I climbed up a pile of snow-covered stones that I guess were supposed to be steps, and tugged on the sliding door, not expecting it to give way, not expecting it to slide open and then catch, opening just wide enough for me slip through.
Inside, the daytime struggled against the darkened windows, so the dark was somehow extra-violet, aglow. It was colder than outside. As my eyes adjusted, I could see that it must have been a dining car—on one side tables were attached to the walls, though the chairs or booths or whatever had been there before were long gone. M + R was carved into one of the tables, the letters big as my hands. To my left, a basin, another longer table with nothing on it but cups and broken glass and pieces of tape, likely left by the cops, and a half-full bag of Huggies that gave me the shivers. Shattered glass crunched under my boots. A poster on the leftmost wall of a girl bent over, holding her ass apart, her face hanging down between her ankles, a cigarette burn in the middle of each cheek. I looked out one of the windows, where an unpainted circle made a little porthole to the field. The glass was covered with a lichen-y layer of ice, but I got very close and looked through it anyway, at the snow scarred by my boot prints, my attempt at a path. It started abruptly, by someone dropped from space, and appeared to be going nowhere.
*
The drive up to Silver Lake and back down to school marked a permanent shift in my relationship with Jimmy. He was the only person who knew what we hadn’t done for Marlena. Just looking at him, his hands on the wheel, his dirty jeans, the spackle of second-day growth on his jawline, felt like pressing my thumb deep into a bruise. He turned the radio to the Top 40 station, the volume up too loud for us to talk. The heater blew dry gusts into my eyes. The two of us stared at different sides of the same road. I wanted to say something but couldn’t bring myself to start. I feel that silence even now. He hugged me in the girls’ parking lot, squishing my face up against his coat, and I almost did it then—cried, apologized, asked him to be my brother, I don’t know. The possibility died when I squirmed away. “I love you,” he said. “See you,” I said back.
In the final half of senior year, my grades continued to drop. Every time I talked to Mom, she catalogued the costs, the fees and books and uniforms, the per-hour price of every class, the waste. I suppose Concord came a little too late. But I’m sure the school’s name on my transcript was the only reason I was accepted to Hunter College, one of the two places I’d actually finished the application for. Mom scraped up the money to help me put down the security deposit on a windowless room in a cat-piss-smelling and overcrowded apartment in East Harlem. My room was the cheapest, at five hundred dollars a month. Mom and Jimmy were rattled by my unfriendly roommates, the graffiti on the building door, the chicken place on my block with its bulletproof pane separating the counter from the dining area. But I think they were also relieved. Their sacrifices were over. I was the family offering. I would go to college in a great city, and in doing so, my experiences, so different from theirs, would separate me from them forever—but in return, I would have a better life. They’d done everything they could, by getting me there. What happened next was up to me.
I made it out, just like I wanted, and not once have I stopped looking back.
New York
Sal was late. I felt worse than I had all day, a kind of full-body deflation, as if I’d been freeze-dried. The cure was a drink. I’d chosen a wood-paneled bar/coffee shop near the library, decorated in the style of a summer cabin—bunches of dried lavender hung from the walls, alongside black-and-white portraits of people from a time before electricity. I sat at a sliver of pine, on a narrow stool that tipped on its legs when I moved. The air was misty with coffee dust and cooking steam. I closed my eyes, trying to press the throb out of my temples, and saw the girl from the library being led out the door, a policeman on each arm. The door jangled, infusing the room with a gust of cold, but it was never him. A waiter came by, and I ordered, surprising myself, a lemon tea.
But then, there he was. A tall young man, blond and light-eyed, wearing a gray zip-up sweatshirt with a Polo logo on the breast, faded jeans, white tennis shoes, an orange knit cap. He scanned the room. I half stood, waved. He made his way between the too-tight tables, bumping into seated people with his Macy’s bag, his wide frame. He had her features, but they didn’t quite work on him—his nose and mouth too dainty, giving his face a sort of fussy look. Marlena had existed, I realized, and it felt real in a way it never had before. She’d been alive, and we were what was left of her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, when he sat down, his knees bumping into the piece of wood from underneath, sloshing my tea over the brim. “The subway got me all turned around.” His accent. He peeled his hat off and dropped it into his bag, running his hand up the back of his head, which was covered with close-shaved white-blond hair. He was slightly overweight; I’d expected a graceful little boy.
“I should have picked a different table.”
“Oh no,” he said. “This is fine.”
“Can I get you something? A drink, or some food?” The past and present were colliding, a disorienting, almost violent sensation, but on top of it all I still, mostly, just wanted a drink. I had that sober, skinned feeling; everything that touched me hurt. Noises too loud, feelings too loud, people too loud. A drink would blunt the edges. The waiter was taking a long time. Sal was telling me that his wife was nearby, at a clothing store he was grateful he didn’t have to go to.