I leaned over and looked at him closely. He wasn’t Mason anymore; he was them. Looking at him, looking at them, the behavior of my whole life was suddenly inexplicable. The years of Waist Watchers, Baptist Weight Loss and plans for surgery, the hours and hours that added up to years of my life spent sitting at home afraid to go outside, afraid to be laughed at and shunned and rejected and stared at by faces like the one looking up at me now, one of the generic, mass-produced, ordinary, follow-the-crowd, hateful faces. At another time, at home alone, I would have wept to think about it. I wished I could go back to the beginning of my life and start again.
I removed my foot from his chest. I didn’t want to fight with him. He didn’t matter. I turned to leave, pushing my way through the onlookers. No one tried to stop me. The police hadn’t been called. Mason’s friends seemed to have disappeared.
As I walked away from the bar, the sky above was clear and black. Somewhere up there was the laugh that had escaped from me, the long trail of light that was now part of the universe. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there. I would only have to look up to remember it.
? ? ?
MY BREAKFAST THE NEXT MORNING was a poached egg, rye toast with butter, melon, and tea. I didn’t spend my morning in the kitchen making omelets and stacks of waffles for myself and everyone else. A normal breakfast satisfied me.
When I finished eating, I remained at the table, fixated on Eulayla’s fat jeans hanging on the red wall. I still hadn’t deposited the $20,000 check from Verena. I had also never canceled my surgery. I called Dr. Shearer’s secretary to make it official. After hanging up the phone I didn’t feel a sense of loss. I felt proud.
Sana had asked why I’d wanted to talk the night before, but I told her I had been bored and thought going to the bar would be fun. She didn’t seem to suspect anything. I had decided not to tell her about Julia’s request for money. I’d been relying on the women of Calliope House, particularly Sana, for support and community, but this was a decision I needed to make alone. It wouldn’t be fair to implicate them. Leeta had never been part of their lives, and they didn’t understand my connection to her. She was my problem.
While I considered what to do about Leeta, I decided it was time to return to Swann Street. I’d abandoned my apartment in Brooklyn months before and needed to face it again. On my way there I mailed about fifty books to my girls, as the requests kept coming in. After the post office I went to my bank and deposited the $20,000.
On the subway to Brooklyn, descending into the dark tunnel, traveling back to my own netherworld, I prepared to see my old home again. I arrived at the brownstone, opening the familiar street door and stopping at the wall of copper-colored mailboxes in the entryway before going upstairs to my apartment. Mail was stuffed into my box, and there was a notice from the post office saying they’d stopped delivering it. I shuffled through the bills and junk mail, throwing most of it in the recycling bin. One letter was from Austen Media, dated from the summer. It stated that I’d been fired for gross misconduct for deleting Kitty’s email and was not allowed back in the slim chrome tower. I was about to throw the letter away, but then decided I might frame it instead.
I inserted the key into the front door of my apartment, and when I opened it, I saw my living room, my desk, the kitchen, just the way I’d left them. At the sight of my old home I felt a twinge, a plucked guitar string of memory that reverberated from head to toe. I flicked the light switch and was relieved the electricity was still on. My coffee mug, still half full, sat on the kitchen counter. Everything was covered in dust, a gray powder like time made manifest, the time that had passed since I’d left this life.
There was barely any food inside the refrigerator. The cupboards were mostly empty, aside from a box of crackers and a few cans of soup. In the freezer there was the stack of Waist Watchers entrées that I’d made, wrapped neatly in foil, the two-star and three-star meals. I recalled my empty belly and the lethargy, sometimes even paralysis, that had resulted from existing on those meals. I’d moved slowly back then, when I’d moved at all.
In my bedroom, I removed Alicia’s clothes from the closet, the dresses that didn’t fit me and never would. I called Sana and asked if she might need clothes for the girls at the clinic when it opened. I explained that the outfits weren’t likely to be the girls’ style, but they would work for job interviews and court appearances. She was enthusiastic, so I packed the clothes in the two black suitcases that were stored under my bed and arranged for a courier to pick them up and deliver them to Calliope House.
The clothes I used to wear every day were in piles on the floor and stuffed into the dresser. I put them in the trash. Over the next several days, I slept in my old bed and awoke each morning to continue sorting through my belongings, going through my books and mementos, my whole life in New York. I discovered empty bottles of Y——, as well as piles of Waist Watchers literature and copies of Daisy Chain. Most of that went into the recycling bin. The copy of Adventures in Dietland that Leeta had given to me went into the box of things I would always keep, with my family photo albums and souvenirs.