I had been just a newborn when my father had come to the conclusion that his own instincts were not to be trusted. Rocking me in my dark room one night, humming softly, he was overwhelmed by what could only properly be named a flood of emotion—not a single, identifiable feeling, but everything his heart was capable of throwing at him, a raging muddy river clogged with debris. He’d sobbed and held me as though I were his life buoy. Too much, he’d thought. It’s just too much. Unsortable, uncontrollable. And how would he protect me if he was this weakened by love?
Ah yehwoh behwee, he again said around my mother’s finger. I turned my head to hide my smile—I was not done with my accusatory tears. As I did, a spot of red appeared on my white shirt, above the school crest, at the clavicle. My parents both saw it and my mother ran her hand up my neck, her fingertips lightly touching the skin. I giggled and closed off access by clamping head to shoulder.
Honey, my mother said. She and my father were both looking for blood from the ear, of course, having been tempered to search out that cinematic signal of dire brain injury. Everyone bleeds from the ear or nose, a single trickle, before their eyes go glassy and they die. But it wasn’t coming from the ear, and when I relaxed my clench, my mother canvassed my skull, pulling curtains of hair this way and that until she found the source, a split in the scalp, a wet mouth parted among the hairs at the crown of my head, darkly saturated, and a single stream running from the side. The wound was about three inches long. I, looking at the faces of my parents, suddenly realized something was wrong.
Just a cut, honey, she said. We should have a doctor look at this, she said to my father.
I have to go to the doctor? I said, clutching my mother’s arm.
You don’t want to bleed all over your uniform, do you?
I don’t want to go to the doctor!
Look, look, my father said. I’ll get a bandage for my mouth, he said, pulling back his lip to reveal the gap in his teeth. We’w mawch.
I don’t want to match!
My mother pulled me close and pressed the handkerchief to the wound while I chanted that I didn’t want to go to the doctor. Not now, not ever.
Let’s get moving before we need skis, my mother said.
Right, my father said. What do we need? Boots? Boots. Do we need to take food? He went back down to his hands and knees, mumbling to himself about coats and umbrellas and gloves, bus routes, cabs.
Erwin, my mother said.
What? he said. I’m looking for her boots.
Erwin.
What? He looked back from beneath the bench. His rump was in the air and both of us were gazing at him with pity.
Oh. Oh, he said. He stood up. I should stay here, then.
It would probably be better if you stayed here, my mother said.
It’s okay, Daddy, I said.
My mother called the pediatrician, but she got the service. She called her own doctor, then her ob-gyn. Because of the storm everyone had closed up early and made for Connecticut. My father was back on the floor, cross-legged, with me in his lap, his handkerchief’s symbology flooded by a red lake.
What about Nachtman? he said.
I’m not calling Nachtman.
He did fine with this, my father said, tipping his chin at the crazed white scar traversing the webbing of his thumb, site of a self-inflicted knife wound he’d suffered trying to slice an apple for me.
He’s not even a doctor! my mother said.
He’s a doctor.
So he has a license now?
This is absurd. It’s a piece of paper. His skills didn’t evaporate when he emigrated.
His skills aren’t going anywhere near her head, my mother said. She dialed another number. She waited an eternity before someone picked up.
Jane? she said. It’s Sarah. Look, sorry. Oh really? Oh, how weird. So. No, no, it’s not about that—no rush about that. It’s— We have a little problem here. Hazel hit her head and I need someone to look at her, but— No, it’s not serious. Yes. Exactly. Probably. No, she’s sitting right here. No.
Honey, my mother said to me, do you feel like you’re going to throw up? I shook my head. Dizzy? I shook my head again. No, no, neither. Yes, bleeding. Probably. Yes, probably. She looked in my direction. My head was on my father’s shoulder, and I smiled weakly at her, resigned. That’s the problem, she said, I can’t get Foreman or anyone else and I wondered if we might stop by your place— Of course. Oh no, Jane, we’ll just go to Roosevelt, then. That’s no good. No, no, no. Are you sure? Really sure? Oh well, that might be fun. She raised her eyebrows at me. And if we need to go on to Roosevelt— Sure. Sure. Of course. I’ll see if he’s up for it. Thank you, Jane. Thank you. We’ll be up in a minute. Bye.
Vornados are having a party, my mother said after she’d hung up.
Tonight? my father said.
Right now. She said she was just about to call us.
I’m sure, my father said.
She said she’d look Hazel over and that we should all stay for the party. Erwin, they’re having a costume party, my mother said and burst out laughing.
She actually said she was just about to call us? he said.
Spur-of-the-moment. They were just about to call.
My father shook his head and laughed, and then I started laughing, looking to him, then to my mother, for some clue why.
Now you’re going to insist on coming with us, aren’t you? my mother said.
Let me get my tux, my father said.
Daddy, you’re coming, too? I said.
No, honey, said my mother. How to explain to me why it was funny? How much better it was to let me laugh alongside them, unencumbered by understanding, sounding my single note in their major key.
She actually invited me? my father said.
She did.
By name?
That asshole, I believe she said?
That’s me.
I’ll call if, you know. Anything, my mother said.
Anything at all, he said. He kissed my mother, kissed me, and slipped something into my hand. I knew what it was without looking, and he said, For good luck. It was the only time I can remember him parting with the hex nut he carried in his pocket, his talisman, a mechanical fixture whose intended use is to bind together, to stave off entropy and chaos, two forces he detected everywhere.
Part II
8.
In 1978, the tongue of land at the far eastern end of Long Island was home to the 773rd Radar Squadron of the United States Air Force, the Ronjo and Memory Motels, a trailer park out at Ditch Plains, a decent point break on the south side, and a voracious white-tailed deer population. Clusters of gray clapboard houses, battered by snow and ice in the winter, scoured by sand and sun in the summer. The red-roofed Coast Guard outpost just up the road from the Montauk Yacht Club, a ruin that played host to a few families on Sunday afternoons for lunch. The waters hadn’t been fished to death, and a person with a boat could make a living.
There was speculation at the time that the Air Force had been taking advantage of the base’s secluded location to conduct experiments on the population of Montauk (2,800). Unconventional psychological warfare, time travel, electromagnetism, invisibility. In 1978, it wouldn’t have been impossible to fill most of the seats in the ballroom at the Montauk Yacht Club with members of the populace who claimed to have been abducted and forced to participate in those experiments.
On the Friday before the party at the Vornados’ penthouse, I’d taken a train to Montauk with my parents. They’d kept me home from school and we’d caught a cab to Penn Station for the long ride out. For hours I’d been in stasis, suppressed to a near-narcoleptic state by the blurred rhythm that train windows impart on the world, but as we approached the station, the train slowed and the trees thinned to offer flashbulb views of Napeague Bay. Then the woods fell away entirely and there was the insinuation of a body of water to the south, Fort Pond, its presence marked by a void brighter than the snow. Even if you couldn’t see it, you could feel the immense presence of the sea surrounding the place, but it was the infinite white ceiling of the sky, its sovereignty unbroken by office towers or billboards, that was unsettling to a child accustomed to the gray canyons of the city.