What Every Girl (except me) Knows

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  Did she shop here? I looked up at the street number—78th Street. Only a block from her apartment. Had I been here before?

  “Well?” Ian paused on the sidewalk. “Let’s go.”

  We turned the corner at 79th and kept walking until we were directly across from 435 East 79th Street. And we stopped. The entrance had a long green awning and printed on the awning just under the numbers was a name—THE YORK.

  So this building has a name. Everything should have a name, I thought. Her building was named The York. My mother’s name was Arlene.

  “Wouldn’t it be wild if she just walked out right this instant?” I said as we stood safely on the opposite side of the street.

  “Yeah, I guess that would be wild,” Ian said. He didn’t laugh, and I hadn’t meant it to be funny.

  A long time ago, well, maybe not so long ago, when I was around eight years old, I had this whole fantasy. She, my mother, was still alive somewhere. It was just that she couldn’t handle things and she needed to get away, even from us, her own kids. So my dad arranged this whole thing. He arranged for her to appear to have died, but really she was just escaping. She was living somewhere else, as someone else. She needed a little break. Every mom deserves a break sometime.

  So I had this fantasy and at some point I almost started believing it, every detail. I imagined what she did for a job while she was hiding out—she worked in a florist shop, putting together beautiful bouquets of flowers. She changed her name—she was Nicole Freedman. She grew her hair long and wore loose-fitting clothing. She lived in a sun-filled apartment above the florist shop. She slept on a pullout corduroy couch.

  I imagined that she had even fooled her own parents. The funeral was a farce to throw everyone off, so they wouldn’t come looking for her, so she could be free—all put together by my dad. For her. That’s what she needed and he loved her that much. He was a hero.

  But the best part of the whole story was that someday she was going to come back. Come back for me. She’d be there when I need her most, and that year I really needed her. I was in third grade. I was so lonely and everything was so sad. It was the year Beth Moore’s mother wouldn’t let me come to her house anymore.

  I did a lot of waiting for her to return. If there was ever a right time, it was then. I needed her that year, real bad. But she didn’t come and by the time I was nine, I vowed I would never wait for anyone again.

  So when I said to my brother, “Wouldn’t it be wild…?” it wasn’t so wild. It’s just that I had stopped waiting and stopped believing and now here I was. And all I wanted was to know the truth.

  Chapter 35

  “Wait, I just want to look from here for a while,” Ian said.

  So we looked out across the wide street to the building named The York, and for a long while Ian didn’t say anything. It was a very tall apartment building, maybe thirteen stories or so, and made of a whitish brick. Every other window had a metal balcony that didn’t look big enough for anyone to stand on.

  I quickly lost interest in just staring at the building; obviously nothing important was going to happen to me from there. I looked over to my brother. He stood still, eyes fixed on one spot. If I were to see anything or learn anything, it was going to have to come from him. I tried to see my brother very carefully, as if for the first time, as if he had some magic power; as if he were a portal to memory that I was going to miss if I wasn’t attentive enough.

  “Okay, ready?” Ian said. He was apparently done.

  He wasn’t yet offering any insights, so I nodded and we walked up to the corner to cross the street. Someone was standing in front of the building. There was a doorman, just as there had been that morning, and this one guarded the door. He was young, with a ponytail and a gray uniform. He paced back and forth and then disappeared inside the building.

  “Ian,” I said as we neared the entrance. “Is that the same doorman?”

  Ian looked, considered the possibility, and then said firmly, “No, our guy was old.”

  “Well, this doorman’s not just going to let us in.”

  A lady with a miniature dog came up the street before us and approached the building. The doorman stepped out in greeting and opened the large glass door for her.

  “We have to tell him why we are here,” I said.

  “Like it’s that simple,” Ian said.

  A little boy and his father walked out. The little boy wore a navy jacket and tie and carried a fancy, leather schoolbag.

  “I’ll just tell him the truth,” I said. I didn’t wait for Ian’s approval. I walked steadily up to the man wearing the gray jacket with gold buttons and a ponytail.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “We used to live in this building, a long time ago. Would it be all right if we just looked around inside—I mean, just inside the lobby here.”

  Ian had come up behind me. We could see in through the glass doors. We could see the lobby, the two potted plants, the mail chute, the doorman’s station, and the two elevators by the far wall.

  The young doorman looked back inside, as if trying to figure out what we might want to see inside, or what we might do damage to if we were lying. It would be his responsibility if we did something wrong and he had been the one to let us in.

  Why would anyone want to just innocently look at the lobby of a building they used to live in? But then again, why not?

  “I don’t know,” the doorman said.

  Ian and I were still, and waited like two small children.

  “Just real quick,” I said.

  “Just right in the lobby?” Ian added.

  “It’s not allowed,” the doorman told us.

  “Please,” I said.

  There was a great pause right then. I don’t know exactly how much time passed.

  “Well, don’t take long.” The doorman moved aside, not quite giving permission, but allowing us in.

  Ian and I both agreed, and we stepped inside the building.

  The lobby was big for a New York apartment building, bigger than my grandparents’ lobby. It had a fancy carpeted section where two brand-new upholstered chairs and a table stood empty. The floor by the elevators and the stairwell looked as if it had been newly tiled.

  “Nothing looks familiar,” Ian said and shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “You’re not trying,” I said to Ian. “Walk around a little.” Ian didn’t say anything. He moved toward the mail chute. He walked over the tiles and back to the carpet. He shrugged.

  “Nothing.” Ian dropped into one of the soft, deep chairs. I took the other one. My hands rested high on the arms of the chair, lifted like wings. So this was it? Chrome and glass, a poshly decorated New York apartment-building lobby was going to be the beginning and the end all in one? No, it couldn’t!

  My heart began pounding as soon as the possibility of an idea reached my lips; my eyes smarted with tears, though I didn’t feel sad.

  “We have to go in the elevator,” I said suddenly. “We have to ride up and then ride down again and come out just like we did that day.”

  Ian leaned forward to see me past his chair. “What?”

  “We have to,” I said.

  Ian glanced over to the doorman, who was letting someone into the building, an old man walking with a cane. I followed the man with my eyes as he made his way to the elevators. He pushed the UP button and stepped into the first elevator car, which had opened immediately.

  “The doorman’s not going to let us do that!” Ian said to me.

  “Let’s just do it so fast he doesn’t notice,” I whispered.

  “They’ve got cameras in the elevators. Look.” Ian gestured with a sideways shift of his eyes.

  I could hear the blood from my heart racing through my body, not letting me alone, not letting me rest. It was partly fear, partly anticipation, partly determination, partly warding off possible disappointment. No!

  “We’ll be back before he can do anything,” I said and stood up. The doorman had stepped out to the sidewal
k to help a woman out of her taxi. “We’ve got to do it. Now,” I said.

  “Okay, we’ll try it.”

  Ian and I got up as if we were going to leave the building. Then we cut quickly around the carpet toward the hall, to the fully closed elevator doors. The UP button lit up when Ian touched it. Then even though I knew it wouldn’t help, I kept pushing the UP button over and over.

  “He’s coming,” Ian turned back. The woman from the taxi had several packages, which the doorman was struggling with as he neared the outside doors. He took hold of the handle and pulled it open. As he held the packages, the woman entered through the door and headed right toward us.

  Desperately, I pushed the button once again. The bell dinged sweetly and the doors spread apart. Just as the doorman put down the woman’s belongings inside the lobby, the elevator shut with Ian and me inside.

  But the elevator was not moving. It was waiting for a command.

  “I don’t know what floor we lived on,” Ian told me.

  My heart thumped so loudly I thought I could hear it outside my body. I was equally sure I could hear the doorman’s footsteps running toward the elevator.

  “So where do we go?” I asked frantically.

  “The top, the top one,” Ian said. “We’ll just go all the way up.”

  Ian leaned over and hit number 14 on the control panel. The pull of gravity moved through my body like a strong wave. It was quiet inside the elevator.

  “Is this what we did?” I asked. I looked at the walls around me and the carpeted floor for anything to spark recognition.

  “I guess,” Ian said quietly.

  The numbers lit up one by one as the elevator rose. I supposed the doorman could see us in the monitor by now. I peered up at the camera in the corner of the ceiling and quickly down. Maybe he was calling the police or maybe he was running up the stairs to catch us when we got to the top and arrest us.

  “Do you remember anything yet?” I asked. My impatience must have slipped out.

  “No,” Ian snapped. “So why don’t you quit bothering me?”

  The bell sounded again, the doors slid open, and we were on the top floor. We were met with only silence, and I felt more alone than I had all day.

  We would have only a moment here on this floor, then the elevator would shut again and we would be traveling down; the doors would open at the bottom and it would be all over. And if we were lucky the doorman would just ask us to leave. But I would have failed. I was about to lose everything all over again.

  “I’m getting out here,” I said, stepping out into the hall.

  “What the…?” Ian said. “Are you crazy? What are you doing?” He stepped out but held his foot in the path of the closing elevator doors. The heavy doors banged against his sneaker and automatically reopened.

  “Does this look familiar? Is this it?” I heard my voice rising. “Were we here? Is this even the right building?”

  “I don’t know!” Ian shouted. The elevator banged again against his foot. This time Ian pulled away and the doors shut. The elevator left without us.

  I felt terrible. The hall was empty and much darker than the lobby had been. It echoed with our voices. It smelled of carpet glue and fresh paint.

  That’s when I realized the whole building must have been renovated, and just recently, judging from the paint smell, the shiny tiles in the lobby, and the modern electronic equipment for the doorman’s station. It couldn’t seem familiar, because it wasn’t familiar!

  “It doesn’t look like anything I remember. What can I say?” Ian said harshly.

  We were too late. Our memories had been torn off with the old wallpaper that had hung here and the old carpet that had been replaced. They had been carried away like debris in a flooding river, too far out of reach. I had made a terrible mistake in coming here. Ian was really mad at me, yelling at me.

  Then Ian started talking.

  He wasn’t angry at all, only deeply sad.

  “We’d been awake for a while, I guess longer than we were used to being up alone. Finally we went into her room and tried to wake her up. We tried to shake her and we even used a light from the desk and shined it in her face,” Ian began. “But it didn’t work. I don’t know why we came down here. Or why I didn’t just call Dad.”

  “Call Dad?” I said. “Call him where?”

  “At his new apartment. He had moved out. We lived here alone,” Ian said slowly, as if he was remembering. But I didn’t know, perhaps he had known all along. Our dad had moved out and that’s when this happened. It all happened only three weeks after he left, Ian told me then.

  “We got into the elevator to go down to tell the doorman. To tell him she wouldn’t wake up. We came down to get help.” Ian told me the story. His story. My story.

  He pushed the elevator button on the wall.

  “It was my fault,” Ian said to me as we waited. “If I had gotten that doorman to listen to me. If I had tried harder. Afterward, I couldn’t get that out of my head. I should have made him believe us. I should have gotten him to help.”

  “Ian, you were seven years old,” I told him, but I knew he knew that.

  The bell sounded and the elevator doors opened again. We stepped inside. I didn’t even think about the camera or the doorman. Ian and I stood side by side, facing out as the doors closed on us for a second time that day.

  “I bet you were mad at me,” I said. “I bet you didn’t even want to take me with you.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Ian said. “I wanted to take you with me. We were together. I think I was holding your hand.”

  Ian let his arm drop and his fingers unwind. I moved an immeasurable step closer to my brother and felt his hand reach out for mine. Our fingers encircled each other’s as the elevator dropped past each floor. As soon as the door opened up to the natural light of the lobby the doorman came rushing over, red in the face, most definitely angry, and told us to leave the building at once or he was going to call the police. Ian and I didn’t say anything. We didn’t let go of each other. We were still gripping hands as we left The York and stepped out into the street.

  Chapter 36

  I can’t say exactly where I left my backpack after that point. I didn’t remember having it in the elevator; I sort of remembered having it while Ian and I sat on those big chairs in the lobby. I was sure I took it off the train with me. But after that I wasn’t sure. All I was sure of was that I had my return ticket in the front zipper pocket, and Ian only had six dollars left in his wallet.

  What I couldn’t believe was that Ian didn’t tell me how stupid I was or how careless or ask why had he gone on this idiotic expedition in the first place.

  “I’ll think of something,” Ian said.

  My face was pale, I’m sure. I felt like something had hold of my guts and was twisting them around. My mouth tasted like I had been chewing an eraser. I couldn’t slow down my breathing and at the same time I couldn’t get enough air. I had lost my ticket and my only way home. We couldn’t call Dad. He would be angry beyond words. We didn’t have enough for another ticket home. Paul was supposed to pick us up at the Poughkeepsie train station at five past three, but there was no way to reach him before then. He had band rehearsal—who knows where?

  “We’ll just start walking back to Grand Central Station,” Ian said calmly.

  “Then what?” My voice was thick, with sobs waiting in the back of my throat.

  “We’ll think while we’re walking,” Ian said. “But at least we’ll be walking.”

  It seemed to make sense, and besides, he wasn’t yelling. He didn’t walk away and leave me, though he had one ticket to go home—his own. He wouldn’t do that, anyway. He was my big brother.

  We started away from the door, away from The York, away from her neighborhood.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, and as soon as I spoke I began to cry. Tears didn’t drop from my eyes gently onto my cheeks; tears poured like a river. I hadn’t cried like this since Cleo left. And now I crie
d again. I cried for me.

  “It’s all my fault,” I kept saying, and we kept on walking. Every now and then someone, usually a woman with children, would ask if I was all right; to which my brother would have to answer, “She’s okay. I’m her brother.”

  It was as if everything I had ever done wrong, and every time I had ever been lonely, and every time I had ever felt that I never would and never could be as good as everyone else hit me all at once. Had I never asked Cleo if I could call her “Mom” she never would have left. Had I been quieter in the mornings my real mother would be alive. If I was more deserving she would have left the florist shop and come back for me. I had needed her so badly. I needed her now.

  The neighborhood around us changed the more we headed downtown on Lexington Avenue. It got busier and more crowded. My crying slowed, but my lungs involuntarily gasped for air every few seconds.

  “Then it’s my fault, too,” Ian said quietly. We waited at a curb for the light to change. People behind us stepped up and waited. People on the other side facing us waited.

  “I shouldn’t have let you hold your ticket,” Ian continued. “Or I should have been wearing the backpack. I’m older.”

  “But this whole thing was my idea,” I said. The light turned to WALK and the mobs headed forward directly into each other, but somehow all the people in that little space avoided bumping, crossed the street, and continued on their opposite ways.

  “I wanted to go, too,” Ian said. “I told you that already. What? You don’t hear so well?” He knocked me on the top of my head with his fist, lightly.

  “Well, then Dad’s really the one to blame,” I said.

  “For you losing your ticket?”

  “No, it’s his fault that she died,” I said. “He moved out and then she died.”

  The tall buildings surrounded us here. Department stores and banks, and hundreds of people rushing again. The sidewalk was narrow. There were no trees. There was barely sky. Shade on one side of the street, sun on the other, and in-between a flood of traffic moving in one direction like a river.