by Sara Gran
“Very well, thank you. Are you moving back in?”
“No, I’m just…” I can’t finish the sentence, but I gesture up to the apartment and Mrs. Adler seems to get it
“You know,” she says, “I’ve been meaning to write you a letter. Myself and the Cohens, we wanted to thank you for letting us stay here Most people would have put us out on the street.”
I mutter something about the benefits of having trustworthy tenants, as if I’m getting something out of the deal. I don’t want this woman, twice my age, to feel obligated to me
“Well, I know that’s not true,” Mrs. Adler says. “It’s very kind of you, and your mother would have been very proud.” With that she walks by and lets herself into the building, more her home now than mine
Yes, I think to myself, she would have been proud. I’m ready to burst into tears for the hundredth time that week when a nice warm relaxation comes over me. I remember what Kyra Desai said and I think, She is proud. The warmth spreads inward, deep into my solar plexus, and I know it. She 15 proud. I’m more sure of it now than I ever was when she was alive.
Chapter 29
A few afternoons a week, when I don’t have class, I volunteer as a counselor at the Sunshine House, a drop-in crisis center on the Lower East Side for the mentally ill I figure I’ve been surrounded by nuts all my life anyway, I might as well schedule some time with them. The center is in what used to be a public school gymnasium They’ve tiled the floors with vinyl, put up some drywall partitions, stuck in a little doctor’s office and a therapy room and a big waiting room with ancient plastic school chairs and a bunch of volunteers, and that’s it. Most of the drop-ins are homeless, although we get a few suicidal Lower East Side hipsters, and they all get the same treatment; a few minutes with a crisis counselor, an evaluation by the M.D., and then either therapy or commitment or release. Usually commitment. It’s surprisingly easy to become a crisis counselor; they put me through a two-week training program where I learn how to get people to calm down until the staff psychiatrist can see them and how to do a quick evaluation of harm risk, and then they put me on the job.
And wouldn’t you know it, one brilliant autumn day at Sunshine House, in walks Annette Howard with her black Kelly bag. Except that Annette is a different person. Her white skippy sneakers are filthy, her chinos are torn, her white T-shirt is dotted with red spots that might be blood Only the Kelly bag is the same, polished to an immaculate shine Her eyes are too wide and her mouth is slack
“Annette,” I say “Annette, it’s me, Mary Forrest What happened to you?”
She doesn’t seem surprised to see me “Oh, Mary,” she whispers. “Mary, thank God it’s you I’m so scared, Mary I can’t get away.”
“Get away from what? What’s going on?”
“The voices,” she whispers “It’s just like before. The mental illness, it’s coming back. I can hear it. Oh my God, Mary, oh my God. I feel it now. Do you hear it? Do you hear it?”
“There’s nothing to hear. Try to calm down. I know you’re scared. Everything is okay.” Somehow I’ve gotten my arm around one shoulder and this seems to be helping. I motion to one of the other volunteers to get a doctor.
“I’m not a bad person, Mary, I’m not a bad person Why is this happening to me? I can hear it, I can feel it, the sickness, it started in my feet and now it’s crawling up my back. It’s the pedicure, the pedicure I got on Sunday, they put it in my feet and now it’s moving up to my head. Please don’t let anyone see me Please don’t let anyone see me like this.”
“No one will see you, honey, don’t worry, it’s just you and me.”
“I’m not a bad person. Please don’t believe them, don’t listen to them. I am not a bad person, I am not I am not—” she lets out a scream, an ear-piercing scream for all the centuries—“I am not a bad person I am not a bad person .. ”
I hold Annette close, I wrap my arms around her and stroke her hair and whisper in her ear that she’s a good person, I know she’s a good person.
“Please help me, Mary,” she whispers. “Please don’t believe them ”
“I don’t,” I say. “Never, ever, ever. I love you, Annette. So many people love you. We know you’re good. We know ”
“They keep telling me—”
“Don’t listen to them. They’ve been telling me that all my life Don’t listen to them. In twenty or thirty years they go away ”
When my shift is over and Annette is safe in Bellevue I go to a coffee shop on Second Avenue for dinner, exhausted and starved In the coffee shop an old man, I take him to be the manager, is sitting behind the counter opening mail. He looks familiar. A waitress takes my order and by the time my latkes have come I know who the man is: He used to be a waiter at the Washington Square Coffee Shop, where I used to hang out when I cut at St. Elizabeth’s. I went to Washington Square every day for six, maybe seven years. Every day. If I had ever known his name, I had forgotten it now. I remembered him yelling at me for putting my feet up on the booth opposite. I remembered talking to him once about all the stray cats in Athens, where he was from. There was a cat in the diner, Hamburger, and I liked her and he liked her so we got along well. I was a badly behaved punk kid and I needed to be yelled at sometimes.
I don’t know how to say hello or if I even should. My bill is paid and I’m about to leave when he looks up from the counter and sees me. We lock eyes for a minute before he breaks out into a smile and comes to my booth to shake my hand and put his other hand on my shoulder and give me a big hello
“I can’t believe it,” he says, his accent not lessened by fifteen more years in the city. “I can’t believe I’m seeing you after all this time Just today, some girls come in. Young, like you were then Not a lot of kids come in here but these girls, they look like you and your friends used to. Laughing so loud, talking, talking, talking, when they’re supposed to be in school. I think, what happened to those girls. The one girl, Cehe, I see her sometimes She lives in the neighborhood still She’s got a baby now, two years old. Beautiful. Once I see the other girl, the blond one. Suzie She wasn’t so good. She looks like maybe she lives on the street, even. I tell her, you want food, you want even a job, come back. Come back whenever you want. But she never comes. And now after all this time I’m seeing you You have a baby yet?”
“No, no babies.”
“You’re married?”
“No, not married.”
“You’re happy?”
“Yes, very happy.”
“Good, good Look at you, you’re a beautiful grown-up woman From your face I see, everything’s good So my curiosity is satisfied After you don’t see someone for ten, fifteen years, you start to worry.”
At home that night I call Veronica and I tell her about Annette, and about the guy in the coffee shop, and the strange day I’ve had
“I’m not surprised,” she says. She pauses for a moment before she speaks again Veronica takes her own sweet time and will not rush for anyone, ever “It’s all the same people in New York now. It’s exactly the same as it was when we were kids Just yesterday I saw our ninth-grade English teacher, Mr Phillips. Remember him? He always talked too fast And his pants were too tight. He works at Balducci’s now
“Nothing ever changes, in this city.”
Chapter 30
Some days are great I wake up, go to yoga, eat lunch, take a class Afterward I’ll do my homework or go shopping or whatever I please. No ties, no responsibilities I could fly to Paris for the weekend if I wanted I’m a fucking debutante Some days, I’m too free Without the anchor of Evelyn, chain-smoking in the GV office a few miles downtown, nothing holds me to the earth and I’m floating. Everyone tries to cheer me up and it’s hard not to get angry at the “it’ll get better” platitudes During one particularly black weekend, which stretches into five days of lying on my new zebra-print sofa with the curtains drawn, Chloe even brings Nicholas up for a visit, operating on the principle that a baby is a sure cure for whatever ails a woman.
He’s cute, but he’s no Evelyn.
Still, I get better anyway.
On one moderately black day, Austin is supposed to call at noon. We’ve made plans for lunch after his morning meeting with, of all people, Kerri May—he’s doing a colossal spread for the September issue of Kerri’s magazine. At 11 50 I pick up a new book on yoga. Apparently the whole thing is about uniting the Kundahni energy with the crown chakra, but only one person in a century, at most, actually achieves this
11.59.
I put down the yoga book and pick up the new issue of Martha Stewart Living and read an article on cookies. I have never in my life baked a decent cookie, and now I know why: too much heat.
12:05
I throw the magazine across the living room. At 12:10 I’m pacing around the apartment By 12.15 my knuckles are white and it takes all my will not to call Veronica and take her someplace expensive for lunch, maybe the Russian Tea Room or the Plaza Hotel.
At 12:20 the phone rings.
“I told you I’d be early,” Austin says. I open my mouth to tell him to go to hell and then shut it Early?
“Mary? Are you there?” Stupidly I nod. Twelve-thirty. He was supposed to call at twelve-thirty.
“Mary, are you there? Is everything okay?”
“Yes, yes, I’m right here I’m here and everything’s fine ”
We make plans to meet at a Korean barbecue spot on Stuyvesant Place in an hour When we get off the phone I tell myself that the next time I won’t assume the worst.
From now on, I won’t always assume the worst.