And then she saw, across the street, with a clear purposeful expression, obviously headed to the gallery, her mother.
Mona wore a new black dress that morning, and it fit her perfectly. It was slim, a little clingy, maybe jersey material. A red purse dangled from her elbow, also new. She was carrying a large white box in her arms, and her wildly curly dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Gretchen knew the way that hair would smell—tea tree oil shampoo and chai tea—and she wanted to bury her face in it. To feel her mother’s arms around her.
Suddenly she felt dizzy and frantic, wanted to run to Mona and see her smile, hear her laugh. This was the closest Gretchen had gotten to her in months. Gretchen raised her camera to her eye with her trembling hands, found her mother in the viewfinder, aimed, and snapped the image. Her mother had kept walking, of course—she hadn’t noticed Gretchen—but that didn’t matter, because Gretchen had set her shutter speed at 1/900, and there was no way her mother could be blurred or lost with that setting. Through that viewfinder, her mother was brought so close to Gretchen’s eye that she even recognized the little gold charm bracelet her father had given her one year.
Gretchen continued to follow her mother with the camera, snapping and snapping. She was getting proof. Her mother was not dead. She was interacting with people, people who could obviously see her. For one instant her mother even glanced in Gretchen’s direction and seemed to return her gaze.
The street was suddenly more crowded with vehicles and pedestrians, and several times Gretchen lost sight of her mother when a bus passed between them or a sea of businessmen blocked her view. And then, suddenly, she was being jostled on every side by other people on the sidewalk, who elbowed her and scowled. Groups of people refused to part to let her through.
She stopped, and then started again, walked quickly across the street, and then turned back a block later. Everything was familiar, but rearranged. She turned all the way around in a circle, bumping into a teenage boy in a baseball cap, who gave her a little shove but said nothing. With rising panic, Gretchen began to walk back in the direction she’d come from, and then she found herself crossing another street, and then another. And then she turned around yet again and began to run, glancing desperately at the doors and windows of every storefront she passed, camera slamming against her ribs, searching, frantically by then, but not one of these doors had, painted on it in the bright-orange letters she knew so well, Mona Axton Gallery. It was as if the buildings on this block had been picked up and shuffled around. She had absolutely no idea where she was.
The gallery was not there. Gretchen stood where she knew it should have been and, almost in one last desperate attempt to find it, looked up at the sky. Blue, and empty. She was standing in front of a door printed with the words GREEN CLEAN. Below that, a faded sign was taped to the glass. It said, Grand Opening! Eco-Friendly Dry Cleaning.
She stepped closer to the door, put her hands to her face, and peered inside. There was a woman shoving what appeared to be wadded-up shirts into a cloth bag. She kept glancing at Gretchen blankly, and then back down at her work.
Gretchen looked into the woman’s face. She had dark hair, pulled back in a ponytail. She was skinny—smoker skinny, caffeine skinny, wearing a black dress that clung to her skeleton.
It was the dress Gretchen’s mother had been wearing only moments ago on the street. And in front of the woman was a red purse, lying on the counter.
Gretchen turned and ran. And ran. And ran. Dodging the pedestrians and the little dogs and trash cans and cabs.
Later, in her bedroom with the door closed, sitting at her desk, she looked at the proof she collected that day.
She opened iPhoto, double-clicked, and an image began to slowly spread itself across her laptop screen in all of its digital brilliance, and when it was finally complete Gretchen saw in the arrangements of those pixels . . . a complete stranger crossing the street. Carrying a red purse. Holding a package. Wearing a black jersey dress. Glaring in Gretchen’s direction—that angry expression having been what Gretchen had mistaken for her mother’s smile. A stranger.
It was the pain of this that stopped Gretchen’s curiosity about where Mona might be. Whether she was wandering the city or wandering the afterlife, Mona had no plans to come back to her, even in pictures. If she was alive it seemed that she didn’t want to be found, and if she was dead she was dead. Dead people don’t walk the streets or go to work or kiss their husbands good-bye on the subway platform. They do not tuck you in bed anymore, or take you out to brunch, or show you secret pictures from their fabulous pasts.