I charged forward with my shoulder. I pushed him hard. There was this kind of oof, but I kept pushing. My legs churned, sliding on spilled lettuce leaves. He went down the ladder steps.
I put the bird down, finally. Without him looming over me, I was able to pop it into a cage. It was going to die anyway. It wasn’t sitting right; it was broken.
I looked down. Harry had fallen onto the back of his neck. His legs were diagonal up the steps; his head was flat on the carpet. His body looked short and strange to me from up here. It reminded me of Mantegna’s laid-out Dead Christ, which everyone studies. The way he used foreshortening of the legs to position the viewer, anyone looking at the painting is right there, at dead Jesus’ feet, near and kneeling. It’s like I was right there with Harry. It’s like this was real.
I had to walk sideways to get down past him. The phone rang. Four rings, the long beep again, “Gretchen, Paul, and Harry…” Ha. Ha. Ha.
It was Gretchen. I listened. It’s human nature to listen.
She was sorry, she said. It was she who had done it to the birds. She forgave, I don’t know what. She needed to be picked up. Her mother was… something. And the money.
She was suddenly bent on moving the money.
Charity. Immediately. I could hear the disgust in her voice. She was shoving the money away from her, like a plate of bad food. I needed until Tuesday. I needed.
I deleted the message. I took the keys out of Harry’s pocket.
I picked birdseed out from the tread of my shoes before I went downstairs.
The orange Sainsbury’s bags sagged by the front door. I put the milk away, and the hot cross buns, and the coffee beans. It seemed important. My fingerprints wouldn’t matter. They were already all over the place, they were supposed to be. It just seemed important that this not look sudden, not look caught-in-the-act. I pushed the empty bags in with the recycling under the sink. A small, white feather, which must have come off of me, was caught between them.
I picked it out very carefully. It was very important that nothing confuse the simplest explanation of what had happened, an explanation that didn’t include me.
I cupped my hands around the feather, so it wouldn’t waft away, and carried it up the stairs. At the end of the hall I stepped around the mess at the bottom of the ladder and inched my way up. At the top, the little bird, whose heart had beat so fast in my hand, was lying on its side but still visibly breathing.
I laid the feather on it. The little poof of white rode up and down, up and down.
I’ve driven their car before, once to get Gretchen to a lecture when her taxi didn’t arrive, and another time to pick up a package. I’d volunteered as an acolyte and friend. It seemed like a long time ago. I shifted the seat for my shorter legs. I always put it back when I returned, to be ready for Harry.
I turned left onto Barton and stopped at the light at the bottom of Grange Road. Six other cars idled with me. A dozen pedestrians flowed past on both sides of the street.
A pair of women walked up Barton together, from out of Wolfson College. They were dressed up. One wore gold, the other white. Knee-length dresses and feminine coats. Gloves. The one in white had a veil on her head, a short one, grazing her shoulders. Her hair was down. They both carried flowers. They were arm in arm, like European girls. Like Therese and Annick. They were heading toward the river.
It was Alice. Today was Dr. Keene’s wedding. I’d forgotten.
They crossed the road in front of me. The light turned green. I went. What else could I do? There were cars behind me. There was nothing for it but to go forward.
Alice was so beautiful that I cried.
CHAPTER 12
I woke up. It was dark and the clock said four. In winter, a dark four could be a.m. or p.m. and I didn’t know.
I still had all my clothes on under the covers. My jeans felt stiff, like casts on my legs, and pinched my stomach. I tried to swing my legs over the side, but there was friction against the bedclothes.
I was still wearing shoes.
“What the fuck?” I said out loud. I kicked, hard, until the covers ended up on the floor. They sucked one of my shoes with them, and I had to crawl around down there and stick my arm into the tangle of blanket and sheet to get it back out. It was an awful lot of fucking work just to get out of bed.
I got dressed and went outside. The long line of twinkle lights across the shops were on. People bustled. So, four p.m. December shoppers from the villages were wide from the bags they carried. There wasn’t room on the sidewalk for all of us; I got bumped on both sides. I put my hand on my cheek and shivered. How long had I slept?
My jacket wasn’t warm enough. I didn’t need one in California. I shouldn’t need one here either; it’s not like it ever snows. The only snow I got I’d had to make myself, little scraps of paper. The white Christmas reputation that England has is Victorian. You’d know that if you think about it. Those British-people-skating scenes on cards always have long dresses and muffs and sleighs. You don’t get snow here now, except maybe one day a year. It snowed once last year, and it didn’t stick or even slush. It hit the street and melted immediately. You could watch it happen but it didn’t stay and pile up. Which makes it not really snow, not the snow that I dreamed about when I was a kid. Snow is only snow when it’s accumulated. Snow is what happens after it’s hit the ground. The falling is just the way that it gets there.
It’s like a guy who touches you at a party isn’t really a boyfriend. It’s not like you can tell people the next day, He’s my boyfriend. Because he’s not, not until you see what sticks.
Nick looked upset. Not in my head; Nick wasn’t in my head. He was in a car at the intersection.
I was stopped at the corner with the flower shop. I was flanked by a window of bright living things, and the doorway was like this halo over me. Flat brass flowers were embedded in the sidewalk all up and down this road, scattered like they’d grown up through the concrete by accident. Someone had designed them and cast them and pressed them in at random, all the way from here to beyond the river. God, it was beautiful.
I think he saw me. He looked right in my direction, but he didn’t act like he saw me. There were other people around, so maybe he didn’t. He wasn’t driving. Someone else was driving. It was a woman. She drove the car through the intersection and on down Chesterton Road.
I leaned back against the shop door. Nick. He wasn’t gone. None of it had happened.
How much the fuck did I drink last night that I dreamed all that? Right?
I only needed to figure out how far back it all went.
I almost ran. I was so sure of what I’d find, I wanted to run. But I didn’t, because of the narrow sidewalks and all those fancy shopping bags hanging from everyone’s hands. So I kind of skipped and half jumped around, jogging but not really jogging, you know? I almost tripped over a busker’s bucket of coins.
The gates were closed. Of course they would be-Monday. Museums close on Mondays because they’re open on weekends. I didn’t rattle the gates; I didn’t need to. The window I was looking for was farther down the building. There-between the main stairs and the handicapped entrance. Over the giant Henry Moore. There. That window there.
Three Chinese vases, each as big as a toddler. I wrapped my fingers around the iron bars of the fence to hold myself up.
None of it had happened. None.
It was Christmas. It was presents and snowflakes and cards with prints of Victorian skaters. I hadn’t fucked it up with Nick; he wasn’t gone. Maybe I hadn’t even met him yet. If the vases hadn’t been shattered, I hadn’t even met Polly yet. I was still nineteen. I was young. I was happy. I was still a kid.