Ciaran in the bodega is a bald, old Irishman with nose hairs long enough to be mistaken for a mustache. His grown children work the night shift. One, Timothy, goes to City College. A Type Two employee, he’s saving to buy his girlfriend an engagement ring. The other, Ciaran Jr., is always in trouble: drugs, fights. He mocks his brother’s helmet. Ciaran thinks he steals from the register. I don’t doubt it; I’ve seen this son, a freckled lump of muscle. With me, Ciaran’s style is somewhere between flirtation and paternal worry. The balance is right. I like listening to his stories, the local gossip. He knows everyone in the neighborhood, who they’re screwing, what they owe the bank. I can’t put faces to names but it doesn’t matter. I find the smallness of life here refreshing, though maybe that’s condescending. The store smells like cat litter.
“Wendy,” Ciaran says. He was born in Galway, and still has the trace of an accent despite forty years in New York. This neighborhood used to be Irish, but Brooklyn’s a free-for-all these days, a mad rush to beat the market.
“Large coffee, two cream,” says Ciaran. I love the pride he takes in knowing my order. He often gives me small gifts: chocolates, hard candy, lollipops. I leave the gifts in a pile on my kitchen table. I kept the furniture that came with the apartment. Eventually I’ll decorate. I don’t plan to leave. I never eat the chocolates, but I like having them there.
I sit down on a high stool and hold Olivia in my lap. I drink the coffee as slowly as I can. I make a game of it, seeing how long I can pause between sips. I’ve traded my smartphone for an old-fashioned flip that doesn’t have Wi-Fi. I feel more present this way, and the hours feel longer, which I like. Even at home on the laptop, I don’t check my statistics. The knowledge that this freedom is a willful delusion doesn’t make me feel any less free.
I eat a vegetable sandwich that includes the avocados Ciaran’s begun to buy at my request. He sits next to me and makes faces at Olivia, who laughs. She’s an easy audience. The skin on Ciaran’s face is loose, as if he bought the wrong size shirt for his skull. He smells of cat shit. He tells me his wife always wanted a daughter. The ginger cat struts along the counter, one foot crossing over the other. It’s unsanitary. I don’t say anything. The cat likes Olivia and I sense the affection is mutual. I’m afraid of the cat, as I am of all animals. Olivia shows none of my fear.
“Look at her,” says Ciaran. He points at the cat. “I took her to the vet for her yearly checkup, and the vet says that if Ginger were a human she might be a gymnast. Isn’t that funny, a cat being a gymnast?”
I smile. Ginger sniffs around Olivia. Olivia laughs. Ciaran lets the cat lick an empty tin of tuna. He’s gentle with the animal, stroking its fur in a way that reminds me of my mother brushing my hair before bed. Maybe the cat and I have ginger affinity. Sometimes I say Nina when I mean Olivia. She’ll never know. I’m not sure to which she I refer.
There are plenty of seats on the subway. That’s one nice aspect of living this far out. I like to watch Olivia, imagine things from her perspective. I examine her features for signs of my own. People say she looks like me but I don’t see it. I don’t see Lucas either, though I’m always searching. Nina was my mother’s name. Olivia’s name belongs to no one. I imagine she’s free of the burden of history, but each time we leave the insular paradise of our apartment I know this is not the case.
We switch at Fourteenth Street. The busker who’s been here for decades is still singing the same Beatles songs over the same wrong chords and grinning. I find his smile upsetting: its width and consistency. I used to hate his voice, the way he reached for inaccessible notes. Now I think I’d miss him if he disappeared.
We wait a long time for a train. Someone’s selling churros caked in powdered sugar. Olivia’s face looks blotchy. I worry she’s developing a rash. Two teenagers remind me of Ricky and Michael. They sit across from me on the train and I can’t help staring. They’re wearing shorts and their legs are hairless. They seem almost afraid of Olivia, as if looking might turn them back into babies themselves.
I don’t get off at Fifty-Ninth. Something about the crowds outside Columbus Circle, the heat of exhaust pipes, manure from Central Park, people smoking outside the mall. Instead we ride up to Seventy-Second and walk south. There’s a new storefront on West End, a bookstore. This is an interesting development. There hasn’t been a nearby bookstore in years.
The new store was formerly a flower shop. I once went with my father to pick up roses for my mother. He bought her flowers every Friday. Only now I can’t remember if the flowers we bought that day were for my mother or her grave.
The light inside the store is low. People must come here to hide. The store carries an impressive amount of small press books and poetry. I imagine it’s a Columbia hangout, or
