Читать книгу Sunrise in New York - Helen Cox - Страница 11
Chapter Five
ОглавлениеAbout a half hour later, we bundled through the door of Jack and Esther’s apartment. It was on Ludlow Street, just a few blocks down from the diner, and was a lot more swish than Jimmy’s place, that much I noticed right away. Jack said he’d moved in over the summer but six months later there wasn’t much sign it’d been lived in. The place had laminate floors, a faux fireplace in the centre of the sitting room, and bookshelves, heaving with paperbacks, lined the surrounding walls, which had been painted a shade of off-white. It was bright without feeling too much like a showroom, and the whole place had a warmth to it.
‘There we are.’ Jack laid my guitar and suitcase down on the sheepskin rug, which stretched out just in front of the fireplace. ‘I’ve never used it myself, but I think this settee actually doubles up as a bed.’ He started yanking cushions off the sofa, pulled at the base and unfolded a mattress. ‘Not sure how comfortable it’ll be.’
‘Oh, trust me, it’s a big step up from where I’ve been sleeping the last few nights,’ I said, and smiled. He did a sort of awkward half-smile that told me he understood. He couldn’t, of course. He had no idea what I’d been through. But I got the impression that he was the kind of guy who wanted to understand, even if that was beyond him. Esther was lucky, having a fella like that to take care of her. Not that she showed any outward sign of appreciation in front of other people, though I got the feeling things might be different when the two of them were alone.
‘Jack,’ she called, a touchy note in her voice. She’d scurried straight into the kitchen to make me something to eat, even though I’d just had a grilled cheese at the diner and had told her there was no need. Jack sauntered towards the kitchen and leaned on the inside of the doorway. ‘Why are the cupboards bare?’
‘Because we were going away over Christmas and you said we had to empty the cupboards. Don’t you remember that unforgettable dessert you made the night before the flight? The one that masterfully blended what was left of the breakfast cereal with those satsumas that were about to go off?’
‘Don’t get funny, Faber,’ came Esther’s sharp response. Sitting down on the edge of the sofa bed, I put my hand over my mouth, giggling at their little routine. ‘We’re not at all in a fit state to receive guests. You’ll have to go to the shop,’ Esther added.
‘Alright.’ Though I couldn’t see his expression I could hear a rich amusement flooding through Jack’s voice over the fuss Esther was kicking up. ‘I’ll go to the shop, but I don’t think you’re ever allowed to get at your mother again for her overzealous hospitality.’
‘Jack!’ Esther almost shrieked but her next words were muffled.
He’d moved towards her.
He was kissing her.
From my vantage point in the living room, on account of the fact the kitchen didn’t have a door to it, I saw him stooping over her. Her hands, clenched into fists at first, relaxed and ran up and down the length of his arms. I lowered my eyes and turned away. Peeling off my leather jacket, I pulled my suitcase up onto the bed and rifled through it for the notebook Jimmy had returned to me. Opening it up to the last page I’d written on, I read:
There’s no other thought or sight or sound.
The moment you kiss and you’re lost and you’re found.
I re-read the words and sighed down at them.
Jimmy.
Why couldn’t I get him out of my head? He’d done all those things to Esther and Jack and Ryan. But he’d also helped me even though he didn’t know me at all. Even though he knew I was a friend of Esther’s and she had no time for him.
And, that kiss…
I couldn’t forget the power of it, the desperation not just from me but from him too. I’d never been kissed like that before, that was for sure. I’d dated a few guys over the years, naturally, and pretty much all of them were guys I’d met at the bars and clubs I’d sung in. When you sing like an angel, people think you might be one for real and ask you out to dinner. Things roll along well enough until one day, often quite unexpectedly, they turn around and tell you it’s over. Nothing personal, they always say, it’s just that the relationship has run its course, that’s all. In every case, within eighteen months of me hearing it was ‘nothing personal’ the guy was engaged to some level-headed lawyer type or worse, an over-limber gym instructor who never stopped giggling. Like being happy all the time made you more attractive or something.
In either case, I always got to wondering what the hell they were dating me for if that’s who they were looking to wind up with. I was strong, sure, but I wasn’t going to win any awards for my athleticism, and as for being level-headed… Right, musicians are so well known for that.
‘It seems I’m going to the shop.’ Jack was back in the sitting room now and Esther was standing just behind him in the kitchen doorway with a vague, dreamy smile on her face. ‘I’ve been given a fairly comprehensive list of what to buy…’ Jack trailed off and grinned at Esther, and she used both hands to give him a playful shove. He responded to this by wrapping a big arm around her and pulling her close to him. She didn’t resist. ‘But is there anything in particular you want?’ he finished.
‘I’m good thanks, Esther already picked up the essentials on the walk here,’ I smiled, referring to the pack of Double Stuf Oreos she’d bought for me at a small shop on the corner run by an Armenian family. I was amazed she remembered they were my favourite cookie, but she was always really thoughtful like that. Shame I hadn’t shown her the same courtesy; things could’ve been very different if I had.
‘Right, back in a bit.’ Jack, with a touch of reluctance, unhooked his arm from Esther’s shoulder, pulled on a long navy parka jacket hanging by the front door and set off on his mission into the building blizzard outside.
Esther watched after Jack for a moment and then looked back at me. Still leaning in the doorway of the kitchen, she folded her arms across her chest.
‘So, you didn’t want to say anything in front of the whole diner crowd, I understand that more than most. But don’t I deserve to know what’s going on here?’
I sighed. She was almost as difficult to dodge on this subject as Jimmy had been. But it was for her own good. It was for everybody’s good.
‘You know that if I could tell you, I would. You know better than anyone what a terrible liar I am. But it’s not safe. I’m frightened to tell you. It might put you in danger,’ I said. From my position on the sofa bed, I pulled my knees up into my chest one at a time, rested my chin on them and looked up at her.
‘In that case, isn’t it dangerous even having you here in the house?’ she said, doing that pouty thing with her mouth that meant she wasn’t happy about something.
‘I… Well, to be honest, I guess it might put you in danger. But I don’t think so. If I thought there was a real risk of that, I wouldn’t be here. It’s me they…’ I paused just long enough to think about what they would do to me when they found me, before correcting myself. ‘So long as you don’t know anything, everything will be fine. All I need to do is get my head together and busk for some money and then I’ll figure out where I go from here.’
‘You still not talking to your family then?’ Esther said, pressing her lips hard against one another.
‘Nope.’ I looked down at my knees, wondering if my parents had even called my old apartment back in Atlantic City on Christmas Day. ‘I don’t understand why they can’t just accept what I want to do with my life. Alright, so playing a casino isn’t the most prestigious of jobs but it’s a way of playing music and paying bills.’
Esther shrugged. ‘Parents can be funny about stuff like that. I was a teacher once upon a time and saw it a lot with the kids I taught.’
‘I didn’t know you were a teacher. But now you say it I can imagine it. You have that stony, unimpressed glare perfected,’ I said with a small smile.
‘Thank you for noticing,’ Esther said, with a flicker of her left eyebrow. ‘It takes precious time to perfect something like that.’ She took in a deep breath and straightened out her mouth, which just a second ago had been hitching up into a smirk. ‘Where’d you spend Christmas?’
My chest clenched at that question. ‘In a church, mostly.’
‘Alone?’
I nodded.
Esther lifted her head up off the doorframe before sighing, walking over and sitting next to me on the bed.
‘I didn’t tell you before, but when you went back to your parents’ last Christmas, I spent it alone in Atlantic City,’ Esther said, looking at me, her eyes watery and gleaming; two topaz stones catching the light.
‘But you said you had friends you were spending it with in New York?’
‘I lied. I wanted to be alone and I didn’t want anyone to know why.’ Esther shook her head. ‘Unlike you, I can lie, and I did. For a long time, I lied about so much.’
‘Why?’ The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it.
Esther sighed again. ‘It’s… painful to talk about. But Mum spent Christmas 1989 alone too, back in England, and I still feel awful about it. Who knows how many Christmases she’s got left. And there’s no harder time to be alone. This time of year is supposed to be all about togetherness, and when you spend it watching all the other families go into their cosy homes, standing on the outside of the circle, hearing them on the inside laughing and arguing and taking each other for granted, knowing they’re part of something you’re not, well, that’s hell.’ Esther was caught in a daydream, or something worse: the grip of a tragic memory.
‘Makes you feel like you got no family,’ I agreed.
‘I’m sorry I hesitated about taking you in, that was wrong,’ she said, looking me right in the eye as she spoke.
‘It’s no less than I deserved.’ Somehow, I don’t know how, I managed to shrug.
‘Don’t say that. Nobody deserves to be turned away when they’re desperate like that,’ Esther said. She moved a stray strand of blue hair out of my eyes. The temperature in the room seemed to be rising by the second. There were no mirrors in the sitting room but I could feel the redness in my face and a lone tear stole down my cheek.
‘Bonnie, hey, come on,’ said Esther, putting a hand on each of my shoulders. It wasn’t exactly an invitation for an embrace but I threw my arms around Esther anyway and, without hesitation, she pulled my head into her chest and stroked my hair. Did she know, by some magical instinct, that that’s what Mama used to do when I was a kid? Until one day, without a word as to why, she just stopped. Maybe because she thought I’d grown too old. Or maybe because it had finally sunk in that her first-born daughter wasn’t going to be the perfect little princess she’d hoped for. She was going to drink beer and stay up late and play music she didn’t approve of.
I missed those hugs so much.
For all that’d happened between me and Esther in Atlantic City, she was the closest thing I had to family right then. A woman I hadn’t seen for almost a year. A woman I’d tried to rip off in a moment of hopelessness. They were always so difficult to undo, the things you did in moments like that.
‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what I did to you. I never should’ve done it,’ I said, my voice muffled by the fabric of the checked shirt she was wearing.
‘Shh. It’s alright. It’s alright,’ Esther soothed.
‘It’s not alright. It never is. You’re good to me when I don’t deserve it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know who I am or what to do. I’m not supposed to be here. I should have things figured out. I should have a real job and a family and a house and a cat or something dumb like that but I haven’t got any of those things. I just… I don’t fit. I don’t belong. I don’t know why.’ I took in a sharp breath, trying to fill my lungs again after my pathetic blathering, which had all the makings of a country song if only I could make it all rhyme.
‘Bonnie, you’ve got to listen to me. Listen.’ Esther wrapped her arms tighter around me, holding me steady against the force of my tears and the exhaustion and all I was running from. ‘Nobody has the right to tell you who you should be or what you should do.’ I closed my eyes and tried to zone in on her voice. It had a steadiness and certainty to it I didn’t remember noticing before. ‘You’ve got to figure that out for yourself. I built a whole other life on “shoulds”. A woman should get married. A woman should keep a tidy, proper house. A woman should please her husband.’
I pulled my head away from her chest and dried my eyes on the sleeve of my sweater dress.
‘You were married?’ Even though Jimmy had already let this slip last night in the diner, I thought it best to look surprised. If Esther found out Jimmy had been talking about her private life behind her back it’d only upset her and that’s the last thing I wanted.
‘To a bad guy,’ Esther said. ‘On the surface, he seemed to be everything a good husband should be. But when nobody was looking he did unspeakable things. To me and to himself.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I rubbed her right arm at the elbow.
‘It’s alright, I’m alright– or, at least, I’m on my way to alright. But what I’m saying is, I’ve lived a life of “shoulds”. In fact, in a weird way, that’s something Michael – my late husband – and I had in common. And it’s not a guaranteed route to happiness. In fact, often it’s quite the opposite.’
I offered a limp smile. ‘Are you saying Jack isn’t the kinda fella who gets too hung up on what he should be doing?’
Esther shook her head and after a minute smiled too. She always had a war with herself over raising a grin. I never did understand that about her.
‘Jack’s impulsive and unpredictable and has a complicated history, if we’re going to be polite about it, but he’s not alone on that score, and he makes me happy. Not everything about our life as a couple is certain, but it doesn’t matter because we’re together and to us that’s all that really matters,’ she explained.
‘So all I gotta do is find true love? That it?’ I smirked at the idea. True love was some far-off, mythical figment right then. She might as well have told me to go off and hunt for a unicorn.
‘No.’ Esther chuckled. ‘You have to decide what you want, that’s it. A relationship with someone else might play a part in that someday but your relationship with yourself is more important. In fact, it’s by far the most important thing.’
‘Difficult to have a relationship with someone you barely know,’ I said, scraping both hands through my hair.
‘Maybe this is your chance to find out who you are.’ Esther raised both eyebrows. ‘Maybe this is a chance to become who you want to be. Rather than some sexed-up persona on the casino stage in Atlantic City.’
Esther had heard me talk so many times, after too many beers, of how I felt I was hiding behind the words and truths of other people. Put me on a stage, give me a song to sing, and I could be somebody. Not myself, but somebody. But take me out of my costume, let me come up with my own words, and I didn’t know who I was or what to say. Off stage, I wasn’t anybody at all. Other than a person nobody really wanted around.
‘Don’t remember you dishing out these philosophical nuggets when you were frying omelettes at the Crystal Cavern Buffet. When did you get so wise?’ I eyed Esther in mock suspicion.
‘Only about two months ago,’ she said. ‘Oh, and please, don’t remind me about that buffet job. People used to waste so much food, and dangle lengths of bacon into their mouths as if they were starving mongrels. Used to make me sick.’
‘People can be pretty disgusting. Especially in a place like Atlantic City,’ I said with a little shiver. Though ‘disgusting’ didn’t even come close to what I saw that night.
‘Hmm,’ Esther agreed, and then shifted her voice back into the business-like tone she’d used with Jack earlier when she was instructing him on what to buy at the store. ‘Right, Jack’s clearly gone shopping to Timbuktu. How anyone strings out a trip to a shop less than a block from the flat the way he does, I’ll never know. Why don’t you get a hot shower whilst you’re waiting? You can borrow my dressing gown and by the time you’ve got yourself sorted I’ll probably have a cup of hot chocolate ready for you. Assuming Faber hasn’t frozen outside in the blizzard.’
‘That all sounds incredible,’ I said, swooning at the very thought of feeling warm inside and out. ‘Except the part about Jack freezing to death, of course.’
Just then, Esther held out her hand. It was such a small gesture. She couldn’t have known what it meant to me. Looking at her hand, I noticed a scar I’d never seen before, just on the inside of the palm where the thumb and the forefinger meet. A dull, red line that marked out some past pain I didn’t know about. Tact may not have been my most obvious quality but I knew better than to ask about it. Instead, I put my hand in hers and she gave it a squeeze. The lower half of my face wobbled but I managed to keep it together this time. I’d cried a lifetime’s worth of tears in the last few days. Enough was enough.
‘Alright.’ Esther jumped up off the mattress, scuttled into the bedroom and returned with a cotton bathrobe in cornflower blue and the softest-looking towels I’d ever seen in my life. ‘Go and relax in the shower, and in the meantime I’ll hunt out some spare bedding for this thing,’ she said, tutting at the way Jack had arranged the cushions and reorganising them into what would, I had to admit, be a far more comfortable formation.
‘Thanks,’ I said, a little smile creeping across my face at how much Esther was enjoying the mothering aspect of this scenario. She smiled in return and rubbed my right arm.
Scooping up the yellow towels and the robe, I headed off to the shower, locked the door behind me and started when I caught my reflection in the mirror.
‘God damn it,’ I said, putting a hand on my heart as if to push it back into the correct position. Would I ever stop seeing a stranger with a blue bob in the mirror? It’s not that it didn’t suit me – it actually looked kinda cute, even if I did say so myself – but I’d had almost twenty-eight years of looking into a mirror and seeing a face framed with flowing brown locks. Before all this I was almost sensible-looking, when I wasn’t on stage. But since – what had Jimmy called it? – my makeover from the Cyndi Lauper school of beauty, I looked a lot more like the wacky idiot I probably was deep down.
I rested my hands either side of the sink and looked my reflection dead in the eye, trying to see past my weird disguise down to the person I really was. A pair of wary green eyes stared back at me. They had an emptiness to them, a despair.
I turned to the shower for a moment, switched on the faucet and sighed at the soft pattering sound the water made. A sound that meant refreshment and relief. That gentle burbling banished the awkward silence that’d been growing between me and my reflection.
I kicked off my shoes and was about to pull my sweater dress over my head when I paused and sighed again. This time, not out of relief. Lowering my arms, I turned, leaned on the sink and looked into the glass.
‘I’m real sorry for gettin’ you into this,’ I said to the woman in the mirror. ‘I’m sorry for so much that I’ve done to you. I haven’t exactly treated you right the last twenty-seven years. Fact is, all I’ve done is hurt you. By being ashamed of you.’ The woman’s eyes came over all watery. ‘But I’m going to change that,’ I said to her, quick as I could, before she turned on the waterworks. ‘It is going to change, Bonnie.’ The woman in the mirror flinched at the sound of me speaking her name out loud. ‘Something has to. You deserve better than what you’ve had.’
I put my hand over my mouth to smother a weak chuckle and I shook my head.
Neat. Talking to yourself in the mirror. That’s always a sign of spectacular mental health.
I looked down into the endless blackness of the plughole and then back up at my reflection, searching for something, any clue to who I really was and what my next step should be.
But the woman in the mirror was giving away nothing.
Maybe Esther was right. That somehow this was an opportunity disguised as a disaster, a wake-up call. Oh boy, it’d been that alright.
I could never go back to my old life in Atlantic City, and I wasn’t wanted back in Detroit. What I was meant to do now, I had no idea.