A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [90]
“They’re students,” she said dismissively, as if the word were a synonym for “nothing.”
“They look about your age.”
Sasha shrugged. “Most of them still live at home,” she said. “I want to hear about you, Uncle Teddy. Are you still an art history professor? By now you must be an expert.”
Jarred once again by her memory, Ted felt the pressure that arose in him when he tried to talk about his work—a confusion about what had originally driven him to disappoint his parents and rack up mountainous debt so he could write a dissertation claiming (in breathless tones that embarrassed him now) that Cézanne’s distinctive brushstrokes were an effort to represent sound—namely, in his summer landscapes, the hypnotic chant of locusts.
“I’m writing about the impact of Greek sculpture on the French Impressionists,” he said, attempting liveliness, but it landed like a brick.
“Your wife, Susan,” Sasha said. “Her hair is blond, right?”
“Yes, Susan is blond.…”
“My hair used to be red.”
“It’s still red,” he said. “Reddish.”
“But not like it was.” She watched him, awaiting confirmation.
“No.”
There was a pause. “Do you love her? Susan?”
This cool inquiry landed somewhere near Ted’s solar plexus. “Aunt Susan,” he corrected her.
Sasha looked chastened. “Aunt.”
“Of course I love her,” Ted said quietly.
Dinner arrived: pizza draped in buffalo mozzarella, buttery and warm in Ted’s throat. After a second glass of red wine, Sasha began to talk. She had run away from home with Wade, the drummer for the Pinheads (a band that seemed to require no introduction), who were playing in Tokyo. “We stayed at the Okura Hotel, meaning fancy,” she said. “It was April, that’s cherry blossom season in Japan, and every tree was covered with all these pink flowers, and businessmen sang and danced underneath them in paper hats!” Ted, who had never been to the Far East or even the Near East, felt a twist of envy.
After Tokyo, the band had gone to Hong Kong. “We stayed in a white high-rise on a hill, with the most incredible view,” she said. “Islands and water and boats and planes…”
“So, is Wade with you now? In Naples?”
She blinked. “Wade? No.”
He’d left her there, in Hong Kong, in the tall white building; she’d lingered in the apartment until its owner had asked her to leave. Then she’d moved to a youth hostel inside a building full of sweatshops, people asleep under their sewing machines on piles of fabric scraps. Sasha relayed these details lightheartedly, as if it had all been a romp. “Then I made some friends,” she said, “and we crossed into China.”
“Are those the friends you were meeting yesterday?”
Sasha laughed. “I meet new people everywhere I go,” she said. “That’s how it is when you travel, Uncle Teddy.”
She was flushed—from the wine or maybe the pleasure of remembering. Ted waved for the bill and paid it. He felt leaden, depressed.
The teenagers had dispersed into the chilly night. Sasha didn’t have a coat. “Please wear my jacket,” Ted said, removing the worn, heavy tweed, but she wouldn’t hear of it. He sensed that she wanted to remain fully visible in her red dress. The tall boots exaggerated her limp.
After a walk of many blocks, they reached a generic-looking nightclub whose doorman waved them listlessly inside. By now it was midnight. “Friends of mine own this place,” Sasha said, leading the way into a tumult of bodies, fluorescent purple light, and a beat with all the variety of a jackhammer. Even Ted, no connoisseur of nightclubs, felt the tired familiarity of the scene, yet Sasha seemed enthralled. “Buy me a drink, Uncle Teddy, would you?” she said, pointing at a ghastly concoction at a nearby table. “Like that, with a little umbrella.”
Ted shoved his way toward the bar. Being away from his niece felt like opening a window, loosening an airless oppression.