Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [85]
Lena looked through the neat lines for the apologetic language, the stilted sorrow for the ending of her hopes, such as they were, and the exhortation for friendship in the future. He’d say that they were like family, that he really cared for her and blah, blah, blah. This was exactly the conversation she didn’t want to have and the one he was surely eager for. But when she paused her brain and actually read the words, she saw that they were nothing like that.
As I walked along the river on my way home from work yesterday, I had a memory of Tibby, and I wanted to tell it to you.
Do you remember that August, almost ten years ago, when you and your friends came to Santorini to look for your lost pants? Bridget saw me first on a street in the village and recognized me, I think. But it was Tibby who chased me down. I don’t know if they even told you about it.
Tibby said, “Lena is here, did you know that?” and I told her that I didn’t. I was startled to hear it and startled to see her. She introduced herself, but I already knew who she was. “Do you want to see her?” Tibby asked.
She had so much intensity and sweetness in her demeanor. I was a coward at first. “Does she want to see me?” I asked.
And Tibby fixed me with quite a look. She was weighing my character at that moment, and I would have believed her judgment over anyone else’s. “Do you want to see her?” she said again.
I remember standing in the middle of the street, and there was Tibby right up in my face and Bee standing in puzzlement with her hands on her hips a few yards away. I could see the conflict with Bee. She didn’t know if she would be betraying you by coming closer or by staying away.
Seeing those girls, I knew you better. I understood you in a new way. After all that had happened earlier that summer, I guess I wondered about you: do you even want to be loved? And when I saw them, I knew you did.
So there was Tibby, a stranger who didn’t feel like a stranger, putting it to me. I wanted to hide from her, but I couldn’t. I looked at her and said, “Of course I do. More than anything else.”
And so Tibby considered me and then nodded. She said, “You should come to the house this afternoon.” And I did.
In the morning and evenings here in London I like to walk to and from work alone, in part because I’m never actually alone. I always seem to walk with someone, either living or gone.
Often I walk with my father, though I have almost no true memory of him. He’s my adviser, fixed and principled, the man who tells me to do the right thing and knows I know what it is, regardless of any seeming complication. Occasionally it’s my mother. My memory of her is no better, so I fabricate. I project her, as an analyst might say. She looks or sounds different at different times, changing according to my needs, I suppose. She is my empathizer.
On lesser days, when I’m surface bound, it’s one of my colleagues or my secretary. Often it’s a friend, Yusuf or Daniel from the old flat. Today, yesterday, the day before, maybe tomorrow, I walk with Tibby.
Lena didn’t stare at the letter for hours at a time in her customary way. She didn’t think, obsess, wonder, or tremble. Well, she did all of those things, but she was suddenly invested with some larger power. She sat down and wrote him back.
Having grown up perched over the Caldera, do you ever think of the lost city that supposedly slid into the sea?
I seem to think of it and dream of it all the time these days. I know it’s infantile, but I imagine that Tibby was swimming out there, searching for our lost pants, and found the trick way in, and she’s there, and it’s beautiful and everything is slow and still and quiet, as I always wish the world to be.
That’s my projection, as your analyst would say, I guess, and it keeps me company. Our pants