Chapter 33
It’s not a great day to go to Coney Island.
Even if September 11th hadn’t left the city in a state of somber mourning, it wouldn’t be an ideal time to go to Coney Island. It’s October. The weather has turned. Everything will be shuttered, the boardwalk a ghost town.
Nick knows all this.
But he can’t stop thinking about her. There are times when her memory is muted—a soft fuzz in the back of his brain, someone he used to know, something that once happened. And there are other times, when she blazes bright in the forefront of his mind, and provokes various different emotions, depending on the mood he’s in.
On the days when he finds himself missing her, he goes for walks. He wanders, and goes to places they used to go. Sometimes, the magic of the memory is still there. Other times, the place looks smaller and more ordinary than it ever did before…and he tells himself: This disappointment is good, the magic was never real, this is how you let go of her.
He doesn’t miss her all the time.
He doesn’t think of her all the time, or even all that often.
But when the planes hit the towers, he immediately thought of her. Almost with a sense of panic—where was she, and was she OK? The idea that she could be anywhere near downtown didn’t make rational sense, but he found himself stirred by an almost animalistic impulse to run and find her.
It was then that he realized: when your home is attacked, you suddenly have a very clear picture of what—and who—your home is to you.
It doesn’t seem possible that she should still feel like home to him. But she does. He’d bought every edition of The Paris Review until he found the one with her poems. There was a line that haunted him—something about “a sense of you fills the void…”
like that time I found my misplaced house key
in your mouth
There are times when Nick feels like he can actually taste the metallic flavor of that key in his own mouth. A taste like iron, a taste like blood. A taste like home; the idea that memories taste like pennies.
It’s not a great day to go to Coney Island, but Nick is going. He’ll walk the boardwalk where they walked together, and along the sandy shore.
He waits for the N train patiently. There is a cellist playing on the platform, the first busker he’s seen since the attacks. He pulls a twenty from his wallet and leaves it in the case.
The train pulls into the station. The doors burst open. People emerge. He waits for them to go their way, and steps on.
The fresh air will be good for him. The attacks had left everyone at home, glued to the television…and then afraid to go out during the weeks that followed. Guilty and afraid to talk and drink and laugh again. Or even enjoy a walk.
Perhaps he’ll feel closer to her…or perhaps he’ll feel she’s moved even further away from him and is gone for good. Either would be a relief.
The train jerks forward, slows, then steadily builds up momentum. He is standing by the door, facing the windows. As the train zips forward, the windows darken and transform into a mirror. He sees his own face, the geometric shape of his features. Reflexively, he looks away.
His eyes stare into the train car, as reflected in the blackened window…and then he sees another familiar face, not his own.
He turns, and stares. He wears no expression on his face, beyond that of disbelief.
There she is, holding the overhead railing, studying the “Missing” posters with a furrowed, earnest brow: Sawyer.
He stares, still unwilling to believe she’s real.
But it’s her. It’s her face. It’s the compassion in her expression—a compassion he knows so well.
As though feeling his eyes on her, she turns, and looks in his direction.
They lock eyes.
The train continues to hurtle along, clacking and rattling, and sometimes screeching along the occasional bends of the track.
Nick feels a hole open up in time, and feels himself falling. He sees Sawyer, but he also sees her standing next to him, smiling and leaning on the railing of the Staten Island Ferry, the wind playing with her hair. He sees her sitting at his mother’s kitchen table with wet hair, eating potato salad. He sees her diving into the lake and breaking through the surface, splashing and laughing. He sees her naked in his bed. He sees her kissing him in the claw-foot tub in the kitchen of his apartment. He sees her dancing with the roller skaters in Central Park, looking beautiful and throwing her arms and hips around with abandon, and bursting into embarrassed laughter as she sees him watching her.
Nick sees all this, and he can’t look away.
And neither does Sawyer.
The train stops. The doors fly open. People get off and other people get on.
The train lurches forward again.
Neither of them has moved an inch. And neither of them has blinked.
Finally, Nick sees the trail of tears glistening on her cheeks, and he makes up his mind. As he steps toward her, she steps toward him.
People on the train are looking at them funny, staring. Nick doesn’t care.
He feels something slick and warm turning cold on his face and reaches a hand to his cheek to discover, with surprise, that his own skin is wet with tears.
They meet in the middle of the train, and he folds her in his arms. It feels like coming home.