“Cassie.” She rolled her mouth around the word, tasting the sound of it. “A lovely name.” It was something in her eyes. And the bend of her lips. A sly lift that let you know she was thinking more than she said. “Is she staying here, too?” At the question, I felt a knot tighten in my chest.
“Text her to come have a drink.” Justine swiveled in her stool, one hand cupped at her mouth. “Cassie!” she called out. “We’re down here.”
I pictured it: The elevator doors slide open, Cassie steps out and crosses the room toward us. Pushing the hair from her face with the back of her hand. Would she recognize herself in Clara? Would she recognize me?
“Sadly, she’s not here,” I said.
“That’s a shame. Why not?”
“Well—” I hesitated. “She couldn’t get away from work. But I think she’d really like both of you.”
“Of course she would,” Justine said. “Next time.”
“Yes,” I agreed, and smiled. “Next time.”
Some noise on repeat pulled me from sleep and as I came into consciousness I recognized it: the yap of a barking dog, shrill and insistent. From behind the wall against the bed. I pictured a small wiry thing, weaseled into the hotel by an overbearing owner. My gummy tongue filled my mouth, my head pounded. I peered at the clock on the bedstand. Just after six. I pulled open the curtains, woozy with the head rush of standing up too fast. Dim morning light eked through the window. Muffled sounds of the city waking—the hum of traffic, a sharp horn—rose up from below. I showered, choked down some aspirin. I dressed and headed out.
A hard cold hit me, but I liked it. I offered my body to it. The streets were opening to life, the day beginning. Couples and packs of tourists and food carts and buses and taxis and bike messengers. After the emptiness of Sawyer, Chicago’s streets surged. A young kid walked between his parents, holding a hand of each one. The mother nodded along to his story, the father scrolled through his phone.
Twenty minutes later, I was warmed up, even sweating a little. My parents’ hotel came into view, a behemoth of stone and glass. I stepped into the lobby, vast and ornate. The ceiling soared and the grandiosity of the room unmoored me: the shock of human creation—that we had learned to carve the space of the world into volumes such as this. I felt myself almost lift from the ground …
“Mark?”
The sound of my mother’s voice brought me crashing down. The lobby erupted in noise—a motorcycle screeching from the street, a man barking into a cell phone, two children arguing. I spun around, searching her out.
“Marky.”
She was there in front of me, wrapped in a heavy coat despite the warmth of the room.
“Mom.” I could hear the small child in my voice and I stepped forward into her arms.
We pulled back and she looked me up and down. “You’re so skinny. Are you eating?”
“Of course I’m eating, Mom. You can’t sustain life without food. Where’s Dad?”
“Talking to the concierge.” She waved behind her; he stood at the desk. “About god knows what. This could take forever.” She laughed. “I just can’t believe you came all this way for such a quick trip.”
My father joined us, greeting me with a barrage of questions: the length of my flight, what airport did I land in, which hotel, how did I get there. These were the mundane details in which he dwelled, the mechanics of infrastructure, the certainty of driving directions. When I was young, these interrogations annoyed me. How did any of it matter? Now I found comfort in it, the questions a kind of loving attention.
I had mapped the day. Breakfast nearby and then to one of the city’s oldest department stores. My mother had been there once, in her twenties, her only trip to Chicago; she wanted something for the evening’s party, but kept insisting it wasn’t necessary. She pulled her coat tighter across her so she disappeared into its puffs and folds. It must have been thirty degrees colder than Florida. We walked to the restaurant, my father announcing the streets as we passed. Michigan. Lake Street. Huron. At breakfast, they asked about work, about Stephen and Safie—they didn’t know I’d lost them both. I made up details; I was getting good at that. I asked them to remind me of the friend they were seeing. “You remember him,” my mother said. “They visited us. I don’t know, you must have been five? Cassie said his breath smelled like feet.”
It was rare for my mother to speak of Cassie and the scene came back immediately.
“I remember. You got so mad at her.”
My mother blinked, her mouth set in a straight line. “I did not.” I’d upset her without meaning to. She looked down and reached for a menu, opening it across the table, although we had already ordered.
We got in a cab after breakfast, my father arguing with me when I paid. The department store was housed in an art deco building, untouched by time. My mother dazzled at the facade, trying to piecetogether her recollection from so many decades ago. “Nothing in Florida is old,” she said. “Well, besides the people.” She laughed at herself and touched my father’s arm. “We’re old.”
We deposited my father at a restaurant on the ground level; he claimed to be allergic to shopping, a joke he’d made a hundred times. He stationed himself at the bar, surrounded by other men whose wives and girlfriends had claimed some temporary freedom. My mother and I rode the elevator a few floors up—brass doors, mirrored ceiling. She trailed through the racks of clothes, pulling at items, commenting and asking what I thought. It was nice to see her worrying a bit about what she would wear. After Cassie, she had adopted a utilitarian approach to almost everything. Life, for my mother, became something to get through. But as I watched I saw she had softened over these years. There was a sweetness I’d forgotten about.
She found a dress, deep blue, simple but for a web of beadwork around the neck and shoulders. She swept her fingers across it.
“Gorgeous, isn’t it?”
“It is. Try it on.”
“I’m not sure I could pull this off.” She hummed softly to herself. There was something in it I recognized: she wanted the dress, but didn’t think she could have it.
