Still Me, Page 26

  "My girlfriend," said Treena.

  "Oh. Nice." Lily shook Eddie's hand, then turned back to me. "So. I'm still planning on making Granny bring me out to New York. She says she won't do it while it's this cold but she will in the spring. So be prepared to take a few days off. April totally qualifies as spring, yes? Up for it?"

  "Can't wait," I said. To the side of me, Mum deflated quietly with relief.

  Lily hugged me hard, then ran from the front step. I watched her go and envied the robustness of the young.

  20

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Great picture, Treen! Really lovely. I liked it almost as much as the four you sent yesterday. No, my favorite is still the one you sent Tuesday. The three of you at the park. Yes, Eddie has got really nice eyes. You definitely look happy. I'm really glad.

  Re your other point: I do think it might be a little early to frame one and send it to Mum and Dad but, hey, you know best.

  Love to Thommo,

  Lx

  PS I'm fine. Thanks for asking.

  I arrived back in the kind of New York blizzard that you see on the news, where only the tops of cars are visible and children sledge down normally traffic-filled streets and even the weather forecasters can't quite hide their childish glee. The wide avenues were clear, forced into compliance by the mayor, the city's huge snowplows chugging dutifully up and down the major thoroughfares like gigantic beasts of burden.

  I might normally have been thrilled to see snow like that, but my personal weather front was gray and damp, and it hung over me like a chill weight, sucking the joy from any situation.

  I had never had my heart broken before, at least not by someone living. I had walked away from Patrick knowing deep down that, for both of us, our relationship had become a habit, a pair of shoes you might not really love but wore because you couldn't be bothered to get new ones. When Will had died I had thought I would never feel anything again.

  It turned out there was little comfort to be had in knowing the person you'd loved and lost was still breathing. My brain, sadistic organ that it was, insisted on returning to Sam again and again throughout my day. What was he doing now? What was he thinking? Was he with her? Did he regret what had passed between us? Had he thought of me at all? I had a dozen silent arguments with him a day, some of which I even won. My rational self would butt in, telling me there was no point in thinking about him. What was done was done. I had returned to a different continent. Our futures lay thousands of miles apart.

  And then, occasionally, a slightly manic self would intervene with a kind of forced optimism--I could be whoever I wanted! I was tied to nobody! I could go anywhere in the world without feeling conflicted! These three selves could jostle for space in my mind over a few minutes, and frequently did. It was a kind of schizophrenic existence and completely exhausting.

  I drowned them. I ran with George and Agnes at dawn, not slowing when my chest hurt and my shins felt like hot pokers. I whizzed around the apartment, anticipating Agnes's needs, offering to help Michael when he looked particularly overworked, peeling potatoes alongside Ilaria and ignoring her when she harrumphed. I even offered to help Ashok shovel snow off the walkway--anything to stop me having to sit and contemplate my own life. He pulled a face and told me not to be a crazy person: did I want to see him out of a job?

  Josh texted me on my third day home, while Agnes was holding up individual shoes in a children's shop and talking in Polish to her mother on the phone, apparently trying to work out which size she should be purchasing and whether her sister would approve. I felt my phone vibrate and looked down.

  --Hey, Louisa Clark The First. Long time no hear. Hope you had a good Christmas. Want to grab a coffee sometime?

  I stared. I had no reason not to, but somehow it felt wrong. I was too raw, my senses still full of a man three thousand miles away.

  --Hey Josh. Bit busy right now (Agnes runs me off my feet!) but maybe sometime soon. Hope you're well. L x

  He didn't respond and I felt strangely bad about it.

  Garry loaded Agnes's shopping into the car and then her phone buzzed. She pulled it from her bag and stared at it. She looked out of the window for a moment, then at me. "I forgot I had an art lesson. We have to go to East Williamsburg."

  It was patently a lie. I had a sudden memory of the awful Thanksgiving lunch, with all its revelations, and tried not to let it show on my face. "I'll cancel the piano lesson, then," I said evenly.

  "Yes. Garry, I have art lesson. I forgot."

  Without a word, Garry pulled the limo onto the road.

  --

  Garry and I sat in silence in the car park, the engine running quietly to protect us from the chill outside. I felt quietly furious with Agnes for choosing this afternoon for one of her "art lessons" as it meant I was left alone with my thoughts, a bunch of unwelcome houseguests who refused to leave. I put my earphones in and played myself some cheerful music. I used my iPad to organize the rest of Agnes's week. I played three online Scrabble moves with Mum. I answered an e-mail from Treena, asking whether I thought she should take Eddie to a work dinner or if it was too soon. (I thought she should probably just get on with it.) I gazed outside at the glowering, snow-laden sky and wondered if more was going to fall. Garry watched a comedy show on his tablet, snorting alongside the canned laughter, his chin resting on his chest.

  "Fancy a coffee?" I said, when I had run out of nails to chew. "She's going to be ages, isn't she?"

  "Nah. My doctor tells me I got to cut down on the doughnuts. And you know what happens if we go to the good doughnut place."

  I picked at a loose thread on my trousers. "Want to play I Spy?"

  "Are you kidding me?"

  I lay back in my seat with a sigh and listened to the rest of the comedy show, then to Garry's labored breathing as it slowed and became an occasional snore. The sky had begun to darken, an unfriendly, iron gray. It was going to take hours to get back through the traffic. And then my phone rang.

  "Louisa? Are you with Agnes? Her phone seems to be turned off. Can you get her for me?"

  I glanced out of the window to where Steven Lipkott's studio light cast a yellow rectangle over the graying snow below.

  "Uh . . . she's just . . . she's just trying some things on, Mr. Gopnik. Let me run into the changing rooms and I'll get her to call you straight back."

  The downstairs door was propped open with two pots of paint, as if in the middle of a delivery. I ran up the concrete steps and along the corridor until I reached the studio. There I stopped at the closed door, breathing hard. I gazed down at my phone, then up to the heavens. I did not want to walk in. I did not want irrefutable proof of what had been suggested at Thanksgiving. I pressed my ear against the door, trying to work out if it was safe to knock, feeling furtive, as if it were I who was at fault. But all I could hear was music and muffled conversation.

  With greater confidence I knocked. A couple of seconds later, I tried and opened the door. Steven Lipkott and Agnes were standing on the far side of the room with their backs to me, looking at a stack of canvases against the wall. He rested one hand on her shoulder, the other waving a cigarette toward one of the smaller canvases. The room smelled of smoke and turpentine and, faintly, of perfume.

  "Well, why don't you bring me some other pictures of her?" he was saying. "If you don't feel it really represents her, then we should--"

  "Louisa!" Agnes spun around and threw up a palm, as if she were warding me off.

  "I'm sorry," I said, holding up my phone. "It--it's Mr. Gopnik. He's trying to reach you."

  "You shouldn't have come in here! Why you didn't knock?" The color had leached from her face.

  "I did. I'm sorry. I didn't have any way of . . ." It was as I was backing out of the door that I glimpsed the canvas. A child, with blond hair and wide eyes, half turned as if about to skip away. And with a sudden and inevitable clarity I understood everything: the depression,
the endless conversations with her mother, the endless toy and shoe purchases . . .

  Steven stooped to pick it up. "Look. Just take that one with you if you want. Have a think about it--"

  "Shut up, Steven!" He flinched, as if unsure what had prompted her reaction. But that was what finally confirmed it.

  "I'll meet you downstairs," I said, and closed the door quietly behind me.

  --

  We drove back to the Upper East Side in silence. Agnes called Mr. Gopnik and apologized, she hadn't realized her phone was off, a design fault--the thing was always shutting down without her doing it--she really needed a different one. Yes, darling. We're headed back now. Yes, I know . . .

  She did not look at me. In truth, I could barely look at her. My mind was humming, marrying up the events of the last months with what I now understood.

  When we finally reached home I walked a few paces behind her through the lobby, but as we got to the lift, she swiveled, stared at the floor, and then turned back toward the door. "Okay. Come with me."

  --

  We sat in a dark, gilded hotel bar, the kind where I imagined rich Middle Eastern businessmen entertained their clients and waved away bar bills without looking. It was nearly empty. Agnes and I sat in a dimly lit corner booth, waiting as the server ostentatiously offloaded two vodka tonics and a pot of glossy green olives, trying and failing to catch Agnes's eye.

  "She's mine," Agnes said as the server walked away.

  I took a sip of my drink. It was ferociously strong and I was glad. It felt useful to have something to focus on.

  "My daughter." Her voice was tight, oddly furious. "She lives with my sister in Poland. She is fine--she was so young when I went that she barely remembers when her mama lived with her--and my sister is happy because she cannot have children, but my mother is very angry at me."

  "But--"

  "I didn't tell him when I met him, okay? I was so . . . so happy that someone like him liked me. I didn't think for one minute we would be together. It was like a dream, you know? I thought, I will just have this little adventure, and then my work visa will finish and I will go back to Poland and I will remember this thing always. And then everything happened so fast and he leaves his wife for me. I couldn't think how to tell him. Every time I meet him I think, This is the time, this is the time . . . and then when we are together he tell me--he tells me that he doesn't want any more children. He is done, he says. He feels he has made big mess with his own family and he does not want to make it worse with stepfamilies, half brothers, half sisters, all this business. He loves me but the no-children thing is deal breaker for him. So how can I tell him then?"

  I leaned forward so that nobody else could hear. "But . . . but this is batshit crazy, Agnes. You already have a daughter!"

  "And how can I tell him this now after two years? You think he will not think I am bad woman? You think he will not see this as terrible, terrible deceit? I have made huge problem for myself, Louisa. I know this." She took a swig of her drink.

  "I think all the time--all the time--how I can fix this? But there is nothing to fix. I lied to him. For him, trust is everything. He would not forgive me. So is simple. This way he is happy, I am happy, I can provide for everyone. I try to convince my sister to come to live in New York one day. Then I can see Zofia every day."

  "But you must miss her terribly."

  Her jaw tightened. "I am providing for her future." She spoke as if reading from a long-rehearsed mental list. "Before, our family had not so much. My sister now lives in very good house--four bedrooms, everything new. Very nice area. Zofia will go to best school in Poland, play best piano, she will have everything."

  "But no mother."

  Her eyes suddenly brimmed. "No. I have to leave Leonard or I have to leave her. So is my . . . my . . . oh, what is word? . . . my penance to live without her." Her voice cracked a little.

  I sipped my vodka. I didn't know what else to do. We both stared at our glasses.

  "I am not bad person, Louisa. I love Leonard. Very much."

  "I know."

  "I had this idea that maybe when we had been married, when we had been together a while, I could tell him. And he would be little bit upset but maybe he could come round. Or I could go backward and forward to Poland, you know? Or maybe she could come stay for a bit. But things just get so--so complicated. His family hate me so much. You know what would happen if they found out about her now? You know what would happen if Tabitha knew this thing about me?"

  I could guess.

  "I love him. I know you think many things about me. But I love him. He is good man. Sometimes I find it very hard because he is working so much and because nobody cares for me in his world . . . and I get so lonely and maybe . . . I do not always behave perfectly, but when I think of being without him I cannot bear it. He is truly my soul mate. From first day, I knew this."

  She traced a pattern on the table with a slim finger. "But then I think of my daughter growing up for next ten, fifteen years without me and I . . . I . . ."

  She let out a shuddering sigh, loud enough to draw the attention of the barman. I reached into my bag, and when I couldn't find a handkerchief I passed her a cocktail napkin. When she looked up there was a softness to her face. It was an expression I hadn't seen before, radiant with love and tenderness.

  "She is so beautiful, Louisa. She is nearly four years old now and so clever. And so bright. She knows days of the week and she can point out countries on the globe and she can sing. She knows where New York is. She can draw a line on map between Krakow and New York without anybody showing her. And every time I visit she hangs on to me and says, 'Why do you have to go, Mama? I don't want you to go.' And a little bit of my heart, it breaks . . . Oh, God, it breaks . . . Sometimes now I don't even want to see her because the pain when I have to leave is . . . it is . . ." Agnes hunched over her drink, her hand lifting mechanically to wipe the tears that fell silently onto the shiny table.

  I handed her another cocktail napkin. "Agnes," I said softly, "I don't know how long you can keep this up."

  She dabbed at her eyes, her head bowed. When she looked up it was impossible to tell she had been crying. "We are friends, yes? Good friends."

  "Of course."

  She glanced behind her and leaned forward over the table. "You and I. We are both immigrants. We both know it is hard to find your place in this world. You want to make your life better, work hard in country that is not your own--you make new life, new friends, find new love. You get to become new person! But is never a simple thing, never without cost."

  I swallowed, and pushed away a hot, angry image of Sam in his railway carriage.

  "I know this--nobody gets everything. And we immigrants know this more than anyone. You always have one foot in two places. You can never be truly happy because, from the moment you leave, you are two selves, and wherever you are one half of you is always calling to the other. This is our price, Louisa. This is the cost of who we are."

  She took a sip of her drink and then another. Then she took a deep breath and shook her hands out across the table, as if she were ridding herself of excess emotion through her fingertips. When she spoke again her voice was steely. "You must not tell him. You must not tell him what you see today."

  "Agnes, I don't know how you can hide this forever. It's too big. It--"

  She reached out a hand and laid it on my arm. Her fingers closed firmly around my wrist. "Please. We are friends, yes?"

  I swallowed.

  --

  There are no real secrets among the rich, it turns out. Just people paid to keep them. I walked up the stairs, this new burden unexpectedly heavy on my heart. I thought of a little girl across the world with everything but the thing she wanted most in the world, and a woman who probably felt the same, even if she was only just beginning to realize it. I thought about calling my sister--the only person left with whom I might be able to discuss it--but knew without speaking to her what her judgment would be. She wo
uld no more have left Thom in another country than she would have cut off her own arm.

  I thought about Sam, and the bargains we make with ourselves to justify our choices. I sat in my room that evening until my thoughts hung low and black around my head and I pulled out my phone.

  --Hey, Josh, is that offer still open? But for, like, a drink drink instead of coffee?

  Within thirty seconds the answer pinged back.

  --Just say where and when, Louisa.

  21

  In the end, I met Josh at a dive bar he knew off Times Square. It was long and narrow, covered with photographs of boxers, and the floor was tacky underfoot. I wore black jeans and scraped my hair into a ponytail. Nobody looked up as I squeezed my way past the middle-aged men and autographed pictures of flyweights and men whose necks were wider than their heads.

  He was seated at a tiny table at the end of the bar in a waxed dark brown jacket--the kind you buy to look like you belong in the countryside. When he saw me, his smile was sudden and infectious and made me briefly glad that someone uncomplicated was pleased to see me in a world that felt impossibly messy.

  "How you doing?" He stood and looked like he wanted to step forward and hug me but something--perhaps the circumstances of our last meeting--prevented him. He touched my arm instead.

  "I've had a bit of a day. A bit of a week, actually. And I really need a friendly face to have a drink or two with. And--guess what--yours was the first name I pulled out of my New York hat!"

  "What do you want? Bear in mind they do about six drinks here."

  "Vodka tonic?"

  "I'm pretty sure that's one of them."

  He was back within minutes with a bottled beer for himself and a vodka tonic for me. I had shed my coat and was oddly nervous to be opposite him.

  "So . . . this week of yours. What happened?"

  I took a sip of my drink. It sat too comfortably on top of the one I'd had that afternoon. "I . . . I found out something today. It's kind of knocked me sideways. I can't tell you what it is, not because I don't trust you but because it's so big that it would affect all sorts of people. And I don't know what to do about it." I shifted in my seat. "I think I just need to kind of swallow it and learn how not to let it give me indigestion. Does that make sense? So I was hoping I could see you and have a couple of drinks and hear a bit about your life--a nice life without big dark secrets, assuming you don't have any big dark secrets--and remind myself that life can be normal and good, but I really don't want you to try and get me to talk about mine. Like if I happen to drop my defenses and stuff."