When the Lights Go Out(42)

It isn’t until a woman standing on a street corner stares at me like I’m crazy that I realize I’ve been speaking out loud.

In time I find my way into the Loop. It isn’t intentional. I don’t go there on purpose. It’s something far more subliminal than that, that makes my legs pedal hard, steering me to the Art Institute on Michigan Avenue, where I park Old Faithful just steps from the bronze lions and walk.

I don’t go to the museum.

Rather I head to the south end of the building where, just off Michigan Avenue, I slip into this secret world of raised flower beds and a grove of hawthorn trees. I’d never have known what kind of tree they were, but Mom knew, Mom who found this spot by accident one day when I was young and we were exploring. It was fall and the trees were angular and uneven, a brassy shade of copper that peeked through the green of nearby trees as they do now.

Let’s see what this place is, Mom had said that day, grabbing a hold of my hand and drawing me in. That first day, I didn’t want to go. Rather I wanted to climb on the lions’ backs and ride. But Mom had said no. The lions were to look at. They weren’t for riding, though she let me pet them as we passed by.

The entrance to the garden is guarded by honey locust trees, which keep the rest of it hidden from the urban world on the other side. I slip in. I walk down a handful of steps that dip inches below street level. I move between the trees, lost in an enclave beneath an awning of leaves. Transported somewhere hundreds of miles from a city street.

There are people here. It’s not as if I’m the only one who knows about this place. And yet those that are here are placid. Quiet. Drinking coffee and smoothies, reading books, staring into space. A woman picks at the edges of a muffin wrapper, offering scraps to a nearby bird.

This was one of Mom’s favorite spots in the city. We’d come here and she’d spend hours sitting on the edge of the raised beds. She’d watch as I scaled them with my arms extended, imagining myself as a tightrope walker. They’re large—a good twenty feet by twenty feet or more—so it was always quite the feat when I could get around without falling.

Mom let me do it for hours. She never got bored.

There was one place in the garden Mom liked more than the rest because it was secluded, set back from the street entrance, the water fountain and the pool. Even in the most secluded of places, she found the most covert place to hide.

I make my way there now because I think that somehow I might feel closer to Mom if I sit there. That somehow we’ll be able to commune.

But when I get there, that spot is already occupied. A man sits there, reading the newspaper. Truth be told, it makes me crabby, thinking what nerve he has to sit in Mom’s favorite spot. And so I sit opposite him on another bed, twenty feet away or more, watching him, waiting for him to leave. I stare at him, thinking it’ll make him uncomfortable and he’ll go.

But he’s not uncomfortable because he doesn’t even see me staring. He’s too preoccupied by the newspaper in his hands.

I can’t say one way or the other if he’s tall or short because he’s sitting. He’s got his legs crossed, ankle to knee, and his clothes are all sorts of nondescript. Pants, shirt, shoes. Nothing noteworthy about them. They’re clothes. The sleeves of his shirt are thrust to the elbows. There, on his left arm beneath the cuff of the shirt, is a scar. It peeks out from beneath the sleeve, a six-inch gash that’s healed poorly. The skin around it is puckered and pink.

His face looks sad. That’s the first thought I have. That the expression on his face—that and his body language—is one of sadness. The way his mouth pulls down at the corners, a slight tug there at the edges of his lips. The way his shoulders slouch. I should know because each time I look in the mirror, I see the very same thing. On his face is a patch of hair, a tight beard, trimmed and tidy. It gives off an aura of mystery and regality. His skin is tanned like the hide of a moose, stretched and dried in the sun before being smoked over a fire. Like he’s spent too much time outside in the sun.

He isn’t thumbing through the newspaper, but instead he’s got his eyes peeled to some story on the top page, the paper folded so that he can hone in on it. Something bad has happened in the world, I think. Something bad always happens. I wonder what it is this time. Terrorist attack. Women and children being slaughtered by their own leaders. A shooting in an elementary school. Children murdered by their own moms and dads.

I watch his eyes, the movement of them as he scans the story. Moving left to right. Dropping down to read the next line. But his eyes are lowered, gazing down on the newspaper and so I can’t see much, none other than the lashes and the lids. He bites a lip. He bites hard so that the pain of the lip overrides whatever it is he’s feeling on the inside. I do that too.

He reaches for a cup of coffee set on the marble edge of the raised bed. I read the corrugated sleeve on the cup. A coffee bar on Dearborn. I’ve never been there before, but I know the place. I’ve seen it before.

And then he gets up to go, and I ready myself to make a move for his seat. He slips an orange baseball cap over the brown hair, though as he goes, he leaves his newspaper behind. Because he’s sad. Because he’s distracted.

He walks away and I notice a shoe is untied, the cuff of a pant leg stuck in the shoe’s tongue. He leaves it there. For a second or two I watch him go.

But then, standing and making my way to the raised bed, I call to him, “Sir,” while grabbing the newspaper so that the wind doesn’t have a chance to scatter it around the garden. “Sir,” I call again, “your newspaper.”