Untethered (14 page)

A
s the plane lowered over Dulles the following Sunday afternoon, Char told herself the buzz in her rib cage was a physical response to the quick descent, not an emotional reaction to being back in the city she adored. It felt disloyal to Allie, being thrilled to be here.

But as she disembarked and fought her way through the crowds to the curb outside baggage claim, she couldn't help smiling. Ah, people. Masses and masses of noisy people, pushing past her as they barked orders into cell phones, or stopping immediately in front of her to check a text or find their bearings on the arrivals level. This sort of thing annoyed her when she still lived here. Now it delighted her.

By the time she spotted Ruth's car inching toward her in the congested traffic, Char was practically laughing. She ran to the car, tossed her bags in the backseat, and dove into the front. They held up traffic as they embraced, Char leaning at a rakish angle to keep Ruth from having to move too much.

“How's your leg?” Char regarded her friend's legging-clad thighs,
looking as strong as ever. Ruth was into everything: CrossFit, kickboxing, Bikram yoga. “Looks like the break didn't slow you down much. Your once-casted leg is already stronger than both of mine.”

“Pilates!” Ruth said. “There's this new Tower class at a place near campus. Sped up my recovery like you wouldn't believe. So then I started this thing called ViPR—my Pilates place added it. It's this cool new workout combining strength and cardio, where you—”

“Do you remember where I flew in from?” Char said. “We don't even have a Y. Not that I'd go if we did.” And she wouldn't, nor would she ever go to any of the many different niche studios Ruth was always discovering, ones that popped up—along with craft beer places and tapas restaurants, loft apartments and trendy kitchen supply stores—every time a pocket of the city began to show signs of gentrification. “You wouldn't last a week there.”

“Oh, I don't know about that,” Ruth said. She flicked her indicator light and tried to pull into the lane that would lead them away from the airport. “I quite liked it the few times I went to see you.” She craned her neck around to find an opening in the traffic as, behind her, a cabdriver leaned on his horn and yelled out his window for her to get moving.

“And I could last plenty long without this traffic. And jerks like this guy.” Ruth waved in her mirror to the cabbie and gunned her car into the next lane, replacing the irate cabdriver in her rearview mirror with an irate delivery truck driver who gestured wildly as she cut him off.

Char lowered her window, allowing the cacophony of horns and voices and the smell of exhaust to envelope her. She inhaled deeply and let her breath out in a long, contented stream. “Ah. The noisy, smelly big city. I've missed this.”

Ruth laughed. “Give it five minutes.”

As Ruth drove, she filled Char in on the departmental gossip, the latest building projects on campus, and her always-hilarious forays into the dating world. Char brought Ruth up to date on the continuing saga of Allie and her mother.

Later, as they drove east along U Street, they both turned left and craned their necks to peer down 14th.

“I was wondering if you'd remember,” Ruth said.

“It was only six years ago. I'm not ninety-five.”

“Do you want me to turn up here and circle back so we can drive past it?” Ruth asked. “Or park somewhere? We could go in. Get a drink. Sit in the same spot at the bar, even.” When Char didn't respond, Ruth said, “Or maybe you don't ever want to see it again. I'm sorry. I don't know how these things work.”

“Neither do I,” Char said. “If there's a manual for how to do this right, I haven't read it.”

“So . . . ?” Ruth said, slowing as they approached the next cross street and moving to the left lane. “Am I turning and circling back?”

“I don't think so. It's one thing to take walks down memory lane when I'm in the privacy of my own home. I'm not sure how good an idea it is for me to do it in a bar full of strangers. Not at this point, anyway. Maybe another time.”

Char felt the pressure build behind her eyes as the sense of loss overcame her. It was ridiculous, she told herself. She had never lived in D.C. with Bradley, and they had only spent a fraction of their total time together here. Ridiculous or not, however, the memories of those times crashed down on her in a way they never had when she called them up in Michigan.

Suddenly, she could see the dark interior of the pub, feel his hand on her knee, smell him as he leaned in closer. She had thought it was so he could be heard over the music, until she realized there was no
music. When she told Ruth this later, Ruth said, “You noticed there wasn't any music? I'm surprised. I didn't think either of you noticed anything. Including the existence of a bartender. Or other people.”

Char had loved Bradley in Mount Pleasant, in the kind of familiar, comfortable, together-forever kind of way that you can come to love a person. That kind of love, of course, was what she missed the most. Being in their house, in the rooms where they had shared that kind of love, left a constant, hollow ache, like a part of her had been removed.

But being here, a block away from the bar—four or five blocks now, since Ruth had kept driving—reminded her of the other, newer love they had shared. The unfamiliar, uncomfortable, heart-thumping feeling of falling for someone so fast it made you dizzy. And seeing, from the way he looked at you, that the same thing was happening, impossibly, to him.

Char put a hand on her chest. It felt as though someone were pressing a sharp blade against her sternum, compressing her rib cage and cutting her skin at the same time. It was piercing, excruciating.

“Are you okay?” Ruth asked.

“I'm remembering what it was like to fall in love with him.”

“Oh.” Ruth laughed. “You had me worried.”

“It's nothing. Just a little hard to breathe. It feels like I'm being stabbed in the heart with the world's sharpest knife.”

“Kind of like how it felt back then,” Ruth said, laughing again.

“Ha, yes.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Ruth asked, turning serious. “Stop the car? Do you need air?” She rubbed Char's arm.

“No, thanks,” Char said.

Ruth rubbed Char's arm again. “I hope it fades quickly.”

Char closed her eyes. “I don't.”

•   •   •

O
n Monday morning, Char and Ruth bought coffee at a shop near campus and sipped as they walked. The same crowded sidewalks that had Ruth cursing under her breath made Char grin ear to ear.

“Really?” Ruth said. “You miss bumping into students, having them step on your heels, change direction in front of you so you have to stop short and spill your coffee?” Ruth had done just that, and now had a brown stain the size of a fist on the front of her dress. “You don't have your own brand of this at CMU?”

“Probably,” Char said, “but I'm not there enough to notice. I park in the morning, I walk to the journalism building, I leave in the evening. I eat lunch in my office—with Colleen, you remember her. I don't get out much. Maybe I will, after this.”

“Because you like jam-packed sidewalks as much as you like honking cars and the smell of exhaust?” Ruth said. “Is that it?”

Char shrugged. “I like being in the middle of civilization. I never realized how much, until I found myself in the middle of cow pastures and cornfields.”

“You know,” Ruth said, “I've been warning myself for the past few days to not give you the hard sell on coming back. I didn't want to put that pressure on you. Now I see that my kind of pro-D.C. propaganda wouldn't have worked anyway. I had the thought of taking you past the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, showing you the sailboats on the Potomac. Meanwhile, the real sales features for you are crowds and pollution.”

“This works, too,” Char said, gesturing. They had arrived at the edge of the Woods-Brown Amphitheatre, and as it had done the
first time she had seen it, it took her breath away. “I never get tired of looking at this.”

Ruth turned away quickly, but not before Char saw the mischievous smile on her friend's face. “It's possible I remembered that,” Ruth said.

“Thanks for staying away from the hard sell,” Char said, laughing.

“Call me when you're finished,” Ruth said, when they reached Dean Winchester's office. “You'll be terrific.” She held Char's shaking hands in hers. “Don't be nervous. He's as nice as he ever was.”

And he was. The dean asked her about Michigan, about Allie, about life without Bradley. He pointed out the new photos in his office. He'd had three new grandchildren since Char had moved to Michigan, and the ones she had met, who were toddlers at the time, were now in upper elementary school.

They weren't family, Char and the dean. He wasn't a father figure. He hadn't swooped in after her parents died and told her she could always count on him. She hadn't spent weekend mornings at his house, sipping coffee in the yard and chatting with him and his wife while the grandkids ran around.

But she had met his family once, at an awards ceremony where he had been recognized. She had heard about his daughter's wedding, the birth of his son's twins. She had a history with this man. He was like the traffic noise, the throng of students on the sidewalk, the smell of exhaust on the D.C. streets. He was familiar. He made her feel like she was home.

•   •   •

O
n Char's last night in town, they walked from Ruth's brownstone to their favorite restaurant, around the corner. Char felt like a tourist, gazing up and down the street, gawking with delight
at a clump of students walking on the opposite sidewalk, drunk already, two of them shuffling backward, singing far too loudly while another tried to shush them. She gave a twenty to a woman sitting in the entryway of a closed office building. Ruth gaped at the amount and said, “If you keep that up, you won't be able to afford to live inside the loop.”

As she pulled open the door to the restaurant, Ruth said, “I haven't organized anything special. I sent an e-mail last week, saying anyone who's free could join us but I haven't had time to follow up with anyone.”

The moment they stepped inside, a cheer erupted from a long table in the back. Almost the entire journalism department had come. “Right,” Char said, bumping Ruth with her shoulder. “Nothing special.”

Ruth linked arms with Char and led her toward the others. “Not that I'm trying to pull out all the stops to get you to come back.” She swept her arm from one end of the table to the other, indicating Char's former colleagues, most of whom were now on their feet, arms wide to embrace her. “Not that any of them are, either.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The dean sent his regrets,” Ruth said. She stopped moving and turned to face Char. “Don't take it the wrong way. He had something going on. You know his calendar.”

“Oh, I get it,” Char said. “I was amazed enough that he could spare an hour for me on Monday, with as little notice as I gave him.”

“He wouldn't have done that for just anyone, you know.”

Ruth let go of Char's arm as nine other members of the journalism faculty rose to embrace their former colleague and friend. Char had been in touch over e-mail with the group in the years she had been in Mount Pleasant. She had heard from each of them, by
written card, delivered bouquet, or phone call—or all three—in the months since Bradley died. Three of them had offered to have her stay with them this week, though none had been surprised to hear she had already made plans with Ruth. If the department was like a family, Char and Ruth were the set of twins.

Ninety minutes later, Char set her wineglass on the table, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes. Around her, the voices of her former colleagues rose and fell along with the clinking of cutlery against dishes as they discussed and debated and joked in pairs and small groups and sometimes as an entire table. They talked about their classes, this year's crop of students, the administration, local politics, foreign policy. And with regard to the last two subjects, of course, who was covering them better—print or online media sources? Trained reporters or self-taught bloggers?

“You okay?” Ruth asked, leaning close.

“More than okay,” Char said, opening her eyes.

“Does it feel strange to see everyone?”

“What's strange is that it
doesn't
feel strange. I've been gone almost six years. I thought there'd be this awkward reentry phase. But I feel like I stepped away for a long weekend. It's not that nothing's changed. I mean, I can't keep up with some of the subject matter at all. But the feeling of sitting here with all of you? It all feels so natural.”

She had forgotten this aspect of a city like D.C. Here, almost no one was a “townie,” which meant no one was an outsider. There were Beltway insiders, of course, but politicians and professors were different breeds. Everyone at the table had come from someplace else—another school, another city, another country—and their disparate backgrounds helped create a common identity. Some had come, left (on sabbatical, on assignment, for another job), and
returned. It wasn't exactly a revolving door, especially in the tenured ranks. But it wasn't a place like the small town Char had just flown in from, where it took less than a minute to spot the new person, and a long, long time before the new person started to feel like he or she fit it.