and ka-boom.”
“Ka-boom?”
“Everything’s changed.”
“What do you mean?” Nat said. He himself had earned extra money on snow days, shoveling driveways.
“It’s a different planet,” Izzie said. “This feeling-I couldn’t put it into words back then-of freedom. Real freedom, like I was no longer in the grip of all these forces.”
“What forces?”
“The forces, Nat. The responsibilities, the duties, the relationships.”
“Life as we know it.”
“Exactly. Snow days are different. Like after the world ends but you survived.”
“And you get the same feeling down here.”
“Close. How did you know?”
Later they were in the bedroom, on the canopied bed, the candles all out, the silence complete.
And not long after that: “The things you do,” Izzie said.
Anything. They seemed to be able to do anything together, without need of consultation, without fear of a misstep. He moved slightly so she could put her head on his chest if she wanted; she did.
“Think it’s still snowing?” Nat said.
“Got to be,” said Izzie. “That’s why I picked this place-it was snowing when I interviewed.”
Picked this place. Nat thought of Mrs. Smith and Miss Brown, all it had taken to get him here. “And Grace? Is that why she picked it too?”
“She didn’t really care.”
“Didn’t care?”
“Where she went. College isn’t really that big a deal, is it? If I liked it, that was good enough for her.”
Silence.
“And when you went with your father and Grace stayed with your mother?” Nat said. “How was that decided?”
“What a funny question.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s one of my earliest memories, maybe the first. It was supposed to be the other way, me with my mother, Grace with my father. Then there was this goodbye scene in Grand Central Station. Suitcases, porters, the old nanny and the new one, probably the Albert of the time, the four of us. The four of us of the time. And Grace-do you know Grand Central?”
“No.”
“There’s a mezzanine with a restaurant above the main concourse, or at least there was then. This was before the renovation, when it was still full of homeless people. We were having hot chocolate while someone got the tickets for Connecticut. Grace’s chocolate spilled-I can’t remember how, but I can still see the chocolate flowing across the table and dripping onto her lap. She just watched it, didn’t even flinch. Then she looked up and said she wanted to go with Mommy.”
Silence. And yes, like a snow day, everything muffled, the world disconnected.
“But it was all arranged. That’s what they said, my mother, my father, one of the nannies, someone. No one took her seriously. The next thing, she’d climbed on top of the railing, over the concourse, and spread her arms. I can see that too, much stronger than the spilled chocolate, even. On tiptoes on the railing, like Acapulco. It was in my dreams for years.”
Silence.
“What was that?” Izzie said.
“What?”
“That noise.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
They listened, heard nothing but snow day silence, insulated from sound by the earth around them.
“Then what happened?” Nat said.
“This homeless guy, going from table to table with a paper cup, grabbed her and sat her back down in her chair, like it was part of his routine, kind of roughly. Couldn’t have happened now, of course, the way it’s all cleaned up. Then the tickets came. I went to Connecticut and Grace went back to the apartment with our mother. This was on Fifth Avenue, not where we are now. And that was that. The next year, our mother met someone new and moved to Paris, and my father ended up with both of us, back in the city.”
Silence.
“But I never understood what she was basing her preference on,” Izzie said.
“How do you mean?”
“We hardly spent any time with either of them. I don’t know why it made such a difference.”
Nat didn’t either, but he could see that chocolate dripping into Grace’s little lap as though he’d been there. In the darkness, he felt Izzie’s eyes on him.
“What’s your earliest memory?” she said.
“The same kind of thing.”
Izzie took it for a joke, and laughed.
They climbed the rope ladder, started back through the tunnels, Nat leading the way with a flashlight. “A teacher?” said Izzie; he felt her breath on the back of his ear. “Is that really what you want to be?”
He replied with a question of his own. “What did you put?” The rest of the cards had been forgotten after Mrs. Uzig’s appearance.
“Guess.”
“Spearing fish,” Nat said.
Pause. “I wish I had,” Izzie said. “I’m starting to think you know me better than I do.”
He had a troubling thought. “You didn’t put what Grace did?”
“Oh, no.”
“Then what?”
“Now I’m not telling.”
“Even if I guess?”
Somewhere during this dialogue they’d stopped, faced each other, embraced; the flashlight beam pointing here and there without guidance.
Izzie started to reply, then made a little sound, a quick inhale. “Look,” she said, and pointed to the quivering circle of light on the tunnel ceiling.
A bat hung upside down from a plastic pipe, its eyes wide open, liquid, intelligent.
“Our cave,” said Izzie. “Our bat.”
The thing hung motionless.
They climbed into the janitor’s closet in the basement of Plessey, out into the hall, upstairs to the main floor. Late night, snow coming down hard.
“Snow day tomorrow,” Izzie said, “for sure.”
She led him out the door and onto the quad, the snow in her hair, on her eyelashes. “Kiss me,” she said. “Kiss me right now.”
He did. Everything was all right, would be all right; whatever problems there were lost their power, like normal forces on a snow day, just as Izzie had said. He loved her, no doubt about it, and would have said so; but she was already gone, running across the quad toward Lanark, snow falling behind her like curtains.
In the morning snow still fell, but not as hard. Nat put on his boots, warm and waterproof, sixteenth-birthday present from his mom, now a little tight, and walked over to the student union cafeteria. Breakfast smells woke him up. He piled food on his tray-scrambled eggs, bacon, corn flakes, English muffin, banana, milk, juice, coffee. The cashier took his meal card, swiped it through the machine, swiped it again, once more. “Card’s blocked,” she
