A weird, sunny mood in the car, as if they hadn’t heard Rita howling for hours or seen blood dripping from her hand. The drive was new to Edmund, and Papa took the long way to point out the navy yard and the place where the British had packed Americans onto a ship and left them to starve in the Revolutionary War, skulls and bones crowding the shore of Wallabout Bay. People found vertebrae instead of seashells, crabs hiding in skulls. Then the swoop and darkness as they entered the city, the noise and blurring traffic when they emerged from the tunnel. They parked the car and carried their bags to the apartment on Bleecker, a bedroom and an office in the back overlooking scrabbly gardens, black-and-white tiled floor in the kitchen, clanking radiators. Polly and Edmund were put in Papa’s office, Polly on the padded window seat overlooking the garden—she barely fit—and Edmund on the small sofa. There were piles of books everywhere and old movie posters with Papa’s name as writer and producer: The Tempest, The Amber Queen, The Window.

They took the subway to the museum. The doctor’s office was on Eightieth and Third, and Papa pointed west and said they’d all meet at noon in the south wing of the Met.

“Where?” asked Polly.

“Begone,” he said. “We’ll find you.”

How, thought Polly. But they made their way west and Edmund ran up the massive steps. The guard at the door looked unhappy. “Our mother is inside,” said Edmund. He put a quarter in the donation jar and looked levelly at the man, who waved them on. Polly was humbled by this ability to bullshit.

They saw Egyptian mummies and armor, naked women and angels and crosses, paintings about gods and violence. They were in the Asian section when Polly felt a hand mashing down on her head, twisting: Papa. Dee led them around the corner to a case with patterned cloth and jewels; she pointed to a gold belt buckle with a roaring lion and they read Papa’s name—he’d found it on a frozen body buried in the mountains of Russia, in 1911.