Besides, Klara is drawn less to stage magicians – the bright lights and evening clothes, the wire-rigged levitations – than to those who perform in more modest venues, where magic is handed from person to person like a crumpled dollar bill. On Sundays, she watches the street magician Jeff Sheridan at his usual post by the Sir Walter Scott statue in Central Park. But could she really make a living that way? New York is changing. In her neighborhood, the hippies have been replaced by hard-core kids, the drugs by harder drugs. Puerto Rican gangs hold court at Twelfth and Avenue A. Once, Klara was held up by men who probably would have done worse if Daniel had not happened to walk by at exactly that moment.
Varya ashes into an empty teacup. ‘I can’t believe you’re still going to leave. With Ma like this.’
‘That was always the plan, Varya. I was always going to leave.’
‘Well, sometimes plans change. Sometimes they have to.’
Klara raises an eyebrow. ‘So why don’t you change yours?’
‘I can’t. I have exams.’
Varya’s hands are rigid, her back straight. She has always been uncompromising, sanctimonious, someone who walks between the lines as if on a balance beam. On her fourteenth birthday, she blew out all but three candles, and Simon, just eight, stood on his tiptoes to do the rest. Varya yelled at him and cried so intensely that even Saul and Gertie were puzzled. She has none of Klara’s beauty, no interest in clothing or makeup. Her one indulgence is her hair. It is waist length and has never been colored or dyed, not because Varya’s natural color – the dusty, light brown of dirt in summer – is in any way remarkable; she simply prefers it as it has always been. Klara dyes her hair a vivid, drugstore red. Whenever she does her roots, the sink looks bloody for days.
‘Exams,’ Klara says, waving a hand, as if exams are a hobby that Varya should have outgrown.
‘And where do you plan to go?’ asks Daniel.
‘I haven’t decided.’ Klara speaks coolly, but her features are tense.
‘Good lord.’ Varya drops her head back. ‘You don’t even have a plan?’
‘I’m waiting,’ says Klara. ‘For it to be revealed to me.’
Simon looks at his sister. He knows she’s terrified about her future. He also knows she hides it effectively.
‘And once it’s revealed to you,’ says Daniel, ‘this place you’re going. How will you get there? Are you waiting for that to be revealed to you, too? You don’t have the money for a car. You don’t have the money for a plane ticket.’
‘There’s this new thing called hitchhiking, Danny.’ Klara is the only one who calls Daniel by his childhood nickname, knowing it calls up memories of bed-wetting and buck teeth and, most of all, a family trip to Lavallette, New Jersey, during which he could not help but shit his corduroys, ruining the first day of the Golds’ vacation and the backseat of their rented Chevy. ‘All the cool kids are doing it.’
‘Klara, please.’ Varya’s head snaps forward. ‘Promise me you aren’t going to hitchhike. Across the country? You’ll be killed.’
‘I won’t be killed.’ Klara takes a drag and blows smoke to the left, away from Varya. ‘But if it means that much to you, I’ll take a Greyhound.’
‘That’ll take days,’ says Daniel.
‘Cheaper than the train. And besides. Do you really think Ma needs me? She’s happier when I’m not around.’ The revelation that Klara would not be applying to college was followed by long screaming matches between her and Gertie, which gave way to bitter silence. ‘Anyway, she won’t be alone. Sy’ll be here.’
She reaches for Simon, gives his knee a squeeze.
‘That doesn’t bother you, Simon?’ Daniel asks.
It does. He can already see how it will be when everyone else is gone, he and Gertie trapped alone inside a never-ending shiva – ‘Si-mon!’ – his father nowhere and everywhere at once. Nights when he’ll sneak out to run, needing to be anywhere but home. And the business – of course, the business – which is now rightfully his. Equally bad is the thought of losing Klara, his ally, but for her sake, he shrugs.
‘Nah. Klara should do what she wants. We got one life, right?’
‘Far as we know.’ Klara snuffs out her cigarette. ‘Don’t you guys ever think about it?’
Daniel raises his eyebrows. ‘About the afterlife?’
‘No,’ says Klara. ‘About how long yours’ll be.’
Now that the box has been opened, quiet falls in the attic.
‘Not that old bitch again,’ Daniel says.
Klara flinches, as if it’s she who’s been insulted. They have not discussed the woman on Hester Street in years. Tonight, though, she’s drunk. Simon sees it in the glaze of her eyes, the way her s’s slosh together.
‘You guys are cowards,’ she says. ‘You can’t even admit it.’
‘Admit what?’ asks Daniel.
‘What she told you.’ Klara points a finger at him, the nail painted with chipping red polish. ‘Come on, Daniel. I dare you.’
‘No.’
‘Coward.’ Klara grins crookedly, closing her eyes.
‘I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to,’ says Daniel. ‘It was years ago – it was a decade ago. Do you honestly think I committed it to memory?’
‘I did,’ says Varya. ‘January 21st, 2044. So there.’
She takes a swig of her drink, then another, and puts the empty teacup on the ground. Klara looks at her sister with surprise. Then she grabs the bottle of bourbon by the neck with one hand and refills Varya’s cup before her own.
‘What’s that?’ asks Simon. ‘Eighty-eight years old?’
Varya nods.
‘Congratulations.’ Klara closes her eyes. ‘She told me I’d die at thirty-one.’
Daniel clears his throat. ‘Well, that’s bullshit.’
Klara raises her glass. ‘Here’s hoping.’
‘Fine.’ Daniel drains his own. ‘November 24th, 2006. You beat me, V.’
‘Forty-eight,’ Klara says. ‘You worried?’
‘Not at all. I’m sure that hag said the first thing that came to mind. I’d be a fool to put any stock in it.’ He puts his cup down; it rattles on the wood plank. ‘What about you, Sy?’
Simon is on his seventh cigarette. He takes a drag and exhales the smoke, keeping his eyes on the wall. ‘Young.’
‘How young?’ Klara asks.
‘My business.’
‘Oh, come on,’ says Varya. ‘This is ridiculous. She only has power over us if we give it to her – and it’s obvious she was a fraud. Eighty-eight? Please. With a prophecy like that, I’ll probably be hit by a truck when I’m forty.’
‘Then how come all the rest of ours were so bad?’ asks Simon.
‘I don’t know. Variety? She can’t tell everyone the same thing.’ Varya’s face is flushed. ‘I’m sorry we ever went to see her. The only thing she did was lodge the idea in our heads.’
‘It’s Daniel’s fault,’ says Klara. ‘He made us go.’
‘Don’t you think I know that?’ hisses Daniel. ‘Besides, you were the first to agree.’
Fury blooms in Simon’s chest. For a moment, he resents them all: Varya, rational and distant, a lifetime ahead; Daniel, who staked his claim to medicine years ago, forcing Simon to carry Gold’s; Klara, abandoning him now. He hates that they get to escape.
‘Guys!’ he says. ‘Stop it! Just shut up, okay? Dad is dead. So can you fucking shut up?’
He’s surprised by the authority in his voice. Even Daniel seems to shrink.
‘Simon says,’ says Daniel.
Varya and Daniel go downstairs to sleep in their beds, but Klara and Simon climb up to the roof. They bring pillows and blankets and fall asleep on the concrete beneath the glow of the smog-veiled moon. They’re shaken awake before dawn. At first, they think it’s Gertie, but then Varya’s thin, drawn face comes into focus.