The Geography of You and Me

A part of her would always love New York, but she’d loved Edinburgh, too, and now London. And if you were to set her down in Paris or Rome or Prague or any of the other places they’d visited, she was certain she’d find a way to fall in love with those, too.

All these years, she’d imagined her parents were out there in the world trying to take in as much as possible: photos and stories and memories, check marks on a list of countries and pins on a globe. But what she hadn’t understood until now was that they’d left pieces of themselves in all those places, too. They’d made a little home for themselves wherever they went, and now Lucy would do the same.

But first, there was New York. The little cartoon airplane on the screen inched out across the blue of the map and toward the green, and Lucy ran a finger along the cracked spine of the book in her lap, closing her eyes.

At first, she’d tried telling her parents that she’d simply changed her mind about going back for the summer.

“Not for the whole time,” she said one afternoon as they strolled through Kensington Gardens, enjoying the rare sunshine and the even rarer appearance of Dad in daylight hours. “I was just thinking it would actually be kind of nice to visit, you know?”

Along the edge of the pond, a trio of ducks sat honking at everyone who passed by, and Dad watched them intently, his mouth turned down at the edges.

“Wish I could go back for a visit,” he said, squinting at the water.

But Mom only raised her eyebrows. “What kind of visit?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “Maybe just to see some sights… or some friends.”

At this, Mom stopped short, her hands on her hips. “Some friends?”

Lucy nodded.

“In New York?” she asked, then turned to Dad without bothering to wait for an answer. “Are you buying this?”

He glanced over at her with a blank look. “What?”

“Mom,” Lucy said with a groan. “It would only be for a few days.”

“And you’d be there all by yourself?”

Lucy dropped her gaze. “Yeah,” she said to the gravel path.

“Nope,” Mom said. “No way.”

Dad looked from one to the other as if this were some kind of sporting event where he didn’t quite understand the rules. “I think Lucy’s perfectly capable of being there on her own,” he said. “It’s not like she hasn’t done it before.”

“Yes,” Mom said in a measured tone, “but this time, there’s a boy in the picture.”

Lucy let out a strangled noise.

“A boy?” Dad said, as if the concept had never occurred to him. “What boy?”

“He’s in town that first week of June,” Lucy said, ignoring him as she turned back to Mom. “He thinks I’ll be there already, because I told him that a million years ago, and he wants to meet up.…”

Mom was watching her with an unreadable expression. “And you really want to see him.”

Lucy nodded miserably. “And I really want to see him.”

Dad shook his head. “What boy?”

There was a long pause while Mom seemed to consider this, and then, finally, her face softened.

“What boy?” Dad had asked again.

Now Lucy’s seat shook as Mom leaned over the top of it from the row behind her. “Hi,” she said. “Sleep well?”

She swiveled to look at her. “Did you?”

“No,” Mom said, but her eyes were shining. “I’m too excited.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she said with a grin. “It seems that distance does indeed make the heart grow fonder.”

“I think that’s absence.”

Mom shrugged. “Either way.”

Lucy turned back to the window, where the plane had broken free of the clouds, and the blue-gray ocean swept out beneath them. When she pressed her cheek to the glass, she could see ahead to where it met the land, stopping abruptly at the edge of New York. “Not a whole lot of distance now.”

“That’s okay,” Mom said, sitting back down, so that she spoke through the space between seats, her voice close to Lucy’s ear. “Someone once told me it’s best to see a city from the ground up.”

They left the water behind, the scene below becoming a grid of grayish buildings, and made a wide sweeping turn as they moved inland, the plane tipping leisurely to one side so that Lucy could see the rivers that cut through the land like veins.

As the ground rushed up at them, she remembered her father’s advice about calling the car company as soon as they landed, and she sat forward, reaching for her bag. In her wallet, there was a business card with the number, which her dad had carried around in his own wallet for years. It was fuzzy at the corners and bent across the middle, but he’d handed it to her with pride.