A Taxonomy of Barnacles, page 7
“It’s the opposite of hospitality,” Bridget elaborated.
“Exactly,” Billy smiled. He paused again to allow Bridget to situate herself in a crazed stadium, to imagine the smell of beer and hot dogs, to hear the loudspeaker’s manic announcements, the hushed nerves of the crowd. “Sweetheart,” he began, assuming the role, “I know you’re busy right now, but there’s something I’ve been needing to ask you for a very long time.”
“Not now,” Bridget quipped, feigning interest in the imagined game. “Can’t you ask me later?” she said. “I really need to watch this.”
“But darling,” Billy said. He paused to eat an imaginary Cracker Jack. “Sweetheart,” he said. He paused again for the token shoulder tap, but as he did, his heart swelled with genuine emotion. “I’m truly sorry to bother you but my question is urgent.” At this, Billy reached into his pocket and, as far as Bridget could tell, began to fish around frantically as though for a very small object.
This fraught gesture and Billy’s odd tone combined to give Bridget pause, causing her to look up suddenly and make direct eye contact. Either Billy had been moved by his mimicry or this was his most convincing performance to date. Bridget’s heart lurched from her chest as Billy searched his pocket. Her peripheral vision refined suddenly. Her hearing grew wildly acute. Was this what they called a sixth sense? she wondered. Or was this merely indigestion? Why were her eyes twitching at the corners, watering at the tear ducts? Was this heightened awareness what people meant when they spoke of premonition? Was it possible Billy was brazen enough to propose just like this, with her family roaming around nearby, with her boyfriend just down the hall? And why, more importantly, did this possibility fill her with the certain giddy thrill one experiences in very beautiful cathedrals or due to heavy narcotics?
Finally, Billy removed something from his pocket and hid it behind his back. “This is for you,” he said, grinning. He paused a long moment, eyed Bridget sheepishly, then finally extended his hand to reveal a pair of tickets.
“Billy,” Bridget said, “you shouldn’t have.” She smiled unconvincingly.
“It’s as much for you as for me,” he said. “Tickets to the biggest event of the season, the first game between the Yankees and the Sox.”
Embarrassingly, it took Bridget several moments to recover from the shock. In a sense, she had experienced two surprises: first, when she thought Billy was proposing in earnest and second, when she realized she was disappointed he had not. Luckily, at just this moment, Bridget heard Trot’s voice down the hall and, dismissing her emotions, smiled a reprimand at Billy and stuffed the tickets into her pocket.
* * *
As with most guests, Trot’s patience waned as the tour wore on. Benita seemed to seize on this fact by adding new and more extraneous details to her tour. The building in which the Barnacles lived was as remarkable as the family that called it home. From the windows, the residents enjoyed a perfect view of the Central Park Zoo and, from the high floors, Sheep Meadow, the lower loop, and the Reservoir. Turning right, you could see the Seventy-second Street Boat Pond where the children sailed tiny boats in the spring and summer. Turning left, you overlooked the Plaza Hotel, its grand facade perfectly visible even from half a mile away. In every season, the park presented a new and more beautiful vista. It was at its most dramatic in the fall when it looked like a large bouquet and at its prettiest in the spring, when its endless brown was dotted with pink like birthday present ribbon.
The building itself was graced with a charming and well-appointed roof garden whose use was restricted, thanks to Bunny’s long campaign, to the Barnacles and the Finches, the families who occupied the top-floor apartments. If all of these flourishes failed to satisfy the discerning tenant, the edifice of the building boasted one last mark of distinction. After much hoopla on the local news, some coverage in national papers, a week of protests on Fifth Avenue, and many thousands of dollars in litigation, Mrs. Finch’s aggressive campaign had paid off; a family of endangered red-tailed hawks nested on the roof of the building, evading the serious threat to their perch at Central Park’s best address. Despite complaints from many tenants who resented the hawks’ tendency to leave carcasses on either side of the awning, the hawks were allowed to stay without paying rent or property tax and did so with seeming aplomb, hatching several new chicks every April like clockwork.
These birds of prey found the building a perfect habitat due to the ample feeding opportunities in nearby Central Park’s high population of insects, pigeons, and rats. Furthermore, the hawks enjoyed the affection of the neighborhood. Their nest itself had become the obsession of a local ornithologist who stationed himself at the opposite side of the Boat Pond every Sunday, weather permitting, to monitor the nest with binoculars. Unfortunately, the bird-watcher’s gaze only worsened the relationship between the hawks and the tenants, causing them to fear for their privacy. But, thanks to Mrs. Finch, the birds were now safe. They were a hallmark of the neighborhood just like Rumplemeyer’s, the Plaza Tea Room, and Bemelmens Bar. They were protected by the nation’s preservation of migratory birds and therefore immune to complaints. So they were allowed to enjoy their impressive address, the ample resources of the park, and their unique status as one of the Upper East Side’s last stable monogamous marriages.
Benita encouraged Trot to steal a quick glimpse of the roof. But Trot declined, citing fatigue rather than admit to his crippling fear of heights. Typically, Benita took comfort in the roof’s panoramic view. Perspective worked its usual magic, encouraging her to imagine herself the princess of New York City and Central Park as her personal playground. The height and beauty of the view did their part to confirm this theory. Her high-powered electron telescope, a gift from her father on her tenth birthday, allowed her to disprove the common misconception that stars were invisible in New York due to the exorbitant electric output of the city’s skyscrapers. To the contrary, Benita had spent countless hours peering through her lens in search of evidence to debunk this claim and also in the hopes that a tireless vigil would one day result in the discovery of a new planet.
But, standing firm, Trot refused Benita’s entreaty to check out the view and continued down the hall, just ahead of Benita, in search of somewhere to sit. Near the Hall of Collections, Trot experienced sensory shock. Each door in the hall opened onto a different stash. Gold paint announced each new collection on a shiny black plaque.
“That’s the portrait gallery,” Benita announced. “As you can see, Beryl tried to make me look ugly.” Trot scanned the wall for Benita’s portrait, expecting a cruel caricature, but found instead a portrait with an almost photographic resemblance. This room was, at least, a good use of space, housing portraits of every member of the family including a long lineage of pets.
“Our first dog was named after Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus. This is his son, Charles and his wife, Emma Wedgewood.”
The notorious resemblance between dogs and masters was, in this case, more alarming than most. Each dog, Trot noted with some concern, bore a familiar curious look that was expressed most clearly in the eyebrows.
Tiring of this room quickly, Benita continued down the hall. She stopped at another door that was ostensibly the same as the previous one but for a plaque that indicated it as the SHELL COLLECTION.
“These are the conchs,” she announced. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with glass shelves, every inch of which was crammed with large lustrous shells. Their long sharp points, at quick glance, caused them to look like severed limbs. Peering into their spiraled cores, Trot was surprised by their colors. Bright pink and purple paved the entrance to their inner depths.
Benita removed a shell from its shelf. “This,” she said, “is a barnacle. They have the largest penis of any organism in the animal kingdom. It’s called a groping penis because it comes out of its shell and gropes around for mates.” As she said the word “grope,” she extended her arms and wiggled her fingers menacingly.
Trot nodded and smiled politely though he found himself suddenly nauseated.
“This is Daddy’s prize possession,” she went on, straining on her toes to lift one from a higher shelf. “This barnacle lived in prehistoric times. It’s the first known specimen on record.”
Arguably, the shell collection was the best collection in the house. Painstakingly accumulated over many years, the room was a living catalog of the crustacean kingdom. Each shelf contained one complete set of the thirteen phyla. Every species, extinct or extant, in all of the seven oceans was represented. Like all the collections in the apartment, the shells were the lucky beneficiaries of Barry’s obsessive-compulsive disorder, but unlike books or antique toys, rare shells could not always be bought. In some cases, Barry had personally procured his specimens. As a result, the room had a secondary, related collection: the stories of each shell’s discovery, intertwining the history of the natural world with that of the Barnacle family. The thorny speckled cowry, for example, was the result of a tussle between Barry and a Gulf Stream jellyfish. The pink-eyed cochina, one of four in the world, was a serendipitous find, uncovered amidst a wedge of sludge on a shelling excursion in Marco Island, Florida. The horseshoe crab had nearly caused Beth to sprain her ankle during a weekend trip to a friend’s house in the Hamptons. The dagger-toothed clam was a gift to Barry from the German ambassador. Luckily, no one would ever know that Belinda had glued one of its teeth back together after a particularly violent fight with Beth.
Finally, even Benita seemed ready to conclude the tour. She closed the door to the shell collection and accelerated down the hall. “This is the library,” she quipped, abandoning ceremony. “See that Bible over there? It’s a first edition.”
Trot followed reluctantly and stopped at the next destination. Against his will, he found himself suddenly transfixed. The dampened musk of so many books was completely overwhelming. He felt weak, as in the presence of a new love, painfully aware of his insignificance and inspired to accomplish great things. Leaning against a shelf to steady himself, he wondered if books cast this spell on everyone or just aspiring writers. Either way, the effect was wholly transforming. If he were to be trapped in the apartment, he decided, he would want it to be in this room.
Benita broke into his reverie with a non sequitur. “Bridget is Dad’s favorite, after me,” she said. “He’s not going to let her marry just anyone.”
“That’s a relief,” Trot lied, “since last night she proposed to me.”
Frustrated by Trot’s quick response, Benita adjourned to the next room. “This is my father’s laboratory,” she said. The room, cluttered with broken objects, emitted the regular bleep of a broken alarm clock or a detonating bomb. In the corner sat a ten-foot pile of what appeared to be ceramic toilet seats. An oil painting of an ostrich hung above a cluttered desk.
“What are those?” asked Trot, pointing to the toilet seats.
“They’re for my father’s invention,” Benita said. “My stepmother hated it when he left the seat up, so Daddy invented an automatic seat-replacer to save their marriage.”
Trot approached the mechanism and pushed an inviting switch, succeeding in administering a small electric shock to his hand. As he recovered, he tried to recall the last half hour of his visit, concerned he’d already committed Bunny’s cardinal sin.
“That’s Dodo,” said Benita, gesturing at the painting. “He’s the family mascot.”
“That’s an odd name for an ostrich,” Trot said, adopting a new policy to challenge everything Benita said.
“It’s an emu,” Benita snorted.
Dodo, she explained, was Barry’s proof that Lamarck was not far off the mark, that a species could change its traits over time with enough effort. To this end, Barry cited an example from current zoology. The emu was an endangered species while the ostrich, its close cousin, had managed to outrun this fate. The emu, Barry felt, had only itself to blame for its precarious state. The ostrich, on the other hand, had survived due to sheer perseverance. The ostrich was an emu with a strong work ethic, an emu that struggled and strove. Dodo was the ending to Barry’s favorite fable, a warning that, without hard work, any species could go to the birds.
At this point, Benita abbreviated her tour, exhausting even herself. Down the hall was the dance studio that nobody used except Bell for yoga when she came home to visit, which she rarely did anymore, and Belinda, for privacy with boys when she was home from school; a squash court, because nobody wanted a pool; the game room with the hallowed Ping-Pong table; a collection of antique roulette wheels; a second music room with two player pianos; and a variety of rooms devoted to storage and overflow guests. But, even despite this blinding excess, Trot was still charmed by the apartment. There was something about its abundance that was intrinsically different from the offensive hording of the nouveau riche. These collections were way too weird to be public displays of success. These artifacts were not trophies but monuments, statues erected in tribute to Barry’s curiosity. Most people, when they toured the house, were blinded by envy or disdain. But those who bothered to look closely found something else: The apartment was an effigy to awe, a museum of marvel. These were the floor plans of a madman’s mind.
Finally, Trot gave in to the urge to provoke his guide. During the course of their tour, he had come to think of her as his own younger sister and therefore felt he’d earned the right to razz her a bit. “I’m onto you, Benita,” he said.
“No, you’re not.” She sniffed.
“Yes, I am,” Trot said. “You take people on this tour to intimidate them.”
Benita smiled with genuine delight. “Why,” she asked, “are you intimidated?”
“No, not one bit,” Trot said. “In fact, I feel far more comfortable now than when I arrived.”
“Oh,” said Benita. She smiled cordially. “If I were you, I wouldn’t get too attached.”
Yet again, Trot detonated Benita’s insult with a smile. The charge between them had changed, he decided, in a subtle but striking way. “I’ll tell you what else,” he went on. He took a step closer, attempting to tower over her. “I think this is how you treat people you like. I think you put people through this test so that you know they won’t disappear once you’ve decided you want them around. In fact,” he said, in closing, “I think you like me a lot.”
Benita said nothing for several moments, allowing him to punctuate his speech with the fermata he craved. Then once she’d given him, she felt, a more than adequate fighting chance, she rapped the wall with her knuckle. “Actually,” she declared, “I like you less than this wall.”
With this, Benita continued down the hall with renewed energy. Deflated, Trot opted for silence. Silence, he hoped, would confound the brat more than another duel.
“Last stop,” Benita said, “the music room. We’re on strike from practicing until Beryl comes back.”
Trot paused for a moment, disoriented again. “But what about the piano in the living room?” he asked.
“That one’s a Steinway,” Benita explained. “This one’s a Bösendorfer.”
Trot, who had studied piano as a child, admired the fine instrument. It was situated under an arched glass ceiling and bathed in an intricate maze of shadows that made it look almost divine. He stood, transfixed for a moment, then noticed another oddity in the room: a large framed portrait of a young black woman, playing the very same piano.
The portrait’s subject was Brandy, the girls’ beloved ex-nanny. A plaque underneath the frame bore the span of her stay like the dates on a gravestone. Brandy had lived with the Barnacles for four harmonious years while she combined the duties of a governess with the obligations of a college student. A statuesque Bahamian girl with large devilish eyes, she was one of few teenagers who could enter the Barnacle apartment without feeling intimidated or overwhelmed. In addition to acting as caretaker for the girls, she also served as a live-in music teacher and tutor.
Brandy was uniquely suited to the job, graced by heredity with both musical and rhetorical talent. Her parents, Bertram and Birdie Brown were the organist and pastor of Coney Island’s Lutheran church. Bertram also moonlit in a local piano bar two nights a week. When Brandy answered the ad for the nanny position, her prospective employers were split. Bella felt she was dangerously pretty but Barry ultimately overruled, citing the Brooklyn connection and arguing that Brandy could further the girls’ musical education. Within weeks, Brandy was not only teaching piano, but instructing the girls in Caribbean dance, and orchestrating the intra-apartment productions that both cemented the Barnacle girls’ love of musical theater and forged the Finch twins’ aspirations to direct.
For everyone involved, these performances were fond memories, conjoining the Barnacle and Finch households into one big singing family. So, it was perhaps only natural that conflicting feelings would evolve when the girls asked Barry to round out the orchestra for a production of Godspell. While accompanying Brandy on clarinet, he found himself feeling suddenly very much like Captain von Trapp. But who could blame Barry, after such a sonorous partnership, for inviting Brandy to join him for a more extended medley? Who could fault Barry for entreating Brandy back to the shell collection to show her how the clarinet’s sound was surpassed by the longing moan of the conch? Who could blame Bella for her response, berating Barry and banishing Brandy when she happened upon this tryst.
“But Dad got his way in the end,” Benita concluded.
“How’s that?” Trot asked.
“He hung Brandy’s portrait over the piano so he could look at her whenever he plays. Then he found a poor replacement in Bunny and left my mom for her.”
Trot stared at the piano in a daze, floored by the sheer breadth of information he’d encountered in the last hour. Finally, he roused himself and turned to leave. But as he turned, he stopped again for fear he was hallucinating. The piano bench appeared to have a fifth foot.
“Wait,” Trot said. He blinked and looked away as though to make sure his eyes had not fooled him. But, when he looked back, he was even more confused than before. The extra foot under the bench had miraculously disappeared. He stood for a moment, confounded, shaking his head incredulously then, abandoning his pretense at composure, he hit the deck in order to investigate the space under the piano.
