Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk(84)

As I turn and walk toward Murray Hill and home and purring Phoebe, I suspect that we do not know any more than the people of the past did, but only think somewhat differently.

Walking East on Thirty-Sixth Street, my street, I can’t see the moon anywhere, but I know it’s up there.

Somewhere under it is Gian, are the children. Somewhere under it is Julia—or not. I think back to the handful of greeting cards that she and I exchanged over the years, and her unrealized wish that she and I be friends. I always wondered what else she wanted from me, having already taken Max. I kept my guard up. And she cared for my ailing ex-husband, my only true love; she nurtured my son, and helped nurture his children, even after Max was gone. She gave of herself joyfully, in a way I could never manage, could never conceive. What else could she have wanted except to make amends, to care for us, to help when she was needed? Why did that never occur to me?

So many careers and fortunes are made by expecting the least and the worst of people. And yet people are rarely so disappointing. The city has taught me that.

A long black car pulls up next to me, engine sighing, a bass voice booming from the window, “Lillian! Is that you?”

And even though the voice has yelled my name, I jump, shaking with surplus adrenaline.

“Skip?” I say, stopping as the car stops, to stare at his familiar mustachioed face. “What are you doing up in Murray Hill?”

“I dropped my trader guy off at some sex party, and now I’m taking the scenic route home,” he says. “I barely recognized you in that b-boy jacket. What happened to the mink?”

“Oh, I met some young gentlemen. We got on the subject of outerwear and decided to switch.”

“You gave up your mink for some cheap leather and zippers?” he says, leaning out to have a better look.

“Naturally,” I say, striking a catalogue-model pose, hand to hip, gaze over one shoulder. “It’s very figure-flattering, and besides—I’ve got other furs, but I haven’t got one of these.”

“Whatever you say, Lillian,” he says, and I am grateful to him for not pushing it further. “But how about you let me get my 1985 started off right by doing a good turn. It’d be my honor to give you a lift home.”

“Thank you,” I say. “But to ensconce myself in a car when I’ve made it this far with my own powers of locomotion would be a defeat that would set my 1985 off on the wrong foot.”

“What is it with you and walking, Lillian?” Skip asks, and for an irrational moment I worry that he’s going to shepherd me bodily into the back seat, but of course he remains behind the wheel.

“Skip, I’m quite weary and can’t explain it to you properly right now,” I say, and slowly begin to continue my walk. “But I’m not exaggerating when I say that walking has done no less than save my life. Plus, you’ll be relieved to know that this is my street.”

He rolls the limo forward, too, matching my pace. “That does make me feel better, but I’m going to go ahead and walk you home this way.”

“If you insist,” I say, and we proceed the final block to 22 E. Thirty-Sixth, me on two feet, him on four wheels. The distance is so brief that I almost let the interval pass in silence, but then I find myself saying, “Listen, Skip, would you like to meet up and take a walk some day? I can show you what I mean.”

“Aw, Lillian, you don’t have to prove anything to me,” he says, stopping the car and shaking his head. “I don’t mean to insult you.”

“No, really,” I say, extending a hand toward his window. “Give me your telephone number. If you do, I’ll call you. We’ll stroll.”

He hesitates a beat before reaching into his tuxedo jacket and presenting me a card. “You know what? You’re right. I sit on my ass in this limo all the livelong day. A walk could only do me good.”

“Me too,” I say, putting the card in one of Keith’s many zippered pockets and stepping away. “And now I bid you goodnight, as this building right here is my humble castle.”

I wave and he honks once—a gentle salute—when he sees that I’m safely inside my own building, before accelerating into the night.

I reach my apartment door, and fit the key to the lock. Poor famished Phoebe greets me in the entry, mewling and rubbing her rounded skull against my unsteady ankles. From across the otherwise dark apartment I see the insistent blink of the answering machine’s message light—the grandchildren wishing me a Happy New Year, Gian wondering where I was when the children called, Gian telling me that Julia has died.

Nothing that won’t wait until after the cat has been fed. I take off Keith’s coat and drape it over the back of a chair.

I turn on lamps, open drawers, set the opener to the rim of the can. Phoebe watches me from the floor, her pupils green and cavernous.

“Be patient,” I tell her. “Or make yourself useful by growing some thumbs.”

I owned that mink for more than forty years, more than twice the time I was married to Max. I bought it a month after Gian was born, as a way of proving that my life was still my own. For decades it rarely left my closet and never left the apartment. With Max away on business, with Johnny napping in another room, I’d drape it over the bed and run my fingers across it, conspiring with myself, reaffirming my status as an imposter, an agent provocateur. You think that it is a secret but it has never been one.