Eventually we find ourselves in a corner room on the fourth floor, with heavy blue brocade curtains and pale lavender walls.
“I thought this one could be yours.” My dad shuffles his feet a bit, searching for the right words. “It was your mother’s room when she was your age. It’s a little more grown-up than the one you slept in before we left.”
I look around, surveying the four-poster bed, photographs of faraway places, and the ornate fireplace strewn with little silver boxes and souvenirs shaped like hippos and giraffes. Now my mother lives in Madagascar on a research compound with real-life versions of these creatures.
“Okay,” I say.
“Are you sure?” my dad asks.
“I think so . . .” I hesitate.
“Great,” he says, and just like that he’s gone, back out to the car to continue the business of uprooting our lives.
I have just pulled what feels like my millionth box from the U-Haul, while Jerry follows me to and from the house, staring. They say most dogs don’t make eye contact out of respect and to show that they understand you are the alpha of the pack. Well, Jerry only ever looks me directly in the eye. What does that say about us?
Inside the foyer my eyes fall on a large manila envelope sitting on the hall table, with my name written in my grandmother’s scrawling cursive.
“I found that in Nan’s sitting room,” I hear my dad say, and look up to find him standing halfway up the staircase, struggling with a box labeled ALICE’S BOOKS. “Who knows what it is. She saved everything. She called it meticulous; I called it obsessive. You should go check out her closet. If I recall correctly, it’s color coded.”
I study the envelope, feeling a mix of confusion and an odd kind of relief. It’s the first sign that I am actually meant to be here. Carefully, I spill its contents out on the marble surface of the table. Out fall a bunch of postcards printed on flimsy brown cardboard paper. I pick one up. On one side is a simple image of a trio of balloons, floating into the sky. On the other side, in thick typewriter font, is written:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALICE!
FROM GUSTAVE L. PETERMANN AND ALL YOUR FRIENDS
AT THE CENTER FOR DREAM DISCOVERY (CDD)
I frown at the card, drop it, and pick up another. It says the exact same thing. And so does the next. There are nine postcards, all with balloons on one side, all with the same strange birthday wishes on the back. I check the postmarks and realize one has been sent every year since I’ve been away, on the day of my birthday. I think of the appointment reminders my dentist’s office always sent me in New York—a tooth with a face, wearing makeup. What kind of tooth wears blush?
At the bottom of the stack is a note, written on light turquoise paper, delicate between my fingertips:
Dear Alice—
Who knows if these will be of any use to you, but I simply couldn’t bear to throw any of them away.
With Love,
Nan
I smile and shake my head. It’s exactly Nan. Simple, elegant, to the point. At least in writing, which was mostly how I knew her. My father had never wanted to come back to Boston after we’d left, always coming up with an excuse. I’d seen Nan a handful of times over the years when she would pilgrimage to New York for the opening of a Broadway play or a show at the Guggenheim. Her hair was always perfectly done, her clothes freshly pressed. I wondered, did everyone just become immaculate in old age, or would I be eighty and still wearing sweaters with holes in the cuffs that I can stick my thumbs through?
Just then my phone buzzes.
“I thought you were dead,” Sophie says when I answer. “Too busy pahking the cah in Hahvahd Yahd to answer any of my texts?”
I am already laughing. “So, do you miss me, or what?” I ask.
“Nope!” she quips.
“How come?” I whine.
“Because I have your clone, duh. I’m with her now. She’s kind of pissed I’m talking to you, actually. She wants to know what you can offer that she can’t.” Sophie was my first friend in New York and my best friend ever since. We have an old inside joke that we secretly made clones of each other to keep us company when the other isn’t around. Nobody gets it, and we prefer it that way.
“Well, I miss you,” I say.
“What’s wrong?” Sophie’s tone is suddenly serious. She can always tell when something is up. It is totally annoying, for the most part.
“It’s just weird here,” I say. “You should see the house, Soph. It’s like a museum.”
“But you love museums!” Sophie exclaims. She wouldn’t understand anyway, because she lives on Park Avenue in an apartment so spotless I was always afraid my mere presence would stain it. Sophie’s parents sell art for a living. Big modern art, like giant spheres made of Astroturf, and videos of strangers swimming that they project onto the walls of their living room. “Really, Alice, if you went missing, the first place I’d tell the sexy NYPD detective who showed up at my door to look for you would be the Met or MoMA.”