Jane Mendelsohn - Burning Down the House

—

They fell onto the couch. Ian was trying to restrain her, but he could not. Poppy knelt above him with her forearms grasped in his hands and her face reddened with fury, her eyes vivid blue. Her wide eyes, usually searching, now glared. Her expression not its typical, gently mocking self. She shook her head and the brown bangs of her short haircut flew to the side. The line of her long clean neck straightened. She began to kick. She pressed her full weight into his hands and kicked into his shins, into the couch, sending a pillow onto the floor. She bent her bony knee into his thigh and tried to knee him with her other leg in his groin. She was flailing like an enormous bird. Ian only held on more tightly. She writhed until his arm buckled and he let go of her for a moment. She fell onto his chest. They jerked on top of each other. Then his breathing slowed and they stopped moving. Ian wrapped his arms around her while she cried. When she pulled away and got off of him and stood up she knocked over the glass and swept her hair out of her eyes and went to the bathroom.

—

She splashed her face with icy water until she could not feel her hands. She sat on the toilet with the lid down and took a number of deep breaths, studying the pattern of small black and white hexagonal tiles on the floor. When she had calmed down she went into the living room and scooped up her bag and her jacket and fished around in her pocket for some keys and dropped them on the rug. Then she slipped her feet into her low suede boots and told Ian what she thought of him and left the apartment and didn’t wait for the elevator but instead ran down the eleven flights of stairs.

—

On the sidewalk Poppy marched with a steady step and the wind ruffled her hair and she moved her lips the tiniest bit while she talked in her head. It was going dark outside, violet bands of light sliding between the buildings. Shapes massing in shadows like old twentieth-century film negatives thrown on top of one another. Weaving red taillights drawing quickly disappearing arcs and lines between the otherwise disconnected people. Night didn’t fall in New York so much as rise, the saturation deepening, the volume lifting, the energy elevating and heightening people’s consciousness of themselves, their sensations or their thoughts, depending on who they were.

—

What were you thinking? she thought.

You were thinking that he was cruel and that this was the worst thing that had ever happened to you.

That was smart, have a temper tantrum and behave like the teenager you are which is probably why he wanted to end it to begin with.

Would you just forget about him? He’s pushing forty. Well, he should pick on someone his own age.

—

Poppy stopped at a corner and waited for the light. She could feel the doubts accumulating and dispersing through her mind and body, and beneath them, a deeper river of pain like a second nervous system, an even-more-hidden network of hurt. The idea that this was the worst thing that had ever happened to her was ludicrous. She had lost her mother when she was six. This was just a reminder. So why the searing heat in her solar plexus like a sword being slowly pulled out? This had to stop. In her mind she stood with Ian on a high rock, and miles below them pooled a glassy ancient lake. There was no sound at this altitude, on this craggy cliff of sublime remove. A glowing white sky behind his head. She looked at his face, the fine tracings of lines around his gray eyes like hieroglyphics, letters of another alphabet. If only she could read them she would understand so much. But she couldn’t. They didn’t mean anything. That’s what I must seem like to him, she thought, meaningless. Then she raised her arm and put her hand on his chest and pushed him. He fell soundlessly down and that was it.

STEVE HAD TAKEN to holding some meetings in the apartment. He liked to have people brought to his study directly. He would be reading or writing when they arrived and they would be seated beside the large low round gleaming marble table, asked what they would like to drink, brought the drink with a square linen cocktail napkin, and be made to wait for Steve until he finished his work. He had an enormous office and several conference rooms at his headquarters in Rockefeller Center, but he preferred to speak to certain business associates in the privacy of his own home. Since these meetings were always held during the day when the boys and Poppy were in school and Patrizia out and about in the city, Steve knew that Neva would be free on occasion to greet these guests and accompany them to his library. He had several assistants at the office and there was a secretary at home too, but she had her own little room, and as Steve explained, as if he even needed to, to Neva, the secretary was handling household matters, scheduling, event planning, returning deliveries, making appointments, and so on, but he did not involve her in his business affairs. He trusted Neva, he said, enough to give her this important task. And, speaking to her in a low whisper, as he made notations in a notebook, he expressed his interest in having her stay in the room during the meetings.

Neva asked him what his purpose was in all this.

Steve adjusted his glasses and kept writing. He stopped for a moment as if he were going to answer her but then kept writing while she stood there, in his study, her spine aching from standing so still.

Steve shut his notebook and checked his computers and then closed a few screens and took off his glasses. He breathed deeply and wiped his huge hand over his face. It looked like a massive tarantula grappling with its prey. When he was finished with the gesture he breathed deeply again.

There is no one else in my employ I can trust in this matter. Anyone I bring into this from my team will try to persuade me to act against my conscience.

He looked about the room. He nodded toward bookshelves and maps, glass-covered model ships, photographs of natural grandeur taken by the great American landscape photographers, mesas and cliffs, canyons and boulders, waterfalls spilling and tangling down, framed and matted, hung at ideal viewing height.

These business associates of mine, he said, they may seem harmless or as though they want to collaborate with me for our mutual benefit. They may appear to bring useful suggestions or valuable opportunities. Yet they would devour me. Any ground I give them will be despoiled. This country was built by raping the land and these people would take it to the furthest extreme, pioneers of depravity. This is what they don’t understand: nature conquers all. And by nature I don’t mean man’s nature or wildness I mean the endless timeless force of nature. Nature will bring them down in the roughest way but I do not want to be brought down and so I am forced to fend them off, hold something sacred. These are vicious people and I am going up against them naked.

Naked?

Unprotected, outside the law. I could bring the law into it but then they would have me killed. There are too many of them, everywhere, and I would expose myself by bringing in the law. No, I have to stand up to them myself.

Why me? Why do you need me?

A witness. I need a witness, someone strong who will not send me the message to cave to them and who will show no fear.

How do you know I won’t?

I don’t. I’m trusting my instinct.

Neva stood before him. She had elevated her style of clothing after having worked for the family for a few months and now she wore a neutral-colored blouse, a black skirt, and black leather boots. They were not expensive but the effect was elegant.

If nature conquers all, then why bother to fight these people? she asked. Eventually, they will lose.

Steve angled his large head. His chin jutted out and his eyelids drooped. He spoke slowly: Eventually is too long. What they want to do is too terrible.