The Ramblers (6 page)

“I know all about this bench.”

H
ow about a coffee?” Patrick asks.

“I'd love to but my friend Smith always meets me over by the Gill after my tours—it's a kind of ritual we have. But maybe we could sit down for a bit?” Clio asks, her voice shaking.

They walk back into the park, through the Ramble, and sit on what she has come to think of as her bench. Patrick is quiet while she takes a moment, before she forgets, to quickly jot the day's findings in her journal. When she finishes, she tucks her notes away and looks over to him.

“That was something,” he says matter-of-factly, “though I certainly felt out of step with the others. Those folks seem to know what they're doing. That kid is amazing. He might know more about birds than you do.”

Clio laughs. “Jackson is by far my best student.”

“He made me miss my boys.”

“I'm sure you're excited to get home. But I know Henry is so glad you came,” Clio says. “And I love that you asked about hummingbirds. Have you ever seen one?”

“I can't say that I have,” Patrick says.

“They are the most amazing creatures,” Clio says. “Like flying jewels. So tiny and colorful and fierce.”

“Well, I'll be sure to add ‘see a hummingbird' to my bucket list, then. How many years have you been doing this?”

She thinks about this. “Let's see. A little more than twelve. I started right after 9/11. That was a tough time, but doing this each week helped.”

It was more than a tough time. Clio had just graduated from Yale and was new to the city, still harboring a tremendous amount of guilt about not returning home after graduation to be with her parents, who needed her. Her mother had stopped taking her medication and would call Clio at Smith's apartment at odd hours, telling her to come home. She'd send disturbing e-mails about government conspiracies and hummingbird deaths and Clio would torture herself, reading her mother's words again and again, committing her nonsensical musings to memory, etching them forever in her mind.

They're watching us, again, Clio, I see the red lights blinking in the windows! Did you know a hummingbird's heart beats over 500 times per minute and then shuts down almost completely at night, Clio? Many hummingbirds die in their sleep, Clio. Did you know that did you know that? IN THEIR SLEEP?

And then the attack on top of it all. She felt like the world might actually end on that impossibly gorgeous morning. When it happened, she was up at Columbia, waiting for her phylogenetics lecture to begin. She remembers her professor arriving a few minutes late, gripping the
lectern as if he might fall, his face ashen, his voice shaking, as he made the cryptic announcement into the microphone.
Because of this morning's unfolding events, class is canceled today.
He offered no details, but they swirled about her, bits coming from fellow students who were late to class, students who'd seen television coverage or heard something on the radio.

She stumbled back to the San Remo in a traumatized daze, inhaling the terrifying smell of destruction that would linger over the city for weeks. When she got to Smith's apartment she tried to call her parents to tell them she was all right, dialing the numbers over and over again for hours until she finally got through. Her mother went back to the hospital the next day and stayed there for weeks. Clio herself didn't sleep through the night for months, and that's how she found herself clutching her first prescription. Prozac. “A tiny dose,” her doctor said, “like nothing at all,” almost nonchalantly. Clio filled the prescription. Held the little bottle in her hands. When she took the first pill, swallowing it down with water from Smith's tap, she cried. This wasn't nothing for her.

After a few weeks, the medicine kicked in and she felt a new softness, a haze folding over her. The world seemed lighter and kinder, muted almost. She slept soundly. She stopped dreaming of falling buildings and plunging bodies, of dark plumes of smoke, of strangers' faces, of swollen eyes, of her mother sedated on a hospital bed in New Haven. When she did wake up in the night, she wasn't throttled with fear.

But she didn't feel like herself. Before this, she didn't even know what this meant—
feeling like herself
—but when it was gone, it felt like a loss. She missed the intensity, the rawness of the world, the ups and the downs. She even missed the panic attacks that had plagued her since the beginning of college. After many months, she called her doctor and said she wanted to wean off, and she did. Her doctor prescribed Xanax and told her to take it when she felt particularly anxious. This seemed to work, but sometimes it was difficult to catch the anxiety before it blew up. But one thing helped most. Wandering here, to the
park, specifically to the Ramble, the tangled wilderness at its center. When it was too cold and she was feeling panicky, she'd take refuge in the dark, damp halls of the ornithology collection at the Museum of Natural History instead. In these places, she felt she could breathe.

“I think back to the beginning,” Clio says, smiling, “and I was so intent on knowing every little thing about the Ramble and I prepared all of these notes, a cheat sheet almost, and I came up with all these ideas about the virtues of getting lost, about the wilderness of the world, and it was so unnecessary because I realized that these people could do their own Internet searches and collect all the information in the world, but they would come on my walks to find some quiet. They come to see birds and to escape, to breathe, not to be lectured. You know, I met Henry right here on this bench after one of my walks.”

Patrick nods. “Yes, I know all about this bench.”

“You do?” Clio says, incredulous, thinking again about that day last May.

It had rained that morning. It was a quick, furious pour and in its aftermath, the park was a glistening green. Clio and her walkers had ducked into Belvedere Castle for the thick of it and then resumed, soon serenaded by the Warbling Vireo's sweet songs. A Baltimore Oriole flitted back and forth from a nest in an oak tree.

After the tour, there he was, Henry, then just a curious stranger, a man with black hair sitting on the bench she'd come to think of as hers. From the short distance, a few yards at most, he struck her as pristine and professorial; he wore a tweed jacket more fitting for fall, a pair of gray slacks. He was hunched over, his head cradled in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. She wondered if he was crying or sleeping or drunk.

Her first instinct was to find a new spot, but the moment she began to turn away, the man lifted his head and looked at her. Oh, that first look. It was not the look of a stranger. There was nothing perfunctory about this inaugural glance. There was so much packed in there—warmth, sadness, curiosity, desire. His eyes were the ticket. A blazing blue in
the post-rain noon sunlight, they shone from behind heavy, sleepy lids. His cheeks, she saw now, were wet. There was no question he had been crying, but about what? He drew a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped his eyes and sniffled and smiled. And, again, this smile was rare, not run-of-the-mill, not a conciliatory, casual thing, but edged in mystery and meaning. He nodded toward the bench and uttered one word. A question.

Sit?

And the crazy thing is she did. She sat down next to him. Looking back, it makes little sense. She'd spent her life in self-protection mode, cultivating a safe distance from others, but there was something about this man. He was strikingly handsome, and Clio wondered vaguely if she was supposed to know who he was, if he was a movie star. Whatever it was, she responded to his simple, odd question and walked over, clutching her binoculars and bag and small notebook, and she sat next to him on the bench. The world went on around them.

He was very different up close, from this proximal vantage, leagues less polished. There was a keen scruffiness to him, an aura of unraveling; this relieved Clio, and her relief surprised her because this meant somehow that she already cared. His dress shirt was woefully wrinkled, stained with drips of coffee. His slacks were too short and tattered at the hem. His socks were a bright green with small white shamrocks. His shoes looked as if they might fall apart. One was untied.

I got caught in the rain,
he said, his voice deep and smoky, hints of an accent cutting through.

They talked. In staccato bursts at first, but then with an ease that seemed to startle them both. They talked about the park and the birds and the rain, about the fact that they'd both lost mothers, that he was opening a hotel. Hours went by. Clio felt thankful that Smith was occupied at a baby shower downtown. Otherwise, Clio would have run off long before to meet her friend.

“Henry called me that afternoon, you know,” Patrick says. “Told me about you. Before your head swells, I should mention that we talk
on that particular day every year, the day Mum died. I usually call him, to check in. He took it the hardest of all of us, was always quite the mother's boy, but this year he phoned me instead.”

“What did he say?” Clio says, curious, biting her bottom lip.

“Oh, I don't know, that he was off brooding in the park and he met the most becoming and unusual girl, that he blabbered on about our mum, that it just so happened that this girl had lost her own mother. He said he saw this as a sign. And I gave him a hard time for this foolish sign nonsense. I told him to ask you out. He said he already did.”

“Yes, he was pretty quick to do that,” Clio says.

“You don't understand how this shocked me, Clio. My brother is all about work. There have always been women, flings, yes, but he's never much cared about anyone. I pester him about settling down sometimes because he's so wonderful with my sons, but he's been adamant that marriage and a family aren't part of his plan. He's always had this thing about sticking it to our old man, showing him that he could come here to the States and make a name for himself, and I think he's become addicted to the grind, to the success, but then he calls me up that day and goes on and on about you and frankly it didn't even matter what he said, because I could detect this change in my brother and I had this good feeling.”

He pauses, looks over at Clio, but says nothing. She feels her body continue to tense, the tears rising. She blinks, willing them to stay put.

“What a sorry sight he was this morning at breakfast. All puffy eyed and wrecked. He had me to the room because he wasn't quite in the shape to show his face. You'd think with Henry's size he'd be able to drink us all under the table, but not so. He's always been the lightweight in the Kildare clan. So he was struggling mightily this morning and looked like shit. He's very worried about you, Clio.”

Clio nods and stares out at the Gill, the calm surface of the water shiny with sun. The two towers of the San Remo stand proud in the distance. The tears she's tried so hard to hold back rise now, pooling
in her eyes. A single droplet snakes down her cheek. She doesn't wipe it away.

“He's right to be worried, Patrick,” she says. “I'm a mess. He shouldn't waste his time on me. There are so many other women who—”

Patrick gently grabs her arm and she stops speaking.

“He only cares about one,” Patrick says firmly, fixing her with his eyes. “Trust me, Clio, this is all very new. He's scarlet for you, but he's shaken. As it seems you are. I'm not even sure what I'm doing here.”

Clio swallows and nods, looks down at the leaf-strewn path.

“I'm not so sure I deserve him.”

Patrick considers this and as he does a sinister silence takes hold. But then he shakes his head. “Nobody's perfect, Clio. Not even our Henry,” he says, his face easing into an earnest grin. “My mum had horror stories of what Henry was like as a little boy. She said he was an utter rascal. Apparently, he used to unscrew all the jars in the fridge, and he'd bury Mum's favorite silver necklace in the garden, and he once put ice cubes in my bed in the middle of the night while I was in the bathroom. The truth is, as the baby I idolized him, but he was certainly strange. Always reading books about faraway places. Always involving me in these elaborate and imaginative games. He's brilliant with my sons, I must say. They talk about Uncle Henry all the time.”

Clio imagines Henry goofing around with Patrick's little boys and the picture delights her even though it's somewhat difficult to conjure. She's never had the chance to see him around kids. Her mind wanders. What if . . . She stops herself from going too far with this.

Speaking of, Clio looks up and sees Smith approaching now on the path. The sight of her friend brings with it a wave of comfort, of relief. She wears her mother Bitsy's big sable fur and a pair of heeled boots. Something's up.

“Oh, I'm so sorry, I lost track of time,” Clio says. “That's my friend Smith coming to meet me.”

Smith walks up and throws her arm around Clio and kisses her hello. “God, it's freezing out here.”

“Smith, this is Patrick, Henry's brother. He flew in from California to see the hotel.”

Smith extends a leather-gloved hand and Patrick shakes it. “Well I can certainly see the resemblance,” Smith says, smiling flirtatiously. Smith has always known how to turn it on for attractive men. “The Kildare eyes.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Smith. I just had the fine privilege of following along with Clio on her bird walk. Learned a thing or two. In my estimation, a morning well spent, but I should get going and leave you two to do your catching up. Clio, if I don't see you again, I do hope you stay well.”

If I don't see you again. Stay well.

A lump forms in Clio's throat as she watches him go. Will she see him again? Was that it?

“He just showed up on my walk,” Clio explains. “Came to make sure his brother's highly questionable girlfriend is not a total mental case, and I'm not sure I've convinced him of that. How was your morning?”