The Whole World (28 page)

I thought it was sweet that she still thought he might be alive. Speaking of old, I was old now too. Because I’d been through something. I’d woken up thinking all kinds of people could be alive, and it turned out that none of them are.

I shook my head. Because I hadn’t seen him, not the way Polly wanted me to have. I knew that now. I’d seen him the same way I see Harry and Gretchen, and would keep on seeing them, the rest of my life. Why Nick would bother haunting me is anyone’s guess, because it’s not like I had anything to do with whatever stabbed him or pushed him or held him underwater. Maybe he was just haunting Cambridge, and passing me was incidental. That would fit, wouldn’t it? It’s not like I mattered enough for him to even bother.

“Nick’s dead too,” I said. What did she expect? He’s gone, he’s dead. The police had dredged the Cam, because they thought so too. Did she ever really think he was coming back?

It was the smack I’d fantasized. The shock on her face was hilarious. She must have really thought he was coming back. Up until this moment, when I said what’s been obvious for a long time. Of course he’s dead. People like Nick don’t just leave.

“You were going to take him back, weren’t you?” I hurled at her. “Never mind that he gets off with your best friend. You were going to take him back, and get on with being a tease and just holding hands.”

I stared hard, because this was fascinating. Look at her face: Things passed through it, things that could have become words but never got that far, never got that specific or that limited. That’s what art is for, for catching these looks. I wanted to draw her so bad my fingers vibrated.

Then she spoke, and all the variety and vastness resolved and reduced into two bullet points: “You’re not my best friend. And I do wish Nick was back.”

There was a flapping sound behind me, like a dozen birds had suddenly taken off from the museum’s roof. I didn’t have to turn around. They would be Harry’s canaries, round and fluffy and colored like Easter candy. When the beating of their wings died down, I did turn around. Gretchen was gone.

When I turned back, so was Polly.

I checked an ATM. The transaction was going to take “up to” two days, but that could mean today, so I checked. Everything was still the same. I was still in desperate need of money.

There are something like twenty banks in town and I passed, like, half of them. I checked my balance at each one. If I’d been on my bike I wouldn’t have done that, but with everything in slow motion what else was I supposed to do? I was on foot because someone had taken it.

Bikes get stolen all the time in Cambridge, and it’s not an idle thing. It’s not like they get stolen by people who’re going to use them. Then maybe someone who really needed a bike and had to get somewhere might be on mine. I could live with that. Maybe my bike would even be part of something important. But the bike stealing is more organized here. The person who took it is probably just selling it on, just doing business. Things like that make me sick.

I waited in a lot of lines. I pressed a lot of buttons.

Then, just like that: 10,003.45 pounds.

I looked over my shoulder. Did anyone see that?

I looked back. The number was still there. I jumped from foot to foot and shook my hands like they’d fallen asleep. Quick; end the transaction. No—celebrate! Withdraw cash. Buy something. Maybe one of those massively expensive coffees that’s really some kind of mutant sundae with caffeine.

I pressed all the right buttons. But it spat out my card without any money. I tried again; the balance was there, but it wouldn’t let me get at it. I grabbed the sides of the machine and tried to shake it, like when a bag of potato chips is hanging off the spiral in a vending machine. But this thing was, of course, embedded in the wall. There would be no shaking it.

The spiral with my money hanging off it wasn’t in this machine anyway. It would be in a computer somewhere at the bank. The account or transaction might have been flagged, and put on hold. Perhaps they’d been notified of the death by someone incredibly thorough. Maybe everything to do with them was frozen already. Or, no, really, it could just be that things hadn’t finished processing. Maybe there’s this stage where the amount is acknowledged but not releasable yet. Maybe that’s what they meant by two days and tomorrow everything would be fine. Right?

Just past Sainsbury’s there was one more bank.

I waited in line behind a guy with a guitar on his back. He stuck in a card and punched a lot of buttons but nothing much happened, so he opened up his bag and rooted around in it. He got another card and held it in his teeth while he rebuckled the two straps on the front of his bag without taking off his bulky gloves. One side he got but the other one squirmed away from him over and over. He stood there, between me and the machine, wrestling with this stupid bag buckle while I rocked from side to side. The card stuck out of his mouth like a tongue. A mom with a stroller passed between us and rolled a dirty wheel over my shoe.

Finally he stuck the new card in the machine. A ten slid out.

He got out of my way. I pushed my card in the slot and pressed the right buttons. The balance was there.

I tried withdrawal again. Ten had worked out pretty great for the guy in front of me, so I tried it too. Press, press, press, press,
whirr …
money. Money.

Ten pounds.

I pinched it between my fingers and tugged. It didn’t give right away so I pulled with both hands so hard that I rocked back into the person behind me. “Sorry,” I said, but I didn’t get out of the way. The machine asked if I wanted another transaction. Even with the money free I knew I couldn’t get at the whole of it until tomorrow. A machine wouldn’t be able to give that much; I’d have to wait in line and ask a teller nicely. It was already after five.

I just stared at the small piece of it that was in my hand. It was suddenly weird to me that it wasn’t green. I’d been using this colorful money for over a year now but it was suddenly weird. It didn’t look like money. It looked like a magazine ad. Like a travel agency poster. A poster for Tahiti, my own Tahiti, my own place to get away and grow into something that I knew I could be if people would just stop getting in the way.

I mashed the money into the front pocket of my jeans and whirled around. I thought I’d heard Gretchen’s cane, but it was the person waiting behind me, tapping a pen against their card.

I rubbed my forehead. It was just a pen tapping a card. And the birds at the Fitzwilliam could have been any birds. There are lots of birds in Cambridge. Harry never wore a hat like that at all. I was just getting all “Tell-Tale Heart” about things because of the waiting. Everything could be explained away, except Nick in that car. I’d seen Nick for sure.

Harry came out of the supermarket. I ducked into a doorway. He had those same two orange bags he’d left by the front door yesterday. He had that same hat on he’d had by the Fitzwilliam. No, Harry doesn’t wear hats. What was going on? I had to look at his face.

I chased him toward Magdalene but there were crowds at the bus stops. By the time I got through he was gone.

I leaned against the bridge to breathe. Of course it hadn’t been Harry. He wouldn’t carry groceries up Bridge Street; that’s the opposite of the way to their house. A punt emerged underneath me. In the spring the river will be full of them, rubbing up against each other. But in today’s cold and dark there was just this one. I squinted to see if it was Nick. But it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. He was too short. Of course it wasn’t Nick. Why would Nick be punting?

I had to get it together.

If I’d seen a dead Nick, if I was seeing ghosts, then this money wouldn’t get me anywhere. They wouldn’t let me spend it on anything, not without sneaking up behind me or crossing in front of me or filling my ears with chirping and tapping and Gretchen’s horrible thud against the front of Harry’s car.

But if Nick had been real, if he was alive and back, then I’d know for sure that any tapping I heard was just someone busking on the drums, or bouncing a jackhammer into the street, anything, but not that cane.

If he was back, then I could get out of here tomorrow and get on with life. I could leave and not be followed.

He’d be with his family, wouldn’t he. I had to know.

Madingley Road is a busy street and the cars whooshing by made a buzz in my head that blocked out other things. I felt like I was going to float up, which I think was from breathing in so much exhaust instead of oxygen.

Nick’s family’s house is on a corner. To get to the front door, you have to go around most of the place. The back of it is kind of right there, facing the crazy neighbor’s fence.

This fluttering thing hit me in the face. Not a bird, not any kind of bird. It was a piece of … it was a picture. It was a dozen little boys in black top hats. It was the King’s College choristers. Nick was in the middle. That was him, when he was short and his voice was high. I recognized his face. I can always tell his face.

Another one landed on my foot. It was raining Nick. This one was of him as a blond teenager with a dark-haired little girl in front of some big European fountain.

I looked up. That dark-haired girl was grown up and throwing them out of the window. Wind blew them at me, instead of into the neighbor’s yard she was aiming for.

“What are you doing?” I called out.

She flinched, and the top of her head banged into the window frame.

“Hey, are you okay?” I asked. I walked over to underneath her. The house didn’t have high ceilings so upstairs wasn’t that far up.

“If Mrs. Cowley likes photos so much she can have them!” Alexandra kept trying to arc them over the fence, but the wind smeared them around the yard.

I picked up another at random. It was a blurry, blobby baby picture. My mom had pictures like that of me, from back in the day when you had to print a whole roll of film.

“Are you okay?” I repeated.

She looked at me with that kind of tilted head that people do when someone else is stupid.

“Hey!” I said. She retreated and shoved the window shut. I charged around to the front door. “Hey!” I repeated, pushing it open.

This was Nick’s house. There were full bookshelves everywhere. There was a cute bag on a chair, and a girly jacket on the floor. There was a table with two plates holding orange rinds and crumbs. There were two cups and two spoons, and a jagged-edged knife.

Alexandra cantered down the stairs on tottery high heels. She had on tights and a short skirt and a sweater. She hugged her arms around herself. “You’re Nick’s friend, right? What do you want?”

“Where is he?” The house was mostly open-plan. It couldn’t hide anything. Nick wasn’t there, not on this floor anyway.

“I don’t know.” Her mouth hung open in that last “oh” sound. She rubbed her thin sleeves like she was cold.

I darted past her up the steps. She chased me. “What are you doing?” One of the bedroom doors was sort of open. I pushed it the rest of the way.

The bookcase in here held old textbooks, framed certificates, and Nick’s graduation photo: He looked like an Easter bunny in the University’s traditional rabbit-fur cape and white bow around his neck. “What do you want?” she persisted.

A drawer at the bottom of the computer desk had been pulled all the way out. It was full of pictures and negatives sorted into labeled envelopes. There was the window from which she’d dumped her and Nick’s childhood.

The duvet on the single bed hung halfway off and the pillow was indented and askew. I gasped.

Alexandra hung back in the doorway. “Mum must have slept in it,” she said. “She does that sometimes. He’s really not here. I, I really don’t think he’s coming back….”

The balance of the duvet must have reached some tipping point; it suddenly sagged and something round tumbled out. It came to rest at Alexandra’s foot. It was a balled-up sock, a thick white one.

We both fell to hands and knees, like movie people ducking bullets. We stuck our faces under the bed.

There was a crumpled sweatshirt. And, where the duvet had slid off the mattress, a pair of jeans.

Alexandra squeezed the sweatshirt in her hands, but tempered her hope. “Mum might have hugged his sweatshirt in bed….”

I pulled out the jeans to read the label. Inches, not a size. Guys’ jeans. “These are his,” I said. “These are his clothes. Unless,” I added, “you had a boyfriend over last night….”

“I wasn’t even home last night!” she said, indignant, then ecstatic. Realization bloomed. “I wasn’t even home….”

There’s a famous sculpture of St. Teresa in ecstasy. The expression Bernini put into her marble face would have been enough for anybody, but he positioned a hidden window to light it, and then threw in an extravagance of enormous gilt rods behind her, just in case the rays of the real sun didn’t measure up. That’s how Alexandra looked. She looked radiant. She looked lit.

“I saw him today,” I said, reflecting her happiness. “On Chesterton Road. I really saw him!”

The money would come out of the bank tomorrow. I would leave a living Nick, and dead Harry and dead Gretchen, behind. I’d only been imagining things. They couldn’t really follow me.

Tap, tap, tap …

All my muscles squeezed together hard.

I shook myself. That was just the noise of Alexandra’s heels on the stairs. She was clattering down them because a car was pulling up.

I checked my hair in the dresser mirror. I wiped my mouth. I followed her down to see Nick one last time.

Tap, tap, tap
.

Gretchen had no power over me anymore. I knew the sound for what it was: knocking on a door.

Why would Nick knock on his own door?

The stairs decanted me back into the living space. It was a big room, for everything all at once: for sitting and eating and putting on coats. Only the kitchen had a full-height interior wall, for more cabinet space, I guess. I ducked into that kitchen, behind that wall.

Alexandra opened the door to a man. She said, “Morris!” and hugged him. Morris. That was the name of Polly’s policeman.

“Alexandra,” he said. “I need to see Nick. Is he here?”