Read His Illegal Self for Free Online

of course, was completely true. Not just the
Post
but the
News,
the
Globe,
even the
Times.
And that was why she would call Grandma Selkirk, because the old lady, at least, had seen the steel at Dial’s core, that although she could not stand Phoebe Selkirk’s Upper East Side ass, she would never betray her trust. That was who she was.
    Dial dropped a dime in Brooklyn Heights, and the phone rang on Park Avenue. Hello, she said, this is Anna Xenos.
    Yes, I am recording this.
    The Selkirks were like animals in the zoo. How amazing she should know them at all.
    Yes. This is Anna. Hi.
    Did they give you the address of my apartment?
    I know your apartment, Mrs. Selkirk. Remember I worked for you.
    When you get to my age everyone has worked for you.
    What is it you want me to do?
    They’ve told you.
    Yes, broadly, Dial said, thinking, Oh please don’t piss me off too much.
    Very well, the old lady said. Would you please come to me tomorrow at 10:45. You must bring him back in sixty minutes.
    And that’s it, right? She thought,
Must.
    Will you be asking for a fee?
    Oh please listen to yourself, she said. And returned the phone to the care of the Puritans. She could so easily not do this. She stood above the gritty artery of the BQE wondering why, of all the extraordinary things she could do in New York, she would waste her time this way.
    Well, there was the boy, but who would remember that she carried the weight of his squirming life from May until September 1966—cruel ear infections long ago, jagged teeth like shards of quartz attacking from inside, high fevers, cold baths, all the smells of cloves, shit, jasmine oil she mixed with Johnson & Johnson so he always smelled like a newly anointed prince. She had thought she loved him then.
    You’ll go with her to Bloomingdale’s, the tall one said, refusing to lean companionably across the rail. She wants to buy Susan a gift. You accompany her while she purchases it. Then you take the gift and you take the 6 train to Grand Central, then the shuttle, then walk through the passage to Port Authority. Susan will meet you both there.
    The number I called was in Philly.
    Yes. That’s right.
    I’m from Boston. I don’t know Port Authority.
    Just walk, Dial. OK? We’ll be watching you.
    Dial was mostly thinking, Wait till I tell Madeleine this. Madeleine was a Long Island Jew with a Communist father. Who else would understand these fucked-up feelings swelling in her breast right now, her scorn for the cashmere sweater, the guilty certainty that these joyless bank robbers were on the right side of the war.
    If not for me, then for the Movement, Susan Selkirk had said.
    Every time it got her, every goddamn time.

7
    There was nothing in the Belvedere’s lobby she recognized from her long-ago visit—neither the loud checkerboard of marble tiles, nor the huge faux-Grecian vase. It had been May 1966, six years ago, a time when her speech was still thick with Boston. Today she remembered only what disappointing uses the Selkirk money had been put to—frumpy sofas and matching rosewood end tables. True, there had been a de Kooning on the living room wall, but she had been way too nervous to stare at it. The apartment generally suggested that there had not been a new idea in furniture design this century.
    She walked from the doorman to the elevator operator, arguing, with her big backpack and her stride, her perfect right to be there.
    The elevator man regarded her tits with what she thought of as her father’s dark DP eyes.
    Efharisto,
she said.
    You’re welcome, the displaced person said, transferring his attention to the lights.
    As the elevator opened into the apartment she both met and remembered the incongruous smell of burned toast. The very small, very ordinary kitchen was partially visible in the hallway to the left. The Park Avenue sky was straight ahead, and the sun, at that time of morning, was so bright that it took her a moment to see the little creature, a glowing