Janine had seen the pain in her eyes and put her arms around Gretchen.
“The truth is,” Janine said, “we just don’t know. But you asked me how I feel. And I feel the force of your mother’s life around us. Sometimes you have to follow your gut to get to the proof you’re looking for.” At the apartment, after Aunt Esther’s call, Janine looked right into her eyes again. “You sure you want to spend the whole summer upstate in Mayville?”
“Yeah,” Gretchen said. “It sounds like it’ll be a good vacation.”
Janine looked a little skeptical. “It’ll be interesting, anyway,” she said.
“Can I inherit a house if I’m only sixteen?” Gretchen asked.
“Sure you can,” Janine said, laying down some Scrabble tiles that spelled the word “pickle.” “You just can’t do anything with it yet.”
The next day Gretchen barely had a proper good-bye with Simon before the car arrived. He came downstairs and lay on her bed with his big feet propped against the wall, telling her how he had a crazy conversation about poetry with the guy who owns that vintage clothing store with the neon pink sign down on St. Marks Place.
“The guy has a big tattoo across his chest that says I Need More,” Simon said. “I’m like, more what? Did he just get bored and not go back to the tattoo shop for the final word?”
“More shirts?” Gretchen said. “How’d you see his chest?”
“’Cause he was showing me the tattoo.”
“More modesty?” Gretchen suggested, making Simon laugh.
“Maybe just more wrinkle cream,” Simon said. “I think he’s like a million years old. He talked about going to see Iggy Pop play in the 1960s!”
“That’s cool, though,” Gretchen said.
Simon sighed. “I know. I wish we could have seen him back then.” He watched her pack up her makeup. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me here by myself all summer.”
She lay down next to him on the bed, looked into his dark eyes, rested her forehead against his. “I will text you every day.”
“You better,” he said.
Then he got up and helped pick out her “going to the mansion” outfit: gray vintage cotton slip, her Doc Martens, an old rhinestone necklace that had belonged to her mother. She wore bright-red lipstick and put her long hair up into a topknot on her head. He stood back and sighed again. “So, so beautiful,” he said.
Janine went down in the elevator with her to see her off, handed Gretchen a wad of cash as she was getting into the car, and kissed her on the cheek.
“Upstate is pretty weird,” she said. “Take some good pictures.”
“Wait, what do you mean, weird?”
Janine shrugged. “Depressing. Provincial. Creepy. Insular. Ignorant. . . .”
“Okay,” Gretchen said, looking nervous. “I think I got it.”
“There’s a reason eight million people live in New York City and not in the surrounding countryside,” Janine said. Then, “If you feel like coming home—do it.” Then she patted the top of the car and the driver headed out through a jam of rush-hour traffic. Gretchen gazed into the orange light of morning that reflected off the tall buildings surrounding Central Park. How very strange, Gretchen thought. She hadn’t thought about Axton mansion for years, and now she was heading there—about to inherit the place her mother’s family had once called home.
She’d had eight hours sitting in the back of the car to dream of what the mansion might be like, and now here it was: a ghostly relic at the end of a dark forest road. No houses nearby, not a soul in sight. On the porch the scrawny cat stared, an empty chair rocked back and forth from the breeze, and a stiff piece of smudged and ancient newsprint scuttled across the porch and lodged itself in the thorns at the base of the rosebush.
Dear James,
Thank you for sending the NORTH STAR along with your letter. It means everything to me! I have hidden it beneath my mattress for fear Father discovers it. There is such anxiety over these topics. My parents have always found it best to keep their heads down—I’m sure you know why. But as for myself I hope you will tell me of any opportunity that might arise for me to help. I only wish that I had been able to be there and see Mr. Douglass speak myself. Maybe one day people will understand that no matter the plight, it’s the very same people holding everybody down.
I think about his life and journey and, like you, am inspired. Were that I not forced to stay in my father’s home and care for my nieces, I would be at school, like you, or maybe even helping in the cause. Just to be surrounded by those who can speak so bravely about freedom, and fight for it.