Chasing Windmills

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  I just kept looking away from him, trying to fall back on the most basic animal signals. Trying to say with my body language, I don't want a fight. But I could feel his energy crackling in the air between us. He wanted a fight. So we would probably have one.

  “You look terrible,” he said.

  “I didn't sleep.”

  “What's with you and sleeping all of a sudden?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Well, it's unacceptable.”

  “I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it. I can either sleep or I can't.”

  “You'll take one of my sleeping pills.”

  “No I won't.”

  “Excuse me?”

  A silence fell, a cold, purposeful silence, one intended to give me time to see that I had stepped way over the line. The energy that had crackled before was spitting now. I held very still, the way people are told to lie facedown and play dead during a bear attack. It was that serious. I tried to plot my best way out.

  I said, “It's not safe to take somebody else's prescription medication. We don't even weigh the same. You're bigger than I am.”

  I could see by his face that I had successfully evaded him. I was relieved, and proud. I'd played my hand brilliantly. I'd squeezed away from his rage by saying just the sort of thing he would say. By being exactly the person he taught me to be.

  “That's a good point,” he said. “We'll have to take you to the doctor and get you your own prescription.”

  Then I had a choice to make, and I opted for survival. “Okay, fine,” I said. It was easier to go get the pills with him and flush one down the toilet every night. The less said, the better.

  But the bad energy hung over the house for most of the morning. Every move I made could have been the wrong one. He was just waiting to jump me. But I thought out everything I said or did three or four moves in advance, as if we were playing chess. It was exhausting, and the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to drift into a dream state where I could replay last night and dream about tonight. But in a war zone you stay focused and watch your step.

  • • •

  I MISSED MY RUN a second day in a row because I was so frazzled and exhausted. But I did take a nice long walk with Delilah. In the park, which is farther than we usually go.

  Instead of a fan, she brought an umbrella. A very colorful, fancy umbrella with Paris scenes on it, like cancan dancers and the Eiffel Tower.

  “Expecting rain?” I asked, but she explained that it was a sun umbrella.

  She spun it around a little in her left hand every now and then, like she was waltzing along with a parasol. And it always made her laugh. All my bad mood from the morning just fell away, and I felt okay. Tired, shell-shocked, but okay.

  Of course, she was very excited about my news of the previous night. Wanted to know all the details. “Did she say anything to you?”

  “She said, ‘Hi.'”

  “And what did you say?”

  “‘Hi.'”

  “Well, I guess that's some kind of a start.”

  “And then, before she got off the train, she said, ‘Maybe I'll see you tomorrow.'”

  “Oooooooh-weeee. Now we're gettin' somewhere.”

  I could really hear and feel her excitement. It was amazing and wonderful that somebody could be so happy over something that was happening to me.

  She stopped walking suddenly, and I stopped, and she looked into my face for a long time. I wasn't sure why, but I said nothing.

  “I would think you'd be happier today.”

  “I'm just tired,” I said. But that wasn't entirely true. And I think she knew it. We started walking again. Silently. We passed a woman walking about ten dogs all at once, and a group of old women on roller skates. Well, actually, they passed us. Then I said, “It's my father. He's noticing that I'm not sleeping. And he wants to do something about it. I'm worried I'm not going to be able to keep slipping out much longer.”

  Then we walked a little more in silence. Down to where you can see Bethesda Fountain. Delilah wasn't twirling her umbrella anymore. She seemed lost in thought.

  “I know you don't want me to ask you this,” she said, and I braced for the worst. “I know you'd rather I don't, but I got to ask. Can't keep it in another minute. How come that father of yours don't want you to know anybody?”

  For reasons hard to explain, I jumped to defend him. “He's only trying to take good care of me.” She just raised one eyebrow. “He says people will always let you down.”

  “Well, now, that's true,” she said. And I was surprised. I didn't expect her to agree with my father on anything. “People will always let you down. And do you know why? It's because they were put on this earth for a reason. But the reason is not you. They were not put on this earth to take care of you. But that don't mean you shouldn't even know ‘e m.”

  “He says all I should need is my family.”

  “Honey, that ain't even hardly a family. It's just one man. Takes more than that to make a family, even if that was true. What about your mother? Don't you ever see her?”

  “She died when I was seven.”

  “Oh. I'm sorry to hear that, child. Don't you have grandparents?”

  “Not really. My father's parents are dead. And my mother's father died a long time ago. My Grandma Annie is still alive, I think. But my father doesn't want me to talk to her.” I knew the minute it came out of my mouth how that would sound. So I jumped to defend him again. Before she could even raise an eyebrow. “It's not what you're thinking. It's because she's crazy. He doesn't let me talk to her because she's crazy.”

  “Crazy how? How's he know she's crazy? She locked up somewhere?”

  “No. She manages a motel out in California. Out in the Mojave Desert. So, no, she's not locked up or anything. But he knows she's crazy because she won't accept the fact that my mother is dead. It's like she doesn't even believe it. He says if she ever tries to contact me I should run for my life. Because she talks about my mother like she isn't even dead.”

  Another long, unpleasant silence. For the first time ever, I wished my time with Delilah could be over for the day. We walked a little farther. A man slammed into my shoulder in passing and didn't even excuse himself.

  “How did your mother die?” she asked. I could feel the weight of something behind the question, but I didn't know what it was yet. But it made me uneasy.

  “I'm not sure.”

  “What do you mean, you're not sure? You were there, right?”

  “Not exactly. She'd left by then. She left and took me with her. And then my father found us and took me back. And then she came and visited me for a while. And then she didn't visit for a long time, so I asked where she was. And he told me she'd died.”

  “But not till you asked.”

  “Right.”

  “And he didn't tell you what she died of.”

  “I don't think so.” I could feel my uneasiness like something alive in my stomach. Growing up too fast in too small a space.

  By now we had turned the corner and come out of the park and back onto the street, and we stood waiting at the stoplight in silence. Delilah always waited for the light to turn, even if there were no cars coming. That's how you could tell she wasn't a New Yorker.

  I looked over at her, and her eyebrows were scrunched down, but we still said nothing.

  When our building came into sight, she said, “Let me ask you one more thing about it. You ever go to a funeral for your mother?”

  “Funeral?”

  “Or a memorial or something? Where family and friends get together? Honor her passing?”

  “Um. No. There was nothing like that.”

  She nodded and said nothing.

  When we got to the front steps of our building she turned and looked me right in the face. “Come upstairs with me. We'll have a cup of tea. I know, I know. He'll be expecting you. But this is important.”

  My stomach tied up into a little knot, but I followed her upstairs.


  I'D NEVER HAD TEA BEFORE, and at first I wasn't sure I liked it. But I loaded it up with sugar and milk, and then it tasted okay.

  “Please just say whatever you're going to say,” I said. “Because this is making me really nervous.”

  She sat down across the kitchen table from me. “If I was you, I'd talk to this Grandma Annie. See what she got to say.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she might not be so crazy like your father says.”

  “But she thinks my mother is still alive.”

  “Well?”

  I wasn't following. “Well?”

  “Maybe she's right. Maybe your mother is still alive.”

  A wave of tiredness struck me. Like I knew she was wrong, but I just didn't have the energy to explain it. What could I say to prove she was wrong? “My mother is dead,” I said. “I know she is.”

  “You know how? Besides the fact that your father said so?”

  I thought about it, but I couldn't think of anything else. The only other relative we had was Grandma Annie, and I didn't know it through her. I'd never seen an obituary in the paper or anything. And yet I had always known it was true. Because my father said it. He wouldn't say it if it wasn't true. Would he?

  Something started bending around in my brain. I don't know how to describe it. Like the feeling when you hang backward over your bed and look at the world upside down. That same sense of dizziness, that sense of everything being backward, wrong, distorted.

  If what she said was true—but I just couldn't feel it was—then I might actually have a mother and be able to see her again. And yet a big part of me wanted it not to be true, because it would mean that everything I'd believed right up until that minute was wrong.

  I thought of that amusement park when I was six, where you walked into a room with a slanted floor, but all the furniture is made to look like you're not on a slanted floor, so your body doesn't understand why you can't balance.

  I tried to explain it to Delilah, and she nodded her head. “Oh, honey, I know. That's why I wanted you upstairs and sitting down. I knew this would mess up your poor tired brain. It's like that movie, I think it was Singin' in the Rain, where he dances from the floor right up onto a wall and then on the ceiling, and your brain just can't get it. Oh, but why am I talking to you about that? I know your daddy won't let you see any movies. But, anyway, don't try to think too much about it right now. Maybe your grandma is crazy. Maybe your daddy is lying to you. You can't sit here and figure out the difference. But maybe if you're strong enough to do it, just find that Grandma Annie and hear what she got to say.”

  I think I nodded, but I could be wrong. I got up and walked back to my own apartment, but my feet felt weird, like I couldn't tell if they were touching the ground or not.

  I remembered that I'd left most of that cup of tea sitting on Delilah's kitchen table.

  When I got upstairs, my father started right in on me. “You could not have been running that whole time.”

  “Please leave me alone,” I said. “I don't feel good. I'm going to go lie down.”

  Amazingly, he said nothing. And I went into my room to lie down.

  WHEN I WOKE UP, I shot awake. Sat up fast. I was sitting up in bed on top of the covers, with all my clothes on. I turned on a light and looked at the clock. It was after one A.M.

  I didn't change my clothes. I didn't brush my hair. I just got up and ran. I just got out of that apartment as fast as I could.

  The night air felt cool as I was running through it. I tried to remember the last time I'd felt cool. I mean, other than the unnatural cool of air-conditioning. When I got to the subway stairs, halfway down I felt that cool disappearing. Felt the air turn stuffy and close.

  I didn't care. It was where I wanted to be. I just hoped I wasn't too late.

  While I was waiting for the train to come, I tried to comb my hair with my fingers. But I had no mirror, nothing to help me see what I was doing, and I don't think I got very far. When I saw the lights of the train coming, I felt like my knees were going to buckle. I was that scared. Why does something this good have to be scary? Which I guess is a strange question, because everything is scary to me. But I guess I expected something like this to be the exception.

  Before the train even stopped, I ran the length of it, looking into the lighted cars.

  She was there. I saw the back of her hat. She was sitting faced away from me. The train hadn't even stopped yet, so I had to turn and run the other way with it. Then I stood there feeling my own heart pound. Waiting for the doors to open. The longest three seconds of my life. The slowest that time has ever slowed down for me. Waiting for the conductor to open those doors. When he finally did, the sound made me jump. Even though I heard it almost every night.

  I ran inside and stood over her, and she looked up. She looked happy to see me. She patted the seat beside her with one hand, and I sat down.

  She had something else going on with her face this time. Something different. Her lower lip on one side was swollen, and had a split in it that was only partly scabbed over. I looked away so she wouldn't think I was staring at it.

  Then I realized what a ridiculous position I was in. I couldn't talk. I could barely breathe. I was still all out of breath from running. I was wearing clothes I'd slept in for hours. I hadn't brushed my teeth. My hair must have been a pathetic mess.

  I looked over at her and tried to smile. She smiled back, and my insides melted again. It didn't feel exactly like hot water this time. More like molten lava. “I'm sorry,” I said. But I was so out of breath. I'm not sure she could understand me. “I fell asleep.”

  Then I caught myself and wondered what the hell I was doing. Talking like we had an appointment or something. Only we did. And we both knew it. But maybe we weren't supposed to talk about it. I didn't know.

  She kept looking at me, and I felt unsure of myself, even though she wasn't looking at me like she thought I was a mess. I tried to comb my hair a little with my fingers again. Get it off my face. A feeble attempt.

  “I must look like a car wreck,” I said. Partly amazed that I was talking to her at all, partly amazed that it all came out so easily.

  “No,” she said. “You look fine.” And she lifted one hand and touched my hair. Brushed it back off my forehead with one big rake of her long fingers. I couldn't move. I think I stopped breathing. “You look nice.”

  Then she took her hand back and we sat in a kind of stunned silence. At least, I was stunned. I was looking down at the floor of the car, but really looking at her hands. She had beautiful hands, chiseled and not too small, with long fingers. Strong looking. And beautiful arms, at least the part I could see beyond her rolled-up long sleeves. She always wore long sleeves, even in the heat. Well, I don't know why I say always. I'd only seen her three times. But she seemed to wear a lot of clothes for the weather each time.

  We sat back, and the train pulled out of the station. After a minute I looked over at her. “What happened to your lip?”

  She held up one finger and put it to my lips to shush me. Gently. “Let's not talk tonight,” she said. Then she took off her hat and put her head on my shoulder. I wasn't quite sure what to do. It felt weird to just sit there with my hands in my lap. But I wasn't sure if it was okay to put my arm around her. But I wanted to, because I think she wanted comforting.

  A minute later she picked up my arm and put it around her shoulder. Ducked under it and set her head on my chest. I was pretty much just numb with shock. Her hat was sitting half on her leg and half on mine. I felt a jiggling in her shoulder, and I thought she was laughing. That's what it felt like. But then I heard a little sniffle, and then I knew.

  Now, there's not a lot I'll thank my father for. But I'll thank him for this: He taught me to carry a handkerchief. An actual cloth handkerchief. Gentlemen do, he says. In case you have to cough or sneeze, or offer it to someone who needs a handkerchief. So I always have one in my back jeans pockets, and I offered it to her. I couldn't see her
face, but she took it from me.

  “That's so sweet,” she said. She had a wonderful soft voice.

  She was also the second woman to call me sweet in a very short space of time. So maybe I'm sweet. I'm not sure.

  “You can keep it,” I said. I liked the idea of her taking something of mine with her.

  We rode all the way to the end of the line and back, and she didn't talk much. Just sniffled and wiped her face. Just as we came back into the Union Square station, she spoke again. She said, “I don't even know your name.”

  “Sebastian.”

  “What do people call you for short?”

  What people? I was thinking. But I didn't say that. “I don't really have a nickname.”

  She thought that over, and nodded. “You should.”

  “Okay. Where do I get one of those?”

  “I'll give you one. But I need time to think. I'll give you one next time I see you.” The doors opened. “Like day after tomorrow. At the bottom of those stairs.” She pointed. “So we don't get on different trains.”

  It was all I could do to ask her why not tomorrow. But I couldn't do that.

  “I should go.” She got up to leave. She didn't look back this time. She kept her face turned away and walked off. Like she didn't want me to see her cry.

  I froze for a minute, then ran after her. Ran out onto the platform. “Wait. You didn't tell me your name.”

  “Maria,” she said over her shoulder.

  I just stood there and watched her walk up the stairs. And then I just kept standing there. Staring at the place I'd last seen her. For the most amazing length of time.

  Finally I climbed the stairs myself, and walked home. Block after block. Thinking nothing. Just walking in the cool air, saying her name—Maria—over and over again in my head.

  I had a dream that I'm ashamed of.

  Is that right? To be ashamed of a dream?