‘Maybe he thinks he wants you to be just like him,’ I say. ‘But one day he’ll see that he’s wrong.’
‘Just like that.’ Michael smiles.
‘Just like that,’ I say. ‘I’m much older and wiser than you, trust me on this.’
There’s a moment as we look into each other’s eyes when it feels like it could end in a kiss, which isn’t a surprise. What is, though, is how much I want it to.
It’s Michael that pulls away.
‘I got it, we should have a picnic. Wait there.’ Pressing my hand to his lips, before returning it to me, he goes into a general store.
A few moments later he returns. ‘Here,’ he says, handing me a Coke, with a red-and-white-striped straw in it, and a Twinkie.
He leads me all the way down to the end of 3rd Avenue, past where the commercial properties become homes and apartments, trimmed with balconies that are brimming with flowers. We cross a busy road, and all but race down the shady path that leads to an expanse of grass, the only thing beyond it the bridge, silver against the skyline, an arrow dividing the otherwise seamless blue water and sky.
‘It can be a little dangerous down here at night,’ Michael tells me, as he finds us a bench, giving a small bow as he offers me a seat. ‘But it’s cool now, especially with me here to protect you.’
All of his bravado is back, and I’m happy.
I sip sweet, dark Coke, and feel the long grass around my ankles tickle and scratch. Is it wrong that I am so happy? Is it dangerous to feel so content here? This feeling, this happiness that I feel, is so rare, so precious. It’s a happiness I can’t keep; I can’t let it be mine.
‘I grew up watching them build it,’ Michael says, nodding at the bridge. ‘In my head, when I was a kid, I thought as soon as they finish building that bridge I’m going to run over it as fast as I can and get out of here. I sort of thought it would get me anywhere, you know? Anywhere I dreamt of.’
‘Where do you dream of?’ I ask him.
‘Well, not fucking Staten Island, which is the only place that bridge goes to.’ He chuckles. ‘You can’t even walk over it either, just cars.’
‘Where then?’
He falters, and looks away from me, back out to the bridge, suddenly shy.
‘Tell me.’ I lean into him, the skin of my arm grazing his. He sighs as he looks at me, and I love the sound of his longing.
‘I want to write stories,’ he confesses. ‘But not just for fun, like, for real. Real stories in books and shit. I know I can’t, I know I don’t have the right schooling to be a writer. But I want to write books like The Shining. Not scary shit, but stuff that’s exciting, that anyone can get into. Books for people like me. But fuck it, I’m not even supposed to read books. I don’t tell Dad, I don’t tell the guys, I don’t even tell most of the girls I date that I read books and write stories …’
‘I think men that read books are the most attractive kind,’ I tell him. His eyes widen, his cheeks colour beneath his tan.
‘You don’t think I’m a dope, some baker’s kid with a high-school diploma, getting ideas above his station?’
‘No, I don’t,’ I say. ‘That’s not what I think about you at all. I find you rather compelling.’
‘Compelling?’ He mimics my accent, throwing his head back as he laughs, suddenly carefree again. ‘Well, chicks have called me a lot of things, but never compelling. It’s a dumb dream, it won’t never happen. Just like that bridge looks so pretty; it don’t really go nowhere. That’s me, my friend.’
‘That isn’t you,’ I counter, thinking of the future I have seen for him. I couldn’t know how happy or content that Michael was, what love waited for him at home. Was there a wife, children? All I know is that man I met was a man who had never gone anywhere after all. ‘If came to see you in thirty years’ time what would you be doing?’ I ask him. ‘Where would you be?’
‘If I’m still alive by then?’ He laughs. ‘I’ll be driving my hover car to work at the goddam bakery, selling space food to Martians!’
‘Huh, the future sounds fun,’ I say. ‘I’ve lived a quiet life, until now. Stayed in one place, done one thing. Never really fallen in love, never really made any kind of mark on the world. I saw my mum live her whole life with this aching urge to be small and quiet and unseen, when she was meant to be big and loud and in everyone’s faces. Life, circumstance, got the better of her, and I don’t want that for me, or the people I care about. I want my life to have mattered, to have made a difference. What I’m trying to say is, you might as well try as hard as you can to follow your dreams, otherwise what are they for, except to remind you of everything you didn’t do.’
The sun has dipped a little, and turned the afternoon golden, dappling through the tree canopy and playing over his face. When I thought he was a bit player in this drama it was easier to look at him, but now I know how important he has become, I feel suddenly a little shy.
‘That beautiful bridge might not go anywhere you want to go, but there are plenty of other bridges and tunnels that do,’ I tell him.
‘Would you come with me, if I go?’ His green eyes intensify, and I feel the world fall apart. It’s not time that is shifting inside me, it’s my heart. There’s a rise of bubbles from my belly; this is exactly the wrong moment to fall in love for the first time in my life. And precisely the wrong man to fall in love with. There can be no future, no hope, no chance for this love. There won’t even be a memory of it.
And yet.
And yet, I know this is both my first and last chance to be in love, and I know that somehow, for some reason I don’t understand, it was always only ever going to be here that I found the person I could love, that I found Michael. And, dear god, I don’t want to cease to live without having known what it means to feel this way.
Everything about him, about me, makes these feeling utterly impossible, and yet I feel them; longing and desire inhabit every living cell that makes me what I am. My body rings for him, like a struck bell.
So, slowly, very slowly, I let myself fall, knowing that there is no turning back.
Michael slides along the bench towards me, his eyes locked on mine. His hand finds my waist, pulling me flush against him. We lean into one another and we both feel it, this pull, this magnetism made just for us two; a desperate need to be connected.
In any decade, in any time, this is what it feels like to fall in love.
‘Hey, Luna!’ Riss breaks us apart with her call, crossing her arms and rocking back on her hips as she really looks at us. ‘Oh, hey Michael.’
‘Hello,’ I say, tucking my hair primly behind my ear as I move away from him. After all my mother has just caught me with a boy.
‘Great timing, Riss. Perfect.’ Michael sits back, his arm stretching out behind me. Even in the heat I miss the warmth of his body near mine. ‘Where you been? Why aren’t you at your little sewing machine making me a nice shirt for Saturday night?’
‘Because I’m sick,’ Riss says, looking about as healthy as a girl can, her bare, brown skin seeming to glow in the sun, against a yellow, cotton sundress edged in white, a green purse slung over her shoulder, a brown, paper package under her arm. She is fully charged with love and sunlight, and for once I don’t have to guess what that might be like. I know, and knowing makes it even harder to realise that, not long from now, one moment, one decision, one action, will destroy all the joy she carries with her now, smashing it into pieces. And all her life long, no matter how she will try to gather them up again, and reassemble what once was, she will never be complete again.
The more I don’t want to leave this life, the more I know I must.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask, sensing a flush in her cheeks, a glitter in her eyes.
She crosses to the bench and sits down next to me, forcing Michael to move up to the end of the bench. She stares at me intently.
‘You are a mystery, you know that?’ she says, so close I can smell the scent of her hair, see the little scar on her chin.
‘A mystery, me?’ I say, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Yeah, you’re like that movie, The Man Who Fell to Earth, except you’re a girl, of course. You just drop out of the sky, out of nowhere, and the funny thing is, I feel like I know you somehow. I wish I could work out who it is you remind me of,’ she says.
‘I just have a face like that, I suppose …’
‘Those eyes,’ she says. ‘You’ve got the bluest eyes, just like …’
‘So tell us, what have you really been doing?’ Michael cuts in, and I wonder if he could see how uncomfortable I was becoming with her questions, her closeness.
‘Seeing Henry.’ Riss leans back against the bench, stretching her arms out along its back; her smile is a perfect curl of joy. ‘I told Pops I was sick, and Stephanie is covering for me. Henry’s got to go back soon, and I need to spend as much time with him as I can, so …’
Michael pretends to gag, and Riss cuffs him mildly around the back of his head.
‘Just because you’ve never been in love,’ she says, glancing at me. ‘Or maybe that’s changed recently.’
I repress a smile as Michael blushes rather sweetly.
‘Listen, can you two keep a secret? I mean like a huge fucking secret?’
‘Yes,’ I say at once.
‘Depends what you gonna give me to keep quiet,’ Michael teases her, and she cuffs him again.
‘Can you fucking keep a secret or not, Michael?’ Riss levels a dark-eyed glare at him, and he raises his palms in surrender.
‘Nice language from a lady,’ he says.
‘Well, we went for a picnic, down on the shore,’ Riss says. ‘I knew it was coming, but even so when he asked …’ Biting her lip, she stretches out her left hand for both of us to see, wriggling her fingers so that her newly acquired piece of jewellery sparkles in the sun. ‘Henry asked me to marry him and, it wasn’t until then, until he asked me, that I knew what the right thing to do was, and I said yes! I’m engaged, can you believe it?’
‘Wow!’ Reaching out, I take her hand, and as I do time tilts and disintegrates around me.
Not now, this can’t happen now. I concentrate very hard on the ring, desperate to stay in this moment. Of course I know it, better than the back of my own hand. A tiny flower of diamonds, arranged like a daisy on a thin, gold band. I’ve gazed at it as I held Mum’s hand walking to school, seen her rub and twist it, day after day, decade after decade. Watched it shine through mud as we weeded in the garden.
Buried her, with it still on her finger.
Time settles for the moment at least, leaving me be.
‘Well, that’s wonderful news.’ I make myself stay bright. ‘Congratulations. Are you going home to tell your dad? When will you be going to the UK? You should go with him right away. Go tonight, go tomorrow!’
Riss frowns and laughs at the same time.
‘Are you crazy?’ Riss shakes her head. ‘Pops would die if I just ran off like that. His daughter marrying a non-Catholic? And moving to England, leaving him with Stephanie? I told you before, I got to be careful; if I tell him in the wrong way at the wrong time, then this whole thing is over. I’ll lose Henry or my family or both, and I don’t want to choose. We’ve got time; he’s going back in a few days, but we have this now, to show how serious we are, and time to make it right.’
‘Sometimes time is the last thing you need,’ I say urgently. This moment is my chance; it might be my one chance to change things, and I can’t let it slip away. If I can’t get her to deviate from the path she is on, I will lose everything that I have only just found. ‘Just tell your dad. What’s the point in lying? You want to marry Henry, right? You’re a grown woman, you don’t need anyone’s permission. It will be difficult, of course, but it’s better than keeping it a secret. Secrets always makes things worse.’
‘Maybe,’ Riss says, drawing back from me a little. ‘Why’s it such a big deal to you anyways?’
‘It’s not,’ I say carefully, trying to sound older, wiser. ‘It’s just, well, I’ve seen people drift apart in long-distance relationships. Things start out well, but if you don’t see someone, and there are other people on the scene … who knows?’
My mother’s scowl can turn a bright day black as night.
‘Those are the people you know, not me, not Henry. I know him, and I know us. We’re forever, whatever happens.’
‘I agree with Luna,’ Michael says, and Riss laughs.
‘No kidding, you’d agree white is black if you thought it’d get you laid.’
‘That’s not what it’s like with me and her,’ he says so seriously that even Riss is surprised.
‘OK, I’m sorry.’ Something shifts in her expression, something softens. ‘I didn’t realise. Even so, you should get why I can’t just run away, Michael.’
‘Maybe I do, but maybe she’s right about just being straight about it now. Your pop’s a decent guy, and he loves you. So Henry’s not Catholic, does that really matter? He’s a good man, that’s what matters, not what God he prays to or what lies he tells himself to feel better about winding up dead one day.’
Riss hesitates and, for a moment, hope and fear combine as I wonder if it could be Michael that makes the difference, if that’s why I’ve been so drawn to him. But then she shakes her head.
‘I need time. Time to think and time to pray on what to do about it. I’m going see if I can talk to Father Thomas. Priests can’t tell anyone what you tell them; they’ve got to keep it a secret.’
My hearts plummets into my stomach and just as fast panic rises again, and I can feel myself lose any semblance of reason.
‘Don’t,’ I say urgently, grabbing her arms and trying to pull her towards me. ‘Don’t talk to him. Please, stay away from that man.’
‘Are you crazy?’ Riss stands up rubbing at the red finger marks I left on her arms. ‘Have you even met him? I’ve known him since I was a kid. Of course I should ask him for guidance, he’s cool. He understands what life is about. He wasn’t always a priest. I respect that about him.’
‘But …’ I flail around for something, anything to stop her talking to him. ‘I don’t like him.’
‘You haven’t even met him!’ Riss’s eyes flash with furious lightening.
‘Today. Today I did,’ I tell her frantically. ‘I was outside the church and he was talking to a girl, and the way he was looking at her …’
‘Luna, shut up before we fall out,’ she says, and I bite back any more words, afraid of pushing her away. She offers me the package. ‘Here, it’s your dress. I was going to drop it round to Mrs Oberman’s or wherever you’re staying now, but as you are here … we’re meeting at 2001 Odyssey tonight, around ten, if you want to come.’
It’s a less welcoming invitation than the last one.
‘Thank you,’ I say as I take it. ‘I’ll do my best to be there.’
‘You’re welcome. But don’t ever talk about Father Thomas that way again, do you hear me? It matters to me. God matters to me.’
I nod, carefully inching my way through the next few seconds, terrified of losing her trust altogether.
‘See you around.’
I watch as she vanishes into the tunnel of shadows made by the trees.
‘Shit.’ I bury my face in my hands.
‘You OK?’ Michael touches my shoulder and I shrug him off. ‘That’s not like Riss to get so wound up about something, go off like that about what you said. It’s like you really got under her skin. I guess this means a lot to her.’
As I try and focus on him, he seems to flicker in and out of my vision. I’ve failed and it feels like I’m being thrown back to the future in disgust. Every second that passes I see the park around me disintegrate and reform, a couple walking hand in hand, both listening to the same iPod, appear and disappear in an instant.
‘I have to go,’ I struggle to speak. ‘I need to be alone right now.’
‘She should never have spoken to you like that.’ Michael is kind,
serious. His eyes are full of concern. Oh God, I don’t want to leave him and still I stand up to go, unsteady on my feet.
‘Whoa, steady.’ He stands up, but as he tries to touch me I flinch away.
‘No, I … no, go away,’ I say again. ‘I just need to be alone.’
‘Luna, I thought we—’
‘Go away!’ I raise my voice this time, and he takes a few steps back. ‘Please go away!’
‘Fine.’ He turns on his heel.
As soon as he is out of sight I lose the battle. I stumble down a quiet street into some stranger’s backyard and I fall onto the long grass. And then it feels like I am falling through it, through the earth, through soil, through rock and heat, and molten lava, and it hurts. Being torn apart atom by atom hurts. I wait and hope that, when every molecule around me stops vibrating, I will survive just long enough to know I’ve done what I set out to do. This can’t be the end, not this. I can’t die not knowing if this warning is enough to save her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
‘What happened?’ Pea is sitting on Mrs Finkle’s steps as I finally make my way back to our lodgings. Her face is tight and pinched. ‘One minute you were there, the next I was alone with Michelle.’
‘It happened again.’ Wearily, every one of my limbs stiff and sore, I take a seat beside her, resting the package beside me on the step. It has aged thirty years in the last three minutes. The paper is faded and foxed, the string that ties it thin and unravelling.
‘It happened so quickly, right there, right in the hall outside Michelle’s office. It was quicker this time, more violent. I feel like the more I do it, the less of me there is to make the transition, so the faster it is, the easier it is in a way. But every time it happens, it hurts me. And I wasn’t ready. I don’t have enough control over it, over me.’
The Summer of Impossible Things Page 19