by Gae Polisner
“Okay,” Sarah says, trying to keep her voice cheerful. “By the way, this is Klee. He’s going to hang out with us.”
“Klee, yeah. Your boyfriend,” he says, making his voice singsong on the last word. I smile. She told him about me, then.
“No, your boyfriend, brat,” she says, swatting him playfully, then she helps him bundle up in his coat and mittens and hat, before we head back out into the city.
Despite their repeated pleas, I won’t tell them where we’re going, just head us up six blocks, then east on 59th Street. The snow is downright blizzardish, and Tyler doesn’t walk very fast, but he doesn’t complain either, and we finally make it to Dylan’s Candy Bar on the corner of 3rd Avenue and 60th Street.
“Voilà,” I say, crossing us and planting my hands on Tyler’s shoulders to stop him in front of the main window. “My dad used to take me here on my birthdays. Even the most jaded New Yorker can’t refuse an hour inside Dylan’s.”
The window is set up as Santa’s workshop. Gears made out of larger-than-life red-and-white peppermints spin and drop platter-sized spice drops and Mike and Ikes onto a conveyer belt that moves past rotating elves.
The place is a sugar-coated heaven.
“Holy cow!” Tyler says, mustering his first real show of enthusiasm, and we push in and through the insane sea of shoppers to get to the ceiling-high M&M bar in the back. Columns of graduating rainbow-colored M&M’s reach floor to ceiling, taking up an entire wall. Red to orange to yellow to green to purple, with multiple shades and gradations in between.
Sarah looks at me with an odd look of concern.
“Total tourist trap, for sure,” I say. “And overpriced. But there’s no kid on the planet who doesn’t love it here, trust me.”
“Yeah, except, it’s going to cost a fortune, Klee—”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I don’t mind. I’ve got this.”
“You can’t.”
“I want to,” I say. “Consider it part of your Christmas present, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, then, “Whoa, Cowboy!” and she moves quickly toward Tyler to stop him from unloading an entire metal scoop of pale blue M&Ms into his bag.
By the time we cover all three floors of the store, the kid’s bag is filled with more than $30 of seriously overpriced candy that will clearly send him into a sugar coma. But when I pay and hand the bag back to him, it’s worth it just to see his goofy smile.
“Come on,” I say, when we’re outside again. “We’re just picking up steam. Stop number two on the Klee Alden Christmas tour of Manhattan.”
“Let’s not,” Sarah says, shivering. “It’s cold and I’m spent. Let’s just go back to the hotel and hang there.”
“No can do,” I say, pulling her close to me. “It’s only two thirty, and Tyler here has a whole lot of city to see, right, Tyler?”
“Right,” Tyler says, dangling a curl of red shoestring licorice into his mouth.
“Besides,” I add, “your parents won’t be back at the hotel until after five.”
“They’re not my parents,” Sarah says. “You mean my jackass father and his wife.”
* * *
The good thing about a snowy day in December is that it’s already twilight by 3 P.M.
I’m holding Sarah’s hand and she’s holding Tyler’s as I pull us across Madison toward Rockefeller Center.
“A tree is a tree, Klee,” Sarah whines. “It’s really cold. I don’t even get what the big deal is.”
My nose runs and I swipe at it with frozen fingers. I’m cold, too, and Sarah has finally taken me up on my offer of gloves. But it’s worth it. I know it is.
“You will,” I say. “And we’re here, anyway. So you might as well enjoy it now.”
As we move through the thickening crowds, I hold tighter to her hand, and grab Tyler’s, too. If I lose him here, I’ll never find him again. He lets me take it, and the feel of his small hand in mine makes my heart ache with thoughts of my dad. It occurs to me how needy a thing like love is, or can be, to care about someone so deeply. To simply want to hold on to them. It feels that way with Sarah. Like the harder I try, the more she only ever backs away.
But maybe that’s not right. Last night she called me, so maybe she’s just looking to me to be the one to hold on.
All I know is, standing here now, holding Tyler’s hand with the snow spinning down through the city, I long for my father and wonder whether I tried hard enough. If I had tried harder, maybe I could have done something to hold on to him.
“Okay, I hate to admit it, but you’re right, Alden.” Sarah has stopped in her tracks, slowed by the bodies and the spectacle before us. “Oh my God, it’s beautiful,” she says. Against the dusty gray sky, the tree is magical, aglow with a million dots of red, blue, and green.
“It looks like a giant Christmas cookie,” Tyler says happily. His eyes are huge, his cheeks a deep, rosy red.
I smile, pleased with myself, as I maneuver us expertly through the crowds. The closer we get, the clearer the carolers grow. Their voices rise in harmony, above the rat-a-tat-tat of tin drums, together on the melancholy rumpum pum pums.
Camera flashes pop, tiny light explosions illuminating the snowflakes that tumble steadily down.
When we finally get close enough, I stop and let Sarah and Tyler move the remaining few feet ahead of me toward the tree. Still within sight, but able to truly take the magnitude of all of it in. I can hear them singing, Tyler on tippy-toes, head turned up to the sky, his rumpum pum pum louder and more joyful than all the other voices.
And when Sarah finally turns back to find me again, her black hair shimmering with colors that reflect off the melted snow, the look on her face is so sad and lost, even though she sees me, even though her brother holds fast to her arm, that it makes my chest squeeze tight and my breath disappear.
She’s right there, I think. She’s right there.
So why does she feel so far away?
* * *
It’s weird to walk the floor at this hour, with the skeletal night staff, and nursing stations all but empty, in a pair of yellow swim trunks that don’t belong to me. As we pass through the main lobby, one nurse sits with her back to us, staring up at a wall-mounted television.
“She loves her old movies,” Sister Agnes Teresa whispers, indicating the sepia glow of the screen.
An orderly I don’t recognize drags a bucket, swabbing a mop across the floor, unconcerned.
When we reach the stairwell, Sister Agnes Teresa wraps her short fingers around the door handle and works to pull the weight of it open. I don’t know if I should help or not, if offering would somehow insult her. She’s probably stronger than I am anyway.
Watching her maneuver the stairs is equally uncomfortable. She grabs hold of the railing and tilts slightly as she drops herself step to step. The other hand holds up her robe so she doesn’t trip on it.
We go down a flight, stopping at a door marked L1. I reach out to open it, but she says, “Wait, we need a special key,” and she extracts the magic set from her pocket.
The door opens into a dark hallway, and I follow her until we reach a windowed stretch of wall beyond which I can make out the hulking silhouettes of gym equipment. Elliptical machines, treadmills, and weight stations. Past that, at the next bank of windows, a dark, rectangular abyss of water.
“Here we are,” Sister Agnes Teresa says, opening the door. The sharp smell of chlorine enters my nose. “I always love it best at this hour when we don’t have to contend with the therapy crowd.”
“Yeah,” I say, soothed by the gentle waffle of water that comes with the shift of air as the door closes again.
Sister Agnes Teresa moves to the wall and switches on a rear bank of lights. “How about just those? We leave it ambient, is that okay?”
I don’t answer, stand lost in the play of light across the water’s surface, reticulated patterns that shimmer and dance like it’s a night sky, and we’ve disappeared from this room.
>
* * *
“It’s beautiful up here.”
We’re on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, where Sarah clasps her fingers around the guardrails and stares out across the building tops of Manhattan to the shimmering Hudson River in the distance. Her breath puffs out like cigarette smoke.
“I’m glad we came,” she says, reassuring herself, or maybe me. “I’m glad to be with you.” Things have been weird and distant between us, so it fills me with hope to hear her say this. Especially since it’s Valentine’s Day. “You’re a hopeless romantic, you know that, Alden?”
I lean in against her and close my fingers around hers, feeling, as always, the rush of electricity that glues me to her. “I hope not,” I say, wishing things could feel easier between us. Be easier. Be clearer.
“I just mean you’re good at this,” she says. “I’m not. And you are.” She twists toward me for a second and says, “Good at all this stuff. Good at being good, you know? I’m not sure I really deserve that.”
“Of course you do,” I say, and I want to say more, but her words choke me up, and I’m hyperaware these days of seeming too weak, or saying too much, of wanting more from her than she’s willing or wanting to give. I need to be strong if I want to hold on to her.
Or maybe I’m trying too hard, overthinking everything. If she wanted to, she would have broken up with me. But she hasn’t. Like with a cat, the more I stay back, the more she seems to gravitate toward me. Maybe that’s the secret of Sarah. That I need to let her come to me when she wants to. In her own time. Still, I want to pull her to me now and kiss her, kiss her the way we used to always kiss. It’s been weeks since we’ve kissed like that, since before she went to her father’s for the holidays.
“That’s good, right? That you get to spend time with him?” I had asked when she first told me she was spending Christmas Day through New Year’s at his house. As much as I hadn’t wanted her to go, wanted her to be here to celebrate with me, I was happy for her, too. A chance to get away from her mom, and have real quality time with her father. “You’ll get to see your brother, too, right?” I’d asked, trying to be supportive and muster genuine enthusiasm.
She had only shrugged, and said, “Not worth the price I have to pay when I get home. Let’s just say the record is three weeks straight of trying to drag my mother back up from the Pit of Despair.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, the you-betrayed-and-deserted-me Pit of Despair.”
“So then don’t go.”
“I have to. It’s in their Agreement,” she’d answered.
And she was right about afterward. For the first few weeks of January, I barely saw her outside of school. She was always helping her mom around the house, or going places with her. Part of me wondered if she was just making excuses not to be with me, but then she’d call or text and tell me how she wanted me and missed me.
You looked hot in T’s today. Away this weekend. Keep it up & I may have to do you in janitor’s closet.
I pull her to me now, and kiss her. She responds halfheartedly, so I stop and peer into her eyes. She stares off past me, until I raise my brows in question.
“Nothing. What? You know how the holidays get to me, Klee.”
“Old news. It’s February. I was hoping we could fully enjoy the evening. Enjoy enjoy.” I waggle my eyebrows.
“We are. I am,” she says, punching me playfully in the chest. “It’s just not that easy. To switch gears. I wish she’d meet someone, get over him already.”
“Me, too,” I say. “Hey, I know,” I add without thinking, “come with me to Boston next year.” The minute I say it, I’m panicked. It’s exactly what I shouldn’t be saying.
“You don’t even know if you’re going,” she answers, though I’m not sure how she means it. A challenge? A dig? Something else?
“Formalities,” I offer, trying to sound casual, though I don’t even come close. I like her too much. Jesus, I’m in love with her. “I won’t have trouble getting in. At least I don’t think so. And there are lots of schools up there. Northeastern, BU, a whole bunch of them.”
“Can’t afford it … we’ve had this conversation before.”
“What about your dad?”
“He’s not paying either.”
“Okay, fine, but how do you know? Did you ask—?”
“Klee!” she interrupts, fury in her eyes. “I told you to stop! I’m not going! I’m not leaving her. She’d fall apart. She’d fucking kill herself if I did that! You want me to have that on my head?”
I shoot her a look, the words cutting the darkness, echoing in my ears. She realizes too late what she’s said, how it sounds. Not that she meant anything by it. But she’s right. Maybe there was something I could have done. Something I didn’t do that would have changed things. Maybe I’m selfish because I couldn’t see the problem, didn’t even realize I needed to help him.
Tears sting my eyes. Sarah looks at me and says, “I’m sorry, Klee. Really. I didn’t mean anything by that. But, see, that’s the difference between you and me. You have options and I don’t. You don’t even get that there’s a difference.”
“I do. I mean, I don’t know if I do, but you have choices…”
She whirls on me. “See? You don’t! With your nice house and your fancy car and the whole stupid world at your fingertips. I’m stuck here, forever, in Northhollow. If not because of money, then taking care of her. So get over it. Stop trying to fix things. And stop trying to make me something I’m not!”
“Sarah—”
“What?”
You’re being ridiculous, I want to say. And unfair. Besides, she’s a grown woman. A nurse. She cares for people. She doesn’t expect you to care for her. But I don’t. Because I know better. If my dad had needed me—had asked—I would have stayed, too. If only he had asked.
“Hey, Klee?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.” She takes my hands and presses them to her cheeks, which are pink with cold, or maybe pink in the glow of the spire lit up for Valentine’s Day. “I am. I know you mean well, and I don’t want to fight. This isn’t your fault. I came here because I wanted to. I want to be here with you.”
She leans into me now, and pulls my arms around her, and we’re kissing again, but this time her body gives, and folds completely into mine, and all I can think about is that, somehow, we’re going to be okay.
When we stop kissing, we both turn and look out over the sparkling city together, this city I love, that now Sarah loves as much as I do.
“See that mist?” I ask, nodding at where the sky is shrouded with fog.
“Yeah?”
“Reach out and see if you can touch it with your fingers.” She presses her body to the guardrails and extends her arm out through the grating, stretching her fingers just far enough to touch the tip of the patch in front of us. “That’s actually a cloud,” I tell her. “We’re actually standing in the clouds. You’re touching a cloud.”
“That’s amazing,” she says.
“You’re amazing,” I say, moving behind her, and pressing into her again. “Every time I’m with you, it’s like I get to touch a cloud.”
“Don’t do that.” She shrugs me off and closes her eyes. “I hate when you do that. You’re too nice … I can’t return it … Don’t make me be mean to you.” She wraps her arms to her chest and starts walking again.
I follow silently, wishing I didn’t always seem to say the wrong thing. Halfway around the perimeter, she finally stops to take in the opposite side of the city. The winking PepsiCo sign. The shimmering green-black of the East River. The steady lines of traffic to the north and south of us, even at this hour, alternating streams of white and tangerine, crawling toward us in one direction, snaking off into infinity in the other.
“I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I don’t mean to be like this. I know you were only trying to help. It’s just sometimes…” She turns away from me again, stares
out through the grating for a while. “Do you ever wish you could fly, Klee? I don’t mean jump, I don’t mean kill yourself, but fly. Really fly, like a bird. Like in my dreams.” She puts her arms out, closes her eyes, and tilts almost imperceptibly from side to side. Like a kid pretending to be an airplane. “Even for a few minutes, just let loose and forget everything. Everything but soaring weightless through the sky. I think even if you crashed and burned at the end, it would still be worth it. Just to have those few minutes to fly free.”
“No,” I say, “I don’t.” And that’s the truth. I don’t think about it and I don’t want to try. Because the fact is, she’s wrong. And, that’s something that she doesn’t get. She’s lucky enough not to have to get it. To know it. It’s all a hypothetical to her. But I’ve lived it, so I know. It’s not worth it. Not one iota. I’ve thought about this a hundred times since my father died. Because after the freedom is the nothingness.
Nothingness.
If not for you, then for everyone else left behind.
* * *
“What are you thinking about?” Sister Agnes Teresa leans forward and swishes her hands through the water.
She doesn’t wait for my answer, though, just stands and pulls her robe off to reveal a navy one-piece. “Yeah, I know it’s not pretty, and yes, even nuns own bathing suits,” she says, draping the habit over a chair. “I told you we were swimming. You think I was going to send you in alone?” She waddles to the steps, and I try not to stare. “You coming, or you just going to sit there enjoying the view?”
I shake off the thoughts of Sarah and follow her down, wading tentatively into the cool water.
Once in, I lie back and let my body relax, my arms and legs drifting outward, my body floating weightlessly, the hollow echo of nothingness temporarily displaced by the water in my ears.
* * *
“I’m bored. Come swim with me.” I tap Dad’s shoulder, then tug at it. “Please? We could race.”
