They strolled down two blocks of a narrow treeless pastel-colored street to the immense wide plaza with the enormous basilica. They were too late to enter St. Mary’s to take a look around. The last scheduled visit was at six. They had just missed it.
“Ain’t it our luck,” said Mason. “Once again I’m thwarted in my mission.”
“What mission is that?” said Blake. “To visit every damn church in Europe?”
“Oh, nice. Blaspheme the holy church.”
“It would’ve been worth it to go,” Blake said. “I remember reading something about the opulent altar inside. It’s from the fifteenth century. It’s supposed to be the tallest indoor Gothic structure in the world.”
“Thanks, bro, for letting me know what I’m missing.”
“Welcome, bro.”
Some things never changed.
The main square in Krakow’s Old Town is the vast Rynek Glowny, a medieval renaissance Gothic space surrounded by light modern townhouses. It’s an open-door market, with hundreds of eateries, dozens of tent vendors, millions of pigeons. Chloe had been in Livu Square in Riga, and in Old Town Square in Warsaw. Krakow’s plaza was the largest. But it was the first one without Johnny in it. So it felt the smallest. She heard music in the far corner, a saxophonist playing an incongruous “Fly Like an Eagle.” There was music, yet there was no music.
They bought a map and a guide, in bad Bilingual. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys, Blake said, but Hannah thought even there, they’d overpaid. “We’re not staying, and we slept all day,” she said, “so why throw our money away on a guide for a city we’ll never see?”
“Perhaps we’ll decide after reading this shoddily produced masterpiece,” said Blake, “that one more day in Krakow will be worth it.”
They were starving, yet had a lot to do, so they decided to divide their duties. Hannah went to buy herself and Chloe a phone card to call their mothers. Hannah hadn’t called hers once. She said she wanted to tell her about Zhenya.
“Zhenya is what you want to tell your mother about?” Chloe whispered.
“Zhenya is all I can tell her about,” Hannah whispered back.
Mason went to buy and mail a Krakow postcard back home to his friends. Blake found a small picnic table next to a beer bar by the far shady side of Cloth Hall, a closed-door market, and planted himself there with the map. He said he would do his best to salvage Krakow for the four of them. Chloe was sent to buy a feast for dinner.
“Something filling and Polish,” Blake said to her.
“Something filling and non-Polish,” Mason said to her.
Hannah said she wasn’t hungry.
“Blake,” Chloe said before she walked away, “don’t forget to get us to Oskar Schindler, okay?” Her voice almost didn’t crack.
“We have no time for Schindler and his enamel factory,” Blake called back, sitting by himself at the picnic table, straddling the seat, studying the map. “But we might have time to walk to the river and see the dragon’s lair. Would you like that?” He smiled. “I thought you might. Apparently it’s a must-see.”
By the time Chloe returned with the food, Mason had joined Blake at the table. The brothers were trying to outdo each other in useless conversation. It all started, they told her, because Mason had put on a striped henley. “I know Sponge Bob thinks the best time to wear a striped sweater is all the time,” Blake said, “but the talking sponge is wrong, bro.”
Mason waved him off. “Eat your foreign food and shut up. Just remember that diarrhea is Europe’s third leading cause of death.”
“Ha! Dude, when?”
“Well,” Mason replied, trying to stay serious, “in 1900.”
Blake laughed. “A hundred years ago? I’ll take my chances. But on the same subject, did you know that constipation is Latin for crowding together?”
“Is not!”
“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.”
“You’re such a bullshit artist. You lie like a rug!” They both guffawed.
“Will you stop being two, you two?” Chloe said, setting the white bags down on the table. “Where’s Hannah?”
“Still talking to her mom, I guess,” Blake said. “Wait, there she is. Hannah! Here!” He waved. Hannah hurried across the square. “Look how funny she’s walking,” Blake said, amused. “Like she’s waddling.”
Chloe made no comment, not even under her breath. Especially not under her breath. “I got you zurek, Blake,” she said, drawing his attention away, parceling out the food. “It’s some kind of weird stew. You’ll love it.”
She held the pizza and pierogi in her hands. Mason was helping her unwrap the bread and the potato latkes.
Out of breath, Hannah neared the table. “Ugh, no, not pizza. I can’t stand that tomato sauce.”
“Pizza?” Mason said in a mimic tease. “Chloe, didn’t you hear Hannah tell you she didn’t want ethnic food?”
“Funny stuff, bro,” Blake said. “Funny stuff. Hannah, since when don’t you like pizza? You love tomato sauce.”
Chloe quickly handed Hannah a paper plate with a potato pierogi and a crusty loaf. “Here, take, sit. Eat.”
“I wish it wasn’t fried,” Hannah said, eyeing the greasy fare.
And then she spoke the following words: “Chloe, when was the last time you talked to your mom?”
“I don’t know. Riga, I guess. After the orphanage. I called to tell her about the boy I found.” In the ruins of old forts near white sand beaches. Chloe struggled to open her Coke. Her hands trembled slightly.
“You mean Raymonds?”
“Of course Raymonds.”
“Oh. Did you ask her if you got your UMaine room assignment yet?”
Very carefully, Chloe lowered her unopened can of Coke to the table. She said nothing.
“Because my mom says I got mine in the mail,” Hannah continued, “but for some reason I was given a random roommate. Not you. When you call your mom, can you find out who they gave you? Clearly she’s going to have to call housing tomorrow to get it taken care of. Why would they do that? We were so specific that we wanted each other. We filled out our housing forms together just last month.”
There was a hard marbled silence, the kind where the only sounds are of taxis and strangers, of wailing sirens and cooing pigeons, of vendors and buskers (though not the busker). The kind where there is so much to say, and yet not a single word can be spoken. Blake was eating voraciously. Neither Chloe, nor Mason, nor Hannah ate or moved. The plate with the tepid pizza dangled in Chloe’s hand.
Mason took it from her, and placed it fastidiously in front of himself. With a napkin he dabbed the cheese on top to absorb some of the grease. “Are you ever going to tell her, Chloe?” asked Mason.
A puzzled Chloe turned her head toward her boyfriend. She didn’t even have time to wonder properly before Mason spoke again. “Or should I?” He took a big bite of his slice.
“Tell me what?” said Hannah.
“Yeah.” Blake’s happy mouth was swallowing the thick zurek. “Tell her what?”
But Mason’s mouth was full of pizza. He didn’t reply.
Chloe lowered her hands. She had been waiting all these months to talk to Hannah, waiting for the right time. And yet this couldn’t be a worse time. Simply could not be. Can I have a do-over, she thought with sadness. Can I rewind back to July, when we were on my dock, our feet dangling in the water, splashing each other, laughing in the afternoon, dreaming of Europe, mapping, planning, giggling like when we were kids and Hannah and I were the closest thing to sisters. I want that back. I want to ruin that moment.
She took a deep deep breath, a slow-motion pause before the train wreck. For some reason she couldn’t take her eyes off Mason sitting next to her, enjoying his pizza. What do you know about it? she wanted to ask. What are you implying? That you know? She frowned, suspicious and troubled. Was that possible? She almost spoke her first words to Mason instead of Hannah. But she checked herself. Hannah deserved an answer.
/> “Hannah,” Chloe said. “I’m sorry, poodle. But I’m not going to the University of Maine. That’s why you have a different roommate.”
Sparrows, shopkeepers, tourists, singers. Why did they fight, remember each other’s offenses? Why didn’t they go play? Chloe felt such regret.
“What?” Hannah said.
“What?” Blake said. He stopped eating. He put down his spoon. He stopped smiling, making num-num noises. He stopped.
“I’m going to another university.” She turned her gaze to Mason’s unraised head. “Mason, did you know this?”
“Mason, did you know this?” Blake echoed.
Mason wiped his mouth. “What are you glaring at me for? I’m not the one not going to UMaine. Though technically, of course, I’m not.”
“Mason,” Chloe repeated, more and more distressed, “did you know?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “So?”
“You knew and you said nothing?”
“What did you want me to say?”
“What—I don’t know, but … why didn’t you talk to me?”
“Why didn’t you talk to me?” Mason said, not looking at Chloe, staring ahead at Blake. “I was waiting for you to say something. Any minute, I thought, she’s bound to tell me. Any second now, she’ll let me know.” Mason studied his pizza crust like it was a rare unearthed fossil. Chloe stared at Mason’s spiky-haired head. She wouldn’t and couldn’t look at Hannah, or at Blake.
“Where are you going, Chloe?” Blake said in a voice so quiet.
Beyond the stunned what, Hannah had yet to speak.
“University of San Diego.”
Blake’s hands dropped to his sides. His shoulders slumped. Chloe almost wanted to say I’m sorry to him. She remembered her place, and didn’t.
“Bro,” Blake said, “you knew this and you didn’t tell me?”
“Why would I?” said Mason.
Hannah found her voice, a loud one. “But you might have thought to tell me, Mason, no?”
“What are you yelling at me for?” Mason raised his own voice. “I’m just the messenger.”
“Um, you mean the dead opposite of messenger?”
“Hey, yell at her! It wasn’t my secret to tell. Be mad at Chloe. She’s the one who didn’t say anything.”
She’s a cat, Chloe wanted to say.
“She’s the one who’s leaving,” said Blake.
The brief silence that followed wasn’t the silence to process, to suffer, to grieve. It was the silence of the universe before the hurricane.
“Oh my God!” Hannah jumped up. “What is wrong with you?” she said to Chloe. “What’s wrong with you?” She started to cry.
“I’m sorry, Hannah.” Chloe wrung her hands. She wanted to rush to her friend, but didn’t dare. She was afraid Hannah would punch her. In any case Blake was already doing the consoling. “I was going to tell you. Really. I just couldn’t find the right time.” You know how that is, sometimes? Chloe thought. When you have to tell somebody very dear something very important but just can’t find the nerve or the right moment? You can imagine something like that, can’t you, poodle?
“How long have you known?”
“Since May.”
“Since May!” Hannah cried. “And you couldn’t find a good time to tell me? We made plans to come here, and you knew! We filled out our housing applications together, and you knew! Couldn’t you have told me then, before we wrote down our personal hygiene habits?”
“I could’ve, of course. I should’ve. I’m sorry.” What could Chloe say? I didn’t tell you because I was afraid you wouldn’t come with me to Treblinka?
And yet Mason had known, and said nothing. Nothing! How was that possible? Chloe was so piercingly baffled by that, she couldn’t cope with the injuries forming into an avalanche inside her.
“Oh my God!” Hannah wiped her blotchy face. “Your mother must be beside herself. How could you do this to her?”
The pierogi, the potato latkes, Blake’s zurek lay unfinished on the table. Only Mason had polished off the last crumb of his pizza slice and was now picking off the doughy edges of Blake’s fried pierogi.
“My mother is the one who suggested it,” said Chloe. That must be how Mason found out. Her mother had told his mother over a Friday ShopRite spree and then swore her to secrecy. Some secrecy!
What was more shocking? That she was leaving, or that Lang approved? By Hannah’s face, Chloe knew the answer. Lang’s approval was the worst of all.
“San Diego’s just a better fit for me, Hannah. I’m sorry.”
Hannah waved her off, waved Blake off. She had to sit down.
Rainy Bangor, cold Bangor, Arctic Bangor, mosquitoes, fog, damp, snowshoes. L.L.Bean coats and ski pants. Ice skating under the moonlight on their frozen lake, the eight lake houses with their Christmas lights on, strands of rainbows flickering on the blue ice. Who was she on the ice with? Everyone or just Blake? Chloe couldn’t remember. She had skated into his arms and they both fell. It must have been Blake.
“What a traitor you are,” Hannah said. “What an unbelievable traitor. I thought you were my friend.”
“I am your friend.”
“You were never my friend.”
“I was always your friend,” Chloe said. “I love you. I’d do anything for you.”
“Except go to school with me, like we planned our whole lives, like we dreamed our whole lives.”
Chloe swallowed miserably. “Are you my friend, Hannah?”
“Obviously not.”
“Okay. But if you were my friend, wouldn’t you wish for me what I want for myself?” When there was no answer from a sniffling Hannah, Chloe continued. “Let me go to the place that’s perfect for me. Please. Be happy I’m happy.”
“Why should I be? You’re happy that I’m unhappy.”
“What? No,” said Chloe. “I’m very unhappy you’ve been unhappy.”
“You’re unhappy, Hannah?” Blake asked. “Why?”
“Real friends don’t do this,” Hannah said. “Real friends talk to each other.”
What about real boyfriends? Chloe thought fleetingly. Do real boyfriends talk to their girlfriends? “I tried to talk to you,” she said to Hannah. “You didn’t listen. All you wanted to talk about was yourself and your problems.”
“What problems, Hannah?” asked Blake.
“I got me some new problems now, don’t I,” Hannah snapped. “Rooming with a complete stranger. Great, just great, Chloe.”
“Great, just great.” Chloe mimicked Hannah, losing a bit of her temper, her heart freshly wounded by Mason. Any second now, the avalanche would break off the mountain and take them all down. “Can you for a second get off that high stallion you’re riding? You were just telling me how you might not even go to UMaine, or did you forget that? You were telling me this just yesterday. You’d leave me there by myself in a second. For all I know, you’re about to. For all I know, you’re not even going, and this is nothing but bullshit.” Well done, Chloe. Best defense was offense, right?
“Wait,” said Blake. Now he turned fully to Hannah, looking raw. “Why would you not go to UMaine? What problems?”
Hannah wouldn’t say.
“Answer me,” said Blake.
Hannah wouldn’t answer. Her head was down, but when she raised it, her angry red gaze was at Mason. She pointed at him, stabbing the air with her shaking finger. “You are such a fucking asshole,” she said. “This is all your goddamn fault.”
“Whoa,” Mason said. “Hang on just a sec—”
“You kept your stupid lying cheating mouth shut for this long, why couldn’t you keep it shut for a few days longer? She would’ve told me herself. When we came back, she would’ve definitely told me, I’m almost sure. You are so screwed up, Mason.” Hannah was loud. “Why are you pissed off all the time? You have it so good. Why didn’t you just let it be? It’s not her fault you forgot your idiot statue and let her go with Johnny on the train. It’s not Johnny’s fault
you lost the statue. You cart around that thing with you like porn, ready at any moment to jerk off to it. Maybe it’s fucking karma, did you think of that, huh? I bet you didn’t. And it’s not Chloe’s fault either. If you’re all about truth, and paying your pretend piety at the Riga cathedrals, why don’t you tell Chloe where you got that two dollar item from. Who gave it to you, Mason? Go ahead. I can’t wait to hear this one.” Hannah folded her trembling arms around her chest and panted.
“You know, Mason,” said Chloe, “I can’t wait to hear this one either.”
She continued to stand, but her thighs felt weak, as if the muscles in them had liquefied. Fake-casually, Chloe leaned forward and rested her palm—and therefore all her weight—on the picnic table. Something had to support her when she listened to Mason’s answer.
But Mason, like Hannah, refused to answer. “Don’t turn this around to me,” he said. “Chloe’s leaving has nothing to do with me.”
“Is that so?” Hannah said with a sneer.
“Maybe if you were a better friend to her, she’d be going with you to UMaine instead of across the country.”
“Maybe if you were a better boyfriend, you mean! Or even any kind of a boyfriend, anything at all, really. Maybe if you were more than a passing acquaintance!”
“Who gave you the statue, Mason?” said Chloe.
“All right, everyone.” That was Blake, spitting into the hot wind. “This isn’t worth it, let’s all calm down …”
“Who gave you the statue, Mason?” Chloe repeated.
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