“As Marge says, ‘Let’s pencil it in,’ ” I replied.
He laughed. “I will. I’ll call you on Friday or drop by the restaurant for lunch, maybe. You should know by then, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“Hey, everything’s going to be fine,” he said. His excitement did give me a little relief. “Don’t worry.”
“Okay. I’ll put it on the back burner.”
He laughed again. “See you soon.”
At least I made one person happier tonight, I thought.
Afterward, I sat by the window and looked out at the street and the lights, watching people hurrying along up and down the sidewalk, most everyone appearing like someone who knew where he or she was going. I envied them, envied people who were so clearly focused on their purposes in life, even their daily routine, as boring or as monotonous as it might seem to others. If they had any fantasies about their futures, those fantasies came with lightning speed, like a flash of their names in lights and then a laugh at how silly that was. No real disappointment lingered. Depression didn’t rain down around them in the same way it did for me, as cold and dreary as an English winter’s day.
My sister, Julia, whom I had never looked to as a role model or someone I would aspire to be like, suddenly seemed so right in the way she had gone about planning and living her life. She was contented with who she was. Except for what she confronted at work, her daily life had so few serious challenges. Yes, her happiness was limited, her world of satisfaction so much narrower, smaller, in comparison to mine, but so was her world of dissatisfaction. How many weekends since I had been here struggling did she sit with friends and laugh while I obsessed about my failures? She had enjoyed a birthday, Christmas, probably been with fellow teachers on New Year’s Eve. She thought about me from time to time, for sure, but her rage at my defiance had kept her from shedding a single tear. She would always take our father’s side; she always had. It shielded her from sorrow in ways I now coveted.
None of them, not even my mummy, would fully understand how deep my defeat would go if and when I showed up on our doorstep. Their pity for me would be restrained, if not totally absent. In their way of thinking, it would all be my fault, anyway. Probably the worst thing of all would be how mute I would become. I’d never sing another note in public. No matter what the song, I wouldn’t be able to sing it without tears streaming down my face. Go home, I thought, and say good-bye to whatever wonderful feeling blossomed inside me when I saw the appreciation on the faces of my listeners. Good-bye to that as well as the self-satisfaction I once enjoyed. Good-bye to dreams. Accept failure like bitter medicine.
Buy that ticket home and say good-bye to Barbra Streisand. Turn off the music, stop humming, even begin to hate the songbirds. I’d be as good as deaf.
On the street below, I saw a girl who resembled me. She was walking at a good clip, but she paused, almost as if she could feel my eyes on her, and turned to look up at me. She smiled. I’d swear to that, and then she walked on, went around a corner, and disappeared forever. That was the amazing thing about New York City, probably all cities like it: you’d see someone, someone you thought for one reason or another was extraordinary, and then he or she would get into a taxi, board a bus, or go around a corner and disappear forever and ever. It was almost as though this was truly a city of ghosts.
I vowed not to become one of them, even though I was in great danger of becoming one.
I rose to my feet.
Who was I kidding? I didn’t have to sleep on it.
I marched myself down the stairway and knocked on Leo’s door.
He stood there looking out at me, the answer so clearly written on my face.
“I’ll call her first thing,” he said. “You’ll meet her here in the mornin’. I’ll leave you two and find some errands I’ve been puttin’ off for one reason or another.”
I turned and walked back up the stairs.
Amazing, I thought. I hadn’t spoken a word. It was truly as if all of it was destined to be. Leo and I, and soon