After breakfast, I get dressed and slowly walk back down the stairs, delaying the inevitable. At the landing, I tap my wrists a few times, pick up my handbag, slip on my gloves, and step out into the crisp October air.
When we first moved to New Jersey, my mom drove me into Manhattan for an appointment with the country’s most prominent allergy expert, Dr. Mei Zhang. I’d never been to a large city before and when she dropped me off at the building’s entrance, I tilted my head up, and up, and up some more, my eyes searching for where the brick met the blue sky. But before I could find it, I felt as though the sidewalk were giving out beneath me, my body swaying, my stomach dropping to my toes. I had to look away.
It’s the same way I feel now, as if the world is too big. As if the space around me is never-ending like the brick of that building. It’s dizzying—my vision blurs, my heartbeat thuds in my ears, my palms become slick with sweat.
I grab the iron railing in front of me to steady myself. I swallow past the hard lump in my throat, willing my eyes to focus, my head to stop swimming, my hands to stop shaking. They don’t obey. I feel like I’m going to pass out. And what then? Not only will I be outside, but I’ll be unconscious, vulnerable. I’ll be Gulliver and the neighborhood children will descend on me like Lilliputians, clawing at me with their tiny fingers and toes, me helpless to stop them.
My heart thuds harder, but I refuse to give up.
I lower my butt onto the top step, taking deep lungfuls of air. Then I start tapping. I concentrate on the monotonous drumming of my fingertips until my heartbeat slows, my vision clears.
I glance up and down the street, scanning it for garbagemen, neighbors walking their dogs, kids on bikes. It’s empty. And I realize I’m surprised that it’s empty. I mean, I wasn’t expecting a parade or anything, but this is a monumental event. And I think I did expect at least a few slack-jawed neighbors, holding a rake midsweep, staring at me in disbelief, their thought bubbles ranging from: There she is. She does still live in there. To: I thought she was dead. But I’m alone. Maybe I’m not Boo Radley. Maybe no one has thought of me at all.
I stand up on quivering legs, clutch my handbag tighter with my fist, and set my sights on my mom’s Pontiac in my driveway. I can picture her behind the wheel so vividly, I have to double-check that she’s not in the driver’s seat.
I duck my head, somehow will my body down the three porch steps, and then make a beeline for the car. Gravel crunches beneath my heels, and I focus all my attention on the sound it makes until my thighs connect with the front bumper. The contact affords some kind of minor relief. I made it. To the car, at least.
My mom’s skirt, which I’m wearing, buffs the metallic bumper with each step as I walk to the other side of the Pontiac. Streaks of rust and dirt now mar the beige fabric, but I don’t care. I just want to be inside the car.
And then I am. I shut the door with a thwack and lean my head back on the upholstered seat, covered with years of Pepsi stains and cigarette burns—my mom never did quit smoking, like she told that reporter in that Times article. I used to think it was gross, but now I take comfort in the familiarity of it. And the fact that a metal box is now separating me from the outside world. I exhale.
Then, with still-trembling hands, I stick the key in the ignition and turn it.
Nothing.
I try again.
It makes a coughing sound but doesn’t start up. I lean forward and check the gas gauge. The little pointer stick is below the red E. That’s probably the least of its problems after sitting for so long, but it’s the extent of my knowledge about cars. If it doesn’t run—add gas.
I remove the key from the ignition, slip out of the car, and crunch back over the gravel driveway to the front porch. I take the steps two at a time, open the door, and walk inside. I know I should Google it. The car. Figure out what’s wrong with it, how to fix it, like I did when the toilet started leaking in the upstairs bathroom and I had to figure out how to replace the wax ring myself. But I decide I’ll start with the gas first and then go from there. Tomorrow. Right now, I peel off my mother’s skirt suit, crawl into a sweatshirt and pants, and curl up on the chair with my dog-eared copy of Far from the Madding Crowd.
OUT OF ALL the men my mom dated, her most short-lived relationship may have been with the triathlete who wore tight spandex pants everywhere—even when he wasn’t working out. His name was something seemingly British, even though he wasn’t—like Barnaby or Benedict. Considering the only thing he and my mother had in common was their preferred cut of pants, their relationship was over in a matter of weeks—before she could even try out the bike he bought for her. She tried to return it to the store, but they wouldn’t take it without the receipt, so she shoved it in the storage shed behind the house, where it has sat ever since.
On Saturday, I go to the shed, half expecting the bike to not even be there anymore, although I guess it’s a little foolish to think it would have somehow vanished into thin air. But there it sits, next to a metal toolbox and a half-empty bag of potting soil from the one and only time Mom decided she might like to try gardening.
After removing the cobwebs from the handlebars and spokes and filling the tires with air from the pump attached to the frame, I navigate the bike out of the shed and onto the gravel driveway. I try to ignore the now-expected physical reactions that take over my body—sprinting heart, sweating palms, blurring vision.
Mind over matter.
Mind over matter.
Mind over matter.
But my mind is apparently not more powerful than matter. And it takes me a full forty-five minutes of stopping and starting, inching myself and the bike past the Pontiac and finally onto the street. I look in both directions, and my heart lurches when I see a woman a few houses down picking a newspaper up out of her yard. I fight the urge to drop the bike and bolt. Instead, I stand there, watching her tuck the paper under her arm. Then she looks up, directly into my eyes, and lifts her hand in a little wave. I’m too stunned to move. I haven’t been in contact with anyone in nine years. In person, anyway.