We Are Here (38 page)

I didn’t feel like fighting a priest, and I didn’t feel like I had any place there. But I couldn’t help glancing back before I went through the door.

Jeffers had his hand on Billy’s head. Billy was trembling, weeping. The words coming out of Jeffers’s mouth were soothing.

I left. I have no idea what happened next.

Lizzie moved fast—faster than Kris had ever seen before. Soon she was having to trot to even keep her in sight. When Lizzie seemed to jump cut to the other side of 14th without crossing the road, Kris shouted the girl’s name and ran across the street after her, and kept shouting in the hope that it would embarrass the girl into stopping. At first Lizzie ignored her, but slowly she drew to a halt. She didn’t turn.

“What do you want?”

Kris came around the front. Lizzie didn’t look friendly. “To
talk
to you.”

“What about?”

“What was happening to Billy?”

“What comes to all of us.”

“He was dying?”

“The end of the Bloom. What else did you think was on the horizon? Even for you? Did you have some other destination in mind?”

“Jeffers thinks you’re already dead, Lizzie.”

“He’s a nice man. But he’s wrong.”

“He’s kind of sweet on you too, isn’t he?”

“Come, come. How could anyone be sweet on a
ghost
?”

“Because he’s lonely and bored and has found something where he believes he can make a difference. And because you’re not a ghost.”

“So what am I?”

“I don’t
know
. I want you to explain.
Properly
.”

Lizzie looked away, seemingly at people walking up and down the street. A middle-aged couple, bickering good-naturedly. A mother smiling down at a child in a stroller. A man standing on the corner and sipping from a coffee, looking vaguely into space as if he’d forgotten what he was supposed to be doing. She breathed out, slow and long, and some of the tension seemed to dissipate.

“You really want to know? What it’s like?”

“Yes.”

Pretty soon Kristina got an inkling of where they might be headed. The idea didn’t make her feel comfortable, and she asked if that’s where Lizzie was going. She spoke the question in a low tone, moving her lips as little as possible, sticking to the rules.

Lizzie didn’t answer.

Kristina kept following—though she knew the girl’s silence probably meant she was right—tucking behind and walking in Lizzie’s wake. Nobody looked at the other girl as they cut through the Village, though a few glanced at Kristina, seeing a woman on a mission, striding out, looking neither left nor right—one of the extras that cities and towns are wallpapered with, shadows put on the streets by God to stop everywhere seeming empty.

Five minutes later Lizzie turned onto Greenwich Avenue and headed along the south side, straight toward the café where Kristina had met with Catherine several times and where she’d introduced her to John, for better or worse. For a ten-yard stretch there was no one close by and Kristina spoke at her normal volume.

“I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, Lizzie, but can’t you just tell me instead? I’ve spent a lot of time following you around.”

“Telling won’t work. You have to walk this life yourself.”

Then they were level with the café. Lizzie glanced to the right. Kristina did the same, cringing, and saw Catherine at one of the tables inside with two women she’d never seen before.

She turned her head away quickly, her heart doing a double-thump, hoping to God Catherine hadn’t seen her.

But she found herself slowing over her next stride, stealing another glance. The other women looked a lot like Catherine. Not physically—both had dark hair and their weights and heights were distributed along the spectrum of social norms for this time and place—but in every other way. They were well dressed and accessorized. Their hair had been recently cut and styled. They were armed with expensive purses and boutique iPhone cases. There was an ease about the angles at which they sat to one another, too—one leaning forward, the other back, the last turned slightly to the side—that made them look like a matching set.

And there was something about the way they laughed.

As Lizzie and Kristina passed, one of the trio evidently said something uproarious. You couldn’t hear the cackling out on the sidewalk, but stripping it of sound merely made it more arresting. The nearest threw her head back. The other sniggered into her hand. Catherine started with a smile but upgraded to a reluctant oh-you-are-bad guffaw. They looked like equals in a warm, shared moment—or, Kristina found herself thinking, like … witches. Three hearty, well-groomed witches of the West Village, gathered together where it cost five bucks for a flat white and the dainty cakes and cookies had been fashioned from ingredients so tightly optimized that eating them made you
more
healthy.

When shall we three meet again? Tomorrow, dear sisters, or else the next day, whenever our busy, fulfilling lives allow. Let’s synchronize smartphones. Get something in the virtual diary. Let’s write the next verse of this everlasting song, the Ballad of the Urban Supermom.

Then Kristina was past the café and it was as if a light had gone out, turning her and Lizzie back into two random women on a shadowy sidewalk with nowhere in particular to go on a cold fall morning.

Lizzie led Kris across the road before coming back along the other side. When she was opposite the café once again she stopped, taking Kristina by surprise. Lizzie was
never
stationary in public. Even when apparently standing in one spot, she constantly turned back and forth, taking a step backward or forward or to the side.

For this moment, however, she was absolutely still.

“What?”

“Wait,” Lizzie said.

“For
what
?”

“ … this.”

At that moment, Catherine glanced up and looked directly at them. Kristina froze.

She
so
did not want to be caught gawking across the street—even though she lived a twenty-minute walk away and could legitimately be taking a stroll through the Village. She could be heading for this very café. She lived in New York City too. It wasn’t like she needed a membership card or qualified sponsor to gain access to coffee shops. And if she’d happened to see her book club pal Catherine inside, what could be more natural than to stop—maybe even wave, go in and say hi?

She felt horribly caught out nonetheless, and had no desire to wave, much less walk over and strike up a conversation with Catherine in front of those two other women. Those
better
women.

The women who were more real than she was.

Catherine meanwhile gazed out at the exact spot where they were standing—Kristina could have
sworn
she did, that she looked her right in the eyes—but her gaze floated past, as if she’d glanced up to check whether the sky held sign of rain and found it did not. She turned back to one of her companions and started nodding vigorously at whatever she was saying.

“See?” Lizzie said quietly.

“See what?”

“How do you feel?”

Kristina felt embarrassed, insubstantial. “So what?” she snapped. “She wasn’t
looking
. She’s got her mind on what’s been said or how long it is until school’s out or whatever. No big deal.”

“That’s what you feel?”

“Yes. Because anything else would be dumb.”

“Right,” Lizzie said, as she turned to head up the street. “Keep telling yourself that.”

“I don’t want to do this,” Kristina said, several hours later. They were outside Catherine’s daughters’ school. In the meantime they’d walked. Just that. They had gone in no stores or cafés. As Lizzie pointed out, she had no money and no one would serve her anyway. So they walked, an endless communion with the streets. Sometimes Lizzie pointed other people out to Kristina, people on corners, lying in park bushes, standing outside restaurants watching the people inside—usually watching one person in particular, it seemed, like a obsessive fan club of one. She pointed also at a few rooftops, both low and high, where men and women were sometimes to be found perching, looking up at the sky or down at the streets or apparently at nothing at all. She pointed out someone dressed as a clown, riding by on the top of a bus. She pointed out a very large ginger cat wearing striped trousers, sitting in the middle of the street as traffic passed by on either side. They all looked lost and alone.

By the time they got to the school, it was five minutes before dismissal, and the tribe of mothers was swelling in the street. Kristina felt cold and tired and sad. “Seriously. I don’t feel comfortable being here.”

“That’s up to you,” Lizzie said. She was under a tree, holding on to the trunk with one hand and slowly circling around. “
You
can do whatever you like.”

“If she spots us, she’s going to call the cops.”

“Spots
you
, you mean.”

“Lizzie, let’s go. Let’s do something else.”

But Lizzie wouldn’t leave, and Kristina stayed. She faded back up the street and stuck close to the railings in front of one of the houses, and kept her head down, but she stayed. She saw Catherine stride confidently into the street. Saw her stop to exchange words with other mothers, mostly flybys but one longer conversation, more serious, concluded with mutual smiles. Saw her put her hand on a few arms as she passed through the crowd and saw the owners of those arms turn and acknowledge her passing and her right to be there.

When Catherine got to the gates she was greeted by the teacher on duty, who chatted cheerfully before remembering something and reaching into a folder. She pulled out a piece of colored paper and stood close to Catherine to discuss it. Catherine turned her head to ask a considered question. What was the document about? Probably nothing so important. A concert, school trip, book drive. It was something
they
knew about, however, and you did not. You got that message all the way down the street. That piece of pale blue paper held a world in it, a universe you did not know and never would.

Lizzie still held the tree with one hand but had stopped circling. She was watching Catherine, her face expressionless, absorbing every little thing that happened, every inconsequential thing she did.

Ella and Isabella came running across the playground. As they were released back into the wild, the youngest, Isabella, threw herself up at Catherine without checking arms were in place to catch her—as you did, when you were confident your mother loved you and would always be there to halt your fall. Kristina’s mother had not been that way. Kristina’s mother was dead, and her daughter was broadly content with the arrangement. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t have been nice for things to have been otherwise.

Still Lizzie watched, silent.

Catherine strolled off up the road with a child holding each hand, turning her head to one side and then the other to listen to their updates and speculations and questions, a woman at the center of her world.

Kristina realized Lizzie was no longer beside her. She followed the girl as she walked up the street.

They eventually stopped at the grassy area beside the Hudson River, past where the Riverwalk ended. They leaned together against the railing, looking out over the water. Kristina had lost count of the times her phone had buzzed. More than four. John, texting to find out where the hell she was; texting again subsequently because he was smart and considerate enough to realize that if she hadn’t responded the first time she was busy doing whatever she was doing and wouldn’t welcome a call. That was John. He thought things through, even if there came a point when he then decided to
stop
thinking and start acting instead. She could picture him, waiting for her somewhere, wanting to talk about what happened next, and maybe also whether they were going to head over to the restaurant later, given that they still had jobs.

Because Kristina
did
have a place in the world. For a few hours most nights she was a fixture in the firmament of strangers: the woman who made the alcohol happen and kept the banter flowing when a couple hours in the company of intoxicating liquors was all these men (and women) had to look forward to. Many were divorced or notoriously single. Others did apparently have a home to go to, but when someone’s ordering another drink at ten thirty you wonder whether the place where they’re not is really home, no matter how long and hard they work to keep paying the bills and regardless of who’s there waiting for them. Kristina had more than once thought that she’d rather end up like Lydia than one of these banished ghosts, people with homes that were not a home.

In the end they went, however, and she did too, with John. Where is home? Where you’re allowed without question, where your right to be is accepted. What must it be like to not have that? To have no direction home because home doesn’t exist anywhere; to be like an electrical device with a plug that fits no socket in the entire world.

“What are you going to do?”

Lizzie’s face was somewhere between thoughtful and confused. “What do you mean?”

“I get it. I understand what you’ve been showing me. The question is what you’re going to do about it.”

“There’s nothing I
can
do.”

“Really?”

Kristina watched as the girl turned the question over in her mind. She looked thinner this afternoon, less substantial. Just plain unhappy, perhaps.

“I used to think I was the lucky one,” Lizzie said. “Compared to Maj. He had nothing. I could watch, at least. Though for a long, long time I stopped myself. When Catherine moved in with Mark I knew it was over between us. I kept away. But then a month or two ago … I fell off the wagon. I started following her again.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Of Maj?” Lizzie shook her head. “I’m glad for him. Any good thing that happens is good for everyone. This isn’t about him. It’s about me. I’m just … I’m tired.”

“Of what?”

Lizzie raised her hands in a gesture that meant everything, and the absence of it. She was tired of lack, of making do in the hope of better tomorrows.