The Half-True Lies of Cricket Cohen by Catherine Lloyd Burns

Author:Catherine Lloyd Burns
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

18

THE PIERRE

Home was getting farther and farther away. Cricket knew that much. She also knew that home was where she was supposed to be. Home had telephone chargers. Home had the memoir she hadn’t written. Home was the responsible direction to go in. But Cricket didn’t like the idea of going backward.

Cricket and Dodo continued forward. Past the children’s zoo they came upon a crowd gathered in front of the Delacorte Clock.

“Look,” Dodo said, “we must be right on time.” Given the number of people, Cricket guessed the bronze animals would begin their turn around the tower any minute now. She loved the distinct personalities each of the animals had. The hippo was so large and yet so sprightly on his feet while playing the violin. The kangaroo and the baby kangaroo were very serious. The goat with the pipes was pretty intense, too. The bear was fat and frolicky, and his whole body appeared to shake along with his tambourine. And the penguin marching with a drum was incredibly adorable. They all seemed alive even before they started marching around on the hour and half hour every day of the week. Dodo was the first person who had showed Cricket this clock, on a visit from California. She hadn’t told her that all the animals would start moving. It was like magic when they’d all begun marching. Cricket had never been able to settle on a favorite animal.

She and Dodo waited with all the others and watched as all the animals made their way around the tower. The show was over when the monkeys rang the bell. People clapped and the crowds started to irritate Cricket. There were even more people at the entrance to the main zoo. An entourage of tourists pushed past them to get on line for tickets and Cricket decided she didn’t like the east side of the park anyway. It seemed more fake. The zoo, the café, all the portrait painters waiting by the gate to the zoo—these were not the things that Cricket liked about the park, and she doubted Olmsted and Vaux would have liked them either. Cricket veered toward the exit onto Fifth Avenue. Dodo gripped the handrail of the stairway that led out and Cricket was right behind. When they emerged onto Fifth Avenue, she felt like an astronaut who’d successfully landed on the moon. If she’d had a flag, she’d have planted it to mark her arrival.

They may as well have been on the moon, that’s how much the Upper East Side felt like another planet to Cricket. The only thing connecting her neighborhood and this one was that the Upper East Side was filled with the people who wrote large checks to her parents’ Upper West Side Enrichment for the Public Fund.

Cricket wondered how many people passing her on Fifth Avenue had either bought a table for this summer’s gala or knew someone who had.

“Did I ever tell you that I lived there?” Dodo said. She and Cricket were standing on Sixty-Fourth Street and she pointed down a few blocks to the Pierre Hotel.

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