waved thanks from the kitchen, through the flash of a swinging white door.
32
Prospect Avenue was busy by now, night-dark, the half-moon directly above, silvering a sweep of clouds. After George answered a few perfunctory university questions for my father, the three of us walked quietly back to Bedford Gardens, past the coffee shop now milling with people arming up with caffeine to face the evening ahead. Past the rows of houses built in the twenties, with rickety porches and wooden support pillars next to Spanish-tile courtyards and red-tiled roofs. Past the old church on Prospect and Rodney, where sometimes I spied groups huddling on the outside steps with coffee cups. A family of palms: squat, medium and spindly tall. The other trees above us, figs and plums, gleamed in the moonlight, reaching tangled branches up.
At the building, my father gave me a hug. I asked him if he wanted to run up and check out the apartment, but he said no, to my surprise. It’s not a hospital, I said, but he just squared his eyes onto George. You’ll double-check? he said, and George nodded. We walked him to his car. I told him I’d be home soon. I just have to get my stuff, I said. He shook George’s hand firmly. Good, he said, out of nowhere. George and I stood together, watching him go. All around us cars rumbled by, slow, always hunting for parking spots, and as soon as my father’s brake lights glowed red, another car clicked on its blinker to claim the space.
George, who had been unusually quiet during the meal, waited for my lead, and after a few minutes we turned from the street and walked into the courtyard area of Bedford Gardens. I couldn’t face the stairs yet, so we stopped at the first level, right by the mermaid fountain with its stop-and-start flow of water. The stone mermaid rested on a rock, holding a tilted bucket, and that’s what the water came from: a steady stream out of her bucket, back into the sea. The fountain itself, although broken, was framed by a nice stone wall, where we sat down. The stones in the wall were damp, but I didn’t mind. The sensation of water creeping into my jeans was uncomfortable but far easier than the whole experience of sitting in that restaurant and trying to describe most of what had happened.
Hey, Rose, George said after a few minutes, pulling a portion off a nearby banana leaf.
Yeah?
He turned to me. The courtyard was dark, except for exterior lamps from a few of the apartments, casting a faint hum of light onto the cement. Heels clicked by, down the sidewalk. With care, George systematically ripped out the green parts of the banana leaf sections, leaving the veins and skeletal structure intact. He worked on it, concentrating. Even with his usual surprised eyebrows, even slightly mussed and tired, he looked almost unbearably handsome to me.
He let out a breath. Nothing, he said. Sorry.
What?
I could see his mind shift over to another subject. When’d you dye your hair? he asked.
I touched an end. It’s just an experiment, I said. Last month.
Suits you, he said. How’s school?
The usual, I said. You?
It’s good, he said. Nodding, to the leaf. I may be going to Boston in the summer, he said.
Boston, I said, vaguely.
MIT, he said.
We faced out, to the entrance. People strode by in hurries. I could feel George’s body there, so close to mine, so warm and living, and in a distant way I remembered Eliza’s party and realized I’d never told her if I was going to go or not. Something came up, I thought, practicing. George dragged a hand through the fern fronds framing the fountain, the ferns that thrived from the on-and-off drip of the mermaid’s bucket.
Thanks for coming today, I said. Really. I can’t really thank you enough.
Oh, he said. Please. I’m so glad you called me. And I was glad to hear from you earlier, really-
I reached over to his part of the wall. The stone blocks. Not quite touching, just closer. I wanted to grab on to him desperately, but not in a very good way. More like I wanted to get rid of us both for a couple hours.
We miss you, out there in Pasadena, I said.
He nodded.
We, I said. Me.
– .
So.
So.
Boston, I said.
Can you tell me, he said gently, what you saw?
I lowered my head. No, I said.
Try, he said.
I made faint slashes in the air. I don’t know how, I said.
But there’s stuff you didn’t say, he said.
I kept my eyes on the cement. A cracked fissure began at the base of the fountain wall and then crossed the courtyard like a fixed bolt of lightning.
George peered up, at the apartment. Shadows crossed our feet, bouncing shapes from the movement of the ferns he’d touched. Leafy light frondy patterns, shot through with the upstairs lamplight that sifted through the courtyard.
Should we just check, inside? he said.
I pictured my mother, getting the message in the morning, heading to the airport, a small one in Nova Scotia, blistering with worry, transferring as many times as was necessary.
Why does she have a bucket? I said.
Who?
The mermaid, I said. Does she really need a bucket?
He stood. Come on, he said. Let’s go in.
33
At the top of the stairs, we stopped at Joseph’s door.
What’s this? George asked, pushing on the edge of the bed.
His, I said. It’s been out there for weeks. He said he wanted to sleep on the floor.
Huh, George said.
The phone receiver was on the bed. And this?
I put it there, I said. You can see, it’s broken.
I hadn’t locked Joe’s door, so an easy push opened it up, and we stepped inside, into the darkness. Shadows of the furniture in the same places, all things still and inert. The depth of that emptiness. If we’d walked in and found Joseph facedown on the carpet just then, as my mother had discovered him just a couple months earlier, it would’ve been cause for celebration. But the vacant sound of the place, like it was just waiting to produce an echo, hollowing out, cultivating its hollows, only made me want to turn around and leave.
George brought the phone inside and did the obvious, which I had not even considered, which was to check the base, by the kitchen.
Unplugged, he said. He stuck the cord back into the jack and returned. Took my hand again.
Which way’s his room? he said.
He seemed a little nervous, suddenly.
Haven’t you been here before? I asked.
He shrank a little, into his shoulders. Early on? he said. But it’s been a while, he said.
We walked down the hall, together. Other than the afternoon times with Eddie, I was rarely anywhere alone
