The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [30]
Phoebe flattened herself against a wall. Her mother’s back was turned. She faced downtown, where a soap-bubble moon had risen between two buildings. Her mother tipped back her head to look at it. This was strange, watching her watch the moon. Phoebe felt a little guilty.
Someone else came outside—Jack, Phoebe thought at first, then recognized the bouncing, tentative stance of Marty, her mother’s new intern. Phoebe had met him twice—very eager, determined to make his own films. His ears stuck out.
Typical Jack, Phoebe thought, making everyone wait. She could see him now, telephone wedged between shoulder and jaw, flapping them out the door as he lit a cigarette. She heard her mother’s and Marty’s voices, but not their words. It began to seem absurd, skulking here while her mother made conversation with a boy hardly older than Phoebe. She longed to leave her hiding place and join them, but how to explain her arrival? Say she’d changed her mind and wanted to come with them, in her torn jeans and berry-spattered T-shirt? She could imagine Jack’s reaction.
A car pulled up alongside her mother—their own boxy Fiat. To Phoebe’s surprise, Jack climbed out. He wore a dark blazer, shiny buttons catching the glare from the streetlight.
The three stood talking for several minutes. Phoebe’s mother’s voice was high, silvery. Jack kept laughing, which seemed unlike him. Phoebe began to feel desolate, stowed away in her corner, furious with all three of them for leaving her out. She wished she’d just gone home.
Finally Marty handed Jack a folder and went back inside the building. Jack and her mother waved. Then her mother turned and looked right in Phoebe’s direction—Phoebe’s heart contracted like a fist. But her mother hadn’t seen. She turned to Jack, who caught her hands in his own and swung them. Then Jack took Phoebe’s mother in his arms and kissed her mouth.
Phoebe was so stunned that she simply stared. It seemed possible this was not her mother after all; as a child she’d made that mistake in department stores, clutching the legs of strange women whose skirts resembled her mother’s. A man and woman were kissing—they could be anyone, Phoebe thought, filled with brief chaotic hope. But there was the Fiat, lights still on, the left one slightly dimmer, their own without a doubt. It all felt irreconcilable, dreamlike. The kiss seemed to last so long. Afterward Jack and her mother hugged, folded together like a single body under the streetlight. Phoebe shut her eyes.
When she looked again, they were getting into the car. Jack took the driver’s seat. The windshield clouded their faces. The car drifted away from the curb behind a bus, heading in Phoebe’s direction. She flipped to face the wall, shoving her cheek to the plaster and holding very still, not turning around until the traffic had gone and the street was silent.
Phoebe stayed where she was for some time. Her mind felt curiously empty. She began walking aimlessly, toward Polk Street, feeling only a numb, dizzy sensation, as if she’d been hit on the head.
Phoebe reached a block lined with male prostitutes her own age or younger, crotches bulging, faces riddled with acne. One boy leaned against a parking meter, smoking. Phoebe approached him. “Can I bum a cigarette?” she asked.
At close range the boy’s face looked uneven, as though