I didn’t think fortunes worked that way, but I was more than happy to play along.
On the way home, I asked if Shadow might be able to sleep somewhere else that night. Vanessa was horrified. “Oh my god! Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Everyone was asleep.”
“May. Of course. We’ll put her in with the boys. I’m so sorry.”
“You could have pushed her off the bed,” Richard said.
“I didn’t want her to bark,” I explained.
“May’s nice,” Vanessa said.
“Oh, does she keep dollar bills folded in her pocket, too?”
Vanessa rolled her eyes, hugged her coat around her, and walked faster. We pulled ahead of Richard on the sidewalk. “I hate it when he makes fun of me. I do that so it’s easier to give them to people on the street.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s easier. I’m embarrassed to take my whole wallet out.”
But I’d meant, Why is he making fun of you? When we were young, I’d felt at times I was Vanessa’s project. She was more socially adept and took me under her wing—literally. She would reach her arm around my back to pull me in for a side hug, my far arm pinned, but it made me feel cared for, protected. Now I did the same to her.
* * *
—
THE NEXT DAY we set out to see the High Line, but it started raining before we got there, so when we arrived at the Gansevoort entrance we ran into the Whitney instead. Vanessa quickly found and was mesmerized by a modular, portable living space called Living Unit by Andrea Zittel. The artist’s statement said she’d been inspired by the fine line between freedom and control, and how people often feel liberated by parameters. The piece was set up in a corner far from a window and looked like a cross between a large wardrobe and a closet. It was meant to contain everything needed to make a life:
2 mugs
2 cups
2 bowls
2 mirrors
a toaster oven
a stovetop
1 pot
1 skillet
4 storage jars
4 hangers
2 folding chairs
1 folding cot
2 file drawers
a desk calendar
I stood next to Vanessa wondering why she was so fascinated.
“I keep trying to think of what else I would absolutely need,” she said.
“I would need at least one flowerpot.”
Vanessa looked at me. “You really like plants.”
I shrugged.
“Okay. So you can use one of the storage jars for an orchid or something.”
Other people came over for a while, but no one stayed as long as we did. One woman with well-cut hair, stylish glasses, and trendy jeans stood with us for longer than I expected. I was sure she had a sofa at home she was very proud of.
“What do you think Lindy would make of it?” Vanessa asked.
Vanessa and I didn’t have a history of talking about Lindy, so I wasn’t sure if her question reflected a difference in the way she was thinking about me or Lindy. “Not cute enough,” I said honestly.
She nodded. “Yeah, but she’d fix that.”
“What about books?” I said.
“Lindy’s are organized by color.”
I pointed at the Living Unit. “I mean where would they go? There’s some space above the desk. You just wouldn’t be able to accumulate too many.”
A round-bellied man in a baseball hat and running shoes came by. He looked for a few seconds, then turned to us. “How does it work? Where are you supposed to put it?”
“It’s supposed to make us think,” Vanessa said.
He wandered off.
“Do you think it could work for a family?” Vanessa asked.
“Maybe if you doubled the number of glasses and chairs.”
“I was looking at a furniture catalog the other day and it said, ‘Your living room is where you share the story of who you are.’”
I hesitated.
“I’m texting a picture to Lindy,” Vanessa said. Under the picture she typed: “New apartment!”
Lindy responded almost immediately. “Perfect! I’ll make curtains. Say hi to May.”
Vanessa texted something back, then put away her phone.
“You two are good at staying in touch,” I said.
She nodded. “We talk pretty often. Not long, just five minutes here and there.”
I didn’t like the phone very much, but I was trying to understand.
“What can you say in five minutes?” I asked.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. The conversation is ongoing.”
We moved for a tour group assembling around the Living Unit.
“I’d like to stay in better touch,” I said.
“You’re going to change now?” Vanessa laughed.
“Can’t I?”
“You just are who you are, May. I understand if I don’t get a Christmas card from you in, what, fifteen years? It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It really doesn’t. You’re my friend.”
“I know. Come here,” she said. The clasp of my necklace had come around the front and was hanging next to the pendant. “Make a wish,” she said, fixing it for me, something she’d done all the time when we were young.
“Let’s cheer ourselves up with a glass of wine,” she said.
But there were no tables available in the restaurant; most were occupied by well-dressed pairs of women drinking wine.
Bowls
On my last night Vanessa made dinner. Sean was in his room, Richard would be home late, and Colby and I were sitting in the living room holding books. Vanessa had sent me to read with Colby, which relieved that visiting stress of wondering what I should be doing, but Colby was not reading and neither was I because in the kitchen Vanessa was talking to her mother on the phone and I was trying to hear the conversation. They had a casual, daily relationship that intrigued and baffled me. They discussed some upcoming plans, made arrangements for a visit after I was gone. When Vanessa’s mother realized I was there, she told Vanessa to give me a hug, and Vanessa did. She walked into the living room with the phone in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other.
“She’s right here, Mom. Okay, I’m hugging her. My mom sends her love.”
“Me, too,” I said, truly touched, my throat tight.
Vanessa smiled at me and squeezed my arm, then walked back to the kitchen. “Okay, Mom, I’ve got to go. Love you. I’ll call you later.”
I felt like I’d just seen a blue whale or a shooting star. I blinked back tears, then looked at Colby, who was holding his book, the cover closed.
“Don’t you like to read?” I asked.
He shrugged.
Vanessa walked halfway back into the living room, the phone gone but the spoon still in her hand. “Have I told you about my friend who makes the bowl paintings?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, she’s something, the kind of person who can manage everything at all times. When she decides you’re a true friend, she makes a bowl painting on a small, square canvas and hangs it on a wall in her living room. The bowl represents you and when you visit, you have to guess which bowl you are.”
“Are you up there?”
Vanessa laughed. “She’s painting me now!”
“A wall of bowl paintings.”
“Yep.”
“Can I just start with sending Christmas cards?”
Vanessa laughed and spun around to go back into the kitchen.
“Books are your friends,” I said to Colby. He frowned, but I thought this was an important message after the bowls. “‘There is no friend as loyal as a book.’ Ernest Hemingway.”
He seemed
unimpressed, but he opened his book, which I took as an encouraging sign. I went to the kitchen.
“How’s your mom?” I asked.
“Busy. I can’t keep up with her. She volunteers, goes to shows. She’s leaving soon to study Spanish in Costa Rica for a month.”
I must have looked sad because she hugged me. “I loved your mom,” she said.
“Did you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“What do you remember?”
“Oh.” She set down the measuring cup she was holding. “Well, I remember how she would watch movies with us sometimes and talk to the characters on the screen. Remember that? She could be really chatty sometimes, then at other times, very quiet.”
“Yes.”
“I remember the picture she gave us for graduation.”
“Do you still have it?”
“On my dresser in the bedroom.”
I waited, hoping for more.
“Didn’t you two walk together a lot?” she asked.
“For a little while.”
“I thought that was nice. My mom and I didn’t do that then.”
Vanessa turned back to making dinner. This is the problem: conversations like this, where one is more deeply invested than the other, can be frustratingly staggered and incomplete. Vanessa hadn’t done anything wrong. She simply had no idea how much the information meant to me, and, of course, it was dinnertime. She was juggling a lot of things; I wanted something pure and complete and true.
She fed the boys first, then we ate while they did their homework. She looked over at the table where they’d left their messy plates and sighed. I wanted to mention my mother again, but then Vanessa said, “After the move I’m getting a kitten. A neat, little girl kitten. Then, with Shadow, the boys won’t outnumber the girls.” She smiled at the dog that was curled at my feet. “Will you come back to see our new place?”
I leaned over to pet Shadow. “Will it be as white?” I asked.
Vanessa laughed. “Richard says it happened after the twins were born. Their mom was sure they were going to be girls and had bought a lot of pink: clothes, bedding, furniture. After the surprise of the boys, she redecorated everything in white.” She gestured dangerously with her glass, full of red wine, at the apartment.
“That’s a little spooky,” I said.
“I know. I hope I can make a good home for them. Their mother is so distant.” She sounded uncharacteristically melancholy.
“Homes do have to be made, don’t they?” I said.
“I’m trying to figure it out.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“Are you and your dad still sharing the house?”
“Yes.”
“It’s been a long time, May. Could you at least renovate?”
I laughed. “That really doesn’t feel like an option.”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s hard for you.”
“How are you?” I asked. “How are you . . . settling to it?”
“Life with the boys?”
I nodded.
“I love it. I really do.” She paused. “Can I be brutally honest?”
“Brutally?”
She smiled. “Honesty is always brutal.”
“Okay.” I thought she was going to say something about herself and the boys, but she asked, “Why are you still single?”
“Why are you married?” I shot back without thinking and was genuinely sorry when she didn’t say right away, Because I love him. She didn’t say anything for a while. The rims of her eyes grew red and she took a sip of wine. “We’re trying to have a baby,” she said finally.
“Lindy thinks I’m sad because I don’t have children, so maybe you’re both right.”
She smiled. “Lindy is very kid-centric. We had a picnic in Central Park with them not too long ago. She made me hold the baby for an hour. It was exhausting. Somehow I ended up entertaining all the kids while she and Max took the afternoon off.”
I stayed quiet.
“Anyway,” she said in a tone that meant “enough.” She looked around the apartment. “I’m not going to miss this place. I am going to miss the building, though. The doorman is wonderful. Do you know he gave up complaining for Lent?”
It felt late in the visit to start something new, but to my surprise I did. “There is someone in Anneville.”
Vanessa was shocked. “Wait, what? There is someone? Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why does all the good stuff come out on the last night?”
“We’ve had a picnic. Well, one picnic and two postcards. That’s it.”
Vanessa looked so happy, and some of the tears she’d seemed to be holding back started to spill out. She crossed her legs on the sofa. “Postcards? That’s romantic. No one writes postcards anymore. What’s his name?”
* * *
—
I PACKED BEFORE BED that night and straightened the room as best I could, but it’s hard to know how to leave a room you’ve borrowed from an eight-year-old boy. I didn’t think Colby and Sean would be wild about the bumblebees I’d brought, so I’d purchased a couple of Lego sets for them and left those on Colby’s desk. I was proud to have thought of the idea, actually. I hoped it gave them a good impression of their new stepmom’s friends.
I tried to make myself sleepy by staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars on Colby’s ceiling (in no discernible constellation I could see), though I couldn’t stop thinking about the Living Unit. I admired its simplicity, but it wasn’t a home. As much as I’d like to deny it, a home does tell a story—in fact, it should—because the question of what you want to own is closely related to how you want to live. I climbed out of Colby’s bed and tiptoed back into the living room, took one of the real estate agent’s little white pots, and flushed the succulent down the toilet. I don’t care for them and there was no way to get it home anyway.
I rinsed the pot in the sink and stepped out of the bathroom. It was strange being up at night in someone else’s house. Though I suddenly felt like an intruder, I walked into the living room. I could hear the ebb and flow of traffic on the West Side Highway, nearby someone honked, then there was a yell. The apartment had windows on three sides, a glass box, allowing views into the buildings on either side. It was past one and most of the windows were dark, but in one room a woman was watching television. I couldn’t see the screen but it must have been very large because the bouncing blue light in the room looked like a tempest.
Behind me I heard footsteps and Vanessa’s voice somewhere near. “Well. You know. May.” Three full stops; its own kind of shorthand. I didn’t know if she was on the phone or talking to Richard. Whoever it was—Lindy? her mother?—the person understood because she didn’t have to explain further.
But I wanted to say, “Wait. No, I don’t! What?”
Her voice moved deeper into the apartment and I stood for a moment holding my breath, looking at the pots on the balcony, planted beautifully by someone. I was pretty sure they had a balcony landscaper. I’d seen the van parked in front of the building earlier. I wanted air, but I couldn’t figure out how to open the balcony door and there was no way I was prepared for the ordeal of hallway, elevator, and doorman, even one with a knack for self-improvement. I opened one of the windows—they were giant and slid left and right instead of up and down—but the child-lock system allowed only about two inches. I leaned toward the gap and breathed the cold air. I would have planted lilac (Syringa vulgaris) on the balcony, but, then again, the sixteenth floor might be too windy for it.
Back in Colby’s room, Shadow was asleep on the bed.
Clapham Common
The next day I found myself again in an airport with time on my hands, but this time it was JFK. I’d made plans to fly directly from New York to London to see Rose because the airfare was cheaper that way. Vanessa had put me in a cab to the airport.
&n
bsp; “Call me,” she said. “Sometimes?”
“I will.”
“Will you?”
“I will try.”
She blew me a kiss as the cab pulled away.
At JFK I sat at the gate for a while. There were several TVs in the area, but most people were looking down at their own phones or laptops. Half a dozen people were reading magazines, one person was holding a book, and there were two knitters. I admire the knitters. You can pretend to be reading, but you cannot pretend to knit. Also, it takes a lot of commitment to cart the supplies around.
When the flight was delayed, I found a bar and ordered some food and a Bloody Mary. The TV screens in the bar were, as usual, split between sports and violence, but this time the sport was baseball and the violence was against people protesting the newest travel ban. I followed the choppy closed-captioning while Muzak played over the airport speakers. A journalist was discussing the idea of America and how its meaning around the world was being diminished. At the end of the bar there was a man wearing one of the red baseball caps, but he had earbuds in and was watching something on his phone.
I checked my bag at the gate. Grendel miraculously fit in the bin, as always, but the flight was full. The attendant behind the counter looked tired and sad. “You look reasonable,” she said, and asked if I would be willing to check my bag for the sake of the flight. How could I not agree?
And so I arrived in London, but Grendel did not. I gave the airline all the information they wanted—name, local address, phone number, one unique identifying item in the bag—and they told me I would “almost certainly” have the bag back within twenty-four hours.
“Almost certainly?”
“The bags we find we find quickly.”
“And the bags you don’t find?”
“They are not returned within twenty-four hours.”
“That seems accurate,” I said.
I named Emily Post as my identifying item, which pleased me, but I had to spell etiquette for the airline representative.
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