Read Online Pages for You by Sylvia Brownrigg - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sylvia Brownrigg
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live on this street, and he’d go buy the newspaper in his slippers”) or private (“I was once kissed goodbye on that corner by a friend who died the following week, in an accident”). Anne showed her sudden surprising gardens and the great shape of the grid, recited the many names of innumerable foods. When Anne learned that Flannery did not know what a knish was, she took Flannery east and easter to Yonah Schimmel’s Bakery so Flannery could sample a spinach-heavy treat and absorb a crucial fact about how the city tasted. “It’s something you have to know,” she told Flannery, and “It’s okay—you can take off your sunglasses now, to eat.”
It was hard, as the hours and light eventually faded, and this wandering dream day passed, for Flannery to know whether she was seeing New York or seeing Anne; whether she was hearing New York’s busy commentary or just listening to Anne’s. The voice that had serenaded her through the turbulent displaced weeks at college was now walking beside her, shaping the air in her ear, coming resonantly from a nearby body that Flannery wanted to hold. Had been longing to hold. Had written about longing for . . . Those bold words that had acted as a spell, as she’d hoped, to bring the two of them together.
It was a miracle. How was it possible? And more to the point, when would this amiable preamble end?
D ark fell, early, and brought with it a quiet offset by the luminous neon and the city’s waking up for its most famous hours. As New York grew louder, the two grew quieter; the conversation changed and lost something of its earlier energy.
They ate dinner in a Japanese restaurant near Astor Place, where Flannery had the best of both worlds: declining, herself, to have sushi, knowing perfectly well she’d dribble rice and raw fish all down her if she did; but given the rare chance to watch Anne as she placed slithery eel delicately into her mouth and fed herself morsel after morsel of skin-pink ginger. They drank sake and ate eagerly, but the speech between them was uneven.
Ordinary biography did not move Anne, and she seemed happy to let silences break over them like waves. She was scarcely interested in where Flannery was from, or what it was like, or how foreign she felt here, or what that was like. She had obviously not taken in whether Flannery had siblings. (She didn’t.) She made one or two references to her own sister, Patricia, who was married and lived in Texas. When Flannery ventured, “What part of New York are you from?”—as if she would have understood the answer, anyway—Anne said in a bored tone,
“I’m not from New York. I’m from Detroit.”
“Really?” It was so different from what Flannery had imagined, from the way Anne moved through these streets. Flannery thought Anne must have known them since girlhood. She was sure they’d wrapped themselves around their Anne for years. Now she understood that Anne’s adoration was that of the adopted daughter rather than the natural offspring. “So—” Flannery started, eager to know everything. What was Detroit like? How and when had she left it? What—where was Detroit, anyway? (Other than in Michigan.) And how had it colored her?
“So.” Anne repeated it as a challenge, a taunt almost. She had a steel in her that suddenly appeared at times, closing all the doors, shutting everything down, forbidding absolutely any further questions. It was like a high-tech Bond trick, a foreign locking mechanism: it became abruptly impossible to find anything like an opening.
“Do you miss it?” Flannery asked, thinking how much she missed her own home.
“Almost never.”
That was the end of that, quite clearly.
Possibly one day Flannery would learn a little about the “almost.” In the meantime, the easiest subject for them to circle back to was reading.
T hey walked along the street, separate in the numbing November cold, and Flannery sensed that the fire between them—she was sure she’d
It was hard, as the hours and light eventually faded, and this wandering dream day passed, for Flannery to know whether she was seeing New York or seeing Anne; whether she was hearing New York’s busy commentary or just listening to Anne’s. The voice that had serenaded her through the turbulent displaced weeks at college was now walking beside her, shaping the air in her ear, coming resonantly from a nearby body that Flannery wanted to hold. Had been longing to hold. Had written about longing for . . . Those bold words that had acted as a spell, as she’d hoped, to bring the two of them together.
It was a miracle. How was it possible? And more to the point, when would this amiable preamble end?
D ark fell, early, and brought with it a quiet offset by the luminous neon and the city’s waking up for its most famous hours. As New York grew louder, the two grew quieter; the conversation changed and lost something of its earlier energy.
They ate dinner in a Japanese restaurant near Astor Place, where Flannery had the best of both worlds: declining, herself, to have sushi, knowing perfectly well she’d dribble rice and raw fish all down her if she did; but given the rare chance to watch Anne as she placed slithery eel delicately into her mouth and fed herself morsel after morsel of skin-pink ginger. They drank sake and ate eagerly, but the speech between them was uneven.
Ordinary biography did not move Anne, and she seemed happy to let silences break over them like waves. She was scarcely interested in where Flannery was from, or what it was like, or how foreign she felt here, or what that was like. She had obviously not taken in whether Flannery had siblings. (She didn’t.) She made one or two references to her own sister, Patricia, who was married and lived in Texas. When Flannery ventured, “What part of New York are you from?”—as if she would have understood the answer, anyway—Anne said in a bored tone,
“I’m not from New York. I’m from Detroit.”
“Really?” It was so different from what Flannery had imagined, from the way Anne moved through these streets. Flannery thought Anne must have known them since girlhood. She was sure they’d wrapped themselves around their Anne for years. Now she understood that Anne’s adoration was that of the adopted daughter rather than the natural offspring. “So—” Flannery started, eager to know everything. What was Detroit like? How and when had she left it? What—where was Detroit, anyway? (Other than in Michigan.) And how had it colored her?
“So.” Anne repeated it as a challenge, a taunt almost. She had a steel in her that suddenly appeared at times, closing all the doors, shutting everything down, forbidding absolutely any further questions. It was like a high-tech Bond trick, a foreign locking mechanism: it became abruptly impossible to find anything like an opening.
“Do you miss it?” Flannery asked, thinking how much she missed her own home.
“Almost never.”
That was the end of that, quite clearly.
Possibly one day Flannery would learn a little about the “almost.” In the meantime, the easiest subject for them to circle back to was reading.
T hey walked along the street, separate in the numbing November cold, and Flannery sensed that the fire between them—she was sure she’d
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