’d become lovers; but maybe I hadn’t because I couldn’t remember, because that was when we ordered the third martini, the third martini that seemed such a good idea at the time; the third martini that stayed in my mouth as I awoke to that piercing sunlight and a brother standing on one leg, holding a double macchiato, pretending to be an Aborigine.