The Map of Longing

Chapter 35

Greta

The silence in the car is dense. And the lights from the fair are still shimmering far off.

But the magic of the moment has shattered.

I get out of the car, my heart in my throat.

Will follows me. I breathe in the cool late-July air with its scent of cotton candy, but it doesn’t reach me. I can’t hear. I can’t see…

“Greta, wait,” he says.

I stop walking and turn to face him. My head hurts, and it’s all I can do not to cry.

I can’t put myself in his shoes. I can’t.

Not now. I have to pay attention to my heart, which is aching, because it swelled when I thought I could kiss a toad and he’d turn to a prince.

I mean, he did, but he’s far from perfect, and if you look at him up close, he’s anything but charming.

“What’s this all about? Am I supposed to redeem you and your bruised ego somehow? Am I a charity case for you, to make you feel better?”

“No, goddamn it, no.”

“I am, Will. You know why? Because if this were a few years ago, you wouldn’t have looked twice at me. I’d have been invisible to you.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Can you just try to be honest for once? I realize you’re out of practice.”

“What are you trying to say?” He clenches his jaw.

“I want to know: Would you have noticed me back then?”

There’s a storm in his eyes. He rubs his chin and looks away, defeated. I know the answer, and even if I’m glad he’s not lying to me or trying to soften the blow, that doesn’t make it hurt any less when he says it aloud.

“No.”

“Great. Thanks, Will.”

“But I was stupid! You can have all the answers right in front of your nose and not realize it! You can be in heaven and be completely incapable of recognizing it.”

I walk off on the verge of tears. I know I’m being irrational, maybe, but all I can think to myself is that if this isn’t real, if what I have with Will is a mirage, if nothing I feel has roots, then I guess I’ll never believe in love again, because I’ll have to admit I don’t know how to recognize it and it’s time to step away and stop touching hot stoves and getting burned.

“Greta, wait. Please.”

“I can’t. I need to go home.”

“So what, you’re going to walk there?”

“Yeah, I am. I think it’s a brilliant plan.” To show I am serious, I walk faster, but we both know it makes no sense and that I’m letting my anger do all the talking. I could never walk that far, let alone in the middle of the night.

“Greta, stop. Let’s go back to the car.”

His eyes beg me, and I know the most sensible thing is to sit down in that car beside him, catch my breath, not say anything till we reach Ink Lake.

So that’s what I do. As he drives, I can see him opening and closing his lips, biting his thumbnail, stiff-shouldered, wanting to say something and thinking better of it.

The more I observe him, the less I think I know him.

Who is he? How can you trust a person like that, someone who’s changed so many times?

How can you know everything about someone?

What they dream, their envies, their fears, their thoughts, their feelings…

The motor grumbles as he screeches to a stop in front of my house.

Will touches my hand, so softly I might have thought it had never happened, but the electricity I feel when I touch his skin tells me otherwise. We look at each other and I see the pain in his eyes. A pain you can’t just fake.

“Greta, I’m sorry I disappointed you.”

“I just… I thought you were different.”

“I am. Now.”

But that’s not good enough. And he knows it too.

Before I get out, I see my birthday present in the back seat. It’s sad, tawdry, like when you wake up the day after a party and see the empty glasses and garbage all around.

I don’t say goodbye. I open the front door, walk inside, climb the stairs.

I can’t stop thinking about Will and his past and all I could never have guessed about him.

I take off my clothes, look at the wall.

My wall. It’s sad to remember how, just a few hours ago, we were wearing wigs and spinning around in a Ferris wheel and kissing.

Everything smelled of popcorn and life was like that too—it popped.

I swear I could feel it popping in my heart.

And Will felt solid, like a Greek statue.

I thought I knew him: not like I could recite the Tucker family tree or anything, but his essence, that was familiar to me, like a gut feeling that makes you say this is the guy and you ignore all the surrounding noise and outside interference.

My gut feelings are flawed, though, that much is clear.

I don’t know what makes me angrier: Will being a selfish bastard who didn’t care about others’ sufferings for so long or me not being able to guess that.

My head hurts.

I have no idea why I’m doing this, where the impulse comes from, but I find myself grabbing a pad and a pen.

I start writing. The first line is: My name’s Greta Peterson and I was born to save my sister.

More lines follow, about my childhood, about people asking what I want to be when I grow up and me saying a Tyrannosaurus so I could crush people’s heads, and I continue: I’ve always felt like a circle in a world of squares, but I’m not willing to conform and straighten out my curved lines.

I don’t add how I thought I’d found another circle I thought could roll through life with me.

I keep writing. More and more. I write about things that were pretty to me when I was a girl, the pine cones I used to pick up for Grandpa, tree rings, wood chips, the veins in leaves, snail shells.

I write about high school and the few classes I liked and wouldn’t miss for the world.

I write about the present, about chaos, about joy, emptiness, and pain, about the game my sister made for me, about forgotten dreams, about the list of things I like and the frustration of holding a match and being unable to light it.

I’m angry as I fold the letter. Angry at the world, at myself, at Will.

I find an envelope and put the paper inside.

I seal it. I look on the web for an address, but I don’t pay any attention to the details.

And I leave in the middle of the night, walk to the mailbox, wait.

Because let’s be honest: Who would decide to write an application to study art history at San Francisco State just a few minutes after the man she thought she loved had let her down as the sun was starting to peek over the horizon?

Me, I guess. Pow. I slip the letter inside before I can change my mind.

And there’s nothing more to do about it.

Then I go back home and get in bed.

My birthday’s over now. I’m twenty-three, and I still don’t know who I am or who the person I’m in love with is.

Questions encircle me as I turn in the sheets and grab a notebook on my nightstand.

In the dark, I scribble out the word archetype, because I realize that’s what Will is: a representation of perfection but one that only really exists in my imagination.

The noise wakes me up.

I go out into the hall and find Mom bent over and dragging a box. There are two others close by. Inside are Lucy’s clothes, the ones Dad and I sorted weeks ago and left in her room to give Mom more time to grieve.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m taking this to Goodwill.” She pulls her hair back. “Give me a hand?”

“Sure. Just a sec.”

I throw on something comfortable and walk out into that hallway where my sister and I always used to meet, going to my room or hers to keep each other company.

We walk downstairs, pull the things into the garage, load them into the car.

A neighbor is crossing the street in athletic clothes.

She says hi, and when she asks my mother how she is, Mom replies, “Good, Betty, we’re making it.

I like your shoes.” And that’s surprising.

Not the comment, just the fact that she notices the shoes.

That she notices anything. As if the outside world were finally becoming clear to her again.

We talk with a nice-looking woman who’s pleased at all we’ve brought in. She talks about last year’s storms and how they’re still helping out the families affected. A guy comes to take the boxes away, and I see Mom wringing her hands, trying to resist the urge to take it all back home.

We don’t talk as we get into the car. It’s drizzling, and the drops speckle the windshield like the tips of needles.

“It’s over,” I say.

“It’s over,” she says.

She starts the car. We drive through Ink Lake.

She asks me what I plan on doing that day, and I tell her I’ll go walk Mr. Fluff when the rain stops.

I don’t tell her all I really want to do is roll around in bed and cry.

I don’t tell her I miss Will—or the idea of Will.

I don’t tell her last night I sent off a college application like an idiot. I don’t tell her anything.

“You should have Olivia over for lunch one day. I haven’t seen her in a long time. We need to catch up,” she proposes.

I feel the key pendant of the necklace she gave me and think that she’s right, that we ought to catch up, but just her and me. The secrets are starting to pile up, they weigh on my back like a stone. I moisten my lips before speaking.

“Mom, I haven’t been friends with Olivia for a while now.”

“What?” She looks at me, still gripping the wheel.

“We had a fight. It doesn’t matter why. We’re not as close as we used to be, plus she’s gone. She went to study design.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Things happen.”

I feel nauseated as I tell her all this. Maybe she’s back enjoying the summer with her family. Maybe she’s off traveling. I don’t care. I don’t care at all. I take a deep breath.

“Honey, I had no idea. But don’t you think it could be a misunderstanding? Most problems you can work out by talking.”

“The way you and Dad do?”

“Greta!”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

The light turns green, and she drives on.

I’m not at my best. This whole thing with Will has upset me. I’m still trying to figure out what I feel about it and why his past bothers me so much. Probably…probably I’m afraid that it has something to do with his present. And I’m scared, terrified, of finding out.

When I was little, I used to love to play video games at Olivia’s house.

Her stepbrother had left the Nintendo there.

The fun thing about it wasn’t that you could jump over mushrooms or gather coins; the fun thing—the fun thing about any game—was that it didn’t matter if you died, because once it said Game over, you got another chance.

In real life, you have to think out your moves clearly; you can’t just let a carnivorous plant come along and gobble you up.

“I’ll take you to Anne’s house,” Mom says.

So off we go. The thin rain has ceased by the time we arrive, and I get out of the car. To my surprise, my mother follows suit.

“You’re coming?”

“Yeah, she and I have a few things to talk about.”

She doesn’t clarify. Anne greets us in her usual polite way and insists on making coffee and sitting in the living room with us for a while. Mr. Fluff follows me because he knows I’m his way out of here, his key to the neighborhood and the park where he can go chase birds.

“Rosie, did you think about what we discussed last week?” Anne asks after emptying some sugar into her coffee. “Don’t tell me it’s not an interesting project. And I think you could really help me out.”

“What did I miss?” I ask.

I forgot that Anne had said she needed to meet with my mother the last time we were here.

The past few weeks have been strange; time’s passed on two tracks, one in my mind, one in the real world.

My recent memories are all jumbled like they’ve been crushed by a steamroller: the night we went to the mountain in search of beauty, the trip out of state, my birthday.

Everything is there but compressed, and at the same time, I realize life has never stopped running its course.

“Anne told me about a project she’s working on. They’re getting a HUD grant to turn a group of half-built houses to low-income rentals. The builder went bankrupt, and she needs to find funding…”

“And that’s where you come in,” Anne said. “Just go there with me and check out the neighborhood. You’ll see what a tragedy it is, all these places just sitting there empty. I feel like we have to do something.”

“Anne…”

“You know you have a gift for persuading people.”

“Had. I doubt it still works.”

“Well, let’s find out the hard way. If I’m right, you’ll help me out. Who knows? Maybe we can get you back on board. I’m sure they’d welcome you with open arms if you really gave it a try.”

For the first time in ages, I see my mother starting to question how she’s living.

It’s only for a second, but hope rises up inside her.

I understand. I understand because I know what it is for part of you to want to do something, to yearn for it, but to shy away from taking that first step.

When you’re standing at an intersection and you don’t know which way to turn, sometimes you need someone to give you a nudge and remind you that you can’t just stay there forever.

That you have to decide. And all at once, I know that this is the whole point of the Map of Longing, and I can almost feel my sister’s breath on the back of my neck. She pushes me to say it:

“Mom, you should give it a try.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. I do. What’s there to lose?”

Nothing great, that’s for sure. The depression that keeps her standing forever at that intersection, on the sofa, in front of the TV. And I doubt she’ll miss that.

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

“Amazing.” Anne grabs my mother’s hand and squeezes it softly. And I see just then how badly she needed a friend, how badly we all do, how badly I do too.

I leave them alone and take Mr. Fluff out for his walk.

We rove the neighborhood, and when we get to the park, I sit on a bench.

I throw him a stick. He sniffs everything in his reach.

It’s nice there. The sky is gray and the trees seem to speak when the wind blows through them.

What do they want to say? Still more: What do their leaves feel?

They look so fragile there, swaying, waiting to fall…

My phone dings. It’s him. I know it’s him.

Will: Next move. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at five.

I put my phone away without answering. I don’t care about anything right now beyond the fragility of the leaves swishing overhead.