Chapter IV #4
Bernadette linked her arm through mine and snuggled close to me as we walked to the subway. “Winter,” she said dramatically, and kissed me quickly on the cheek. “It comes earlier every year, doesn’t it?”
“I guess so,” I said even as my wrists, inside my gloves, started to itch.
“Although I have figured out the only thing I miss about having long hair.”
“What?”
“It’s warmer.”
We reached the subway entrance and as every New Yorker in the winter has experienced, I went from freezing to standing in a pile of my own sweat as we waited for the train to come.
We took the 1 to Columbus Circle and walked east along the southern edge of Central Park.
Bernadette took my arm again and Evelyn and Clara walked together and Mom and Aunt Bea held hands and Dad looked like the odd one out, but happily oblivious to that fact as he stopped at a cart to buy a cup of black coffee.
Fifth Avenue was already swarming with tourists and shoppers—it was Black Friday, after all—but there was a certain order to the chaos, and a specific movement to the crowds of people itching to see the holiday windows.
Bergdorf Goodman’s always had the best displays, and this year did not disappoint.
They had gone with a mythology theme, and each window told a different story, all exploding with color and detail and over-the-top theatrics—Circe dripping in gold, mid-spell; Hermes with gold-winged ankles; Persephone covered in flowers.
“Did you know,” Aunt Bea said, suddenly next to me, wrapping her arm around my waist, “that we Farthing girls are descended from Persephone? That we live here and there, the children of the in-between…”
“How do you know if that’s true though?” I asked.
“Oh, can’t you feel it? Can’t you just feel it? A warm certainty just here—”
She put her hand at the base of my breastplate, somehow finding it through all the layers.
“I don’t feel certain about anything,” I responded darkly.
“Oh, Winnie,” she said. “You have to let it all in. You have to open up. You have to find it, know it, seek it.”
“Are you calling me closed off?”
“Gosh, darling, yes. You’re a locked hope chest. A closed book. A flower before it blooms. But you’ll get there. I’ve no doubt of that.”
We spent two hours on Fifth Avenue, peering into each window and getting jostled by strangers and losing feeling in our extremities. Clara’s nose was so pink at one point that I cupped my hands around her face and huffed hot air at her.
“Sort of gross,” she said. “Sort of nice.”
We ate a late brunch at Sarabeth’s, a super-fancy diner on Fifty-Ninth Street that was a solid part of our window-looking tradition.
As usual, Dad grumbled about the prices.
As usual, the food was actually pretty good.
As usual, Mom and Aunt Bea got a little tipsy on mimosas and giggled so loudly together that surrounding tables shot us dirty looks and mumbled under their breaths about tourists.
Evelyn sat next to me and stole french fries off my plate and we laughed about how much coffee Dad drank and Clara leaned back in her chair so far she toppled over backward and Bernadette laughed so much I thought she might actually have peed her pants a little.
Honestly, it was kind of the perfect day.
It would have been the perfect day.
And I didn’t know why I said it.
I didn’t know why I chose that moment.
But I leaned over to Evelyn and said, “I knew you’d be happy again.”
I didn’t even really think that was what I had meant to say, when I’d first leaned toward her.
I really thought I’d say something about Dad, about Clara rubbing the back of her head dramatically, about Aunt Bea laughing so hard an enormous booger dripped out of her nose, about Mom’s cheeks turning the brightest shade of pink.
But I didn’t say any of those things.
I opened my mouth, and those six words came out—I knew you’d be happy again.
And Evelyn turned to me, her smile undisturbed and unfaltering, her eyes wide and clear, and said, “It was you, wasn’t it?”
And I didn’t respond.
I didn’t have to.
Because I was a terrible liar, and I knew the truth was written all over my face.
Although I knew Evelyn was avoiding me, it was an incredibly subtle avoidance, a gentle evasion that absolutely no one else was able to detect.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bernie said a few days later, when Aunt Bea had gone back to Vermont and we’d gone back to school and life had returned to its usual rhythms.
I didn’t want to tell her what Evelyn had said to me at brunch that day. It felt like the biggest admission of guilt, the truest conviction of my sins.
So I dropped it.
Evelyn and I walked to school each morning.
We exchanged idle chitchat. We talked about the dreams we’d had the night before, the assignments we were working on for school, the dead rat that someone had left on the principal’s desk.
Even I began to question my own mind—had I imagined it all? Was everything fine?
But a week passed in this way.
And then we woke up one morning.
A Saturday in early December.
And Evelyn was gone.