The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily(31)
Saturday, December 20th
You’re missing again, said the text from my brother.
I didn’t answer.
I’m staying at Benny’s tonight. We’re planning our new apartment and I’m not going out searching for you.
I still didn’t answer.
I see the dot dot dot. I know you see this message.
“Stalker Brother,” a new movie-by-text, streaming now on iMessage.
This is getting annoying, Lily Bear. You’re crossing that fine line from adorable to obnoxious.
Said by every adult to every teenager, ever.
My brother was ready to move into his own apartment. He was one of them now.
I rolled my eyes and turned off my phone.
I wasn’t missing.
I was lost.
—
Five days before Christmas, and excitement should have been building, but all I felt was doom and gloom. I’d yet to bake my favorite lebkuchen cookies, wander the holiday stalls in Union Square, go ice-skating in Central Park—numbers two, six, and eight in my top-ten favorite holiday traditions that herald the arrival of the Great Present Exchange (number one, obviously) of December 25. I hadn’t even made a wish list of what I wanted. I hadn’t joined my caroling society for singing excursions—and I was the founding member of the group.
I had been intervened about my Christmas blues, making me only bluer.
My grandpa had decamped for his sister’s house with his cat, and I had let him, without running after him to beg him to stay with us, or begging for his forgiveness for worrying him when I disappeared to Staten Island, or at least insisting he leave the cat with me.
I didn’t know who I was anymore.
Dash knows how I hate seeing animals suffer, and yet I didn’t tell him how upsetting I thought our visit with the swan in the park had been. Like, I wanted to be sick about it afterward, but I said nothing to Dash at the end of our walk besides “See ya later, I guess.” We just were not connecting, and I couldn’t fake it any longer. I had to get away.
“You’re getting everything wrong.” Dash’s words repeated in my head like the earworm of that mean guy calling Alviiiiiin the chipmunk to attention.
“You’re getting everything wrong.”
Alviiiiiin!
“You’re getting everything wrong.”
Alviiiiiin!
Please, Lily’s brain. BE QUIET.
I was almost irritated enough to turn my phone back on to correct Langston, to remind him I have a dog, and dogs I walk, and I would never willfully go missing on them. I might ignore the people in my life, but I would never disregard my responsibilities to my fur babies. Boris had not only been walked early this morning. I’d taken him for a long run and play at the off-leash dog park all the way over on Randall’s Island, which required two very expensive taxi rides because the New York City Transit Authority says pets are only allowed on public transportation if they are “enclosed in a container and carried in a manner which would not annoy other passengers.” The first part Boris could handle; the second part he could not. So now there are two very not-happy taxi drivers because of large Boris’s small farting and slobbering problem, and the exchange of smelly and wet dollar bills from my purse, which Boris had been sitting on during the rides. But Boris was so tired out from the excursion, he would be sleeping for the rest of the day and not even notice I was gone, so why was my brother worried if I wasn’t home and didn’t tell him where I’d gone?
And seriously, if my family just checked with my dog-walking clients, who received dutiful texts this morning letting them know I was not available today, along with a list of alternate, responsible dog walkers, they’d know I was not missing. Missing implies unintentional gone-away-ness. Like when a girl mistakenly ingests hallucinogenic gingerbread men and then her intentional day away turns into legit overnight missing.
Maybe that’s my real problem. Not that I’m lost but that possibly now I’m an addict, craving more and more wild experiences. Danger. Risk. More Jahna, less Lily.
I sighed, and could see my breath in the cold air of the train car. Freezing winter had finally arrived, but the mean kind. Bitter, single-digit temps that kept the train moving slowly because of signal problems, and kept the few people on the barely heated train huddling under their down coats, tying their scarves tightly across their heads and necks and rubbing their gloved hands together. Nobody talked; they just teeth-chattered and shivered.
The air felt as cold as my heart. I looked out the window at the afternoon sun, beaming brightly, as if to say, Here I am, your master of light, so big and powerful that I can radiate no warmth whatsoever if I so choose, and just to be spiteful, I’m going to block any possibility of snow to go along with this frigid cold. Who owns winter? I own winter, that’s who. Suck it, humans of the northeast Atlantic!
I wanted to cry but was afraid the tears would freeze on my face. Dash was right. I was getting everything wrong. I couldn’t read him at all, and I couldn’t even break up with him convincingly, because I was a neurotic mess who loved him too much to insist he let me go, for both our sakes.
The train pulled into its next stop. At first I thought I had imagined it, so I took my glasses off and cleaned them with a tissue and put them back on. Indeed, the sign on the Metro-North platform said PLEASANTVILLE. That was really a place? And if so, why were an army of noisy, angry, drunken Santas getting on? I mean, every kind of Santa—male, female, young, old, fat, skinny, from fully dressed Santas with long white beards to practically naked, almost-a-stripper Santas. More disturbingly, the Santas were followed by a group of carousing carolers tossing hooch flasks to each other as they sang a ditty I know for a fact was not true to the era of the singers’ Victorian costumes.