Lucy by the Sea (52)

Arms finds the three young men down by one of the abandoned cottages I had seen in Dixon along the river through the trees, and as Arms is kneeing Jimmie to get him into the cruiser, Sperm runs up and with his small spiky teeth bites Arms on the calf, and this inflames Arms so much that he picks Sperm up and, with his strong arms, and without even meaning to, breaks the kid’s skinny neck.

The story ends with a flash into the future: that Arms would retire from the police force, and that he would visit Sperm every single day—Sperm sitting in his wheelchair with a ventilator—in the squalid home Sperm lived in alone with his mother, and that Arms would end up loving Sperm as he had loved his own brother, shaving him gently as his whiskers started to grow on his cheeks, clipping his fingernails for him too.



—

That night I said to William, who was reading a book, “My Arms Emory story is sympathetic toward a white cop who liked the old president and who does an act of violence and gets away with it. Maybe I shouldn’t publish it right now.”

William looked up and said, “Well, it might help people understand each other. Just publish it, Lucy.”

I was quiet for a long time. Then I said, “I used to tell my students to write against the grain. Meaning: Try to go outside your comfort level, because that’s where interesting things will happen on the page.”

William kept reading his book. He said, “Just put the story out there.”

But I knew I could not trust myself—or other people. But mostly I could not trust myself: to know what to do these days. I knew that many people understood what was right and what was wrong, but these days I could not fully understand that myself. Mom! I called to my nice made-up mother, and she said, You’ll figure it out, Lucy, you always do.

I did not know if that was true.



—

But I felt very sad about Arms Emory; I loved him.

iii

And then I had both my vaccines, three weeks apart. When the woman put the needle into my arm for the second shot, I almost wept. I thought: I am free. I thought: I will see New York again.



—

William and I made a plan. I would take a train by myself to New Haven and spend a night with Chrissy and also a night with Becka in her new apartment there, and then I would go into the city for a week. William would fly down and visit with Estelle and Bridget during this time, before coming to meet me. The girls would come into the city and visit me separately, they had said this, and I had found that slightly strange, I mean that they would come separately.

And then William would meet me there, and the girls would come back to see him. I made a reservation—or William made it for me—for an Airbnb in New York.





While we waited for the three weeks to go by until my vaccine was all set inside me, Becka called and said that she had been accepted at Yale Law School. In truth, I was shocked by this. William did not seem shocked. “We always knew she was smart,” he said. And that was true. But Becka at Yale? In law school?

Becka added, “Don’t make a big deal out of it when you speak to Chrissy.”

And this surprised me again. Chrissy had gone to Brooklyn Law School, and I had never picked up on any competition between them. Chrissy was the older, in some ways she was bossy, and she had—in her youth—sort of bossed Becka around, which Becka—for the most part—had seemed to take easily.

So when I spoke to Chrissy on the phone, I did not mention it, and I noticed that she did not mention it as well. Chrissy sounded distracted enough that I asked if she was all right, and she said, “God, Mom. Please. Of course I am.”

“Well, I will see you soon,” I said, and she only said “See you soon,” and hung up.



—

I sat for quite a while after that phone call.





Eight

i

And so it was the first week in April that William drove me to South Station in Boston to put me on a train to New Haven. What I noticed as we drove into Boston was that there were places to park on the street. And that the sky was so blue. So blue! “From not having any traffic for a year,” William said. He found a parking place not far from the station and we got out and he wheeled my little suitcase behind him; the city seemed to sparkle in the sunshine and the blue of that sky.



—

But when we stepped into the train station, I was astonished. There was the sense of a war having occurred. One that was not yet over. The lights were very low. And every single shop in the station was closed except for a doughnut place that was only selling coffee, and the woman who was selling it had her little girl next to her sitting on a wooden crate; the schools were still closed. “William,” I whispered. “I know,” he said.

A policeman stood watch.

To one side were benches, and on these benches were homeless people, many were sleeping, others were just staring, their bags of newspapers and clothes near them. One older woman who—to my eyes—did not look homeless rose from her bench and began walking through the station. She was wearing a kind of pretty dress, and she talked as she walked; I thought she might be on the phone, but as she passed by me I saw that she was not on any phone. “I went inside the place to see if I could get a roll.” This is what I heard her saying.



—

William walked me onto the train because the conductor let him, and the conductor said to us, “Ninety percent of the people working for this railroad got the virus.” She added, “But I didn’t. I was super, super careful, I have a compromised child at home.” Then she continued down the aisle, and William had to leave. He stood outside my window and waved. I began to feel a sense of nothingness, which is the only way I can explain it.