The Towering Sky

A crowd had started to gather around them, pushing hungrily toward the waiting train; because once its doors opened it would take off in a matter of minutes.

“I’m sorry. This is all my fault,” Elise said and sighed.

Calliope felt the bitter taste of guilt in her mouth. “No, it’s my fault. If it wasn’t for me, we would still be living our normal lives.”

“What normal lives?” Elise kept untwisting and then re-twisting her scarf from around her neck. Calliope saw that her hand—still wearing her wedding ring—was shaking. “Nothing about our lives is normal, and it’s all my doing. I built this life for us, a life that consists of nothing but running away! And just when we were starting to live somewhere, when you finally had friends, and a boyfriend, we have to leave again.”

He wasn’t my boyfriend, Calliope wanted to protest, but the point didn’t seem worth arguing. Instead she wrapped an arm around her mom and pulled her close. “I’m not a child. I’ve known what I was doing for a while now. You can’t blame yourself,” she said reassuringly.

Elise pulled away. “Don’t you see? It’s because of me that you aren’t a child! I forced you to grow up too soon—to be an adult before you were ready!”

Calliope paused at the truthfulness of her mom’s words. Maybe she had grown up too soon. Maybe that was why she sucked at being a teenager, because she’d long ago adapted to the adult rules for conduct. She knew how to be sincere and how to be sneaky, how to dress for parties in prisons or palaces, how to evade the truth and get things for free.

She knew everything except how to be herself.

Behind Elise, the doors to the Hyperloop cars shot open, and the crowd shoved forward to pour themselves inside.

“You should stay,” Elise whispered, so softly that Calliope thought at first she hadn’t heard her.

“What?”

“Nadav isn’t angry with you. He’s angry with me. If you stayed, he wouldn’t blow your cover—wouldn’t tell everyone the truth about us.” Elise’s eyelashes trembled. They looked impossibly thick and fringed, but then, they weren’t real—like so much of her. “You could stay in New York. You couldn’t go back to Nadav’s apartment, of course, but you’ll figure something out. And now that you wouldn’t be living with him, you could be yourself, not so buttoned-up and prissy. . . .”

It took a moment for her mom’s meaning to dawn, and when it did, Calliope felt stunned. “Stay . . . without you?”

Elise cupped her hand under Calliope’s chin and looked directly into her eyes. “You’re ready, sweetheart. You don’t need me anymore.”

The import of those words seemed to bounce around Grand Central. Calliope imagined them repeating over and over; she imagined them in bright neon like the signs above the food stalls. You’re ready. How long had she waited for her mom to say that? And now that it had happened, she wasn’t sure she actually wanted to hear it.

“Where would I go?”

“You’ll figure it out. You’re spontaneous and resourceful.” Elise smiled, but Calliope barely saw it through her blurry vision. “You learned from the best, after all.”

“Train 1099 to Lisbon departs in two minutes,” an electronic voice boomed over the speakers.

And then they were both crying: real, ugly tears, not the soft dewy ones they used during cons. Calliope felt the other Rail Iberia passengers swerving around them, shooting them looks of irritation or pity, or ignoring them altogether. Those were the genuine New Yorkers, Calliope thought, the ones who could see something unpleasant—like a mother and daughter crying at Grand Central—and skip right over it.

She wanted to be one of them, she realized. A genuine New Yorker. She wanted to stay, to keep building a life here, even if it meant she had to do it alone.

“There are a lot of solo cons you can run, you know,” Elise was saying. “The one-handed flapover works well, and ghost crown, and you can always adapt the runaway princess to—”

“It’s okay, Mom. I’ll be fine,” Calliope assured her, and they both knew in that moment that her mind was made up.

Calliope felt her mom’s arms closing tight around her, her heartbeat hammering through her ribs. “My darling girl. I’m so proud of you,” Elise said fiercely.

“I’m going to miss you.” Calliope’s statement was muffled against her mom’s shoulder.

“I’ll let you know where I end up. I’m thinking the Italian Riviera. Who knows, maybe you can come meet me in Capri for New Year’s,” Elise replied in a passable approximation of her normal tone.

“Thirty seconds,” interrupted the canned voice of the automated reminder.

“Be safe. I love you,” Elise said, and then it was one last hug, all elbows and tangled coats, and a tear exchanged from one cheek to another; and with that Elise was stepping onto the train, her enormous suitcases floating ahead of her toward the luggage compartment.

“I love you too,” Calliope answered, though her mom couldn’t hear. She stood there waving, her eyes glued to the bright red of Elise’s sweater, long after the train had sped away on its whispering rails.

Finally she turned and lifted her eyes toward the ceiling, wondering where in this massive city she would go now.