twinned beside me, my robe frothy at my neck. Little overflows in his seat, his elbow brushing mine.
I feel decelerated, body and brain.
“Of course, then they saw you all crumpled on the grass. That’s what they said, that’s how they described it. And they saw the door to your house open, and so they thought that’s where the incident occurred, but when they looked inside the place was empty. They had to look inside, you know. Because of what they’d heard on the phone.”
I nod. I can’t remember exactly what I said on that call.
“You got kids?” I nod again. “How many?” I extend a single finger. “Only child, huh? I’ve got four. Well, I’ll have four in January. We’ve got one on order.” He laughs; I don’t. I can barely move my lips. “Forty-four years old and a fourth kid on the way. I guess four is my lucky number.”
One, two, three, four, I think. In and out. Feel the lorazepam flying through your veins, like a flock of birds.
Little taps on the horn and the car in front of us scoots ahead. “Lunch rush,” he says.
I lift my eyes to the window. It’s been nearly ten months since I found myself on the streets, or in a car, or in a car on the streets. Ten months since I’ve seen the city from anywhere besides my house; it feels otherworldly, as though I’m exploring alien terrain, as though I’m coasting through some future civilization. The buildings loom impossibly tall, thrusting like fingers into a rinsed-blue sky above. Signs and shops streak past, blaring color: 99¢ fresh pizza!!!, Starbucks, Whole Foods (when did that set up shop?), an old fire station refitted as a condo building (units from $1.99m). Cool dark alleys; windows blank with sunlight. Sirens keen behind us, and Little shrugs the car to one side as an ambulance pushes past.
We approach an intersection, slow to a stop. I study the traffic light, glowing like an evil eye, and watch the stream of pedestrians flow along the crosswalk: two blue-jeaned mothers pushing strollers, a bent-double old man leaning on a cane, teenagers hunched under hot-pink backpacks, a woman in a turquoise burka. A green balloon, loosed from a pretzel stand, dizzies upward. Sounds invade the car: a giddy shriek, the seafloor rumble of traffic, a bicycle bell trilling. A rage of colors, a riot of sounds. I feel as though I’m in a coral reef.
“Off we go,” murmurs Little, and the car surges forward.
Is this what’s become of me? A woman who gawks like a guppy at an everyday lunch hour? A visitor from another world, awed by the miracle of a new grocery store? Deep within my dry-iced brain, something throbs, something angry and vanquished. A flush sunrises in my cheeks. This is what’s become of me. This is who I am.
If it weren’t for the drugs, I’d scream until the windows shattered.
38
“Now,” says Little, “here’s our turn.”
We ease right onto our street. My street.
My street as I haven’t seen it in almost a year. The coffee shop on the corner: still there, presumably still slinging the same too-bitter brew. The house beside it: fire-red as ever, its flower boxes crowded with chrysanthemums. The antique shop just across: dark and sulky now, a commercial space for rent sign pasted in the storefront. St. Dymphna’s, permanently forlorn.
And as the street opens before us, as we drive west beneath a vault of bare branches, I feel tears brimming in my eyes. My street, four seasons later. Strange, I think.
“What’s strange?” says Little.
I must have thought it out loud.
As the car nears the far end of the road, I catch my breath. There’s our house—my house: the black front door, the numbers 2-1-3 wrought in brass above the knocker; the panes of leaded glass on either side, the twin lanterns next to them with their orange electric light; four stories of windows staring dully straight ahead. The stone is less lustrous than I remember, with waterfalls of stains beneath the windows, like they’re weeping, and on the roof, I see a fragment of the rotted trellis. All the glass could stand to be washed—even from the street I can pick out the grime. “Best-looking house on the block,” Ed used to say, and I used to agree.
We’ve aged, the house and I. We’ve decayed.
We roll past it, past the park.
“It’s there,” I say to Little, wagging a hand toward the backseat. “My house.”