I don’t want to run out of time.
“Are you crazy?” Tyler’s saying.
“No way,” Wes answers. “Forget it. Give it back.”
They’re arguing about the little camera box that Wes has. He says it’s a way of taking down images and keeping them forever. He’s very particular about it. I guess Wes wants it back, but I’m bored by their posturing. I realize that their encounter with me, in my peculiar circumstances, will qualify as one of the more memorable experiences of their short lives. But I’d venture to say, that in my short (or is it long?) life, the circumstance looms rather larger.
“Wes?” I interrupt, placing a hand on his arm. His skin is warm to the touch, burned from summer sun.
They stop their arguing. It’s well and truly night now, though I don’t know the time. I step into the pool of light thrown by a streetlamp, and glance down at myself. The tatters in my dress go into stark relief, a whiff of smoke escaping from under my feet, and I cast no shadow. I close my eyes quickly, not looking. I’m here, I tell myself, I’m here right now.
“What is it, Annie?” he asks me.
When he looks at me, his eyes go soft and tender, and I feel they see deeper into me than eyes usually should. I feel guilty, if I’m honest with myself, when I see him look at me that way.
“Do you think you could take me to see the Central Park?” I ask quietly.
He gives me a long, pained look that I don’t much like.
“You want to go to the park?” he asks. “Now?”
I nod.
Tyler and Wes exchange a look. Then Tyler turns the camera over to Wes without further argument.
“You think I can meet you guys tomorrow morning?” Tyler asks. “I wanna see what happens.”
“I guess,” Wes says. “Is that okay with you, Annie?”
Okay, he says. They both say it, all the time. I’ve finally started to figure out what it means. It means “yes” and “all right.” It also means less than all right, and a begrudging no. It means everything, and nothing, all at once.
“Sure.” I smile at Tyler.
He’s not a bad sort, this Tyler, though the shortness of his hair still surprises me. He doesn’t wear a braid, like the Celestial men I’ve known, but it seems that no one does anymore. I can see that he and Wes are friends, in the way that boys sometimes compete more closely with their friends than they do with their enemies. I’ve watched Herschel argue with his friends in the same way. They flash their feathers at each other like roosters.
“Okay,” Tyler says. Okay, again. “Nine o’clock. I’ll see you guys then.”
“Right,” Wes says. “See you.”
Tyler fixes me in a strange stare, his eyes sliding down my form in a way that makes me cross my arms over my chest. Then he grins, and jogs off backward with a wave. Wes and I wave back.
“It’s dark,” Wes remarks, and he sounds nervous. “Are you sure you want to go into the park now?”
I can’t help but laugh at him. First, at his idea of dark. The night lights here are so harsh and glaring that I can see every divot on his nose.
“What do you think’s going to happen?” I chide him. “You afraid the boys from the Bowery will come cut your watch fob? Come on. Walk with me.”
Wes laughs, too, perhaps realizing that whatever he might fear for himself, I, at least, have nothing to fear in the Central Park tonight.
My fear waits for me tomorrow.
There are street signs on the lampposts, a splendid invention. They tell us that we are on the corner of Seventy-Second Street and Park Avenue. Imagine, the city reaches this far uptown.
I take Wes by the hand and lead him west. The streetlights mark our way as friendly and safe, and there’s even a sliver of moon overhead. There’s almost no one about. This quarter seems rich enough that I imagine everyone has a country seat where they retreat in the summer, avoiding the cholera. Perhaps up by the Bronck’s. I knew a girl whose parents had a house nearby where I imagine we are, when it was hilly countryside shot through here and there with streams and apple trees. I wonder if she knows her country house is paved over and gone.
Wes allows me to pull him along, holding my hand pressed between both of his as if he’s afraid I’m going to float away. His hands are hot around mine.
“So,” Wes says.
“Hmmmm?” I ask. I’m enjoying the walk, staring up at the bright-lit windows. Here and there I spy silhouettes of people behind the curtains. I like that I can see them, and they don’t know I’m here.
“Tell me about this Herschel guy,” he tries to say it lightly.
I glance at him, and he’s looking at me with naked eyes. I have to be careful, how this unfolds.
“Well,” I say slowly. “What do you want to know?”
“How long have you known him?” Wes struggles to get the words out.
“We met when I was fifteen,” I say.
“How old are you now?”
I laugh. “Why, seventeen, I should think. Depending how you count.”
“Really?” He’s surprised, but I can’t tell why.
“Why, how old are you?” I ask.
“Nineteen,” he says, his voice sounding kind of strangled.
“Herschel’s nineteen, too,” I say.
The afternoon I wandered into his uncle’s dry goods store by mistake, having gotten lost and missed the store two blocks over that Mother wanted me to visit, I must’ve lounged on the counter talking with him for over an hour. His uncle was sick that day, so he was running the store by himself. I’d never seen a boy with brown eyes as heavily fringed as his. And he was funny. He had this way of talking, this order to his words that made light of everything I said. I was laughing so hard my ribs hurt, and my cheeks got sore from smiling. I coiled a curl around my finger and leaned forward, and when I saw his gaze accidently slip to the lace at my chest, a thrill thundered through me so hard that I couldn’t breathe.
He looked away immediately, and sold me some thread.
His hands were shaking.
I came back the next day.
I knew I wasn’t supposed to.
He tried to explain. That it had nothing to do with me, but that it would be impossible. His family would never allow it. I must see how impossible it would be.
I didn’t care.
The first time we sneaked out together was two weeks later. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was supposed to be home with a fever. Mother, Papa, Beatrice, Ed, and Lottie were all at church, and Winston was up in Seneca. Our house was empty, and I rattled around in it, pacing the floors, chewing the nail off my thumb, wearing a path in the leftover scrubbing sand.
Then, I left. It was the middle of the day, autumn.
I forgot my hat.
I didn’t even wear a shawl.
I went and stood outside his uncle’s shop, staring in the window. His back was to me, he was putting something away on a high shelf, but he felt me there, watching him. I saw his back stiffen, and he turned. He stared back at me, into me, with those fringed eyes. Without a word, he came outside, locked up, and we stole away. I came home disheveled, with leaves clinging to my dress, and everyone wondering where I’d gotten to. But I think my mother knew.
I glance at Wes. He’s waiting for me to tell him something, but I can see in his earnest, boyish face this isn’t what he wants to hear.
We pause at the avenue crossing, watching the yellow horseless carriages go sailing by, and the sign over our head reads MADISON. Like Maddie. I smile, thinking about that strange, angry sort-of-sister. I wonder if that’s where she got the name that she really wanted. And Cinders! Like Cinderella. I wish I’d thought of it.
“Annie?” Wes says. “Are you all right?”
This corner, where we’re standing, used to have a small wooden house, with a grassy hillside behind it
dotted with sheep. I don’t know how I know this with such certainty, but I do. I can see it, without seeing it. Like I can see the impression it left behind. It’s there, underneath the surface of the buildings and asphalt. They’d trade with travelers rolling on cartback down to the city from Hartford or Boston. And even this far inland, their yard was ringed with crushed oyster shells.
Wes pulls on my hand, bringing me back to myself.
“Am I?” I ask him.
He squeezes my hand and we hurry across the street, the lamps on the landaus throwing him into stark relief in the dark. His shadow stretches long against the stone walls of the buildings as we pass them. His shadow moves alone.
Fifth Avenue, when we reach it, is awash with carriages and people, the urgent rush that I’m used to. The carriages come equipped with horns, replacing—or sometimes adding to—the shouts of drivers scattering passersby out of the way. I feel a jolt of excitement, seeing the black outline of the trees against the night sky across the avenue.
“They’ve been talking about this, you know,” I say to Wes, marveling. “I heard Papa and some gentlemen from the committee.”
“About what?” Wes asks.
“About having a park,” I say. “There’s no parks, where I live. Have you noticed that?”
“I never really thought about it,” Wes says, sounding surprised. “Why not?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. But on hot days, like this, it means we all go to the waterfront.”
“Really?” He makes a face.
“Oh yes. The sailors and ropemakers all hate it, because we’re underfoot, and the boys steal things to sell at the pawnshops. When the sun is hot and bright, like it was today, it makes a corona around your head, if you stare at yourself in the river. A halo, that follows you wherever you move. Have you ever done that?” I ask him.
“Yes,” Wes says softly.
The carriages all stop at once, following the command of some complex system of lamps, and we dash hand in hand across the street, running for no reason.
It’s cooler when we reach the park, and the darkness makes me feel safe. I can tell the opposite is true of Wes, though. Anxiety vibrates in him like an over-tuned fiddle string.
“How did you meet him?” Wes presses me.
“At his uncle’s store,” I say without looking at him. I feel him stiffen next to me, with a new awkward hitch in his walk.
“So, is he, like, your boyfriend or something?” Wes asks.
We move deeper into the park, wending our way along a roadside. We’re not alone. Couples wander with us, people walking little dogs on leads. Children weave around us on funny toys with wheels. We cross over a bridge, and off to the right spy a wide plaza leading down to a lake so perfect it almost doesn’t seem real. A fountain plashes in the center of the plaza, and under the bridge I hear a lone violinist playing music that sounds both beautiful and sad.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” I say, looking at Wes.
“It’s a pretty basic question,” he says, a line forming between his eyebrows under that sweet mop of hair on his forehead.
We keep walking, turning down a long promenade lined with trees so tall they meet overhead. Benches line the promenade, and people from all walks of life rest on them, watching us pass. Old women with wire baskets at their feet, tiny babies in wheeled carriages, men dressed only in undershirts. A family walks by, and the man has a cap on the back of his head like Herschel used to wear. He’s young, and so is his pretty wife in her modest clothes. Three children, two girls and boy in a cap, too, romp around their feet.
I have to look away.
“Tell me,” Wes says. “I need to know. Please?”
“We’d steal away to be together . . .” I hesitate. “But we weren’t allowed.”
Wes abruptly releases my hand, and as soon as the pressure is gone, I miss it.
“Two years,” Wes says, sounding almost angry as he walks next to me. He’s thrust his hands in his pockets. “That’s a long time.”
“I guess,” I say. I don’t know what to do with my own hands now. I wrap them around myself and cup my elbows.
“What’s the deal with the cameo, then?” he asks me.
I look down at my naked left hand. The next time I go back, I’ll find it. Finally. I wonder what will happen then.
“He gave it to me,” I whisper. “The last time I saw him. Been saving up for it, he said. Asked one of his cousins, a jeweler, to hold it for him, ’til he could pay.”
Wes greets this bit of information with scathing silence.
“We . . .” I pause.
Should I tell him?
“Go on,” Wes says. A chill runs down the back of my neck even in the heat of the summer night, when I hear how he sounds.
“We’d talked about running away,” I say at last.
It’s true. We did. In a roundabout sort of way. Like we were daring each other to say it. Seeing who could hold out the longest. At first we talked about it by not talking about it at all. And then we talked about it as though playing an imaginary game. If we ran away, which we weren’t, because it was impossible, but if we were, how would we go about it? What would we do for money? How long before they knew we were gone?
My cousin’s cart, Herschel says in my mind, a summer afternoon lazing next to me on the riverbank, shading his eyes from the sun. It’d be a while, before he missed it. We’d drive until the wheels fell off.
But where? I hear myself ask. Not south, surely. North? How far north?
I don’t know, Herschel replies.
He couldn’t imagine what would happen next any more than I could. I think about Wes’s friend Tyler, all that stuff he said about memories. That they’re always changing, each time we think about them. We think they stay the same, but they never do.
Is that really what Herschel said, about taking the cart until the wheels fell off? Or is it what I wanted him to say?
“So. Why didn’t you, then?” Wes asks, his hands digging deeper into his pockets.
We turn off the mall, leaving the watching eyes of New-York and disappearing along a winding path through the trees, meandering down to the artificial lake. I want to find Wes’s hand again. I feel safer, with him holding me here.
The lake is so calm in the moonlight that it perfectly reflects the outline of the trees on the opposite shore, like an ink stain on folded paper. The moon has moved higher in the night sky, and through the white glow of the city around us, I can make out two distant stars.
“He said”—I’m thinking, while I tell Wes this—“there was something he had to do first.”
“Oh? And what was that?” Wes asks, trying to make the question sound curious, but instead it comes out irritated.
“He wouldn’t tell me.” I hear myself say the words, and I have to stop walking.
What did Herschel tell you? the Senegalese Luddite boy shouted at me in the street. What do you know?
Of course. Of course! Herschel was Luddite! And his uncle, too, probably, the one who told me I had no idea what was coming.
“Wes,” I gasp, reaching for his sleeve.
“What is it?” He stops when he feels my hand, close enough that I can smell his boyish skin. It’s hard to make out his features, now that we’re away from the streetlights.
“The Grand Aquatic Display,” I say, my grip tightening. “I know what happens.”
I expect him to be excited, but he’s not. Even in the shadows I can see his face contort in misery.
“Annie,” he says. His voice catches in what almost sounds like a sob. “I know what happens, too, okay? I already know. And I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to go back.”
I slide my hand down his arm, and take his hand in mine. They’re trembling, our hands. But I’m not sure if the trembling is his or mine.
“You d
on’t?” I whisper.
“Sometimes?” He blinks quickly, clearing the tears from his eyes. “I wish I’d never met you. Then I’d just be able to do my film, and take the time to make it really good, and I’d transfer and get everything I wanted. It would’ve been so much easier!”
The bottom falls out of my heart, and all that’s left inside me is a whistling emptiness.
“I’m sorry,” I force the words out.
“Why me, anyway?” he says. “Why’d you have to come here and . . .” He trails off. “Why’d you have to come to me?”
I step closer, close enough to press my lips to his cheek. It’s damp, and I taste tears. I move my lips up to the corner of his eye, kissing the tear away, my lips touching his skin with the softness of butterfly feet. His arms go around my waist, crushing me to his chest, and I grasp his shirt in my fists, pressing my face into his neck.
“I’m here, right now,” I say, my voice muffled by his skin. “I’m here. With you.”
He shudders against me, his own face buried in the curls over my ear.
“I have to tell you something,” Wes whispers fiercely.
“Wait,” I whisper back. “Wait.”
A little ways away, through a screen of trees, we discover a filigreed summerhouse, an open patio with a roof for shade, and benches down close to the water. A warm breeze trips along the lake surface, ruffling the reflected city. I lead Wes by the hand down the path to the summerhouse. He knits his fingers around my palm.
“Do you think . . . ,” Wes says, and I can feel his pulse thrumming fast under his skin. “Annie. Do you think it’s possible to love more than one person?”
I stare long and hard at him. That word hangs in the air between us.
Did he say it?
Did I hear it?
Or is it what I wanted him to say?
It’s impossible to see his expression in the dark. I can only see the outline of his hair, his jaw, and his shoulders as he turns to me. A knot unties itself inside my chest.
I whisper, “Yes.”
Then Wes’s fingers are in my hair, and he’s pulling me to him. His mouth meets mine, soft and warm at first. Hesitant. Herschel is the only other boy I’ve kissed, and his mouth was more insistent, rougher, thinner lipped, and salty. Wes tastes of mint, and his lips are smoother, softer. Richer. I close my eyes, feeling an electric spark where our lips connect, like the rays of the sun in a corona over our heads when we stare into the waters of the Hudson on a sunny afternoon.
The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen Page 30