I decided to walk home.
The streets were so muted somehow. There was space all around me, but all around me, it was empty.
FOR A DAY, or two, or three, I stayed with Harry on the couch, staring into the darkness, drifting in and out of sleep. I ate a little bit, but I wasn’t very hungry.
I couldn’t move. Except from my bed to Nate’s bed because he wasn’t using it—he wasn’t coming back, I was sure—and it allowed me to sleep for longer. I hid in the corner and faced the wall for hours upon hours. Stared and drifted in and out of consciousness.
Slowly, I felt myself slipping past the fringes of sanity, into the darkest reaches of impulses. I could drink some of that cleaner beneath the counter, or take too many pills. That would be easiest. If I could sleep for long enough, I’d be able to stop crying. I could find some relief, and possibly even find my parents. If I believed in that stuff. It was probably best for everyone.
I gathered enough strength to make my way to the kitchen.
I picked up the bottle and considered it, and then I heard a noise.
“Harry? Is that you?”
He didn’t come out.
“Where are you? If that’s a mouse, you’re supposed to scare him away, your one household duty?”
Harry was next to me. I touched his back. “Harry, go get the mouse.”
He didn’t move.
I heard the noise again, closer this time. There was some creaking of the floor, rustling, shuffling, or shifting.
Who was there? A chill bristled past my skin. Every hair was on end.
“Byron?”
No answer. It had to be a mouse. Better a mouse than a roach. Or maybe it was just the furnace. In August. Or the neighbors making noise through the walls. Because there were no such things as monsters, or robbers. That only happened in the tabloids, and in my mind.
This was stupid anyway, all this guessing.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Do what you will.”
I looked up.
The pills spilled from the counter and scattered across the floor. Did I do that?
A faint shadow shifted past, and I smelled a slight whiff of perfume. I could feel her. Something big. A presence.
“Mom,” I said. “Can you hear me?”
Nate hadn’t been able to talk to her either; that’s what he said. I needed to tell him, to let him know she was here. I thought she was. He needed to come back so he could see we weren’t crazy.
“Nate?”
There was no response.
“Mom?”
For a second I almost thought I felt a warm spot on my shoulder. A whisper, a hiss so soft it could have been the wind. “Thissss . . .”
“This what?” I said.
And then she was gone.
This apartment, this situation, this life? Or—
A hackneyed phrase. A boring platitude. An important message. Maybe it was all the same.
This too shall pass. It was her go-to phrase when nothing else was working, when she was exhausted from comforting us, when there wasn’t anything left to say.
Mom and Dad used it like a one-two punch—Mom with the phrase, Dad with the explanation—a rare synchronous effort.
So maybe this was synchronicity. Maybe both of them were there, in that moment, to force me off the pills and off the couch.
I began to draw.
Maybe. But probably, and like each time before, she hadn’t actually said anything. If she had, I doubted she’d waste her word to start a cliché.
And yet one thing I was certain of: Something or someone or some presence had been there. I could still almost feel it. The phrase had worked its magic, and then the moment was gone. There was only silence after that, not even a squeak from the pipes.
30
IN THE MORNING, I FELT A CERTAIN LIGHTNESS—AS THOUGH
I had been holding my breath for weeks, sucking in my stomach to make extra room, and now, suddenly, I was allowed to exhale.
I went into Nate’s chest of drawers and began rifling through them. I hadn’t done this before because I didn’t want to invade his privacy, but I figured he had squandered his rights when he left. If there were more pills in there, I needed to get rid of them before he came back. I needed to start making this space my own.
I didn’t find any more baggies, but in the third row of socks, I did find a small treasure chest: three rolls of quarters. Not only could I use the socks to buy more time before I’d have to do laundry, but with the detergent I had found earlier, I was equipped now to actually do laundry, assuming I could figure out how to do it. I also found two pens and a third of a bottle of cologne. And something else, too. A watch.
It wasn’t his regular watch; that he must have been wearing. It was the watch Mom had given to me in my teens, the same one I had given to Nate after he begged me for it, when I realized I’d lose it anyway. Apparently he had never lost it. It was Batman: the emblem on the face, watching over the numbers. And it was a symbol, a call to action. I strapped it on and made my way to the door.
OUTSIDE, I took a deep breath and braced myself for the sun. It was a little hot, but I appreciated the warmth on my shoulders and back, like a bear hug.
I had only one necessary appointment: the Polar Circle. When I found the front gate, I went straight to it. All I needed was a glimpse.
Gus must have been having another off day, though, one that made him shun the outside—sun was worse than gloom sometimes; and the people; and the eye contact; and me too, because he didn’t feel like communicating. Or doing laps. This was a day when he didn’t even feel up to his neuroses.
As a cloud cover drifted in, I wandered around the Children’s Zoo and visited with the Alpaca (“Alpaca my bags,” I could hear Dad say); watched the kids play with the goats, sheep, cows, and pigs; and thought of our times at the Nature Center. I could feel Dad limping beside me as I remembered that once I had thought about working with kids. That had seemed so long ago, considering how loud they were here, how they kept hogging face time with the animals, the best spots in front of the fence, the crayons at the arts-and-crafts station. They could have their zoo. I only wanted Gus.
When I went back to look for him, it started to drizzle. And still, he was under cover somewhere, out of sight.
Then the rain came, and the burst of a storm. I was drenched, and he hadn’t moved.
But just as I was about to leave, it was as if he could feel me. He emerged, swam close to me, and showed his gums. I took out my sketchbook and found a dry spot beneath a small overhang.
“He smiled at you!” a little girl said. She was about seven, I guessed, though I was bad with ages. Her hair was perfectly arranged in braids, and she was wearing a little white dress. For a second I was distracted by how white it was, how pristine.
But I didn’t respond because I was too busy trying to capture Gus. He was pouring onto the page almost as fast as the rain.
The little girl had been watching, and when the showers stopped, and my sketch was done, she was giddy.
“Can I have that?” she said.
“What?” I said.
“That.” She pointed at my page. “It’s really cute.”
“Thanks, but—”
Her eyes were actually sparkling. I couldn’t tell if that was from the rain, or if it could have been more than that, something else.
“Are you real?” I said.
“Are you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think so.”
She giggled—a light, squealing flurry that was contagious. When I laughed, she laughed harder.
“How did you draw that?” she said.
“I can show you,” I said. “If you want?”
“Yes!”
I tore out a piece of paper and gave her a pencil.
“You start with the shapes, see? Like big ovals and circles. That’s basically what he is, when you look at him. And then you try to get inside his head, if you can, to see what’s going on underneath.”
She nodded and followed my lead. After a few minutes, a woman called out to her.
“There you are!”
It was her mother, a grown version of her child, also wearing white. I wondered how they managed to stay so clean.
“Bleach?” I said.
She didn’t hear me.
“Don’t run away like that again!” the girl’s mother said.
“But Mom, I was just asking—”
“Leave her alone, honey.”
She might have thought I was homeless, or crazy, which I probably was, on both counts, in large part, but it didn’t matter. I was still absorbed in Gus’s glow.
“Mommy, look at what we did!”
The woman glanced in my direction. She looked familiar. I was trying to place her when she caught sight of the sketch.
She gave the drawings a hard, close look.
“You did that?” she said to her daughter.
“Can I keep it?” the girl said to me.
“Sure,” I said. “You did it.”
“Yours,” she said. “Can I have it?”
“That’s someone else’s work, sweetheart. Don’t bother her.”
“Motorcycle accident,” I said.
“Excuse me?” the mother said.
“Are you the talk-show host?”
She smiled. “I’ve gotten that before.”
It wasn’t her. Her bottom teeth were crooked, and she had a few more wrinkles than the woman on TV.
Still, it was difficult not to see this as another sign.
“Here,” I said to the little girl, handing her my Gus. “Take it.”
“Say thank you, honey!”
“Thank you, honey!” the little girl said to me, giggling again.
And then she was gone, disappearing with her mother into the mist.
As I let the rain wash over me, something else came over me, this sudden flood of confidence. I was going to march over to the first zoo-attire-outfitted person I saw. He was a large man, so tall that I actually had to look up to him, but I didn’t care. I was high off of Gus’s vibrations. I was going to ask him how to work there—if he wasn’t so scary-looking.
I would ask the second person I saw.
“Excuse me?” I said to a woman with her back to me.
When she turned around, I realized it was Sally, the same khaki-clad worker I’d seen the first day I visited Gus on my own.
“You did a great job with that little girl,” she said.
“You saw that?”
“Her mother pointed you out. They come here two to three times a week.”
“I hope I didn’t scare them off.”
She laughed. I liked her. Her glasses were round and thick, her stringy curls were in her face, and she didn’t care how loud she was.
“I remember you,” she said.
The first time I’d met her it was dusk, and she seemed tired, but now, in the daylight, bouncing among the people, between the cages, she seemed so much more alive.
“You knew all about the pigment in the bear coat,” she said. “I never forget a face.”
“Me either,” I said. “But I’m not as good with names.”
“What is your name?” she said.
“Oh, right. It’s Lucy.”
“Lucy,” she said. “Have you ever considered volunteering?”
“Seriously?”
“I know. Working for free sounds ridiculous to some, but I’d pay any day for the pleasure of being around these animals.”
“Me too,” I said. “I already spend all my money here. You get to come here for free whenever you want?”
“All that and a free shirt!” she said. She laughed again. “There are different levels of commitment, depending on your interests and openness to education.”
“I’m interested,” I said. “And open.”
She took out a piece of paper and wrote her full name on it, with a number of the volunteer line at the zoo and an email address.
“Send your application to my attention. Don’t forget to mention both your knowledge and your artistic skill. If it’s up to standard, you’ll make it through the first round. Then you’ll have to interview, and I can’t guarantee anything, but this should give you a way in.”
I thought of windows and doors and Mom and Dad and light.
“Is this a dream?” I said.
She examined me for a second. “You’re funny,” she said, without laughing. She was serious about volunteering.
The first person I wanted to tell was Enid, but I knew before we could have any kind of real conversation, I’d have to finish Belle.
WHEN I GOT BACK to the apartment and reexamined the work I’d done on Belle, all I could see was an incompetent version of a cartoon, a poor imitation of something that was artificial to begin with. It must have been the negative influence of the wall paintings, or the fact that I never had the chance to meet the dog. That showed in the eyes, which were vacant, and nowhere close to finished.
There was a chance the nose could be reclaimed, half a paw. The pad on one paw looked okay in one of the earlier sketches. I could layer in different kinds of paints to conceal the absence—everywhere. Or maybe I could try to start over.
Maybe then I could finish.
I found my pencils between the forks and knives in the kitchen. And once I located my sharpener in a bag under the bed, I began to peel away the dull edges. I had pulled an all-nighter once trying to finish a poster-board project in school. I could do it again.
IN THE MORNING, there was no time to waste.
It had been almost two weeks, and that was a lot when you were old. I hoped she was the same Enid, and that she wouldn’t mind seeing me, that she might even be pleasantly surprised.
She had mentioned the coffee shop four blocks down, the one that served cheaper java. I had seen it once, so I knew I could find it again. I was prepared to camp out and wait there for her return—for hours, or days, or however long it took.
The other coffee shop was not as appealing as Frank’s. It didn’t have as much light, or space or warmth. The middle-
aged woman working the old-fashioned register did not acknowledge me when I walked in. Her face was craggy, and her build was sturdy enough to match the hard linoleum counter. She was all business, taking money quickly, ringing up orders, and working on whatever tasks she was working on.
I was a little nervous to see Enid again. I wanted to make a good impression.
“Where’s your bathroom?” I said to the woman at the register.
It was clear that she didn’t want to answer.
I pulled out the roll of quarters I had found. “I’ll have a coffee. And a pastry, too. One of those poppy-seed things?”
“Pirozhki,” she said.
And then she pointed to the restroom in the back.
When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was grateful I had remembered a hat. At least I didn’t have to worry about my hair. I washed the sweat off of my face and applied lipstick, hoping if nothing else that she would appreciate the gesture.
The seats here were scratchy and wobbly, and the walls were dull and stark. This establishment did not offer cappuccino heart-foam drinks or fancy blends from disparate regions around the world. There were only two choices: regular or decaf. And there was only one type of creamer and one choice for milk.
But the coffee itself was excellent—hot and strong.
I sat at a table, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried to look at that portrait of Enid’s dog from every direction, to make sense of her, and bring her back to life based on all of the images of spaniel mutt mixes I’d ever collected, all of the speculating I’d done, all of the conversations with Enid. But without meeting Belle, the picture remained only a picture, a surface image of a being I could only imagine.
After a while, I tried instead to focus on her owner.
Superoldwoman, older than anyone cared to guess, impossible to pin down. Armed with the enduring spirit of her sidekick Be
lle, fistfuls of energy, and her green-tea elixir, she was capable of accomplishing any task, no matter how small.
Three cups later, I was on a roll. I was so immersed in the work I was doing I forgot I had been waiting for Enid, and when she finally appeared a couple of hours after I’d first entered, she nearly fell over.
“Well, well,” she said. “What the hell are you doing here? Scoping out the competition?”
“I was looking for you,” I said.
“What for?” she said, joining me at my table.
I swallowed my last sip of coffee.
“Oh,” she said, glancing at my fingers. “You changed your mind.”
“Kind of,” I said. “Or he did. I’m still not really sure. Wait, how did you know? It happened so fast.”
She shrugged. “It’s a small coffee shop, and there’s always a story. Are you ready to work now?”
It was the best thing she could have said.
“I’ve been working,” I said. “Really hard. Though it’s not exactly what you asked for.”
“Just let me see,” she said.
“It’s not done yet,” I said. “I can change it back if you want. But I got inspired in a different direction so—”
“Lucy,” she said in her most serious voice.
She didn’t have to say anything else. I handed it to her cautiously, to make sure it wouldn’t tear.
She slapped it on the table and began to stare, grazing her fingers over the corners and edges, smudging pieces of sky as she went. She examined the whole thing, section by section, without revealing a single expression.
I couldn’t take it. I got up and told her I had to go to the bathroom, which I did, and I stayed for too long, lingering over the sink, washing my inky hands.
When I mustered the nerve to return to the table, I took a heavy breath and confronted her: “I tried, okay? I’m sorry if it’s not up to your standard, but—”
“Stop apologizing already,” she said, finally looking up. “It’s not what I asked for.”
“I know.”
“But it’s not bad either.”
“Really?”
“My nose is too big.”
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