Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,101

forgotten. Already I was beginning to forget.

“Heavens, no,” said my father. “It was for boys then.”

When we got to London everything changed. The women were dressed in what looked like costumes to me bubbly dresses or striped tight pants. The men as well—brightly colored suits and ruffled shirts and polished boots. We pulled into a parking lot below a very fancy stone-sided building with turrets and gables and crenellations. He jumped out without parking his car and wordlessly handed the keys to a boy about my age. I had a harder time getting out & it took me a moment to regain feeling in my legs. They had been mildly asleep for half an hour. I got my suitcase out of the trunk and held it awkwardly. Behind us, the boy parked the car like an expert. I couldn’t drive. I still can’t.

“This way,” said my father.

The lobby of his building was polished. Every surface looked as if it had been rubbed with a soft cloth until it gleamed. There were fancy women walking back and forth in fancy ridiculous hats. Their boots clacked across the floor. There were little dogs in little handbags.

When we took the elevator up I think my father was nervous about being in it with someone my size. An Indian elevator man said, “Good afternoon, Mr Opp.” But my father said nothing about who I was.

His apartment was the penthouse. The elevator opened directly into it. It was large & spectacular & modern, & I was very surprised. I had thought—it was an integral part of my ideas about my father—that he preferred old things, that his taste ran toward antiques & dark wood & brass. This was what our house was like in Brooklyn. Our brownstone that he had chosen especially for us, his family. My house was my father’s house, always—my mother always told me how much he loved our house.

But this apartment was open & airy, with a wall of windows that looked out on the city. Modern art covered the walls. A plush zebra-striped carpet covered a large part of the floor. There was a giant vase with tall white branches coming out of it like crooked fingers.

“Here we are,” said my father. “Let me take your luggage.” He took it before I could say anything, & it was only then that he finally looked at it.

“I recognize this,” he said. But it was too late.

I was alone. I shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. My pants cut into my belly. My shoulders strained against my silly turtleneck sweater.

I heard tiny footsteps walking down the hallway to my left, & when I turned around to look there was a little boy, five or six years old, red-haired & tiny & knobby-kneed. He was wearing short pants like the ones my mother had put me into on my first day of school.

My heart dropped.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” he said.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“William,” he said.

“I’m Arthur,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

He sidled toward me. He was very serious. He had his hands in his pockets.

“Where’s all your things?” he asked me.

“My father has them,” I said. & realized then what I should have said. I felt huge. I felt I was an imbecile.

He looked at me.

“You’re from New York,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. His accent. Before I got to school and had it beaten out of me, I used to have an accent like his. When I was a very small boy and spoke mainly to my mother and father.

“Daddy used to live there,” he said.

“Yes, he did,” I said.

My father’s girlfriend’s name was Alexandra. She had red hair like her son. It came down to her waist. She was younger than my father, but not by all that much. She was very beautiful and very kind. She scooped William up when she found him talking to me and turned him upside down like it was nothing.

“Oh Arthur,” she said. “We are so glad you’re here.”

Her eyes filled with tears and she smiled in such a way that it looked like she was frowning.

My father came back into the room and said “Ah, well, you’ve all met each other.”

We went to dinner that night at a very fancy restaurant where they all knew the chef. I sat across from them, my father and Alexandra, and William sat next to me, except when he was up & running about the restaurant. Alexandra asked me lots of questions about New York and said she