Emily, Alone Read online

  She could not stop these visitations, even if she wanted to. They plagued her like migraines, left her helpless and dissatisfied, as if her life and the lives of all those she’d loved had come to nothing, merely because that time was gone, receding even in her own memory, to be replaced by this diminished present. If it seemed another world, that was because it was, and all her wishing could not bring it back.

  As they neared East Liberty, block by block the houses deteriorated, porches sagging, windows boarded over, retaining walls spray-painted. Trash dotted the yards and sidewalks, and at every intersection huddled fairy rings of signs from last week’s election, the winners and losers drenched alike by the rain. Arlene had the heater blasting. It stuttered, a leaf stuck in the fan, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Could we possibly turn the heat down?” Emily asked. “I’m roasting.”

  “Are you serious?” Arlene said. “I’ve been freezing all morning.”

  “You probably just need something to eat.”

  “I had my coffee. It didn’t seem to do much good.”

  Arlene was a famous complainer about her low blood pressure, though to Emily she sometimes came across as unaccountably proud of her condition, as if it were special, affecting only the select. Rather than endure a lecture, Emily closed her vent, pinched off her gloves, untied her rain hat, popped her top button and unwound her scarf. As if in compromise, Arlene turned the fan down a notch.

  “That better?” Arlene asked.

  “Thank you.”

  They passed the modernized façade of Peabody High School, where Henry had gone when it was all white. Though it was past nine o’clock, a few bareheaded boys roughhoused beside a bus shelter, laughing and swinging their backpacks at one another. Emily wondered if their mothers knew they were skipping school.

  “Do you have your lights on?” Emily asked, because traffic coming the other way did.

  “Yes, I have my lights on.”

  “I was just asking.”

  “And I’m just telling you.”

  She could not get used to the ugly orange Home Depot that had taken the place of the ugly blue Sears. As a young mother, she’d taken the children there to shop for clothes and to pick out Christmas presents. Margaret was wild for the perfume samples and the jewelry counter, while Kenneth was fascinated by the escalators and the wall of tropical fish and the booth where they made keys. Henry bought all of his tools there. They were still neatly arrayed in the basement, his screwdrivers and wrenches and pliers lined up by size on pegboard, having fulfilled their lifetime guarantees. The Home Depot had been there for ten years, and she’d never once set foot in it. The neighborhood had changed. Not that it was dangerous, not during the day. She probably hadn’t walked this stretch of Highland since … she literally couldn’t remember.

  “Look at that,” Arlene said, gesturing to the SUV passing them on the right. The driver, a black teenager with a sparse beard and squashed afro, was talking on a cell phone. “And you think I’m bad.”

  “You are,” Emily said.

  “At least I’m not on the phone.”

  “Who would you call—me?”

  “Yes,” Arlene said. “I’d call you and tell you to find your own darn ride.”

  “Touché.”

  Then, as if to test her, Arlene slowed and entered Penn Circle, the most frightening part of the drive. In the late sixties, to bypass the pedestrian mall they’d carved from the heart of East Liberty, the city planners had designed a giant roundabout a half-mile in diameter and five lanes wide, which pulled in traffic from the major arteries and feeder streets that had once met there and centrifugally whipped it around and then, without benefit of a stoplight, off in the four principal directions. The endless curves were supposed to keep speeds reasonable, but the practical result was an unbanked racetrack, with drivers pushing their cars hard through the turns, then rocketing across at the last second to make their exits.

  It was not a style of driving that suited Arlene, and rather than seamlessly joining the flow, she came to a dead stop at the yield sign and hesitated excruciatingly before entering, then poked along on the right as traffic flew past, whizzing like missiles, their tires misting her windshield so she had to set the wipers flipping madly. She hunched forward over the wheel, gripping it rigidly. For her part, Emily braced a hand on the dash, anticipating impact, though soon enough, going so slowly, they grew a tail of cars stuck and unable to enter the inner circle. A white van filled the rear window, flashing its brights.

  “Pass me already then,” Arlene said.

  The honking started, a pushy chorus outdone by one long, sustained note. A Honda jockeyed past and purposely cut in front of them, making Arlene brake, before it shot off again.

  “Idiot,” Arlene said. “Five lanes, and you have to be in mine.”

  She drove as if she were wearing blinders, holding her position, focused solely on the road in front of her. As more cars overtook them, Emily kept her eyes straight ahead as well, afraid of what she might see. Finally the van passed. She hazarded a glance back. There was no one; they were alone. Arlene signaled early for their exit. The blinker tinked and tinked, and Emily wanted to reach over and stop it.

  “That’s always pleasant,” Arlene said once they’d made it out onto Penn Avenue and into normal traffic again.

  “You did better than I could have,” Emily said.

  “Are you still too hot?”

  “No.”

  “Oh,” Arlene said as they passed the old Nabisco plant, cleaned up and advertising condominiums, “have you heard how much they’re asking for a one-bedroom?”

  “How much?”

  “A million two.”

  “That’s highway robbery. Who would honestly pay that to live in East Liberty?”

  “They’re calling it Eastside now.”

  “Who’s calling it that? No one I know. It’s a boondoggle if I ever saw one.”

  Besides the greed factor, she didn’t actually mind the condos. Better than leaving the building empty. The real shame was that, winter or summer, when the plant was running, as you drove by you could smell them baking, even with your windows closed. They made Ritz crackers, and the warm, buttery scent surrounded the place like a cloud. In the spring, when the Arts Center held their annual fundraiser in the formal gardens that topped Mellon Park, you could stand with your lemonade and look out over the long slope crisscrossed with paths and over Fifth Avenue and beyond the tennis bubble and the playground and the far green fields and see steam rising from the factory and practically taste the air. Like any Pittsburgher, Emily had been strangely proprietary about the place, and the crackers, as if she’d made them herself, and was sorry it was gone.

  So much of the city was, though some of this nostalgia was just her. From the beginning, having come from the sticks, she’d loved her adopted home with an outsider’s eye, appreciating landmarks a native like Henry took for granted or scorned as corny. Though she’d lived here nearly sixty years, and had spent most of her social life among the country club set, at heart she was still a hick. Pitt’s gothic Cathedral of Learning still seemed impossibly tall, the oak-paneled, stone-fireplaced rooms palatial, too good for students like herself. When she took the grandchildren on the Incline, she was just as awestruck by the view of the Point as Ella or Sam were. She arranged for Sarah and Justin to ride the Gateway Clipper to and from the Pirates game not because it was the scenic, grandmotherly thing to do, or because she’d done it with Margaret and Kenneth when they were their age, but because, as the fake steamboat navigated the two-toned confluence of the Mon and Allegheny, Emily could imagine George Washington standing on the riverbank, the city behind him nothing but an earthen fort and virgin forest, her own history, like America’s, as yet unwritten. When she was young, the city was her new world. Now it seemed she was losing it piece by piece.

  Each street was saturated with memory. They followed Penn as it straddled the red-line between Homewood and Point Breeze, pas
sing Mr. Frick’s beloved Clayton, inviolable behind its spiked fence. There was a café on the grounds where she and Louise had had lunch every so often, and a peaked greenhouse the caretakers opened to the public. Like Frick Park with its rustic woodland paths and quaint bowling greens, it was an oasis, as long as you didn’t contemplate where the money had come from.

  Penn to Braddock, then across Forbes and on past the baseball diamonds where Kenneth had played and into Regent Square, Arlene’s neighborhood, suddenly desirable, with its mottled sycamores and brick side streets backed up on the hollows of the park. Retirees and spinsters on fixed incomes like Arlene hung on in duplexes and 1920s bungalows, but, unlike East Liberty, it had attracted a generation of young families who could no longer afford Point Breeze. The little commercial strip by the Edgewood line was thriving. The theater was showing a Bergman revival (Louise had been a nut for Bergman, Henry bored), and Arlene pointed out a new slow-food bistro where there used to be a card store.

  “They only have eight tables.”

  “Sounds expensive,” Emily said.

  “It’s supposed to be very good.”

  “I wonder if they’re open for Thanksgiving.”

  “I could check,” Arlene said.

  “I’m kidding. There’s nothing wrong with the club.”

  “I forget whose turn it is for Christmas.”

  “Margaret’s, but there are no guarantees with her.”

  “I’m starving,” Arlene said, because they were close now.

  “So am I.”

  They dipped by the angled entrance ramp and then beneath the Parkway itself, the overpass momentarily blocking the rain so that when they stopped at the light on the far side, the wipers squeaked. The Eat’n Park was just up the hill, its lot busy, its windows warm and welcoming.

  When the light changed, Arlene pulled forward and signaled for the left turn but failed to move over enough to let anyone by. As she waited for the oncoming lane to clear, Emily inhaled and exhaled slowly through her nose, trying to empty her mind. Go, she commanded silently, a psychic. Twice Arlene could have made it but held off, playing it safe. Go, Emily wished, and this time it worked. Once they were across and into the lot, she didn’t offer a comment, or after Arlene had parked. That her side was well over the white line was minor. It was relief enough to be out of the car, and then, as they picked their way through the puddles, she noticed Arlene was wearing the Totes rain boots Emily had given her for Christmas years and years ago, and regretted her impatience.

  Beneath the overhang of the front doors, she shook out her umbrella. Inside, re-energized by the smell of coffee brewing and the jumble of a dozen conversations, she folded away her rain hat and removed her scarf, stuffing it into the armhole of her coat before hanging it up. The Eat ’n Park was notoriously cold. She’d purposely worn a sweater, as had Arlene. There was a line to be seated, and they lingered by the display case of baked goods, admiring the pies. They pointed, careful not to smudge the glass. It was a weekly exercise, choosing which looked the nicest, though, living alone, neither was wanton enough to buy one.

  “I’m sure they’ll have pumpkin at the club,” Arlene said.

  “I’m sure.”

  Rhonda, the uniformed and cornrowed greeter, knew them. “Mornin’, ladies,” she said, not bothering to pull them menus, and scanned the room, almost full.

  “Someplace warm, please,” Arlene asked, rubbing her palms together.

  “As you can see, we’re a little busy today. Do you mind sitting near the kitchen?” Meaning the restrooms.

  “Actually,” Arlene said, “in our case that might be convenient.”

  Rhonda led them through the other diners to a booth against the far wall, with a view, through the swinging doors, of the dishwasher. Emily would have preferred a window seat, but a booth was better than a table, and the buffet was right there, the combined aromas of French toast and bacon and maple syrup enticing. She was embarrassed to discover her mouth was watering.

  “It’s no wonder,” Arlene said. “It’s almost nine-thirty.”

  “First I’d like some coffee.”

  “Me too.”

  From her pocketbook, Emily produced her coupon so she’d have it ready when the waitress came. In the booths along the windows, in the flat light from outside, middle-aged couples sipped and chatted, in no hurry to start the day, and she wondered what they did for work.

  “So,” Arlene said, “I take it Kenneth and Lisa have Easter then.”

  “Who knows? I’ve asked him time and again and I still haven’t gotten a straight answer.”

  “You’d think they’d want to get tickets as soon as possible.”

  “You’d think. Oh, here’s our friend.”

  Sandy had been there longer than Rhonda. She was a fair, broadshouldered Pole in her mid-fifties with a chipped tooth and a serious Pittsburgh accent. Through their limited exchanges, Emily knew bits of her history. Her husband had worked at Union Signal right up the hill until they closed; now he was a security guard at Gateway Center downtown. Their son had played basketball for Central Catholic, then gone to Providence College. Just now Emily couldn’t recall where he was or what he did for a living, though Sandy had told her many times. Another hazard of growing old.

  “And hah’re you ladies doin’ today?” Sandy asked, clanking down two mugs and pouring coffee for them without asking.

  “Fine, thank you,” Emily said, handing her the coupon, which Sandy slipped into her apron. “How’s Stephen?”

  “Stephen’s doin’ good, thanks.”

  “Is he coming home for Thanksgiving?”

  “We’re goin’ dahn ’ere for the whole weekend,” Sandy said, gesturing over her shoulder with her thumb, as if his place were right outside.

  “That’s nice,” Arlene said.

  “Yeah, it’ll be nice to get away from this weather. Does either of yinz want orange juice?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Okay, go ahead and help yourself. You know the rules.”

  “We do,” Emily said.

  “I feel better now,” Arlene said when she was gone. “The coffee helps. You know what I’d like to do when Sarah and Justin are here?”

  “What’s that?” Why couldn’t she let it go? Emily had just told her there was no guarantee they were coming. Sarah was out of college and working now, and might not have time off.

  “I’d like to take them skating in Panther Hollow. We always had such fun there.”

  “If it’s frozen. It might not be by then.”

  “I hope it is.”

  It was like Arlene to prod her most sensitive spots—calling up not just the prospect of the grandchildren’s visit, but those long-ago nights when Emily and Henry took to the ice with his fraternity brothers and their dates, and later sitting around the bonfire, sipping hot toddies, the bowl of the woods around them dark, the stars above pure and clear. The pond was still there, and the hollow, and the stars. Only Henry was gone.

  “It looks like they have that nice corned beef hash,” Arlene said.

  “Oh, good.”

  They waited until there was no line. Occasionally the plates were burning hot, fetched fresh from the kitchen, but today they were room temperature. The one Emily lifted from the stack was still wet. Rather than leave it for someone to clean up, she tipped it so the drops ran and fell to the carpet. As always, Arlene took a salad plate, as if she weren’t hungry.

  Both sides of the buffet were identical, a line of twinned chafing dishes, beginning with cantaloupe and honeydew slices, bananas and halved oranges, canned pineapple chunks and cling peaches in their own heavy nectar, cottage cheese and applesauce, three pastel flavors of yogurt, a tray of muffins and Danishes, several different breads you could slice yourself and feed through a toaster like a conveyor belt, at the end of which waited tubs of butter and margarine and cream cheese, then bubbling vats of real oatmeal and Cream of Wheat, followed by miniature boxes of cold cereal and their attendant carafes of sk
im and 2 percent and whole milk, before the steaming heaps of Belgian waffles and pancakes and scrambled eggs and sausages and hash browns—and all of it endlessly replenished. If it wasn’t exactly gourmet fare, that was fine with Emily. She could be a snob about many things—Lisa would say everything—but at this price, just not having to cook was a luxury.

  “I may have to make two trips,” Arlene said, on the other side of the peaked sneeze guard, her plate already piled high.

  “I don’t see why you can’t just use a normal plate,” Emily said.

  “I don’t waaaah uhhhhh laaah,” Arlene said, as if mocking her, or as if Emily had suddenly gone hard of hearing. Emily looked up from the Danish she was mauling with a pair of tongs. Arlene was staring at her, alarmed, as if someone had planted a knife in her back. Her eyes bulged, fixed on something invisible. Her mouth hung open, stuck.

  “Aaah waaah,” she said. “Aaah laaah.”

  In the instant before she toppled forward, out of reflex Emily took a step back, as if giving her room to fall, except the buffet was between them. Arlene fell, still clutching her plate, her face banging the sneeze guard.

  Only then did Emily react, throwing her own plate aside and ducking around the buffet. Arlene was on the floor, the carpet around her littered with fruit. She lay curled on her side, still trying to speak, blood running from a cut above one eye.

  The people in the window booths sat there staring at them.

  “For God’s sake,” Emily shouted, from her hands and knees, “somebody help us!”

  JUST VISITING

  It was just one of her spells, Arlene insisted. She had them whenever her blood pressure dipped too low. She didn’t seem surprised. She was more upset about the gash on her forehead, a rucked line of stitches holding the livid edges together. The confession made Emily picture her fainting in her apartment, or, more frightening, behind the wheel. Arlene didn’t know what all the fuss was about. It was her own fault. She should have eaten something.