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Authors: Alison Pace

Through Thick and Thin (31 page)

BOOK: Through Thick and Thin
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“Stephanie, I feel like I have so much to tell you. I feel like so much has happened, or maybe it’s just that it’s about to, but I have to go first, I have to do something first. I have to go, and then I’ll be back.”
“Are you okay?”
“I am. I’m good. I’m great. I promise. The bus stop is right near here, right? Do you think there’s a bus?”
“Yeah, it’s right up the hill. I’m sure there’s a bus soon—”
“Okay, I’ll call you later and explain this, all of it. But don’t worry because it’s all good.” Meredith says, and then leans in and hugs Stephanie again. She pulls back and looks at her right in the eye, and says, very seriously, very much like the Meredith one would expect, “It’s all going to be okay. You know that, right?”
“Well,” Stephanie says, going somewhere else for just a moment, but then coming back, “we’ll see.”
“No, really. Aubrey’ll pull through this with you there to stand by him. He will.”
“Ah, Aubrey,” Stephanie says, looking down at the ground. “Aubrey, Aubrey,” and as she says it, the repetition of his name, twice in a row, it reminds her of something so concretely, so completely, even though it was so many years ago now, even though it was, now that she thinks of it, a lifetime ago. She wonders if Meredith remembers, too. She wonders if there’s something about that, the
Aubrey, Aubrey, Aubrey
that has transported Meredith back to the living room in the apartment they shared on Eighty-fourth Street, so close to the river.
She looks up at Meredith, and Meredith is, almost in spite of herself it seems, grinning. She stops grinning and looks over cautiously at Stephanie. Stephanie smiles and shakes her head, it’s okay, and Meredith takes a breath first, and then says joyously, “Aubrey, Aubrey, Aubrey. He of the very cool name,” and laughs and Stephanie laughs, too, and then she smiles. It’s a bittersweet smile, part of it is at least, because it makes her think that you have no idea of how things are going to turn out, when you’re so young and so hopeful, and that no matter how much you try to make it so that everything looks perfect, so that everything could
be
a little bit perfect, it’s not going to be. And there’s a part of the smile, too, that doesn’t have any bitterness to it at all; there’s a part of it that remembers her and Meredith’s apartment and how she used to feel when Aubrey used to call. There’s a part of her that still believes that some things could go back to how they used to be.
“Okay. I’m gonna run!” Meredith says, looking over her shoulder to be sure a bus is not yet on the approach. “I’ll call you later. And I’ll explain all this running off to the bus!”
“Call when you can,” Stephanie tells her. “I’ll pick up on the first ring.”
“Oh, argh!” Meredith exclaims. “Ugh, don’t. Pick it up on the second. Or even the third.” And she’s almost turned around and then she pivots back toward Stephanie, gracefully pivots, Stephanie notices. Meredith leans in and hugs Stephanie one more time tightly, and lets out a joyous, “Whoop!” the likes of which Stephanie is sure she’s never heard come from her sister. Meredith puts her fingers to her lips and kisses them, releasing the kiss in the direction of the sleeping Ivy. She turns and starts running.
As Stephanie watches Meredith sprinting up the hill toward the bus stop, this little wonderful dog named DB Sweeney running jauntily along at her side, she reaches her hands up, clapping them together right above her head, without even realizing she’s doing it. She takes her eyes off Meredith for a moment to see if Meredith’s whooping or her clapping may have woken Ivy. And look at that, Ivy indeed is awake, but not crying or fussing or anything at all. She’s just staring out of her stroller, very serenely. Stephanie reaches in and unstraps a strap and pulls Ivy up to her. Together, they watch as Meredith crests the hill, right as the bus back to New York pulls into view.
She thinks about the things that she and Meredith said today. And she knows she’ll think about it all more, and they’ll talk about it all more, and she smiles at the realization of how very much she’s looking forward to later on this evening, or tomorrow, or sometime soon, receiving Meredith’s next call. She smiles also at the realization that she’s looking forward to something. As she turns away from the hill, holding Ivy over her shoulder, lightly pushing the stroller with her free hand, she pauses for a moment on the image of Meredith’s smile, on the image of her own, when they used to say, “Aubrey.”
“Aubrey, Aubrey, Aubrey. He of the very cool name.”
Meredith always said Stephanie had a special skill for meeting guys with the very cool names. And Meredith, so often lamenting the Jims, the Matts, the Joshs, had once told Stephanie that she felt she liked the Scottish names, the Gaelic names, the Celtic names best. Depending on the translation, Aubrey means King of the Fairies or Ruler of the Elves.
“King of the Fairies,” Stephanie says softly to herself, “Ruler of the Elves.” And the thing is, she thinks, is that there isn’t any way to know it at first. Because really, how could you? But what eventually happens is that as you get older, as you learn some things, as you “grow up,” as the saying goes, you figure out that elves don’t really exist, not even in the North Pole. Eventually you see that fairies aren’t real.
Stephanie holds Ivy close, and together they turn toward home.
twenty-six
good things come to those who wait
It has been a festival of public transportation to say the least. The bus from Ridgewood dropped her off at the Port Authority. From there, she took a crosstown bus over to the east side, and then a subway back to Union Square where it seemed she’d just been, maybe a lifetime ago. It’s actually turned out to be a very warm day, and she’s been hurrying, and carrying DB Sweeney over her shoulder in his Sherpa bag. She’s not looking her best.
She makes her way through the labyrinth of the Union Square station, and she has to look at a subway map, and then she’s on her way, she’s on yet another subway, and the announcer is saying, in a way that is helpful and informative yet also somewhat unintelligible, “Last stop in Manhattan.” And she thinks that’s nice that they say that, in case you weren’t ready to leave, in case you weren’t quite ready to go.
She scrolls through her iPod; she needs the right song. She briefly considers David Gray’s “This Years Love (It Better Last)” but even though she’s a pretty big David Gray fan, there’s something too sad about that song, there’s too much of a hint of “No, this isn’t going to work out after all” in it. And she’s sure that can’t be right. Keith Urban, “Making Memories of Us”? Too Nicole Kidman. Lighthouse, “You and Me”?
No,
she thinks, too Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake Gyllenhaal in the movie
Proof.
REM, “You Are the Everything”? Too something. Johnny Lee’s “Looking for Love”?
Ha,
she thinks,
look at that.
And then she smiles to herself, and then she takes her headphones off, turns off her iPod, and puts it away.
When she gets off the train, she reaches into her bag again and finds his card inside her wallet. She looks at the address on the front, and stands for a while in front of a map protected behind plastic, until she locates his address. She takes DB Sweeney out of his bag and looks around, nothing is blurry, everything is clear and in focus. She makes a left on Berry Street and begins walking quickly, and then jogging, in what she hopes, what she thinks, what she’s actually pretty sure is the right direction. She stops for a moment, and notices how quiet it is.
Look at that,
she thinks,
you really can hear the birds chirping in Brooklyn.
And she’s standing right outside his building.
I’ll wait,
she thinks,
if he’s not home, I’ll just sit down on the stoop right here, and wait.
She locates 2R on the nameless list of apartments and presses it. There’s a pause, a long one. And then, Gary.
“Who is it?” His voice comes through the intercom, crisp and clear and alive. And she knows that in yoga you’re supposed to really concentrate on living in the present, but for that one crisp, clear, and alive second, she’s pretty sure she can see her future. She can see herself looking across a room at Gary. He’s separating the movie section out from the rest of the paper, opening it up, spreading it out across the floor. DB Sweeney is there, too, right next to Gary. He’s pressing his two front feet into the floor, arching his back, and stretching his tail skyward. The upward facing dog. Gary is looking up at her, and he’s smiling. She’s pretty sure that in this future she can see, that DB Sweeney is smiling, too. And so is she.
Oh, and in the background? Pete Townshend is singing, “Let My Love Open the Door (to Your Heart).”
“Who is it?” Gary asks a second time.
She takes a deep breath, and presses the
Talk
button. And then she says, “It’s Meredith.”
adopt a dog today!
A few resources if you’re hoping to adopt a dog or help homeless animals:
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
www.ASPCA.org
 
Animal Haven Shelter
www.animalhavenshelter.org
 
Brooklyn Animal Rescue Coalition
www.barcshelter.org
 
The Humane Society of the United States
www.hsus.org
 
Maddie’s Fund
www.maddiesfund.org
 
North Shore Animal League
www.nsalamerica.org
 
 
The Washington Animal Rescue League
www.warl.org
BOOK: Through Thick and Thin
11.63Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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