CHAPTER 14

Success

The next six months and two weeks of Leda’s life were unrecognizably calm. She found a certain focus within herself that would only be revisited the summer after her granddaughter was born. Her class schedule was fairly light, and on weekends she spent more time with her family. Her mom would tell her that she “looked healthy,” and that she “seemed happy,” and although Leda wouldn’t take much notice of her mother saying these things, they were true. She read a lot of Flannery O’Connor and on Wednesdays got soup at an organic soup place. She went to three shows with Anne at a little music club downtown. At one of the shows she got hit on by a cute boy named Caleb. He was tall and baby faced, and he told her that his band played at the club Monday nights.

“I have a band and we play Monday nights,” he said.

“Do you?” she said.

She didn’t believe him about the band, but it felt good to flirt. And when she left that night, she could feel herself float. Anne said: “Why didn’t you get his number? Why didn’t you want him to buy you a drink?” And Leda said: “After what happened with Alex I do not want to go out with anybody right now.” And Anne said: “What about marriage?” And Leda said: “I don’t know.” And she really didn’t know.

Most of her focus was on her writing, and she wrote some of her favorite pieces during this time. It was then that she first considered writing a novel. It was then that she saw herself as put-together and capable. When she blinked visions of how she considered herself, it was herself in a Chanel suit and heels clicking down the sidewalk. It was her linear by the way she stood, linear by posture.

On the last day of this six-month-and-two-week stretch of clarity, she opened a window in her apartment that she had formerly believed to be warped shut. The landlord had pointed it out when she moved in.

“That window won’t open, but all the others do,” he said. “It’s warped.”

She was lying around in pajamas and watching bad TV all day. It had been very cold, and so she’d decided to spend her Sunday inside. She’d made pasta and called her mom and wrote a poem about pumpkin carving. On an impulse she tried to open the window. She had never tried to do it before. The window stuck a bit, but as she bore her weight pushing up against the pane, it loosed and drew open with a long, heavy slide. The cold air hit her in a crisp, nice way. Outside was her city block and the darkness. She could hear distant traffic, but she didn’t really listen for it. The stars were fairly visible despite the brightness of the streetlamps. And when she breathed she could feel a coldness in her lungs that felt as young and fresh as she did then. Clicking heels in her mind, linear as an impulse.

When she went to bed, she shut the window but left it open a crack. She always slept better in the cold. And when she woke up she didn’t remember any of her dreams from the night, but it was morning so she felt the strange kind of promise of a new day.