That was all right. Standing still was what she was supposed to do when she became separated from a parent. “If both of us run around, you see, the chances are that we’ll never be in the same place at the same time,” her mother had explained.
“Like atoms,” Sophie said.
“I guess so … But if one of us stays put, the moving one will eventually cross the still one’s path.”
It made sense. Sophie had imagined that, in such an event, she would turn cool, a lizard under a leaf.
Instead she turned hot, even feverish. She sang “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” under her breath. The sign changed to walk. She sang “Rhody” backward. Her mother would soon cross her path. But her mother could not leave the stroller. The sign changed back to don’t walk. Her father, then. He would stride across the street, two leaps would do it, he would scoop her up, he would put her on his shoulder, though she was much too big for such a perch. She would ride there for blocks and blocks; the restaurant would have a peaked roof and a lot of panes in the windows; they always chose restaurants like that.
JOANNA HAD MANEUVERED the stroller rightward, had taken a step or two, had turned back for Sophie, not seen her, looked right, twice, and then left, down a pedestrian walkway, and spotted amid a crowd of kids around a mime the fair hair and multicolored backpack of her daughter. Her heart bobbled like a balloon.
“Where’s Sophie?” Ken said at her shoulder.
She pointed confidently and pushed the stroller close to the slanted window of a bakery. She’d lift Lily out and all three would have a good view of the mime — he was deftly climbing an invisible ladder — and of the delighted children, particularly Sophie in her new backpack and her old turquoise jacket, only that kid’s jacket was green and she was taller than Sophie and her hair was yellower than Sophie’s, much yellower. Only an unnatural parent could mistake that common candle flame for her dear daughter’s pale incandescence.
SOPHIE, TELLING HERSELF to stand still, was jostled from behind. She turned to object, but the jostler had disappeared. The sign changed to walk. Without forethought, though not unwillingly, she leaped into the street.
Sweaty, gasping, she fetched up on the opposite curb. She did not see her family. She saw strollers here and there, but none of them were Lily’s; they were the fold-up kind for regular kids. She saw a wheelchair. That wasn’t relevant, she scolded herself, brushing her nose with the back of her hand. Lily would walk someday. A jester with a painted white face seemed to wave. She ignored him. She drifted toward the center of the square. Earlier she had noticed a newsstand … a kiosk, her father had said.
The newsstand turned out to be a bright little house of magazines and newspapers and maps. A man wearing earmuffs sat at a cash register. The place shook slightly every few minutes: the subway was underneath.
There Sophie waited, alone and unknown and free.
By now her parents would have retraced their steps. They had already crossed her empty path.
She felt most comfortable near the far wall. Foreign newspapers overlapped one another. There were French papers. She recognized Le Monde from that trip to Paris. The World; her father, if he were here, would request the translation. There were newspapers from other parts of Europe, too — she could tell that their words were Spanish or Italian, though she did not know the meanings. In some papers even the alphabets were mysterious. Letters curved like Aladdin’s lamp, or had dots and dashes underneath them like a second code. Characters she had seen in Chinese restaurants stood straight up, little houses, each with a family of its own. Lily might learn to read, her mother had said. Not soon, but someday. Until that day, all pages would look like these, confusing her, making her feel more left out. Still, in a few years’ time she would be walking. She would stand close to Sophie. Maybe too close. What does it mean? she would whisper. What does it mean? she would whine, and pull at Sophie’s sleeve.
The man with the earmuffs gave Sophie an inquisitive look. She turned to study a newspaper. Each word was many letters long, and each letter was a combination of thick and thin lines. She knew all at once that this was German. Her father played Bach on his harpsichord, from a facsimile of an old manuscript; the title and the directions were in German. If Sophie stayed in this pretty little house for the rest of her life she could probably learn one or two of the languages whose alphabet was familiar. Here was how she would do it: she would read the English papers thoroughly and then, knowing the news by heart, she would figure out the words’ partners in the other papers.
JOANNA AND KEN were behaving sensibly. Joanna was waiting near the mime, who was now walking an imaginary tightrope. He stopped, alarm on his painted face. He was pretending to lose his balance. His stiffened body canted slowly sideways in discrete jerks like a minute hand until at ten past the hour he collapsed into himself and in a wink became a man hanging from a tightrope, left arm upward and unnaturally long, right one waving desperately, legs splayed.
Ken had gone looking for Sophie. He would follow their route backward to the museum, into the museum, from the Burne-Jones camp-counselor angels to the Degas and the Renoir. He would return to the library if necessary; Joanna imagined his tense interrogation of the man who inspected backpacks. The mime was collecting a thicker crowd; she had to crane her head to watch him. Sophie would enjoy this outdoor show once Ken found her, if she had not been snatched into a car, if she were not to end her life as a photograph on a milk carton. Joanna must not think that way, not not not; she must imagine normal outcomes like normal mothers, like mothers of normal children. The girl has wandered off, ruining our day because of some rush of curiosity, hyperintuitive they call her, I call her inconsiderate, doesn’t she know enough to make things easier, not harder, don’t we have it hard enough already with little Miss Misfit here, oh, my sweet Lily, my sweet Sophie, my darling daughters; and so I’ll gaze at Lily dozing and think of Sophie when she was an infant and slept on her side in her crib with arms extended forward and legs too; she looked like a bison on a cave. I remember, I remember … She probably remembers, she with the genius IQ who can sing songs backward. Ken loves to show off her memory and her queer talents, his prize onion. The mime’s pedaling to safety; he’s earned that applause. Haven’t I got coins for his hat? But I can’t leave the stroller, we can’t leave each other, any of us. Of course Sophie will remember to stand still as soon as she realizes she’s lost. Where would she go? She doesn’t know this town. She’s seen only the museum, she didn’t like it, and the library, she hated it; Ken was hurt. She liked the subway. All kids like the underground: sewers, buried treasure, zombies. All kids like trains. They want to be headed somewhere, inbound, outbound …
Ken’s face was putty.
“The library?” she needlessly asked.
“No,” he panted.
“Come,” Joanna said. “I know where she’ll go.”
SOPHIE, WRIGGLING ONE ARM out of the backpack, decided to start with the French newspapers. She was to study French next year any way, with the rest of the special class. But she was pretty sure that she wouldn’t soar with the new subject. She was tied to her first language, hers and Lily’s. Still, she’d learn the rules. She’d listen and sometimes talk. Now, staring at Le Monde, pretending that the man with earmuffs had gone home, she let her eyes cross slightly, the way she wasn’t supposed to, and she melted into the spaces between the paragraphs until she entered a room beyond the news-print, a paneled room lit by candles, walled in leather volumes, the way she had wanted the fifth-biggest library to look. Though more books had been written than she could ever read — she had realized that as soon as she saw Section 4 East — she would manage to read a whole lot of them, in golden dens like the one she was seeing. She would read as many as her parents had read. She would grow as large as her parents had grown. Like them she would study and get married and laugh and drink wine and hug people.