Bursting Bubbles

by Dyan Sheldon

  Mrs Kilgour rewarded her with a smile. “You know, I think you have something there!”

  The idea was that Georgiana would arrange for Mrs Kilgour to have a day out, and pick her up from the nursing centre. They would drive to New York and have lunch in an Italian place the Kilgours used to go to so often when they lived in the city that they and the waiters knew each other by name. After lunch they’d make their way to the tip of the island and board the ferry. They would stay on the boat when it reached Staten Island and return to Manhattan and then drive back home. Mrs Kilgour would be back in her room at St Joan’s before nightfall, and no one would ever be any the wiser. As plans go, there have been a great many worse ones in human history.

  Georgiana, of course, is a girl who has always specialized in seeing the downside of every situation. Had she been present when Jesus strolled across the Sea of Galilee, all she would have noticed was that his feet were getting wet. And yet it isn’t until they’re on the road that she starts to see the drawbacks to what she thought was a strategy without flaws.

  As soon as they get on the Interstate Georgiana realizes how little like a good idea this was. She has been to New York City three times in her life, but she was never the person driving the car. Nor has she ever driven on the Interstate before. Traffic tends to travel faster on the highway than it does in and around Shell Harbour. She has, of course, heard the phrase “white-knuckle ride” before, but this is the first time she’s really understood what it meant. My God, she thinks as cars fly past, it’s like we’re in a race, And not a race she’s likely to win. When she drives around Shell Harbour other drivers – being friends and neighbours and in no particular hurry – often smile and wave. Even if she doesn’t know them personally, it’s such a friendly, laid-back community that no one makes a stink if you signal left when you want to go right or have to make a sudden stop or have a little trouble with your parallel parking. And if you’re lost or unsure of what to do at the next intersection you can always pull over and ask for directions. The Interstate is not so agreeable. Everyone seems either to be going to some serious emergency or going to save-the-world meetings for which they are already late. Instead of smiles and waves there are offensive (if descriptive) hand gestures and threatening scowls. If it were possible to stop suddenly without causing a major accident – which it isn’t – traffic would plough right through you. If you make a wrong signal horns shriek and you can tell what the driver behind you is shouting even if you don’t lip-read.

  “You’ll be fine,” Mrs Kilgour assures her right before she falls asleep. “You have that satellite thing.”

  While Mrs Kilgour snores away the miles, Georgiana hangs on to the steering wheel, afraid to take her eyes off the road for even half a nanosecond to check the exit signs or the image on the satnav. She might as well be driving through a minefield. She clenches her teeth to stop herself from gibbering. She has no idea where she wants to get off, and she isn’t convinced that the “satellite thing” does either. Turn left, it advises, where left is the divider. Turn right, it orders, where right is a wall of trees. If Georgiana could take a hand off the wheel long enough to fish her phone from her pocket she would call Claudelia or Will for moral support if not actual help, but doing that seems no less risky than hitting the divider would be. She could, of course, pull onto the shoulder and call from there, but this course of action has its own set of problems. She can’t figure out how she can slow down enough to pull over without being rear-ended by the car behind her. Were she able to pull over and stop she would never be able to rejoin the traffic again. If she didn’t rejoin the traffic she would be stuck on the shoulder until she was either rescued or (if you believe the stories Georgiana has seen on the news) hit by a very large truck.

  When Mrs Kilgour wakes up, they are off the Interstate and parked on a wide and busy road. She rubs her eyes and looks over at Georgiana. “Where the hell are we?”

  Georgiana, pale and perspiring more than she ever has in phys ed, is staring at the map in the hopeless way of someone who has just been dropped out of a helicopter into an unknown country and doesn’t speak the language in which the map is written. She and Claudelia have talked about doing a cross-country trip after graduation, but now she is doubting the wisdom of that project. They could spend the rest of their lives in Nebraska. Or never get past New York.

  “I don’t know. I think I must have missed the exit.” Her voice is low and grudging because she’s trying not to cry. “But I kind of don’t think this is Lower Manhattan.”

  “That’s a pretty good guess.” Mrs Kilgour peers out of the window. “From the licence plates alone I’d say you’ve managed to bypass New York and go straight to New Jersey. And from the fact that we’re on Kennedy Boulevard, I’d say we’re probably in Jersey City.” She points to the small and largely unhelpful screen. “See if that thing can figure out where the Holland Tunnel is.”

  Mrs Kilgour dozes off again as soon as they see the sign for the tunnel.

  Georgiana has never driven in a tunnel before, either. Gripping the wheel as though it’s a set of reins and she’s trying to stay on the horse, she follows the line of cars under the Hudson river, and, for some reason assuming that the car in front of her is going where she wants to go, drives out of the tunnel and over a bridge.

  This time it is hitting a pothole that wakes up Mrs Kilgour. “Now where are we?” she wants to know.

  “Brooklyn,” sighs Georgiana, and she pulls into the kerb.

  It takes a few minutes for Mrs Kilgour to stop laughing enough to be able to speak. “Just what’s your plan?” she asks. “Sneak up on New York and catch it by surprise?”

  “I think we have to hope it’ll surprise us,” says Georgiana.

  Eventually, and against many odds, they do find the West Village and somewhere to park.

  “This is where we were coming the day Morty had his stroke,” Mrs Kilgour explains. “It was our wedding anniversary. Thirty-five happy years. We were going to ride the ferry like we used to. And visit the old neighbourhood. Morty even had a friend who was lending us an apartment on Eleventh Street for the weekend. It was going to be our second honeymoon.” She smiles. Mrs Kilgour is no stranger to the ironies of life. “Turned out to be the beginning of the end.”

  Georgiana remembers what Alice told her. “You feel like that was your fault?” she asks.

  And is rewarded with a look like a spear. “Who told you that? That gossip on reception?”

  Georgiana, manoeuvring the chair over a kerb, says nothing.

  “Of course I didn’t feel guilty. I didn’t give him that stroke. I just wish it could’ve waited till we were on our way home.”

  Mrs Kilgour sits slightly forward in her chair as they stroll through her old world, directing them from one street to the next. Streets she used to walk down and shop on, streets where she knew the storekeepers and the man who made the best egg creams in the city. Most of the places and all of the people she knew so well are gone now. The deli is a phone store; the coffee house is a taqueria; the bookstore is a nail salon. The Italian place is a vegan restaurant.

  “We’re having an adventure,” says Mrs Kilgour. “If we can detour through Jersey we can eat tofu.”

  After lunch they go to the red-brick townhouse where the Kilgours used to live. “That’s our apartment on the top floor.” Mrs Kilgour stares at the building as if she expects to see herself come out of the front door. “Sometimes we’d eat up on the roof. Candlelight and wine and music from the transistor radio.” Her smile is for nothing that Georgiana can see. “We had some very good times here.”

  She starts to talk about the neighbours. The actors and their parrot who lived underneath them. “That bird rang like a telephone morning, noon and night.” The Polish refugee in the basement who played his violin in the garden on summer nights. “We all used to sit out on our fire escapes to listen. It was like our own private concert.” The couple on the first floor who never stopped fighting. “And then yo
u’d see them on the street, with their arms wrapped around each other like they’d invented love.” The woman on the second floor who came from Wisconsin to be a Rockette. “Ended up the only tapping she did was on a typewriter at NYU.” She remembers the summer of the blackout and the winter it snowed so badly people were skiing down Fifth Avenue. She remembers Horn and Hardart’s Automat and subway tokens. Remembers musicians, writers, poets and painters that Georgiana has never heard of who were once as famous as the city itself, who walked these streets and worked in the downtown lofts and lectured at the universities and played in the bars and argued in the cafes.

  “I feel like I’m watching a movie,” whispers Mrs Kilgour. A movie of her life. “It’s all so vivid. The memories. As if I’m really there. I almost can’t believe that if we rang the bell to my old apartment Morty wouldn’t stick his head out the window to see who it is.”

  Georgiana can’t believe it, either. Has to stop herself from asking why they don’t try. Why they don’t ring the bell and see what happens.

  It starts to rain, breaking the spell.

  “I don’t suppose you brought an umbrella,” says Mrs Kilgour.

  Although she doesn’t want to leave – doesn’t want Mrs Kilgour to have to leave – Georgiana suggests that they go to the ferry. “It is getting kind of late.”

  Mrs Kilgour gives herself a shake. “Don’t look at me. I’m not the one who doesn’t have enough sense of direction to walk around the block.”

  Despite the weather, Mrs Kilgour insists on sitting outside. “We always sat outside. It’s more romantic.”

  “And wetter,” says Georgiana, but largely to herself.

  They watch Manhattan recede as the boat chugs towards Staten Island. They take a picture of themselves, their arms around each other, smiling with the skyline of the city behind them.

  “I almost brought Morty’s ashes to throw in the bay, but then I thought better of it. They can dump his wherever they dump mine.” She smiles one of her life-is-ironic smiles. “Together at last.”

  On the return journey, they stand at the rail to watch the lights of the city approach in the gloaming.

  Georgiana turns to her companion. “It is roman—” She stops herself and moves closer. It’s hard to tell because of the rain, but Mrs Kilgour’s eyes are filled with tears. “Are you crying?” whispers Georgiana. “Because everything went wrong and I got us lost?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” snaps Mrs Kilgour. “I’m crying because I’m happy. This is the best day I’ve had since Morty died.” She reaches over and pats Georgiana’s damp hand. “You know, if I’d had a grandchild I’d want her to be like you.” She pats the hand again. “Only with a better sense of direction. And possibly not so tall.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Asher’s Career Trajectory Takes an Unexpected Turn

  Since Asher accidentally put the idea of civil disobedience into Mrs Dunbar’s head, she has been driven by the examples of Martin Luther King and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. “They should be everyone’s inspiration!” Mrs Dunbar proclaimed. “If they could do it, we can do it!” Asher reminded her that both the Reverend Martin Luther King and Mr Gandhi were assassinated, and she reminded him that Our Lord was also assassinated. “Right. Well, that makes me feel a lot better,” said Asher.

  Perfecting her plan, Mrs Dunbar has spent the weeks since the idea first stumbled out of Asher’s mouth meeting with every other charitable organization in the area, plotting their strategy as furiously as the revolutionaries of colonial America plotted theirs (minus the muskets and powdered wigs). Asher was in on every meeting. Because he has worked in the mayor’s office, Asher knows where everything is, which sections close early, which departments are likely to be understaffed, when specific offices are busy and when they’re not. What he doesn’t know he can find out easily enough. And because he has worked in the mayor’s office, he not only knows a lot of the staff, they know him. “It’s like having an undercover agent!” gloated Mrs Dunbar. She also managed a recruitment drive that the army could only envy, and organized workshops in passive resistance so that everyone would know what to do when the police tried to move or arrest them.

  Today is the day when the talk stops and the action begins. Which is why Asher, sitting at the breakfast table with his father, is putting every ounce of energy he has into trying to act normal. He’s not sure why he’s doing this. He enjoyed the plotting, but he’s not sure he’ll enjoy the actual occupation as much. No matter what Mrs Dunbar, James Madison, the Bill of Rights, Martin Luther King and Gandhi have to say about the rights of ordinary citizens, Asher isn’t the kind of person to wind up on the wrong side of the law. Which would be the opposite side to the one his father’s on. The thing is – the thing that Asher can’t ignore – is that Mrs Dunbar and the others aren’t criminals. They’re ordinary people. Good people. People who try to practise what’s preached to them.

  Nonetheless, Asher has told no one about what’s going to happen – not even Claudelia or Will. There’s no sense in making them accessories.

  “Damn!” Somehow, between lifting his cup and moving it to his mouth, Asher manages to spill coffee all over his breakfast.

  “No harm done.” Albert Grossman finishes stirring precisely half a teaspoon of sugar into his own cup. “Mrs Swedger can fix you more eggs.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Asher pushes his plate away. “I’m not really hungry anyway.” His stomach is so knotted he may never eat again.

  “Something important happening at school today? Some big test? You seem a little tense.”

  A little tense? If he were any tenser he’d snap in two.

  “No, just a regular day at school.” This, at least, is one hundred per cent true. What is also true – and what he doesn’t mention to his father – is that he won’t be at school to enjoy it. For the first time in his entire life, Asher Grossman is playing hooky. “But, you know, it’s the end of the year and there’s a lot going on. The prom… And graduation.” Depending how the day goes, both of those are things he may never see. “So I guess I’m just a little wired.”

  “Well, that’s understandable. Who wouldn’t be a little ‘wired’? You’ve worked very hard.” Albert smiles as if he’s just won a difficult case and a commensurate bonus. “I told you to take more responsibility and handle things yourself, and you did. You’ve done me proud.”

  Perhaps he’s taken on more responsibility than his father meant. Since that smile and those words are two more things Asher may never experience again.

  “Yeah … well … thanks, Dad.” Asher glances at his watch. “Sheesh. Look at the time. I better get moving.” He looks at his father. Hopefully. “Don’t you have to get to the office?”

  “Not today. I’m working at home.” Of course he is. It’s not enough that, for a change, Albert Grossman is in the country, in the state and in the town, he’s also decided not to leave the house. Today. Of all the possible days in the year. “I thought we could try that new steakhouse tonight. I’ve heard good things about it.”

  “Yeah,” agrees Asher. “That’d be great.”

  Assuming, of course, that he makes it home.

  It isn’t just Mrs Dunbar who asked herself “What would Jesus do?” and decided that the answer was “Occupy Town Hall”. In his younger days the Reverend Dunbar spent time in South America with liberation theologists, and he has joined in with his wife’s scheme with all the enthusiasm of our Lord tossing the moneychangers out of the temple. It was the Reverend Dunbar who ran the workshops in passive resistance, and it is he who now drives the protestors from the community centre to the town hall in the church minibus, humming an old gospel song under his breath. He and his wife have more in common than Asher suspected.

  The atmosphere in the bus is matter-of-fact and calmly excited, as if they are on their way to a picnic. As he should have known, most of the centre people have been on demonstrations before – against the war, against torture, against GM crops, against
banker bail-outs. Only Asher, who has been more a poster boy for obedience to authority than its challenger, is new to it. He texts his father to say he may be home late.

  Mrs Dunbar turns in her seat to face her troops. “Everybody knows what they have to do, right?”

  Everybody knows. The Reverend Dunbar is a very good teacher.

  “Let’s synchronize our watches and our phones.” She looks at the watch on her arm. “It’s now two minutes past noon. Everybody got that?”

  The staff in the various branches will have started taking their lunch hours. Some services will be closed. Others will have long lines that move less quickly than a dozing snail. Waiting areas will be crowded. The security guards will be thinking about sitting down and eating a sandwich, not whether or not the afternoon is likely to descend into chaos. The protestors will enter the building as though they are ordinary citizens (which, of course, they are) who have come to apply for a licence or to ask about building regulations or tax deadlines (not stage a sit-in). They will linger and loiter, and spread through every floor and department. The protestors from the shelters and the food banks and the many church groups will be doing the same. At exactly 2.15 p.m. the Occupy Town Hall people will bring out their signs and sit down. Some will handcuff themselves to doors and railings; some to each other. Meanwhile, another group will have assembled outside, and by then the local papers and radio and television stations will have been alerted and reporters will be on the scene.

  Mrs Dunbar and several other women from the centre – all of whom look as if they spend their spare time knitting baby clothes for their grandchildren, not breaking the law – head for the floor where the councillors and the mayor have their offices. And where the Thursday meeting of the town council is scheduled to begin at two and will this week feature an unexpected speech by Mrs Dunbar.