Toby Lived Here by Hilma Wolitzer

Author:Hilma Wolitzer [Wolitzer, Hilma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-8794-1
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-10-25T02:28:00+00:00

14

ON SUNDAY, WHILE SUSAN was still in New Jersey, Nell and Gene Orlando, friends of Toby’s mother, came to take her and Anne out for the day. They were about her mother’s age, but their three children were young, the eldest a year younger than Anne.

They went to Jones Beach and ate a picnic lunch. The Orlandos talked about Toby’s parents, about things they had all done together when they were younger. They spoke about her mother in a matter-of-fact way, about how rough things had been for her after Toby’s father died, and how she had always been a sensitive and fragile person. Toby listened, digging her fingers into the sand until she reached a cold damp place. She was going to ask them if they knew what was happening to her mother now, and what was going to happen next. But then their three-year-old came rushing from the shore, where he had quarreled with his older brother, and he spilled water from his pail and kicked sand on everyone. Nell jumped up to settle things and to brush off the sand. Gene ran toward the ocean to swim, and the moment was lost.

They drove back to Brooklyn Heights to have supper. Nell was an artist, like Toby’s father, and Gene was a poet. Their apartment was crowded with books and papers, paintings and toys, the overflow of their busy lives. It was shockingly different from the house in Queens, with its orderly spareness, its lace doilies on armrests and the backs of chairs.

The children all shared one bedroom. There were bunk beds and a crib, and no room for Anne and Toby to stay over. Toby was glad of that. The children were noisy and distracting. Although she had once liked them very much, had even babysat for them a couple of times, now she felt impatient. This was their old neighborhood, only two blocks from their own house, from her friend Rita’s, four blocks from her former school. Riding through the streets in Gene and Nell’s car, Toby looked out the window and rediscovered the familiar places: the Promenade, where strollers looked for the relief of a summer breeze, borne across the water; Furman Street, where her father had had a studio on the second floor of an old building. She could see the windows of his loft, could just make out moving shadows behind it as they drove past. Strangers there, and in the apartment on Henry Street. It was as if someone else were living their lives.

In the car, baby Alexander sat on Toby’s lap, tugged at her long hair, and tried to chew it. “No,” she told him softly, “that’s not good to eat.” He wouldn’t sit still. He bounced on her lap, reached for her eyes, tugged on her nose, and she couldn’t concentrate on the view from her window. They had driven past her old block before Toby knew it. Anne saw it, though, and said, “Hey, that was our house!” but when Toby swung around to look, with Alexander still attached to her hair, it was too late.

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