Richard Powers - The Time of Our Singing

They’d rearranged the Cloisters in the years since I’d been — moved the stones, shrunk them down, simplified the vaults and capitals. Teresa couldn’t figure out the ersatz medieval grab bag. “You mean this guy just went around buying up monasteries all over the place?”

“The ways of white folk are beyond understanding.”

“Joseph. Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“You know what. How do you buy a monastery anyway?”

“Huh. How do you sell one?”

“I mean, buy a Spanish, get a Portuguese half price?” I squeezed her until she glinted. “And then they just put them all back together like some big jigsaw? Buy me one of these, Joseph. Nice row of columns. Wouldn’t these look great in the backyard?”

“We’d need a backyard first.”

“You’re on. I’d settle for one of those. Can I get that in writing?”

She loved the Unicorn Tapestries, and she cried for the beast in captivity. “Einhorn,” I said out loud.

“Say what?”

“Nothing.”

This was my outing; Teresa couldn’t understand why I wasn’t enjoying these extraterrestrial artifacts. I ran through the rooms, blasting past the exhibits with less attention than Jonah and I had given them a quarter century earlier. I stepped into the cold stone room where we had heard our singers that day, and I saw my brother leap up from the chair to touch the pretty lady who had come to sing for us. Beyond that, no messenger. We abandoned the time hole after an hour. Teresa was elated; I felt more listless than I had since hearing from Jonah. He’d moved on to a world whose key I couldn’t find.

“Let’s walk.” Teresa nodded, happy with any idea I put to her. We cut through Fort Tryon Park. I looked for two boys, seven and eight, amid the crowds lining the paths, but I couldn’t find us among so many like-colored decoys, all speaking Spanish. The wave of Dominicans had begun, one that would, in another decade, recolonize the island’s tip as a million Puerto Ricans had once colonized Brooklyn and East Harlem throughout my childhood. The aging Jews were still there, those who’d refused to move south to a city of Cuban escapees. Strangers who’d have greeted my father on sight pulled back from me in fear. Written already, in their faces: The lease had expired on this, their neighborhood.

“There’s a bakery around here,” I said to my Polish Catholic honky shiksa. “Right around here someplace.”

But I was turned around. We dragged up and down streets, stumbled upon the concrete steps — completely changed — doubled back along our path until Ter had had enough. “Why don’t you just ask somebody?”

Approach a stranger: The idea would never have occurred to me. We asked a deliveryman. “Frisch’s Bakery?” I might as well have been speaking Provençal. “In your dreams, maybe.” Finally, one promenading woman wearing a silver suit dress and a turquoise and smoky quartz bracelet stopped, more out of alarm than pity. She was out for a stroll in her finest attire, as if the city hadn’t gone to hell in a hackney all around her since the war. It surprised her that I spoke intelligible English. She could have been my aunt. The fact would have killed her on the spot.

“Frisch’s? Frisch’s up on Overlook?”

“Yes, that’s it! That’s the one.” Edging away, palms up, harmless.

My Tante snorted. “You’re going to need more than good directions. It closed down ages ago. Ten years, if you’re lucky. What are you looking for, dear?” Her voice bent down with burden, her penance for coming to this mixed land.

Teresa, too, turned to me. Yes, what are you looking for?

I spoke my humiliation. “Mandelbrot.”

“Mandelbrot!”She examined me to see how I could have discovered this secret password. “Why didn’t you say so, dear? Frisch’s, you don’t need. Down to the next street, make a left. Halfway up the block on your left.”

I thanked her again, in zeal proportional to how worthless her information was to me. I cupped Teresa by the shoulder and dragged her off toward the street Tante had indicated.

“What’s Mandelbrot, Joseph?” In her mouth, the word turned to enriched flour.

“Almond bread.” Lost in translation.

“Almond bread! You like almond bread? You never told me. I could have made you…” Teresa, her face contorted, struggled with the indictment. If you’d only told me, brought the affair home and put her into bed with us.

We found the bakery. Nothing resembling Frisch’s. The thing they sold as Mandelbrot might as well have been cinnamon toast. We sat on a bench and picked at it, our day in the city ending. I looked up the street at a man combing through a wire-mesh trash can. Tomorrow was just that light on the horizon, rushing to catch up with yesterday. This was the street Da had brought us along, telling us how all the universe’s clocks kept different times. The same bench, though same seemed meaningless.

We’d eaten nothing all day. But Teresa picked at her almond bread as at some stale Communion wafer. She tore off hunks and tossed them to the pigeons, then cursed the birds for swarming her. I sat next to her, waylaid in my own life. The boys and their father passed us while we sat on this bench, but they didn’t yet know how to see us. There was no place I could get to from this where and when. I rose to go, but I couldn’t walk. Teresa was clamped onto me, holding me in place. “Joseph. My Joe. We have to make it legal.”

“It?” Trying to smash all clocks.

“Us.”

I sat back down. I studied the man working the trash can, who was unfolding a shiny packet of aluminum foil. “Ter, we’re good. Aren’t you happy?” She looked down. “Why do you always say ‘make it legal’? You afraid of being arrested? You want some contract in case you need to sue me?”

“Fuck the law. I don’t give a shit about the law.” She was crying, forcing her words through closed teeth. “You keep saying okay, but nothing happens. It’s like your music. You say you want to, but you don’t. I keep waiting for you. It’s like you’re just killing time with me. You think you’re going to find somebody better who you’ll really want to marry, really want to make—”

“No. Absolutely not. I will never, never find anyone else who…is better to me than you.”

“Really, Joseph? Really? Then why not prove it?”

“What do we have to prove? Is love about proving?” Yes, I thought, even as I asked. That’s exactly what love is. Teresa leaned her head over her knees and began to sob. I stroked her back in big sweeping ovals, like a child practicing his cursive O ’s. I learned to write from Mama, but I couldn’t remember her ever teaching me. I rubbed Ter’s back as she heaved, feeling my hand from some distant, insulated place.

A man in a black suit and crushed porkpie hat, older than the century, shuffled by. At the sound of danger, his shuffle accelerated to a crawl. Then, seeing that our tragedy wouldn’t hurt him, he stopped. “Is she sick, the girl?”

“She’s fine. It’s just… Leid.” He nodded, squinting, and said something in Da’s language I didn’t catch. All I heard was the brutal reprimand. His shuffle ramped up again, but he stopped and looked back every twenty paces. Checking whether to call the Polizei.

I knew Teresa’s need for marriage, the one she couldn’t speak. If she married, her family might relent and retrieve her. If we stayed as we were, we’d confirm their worst slander. She’d be forever living in sin with a freeloading black who didn’t even care enough to give her a ring.

But marriage was impossible. It was wrong in a way I couldn’t begin to say. My brother and sister made it impossible. My father and mother. Marriage meant belonging, recognizing, finding zero, coming home. The bird and the fish could fall in love, but the here and now would scatter every thieved twig they might assemble. I don’t know what race Teresa thought I belonged to, but it wasn’t hers. Race trumped love as surely as it colonized the loving mind. There was no middle place to stand. My parents had tried, and the results were my life. Nothing I felt the need to reproduce.