Chapter 5
On my way back to my new home, I buy a pizza and walk with the box in one hand, enjoying the anonymity of the big city.
Back home everyone knew my name, my mother's name, the general contours of my life.
Here I am no one. Just another person on Sixth Avenue, part of the crowds surging through the city, completely invisible.
I reach the Overton and the lobby silences the sounds of the city.
I cross to the elevator with my pizza and ride up alone.
Moments later, I let myself into the apartment and stand at the window.
I eat straight from the box without bothering to find a plate.
The privilege of having just moved into a new place, or so I tell myself.
The city is doing its late afternoon thing as the workday releases its grip and people surge from office buildings to the subways.
From up here I can see it but not feel it.
The city is alive out there in a way that doesn't quite reach me.
Flattened by distance. Like something observed rather than inhabited.
I raise the binoculars.
I'm not looking for anything specific. I'm just looking. The skyline moves through the lenses in a by-now-familiar way — windows and rooftops and terraces and a variety of small human signals. I sweep east to west and back again, unhurried, searching for something I couldn't even name if asked.
I stop on lit windows as the afternoon darkens. A man at a desk, his face lit blue by a monitor. A woman changing in what she assumes is a private room on the fourteenth floor of the building directly east, the light behind her turning her into a silhouette.
Eventually I get tired of the game and put the binoculars down.
The apartment feels large in a way it didn't this morning.
Emptier. The high ceilings that seemed grand earlier now just seem far away.
I eat the last slice of pizza standing at the kitchen counter, rinse my hands, and wander into Eleanor's bedroom without a real plan.
I soon find myself in front of the open closet.
Her clothes hang in their perfect row. I look at them the way I've been looking at everything in this apartment, like objects in a museum, things behind glass that belong to someone else's life.
Then I reach out and pull the black leather jacket off its hanger.
I carry it to the mirror.
Put it on.
It fits perfectly, like the jacket was made knowing I would one day wear it.
I stand in front of Eleanor's mirror in Eleanor's jacket in Eleanor's apartment. I look at myself and feel a strange sense of recognition. I barely knew my grandmother, but we are bonded by blood. Despite my mother’s efforts to shield me from Eleanor, she lives inside me the same way she lived inside my mother.
My hand moves to the crucifix at my throat.
My mother clasped it around my neck while taking her final breaths in a hospice room, and I haven't taken it off since.
I touch it now and a memory surfaces without invitation — a Sunday when I was nine, kneeling in a church pew beside my mother, her hand gentle on my chin, turning my face toward the cross.
Let Him into your heart, she said. The certainty in her voice. The need in it.
I look away from the crucifix and toward Eleanor's jewelry box on the vanity.
I open it.
Silver rings darkened with age. Heavy bracelets. Black stones set in old tarnished metal, beautiful in a way that doesn't try to be. I move through the pieces slowly.
Then I find the item I must’ve subconsciously been looking for.
The pendant from the portrait. The silver eye, its polished black stone catching the fading light in that way I noticed in the photograph. Not reflective. Absorbing. Like it takes light in and keeps it.
I lift it carefully.
I look at it for a long moment. Then I unclasp the crucifix from my neck, set it gently on the vanity beside the jewelry box, and fasten the pendant in its place.
I look up at the mirror.
For the first time since I arrived, I understand what the superintendent meant. What Marian saw in my face that she wasn't glad to find. I do look like a younger version of Eleanor. The resemblance is undeniable.
I stand there for a long time.
Later, I lie down on Eleanor’s bed without undressing, telling myself it will only be for a minute.
I’m almost asleep when the noise starts up again.
STOMP.
My eyes open.
Not a building sound. Not pipes or settling stone or the distant soundtrack of the city. This is impact. Weight. Something landing on a surface directly above my head with a force that I feel in the mattress beneath me.
I sit up slowly.
STOMP. STOMP.
Closer together now. Heavier. Moving with a rhythm that has nothing random about it. A dragging sound follows — SCRAPE — and then another impact. Whatever is up there has mass and intention and is directly above me, crossing the roof in a deliberate manner.
I jump out of bed and stand in the dark. My heart races as I stare at the ceiling.
The movement stops. Followed by a single violent impact, something slamming into the roof with a force that shudders the ceiling. A thin line of dust falls onto the white duvet.
I take a step back.
There’s another impact. Harder than the first.
Then silence.
I don't move. I don't breathe. I stand in the dark with the pendant cold against my sternum, look at the dust still settling slowly onto the bed, and wait for the next impact.
It doesn't come.
Whatever was up there is gone.
I stand in the dark for a long time after that, the pendant in my hand, the black stone absorbing the darkness the same way it absorbed the light.
Outside, the city hums on, indifferent.
Above me, nothing stirs.
One question keeps going through my mind over and over again. What in God’s name is happening here?