But soon after Ellie turned twelve there was a marked shift in how she received these young people. She sulked when they came over. She picked at her food and then snuck up to her room.
They’d been talking about the novel Caitlin was working on. It was still nascent then. She’d ridden the 2 train back with Maya from campus, the two of them sitting next to one another, knees touching, awkward suddenly outside their usual context.
“I’ve been charting out To the Lighthouse,” she said to Maya at dinner, “trying to figure out how it’s formed.”
“How great!” Maya said. She hadn’t touched her food and was staring at Caitlin. She felt her daughter’s eyes on her.
Caitlin began to speak again. She was explaining the shift that happens in the “Time Passes” section, how she was trying to understand how to make large swaths of time speed up, then slow down.
“Have you ever had long hair?” asked Ellie, interrupting. She had turned toward Caitlin and her mouth pursed a bit as she appraised her face; Caitlin took another bite of the orzo with spinach and chicken Stephen had cooked.
“I’m sorry?” said Caitlin. She smiled at Ellie, looking briefly back at Maya, who sat slightly confused, then scared.
Caitlin was round around the edges. She was short, with thick thighs and a belly, her face a perfectly full moon.
“Your hair,” said Ellie again. “Has it ever been long?” There was something in Ellie’s voice, the flatness of it, like she was trying at something. Maya held tight to the edge of the table and begged her daughter silently to reel herself back in.
“Of course.” Caitlin laughed, and reached up to the dark blond nubs that sat atop her head. “When I was at LSU. It got so hot in summers. I had a friend who was a physicist and she convinced me she understood angles, so she cut off all my hair.” She looked at Maya, who smiled back. “We’d had some wine.” Then back to Ellie, “I liked how easy it was, so I only went shorter after that.”
“Ha,” said Ellie, clearly not amused.
Caitlin reddened. She wore a purple T-shirt and jeans that pulled at the pockets. Her eyes and mouth were small. Maya thought it might be worse to scold her daughter. She wasn’t sure what to do or say to make it all stop there.
“El. .”
Her daughter interrupted her, still looking right at Caitlin. “It’s slimming, you know, long hair.”
Caitlin looked down at her plate. Maya stood, then stopped a second, not knowing which way to turn.
Caitlin had recovered valiantly. She’d initiated a conversation with Stephen about his Germans, talked soccer — she’d been a defender in high school — with Ben. Maya waited until she’d left and both Stephen and Ben had gone upstairs to confront Ellie. But when she found her, in her room with her charcoals and a large piece of thick white paper, Ellie was already crying, saying she was sorry, saying she didn’t know why she’d been that way. Maya had no choice but to pull her in and comfort her, worrying only for a moment that she might still need to scold her for a thing she still wasn’t completely sure her daughter knew she’d done.
The apartment is a twenty-minute walk east from the subway. Maya’s just about at the water by the time she finds the address. She walks up four flights of stairs and hears the sound of bongo drums coming from the floor above, a sloppily strummed banjo, and smells the sweet smoky scent of weed. There are shoes outside each apartment, a stroller folded up in the corner across the hall.
She used to live in an apartment almost exactly like this, those few months before her dad died and then again before she married Stephen. The first summer after school she’d hardly left the apartment. She spent nearly all her time locked up in the tiny space where she knew she could be sure that she’d be left alone. She had no air conditioner and no TV, just an old stereo, a fan, and loads of books. In summer she would point the fan right on herself and lie naked on the floor most of the day. She took cold showers every few hours, walking around with the windows open, tying her hair up in a knot to keep the water in. She’d read and nap; she’d sit very still and listen to the cadence of the footsteps of her neighbors and try to imagine whatever it was they did every day. The family below her had three kids, shoved into the same tiny crooked studio as hers. She peeked whenever she could, when their door was open, as she was coming up or down the stairs. They were all stacked in there: beds on top of beds, shelves on top of shelves, with pots and pans and clothes and shoes all mixed in. They had twin girls and an older boy; the girls would clod along in their brother’s hand-me-downs, those thick-soled athletic shoes that look oversized even when they fit. She always knew when they were coming up the stairs, the clop-clop of their feet, and then, almost every time, one of the kids would either laugh or scream. A lot of nights, she’d hear them coming in from wherever it was they’d been, late for children, ten, eleven, sometimes later, and then the smells would waft up through the open windows, all sorts of spices she’d never even thought to dream of, curries and onions so thick her eyes would run. And Maya would lie on the floor of her apartment, which felt huge with the image of all those stacks inside her head. And she’d wonder how she could shape her face or hold herself in just the way that would get them to knock on her door and ask her to come fold in with them.
Even before the door opens, Maya is accosted by the smell of garlic, onions, and grilling meat. Caitlin grabs hold of Maya before she’s fully through the door. She’s lambent, of fire, Maya thinks, as Caitlin leans toward her, so fresh and full of life. She’s begun to grow her hair out and has it pulled back with a neon scarf; large chunks fall around the scarf and stick to Caitlin’s neck and ears, curling at the ends. Her full round cheeks are flushed and there’s a film of sweat above her upper lip. She’s always had a defiant sort of doughiness that has, while maintaining nearly all its substance, gotten somehow firmer in the months since Maya saw her last. Her breasts heave freely beneath a smocked beige linen dress with intricate dark green embroidery and her feet are bare, with matching green toenails.
The door opens into the kitchen. There are three pans working on the stove. Everywhere, the remnants of Caitlin’s cooking sit: clear glass bowls coated with the last bits of spices and finely chopped cilantro, colorful plastic measuring spoons, onion and garlic skins, cutting boards, and knives still wet from work.
It’s freezing outside, but warm in the apartment. The smallness of the space and with the oven and three burners going, Maya’s quickly peeling off her coat. The bed’s pushed against the wall between two tall windows. Maya can see the staggered lines of projects across the street along the river and a large covered-for-the-winter community pool. Caitlin has set up a card table beside the bed and surrounded it with a hodgepodge of chairs — one yellow and thinly stuffed, one folding, one simple straight-backed wood — and a wooden bench along one side. The bench’s seat is covered with pillows from the bed that Caitlin’s tied down with some silk ribbons that look as if they might also serve as belts. An old red sheet serves as the tablecloth. The walls are all the same thick beige paint of nearly every New York apartment that has seen too many occupants, layer after layer of not quite white that seems to come out from the walls and hang just over the moldings, threatening, at any moment, to come down in dusty, spackled chunks. There are crooked plywood built-in bookshelves and the books are doubled up, balancing precariously close to the edges; Maya stands near to one of the shelves and runs her hand along the spines. The apartment is hastily ordered, but the remnants of prolific mess remain. Maya can make out piles of clothes underneath the bedframe, maybe a bowl and at least one plastic water bottle, balls of dust still lurking in the corners of the room. Books are piled on the small table by the bed and on each windowsill, and on the desk piles of paper sit slightly askew.