All it means is that I have to work fast. It means I have to find Arbus before Stephen figures out a way to stop me. Or worse.
Chapter 23
JUST AS A FEVER makes cold feel colder, love can make loneliness feel lonelier.
She has not disappeared. She is still here with me. But there’s a part of her that’s disconnected. There’s a part of us that has retreated into her. We don’t talk about it, because every time I bring it up, it retreats a little farther.
We haven’t fought. But still it feels like we’re living in a truce time. Our happiness right now can only exist in a bubble of questionlessness, and I keep thinking of the questions that will cause the puncture, will ground us back into awkwardness, if not argument.
She doesn’t acknowledge any of this. To ask her, we are doing great. To ask her, Arbus is something that happened and is no longer happening. To ask her, we are in this together.
But still, I feel the loneliness. I feel the absence in the presence.
She notices. She has to notice. In her way—a way I am still learning—she tries to make amends. Not through disclosure, but trying to compensate for the lack of it. She brings flowers to my apartment, and instead of putting the whole bouquet in one vase, she leaves a flower in each room. We watch movies together. She stays over some nights. And in that intimacy, I can often forget. I can often lose the loneliness. But then I will wake up in the middle of the night. I will stare at her sleeping in the blue-dark. I will feel such tenderness . . . and I will also feel the pinpricks of all the things I am not saying.
She suggests we go to the park. She has to be at Millie’s in an hour, but there is still time for the park. I ask if she wants to invite Laurie along and she says no, this time is just for the two of us. I wonder if this means there’s something she wants to tell me. I wonder if she’s seen or learned anything more.
But maybe it’s the simple togetherness she wants, which is still a meaningful prize. She holds my hand as we make our way to Sheep Meadow—she holds it close to her side, against her hip, so it doesn’t look unnatural to people passing by. She’s also gotten a headset for her phone, so she can talk to me without getting stares. But today, we just walk. I am worried we’ve run out of words, and am hoping she is just saving them for later.
There are hundreds of people around us, most on blankets or towels, a few on lawn chairs. In summer, Sheep Meadow becomes something like the town square of Central Park—a place to gather, a place to picnic, a place to slip away from the tall buildings and expose yourself to the sun. To sit in the sun—a desire I am sure is as old as time. My mother had no idea what effect the sun would have on me, if any. Looking back, I realize she had no idea what the parameters of the curse were—was I invisible just to other people or invisible to the elements as well? Since sunscreen wouldn’t necessarily work, she kept me to the shadows, the shade.
Now I decide to risk it. Because this I know: I can feel the sun. I know what it’s like to bathe in it, to hold your face into it and feel the radiance settle lightly on your skin.
Elizabeth lays out a blanket, and I sit alongside her. To any observer, it will look like she’s waiting for her boyfriend to show up. Nobody will question this.
“Have you ever been to Shakespeare in the Park?” she asks me.
“No,” I murmur, shaking my head. I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that I don’t need to say “no” out loud when I’m shaking my head, not with her.
“We should go before the summer’s over. I’ll wake up at dawn and get two seats. It’ll look like you’ve stood me up.”
“You could give Laurie the seat. I can just sneak in behind you and stand on the sides.”
“No.” Elizabeth smiles at me. “I want to go with you. I want you sitting next to me.”
“I won’t argue with that. We better not tell Laurie, though.”
“If he wants to go, he can get up at dawn too.”
“What are the odds of that?” I ask.
“About the same odds as your grandfather treating us to dinner afterwards.”
There. She’s mentioned him. I wait for more, for this to be a transition into another conversation. But I wait for a few beats too long. By the time I realize it’s a dead end, it’s too late for me to construct a road.
“I was once Viola in Twelfth Night,” Elizabeth says. “We had a major shortage of boys interested in drama, so the boy cast as Sebastian was Korean. Everyone was very surprised when we ended up being twins in the end.”
“Why didn’t Laurie play your brother?”
“Ha! When Laurie was a freshman, he had these legendary fights with our drama teacher over the school musical. She wanted to do Annie Get Your Gun. He wanted to do this musical based on the life of this huge gay kid. She said tomato, he said to-mah-to-you-bitch, and as a result he was blacklisted from all future productions. The only role she would have given him in Twelfth Night was the role of the storm that caused everything in the first place.”
Elizabeth closes her eyes, leans back. “That feels like another time, another country. You think it will take you forever to break free, and then you break free, and there you are. Free.”
She turns her face away from me, towards the sun. I remain sitting up, looking at all the people around us, caught as they are in their own stories. As Elizabeth drifts off, I try to glimpse lines or paragraphs of what’s going on. I lose myself in others because I can never lose myself in myself.
“It’s nice,” Elizabeth murmurs.
“It is,” I agree.
* * *
She sleeps. In the middle of the park in the middle of the city, she sleeps. Like a child, napping during the day. Quieting herself. Resting.
It’s only as the hour turns, only as her time with Millie nears, that I have the heart to wake her.
“Wow, how long was I out?” she asks once I nestle her into consciousness.
I tell her.
“Sorry,” she says. “I guess I really needed that.”
She stretches out and looks around at the people around us. I find myself wondering if she’s seeing what I see. Or if there’s another element layered on top of it. What spells could all these people be under? What curses will destroy them?
If she sees any of this, it doesn’t show. She stands as any other girl would stand, gathers her things as any other girl would gather them. Her expression does not betray any sign of noticing spells or curses.