New York 1969
Nico called the place home but even Evangeline could see it was just an hotel. It turned out Grandma Klippel was paying for them to stay there because Nico’s real home – his apartment – was not deemed appropriate for a nine-year-old to live in. Nico didn’t agree with that opinion but he liked the hotel life. He smoked fat cigars and ordered from room service with a golden grin on his face. He told Evangeline they’d be moving somewhere better anyway, just as soon as her money came through.
Being sad in Cape Cod was easy but being sad in New York was a deal more tricky, with no sea to gaze out at and no fog to make you think you were the last person alive on the earth. In Cape Cod Evangeline had felt her parents were everywhere, watching her. In New York, though, she had to carry them in a little pocket in her head, just like she carried Lincoln’s picture in a pocket in her bag. Did they know where she was? Had they lost her too, now? The place was full of people but she felt lonelier than ever before in her life.
The loneliness didn’t scare her, though; in a way it almost felt good. She didn’t want Nico to love her like she’d wanted Grandma Klippel to. There would be no more disappointments or distractions. All she had to do now was work at being herself. Maybe if she tried hard enough she could find something there; maybe if she worked at it there would be something to make people want her.
She wasn’t getting any prettier but she wasn’t growing uglier, either. Her teeth were big, but straighter since she had worn braces. Her nose was a funny shape but seeing the same nose on Nico’s face every day made it better somehow, because he didn’t look too bad.
Grandma Klippel seemed to think she’d forget about Darius and Thea in New York, because she wrote all the time reminding her how they had been and what they were like. The letters hurt badly but she still went on reading them, even when Nico got mad.
Thea and Darius – was she really Thea’s child? They were so talented, so successful, so special, and so beautiful to look at. Her grandmother sent photographs of Darius as a child. She wrote:
You came from good stock, dear, don’t ever forget it. Thea was a wonderful, talented woman. You were blessed to have her as a mother. Darius thought of you as his own, too – just as much as little Lincoln. Make them proud of you, dear. Don’t waste your life. Darius lived each day as though it were his last … make sure you do the same.
The letters chilled Evangeline. Make them proud of her – how? Was she wasting her life? What was it she was meant to do?
Something else began to trouble her. When she had discovered that her family was dead she had been too sad to wonder why. Maybe she believed things like that just happened. As she grew older, though, she realized they did not. Yet nobody had told her how they had died. Perhaps nobody knew. Nico just looked awkward when she asked him, which she did straight away, on the drive from Cape Cod to New York.
‘What happened to my mother?’ she asked. He had been married to her, so someone must have told him.
Nico was silent for a long while. Then he cleared his throat. Evangeline wondered if he smoked a lot, to get a cough that bad. ‘She died,’ he said, after a while.
‘I know she died,’ Evangeline told him. She didn’t want to sound impolite but she wanted this thing cleared up. ‘Nobody told me how, though.’
Nico coughed again. ‘What did the old lady say?’ he asked.
Evangeline sighed. ‘Grandma? Oh, I don’t think she knows, you know. She still thinks they’ve just gone away. She’s old – too old. The shock could make her ill.’
‘Who told you then?’ Nico sounded genuinely interested now.
‘The chauffeur.’
‘The chauffeur?’ Nico punched the steering wheel, ‘Fuck!’ She had never heard anyone she knew say that word before. He apologized straight away.
‘Did this chauffeur tell you what happened?’ Nico asked.
Evangeline shook her head. ‘I don’t think he knew. I don’t think he knew anything more than he told me.’
‘Jesus.’ Nico pulled a cigarette out of a packet in his pocket and flipped it in the air once before catching it in his mouth. Evangeline would have enjoyed that, had they not been discussing what they were. She had a bad feeling she was going to need to pee pretty soon but she realized she didn’t know her father well enough to ask him to stop. She crossed her legs instead. She watched him light the cigarette with a Zippo and smelt the petrol before he snapped the lid shut again.
‘What do you think happened to them?’ he asked her.
‘I don’t know.’ Her voice sounded small. She was trying so hard to think like an adult, but it wouldn’t happen.
The car hit a rabbit; it bounced straight up over the bonnet like a tumbler in a circus act and onto the windscreen. Nico didn’t swerve once; it was as though the accident hadn’t happened. Evangeline saw the rabbit’s squashed face before it took off again. There was a red splashy mark where it had hit the glass. She almost wet herself with the shock but Nico didn’t mention it.
‘Do you know?’ she asked him after a while. Nico shrugged and said nothing. The shrug told her she wasn’t to ask again. She could see the question made him uncomfortable so she looked out of the window instead. ‘What do I call you?’ she asked after a while.
‘What?’ She could tell from his voice that he had been thinking hard enough to be miles away.
‘Do I call you Mr Castelli?’
Nico made a noise like a snort. ‘Of course not,’ he said, ‘I’m your father.’ ‘What, then?’
He took both hands off the wheel and stretched as though he were tired. She had never seen anyone drive without using their hands.
‘Father?’ he asked. Evangeline bit her lip. ‘I told you – Nico, then – hell, I don’t care.’ Nico looked round at her. ‘What’s that you’re doing? Stop that. How long have you done that for?’ Evangeline was biting her nails. She didn’t stop because it made her feel better. ‘I used to do that,’ Nico added, after a pause. ‘It makes people think you’re scared of them.’
Evangeline stopped.
She thought the hotel looked good from the outside and she preferred the noise of the traffic compared to the constant whispering of the sea. She wondered if Nico would be funny, like Darius. Grandma Klippel hadn’t a funny bone in her body. Darius must have got his talent for clowning from some other branch of the family. All Nico ever did was look worried.
After a while Evangeline began to imagine she was living in a palace. She felt wrapped in tissue, like a doll. It was strange, ordering all your food by phone. Nico told Evangeline to ring for whatever she wanted. She thought at first that no one would take notice of a little girl on the phone, but the food arrived, just as she’d asked for it. No one questioned her when she wanted ice-cream at every meal and no one told her to sit up straight at the table – mainly because she usually ate alone.
Sometimes Nico sat with her but when he did he would just sit and smoke.
‘You shouldn’t do that,’ Evangeline told him.
‘Do
