Lucy shrugged. “It’s okay. We can just chalk it up to claustrophobia. Or lack of oxygen.”
He smiled, but there was something strained about it. “It’s just been a really tough summer. And I guess I’m not used to the idea of being here yet.”
His eyes caught hers through the darkness, and the elevator felt suddenly smaller than it had just minutes before. Lucy thought of all the other times she’d been crammed in here over the years: with women in fur coats and men in expensive suits; with little white dogs on pink leashes and doormen wheeling heavy boxes on luggage carts. She’d once spilled an entire container of orange juice on the carpet right where Owen was sitting, which had made the whole place stink for days, and another time, when she was little, she’d drawn her name in green marker on the wall, much to her mother’s dismay.
She’d read the last pages of her favorite books here, cried the whole way up and laughed the whole way down, made small talk to a thousand different neighbors on a thousand different days. She’d fought with her two older brothers, kicking and clawing, until the door dinged open and they all walked out into the lobby like perfect angels. She’d ridden down to greet her dad when he arrived home from every single business trip, and had even once fallen asleep in the corner as she waited for her parents to come home from a charity auction.
And how many times had they all been stuffed in here together? Dad, with his newspaper folded under his arm, always standing near the door, ready to bolt; Mom, wearing a thin smile, seesawing between amusement and impatience with the rest of them; the twins, grinning as they elbowed each other; and Lucy, the youngest, tucked in a corner, always trailing behind the rest of the family like an ellipsis at the end of a sentence.
And now here she was, in a box that seemed too tiny to hold so many memories, with the walls pressing in all around her and nobody to come to her rescue. Her parents were in Paris, across the ocean, as usual, on the kind of trip that only ever included the two of them. And her brothers—the only friends she’d ever really had—were now thousands of miles away at college.
When they’d left a few weeks ago—Charlie heading off to Berkeley, and Ben to Stanford—Lucy couldn’t help feeling suddenly orphaned. It wasn’t unusual for her parents to be away; they’d always made a habit of careening off to snow-covered European cities or exotic tropical islands on their own. But being left behind was never that bad when there were three of them, and it was always her brothers—a twin pair of clowns, protectors, and friends—that had kept everything from unraveling.
Until now. She was used to being parentless, but being brotherless—and, thus, effectively friendless—was entirely new, and losing both of them at once seemed unfair. The whole family was now hopelessly scattered, and from where she sat—all alone in New York—Lucy felt it deeply just then, as if for the very first time: the bigness of the world, the sheer scope of it.
Across the elevator, Owen rested his head against the wall. “It is what it is…” he murmured, letting the words trail off at the end.
“I hate that expression,” Lucy said, a bit more forcefully than intended. “Nothing is what it is. Things are always changing. They can always get better.”
He looked over, and she could see that he was smiling, even as he shook his head. “You’re totally nuts,” he said. “We’re stuck in an elevator that’s hot and stuffy and probably running out of air. We’re hanging by a cord that’s got to be smaller than my wrist. Your parents are who-knows-where, and my dad’s in Coney Island. And if nobody’s come to get us by now, there’s a good chance they’ve forgotten about us entirely. So seriously, how are you still so positive?”
Lucy slid out from the wall, folding her legs beneath her and leaning forward. “How come your dad’s in Coney Island?” she asked, ignoring his question.
“That’s not the point.”
“For the roller coasters?”
He shook his head.
“The hot dogs?” she asked. “The ocean?”
“Aren’t you at all worried that nobody’s coming to get us?”
“It won’t help anything,” she said. “Worrying.”
“Exactly,” he said. “It is what it is.”
“Nope,” she said. “Nothing is what it is.”
“Fine,” he said. “It’s not what it isn’t.”
Lucy gave him a long look. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“Or maybe you’d just prefer not to,” he said, sitting forward, and they both laughed. The darkness between them felt suddenly thin, flimsy as tissue paper and even less substantial. His eyes shone through the blackness as the silence stretched between them, and when he finally broke it, his voice was choked.
“He’s in Coney Island because that’s where he first met my mother,” Owen said. “He bought flowers to leave on the boardwalk. He wanted to do it alone.”
Lucy opened her mouth to say something—to ask a question, perhaps, or to tell him she was sorry, a word too small to mean anything at a moment like this—but the silence felt suddenly fragile, and she could think of nothing worthy enough to break it.
His head was bowed so that it was hard to make out the expression on his face, and she felt useless, sitting there without any idea of what to do. But then a faint knock sent her heart up into her throat, and his eyes found hers in the dark.
The sound came again, and Owen stood this time, moving over to the door and pressing his ear against it. He knocked back, and they both listened. Even from where she was still sitting numbly in the middle of the floor, Lucy could hear the muffled voices outside, followed by the scrape of something metal. After a moment, she rose to her feet, too, and without a word, without even looking at each other, they stood there like that, shoulder to shoulder, like a couple of astronauts at the end of a long journey, waiting for the doors to open so they could step out into a dazzling new world.
2
The day had started in darkness, too. Owen had woken before the sun was up, just as he had for the last forty-two mornings, jolted out of sleep with the feel of something heavy on his chest, a weight that pressed down on him like a fist. He blinked at the unfamiliar ceiling, the faint cracks that formed a sort of map, and the fly that roved between them, like an X marking some unknowable spot.
In the next room, he could hear the clink of a coffee mug, and he knew his father was awake, too. The last six weeks had turned them into bleary-eyed insomniacs, their days as shapeless as their nights, so that one simply bled into the other. It seemed fitting that they were living underground now; what better place for a couple of ghosts?
His new room was less than half the size of his old one back in their sprawling, sun-drenched house in rural Pennsylvania, where he’d been woken each morning by the sparrows just outside his window. Now he listened to a couple of pigeons squabbling against the narrow panel of glass near the ceiling, where the protective metal bars made what little light there was fall across his bed in slats.
When he emerged into the hallway that separated his room from his father’s and led back to the small kitchen and sitting area, Owen caught a whiff of smoke, and the intensity of it, the vividness of the memory, almost took his knees out from under him. He followed the scent to the living room, where he found his father sitting on the couch, hunched over a mug that was serving as a makeshift ashtray.
“I didn’t think you’d be up,” he said, stabbing out the cigarette with a guilty expression. He ran a hand through his hair, which was just a shade or two darker than Owen’s, then sat back and rubbed his eyes.
“I didn’t really sleep,” Owen admitted, collapsing into the rocking chair across from him. He closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath. He couldn’t help himself; they’d been his mother’s cigarettes, and the scent clenched at something inside him. There’d been eight left when she died, the crumpled pack recovered from the accident site and returned to them along with her wallet and keys and a few other odds and ends, and though his father didn’t usually smoke, there wer
e now only two. Owen could chart the bad days in this way, by the tang of smoke in the mornings, the best and worst reminder of her; one of the only ones left.
“You always hated these,” Owen said, picking up the nearly empty box and spinning it in his hands. His father smiled faintly.
“Terrible habit—it drove me crazy,” he agreed, then shook his head. “I always said it would kill her.”
Owen lowered his eyes but couldn’t help picturing the police report, the theory that she’d been distracted while trying to light a cigarette. They’d found the car upside down in a ditch. The box was ten yards away.
“I thought I’d head out to Brooklyn today,” Dad said, a forced casualness to his voice, though Owen knew what that really meant, knew exactly where he was going and why. “You’ll be okay on your own?”
Owen thought about asking whether he might like some company, but he already knew the answer. He’d seen the flowers resting on the kitchen counter last night, still wrapped in cellophane and already wilting. It was their anniversary; the day didn’t belong to Owen. He ran a hand over the pack of cigarettes and nodded.
“We’ll have dinner when I get back,” Dad said, then picked up the ash-filled mug and padded out into the kitchen. “Anything you want.”
“Great,” Owen called, and then before he could think better of it, he slid one of the last two cigarettes from the pack, twirled it once between his fingers, and tucked it into his pocket without quite knowing why.
In the doorway to his bedroom, he paused. They’d been here nearly a month now, but the room was still lined with boxes, most of them half-open, the cardboard flaps spread out like wings. This sort of thing would have driven his mother crazy, and he couldn’t help smiling as he imagined what her reaction would be, a mix of exasperation and bemusement. She’d always kept things so tidy at home, the counters sparkling and the floors dust-free, and Owen was suddenly glad she couldn’t see this place, with its dim lighting and peeling paint, the mold that caked the spaces between bathroom tiles and the dingy appliances in the kitchen.
Whenever Owen used to complain about cleaning his room or having to do the dishes the moment they were finished with dinner, Mom would cuff him playfully on the head. “Our home is a reflection of who we are,” she’d say in a singsong voice.
“Right,” Owen would shoot back. “And I’m a mess.”
“You are not,” she’d say, laughing. “You’re perfect.”
“Perfectly messy,” Dad would say.
She used to make them take off their shoes in the laundry room, only ever smoked on the back porch, and kept the pillows on the couches from getting too squashed. Dad said it had always been this way, from the moment they bought the house, the two of them thrilled to finally own something so permanent after so much time on the road.
They’d spent the previous two years traveling around in a rickety van with all their worldly belongings stashed in the back. They’d crisscrossed the country, camping out under the stars or sleeping curled in the backseat, whittling away their meager savings as they made their across every state but Hawaii and Alaska. They’d seen Mount Rushmore and Grand Teton, driven up the California coast and gone fishing in the Florida Keys. They’d been to New Orleans and Bar Harbor and Mackinac Island, Charleston and Austin and Lake Tahoe, traveling until they ran out of land, and money, too. It was only then that they returned to Pennsylvania, where they’d both grown up—and where it was time to grow up for a second time—and settled down for good.
But in spite of all the stories he’d heard of their years on the road, Owen had never been much of anywhere. His parents seemed to have gotten it out of their system by the time he came along, and they were content to be in one place. They had a house with a porch and a yard with an apple tree; there was a swingset around the side and a neighboring field of grazing horses. They had a round kitchen table just big enough for three, a door the perfect size for a wreath at Christmastime, and enough nooks and crannies for long and drawn-out games of hide-and-seek. There was nowhere else they ever wanted to be.
Until now.
Alone in his bedroom, Owen heard the front door fall shut, then waited a few minutes before grabbing his phone and wallet and heading out, too, jogging up the stairs from the basement to the lobby, which he passed through quickly, his head bent. It wasn’t that he had anything against the residents of the building, but he didn’t belong here, and neither did his father. Owen was just waiting for him to realize that, too.
All morning, he walked. This was his last day of freedom, the last day he wouldn’t be bound to show up for classes in a school that wasn’t his, and he found himself pacing like a restless animal along the edge of the Hudson River. He left his earbuds on, drowning out the sounds of the city, and he kept moving in spite of the heat. For lunch, he bought a hot dog from a street vendor, then cut over to Central Park, where he sat watching the tourists with their cameras and their maps and their round, shiny eyes. He followed their gazes, trying to see what they saw, but all he could see were more people.
It wasn’t until late afternoon that he made his way back to the corner of Seventy-Second and Broadway, to the ornate stone building that was now his home. He paused just inside the lobby, reluctant to go back downstairs, where there was nothing to do but sit alone for the next few hours and wait for his dad to return. Instead, he felt for the key in the pocket of his shorts.
He’d taken the master set from his dad’s dresser during their first week here, a wildly uncharacteristic move for him. Owen had always been overly cautious, not prone to breaking rules, but after only a few days here, the claustrophobic feel of the place had become too much to take, and he found a locksmith to make a copy of the key that unlocked the door to the roof—the only peaceful place, it seemed, in this entire city.
As he stepped into the elevator, he was already imagining the vast, windblown quiet forty-two stories above, his music loud in his ears and his thoughts far away. He punched the button and stood waiting for the ground to lift beneath his feet, still lost in thought, and he hadn’t even bothered to look up when someone caught the doors just before they could close.
But now, less than an hour later, he felt suddenly too aware of her, a presence beside him as prickly as the heat. As they listened to the sounds on the other side of the door, he glanced down, noticing that her right foot was only inches away from his left one, and he curled his toes and rocked back on his heels and looked away again. He realized he was holding his breath, and he wondered if she was, too.
Just before the door was pried open, he narrowed his eyes, expecting to be greeted by a sudden brightness. But instead, the faces peering down at them from the eleventh floor—which started halfway up the length of the elevator, a thick slab of concrete that bisected the doors—were mostly lost in shadows, and the only light came from a couple of flashlights, which were being pointed directly in their faces, causing them both to blink.
“Hi,” Lucy said brightly, greeting them as if this was all very ordinary, as if they always met in this way: the doorman above them on his hands and knees, his face pale and moonlike in the dark, and beside him, a handyman sitting back on his heels and wiping at his forehead with a bandanna.
“You guys okay?” George asked, passing down a water bottle, which Owen grabbed from him and then handed to Lucy. She nodded as she untwisted the cap and took a long swig.
“It’s a little toasty,” she said, giving the bottle back to Owen. “But we’re fine. Is the whole building out?”
The handyman snorted. “The whole city.”
Owen and Lucy exchanged a look. “Seriously?” she asked, her eyes widening. “That can happen?”
“Apparently,” George said. “It’s chaos out there.”
“Traffic lights and everything?” Owen asked, and the older man nodded, then clapped his hands, all business.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get you guys out of here.”
Lucy went first, and when Owen tried to help her
, she waved him away, hoisting herself up over the lip of the floor, then rising to her feet and brushing off her white dress. Owen followed much less gracefully, flopping onto the ledge like a fish run aground before hopping up. There was an emergency light at the far end of the hallway that cast a reddish glow, and it was a little bit cooler up here but not much; his palms were still sweaty and his T-shirt was still glued to his back.
“So when do they think we’ll have power again?” he asked, trying to keep the nervous edge out of his voice. He couldn’t help thinking of his father. No electricity meant no subways. No subways meant there was no way he could get back anytime soon. And in a situation like this, his absence would not go unnoticed.
“No idea,” George said, stooping to help pack up the tools. The clanging metal rang out along the walls, interrupting the eerie silence. “The phone lines are all jammed and the Internet’s down, too.”
“No cell-phone reception, either,” the handyman added. “It’s impossible to get any kind of information.”
“I heard it’s the whole East Coast,” George said. “That a power plant in Canada got struck by lightning.”
The handyman rolled his eyes. “And I heard it was an alien invasion.”
“I’m just telling you what they were saying on the radio,” George muttered, standing up again. He put a hand on Lucy’s shoulder, then looked from her to Owen. “So you guys are okay?”
They both nodded.
“Good,” he said. “I’ve got to go door-to-door and make sure everyone’s all right. You both have flashlights?”
“Yup,” Lucy said. “Upstairs.”
“Have you heard from my dad at all?” Owen asked as casually as he could manage. “He’s—”
“Yeah, I know,” George said. “He picked one hell of a day to beg off. I haven’t heard from him, but I wouldn’t be worried. Nobody’s heard from anyone.”
“He had to go out to Brooklyn,” Owen said, trying to think of some kind of excuse, an explanation to follow this, but the handyman—who had been walking toward the stairwell—paused and turned back around.
The Geography of You and Me Page 2