Fierce Little Thing: A Novel

1

Seven A.M. The kitchen tumbles with light-tossed dust. Outside, the northern cardinal harangues, a bird so proud they named him twice: Cardinalis cardinalis. I sip my Ceylon tea. I check on the sourdough starter, better known as the Mother. She’s ravenous on this June dazzler, and I sate her: one part starter, one part water, one and a half parts flour; mix to a tangy slop; shroud in linen by the window, below a fast-moving herd of cumulus clouds. Next, I marry last night’s leaven with a pile of flour and a splash of water. And so the Mother and I begin again what we began yesterday and the day before, and all the days before that, since the very day sixteen years ago that I made Grandmother’s grand, white, shuttered house my own: tomorrow’s loaves.

The gate bell rings. Sludge covers my hands. I think to wash them, but the ring returns, relentless, insistent. This happens sometimes. City folks get lost. What a relief to discover an unfamiliar, dark SUV appearing now on the black-and-white screen just inside the front door. I’ll just slap on a charming voice to send the lost soul on their merry way.

You’ve made a wrong turn, I say into the box beside the door, pretending a slop of dough isn’t slipping down my elbow. What’s your final destination? You’ll need—

Saskia. The screen pixilates the man’s face, but I’d know Xavier anywhere.

Topsy’s all the way at the top of the stairs, hidden in my drawer. Already, my palms ache to rip him from his hiding spot. I’ll bury my face in his scalp, so the smell of you can make me whole.

Saskia, let me in. Xavier knows better than this. He knows to leave me alone—unless. Unless what’s coming is worse than what I do.

2

You died.

Daddy went to prison.

Mother went to Mexico.

I didn’t return to the apartment. The immense oak desk was moved out of the den, and a new queen-sized bed wrapped in thick plastic was delivered, and Miriam and her husband moved in. Grandmother made a big to-do, but it wasn’t much of a change; poor Miriam had always been there when we awoke and she left after dark, and even on Sundays, the house remained fragrant with bleach and Murphy’s Oil Soap. I was to call Miriam’s mustached husband Mr. Jacobs. This I found hilarious because shouldn’t Miriam be called Mrs. Jacobs then? But you were dead so there was no one to tell.

Mr. Jacobs was a retired police officer, but Grandmother told me he was to be known as her driver. A tutor from the university came to teach me math, joyless in a way I didn’t know college students could be. I made sure never to tell him what Mr. Jacobs was retired from, but I didn’t know why it was a secret. That special light in the Devil’s Ramble didn’t return. The rags you’d tied in its branches were gone.

One snowy midnight, Miriam and Mr. Jacobs were in the kitchen, sneaking hot toddies. The story does seem to be properly buried, she said, and he said, I’m ready to sleep in my own bed, Miri, and she said, But what if the press finds her? Poor little thing. I’m not sure I can have that on my conscience, and he said, Miri, it’s a tragedy to let tragedy define a child, even though we all knew Mr. Jacobs was only saying so because he wanted to sleep in his own bed. A week later, they went back to their bungalow across town. The next day, Grandmother announced I was returning to the city.

But where? I didn’t mean to sound insolent. I meant, actually where, because you were dead and Daddy was in prison and Mother was in Mexico and the apartment was sold.

It will be smoother, Grandmother said, as if that was an answer. A frown pinched her brow. Someone your own age, guardians with more energy. Unless, of course, you want to go to boarding school. She finished her Lapsang souchang. Her hand shook as she crackled the bone china cup onto its saucer. Frankly, you don’t exactly come across as a rising Madeira girl. The dining room had always been my least favorite of her many rooms; no matter how sunny the day, gloom was always sealed in. She took my hand and clucked at the dirt behind my fingernails. You must return to functioning society.

Xavier Pierce’s family would take me. Our grandmothers had met as new mothers, and our mothers, in turn, had been at Bryn Mawr together, and Xavier and I had celebrated our joint third birthday at the Natural History Museum. I had a vague impression of what he looked like—luscious lips, a golden halo of curls. The last time I’d seen him, at a seventh birthday party for a horrible, farting boy named Walter, I’d found myself studying Xavier’s mouth in the simple arts of talking, smiling, and frowning, amazed that a boy could be so beautiful and also so clearly be a boy. But I had no idea of his interests or character, for though we’d spent our primary school years in apartments only blocks apart, ours was a friendship born of the people before us, who hadn’t even especially been friends.

Grandmother gave Miriam’s sandwich platter another passing glance, then pushed it aside, untouched. I ignored the fist of my stomach. She informed me that I wasn’t the only one who’d been through a big change; around the same time I’d come to live with her (yes, that’s how she put it, as though we’d made a whimsical decision to move me in), Xavier’s family had moved down to Chelsea. The fact that she would allow me to grow up below Seventy-second Street was the surest sign she was desperate to get rid of me.

But why would they want me?

They’re a family of means, if that’s what you’re asking.

Are you paying them?

Don’t be crude, Saskia. She rang the bell. Miriam collected the sandwiches.

That night, over breaded veal cutlets, she added, The Pierces are the right sort of people. Jane travels quite a bit for her little boutique, so don’t expect much mothering. But Philip assures me you’ll receive plenty of care. He paints in a home studio, so you’ll never be unsupervised. His work has become quite well regarded, you know. You’re a very lucky girl. Granted, their lifestyle is more bohemian than you’re used to, but frankly, Saskia, anything is better than you wandering these woods from dawn ’til dusk. Now, being a boy, Xavier won’t expect you to be friends. Get the chance of that out of your mind right now. But you’re certain to make some girlfriends. Someday. She set down her fork. She wiped her mouth with the linen napkin. Let’s remember our agreement. She waited for me to nod, then said, Good girl.

Two days after I turned twelve, Mr. Jacobs dropped me at the Pierces’ loft in Chelsea. The door to the building was propped open with an apple box. On the third floor, a film crew was shooting a man in a trench coat running across the open space. Three times they shot the scene. There were dozens of people on set, and lights and mics and makeup bags, cameras, clipboards, headsets. I stood still for the first time in days and realized my feet ached from all the miles I’d clocked on Grandmother’s land since she’d informed me I was leaving. My sun-bleached hair still smelled of the Connecticut wind. I decided, just then, that I would have to leave the building and find somewhere else to stay; it wasn’t fair to burden these relative strangers with all the reasons for my wandering. But before I could go, Xavier’s scent presented him: musky BO, the mildew of air-dried jeans, Head & Shoulders, cafeteria French fries, a green apple Blow Pop, and Carmex. The room was bustling but all my attention stayed on the fleshy funk of Xavier’s long body just behind mine, a body I realized, only then, I had known for nearly as long as I had been myself. So I wouldn’t leave, not yet.

The loft, one floor up, had been Philip’s studio since the seventies, back when he was a sculptor, but Grandmother was right, they’d lived uptown until Xavier turned ten, when the family decided on this adventure, a word I was to see Jane say with a slant of disgust at the corner of her luscious mouth. She wasn’t there that first day, though. She was in Ghana, buying fabric and goods to be marked up a thousand percent in her boutique.

The loft was a warren of rooms made from canvases, pallets, and plywood. The whole place was splattered: mustard on the ceiling, red on the windows, evergreen across a large swath of the unfinished floorboards in the great room. A single yellow toilet was housed in a dank closet next to the stairs, and the kitchen consisted of a fridge painted black and a hot plate for reheating takeout. But the views of the Empire State Building and the Twin Towers, and the city to the west and the east—framed by nearly three-hundred-sixty degrees of windows, interrupted only by the stairwell and Jane’s toile curtains, and stacks of Philip’s abstract paintings—made it clear that the Pierces were rich in more than just money, although, make no mistake, they also had plenty of that.

The fire door squealed across the concrete floor, announcing our arrival. A real-looking impressionist painting, featuring a herd of gloomy cows munching hay, hung just inside the door.

Oh, it’s dearest Saskia! Philip cried from the center of the great room, as he lifted his attention from a canvas the length of a car. Royal blue streaked his beard. His kimono opened over a broad, hairy belly, gray Champion sweatpants, and volleyball knee pads. He smelled of sweat and turpentine and cigars. He took my duffle bag. He bisou’d my cheeks. I’ll make a room! He meant he would make an actual room. It took two hours and a dozen abandoned canvases, each one a solid color: magenta, puce, violet. Can you believe, he said, hammering them into a makeshift wall, that I wasted so much time on these stupid color dances?

Xavier created a bed from a stack of two-by-fours, a futon mattress, and an electric green afghan. He strung up fairy lights. He scaled a twenty-foot ladder to hammer red velvet fabric over the windows. I’ve got homework, he said, when he was back on earth. I’d forgotten about school. No matter how many times Xavier brushed his forelock back, it settled over that right eye. I discovered that I wanted to land my breath on the pillow of his lips, which was called a kiss but didn’t seem entirely like a kiss when I imagined it. I didn’t want a thing to do with the rest of his body; mouth to mouth just seemed the most efficient way to suck him in.

He caught me looking. Want a snack?

I shook my head.

We’ve got Mexican Coke. The kind with real sugar. Everybody likes that.

Okay, thanks.

This drew a grin, revealing his wonky tooth, which only made him more beautiful. He reached out. He pinched my deltoid. Liar. The lingering ache reminded me that to kiss him would be to lose him, and already I couldn’t afford that.

Philip grunted. We’ve been eating like bachelors, haven’t we, boy? He stuck a finger into my side. She needs sustenance. The diner? He wiped his brow, hammer still clutched in his fist, and swept back into the open loft, where the evening had grown golden. Saskia, you can help me ’til he’s done.

Out in the great room, Philip filled a bucket with paint the color of sunshine. He lined it up beside the canvas he’d been working on, a sea of blue—periwinkle, blueberry, azure. Stand in the yellow. It was a relief to be told what to do, even if the paint was cold and slimy as I slipped my feet in. Start here. Make your way to the other edge. I didn’t want to ruin what he had made. But Philip held out a hand. I lifted my right foot out of the sludge. The color fell away, back into the slop. The evening glow lit a path across the canvas. I strolled across the blue, toward the windows. I left a trail of gold behind me. At the other side, there Philip was again, waiting with a towel.

3

Xavier will expect to bang on the door, so I leave it standing open. He parks in front of the house. His footsteps are crisp and determined across the white gravel, but he hovers on the doorstep. Saskia? In rushes the smell of clipped grass, the chirrup of the chipping sparrow, whose genus and species name, Spizella passerina, mimics its rapid-fire song. The outside steals every last tendril of the Mother’s sour truth. I tried to call!

In the pink bedroom, my feet burrow between teetering stacks of Trollope and Dickens. I didn’t make it to Topsy; too far. Had to barricade myself in Mother’s bedroom. From here to the bed, and the window beyond, the floor is a city of books; high-rises of words, sentences, and paragraphs. Downstairs, he hesitates. Good. If I can’t get to pleasant, at least I might achieve unmurderous if he waits, penitent, for hours.

Then he speaks again, his voice delicate. I’m not going in uninvited. I think he’s talking to me, until I remember cell phones. Absolutely not.

Could someone else be in that SUV, watching him? Could it be Billy? Wasn’t I clear? No visitors, even if you’re married to them.

Sask? He’s off the phone. Hello? Please, Saskia, I really need to talk.

A few breaths. Then another, softer voice issues forth from him; the tone he takes when he needs something. Billy. Thank you for calling back.

But if it’s Billy now, who was on the phone before? Panic rears. Not today.

I’m sorry, he says. I’m so sorry. Can you just… A sigh. Baby, I told you. I’m doing this to protect you. I wait. I do. I do want to be with you right now. But when Xavier’s voice returns, it is full of steel. This could destroy us. I have to fix it.

It’s the grit in his voice. That’s all it takes to know: the thing that I (or we, if there is a we anymore) have feared for more than half our lives has finally happened, or is about to, or might. I amble down the stairs while Xavier begs Billy not to hang up. He lifts his muddy eyes. He mumbles a goodbye. That damned forelock, always, ever flopping.

He carries his father’s height but none of the old man’s paunch. His skin gleams. It’s mostly products and dermatology, but I can’t help my envy. His mother lingers there, too, in the smear of his lips and careful waistline. He points to the threshold. Is it okay?

I don’t have Mexican Coke, I’m afraid.

I think he might pinch my arm, but he pulls me close. My bones creak against his chest. We pretend not to notice how he winces.

4

I was sipping jasmine tea at the kitchen counter when Jane returned home, her jet-black bob still immaculate after the international flight. Her suitcase rattled to the ground. Past midnight, her whispers tangled with the emergency vehicles wailing across town. Philip, you don’t make this kind of choice without talking to your wife.

There was no way to reach you.

You could have called the hotel. I wondered if her hairdo kept its shape on the pillow.

I did. You weren’t there.

So you leave a fucking message.

And later: What will you do when the press finds her, Philip?

Fuck the press.

Okay, but what will you actually do? Flipping them off is not a plan. You need to have a plan.

And later: Remember Xavier’s third birthday, Philip? Right, I forget, that was the year you were buried in Nancy’s glorious crotch. Well, there was a reason I stopped talking to them. I knew something like this would happen, yes, I did, I even told you so, but you never listen.

I reached my hand into the space between my mattress and the wall to find Topsy’s most delicate part, right behind the ears, the part I only allowed myself to touch at night lest it grow rough too quickly. Every time I touched it, I knew I was one step closer to losing the last bit of you, but I couldn’t stop, especially when I thought of being asked to leave. It had been so much easier to imagine going on my own.

But Jane let me stay. She draped her petite frame in both twin sets and saris, and the answer is yes, her hair always looked like that; she got it cut every five Tuesdays at a salon uptown. She didn’t exactly like me, but when she took us to the Buster Keaton retrospective at Film Forum, I cackled in the same split second she did, then caught the glint of one tooth in the cinema glow and realized she was smiling. A week later, in the kitchen, she said, You laugh like your mother, like you might burst into tears at any moment, and I tittered without wanting to, putting my hands over my lips as though I could catch Mother before she spilled out of me.

Philip was always laughing—hilariously, vibrantly, abundantly. He painted at the center of the loft; sometimes we’d keep him company. At night, he went places we were not welcome, but the booze didn’t sour him, and Jane didn’t seem to mind. I hung the painting we’d made together over my bed. He called it The Good Path. My footprints, smaller than they would ever be again, were always traipsing from the lower left corner up to the