*
Saturday mornings, a jog around the reservoir. A Bloody Mary afterward at the deli on Fifty-Sixth that you like, or maybe an early drink with a friend, a show down in Soho, a new gallery to visit, an opening. The New York Times on Sunday morning in your apartment, the paper, The Gray Lady, spread out on your couch while you text and answer e-mails, try the crossword puzzle, read the editorials, force yourself to look at the stock reports. Then something cultural, something solid and good, the MoMa or the Frick, your special favorite, a walk through the park to look at the ducks, to rub Balto’s nose, to see Alice in Wonderland remaining perpetually childish and overlarge. Winter is here, no longer threatening, and you spend some time with your mom talking about wardrobes, a few shopping trips, some good basic gear. You make a reservation for skiing in Vermont. You talk to your boss, three bosses, actually, about Japanese accounts, and they suggest you brush up on your language, so Thursday mornings you drink tea with a Japanese instructor, Mr. Hayes, who is only part Japanese, you discover, but speaks a high-quality language. You practice calligraphy, painting with brushes and ink, and once Mr. Hayes brings in vases and sprigs of forsythia and involves the class—five of you, all youngish corporate types—in ikebana, the traditional art of flower arranging. You are given three wands of forsythia, and you are told to find their proper balance, which is not easy, in Japanese or in English, but you go forward and converse with the other students, with Mr. Hayes, and when you report back to your office you nod at the questions and say the language training is going well.
New York, New York, a helluva town.
Yoga Monday nights, a spin class on Wednesday, mostly women, all pedaling like crazy, sometimes in the dark, and you cannot help recalling Jack’s words, his idea that New York is a prison the inmates build for themselves, because, given a different perspective, spin class could be the activity of madwomen. But you go on, and there are moments of beauty, true rewards, the sun setting behind the Chrysler Building, an amazing drummer in Union Square, a monologue by a woman named KoKo who pretends to be King Kong’s wife, who is mad at him for leaving their island home. Funny stuff, New York stuff. Hip, in the know, tastemakers.
A few faux dates here and there. A drink session with one attorney and a quick flirtation with a hockey player who said he played for the Rangers but his name wasn’t on the roster when you googled it. Your girlfriends calling, trading experiences of ruinous dates, gallows humor in every sad tale of men’s inadequacy or capricious hearts, your dad dropping in to take you to an elegant dinner right on the park. Not bad, nothing bad, you have it all, you have everything, and your mom comes in on Saturday afternoons sometimes to take in a show, sometimes with her friend Barbara, and you join, a third lady in a cloud of suburban perfume, the actors onstage often hilariously hammy, but this is Broadway, and if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
New York, New York, a helluva town.
You try not to think of He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named. Jackie-O, Jackass, Jack and Jill, Jack-o’-lantern, and so on. You do not think of that night in Berlin when your bodies clung together, or the time you stood beside the canal in Amsterdam and watched the swans swim under the cobblestone bridge. You do not think life would be better, truer, more genuine with Jack. You cannot let your mind go there, and you flitter online in the faint blue cursor lights looking for signs of him, electronic tracks, his whereabouts.
Touch football in Central Park, the Sheep Meadow, then a group retreat to a sports bar on the East Side, wings and beers, full-grown men in sports jerseys, blue jeans, and grass-stained sneakers. Hooray for the Giants or the Colts or Notre Dame or USC, and you keep it light, go along, remind yourself that this is what you wanted. You are making it, you are, good job reviews, good feedback from your team leader, up early on Mondays to start it all over again. It is not a prison, no way, and you can think of a thousand girls, a thousand dudes, who would be happy to trade places with you. Even your dad smiles when he hears how you are doing, because you are a cheetah, fast and lethal, and you refuse to be outworked. Twice you go out dancing and drink too much and take a few tokes of a rancid joint, and you let a few guys grind up on you, their johnnies obvious and lurid, and you dance away, remember Amy and Constance, remember Amsterdam, and sometimes it all seems like a dream, like a tossed salad of experiences and hopes and sensation, but part of you admits you are lonely for even that creepy touch, and you go to find your girlfriends and order another round.
New York, New York, a helluva town.
On rare and stormy nights, you read Jack’s grandfather’s journal. Only when the heart needs rain. You sit by the window and look out, air coming in, your pain sharp and brutal and nearly welcome. You read and dream and remember, and you feel old, feel like a person looking back instead of ahead, and you wonder where Jack is this night, this minute, if he thinks of you at all. For a millionth time, you go back over it, recall the deadened feeling in your heart when you knew, you knew, that he was not coming with you. That everything that had gone before it was a myth, a story we tell ourselves in the little hours before sunrise. You say you would send the journal to Jack if you had an address, but you don’t, you surely don’t, and the words and pages go together and become blurry with a third glass of wine, and the wind comes in and makes it colder, and the rain falls out of the sky and makes flecks of moisture on your windowsill.
45
I pulled up in front of Jack’s Vermont land on a cold March morning, my rental car pushing as much heat as it could out of the tiny vents along the dashboard. I parked in front of his house—the former address, anyway—and plucked my coffee out of the slot on the console. I looked at the GPS on my phone, then at the line of stores that had obviously taken over the land around Jack’s grandfather’s farm. No mistake. I reached over and plucked Jack’s grandfather’s journal from my backpack. Jack’s grandfather’s farm, the source of the journal Jack had followed into oblivion, lay buried under a couple of acres of parking lot, a craft store, a kitchen store, the Maple Syrup Restaurant, and a Curves outlet.
I didn’t do anything for a while except drink my coffee and stare out the frosty window. A little later, my phone buzzed, and I picked it up.
“Did you find it?” Amy asked.
“I guess. It’s just a mini-mall of stores now.”
“Well, that’s what he said, right?”
“Right. I guess I had a different image in my head.”
“And what image was that?”
“Oh, beautiful old farmhouse, white picket fence.”
“But, Heather, he told you what had become of the place. He said it was all sold off.”