—
I have never liked the woman who colors my hair—I had adored the first woman who colored it for years, but she moved to California—and the woman who took over, I just never liked her. And I did not like her that day. She was young and had a small child, and a new boyfriend, and I understood that day that she did not like her child, she was cold, and I thought: I am never coming back to you.
I do remember thinking that.
* * *
—
When I got home to my building I met a man in the elevator who said he had just gone to the gym on the second floor but the gym was closed. He seemed surprised about this. “Because of the virus,” he said.
* * *
William called me that night and said, “Lucy, I’m picking you up tomorrow morning and we’re leaving.”
It was a strange thing; I mean that I was not alarmed but I was still kind of surprised at his insistence. “But where are we going?” I asked.
And he said, “The coast of Maine.”
“Maine?” I said. “Are you kidding? We’re going back to Maine?”
“I’ll explain,” he said. “Just please get yourself ready.”
I called the girls to tell them what their father had suggested, and they both said “Just for a few weeks, Mom.” Although Becka was not going anywhere. Her husband—his name is Trey, and he is a poet—wanted to stay in Brooklyn, and so she was going to stay with him.
iii
William showed up the next morning; he looked more like he had years ago, his hair was growing out and his mustache was coming back—it had been five months since he had shaved it off—but it was not nearly what it had once been, and he looked a little odd to me. I saw that on the back of his head was a bald spot; his scalp was pink. And, also, he seemed strange. He stood in my apartment with a look of anxiety as though I was not moving fast enough. He sat down on the couch and said, “Lucy, can we please go now?” So I tossed a few clothes into my little violet-colored suitcase and I left the dirty dishes from breakfast. The woman who helps clean my apartment, Marie, was coming the next day, and I don’t like to leave dirty dishes for her, but William really wanted to get going. “Take your passport,” he said. I turned and looked at him. “Why in the world would I take my passport?” I asked. And he shrugged and said, “Maybe we’ll go to Canada.” I went and got my passport, and then I picked up my laptop and put it back down. William said, “Take your computer, Lucy.”
But I said, “No, I don’t need it for only a couple of weeks. The iPad will be fine.”
“I think you should take your computer,” he said. But I did not.
William picked up the laptop and took it with him.
We went down in the elevator and I rolled my small suitcase to his car. I was wearing my new spring coat that I had recently bought. It was dark blue and black and the girls had convinced me to get it the last time we were at Bloomingdale’s, a few weeks before.
iv
Here is what I did not know that morning in March: I did not know that I would never see my apartment again. I did not know that one of my friends and a family member would die of this virus. I did not know that my relationship with my daughters would change in ways I could never have anticipated. I did not know that my entire life would become something new.
These are the things I did not know that morning in March while I was walking to William’s car with my little violet-colored rolling suitcase.
v
As we drove out of the city, I looked at the daffodils that were out by the side of my building and the trees blossoming near Gracie Mansion; the sun was streaming down with a gentle warmth, and people were walking along the sidewalk, and I thought: Oh, what a beautiful world, what a beautiful city! We got on the FDR, there was a lot of traffic as usual, and over to the left a group of men were playing basketball on a court surrounded by a chain link fence.
Once we were on the Cross Bronx Expressway, William told me that he had rented a house in a town called Crosby—it was on the coast—and that Bob Burgess, Pam Carlson’s ex-husband from years ago, lived there now and had found it for him. Pam Carlson is a woman that William had an affair with on and off for years, it doesn’t matter. Anymore, I mean, it doesn’t matter. But Pam is still friendly with William, and also with her ex-husband, Bob, and apparently Bob was a lawyer in that town and the woman who owned this house had recently put it on the market: Her husband had died, and she had gone into assisted living and she had asked Bob to manage the property. Bob said we could stay in the house; the rent was not even one quarter of the price of my apartment rent in New York, and William has money anyway.
“For how long?” I asked again.
He hesitated. “Maybe just a few weeks.”
* * *
What is strange as I look back is how I simply did not know what was happening.
* * *
I had been kind of disheartened in the previous months. This is because my husband had died a year earlier; also I am often despondent at the end of a book tour, and this had been made worse because I no longer had David to call from the road. That was the hardest part of the tour for me: not having David to speak to each day.
* * *
—
Recently a writer I know—her name is Elsie Waters and her husband had died right before my husband David had died and so we were especially close because of that—had asked me to dinner and I had told her that I was too tired right then. That’s okay, she had said, as soon as you are rested we will get together!
I always remember that as well.
* * *
At one point William stopped to get gas, and when I glanced into the backseat I saw what looked like surgical masks in a clear plastic bag and also a box of plastic gloves. I said, “What are those?”
“Don’t worry about it,” William said.
“But what are they?” I asked, and he said, “Don’t worry about it, Lucy.” But he put on a plastic glove to hold the gas nozzle, I did notice that. I thought he was really overreacting to all of this, and I kind of rolled my eyes, but I did not say anything to him about it.
* * *
So William and I drove to Maine that day, it was a long sunny drive and I don’t remember that we spoke that much. But William was upset that Becka was staying in the city, in Brooklyn. He said, “I told her I would pay for them to go to a house in Montauk, but they won’t do it.” He added, “Becka will be working from home soon, you’ll see.” Becka is a social worker for the city, and I said I didn’t see how she could possibly work from home, and William just shook his head. Becka’s husband, Trey, teaches poetry—he is an adjunct—at New York University, and I didn’t see how he’d ever be able to work from home either. But I did not say that. In a way, I think it did not feel real; I mean because—oddly—I was not all that concerned.
vi
As we finally got off the highway in Maine and drove toward the town of Crosby, it was suddenly very overcast; I took my sunglasses off and everything looked really brown and bleak, and yet in a way that was interesting: There were many different shades of brown in the grasses that we passed by; there was a quietness to this. Then we drove into the town and there was a big white church at the top of a small hill, and there were brick sidewalks and white clapboard houses, and some brick houses too. You could see that the town was pretty in a certain way, if you care for such things.
I do not.
* * *