Chapter 44
— Chapter 44 —
Our bikes were still in the garage, mine and Step’s. Rusted and dusty, but under the grime, his is bright beetle green and mine is the horrible pastel purple I accepted because I was an impatient kid and didn’t want to wait for the bike shop to order a color that wasn’t embarrassing. I cleaned the bikes and greased the chains. Gave Aubrey the green one. The first time she got on it, she made a silly face and said, “Uh, I don’t know if I remember how…” And then took off down the driveway ahead of me with shocking speed.
I kicked myself in the shin with the metal grip of my pedal when I tried to follow. But I kept going anyway, catching up to her eventually, although I’m pretty sure she slowed to let me. And after a few laps up and down the street I did remember how to ride a bicycle, all the nuances of balance and muscle coming back to me like a lost language.
We’re not quite strong enough to power up the big hill, so we take the long way, cruising around the pond, working ourselves up the gentle incline by Eddie’s house, waving to his front lawn even though he’s at work. We pedal hard on the dips to pick up speed for the next climb, brake like babies on the downhill, turning sharp on the main road. We bike slow on the overpass and look for swans on the Croton River.
We are carefree this summer. We have decided we are.
Steena has been a ghost. Jam and Aubrey haven’t even caught sight of her at Gristedes. She must be going out to A&P or Stew Leonard’s for groceries. Or maybe she hired a housekeeper to do her errands. She’s using stock photos of happy families for her realtor mailings now.
Bee keeps saying, “I can’t believe Steena would abandon her kid like that,” but it’s not true, because we both believe it. Steena has always been exceptionally good at washing her hands of anyone who sends even the slightest whiff of rejection her way. It would be too much magical thinking to believe she’d change those stripes for anyone, even her daughter.
Aubrey stayed part-time at the grocery store for summer and picked up some shifts waiting tables at The Aster. But I made her promise to do fun things too. So she and Shray have set up studio hours in the basement to make art and listen to music and be blissfully happy. Sometimes, when I’m home, they invite me to join. I take them up on their offer about half the time. I always want to go down there when they ask, work on my carvings, listen to them laughing, but I think Aubrey should have space to feel like a kid as much as possible, so I try to give her a lot of room.
On nights when we’re not working at our jobs or fixing the house or making art, we ride bikes to the White Swan Deli to get turkey sandwiches on hard rolls with way too much mayo and thick slices of orange American cheese. We bring them out to the clearing at the edge of the Titicus Reservoir, where Step used to take me on summer nights to get me out of my mother’s hair. We sit on rocks to eat. Aubrey throws bits of her roll into the water and we watch minnows swarm.
Step told me once that there had been a town where the reservoir is, but when New York City needed water, the land was seized and flooded, people bribed, then forced, to leave their homes. Sometimes when we walked along the shore, we’d spot their belongings, unearthed by erosion or hidden under rocks. We found shards of pottery and amber medicine bottles, swirled glass marbles, bent tin toys. One time I found a fork and Step told me it might be real silver. I felt rich until we forgot about it. I’m sure it’s still stashed somewhere in the backpack he never bothered to empty.
I used to walk the shoreline with my heart in my throat. I felt like me and Step were having a real adventure together. I loved how he would take the little odds and ends I found and rinse them in the water, using his thumb to clear the dirt away, so I wouldn’t cut myself on broken pieces. He’d push his glasses up on his forehead and look close, squinting.
“You’ve found a real treasure here, Freya,” he’d say, whether he believed it or not. It was one of the few times he humored me. But I hated that we were walking through abandoned lives. I thought about what they’d lost, how they’d built their town thinking it would last forever, how painful it is to learn that nothing ever does. I imagined a girl my own age, her heart in her throat, choking on fear as she left home for the last time, worried she hadn’t collected all her precious belongings before the water rushed in.
Aubrey walks along a rotting log like it’s a balance beam, holding her arms out, pointing her toes as she steps. She jumps down, lands on both feet, throws her arms in the air, and grins at me. I applaud like she’s won gold and she laughs.
We poke around in the water with sticks, overturn rocks and watch tiny crayfish kick up silt as they shoot backward to find a new hiding place. We catch baby catfish in our cupped hands so we can see them up close for as long as we can hold water.
“They’re like little aliens,” Aubrey says. “Look at her whiskers!”
We cheer them on as we let them go.
“You’re free! You’re free!” I say.
“Go out there and be the wonderful fish I know you are,” Aubrey calls as they swim away into the weeds.
I am the happiest I have ever been.
The next time Aubrey and Shray invite me to studio hours, I take them up on the offer. They’re painting an ostrich on an old barn window they bought at a yard sale.
I haul Step’s nightstand into the studio and carve a picture of Aubrey balancing on that log by the water, capturing the shape of her in simple woodcut lines: arms out, toes pointed, hair blowing in the breeze, tiny catfish swimming in the shallows.