The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [137]
“Well, it is lonely, isn’t it, being by yourself in a new country? At least your mother had a phone. Rose and Joseph had letters that took three weeks to arrive, and no money.”
We walked on, stopping at The Green Bean to have some coffee. It wasn’t crowded, so we got a table right by the water. I went to look for Avery, and when I couldn’t find her, I left a note of apology in the kitchen, folded and taped to the stainless-steel fridge. A flock of ducks, a mother with her babies, floated by us, traveling down the outlet past the glassworks, where tourists were once again lined up waiting at the door. I didn’t let myself think of Keegan handling fire inside, or the glass wavering and growing like a living thing. The ducks went on their way, floating and swimming with the current. They could follow this outlet to the Erie Canal, travel all the way to Buffalo, and beyond. But the place they passed first was the dock of the glassworks, where I’d climbed into Keegan’s boat with such a feeling of anticipation just two days before.
“Yoshi,” I said. He looked up smiling, and I glanced away. By the time I looked back I could tell from his face—suddenly serious, so braced for bad news—that he knew something was wrong. I told him quickly that Keegan was the person I’d been dating when my father died, that I’d gone out on the boat with him, that I’d kissed him twice since I’d been here and stirred up the unfinished past, but that in the end I couldn’t go forward, because it wasn’t right.
“You mean morally right?” Yoshi asked. “Are you saying you’d see him if you broke up with me?”
“No. No, I mean it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t the right thing to do. I got confused, that’s all, being back here, and seeing him again, and you were so far away. I’m so sorry, Yoshi. I was off balance. I’ve been off balance for a long time. You know that’s true. Maybe since we went to Japan. This was something I had to settle from the past. And now I have.”
He didn’t answer right away. He folded his arms and looked off across the water, keeping his emotions to himself. I tried to imagine how I would feel if the situation were reversed, and found that I was scared. Always before, I was the one to break things off. I was never the one who got hurt. But it was possible that this could happen now.
“Yoshi? I’m really sorry.”
He looked at me then, waved one hand. “I can’t talk about it,” he said. “I’m so tired. I feel like I’m falling through space.”
The water flowed by; we waited for our order. It seemed best not to break the silence. As the waitress brought us coffee and cinnamon bread, I had a flash of insight that seemed, on the surface, to have nothing to do with anything, but went back to the drive we’d made that morning, the green exit signs flashing past: Canandaigua, Seneca Falls, Corning, and Elmira; back to just yesterday, to the letters I still carried in my purse.
And I feel glad to know that the famous author who once lived down the street was born and died in the same light beneath which I once stood, dreaming that the world would shift and change, or even end.
Elmira, home to Mark Twain, who was born as Halley’s Comet passed over in 1835, and died in 1910, when it passed over once again.
I took out my phone and did a search for the white pages in Elmira. And there she was, just like anyone else listed in the phone book: Stone, Iris J.
“What are you doing?” Yoshi asked.
His tone was normal; maybe we’d just carry on and everything would be okay. I moved my chair over so he could see the screen. “Yoshi, look at this. It’s Iris. I found her. She’s in Elmira.”
And then I explained the essence of the story, how Rose had left her daughter and yet followed her from afar, how I’d found the letters. How Iris might not know about Rose at all, or about the windows, or about her mother’s extraordinary life.
“Are you going to call?”
“Do you think I should?”
“Why not?”
“Right, you’re right—why not?”
Still, I had to enter the numbers four different times before I