The Whole World (27 page)

I cupped my hands around the feather, so it wouldn’t waft away, and carried it up the stairs. At the end of the hall I stepped around the mess at the bottom of the ladder and inched my way up. At the top, the little bird, whose heart had beat so fast in my hand, was lying on its side but still visibly breathing.

I laid the feather on it. The little poof of white rode up and down, up and down.

I’ve driven their car before, once to get Gretchen to a lecture when her taxi didn’t arrive, and another time to pick up a package. I’d volunteered as an acolyte and friend. It seemed like a long time ago. I shifted the seat for my shorter legs. I always put it back when I returned, to be ready for Harry.

I turned left onto Barton and stopped at the light at the bottom of Grange Road. Six other cars idled with me. A dozen pedestrians flowed past on both sides of the street.

A pair of women walked up Barton together, from out of Wolfson College. They were dressed up. One wore gold, the other white. Knee-length dresses and feminine coats. Gloves. The one in white had a veil on her head, a short one, grazing her shoulders. Her hair was down. They both carried flowers. They were arm in arm, like European girls. Like Therese and Annick. They were heading toward the river.

It was Alice. Today was Dr. Keene’s wedding. I’d forgotten.

They crossed the road in front of me. The light turned green. I went. What else could I do? There were cars behind me. There was nothing for it but to go forward.

Alice was so beautiful that I cried.

CHAPTER 12

I
woke up. It was dark and the clock said four. In winter, a dark four could be a.m. or p.m. and I didn’t know.

I still had all my clothes on under the covers. My jeans felt stiff, like casts on my legs, and pinched my stomach. I tried to swing my legs over the side, but there was friction against the bedclothes.

I was still wearing shoes.

“What the fuck?” I said out loud. I kicked, hard, until the covers ended up on the floor. They sucked one of my shoes with them, and I had to crawl around down there and stick my arm into the tangle of blanket and sheet to get it back out. It was an awful lot of fucking work just to get out of bed.

I got dressed and went outside. The long line of twinkle lights across the shops were on. People bustled. So, four p.m. December shoppers from the villages were wide from the bags they carried. There wasn’t room on the sidewalk for all of us; I got bumped on both sides. I put my hand on my cheek and shivered. How long had I slept?

My jacket wasn’t warm enough. I didn’t need one in California. I shouldn’t need one here either; it’s not like it ever snows. The only snow I got I’d had to make myself, little scraps of paper. The white Christmas reputation that England has is Victorian. You’d know that if you think about it. Those British-people-skating scenes on cards always have long dresses and muffs and sleighs. You don’t get snow here now, except maybe one day a year. It snowed once last year, and it didn’t stick or even slush. It hit the street and melted immediately. You could watch it happen but it didn’t stay and pile up. Which makes it not really snow, not the snow that I dreamed about when I was a kid. Snow is only snow when it’s accumulated. Snow is what happens after it’s hit the ground. The falling is just the way that it gets there.

It’s like a guy who touches you at a party isn’t really a boyfriend. It’s not like you can tell people the next day,
He’s my boyfriend
. Because he’s not, not until you see what sticks.

Nick looked upset. Not in my head; Nick wasn’t in my head. He was in a car at the intersection.

I was stopped at the corner with the flower shop. I was flanked by a window of bright living things, and the doorway was like this halo over me. Flat brass flowers were embedded in the sidewalk all up and down this road, scattered like they’d grown up through the concrete by accident. Someone had designed them and cast them and pressed them in at random, all the way from here to beyond the river. God, it was beautiful.

I think he saw me. He looked right in my direction, but he didn’t act like he saw me. There were other people around, so maybe he didn’t. He wasn’t driving. Someone else was driving. It was a woman. She drove the car through the intersection and on down Chesterton Road.

I leaned back against the shop door. Nick. He wasn’t gone. None of it had happened.

How much the fuck did I drink last night that I dreamed all that? Right?

I only needed to figure out how far back it all went.

I almost ran. I was so sure of what I’d find, I wanted to run. But I didn’t, because of the narrow sidewalks and all those fancy shopping bags hanging from everyone’s hands. So I kind of skipped and half jumped around, jogging but not really jogging, you know? I almost tripped over a busker’s bucket of coins.

The gates were closed. Of course they would be—Monday. Museums close on Mondays because they’re open on weekends. I didn’t rattle the gates; I didn’t need to. The window I was looking for was farther down the building. There—between the main stairs and the handicapped entrance. Over the giant Henry Moore. There. That window there.

Three Chinese vases, each as big as a toddler. I wrapped my fingers around the iron bars of the fence to hold myself up.

None of it had happened. None.

It was Christmas. It was presents and snowflakes and cards with prints of Victorian skaters. I hadn’t fucked it up with Nick; he wasn’t gone. Maybe I hadn’t even met him yet. If the vases hadn’t been shattered, I hadn’t even met Polly yet. I was still nineteen. I was young. I was happy. I was still a kid.

What a fucked-up dream. What the fuck did I eat last night? I had curry or something or a street vendor sausage with hot sauce. Right? What a fucked-up …

I’d wait till they opened. I had to go in. Maybe I could put my hands on the vases, just like a stroke or a pet, and no one would notice. They wouldn’t have motion detectors, right? It’s not like paintings, right? Because there isn’t a guard on those stairs. And the vases aren’t that old. They’re not even that valuable. Just to me. I just wanted to touch them, like, to say “thank you.” I wanted to draw them. I didn’t have my sketchbook, but the front desk gives out these packets to kids who ask for them. They have paper and colored pencils and even a little sharpener. I needed to draw those vases.

I’ve been waiting, like, my whole teenaged life for this. For something to draw. For something that’s mine. For something that means something to me so much that when I draw it it’s more than a stupid still-life or landscape or portrait that everyone says is amazing just because it’s recognizable. Everything I’ve done up to now has been praised for looking like real life, but what good is it to just draw what everyone can see anyway? The whole point of art is that it shows the looker something that they wouldn’t have seen otherwise. But you can’t make that happen. You can’t make yourself have something to say.

There are pictures that I drew when I was little, in the margins of books. It took forever for the library to get complaints about them, because they looked really good. They looked like stuff that was supposed to be there. Finally the librarian turned into fucking Nancy Drew and figured out that it was me. She just looked at who had checked out all those books. And she arranged a conference with my parents and told them that I’m an artist. I’m a fucking artist. Because my faces look like faces. It’s such a fucking low standard. Are they good faces? Are they interesting faces? Do they tell you anything or make you feel something? Do they do something?

This librarian told my parents that I’m an artist because why? Because I draw hands with five fingers each, and I know the difference between an eye in front view and an eye in profile? Big fucking deal. An artist draws a face that stops you. Fuck, an artist doesn’t even need a face. There’s a Degas in the Fitz that’s just a hand, a sculpture of a hand. How would you feel if you held your hand like that, cocked back with crooked fingers? If you put your hand like that, everything else follows: You’re angry. All he needed was a hand to fully depict anger. That’s what an artist does. He takes something completely inadequate—like a single body part if you’re Degas. And you make—what? You make something that stops people. Something that has more in it than can fit. Art is a fucking clown car. Right? It’s something with more in it than anyone else would be able to fit.

So this librarian called me an artist. And people shouldn’t be allowed to throw words like that around. Because she didn’t know. She didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. She just meant that I don’t suck, that I’d drawn physically recognizable humans. She didn’t have any standard higher than that. People like that shouldn’t be teachers. Because people like me get told things and get the really wrong idea.

Up until this moment, I didn’t really know if I was an artist. I had all these skills, but no vision. And now, right in front of me through that window, I had vision. It was this physical scene, just a stupid still life, right? But it was relief. It was profound fucking relief. And youth. And future. And Christmas. It’s fucking Christmas on that shelf. Shit, I had tears on my face. They landed on the front of my jacket, and melted away in an instant like snow in England. Snow in beautiful fucking England. I was really here, and nothing bad had happened yet.

I didn’t know if I could wait. If I’d had chalk I would have happily drawn on the sidewalk.

When I looked up again, there she was: Polly. What was she doing here? She doesn’t start until next fall. She must be looking at the colleges.

She passed me by, without acknowledgment. I let out my breath. See? She didn’t know me. She didn’t know me yet.

I turned and watched her keep going, toward St. Peter’s Terrace. She must be checking out Peterhouse accommodation. That would make sense for a prospective student. It all made sense.

A poster farther down the fence reared up into view. It was hanging there, but not just hanging: It intruded and don’t ask me how that works. I’m just telling you what was in front of me. It was a kind of panel where they announce new exhibits. I thought,
Someone beat me to it. Someone else is excited about these vases besides me, because there they are
.

It wasn’t a drawing. It was a photograph. The Fitz was advertising the vases’ restoration.

The image was a close-up, bigger than life-sized. I put my hand on it. I looked as close as I could, and I found them: the cracks. The picture was so real you could even find the cracks.

I think I stood there forever. I don’t think my blood even moved around my body. Everything just stopped. Even Polly must have stopped because when I looked away like a million hours later she was still just half a block from me.

If the vases had been smashed and repaired, if I did know her, if everything had happened just like I’d dreamed it or nightmared it or just plain fucked it up, then who does she think she is that she can walk by me like we don’t know each other? Who does she think she is?

I caught up with her in just a few stretched-out strides because I was mad. Anger makes people bigger, faster, longer-legged. My huge hand and long arm pulled her back by her collar. Her coat had a fur collar on it, fake and feathery. My hand plunged into the tickly mass to get hold of the wool neckline underneath. I pulled hard, to make her back up and choke. The coat was buttoned up around her neck and I pulled.

Then I let go so she could turn around. She looked indignant and I had on this innocent face. Her expression backed down, like she must have been mistaken. Like I hadn’t choked her for a second. Ha ha. It’s like—it’s like, who wouldn’t want to play with that? I wanted to smack her on the face and then say I hadn’t, just to see if she’d take it. Maybe she’d even apologize for the misunderstanding.

“What the hell?” she demanded, rubbing her neck. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with
you
, walking right past me? I’m here, you know? I’m right here!” I waved my hands in her face. “I didn’t think Gretchen’s blindness was catching….”

The skin around her eyes was dark, like she’d slept in mascara. But she doesn’t usually wear makeup. “Liv, don’t you know? Gretchen’s dead. She’s dead,” she said.

“I know,” I said.
I know. I know. I know. I know
. The vases are cracked, Polly is here, Gretchen is dead. But what about Nick? If everything’s happened, then why isn’t Nick gone? Why did I see him in a car on Chesterton Road?

“I saw Nick,” I said.

And, just like that, there was this tapping sound behind me. It sounded like Gretchen’s cane, tapping on the steps of the Fitzwilliam. I ignored it.

“Oh my God, what? Where?” Polly said. Her face didn’t know how to look. It waited to hear whether I saw him dead on the road or on the news or buying a cup of coffee or in my own fucking head.

Then Harry brushed past me, his arm pushing mine as he went by. I know sidewalks can be skinny around here, but this one was plenty wide and there was no reason for it. It was like he just wanted to nudge me or something. I turned and watched him keep going. The clothes were different, and he had on this hat which wasn’t like him, but it was obviously him. And I realized that all his niceness and can-I-make-you-tea is just as much bullshit as everyone else’s because when you’re really freaking out he’ll just walk past you, right?

Polly grabbed my elbow. “Did you really see Nick?”

I was, like,
What?
I made my face all innocent and said, “What are you talking about?” Why didn’t she ask about Harry? Had no word gotten around about Harry, only Gretchen? That isn’t fair. But why would I expect anything to be any better for Harry than it is for me?

She looked hit. I said it again: “What are you talking about?” and she actually started to cry. She looked like a well-trimmed poodle with that coat on. “Nice coat.”

Her fists hammered me in the chest. I was up against the iron fence, and the hitting made my head bounce on the bars. It only lasted a few seconds. “My mother bought me this coat!” she said. Then she let go of me, and I guess I slumped.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll lay off the coat.”

“My mother bought me this coat,” she repeated. She crossed her arms as if I were going to try to take it.

“All yours,” I conceded.

We breathed at each other a little while.

“I just can’t believe that Gretchen’s dead,” she finally said.

“Old people die.” That tapping started again, behind me on the steps.

Polly opened her mouth like she wanted to argue about whether or not Gretchen was actually “old” but instead she asked one more time, “Did you really see Nick?” Like she really, really needed to know.