Lucy by the Sea (Amgash, #4)(57)

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—

There was a small circular shower with a curtain around it, and as I took a shower I thought I might fall; that is how disoriented I felt.



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—

For two days I walked through the city; I had not told any of my friends that I would be there, I had thought I would surprise them and then go see them, but I was glad now that no one knew I was here. I did not feel that I could give them the attention they deserved. I noticed that there were very few taxicabs around. Clothing stores that had lined a whole section of Lexington Avenue were shut, some with a kind of peeling white paper on the insides of their windows.



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—

I walked across Park Avenue against the light; that is how few cars were on the street.



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—

I sat in Central Park and saw the flowering bushes and the leaves that were already out and I watched people go by, there were many people. But I felt nothing.



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—

I went back to Grand Central on Monday morning at nine o’clock, and as I stood on the balcony looking down, there was only one man walking through the wide stretch of the station as above him was the large ceiling with its constellations.



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—

In the afternoon I went to Bloomingdale’s to get some perfume—I have a particular scent I always use—and so I went to the area on the first floor with all the different makeup places, and I bought a small bottle that I would be able to take home on the airplane—we were going to fly back—and I noticed that the salesclerk did not try and sell me anything else, which was different, usually they would say, “Are you sure you don’t want to try some of this new night cream?” Or something like that. But this salesclerk just hurriedly sold me the perfume and then she said, Oh, here, and she handed me a bag of little samples of makeup that one usually gets after one spends enough money, and my small perfume had not been enough to do that, but she shoved the bag at me and I thanked her and she said, “Sure.”

And then I could not find my way out of the store. I kept wandering through the huge makeup section, starting one way, thinking, This is not right, and turning around and going in the other direction and thinking, No, this is not right, and finally a salesman approached me with his black mask on and he said, Can I help you? And I said, I want to get out of the store. And he so courteously ushered me out.



* * *





That night as I lay awake in the Airbnb, I thought of all the people—old people and young people—who had lived out the pandemic in rooms like I was in right now. Alone.





iv


I went to meet Chrissy in Central Park, we had arranged to meet at the duck pond, and she was already there when I arrived. She waved; she had sunglasses on. “Hi, honey,” I said, sitting down next to her on a bench, and she said, “Hi, Mom. One second. Hold on.” And she texted someone and then looked at me and said, “So how does New York seem to you?”

“Oh, it’s strange,” I told her.

“Yeah? How so?”

Something was really wrong with my child.



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—

A woman who was perhaps fifty years old kept walking quickly around the duck pond. She was on a cellphone and I heard her speaking Italian. Around and around she went in an outfit of dark green workout pants and a workout jacket the same color. She wore a bright orange mask, pulled down below her chin.



* * *



—

As we sat on the bench, Chrissy kept looking at her phone. At one point she said, “Sorry, Mom, I just have to answer this,” and she typed away furiously and then finally put her phone away. She seemed to relax just a little bit.

And then I had a vision: Chrissy was having an affair. Or she was about to have an affair.

I looked straight ahead while she talked, she was talking about her work, some sort of internal trouble the organization was having but her own job was perfectly safe, it was just interesting to watch these other people go after each other. Something like that she was saying.

And I said, “Chrissy, don’t do it.”

I turned to look at her, and she took her sunglasses off and looked me straight in the eye, her eyes are hazel, and I felt I had never looked at her so hard, or she at me. “Do what?” she finally said.

And I said, “Do not have that affair.”

And she kept looking at me; her eyes above her mask became tighter, it seemed to me. She would not look away. Then she began to complain about Michael. She said, “You have no idea what he’s really like, Mom. You never did. You know what he does for a living, Mom? He manages people’s money—how meaningful is that?”

“Pretty meaningful,” I said, “to those who have money.”

She got angrier. “Right. Well, there are millions and millions of people in this world without money, so ask them how meaningful it is.”

“But you knew that when you married him.”

She opened her mouth and closed it, and I realized then that when a person is having an affair, their spouse becomes demonized. This is the way it is.