American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [75]
Anna stopped walking. She bent over. Her companion asked her if she was okay. He bent down too. They stayed that way for some time and just as he began to get really worried and ask if he should call a doctor she shook her head and said I’m fine and stood up.
Actually, she said, I’m not fine. But that’s okay.
Her daughter. To say she missed her did not capture the stormy magnitude of her wanting. She could feel the full force of it now. What had happened? Just a shift of light on the water? Maybe that was all it took to realize that this life of contentment in the present was only possible by forgetting the past. And something, some shade of blue or gray or brush of wind or smell of salt, had brought back a hint of the past or perhaps a whiff of the future and suddenly the disconnectedness required to live in only the present, a present that one could convince oneself was luminous with the Now but which in fact was cut off like a sound dampened in mid-beat, this disconnectedness no longer satisfied. No, it was not possible to really be in the present without feeling the hard-won losses of the past, the clear terror that was the future. To ignore where all of these feelings came from, where it all began, that would be like thinking a song came from nowhere, a romance from nothing, a country sprung fully formed from itself. Trouble started this way. How to end it? Anna had no idea. All she had was a sense that by allowing the longing in, the excruciating desire, she might see more fully and maybe have access to some ragged shred of wisdom. Maybe. And maybe they would get a dog.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The forsythia bloomed and there were low fireworks of bright yellow all around the park. Then the dogwood bloomed and the magnolia trees bloomed and then the cherry blossoms and pear blossoms came next and the flowering trees canopied the entire park and underneath the trees the shade was cool and the light filtered down between the leaves in shapes that resembled a second blanketing of shadowy flowers tossed all over the green grass. People brought picnic baskets and arranged themselves in groups on the lawns as if they were posing for a grand picture and in the pond there were turtles and the children ran up to the pond and stopped and threw pieces of bread to the turtles and an egret swooped down from on high every once in a while and gave the onlookers a start and something to gaze at in amazement. By the pond one little girl stood with her back to the water watching the people as they watched the egret. She was wearing a princess-style wool coat in red with gold buttons and she was hot but her mother had made her wear it. It was a spring coat, her mother had insisted, and it was chilly out, but the child knew she was wearing it more for show than for comfort. They had cousins in the children’s clothing business who had given her the coat and who would be meeting them later that day. The girl ignored her coat. She watched the adults. She watched them so intently with her serious little eyes that it was almost as if she were looking for something, or someone. Her vision landed on pocketbooks and high-heeled shoes and children in sailor suits that were old-fashioned even for the time. Those children were worse off than she was! Then finally out of boredom she looked at the pond.
A woman came walking up the path toward the pond. She noticed the girl in the red wool coat. She glanced around to see where the girl’s mother or father might be and she didn’t see anyone right nearby who fit the description. Then she saw a little ways off a couple that she had to look away from as soon as she saw them. They were sitting under a nearby tree eating sandwiches from a picnic basket and they were not concerned about their daughter, as they had no need to be. They were in Central Park. It was 1943. She was perfectly safe.
The woman stood next to the little girl. The little girl looked down just past her feet at the edge of the water where the turtles swam and hovered and waited for