The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [45]
You see this lagoon well believe it or not we went swimming in it the water was totally clean just a little green from algae. The ducks weren’t scared they came quacking right up to us. But the English cops totally freaked and about eight of them stood in a row hollering for us to get out with their oval hats down over their eyes and we said No No you should come in the water’s so nice it would do you good but they blew their whistles and kept yelling so finally we came out with the ducks paddling after us. What a crazy day I was so happy!! Love, Faith
The trees of St. James’s Park hung like velvet drapes, heavy, dense, sunlight spilling between their leaves and soaking the bright grass. Phoebe walked to the water’s edge and looked at the ducks, their crisp, bright markings like costumes.
She circled the lagoon. It was large and sprawling, curved bridges spanning its narrowest parts. In the middle a spray of water shot straight into the air. A nervous excitement coursed through Phoebe. Following Faith’s directions filled her with a keen anticipation, though for what she had no idea. Objects seemed to leap at her, charged with significance.
Phoebe bought a ham sandwich, chocolate cake and a green apple. She carried her tray to a small stone table outdoors and devoured the food, ravenous. After finishing her meal, she opened her notebook and wrote: “July 2, 1978. In England everything is more real. The money is colorful, the coins are heavy like real gold, the parks are greener, the people have beautiful accents. There are terrorists all over, and bomb threats. Nothing is the way I’m used to. This is the real world and I’m totally alive, for the first time ever.”
Eating left Phoebe exhausted. She found an empty cloth chair on the grass and sat down, taking Faith’s postcards from her purse and fanning them in her hands like a deck of cards. There were eighteen in all. Phoebe looked at the postcard of St. James’s Park, then at the park itself. A part of her had not believed she would ever actually sit here, as if the real places would vanish, like mirages, just as she reached them. Now, for the first time in years, the ground felt so solid under Phoebe. She let her eyes fall shut, sunlight warm against her lids, sounds of birds and children and distant traffic lulling her to sleep.
Phoebe woke at six-thirty with a parched throat. Earlier, a boy had shaken her awake to collect money for the chair, but his accent had been hard to comprehend and there were moments of confusion before she’d managed to produce the desired coin. Now Faith’s postcards littered the grass. Phoebe scrambled to gather them up, afraid one might have blown away—but no, all eighteen were there. She tucked them back in their envelope. A ghostly population of empty cloth chairs scattered the grass. The sky had clouded over. Shivering, Phoebe stood.
Quickly she left the park, dogged by a sense of having lapsed, missed something important. She soon found herself under the overhead tracks at Charing Cross station, murky air illuminated by the greenish light from tiny fish-and-chips shops. Railway workers in blue uniforms and boots tossed half-smoked cigarettes into the gutters. Their speech, like that of the boy who had wakened her, was impossible to decipher. From the station doors came a dank, breathlike smell and a gush of human traffic. Phoebe stood in the shadows and watched. No one looked at her. She stared into the flood of oncoming faces and waited for one to sharpen into focus, to be singled out as in a movie crowd scene. People poured through the doors, hurrying to get home. Finally she turned away.
The youth hostel would be open now. Phoebe took the tube to the Gloucester Road station, where an Indian man at a fruit stand displayed a pyramid of figs dusted white with powdered sugar. There were rows of red apples, each wrapped in a tissue.
Trees tossed and bent in the wind. It felt like rain. Phoebe looked at the swollen sky and thought of her grandparents