I see myself pacing Yvonne’s little apartment. I see myself staring into her mirror. I see myself hiding her copy of Crime and Punishment in the oven, going through her kitchen cabinets, standing before her open refrigerator. That’s what I remember most. The plastic container of slivered almonds, the frozen chicken breast, the end slices of an old bag of bread. Baking soda. A bottle of blackberry preserves. Half a jar of that Paul Newman dressing. Two containers of Dannon plain nonfat yogurt, dated December 17. My birthday.
How dare she.
I pulled jars and containers out of that refrigerator and stacked them on the counter. I piled a layer of slivered almonds on a piece of bread, spread some blackberry preserves across it, folded it, and ate it. The almonds were cold and crunchy and dry. The bread was stale. I chewed, staring ahead at the wall. I washed the food down with a swallow of bottled water. Then I made another. I spread the jam, not bothering to catch the crumbs, though I did wash the knife. It was a sharp knife. I tried to eat a handful of dried oatmeal, but it wouldn’t go down. I dipped an old carrot in the Paul Newman dressing and ate that. I remember thinking how Yvonne could have walked in and found me like that. I see myself knowing I should stop, knowing Yvonne could walk in at any moment. But I couldn’t stop.
There was nothing for her to eat when she got home. She’d probably be starving unless she’d eaten on the plane. But I doubt she eats airplane food. Maybe she’d pocketed a packet of cashews or one of those wedges of processed cheese. I always do, even though I end up throwing it out. Anyway I couldn’t worry about her. I was starving.
You look pretty hot in that bikini. I kept hearing it. The way you keep hearing an annoying voiceover in a movie.
I checked Yvonne’s closet, pulled out a knee-length black leather coat. It was from the back of the closet and she’d probably never miss it. I almost switched it for something she’d be more apt to wear, but I really did like this coat. I put it on, stuffed my own jacket into a canvas bag I found on her top shelf, made the bed, and checked the bedroom for signs of me. On the way out I took a swallow of old red wine she’d left on the counter. It was only later I remembered I’d left the bough in the window.
I missed the first appearance of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I missed Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald live on TV. I missed the moment when the Challenger exploded into that incredible martini glass. I’ve seen clips of these events again and again, but there’s something about seeing a thing before you know it will be an important part of history. Your history. When you’re taken unawares. Even a thing like the Beatles. I have gone over that particular Sunday again and again and I just can’t remember how it is possible I missed the Ed Sullivan Show that night. And no matter how exciting the clips are, no matter how many times I see them, I still know it has already happened. I’m not seeing it for the first time. It’s part of history.
So I see myself going through Yvonne’s apartment. I think I can remember every moment, but I can’t really remember doing it for the first time. It all feels like something I watched after the fact. I write it down and on paper it feels more real than it did when it actually happened.
The snow had stopped. It was cold and everything had that tinge white socks get when you wash all your clothes together. The wind had overturned a garbage can and banana peels and coffee grinds and wadded paper littered the sidewalk. It must have rained because the streets were puddled and slushy and the water seeped through my suede boots. I stopped by a dirty-looking Dunkin’ Donuts to get a coffee and on impulse bought a powdered sugar doughnut that looked as dirty as the snow. I tore a corner off the coffee lid, sipped the coffee, and ate the doughnut as I walked down Broadway trying to balance the coffee, my own bag, and Yvonne’s canvas bag. I looked inside the Korean vegetable stand to see if that woman was there. She wasn’t. Just the old guy. The sneaker vendor had added a stash of umbrellas and plastic juice containers and red-and-green striped scarves. He was reading a copy of the Post. The headline said HOLIDAY HORROR!, but I couldn’t see the photograph. I passed by, then went back to the Korean place to buy a banana. I was starving and thought it might fill me. It was five o’clock and I couldn’t imagine getting on a subway. I didn’t want to take a cab. I thought of taking the bus, but after calculating how many calories I’d consumed in the last half hour I decided to walk down to Soho. It was only a matter of a hundred and fifteen blocks. I was warm enough except for my feet which were soaked. And I wasn’t in a hurry to get to the loft.
You look pretty hot in that bikini.
I avoided the corner where the guy was still selling Christmas trees. At Broadway and 95th, by the marquee for Symphony Space, I stopped to call Sarah. A couple was arguing about whether to walk or take a bus—the woman yelling, the man calmly telling her it was not a big deal, not to get all worked up, and if it meant that much to her they could walk. So what they’d be late. I couldn’t hear the rest and then I saw them get on a bus.
I got Sarah’s machine. I remembered she’d said she was meeting Elly for coffee. Four hours is a pretty long coffee. I slammed the phone down without leaving a message. I don’t like Sarah moving in on my territory. Without me there, anyway. I called Brian and there was no answer. It infuriates me that he doesn’t have a machine. It’s just obstinance. I stuffed a bunch of quarters into the pocket of Yvonne’s coat. Then I called Yvonne, got her machine, and hung up. I did it six times so the light would be blinking when she got home.
You look pretty hot in that bikini. I kept hearing it as I walked downtown. I pictured confronting Mark and Yvonne in her apartment. Just standing there waiting calmly for them to explain. For Mark to start going on about Nietzsche. And I’d just stand there, quiet and controlled.
The streets went by in a blur. It seemed like everyone was shouting at one another. A young kid grabbed an orange from an outdoor fruitstand and ran away laughing as the owner screamed down the street after him. A woman slapped a crying child again and again outside the window of Tower Video, in front of a huge poster of It’s a Wonderful Life. A man and woman stood by the Regency, the woman cried, sobbed really, touching the arm of the man’s jacket as he looked past her with no discernible expression. That made me cry.
When I got to Columbus Circle, I was crying so hard I could barely see. I leaned against the scaffolding around the entrance to the subway and tried to calm down. Then I doubled over, holding my stomach, sobbing. I felt a hand on my back.
“Hey, you okay?”
I felt arms lifting me up. A young man put his hands on my shoulders and pressed me gently to tilt my head.
“Hey,” he said again, “you okay?”
He was black, about nineteen. He had a blue striped cap pulled over his ears. He looked so concerned, so sympathetic, I wanted to lean into him and rest. I wanted him to hold me.
“Come on, girl, talk to me. Something happen to you?”
I shook my head, but couldn’t stop crying.
“You’re gonna get hit by a car you walk around like that.” He’d slid his headphones off his ears. They dangled around his neck. I could hear the buzzing music, the rap beat.
“Hey. How you gonna get home doubled down and dragging there like a old dog?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound normal, “I was wondering how I was going to get across that street.”
It was a huge intersection. You couldn’t tell exactly which way the light was flashing or when to walk. I always hate crossing there. I rested Yvonne’s canvas bag beside a garbage can.
“Tell you what,” he said. “We’ll cross together. I’ll skate you across.” He hooked his arm through mine and picked up the canvas bag.
“Thanks,” I said. Sometimes only a stranger can make you feel better.
He looked at me with a big grin. I think he was trying to cheer me up.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I guess I just need to walk.”
“Walk?” he said. “It’s cold as fuck out here. How far you walking?”
“Soho,” I said.
He shook his head back and forth, slowly. “Another crazy white girl,” he said. “Girl, why don’t you take a cab? That’s a pretty nice coat you got there, so I know you could spring for a cab.”
“I stole this coat,” I said. Then I started to laugh.
He shook his head again. The halo of music buzzing out of the headphones and cold fog puffing out of his mouth when he talked made him seem like some kind of angel.
“Do you ever go ice skating?” I asked.
“Shit, you are crazy.”
“I’m serious,” I said. It had just occurred to me I could stop by Rockefeller Center. It was just a few blocks down. I could skate for a while and maybe it would make me feel better. The lit-up tree. All those people. At any rate it would burn off a few more calories.
The guy just looked at me. “Crazy white girl,” he said.
“My husband’s having an affair,” I said.
“Shit,” he said. “That all? Wha’chou goin’ on for? Nobody dead, right?”
He had a point. I could feel myself starting to calm down. Looking at it from a larger perspective.
“I was in her apartment,” I said.
He squinted at me. “Shit,” he said. “You didn’t kill her, did you?”
I laughed, but it started me thinking. Normal people kill. Crimes of passion. Girls who kill their fathers after school, women who bludgeon their husbands. People like me. Who knows what you’re capable of. I remembered Brian telling me he’d done something. In Ireland. Something he couldn’t tell me. Something terrible. And I knew that whatever it was I’d try to understand it because of how I feel about Brian. But it’s possible he did something really awful. It’s possible I could do something really awful. One drink too many. Mark saying the wrong thing at the right time. I thought I should curtail my drinking for a while. Not drink anything at all. You can’t be too careful. Then I thought about Sleeping Beauty, how her parents tried to avoid the prophecy that she’d be pricked to death. Outlawed spindles, needles, any sharp objects. But she was caught by an antique sewing spindle she just happened to find in an attic somewhere. It was fate. She couldn’t avoid it. Maybe I was fated to kill Mark.
“Hey,” he said again, “you didn’t kill her, right?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t kill her.”
“So cool it. It’s Christmas. It’s a beautiful night. You’re young, beautiful. And you haven’t killed anybody. So screw ’em.”
He offered me a cigarette. I shook my head.
“What’s your name?”
“Terry.”
“Terry what?”
“Terry Spera.”
“Italian?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, Terry Spera, you’re Catholic, right?”
I nodded.
“Well,” he said, “I’m Chris. You can call me St. Chris ’cause I helped you cross that big street.”
I laughed. He laughed. He danced around a little to the buzz his earphones were making. Put his hand on my shoulder.
“Wha’chou got in this sack?” he asked, holding out Yvonne’s canvas bag.
“My jacket,” I said.
“You took hers?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Shit,” he said. “My grandmother’s Santería. She could tell you what to do with that shit. But you’re crazy enough. You better stay away from that shit.”
It hadn’t occurred to me to cast a spell on Yvonne.
“You gonna be okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I said. “Sure you don’t want to go for a skate?”
He did a comic imitation of a figure skater, waved, and danced off. Like he was some kind of angel that appeared at a crucial moment. Mark says I’m always looking for signs and I guess it’s true. It’s hard enough living without feeling bad for expecting there to be guideposts here and there.
I liked the idea of going to Rockefeller Center. It seemed like a cheerful thing to do. A holiday thing. I didn’t stop to consider that it would be filled with people—couples, lovers, families. Children with their parents. Nobody out there alone. Just by themselves. It was only about 6:30 but it looked like midnight. I went downstairs to rent skates, but the line was long and my feet were freezing so I walked back up.
I hadn’t been in a pair of ice skates in over eight years. And only four times in my whole life. When I was eleven the people next door had moved and left assorted pairs of skates and my parents had taken the three of us to Wollman Rink—one of the few times they ventured into the city. I loved it. The music, the crowds, the smell of winter, and the lit-up buildings overlooking Central Park. Something, excitement maybe—I almost threw up from the excitement—propelled me around the ice. When I let go of the rail and tested my skates (I was wearing three pairs of socks because the skates were too big) it was like I’d been skating all my life. It was like flying. It seemed everyone was admiring me—the line I made as I handled each curve. Every face was smiling at me. I was a combination of Audrey Hepburn and Marlo Thomas. Even the buttons on my coat seemed beautiful. It’s one of those memories that’s surrounded by a kind of glow, one you return to again and again, not really knowing what made you think of it. A feeling of pure joy and belonging in the world. No fear. No dread. No worry about school the next day or going to hell or being caught by your mother in a lie. Just light and color, the smells of cold air and women’s perfume and hot chocolate and steamy fat pretzels. The world dazzling and beautiful around you. Maybe there are only a few moments like this in your whole life. “Movie moments” I call them. It’s funny how the times you feel the most real in your life it feels like you’re in a movie. I read an article in the Science Times about how memory works, and why you remember certain things in certain ways, but I can’t really remember what it said. Anyway, it took a while before I saw Carla and Lisa clinging to the rail right beside two boys fistfighting on the ice, and my mother ordering me back to the café enclosure. “You’ve had enough now,” she said as I sobbed and begged to stay. Even now, given the distortions of memory, I think I couldn’t have had more than a few minutes of skating. “You only think of yourself,” my mother said and slapped me when I wouldn’t stop crying. In front of all those people. Then we all sat inside, damp and uncomfortable and drinking hot chocolate. And Carla threw up in the slush.
I tied my scarf around Yvonne’s coat collar, pulled my beret down over my ears, and wriggled my toes and fingers to get warm. I held my hands under my armpits. “Silver Bells” was playing on a scratchy recording and the skaters whirled and spun and fell and showed off. There was every kind of skater—but they were all together. . . . in the air there’s a feeling of Christmas. Children laughing, people passing, meeting smile after smile . . . I saw a young girl in a red skating skirt wobbling yet clearly delighted with herself and I thought of her having one of those experiences she’d always remember. A movie moment.
I walked around and around the perimeter of the rink. Banging into people. Stepping around wheelchairs. I knocked over a little child by accident and tried to help him stand. When his mother bent to lift him I noticed someone had stickered her fur coat with an orange circle that read If you think this looks good on you, you should see how it looked on its original owner. A Muzak version of “MacArthur Park” started playing. Hardly a Christmas song. Someone left the cake out in the rain . . . I remember every word of it, every intonation. Why should I remember that song and forget whole pieces of novels I’ve read?
I was walking around the rink, piecing together the words to “MacArthur Park” and trying to remember how we remember and suddenly I was overcome with nausea. I felt hopeless. Like my life was over. I remembered Carla throwing up by the hot chocolate counter and tried to find a bathroom, but the place was so crowded I couldn’t move through fast enough. I just wanted to get out of there. I just wanted to get home.
I didn’t go home that night. I called Brian from a pay phone in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and waited for him to ask me over. To tell me to stay put and he’d be right there to pick me up.
“Terry, what’s wrong? You sound funny,” he said. “Come on, talk to me. Where are you?”
I could still hear Christmas songs from the skating rink. Have yourself a merry little Christmas . . . A Pakistani pretzel vender dropped a handful of hot chestnuts across the slush and two children started throwing them at one another. A man with no jacket and bags rubber-banded around his feet came up to me for money. I must have looked a sight: head against the phone dial, freezing, wiping my nose with my glove.
“Change,” he said.
I wanted to kill him. I leaned into the pay phone. I looked for some change. I thought of Sarah seeing this homeless woman sprawled on the sidewalk with a paper cup and a dog, and thinking, “You think you have it bad. My girlfriend just left me.” The man gave up and moved on. When I found some quarters I stretched the phone cord as far as I could to follow him, but he was already too far away.
“Change . . . change,” he kept repeating, as though it were some kind of divine warning.
“Terry, get in a cab and come over,” Brian said.
I wasn’t too far gone to notice that Mark would have done it a little sexier.
“Are you sure you want me to?” I asked. I tried not to sound too needy.
“Just get in a cab. Come on now.”
I must have looked pretty desperate because it took a while for a cab to stop.
Heading downtown I watched each block pass, bringing me closer to Brian. Fifth Avenue was jammed with tourists and shoppers and I blessed the cab driver who had on a Haitian station and spared me any more Christmas music. I didn’t want to hear anything vaguely recognizable. Not even English. The deejay yammered on in French and that was fine with me.
“Would you like me to change the station?” the driver asked.
“No,” I said. “C’est bonne.”
“Tu parle français?”
“Oui,” I said. Though I don’t.
I took out my journal and tried to write a poem about skating as a kid but I couldn’t get the feeling right and ended up writing a lot of rhyming jibberish. A limerick about Yvonne and the Sorbonne.