That first night in Philadelphia I had fallen asleep on the rooftop of Andrew’s apartment building, and only awoke when the Saturday morning light eked past the rooftop next door to hit me in the face. I was
disoriented at first, then glad I hadn’t been assaulted in my sleep by some big-city cat-burgling pervert. Charlie the trucker had been bad enough. I stood and stretched and pushed that thought from my mind. To the south I could hear a few birds calling from the trees that towered over the Amble-Through, and to the west, I made out sounds of traffic building on Broad Street as the city came back to life. A bee had made its way to the lavender blooms of Andrew’s chives, and I realized I didn’t have my EpiPen in my pocket, so I made sure to keep my distance as I climbed back down the fire escape to Andrew’s apartment.
He hadn’t come back of course, but that still didn’t prevent me from checking his bed, just in case. The bedsheets were unwrinkled, just as I had left them. The clock on his milk crate nightstand read just after seven, just about the time I usually got up back home. If I had been back in West Virginia, I’d have known what to do with myself, the same things I did every day. Get up, wash whatever dishes were in the sink, start Momma a pot of coffee. Saturday morning would mean Elizabeth would rise with hardly any prompting; at the age of ten-and-counting she still liked to check out the new cartoons on TV. I would fix her breakfast, maybe French toast or oatmeal, then poach Momma the one egg the doctor allowed her each week ever since she had started putting on weight and her cholesterol had spiked. Momma blamed it on her medications, but I had been successful for the most part in convincing her that a few extra pounds was worth the easing of her frequent mood swings, and in the last year or so we had managed to sustain peace in the house. At least most of the time. But I knew today there would be no peace back home, that Momma would still be frantic about my having left. I had not yet called her, and knew that I should. The note I had left with Martin, my manager at Hardlee’s Fastfood, would certainly not be assuage her worry or appease her temper. But the phone wasn’t working here.
After I took a shower, I decided to go get something to eat and think about everything I needed to do. Despite the early hour, I figured in a city this size I could certainly find someplace open for breakfast. I took a stack of Andrew’s unopened mail with me, hoping I might find a clue as to where he’d gone or how soon I’d be evicted from his old apartment. Downstairs, a white-haired man was opening the deli, and he gave me a funny look as I squeezed by him and a large stack of newspapers that had been dropped off sometime earlier. I thought about buying one, but a glance at the headlines--one about problems with the Mars Observer, another about a Yale professor recovering from an exploding package mailed by the
Walking down the shady streets of the Amble-through, I noticed a few other people already out walking dogs or watering window boxes. The brick houses all looked more or less the same, with the exception of their doors and old-fashioned shutters, which changed color from house to house. They were pretty, but none was as unique as the red door Andrew had decorated on Rodman Street. Eventually I stumbled upon the same path I had taken yesterday, but the Amble-Through’s twist and turns soon stole my sense of direction. When it spit me out onto 12th Street I was a block further up than I thought I’d be. That was lucky, I guess, for there was a restaurant on the corner called the Cheap Art Café whose door was propped open for business.
Inside, the restaurant’s walls were covered with goofy artwork for sale that appeared to be the output of local college students. Only two other customers were in the place. I sat down at a table next to a long bank of windows and ordered a spinach omelet and a cup of coffee, hoping the latter would taste as good as what I had tried yesterday. None of Andrew’s mail looked like it had been booby-trapped by the Unabomber, so I started opening it as I waited for my food. Most of it was junk, like a flyer for a list of art openings come the first Friday in September, or a free software sample for something I had never heard of before, AOL for Macintosh. I certainly hadn’t seen any signs of a computer in Andrew’s apartment. (Perhaps he took after Momma and hated the things; a few years before, she had the unfortunate timing to finally finish her typing instructor certification just as the world was switching to computers. While the speed drills she knew were equally effective for IBM keyboards as for old Selectrics, the world of
microchips and Random Access Memory was well beyond my mother’s expertise. Her already out-of-date diploma quashed her dreams of becoming a full-time teacher, and she remained in her job as a secretary for the Board of Education.) The rest of Andrew’s mail consisted mainly of unpaid bills. Obviously that was why his phone and electricity had been shut off. At least his next rent payment wasn’t due until the start of September. The statement from the rental agency told me that his lease was not up until December 1st, and I figured that even if I didn’t pay a dime the fact that his security deposit could be applied to the last month’s rent meant I would probably at least have until October 1st before someone knocked on the door to give me the heave-ho.
My food came. The omelet was smothered in cheese and delicious, the coffee not nearly as good as what had come out of Aleta’s French press. As I ate, I decided to make a mental list of things in my favor if I chose to stay in Philadelphia. First, I was lucky to have left home with my ATM card and checkbook in my purse, and there was no way Momma could cripple my finances since I had already had her name removed as a secondary signer on my account. Usually Momma was a penny pincher, but back in February I had caught her using my funds to pay off a massive credit card debt she had run up during a manic, after- Christmas shopping spree at the mall in Fairmont, bringing home boxes of discount ornaments we did not need and bagfuls of marked-down outfits that would fit her only if she actually managed to stick to one of
the fad diets she had given up on time and again. A consequence of her mood swings, Dr. Whetsel had told me when I consulted him; he upped her dosage and I returned her merchandise. Still, I had learned a lesson.
So I found that even without adding in the money Grandma Rose had willed to me, my balance was still pretty healthy from having worked, even at a crummy pay rate, at Hardlee’s Fastfood for over five years—which just goes to show the benefits not having a social life can provide. I also had in my favor a place I could stay, seemingly for free, at least for awhile. Another plus was Andrew’s friends, Aleta and Remy, who seemed nice and helpful, though somewhat bizarre compared to people back home. I had yet to exhaust their knowledge of Andrew’s time here in the city. And in spite of the labyrinth of the Amble- Through, I seemed to be getting my bearings. But the most important thing on my side was when I finally realized I had a lot more gumption than I would have given myself credit for a few days ago.
That brought a smile to my lips. I knew my choices were to either give up and go home, or stick it out here playing Nancy Drew in hopes of discovering where Andrew went. What the hell, I finally decided. Why not stay in Philadelphia, at least for a while? Even if I didn’t figure out where Andrew went the worst that could happen, I told myself, was that I’d have me a big city vacation. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d had a vacation.
Once this was decided, I pulled a pen from my purse and wrote a To Do list.
Buy some clothes (T-shirts? Shorts? Jeans? Underwear) See about getting phone/electric hooked back up? Review next month’s utilities, write checks? Find ATM
Buy groceries!
Find a map of Philadelphia/get better oriented Contact Martin about getting last paycheck Look through Andrew’s notebooks for ideas/clues? Talk with Andrew’s co-workers, boss (at museum?) Make a list of Andrew’s other friends here?
Track down this Steven?
Review Andrew’s bank statement - gas purchases, hotel purchases, etc (may show where he went?)
What I didn’t want write down on my To Do list was the one thing I could put off no longer: Call home. I had to, before Momma herself phoned the police or the FBI. I finished eating and threw away Andrew’s junk mail. As I paid my bill, I looked around for a payphone, but there wasn’t one in the place. I asked for some quarters anyway when the woman behind the counter gave me my change. Maybe there’d be one outside. Before I left, I was able to cross off one of the items on my list. By the register was a big
shelter’s movie night featuring Old Yeller. Stapled beneath the orange sign was a box of free maps, their covers emblazoned with big pink triangles. I took one as I headed back out onto 12th Street into the hot sunshine. In the years since the Great Purge, I’d begun telling myself a story, and I thought of it then. Thought I was the teller, it wasn’t my story; it was Daddy’s, Momma’s, Andrew’s—all the family that came before I did.
* * *
I imagine my parents’ courtship: a parked truck on an October night, a man and woman so young I might call them kids if I saw them now. My mother’s pale skin is lit blue by the dashboard; my father is a shade darker, his shirt unbuttoned. She leans against him. Their lips—cured in cigarette smoke, marinated in whiskey--kiss then part, then kiss again.
She smoothes her hiked skirt past her knees and lifts a bare foot to rest against the radio. She twiddles the volume up and down with her toe. The young man sighs as he sinks against the seatback. She is no good for him and he knows it. Still, she is company, pretty company. She lets him take down her hair, lets him stroke her thigh while she rests against his collarbone and hums a song overtop the commercial on the radio. She wants to be a college girl, she says, wants to go to school over in Elkins if she can save up enough money by next year. She waves her hands before his eyes--long slim fingers with pink painted nails--and tells him how she can type eighty words a minute, no mistakes. I’m something special, she reminds him, shooting her war hero a look until he nods in agreement. A college girl, he thinks--just like that other who ran off to California while he was in Vietnam. Is Katie cut from the same damn cloth? Hell, he doesn’t even know why he likes her, or if she is the reason he’s stayed in town this long, when everyone else he knows has hightailed it to Pittsburgh or down to DC--big cities where paychecks offer more than black lung. What’s he doing, hauling produce, working odd construction jobs--killing time? Staving off loneliness? The uncle whose farm he has worked most all his life is dead now, and the aunt who raised him no longer recognizes his face since the stroke last spring. Kevin’s gone; his uncle’s farmhouse is all that is left to him in this world, but even that is rented to white trash tenants he can’t get rid of till next summer. He should sell the house and the land for what money it will bring and get the hell out. But this Katie holds him here. Maybe if he lets her work on him awhile, the memory of that far off war won’t move around inside him so much. But love? He’s not even sure what love is. Love is words, a thing far less true than the one fact he knows, that Katie will never leave this town. She is all her mother has anymore. Wants to be a college girl. Yet these mountains, these people, suit her. This is what he thinks as he pulls himself to her. On the radio, Patsy Cline sings “Walking After Midnight” sweet and smooth, making it easy to nuzzle this young woman’s neck, tongue this Katie’s ear, until she lifts her head and accepts a kiss into the smoky ripeness of her mouth. A lift of Momma’s skirt, a tear at her panties. In the truck bed, swollen pumpkins newly picked shift as the metal beneath them shakes.
Months pass. Full of morning sickness. Doctor visits. A tearful confession to Grandma Rose. Come December, a hasty wedding in a hand-me-down gown. Finally on a fateful Sunday in July, she goes into labor watching a report about the Apollo astronauts while playing Crazy Eights with her Aunt Inez. He is off taking weekend work, pouring concrete at a house in Harmon for a man whose wife sticks her head out the backdoor to tell this daddy-to-be he must get to the hospital at once. He apologizes to Lew for leaving him shorthanded, hard to get help when the whole world has been huddled around television sets the last four days awaiting news of the lunar landing. With a little liquid courage from beneath his truck seat, this daddy-to-be rockets to the hospital himself.
There he manages a brief clasp of his bride’s hand, a quick kiss to her sweaty forehead before he is ushered out of her room by a well-meaning nurse. He waits in the hallway lounge alongside Rose and Inez, old hens who irritate him more with each passing hour. A black and white TV has been brought into the lounge, and the floor’s staff gathers round, eager to watch the Lunar Module touch down on the Sea of Tranquility. Inez mutters she doesn’t believe it. Neither do I, this daddy-to-be wants to tell her, his thoughts elsewhere. It’s late in the afternoon when the Eagle finally lands. The nurses applaud; this daddy-to-be’s stomach growls; he hasn’t had a bite since breakfast. What is taking so long? He goes to the cafeteria, but cannot eat his sandwich. At ten, when the night shift arrives, he is reassured everything is all right; pay no mind to that screaming down the hall. Childbearing is just harder on some women than others, he is told by the new nurse. The doctor’s going to give her something to knock her out; he needs to perform a C-section, but don’t worry. In the lounge, Rose is squeezing Inez’s hand like she might break her sister’s fingers. He hasn’t seen them take so much as a bathroom break in the last several hours, hardly talking now as they stare stone-faced at the TV. Inside his chest this daddy-to-be’s heart pounds a mile a minute. The night nurse pours him a cup of coffee, ratchets up her hillbilly accent to win him over. Stop worrying so much. Go watch those crazy astro-nuts on the boob-tube.
She is right, he thinks, the whole world is nuts. That a child could be coming into this world, a child of his, when soldiers are blowing each other to bits in faraway jungles and a spacecraft is landing on the surface of the moon, is so damn nuts that he wants to laugh, wants to cry, wants to turn to anyone who will listen and confide in them all that he feels—if he only knew hot to put it into words. It is past eleven o’clock now, and David McKenna still hasn’t eaten, hasn’t even brushed the dried cement off his boots. On the TV the picture from the camera on the lunar surface is hard to make out, but there Neil Armstrong is, dressed in his white spacesuit, jouncing down the Eagle’s ladder. Through a spit of static Armstrong proclaims “one giant leap for mankind”--and it is at that moment that David McKenna lets go of his fear and lets something else rise up in its place. His eyes, and those of half a billion others, are at this moment watching something wondrous take place. Man has stepped foot on the moon. And down here his Katie is in labor. It is a night full of miracles, he thinks. And this he tells to Rose, to Inez, to the nurses and anyone else who will listen,