I loved you.
She does not send this final truth across the ocean. The words too small for this moment, this ending. Only silence is large enough to hold her sorrow tonight.
There was one other print in the pack. The very first snap, long before all those photographs of New York were taken. When that black and white film was loaded, when instructions were given by a teacher to his student.
‘Here’s where you look. Because this is a rangefinder, you start with two images, and this focusing lever helps you bring them closer together. It takes a little time to get the hang of it, but eventually, from those two different views, you end up with a single, clear image. See?’
He was so close, the camera so intimate, that I turned away, right as he snapped the picture. My hair is a silver glow across the frame, phosphorescence in the dark. And though you cannot see my face, I know that I am laughing.
This is not the kind of thing you forget.
TWENTY-FOUR
RUBY TAKES ALONG WALK UPTOWN. ONCE, WHEN SHE WAS running north along the river, she thought she might keep going until she reached George Washington Bridge, but the immense structure seemed to get further away the more she advanced, and it was close to dark when she turned around, began the uneven trek back to her neighbourhood in the West 90s. Today, she starts on Broadway and just keeps walking. Past blocks that look similar enough to her own, taking note of cafes she might come back to next week and consignment stores with last winter’s designer jackets in the window. When she gets to the unmistakable expanse of Columbia, Ruby pushes open a metal gate and steps into the university grounds. It is familiar in the way so much of New York is familiar, the sprawling steps and imposing buildings having appeared in so many films and TV shows she has seen. She crosses the main courtyard, heading east, smiling at the small groups of students sitting alone or in clusters, wondering what they are studying today, thinking she too might like to start classes here in the fall. If she decides to stay. Exiting the university, she turns toward home, following the western boundary of Morningside Park, marvelling at the space this city makes for its people. Knowing there is still so much for her to discover about New York.
As Ruby makes her way over to Amsterdam, the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine rises up before her, impossibly ornate amongst the low-rise buildings of modern, residential New York. She has no time for God, but the church itself is so beautiful, so compelling, that curiosity leads her up the wide stairs, through the thick double doors. Inside, the cavernous cathedral echoes with sunlight, a kaleidoscopic flower beckoning her forward, and Ruby finds herself stunned at the vista. She scrambles for a five-dollar bill to put in the donation box at the entrance to the nave, and she shifts her weight to her toes, not wanting to clomp her feet against the floor. Perhaps it would be different if the church were filled with worshippers, but here, on this mid-week afternoon, she is one of only twenty or so people moving slowly amongst the thick columns and arches. She feels a serenity she had not expected, a peacefulness, despite the obvious grandeur of the church.
And she remembers to look up.
Quietly exploring the cathedral, a lump grows in Ruby’s throat, expands until it feels painful to swallow. A wall of names, of dates and dashes, too many to speak out loud, makes her feel faint, and she considers sitting down, trying out a version of prayer to steady herself, but there’s another woman standing here before this wall, before these names, and she is already praying, head bowed, tears streaming down her face. Ruby blinks back her own tears and moves on.
When she arrives at the Cathedral’s Poets Corner, the lump in Ruby’s throat finally dislodges, hot tears spilling over, causing the words etched across the stone tablets of the floor and walls to blur. She is standing before a memorial to the wordsmiths of this country, the ones who have painstakingly translated the human experience into tiny, perfect sentences. Writers who mapped the world and its sorrows with their words.
Alone, she reads aloud quotes from those poets whose names she knows best.
There’s Millay with her songs and epitaphs. Dickinson describing captivity and consciousness. Emerson and Hemingway asking only for truth, and Hughes with his soul deep as a river. Baldwin, talking about disturbing the peace.
And this.
Walt Whitman. A man, a poet, who so loved New York, and was loved by New York in return.
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
It is others who move away now, leaving the sobbing woman alone with her poets and her sorrow. Generations of writers reaching down to wrap their arms around her, gently pressing their means of survival into her bones.