WINTER ' FOURTEEN
kept all these years.
“I used to think being an adult was something grand and mysterious,” she said finally. “I suppose it
still is. Learn the secrets, Mattie. Let me in on them.”
She laughed, and walked across the street and waved at me, disappearing around the corner past the
warehouses, and rows of old run-down wooden houses. I stood there alone, listening to the wind whistling,
to the sounds of cars disappearing across the river and around the edges of town, the occasional sound
of laughter, probably for a half-hour. Figures here and there darted out into the street, never hazarding a
glance in my direction. I was glad to be alone and longed for some small word of comfort at the same
time, even a simple greeting.
By two-fifteen, it had become dark as night, and I decided to take the long route home. I walked back
to the high-school where my mother would have otherwise been teaching her tenth graders on the thirdfloor. I turned down Eighth Street past the old opera house, the old Linn Theater, the crumbling marquee
still showing Jailhouse Rock, which Sylvia and I had seen five times, past the old alleyways, their packing
cartons stacked like some majestic cathedral.
Walking through the old alleyways, I knew that my life had changed, in some way that I might not
be able to figure out for the longest time. I might never know, exactly. Walking down Lincoln Street, past
the old pool hall around the corner from our apartment, the questions piled through my mind, like the
delicate flakes of snow. Why had my mother really left? Why would Nicky say that she’d left my father?
Why would my mother take up with Nicky? Why did she live the way she did?
In five years, Sylvia had gone from place to place, from Greenwich Village to San Francisco, Chicago,
Indianapolis, and even London at one point, working in various bookshops and cafes, little low-end jobs
at that. And in the years since, I’ve seen her here and there in crowded coffee shops and bars, with years
between us at a time. If nothing else, we still catch up over each other’s lives, at le 7BF