EVE
WHY DID THE PIGEON CROSS THE ROAD?
I was praying for the sound of his voice. I had my phone in hand, pacing up and down the red steps in my black shoes, ten steps up, ten steps down, waiting to hear the sound of his voice. I felt like if I left this place, I could no longer be sure of what reality was, of what actually happened. I would lose the chance to take it all back, or to at least alter something. Across the street, there was a school and a fenced-in concrete area with lines drawn, a basketball court. There were three trees. Above me, two stained glass windows. At the bottom of the steps, I decided to turn right and go to the corner and back. I passed the yellow speed bump sign, yellow school-crossing sign, fire escapes, red door, fire escapes, red door, green building, gray bricks, corner of East Houston Street, then quickly turned back around. Green building, red door, fire escapes, red door, fire escapes, crossing sign, speed bump, red steps. I was anchored to the steps by an invisible thread. I kept walking the same way: around the corner but I never left the block; always returned to where I’d started, at the top of the steps. I tried calling Ben again, and listened to the phone ring and ring with no answer. I kept praying for that steady voice of his to interrupt the endless vacant ringing. Pick up pick up pick up.
I stopped moving when a stranger passed me by. He was rolling a suitcase by his side, and for some reason, I pictured him going home to his wife and two children, kissing their sleepy heads good night, reheating his dinner in the kitchen. He stared straight at me in the dark, with curiosity. It must have looked strange from the outside, the scene: a narrow street, so quiet at night, no lights, a girl in a green bridesmaid’s dress, visibly shaken; the clicking of her shoes up and down the steps. When he was out of sight, I went back to my phone. I called again.
“Hey, it’s me,” I said. “Call me back. I need to talk to you.” It wasn’t my usual course of action to leave a voice mail, but it was the closest I could get to him, and it wasn’t very close. I was desperate and starting to tremble in the cold, but I found comfort in the suffering. Inside of me, it was much worse. I had an energy that I couldn’t get rid of or put toward anything. There was no place to turn, nobody who would feel sorry for me, not a chance.
In need of a distraction from my own thoughts, I started to watch a pigeon along the sidewalk, pecking away near a gutter, a stream of water at the edge of the street. We were both moving back and forth down the road, in the same aimless way. I kept my eye on it as I paced, as it inched farther and farther away from the sidewalk and toward the center of the road. I refused to leave those steps. I would wait there until Ben called back. If I left this place, I would be even more alone in the city, disconnected from everything. I needed an anchor more than ever, and with Ben gone, I had only this wedding and my friends inside. Without this place, I was tied to nothing.
I had a passing memory of Ben holding on to me as I slept; he’d always done this, even before it was required, even after the first drunken night on Saint Marks; yet somehow I’d managed to throw it all away. I felt like something permanent had changed, like there was something spoiled inside of me, capable of ruining whatever lay in its path.
I clicked my phone to check it again, and in that second, a truck whizzed by and crushed the pigeon to death. All at once I heard the snap of countless small bones. I gasped. I moved forward, slowly, peeking at its flattened body, the black, gray, and white feathers against the street. I recoiled backward. I kept thinking about how all it took was one wrong move, just one false step, and it could all be over. You could gain or lose everything. Wasn’t that why Ben felt so guilty about his father? Even he knew how easy it was to alter the course of events.
Maya came outside and I looked at her, not masking my alarm.
“I just saw a pigeon die,” I said. “It died right in front of me. A truck ran over it, and it was like, whoosh. Death.”
She seemed confused but hugged me. She didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t tell her about Jesse’s brother, or Jesse’s roaming hands in the dark, the kiss, what I’d done to Ben. I just held on tight and she did the same. After a few minutes, she loosened her hold on me.
“So was this like . . . a pigeon pigeon?”
I smiled at her. She put her hand on my shoulder and went back inside and brought me my coat and a pile of tissues.
“Apparently, we’ve reached the Kleenex portion of the evening.”
I put on the coat, closed it with both hands, and held it that way, too concerned with staring at my phone to deal with zipping it up properly.
“How’s it going in there? Do you think Kate’s noticed that I’ve been gone?” I asked her.
“No way.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded emphatically. “Kate doesn’t even notice who she married,” she said. “Why don’t you go home?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t.”
“I have to find Erol,” Maya said, and turned to go back inside. I nodded, kept pacing. I didn’t know how much time had gone by, but eventually, I heard the sound of a few wedding guests, too drunk and done for the night, saying their good-byes. Is it over? The first group of departures flung themselves into taxis, the yellow lights on and waiting. After the cab doors closed, somehow, miraculously, my phone rang.
Once I heard his voice, everything else went black. The city was gone. I heard no car horns or bits of conversation from the people walking by or music from inside. I heard nothing but the sound of his words.
“Hey.”
“Hi.”
“How was the wedding?”
“Fine.”
“See.”
“Oh, Ben, I just don’t understand. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me something like that. Something so important like . . .” My voice cracked and tears came spilling under my eyelids. “Something so important like that.”
“This again? I’m sorry. I should have. Right away. You’re right.”
“You can’t just go silent on me. You’re so silent sometimes. And there’s nothing that scares me more than unexplained silence.”
“I know.”
“And it’s all fucked up now. It’s all so fucked up.” I was sobbing into the phone, uncontrollably.
“Why?” he said. I’d never heard Ben sound so alarmed. It broke my heart even more.
“I . . . I did something bad.”
“Okay. . . .”
“I did something really bad.”
“What is it?”
“I saw Jesse at the wedding.”
“Okay.”
“We kissed.”
“What?”
“I know. It was the stupidest thing.”
“Yeah.”
“There’s something wrong with me.”
“Okay.”
“I can’t believe I did this, because I love you. I love you so much, Ben. But you really threw me . . . when you told me that. I was just so surprised. I never ever thought you would hide something from me. You were supposed to be the one who fixed . . . who fixed . . . this hole inside of me. You weren’t supposed to create one.”
“Okay.”
“But even so, it was such a mistake. Do you believe me? It was a big mistake.”
“Okay.”
“Say something other than okay, please.”
“What do you want me to say? Look. I say everything I need to say. There’s nothing bubbling under the surface. What you see is what you get. What is the point of all your words? They don’t get us anywhere. For example, I was a lot better off before we had this conversation.”
“I don’t know, but please say more than just one word. I just want to talk to you. I feel like sometimes you aren’t very expressive, and it’s hard to tell what’s going on in your head when I can’t see you. So, if you could just say what you’re feeling. . . .”
“EVE. Take a wild guess. Take a wild conjecture as to how I might feel. What’s going on in my head? How do I feel? I feel exactly how you’d imagine I would feel.”
And then the line went dead.