Part 12 (1/2)

”I don't know. It's not like I've done this before,” Cheri says. ”Let's just see what happens.” Cheri doesn't take her eyes off her ice hole. The picture she sees through the patch in the window is like a snow globe after it's shaken and everything is settling into place.

”This calls for getting way sober or way stoned and I'm neither.” They light up another bowl to forget the cold, then another. Eventually, the twinkly lights on the house next door flicker, then go dark. The last thing Cheri remembers is looking up at the sky and thinking, It's like a giant black tongue, capturing the snowflakes.

With no one to maintain it, Cheri's ice hole closes in on itself.

Certain sounds immediately evoke a sense memory. The rhythmic sound of a shovel sc.r.a.ping the pavement says Snow day, snow day, and Cheri's dreaming mind conjures the image of her young self, dressed in her red parka and rubber boots, excited to see the world covered in white. Cheri bolts upright. It's light out. Taya's in the backseat buried beneath clothes and magazines. Cheri reaches over and turns the key in the ignition. She flips on the winds.h.i.+eld wipers and the snow is swept aside. There he is, shoveling the driveway of 5521.

Sol wears his pants tucked into boots Cheri has never seen. She's also never seen him hold a shovel or a rake or do anything that Gusmanov could do. But her father is fully engrossed in his task, shoveling with determination Then Cheri notices a young boy, maybe five years old, sitting on the front steps of the house. He's dressed in a snow outfit, the kind that makes a crunchy rustle when you walk, watching Sol intently. When Sol motions to him, he comes running. Sol bends down and puts the boy's hands on the shovel's handle, on top of his; together, they are a great big machine for moving snow. The boy laughs, but his legs wobble and he takes a tumble in the snow. His hat falls off and his hair is a halo of strawberry curls, his little fists are at his eyes. If there had been any doubt in Cheri's mind before, there is none now. It isn't just that the boy has her father's red hair and fair complexion; it's the way he's looking at Sol, lifting his arms: Pick me up. Sol sweeps him up immediately. She experiences a frisson of that same primal need. She suddenly remembers falling, finding herself at the bottom of the slide at the park, in her favorite red parka: bright, loud, now dirty. Reaching toward him: Pick me up, pick me up. Her father looking at her like a package he doesn't know how to unwrap, then turning away. Cici's arms reaching in.

Sol sets his son down and brushes the snow off him. The blond woman from the Most Sacred Blood Church opens the door, smiling. She waves at them: Come back inside.

Cheri has glimpsed an alternate universe, one that apparently exists alongside hers. What would happen if she blinked? Would she be in Montclair, walking in the snow up her driveway to find her mother waiting in the doorway in her bathrobe, her father behind her with a shovel, ready to clear their path?

”Oh, s.h.i.+t,” Taya says softly, leaning over Cheri's shoulder, seeing what she's seeing. Taya has racc.o.o.n eyes from last night's makeup and a sweater wrapped around her head. She puts her arm softly on Cheri's shoulder. ”Let's get out of here,” she says.

Cheri doesn't see Sol for weeks after her secret trip to Rye. He is out of town on business; she has exams. It's easy to avoid him until there he is, standing outside her lecture hall, saying, ”I'll walk you to your next cla.s.s,” like they're in high school. She isn't prepared for the bile she tastes when she makes eye contact. She imagines him just a few hours ago handing his kid a Superman lunchbox. Thanks, Dad, she hears the mop-headed little boy say as he hugs Sol good-bye.

Sol leads her down the crowded hallway, making small talk. ”There's another storm coming in; looks like we could get more snow.”

”A snow day, how perfect.” Cheri can't contain herself. ”I saw her. I saw you and your kid playing in the snow.”

”What?” Sol stops in his tracks.

Cheri looks at him with contempt. ”Forest Drive. Your other life. Which you couldn't even manage to do in another state. You disgust me.”

A kid wearing a backpack gives them a look, then brushes past.

Sol is fl.u.s.tered, tries to take her arm. ”Let's go somewhere and talk,” he says in his best I'm-the-grown-up voice.

”I'm not going anywhere with you.”

”There are things you don't know, Cheri. A compendium of things that all affect each other. This is not the place to do this.” Sol's tone is becoming defensive, which only angers Cheri further.

”A compendium? A f.u.c.king compendium? Take your hand off me. I said I'm not going anywhere.”

Sol backs off, waits for an arm-in-arm couple to go around them. ”I understand how this looks,” he says, grasping for a phrase that might calm her down.

”Is that all you care about, appearances? f.u.c.k how it looks! How could you do this? To us, to her? You're a f.u.c.king lying bigamist. I could have you arrested.” She turns to storm off.

”Whoa,” he says, grabbing her arm again. ”The only woman I'm married to is your mother. And keep your voice down.”

”Oh, great. You're only married to one of them. I guess that means you're in the clear!”

”Please,” Sol says, relaxing his grip on her arm. ”I don't know what you were doing there or what you saw. Were you following me?”

Cheri laughs ruefully. ”I don't think you're in any position to be questioning me.”

Sol lets out an exasperated sigh. His shoulders slump for a moment, but he quickly returns to his full height and clears his throat. ”What do you want me to do here, Cheri? Tell me and I'll do it. I'll tell you the truth.”

”You know, the irony is that I thought I was actually getting to know you. Why did you even bother when everything you do is a lie? Does your other family even know about us?” Cheri pauses, trying to grasp all the implications. She hasn't, until just this moment, considered that this little boy is her half brother. ”Forget it, I don't want to know.” Cheri wrenches her arm out of Sol's grasp and barrels her way outside. Sol is behind her.

”I can understand that.” He pants, struggling to keep up.

”You don't understand anything about me and you never have.” Cheri halts, lights up a cigarette, watching as her hands shake. ”You never liked me. Can we get that out in the open? I was never enough for you. Would it have been different if I were your own flesh and blood? Well, now that's a moot point.”

”That's not true. I may not always like how you behave, but you're my daughter. I love you.”

”You might love me out of obligation, but you never liked me. I know the difference.”

”You're wrong,” he says adamantly. ”You have a right to be angry. But this is not about you-”

”It never is!” Cheri says angrily, exhaling smoke in his face. ”And that's part of the problem! But forget about me. What about Cici? You didn't just do what Taya's dad did, f.u.c.king a secretary and then dumping her. Oh no. You've got a whole other wife, a kid. A whole other f.u.c.king family!”

”Jesus Christ, I told you she's not my wife.” Sol's face is growing red.

”And I suppose he's not your kid?” Cheri knows the little boy is just another victim of her father's lies, but she can't access sympathy for him, or for the blond woman. She can't calculate how many lives he's hurt, but all she cares about in this moment is Cici.

Sol can't look at her. ”Cheri, it's not that simple.”

”No, it's not.” Cheri feels the weight of what is now their shared secret get a bit heavier. Of course it's on her, not Sol, to make the choice about whether to keep it. Cheri looks down at her shaking hands. ”As much as I hate you,” she says icily, ”I'd hate myself more if I ruined Cici's life. Telling her...would ruin what she believes is her life. ”

Cheri sees Sol's shoulders relax. His obvious relief makes her hate him all the more. She needs to get away from the woody smell of Sol's cologne, his semi-tearing eyes, Was.h.i.+ngton Square Park. Nowhere could be far enough.

”Just stay away from me. You're not a part of my life anymore.”

The End of Thanksgiving.

Ever since Sol died on the day before Thanksgiving, both the bird and the holiday were verboten by Cici. It's only three p.m. but Cheri's neighborhood market is jammed like people are getting ready for the Siege of Leningrad and she's thinking, Wasn't it just Halloween? There are cardboard cutouts of turkeys everywhere and too many carts for the narrow aisles; it's claustrophobic. This is why she avoids grocery stores. She snags toilet paper and paper towels and heads to the deli, where there's a sign about ordering your holiday birds. But with Michael on the road for The Palmist, she'll likely settle for commemorating the holiday with a turkey sandwich.

Her favorite sight when she was a kid was the foil-wrapped bundle Cheri would pull out of the fridge and pick on for days after a holiday. Her fridge is currently a wasteland dotted with old takeout containers. The woman at the head of the line orders a pound of corned beef. Sol loved his corned beef on rye. ”If only he'd gone out for a corned beef,” her mother had been known to lament.

When Sol died, it had been fifteen years since Cheri had agreed to keep his secret. Since that day, Cheri had avoided him whenever possible and when-for Cici's sake-she went back to Montclair for obligatory holidays like this one, she kept her sarcasm to a minimum. It was hard enough for her to handle the pretense in her conversations with Cici, but seeing it up close and personal challenged her resolve to stay silent.

Cheri was told that it had been a crisp fall morning. Sol decided to walk to Citronella's to pick up the Thanksgiving turkey. Cici had debated between an eighteen- and a twenty-pounder. It was just the two of them, but Sol liked plenty of leftovers and Joe the butcher had picked out a lovely hen for Cici. Sol was in a wonderful mood; he had a spring in his step because he'd lost a little weight and was getting his tennis game back. Sol had had a mini-stroke three years earlier, after which he had re-prioritized his life. He started eating healthy, exercising daily, and working less. His phlebitis was finally under control; by all accounts, Sol and Cici were enjoying a second wind in their marriage, happily ensconced in their Eighty-first Street apartment. Semiretirement also rejuvenated Sol's humanitarian interests and he volunteered a few hours a week at a free health clinic.

Cici had told him to take Cookie's grocery cart to collect the turkey, but he scoffed; it wasn't right for a man to be seen wheeling a cart down Fifth Avenue. He felt the same way about a man being seen in public walking a small dog. Joe the butcher said he was surprised to see Dr. Matzner that morning, as they'd scheduled the turkey's delivery for later that afternoon. But they joked around and Sol looked in perfect health. ”Happy Thanksgiving to you and the missus,” Joe remembered saying.

The police report quoted witnesses who said they saw a well-dressed older man carrying a large package on Eighty-first Street suddenly fall to the ground. They thought he'd tripped but on closer observation, they realized he was clawing at his chest, unable to breathe. When the EMS team arrived, the man had lost consciousness, and they quickly packed him in the ambulance. Apparently, a bystander had thought to put the package in with him.

Cheri got a garbled call from Cici saying her father had been hurt carrying a turkey and was in the hospital. Come home immediately. Sol died of sudden cardiac arrest at 3:47 p.m. while Cheri was in seat 23C of a United airbus. During her three and a half years as a police officer, Cheri had often been in the position where she had to tell people a loved one had died. She knew it was important to look them in the eye, keep it brief and neutral. The doctor who told Cici the news no doubt adhered to those rules, but Cici was so distraught she'd needed to be sedated and was sleeping when Cheri checked in on her. The hospital administrator gave Cheri a plastic bag filled with Sol's belongings: clothing, watch, wallet. And then he handed her the sodden turkey, wrapped in once-white paper blotched with pink juice. ”Can't you throw it away for us?” Cheri asked. She was told she'd already signed for it; staff could not take personal effects that had been signed for and released, and disposing of raw poultry in the hospital trash was a health hazard. So Cheri carried the dripping turkey out to the street and dropped it in front of the first homeless guy she saw. ”Do I look like I have a stove?” he protested.