Fare Forward Page 7

  We are together, under a star-filled sky, walking on a flat-topped mountain in the desert, in a cave, in an ancient garden, and many other images and sensations that come at me too quickly to stop. What is it? A memory, an experience, a dream? I feel the heat of torches, the thunder of a cheering crowd, the chill of a desert night, and the feeling of him close to me. His lips and breath—on my neck, throat, the inside of my—

  "Oh my God" I gasp.

  The force is so powerful that I start to back slowly away from him. I don't know what else to do, so I turn and run out of the room, away from everything as quickly as possible. I descend the steps two at a time as I try to concentrate, desperately trying to clear my mind. I can't think clearly as the intensity of the moment and the exchange with him has overwhelmed my normal sense of control. As I emerge from the building, I try to understand what has just happened. I am even angrier with myself for running away and letting my vision overtake me.

  I knew him from somewhere; he was in the very room I was looking for. I could feel a crazy sense of unexplained excitement. More than that, however, there was something unforgettable about the way he had looked at me and how it made me feel.

  Ridiculous, Gabriella.

  All the same, I knew that something incredible had just happened.

  * * *

  14

  * * *

  I COULDN'T GET HIM out of my mind. The unexpected encounter with the mysterious stranger stayed with me. There was something about him, different—yet incredibly familiar. I was surprised at how just thinking about him made me feel: uncomfortable, off balance, electrified. I let myself move cautiously into the dark place in my heart—the one I never really dared to look into—and allowed the unexpected feelings to wash over me. The sensation of being near him, I wanted to hold on to the way it felt.

  The phone rings loudly and breaks my reverie. It's Emily.

  "Gabriella, are you getting ready for tonight? You know we can't be late and—"

  "Em, it's only four thirty in the afternoon, the awards ceremony doesn't start until eight. We'll have plenty of time. I need to go do something."

  "Can't it wait? What is so important?"

  "I need to find a book, an out-of-print text. I thought I saw it at the little bookstore down Amsterdam. It's suggested reading and I want to find it."

  "Suggested reading? Please, Gabriella. Can't you just stick to what's required, honestly."

  "I won't be long. I've already missed the first class and I don't want to fall behind. Not for this."

  I hear her sigh. She knows that once I make up my mind to do something there is little to be done to change it.

  "Promise me you'll come straight back to get ready? This is a big night for everyone, especially your grandfather, Gabriella."

  "I know; I'll be ready. I promise."

  I hang up the phone and look around at the spare elegance of my room. I had come in at the beginning of the semester with a can of paint and whitewashed everything. All the furniture, walls, trim, and doors, even the old wood floor. I felt happiest in this spare environment that reminded me of the beach. I drop into the white Eames chair that was a gift from my grandparents. The appreciation of the icons of modern design was something that they began to teach me at a very young age, set by their own example.

  The numbers on the digital alarm clock click into place and indicate how late it is. Like so many of those typical fall evenings in New York, the air is full with the suggestion of winter and night. As I exit my building I feel the crisp fall air sting my face as I turn down 116th Street toward Riverside Park. I treasure this piece of green at the edge of the city, the shimmering trees and the gray water of the Hudson River. The sound of sirens, horns, and diesel buses create the harmonic sounds of the city, vibrations of the power, energy, and possibility that exist here. I see people stand with arms raised, alerting the eyes of the passing taxi drivers; others walk head down, chins thrust forward with determination, purpose, and direction—going somewhere. Lives being lived, believing in the possibilities that await.

  The last few days had been unsettling, yet, I felt something new. An explosion of memories and clear visions of my future, taking me somewhere, pulling me in. Especially the feeling that I had in the classroom, the stranger, and what I saw in his eyes. For the first time, even with everything in my life shifting, I feel ready.

  The bookstore didn't have what I was looking for. Frustrated by the futile search, I change my direction home. I considered myself a person of consistency, a creature of habit as I attempted to find comfort in the rare constants of my life. The things I could rely on—I could count them on one hand. But instead of returning back through Riverside Park as I had come, I choose instead the path that I had walked so many times with him.

  Papa.

  I feel the familiar anxiety, even guilt as I replay the conversation I had with him in his library before I left for school. The day he gave me the amulet. "You will not only make something, you will make a difference. You already have. You changed my fate."

  I had shaken my head as I pushed away his words.

  "I'm so sorry. I never want to hurt you."

  "It should have been me, Gabriella. That bomb was meant for me. I was the one who was supposed to die."

  The feeling of that day and the pain in his words lived in my heart.

  Another memory stayed with me. Flying home to Boston from London at the end of my freshman year at Oxford—my first summer back since it had happened. There was one person I needed to see, someone who loved me and always understood: Lily. The taxi turned the corner, and I saw her small, familiar house. Always a welcome sight, the cozy porch, rocking chairs, and the unmistakeable long ramp, snaking its way from the front door down to the driveway. For her wheelchair.

  I had run up the steps as I felt my heart pounding, excited at the idea of my surprise as my finger pushed the doorbell.

  "I'll be right there." The familiar voice inside called out. I heard the sound of pots banging in the kitchen. "Oh hell, come on in. Whoever it is."

  I pulled the screen door open and stepped inside.

  "I'm coming, just a minute!" I heard her voice as it moved closer.

  I remembered the sound, the slight creak of the wheels as she used her arms to push the chair over the uneven oak floorboards and her face as she turned the corner.

  "Gabriella—it's you, what a wonderful surprise, I had no idea you were coming!"

  "Lily."

  I had dropped to my knees as I reached out to hug her, my arms around her waist, my head in her lap as I was overcome with emotion. I felt her hand touching my hair as she stroked my face, slowly wiping the unexpected tears away, which fell onto her frozen, immobile legs.

  "Gabriella," she whispered.

  "Oh, Lily, I've missed you so much. I've needed you these last months."

  "I've missed you, too." She narrowed her eyes as she searched mine. "How are you doing—with everything?"

  She looked at me with the purest affection I knew: gratitude, trust, happiness.

  "I needed to get away from Europe, all the press, the security—so many changes since my parents died. I needed to come home to Gloucester, to a place where things are real. Like our summers together." I looked down at her paralyzed legs. "Except that everything is different."

  She had smiled at what I was saying, recognizing things I had said before. My uncertainty, the doubts I had shared with her about my choices and the direction my life seemed to be moving in. I looked at my beautiful friend and remembered how our lives had changed in a fraction of a second that fall day when we were so young.

  "Lily, I always think back to that day and—the car. I should have pushed you harder, farther, out of the way."

  "Gabriella, you saved me, you saved my life. You changed my fate. This is the way things were meant to be. I know that. Even if we can't understand why."

  I thought back to that day so many years ago, when I knew the car was going to hit her, befor
e it happened.

  "But my parents, Lily, I couldn't make it out. It was too unclear, I couldn't see things the way I did with you. I keep reliving that day, those moments. Over and over."

  I felt her hands tighten on me. "Please stop doing this to yourself. That bomb had nothing to do with you. You can't always change fate, even though you changed mine. You have to trust yourself—and believe. Can you do that for me, for your grandmother?"

  "I'm telling you, Lily, I don't care anymore what my grandmother called it. This gift. I can't trust it and I don't want it."

  "You might one day."

  I had looked down at the wheelchair, "I'm sorry, Lily. I'm so sorry. I've tried to understand how it works but I can't. It is impossible to describe or explain, even to myself." I looked away from her eyes.

  "There are things that are simply beyond words. Things that are not definable. They just are. You taught me this, remember?"

  "I taught you that?"

  "Everything we learned when we were little. What your grandmother always said—that there is a bigger world that includes that which is not yet and that which might have been. Even that which might be. This is what you have always struggled with, right? Remember the poem she would read to us."

  "The beginning is the end and the end is the beginning."

  "Yes, that's it, Gabriella."

  I remember how she had held me. So much had happened since that day three and a half years ago when I was the one who was broken. The irony of her comforting me.

  I push harder to try and force the painful memories out of my mind as the earth revolves away from the sun, turning day into night. Security grates slam down to the ground, the shriek of the metal—then silence, locks are bolted, lights switched off, as everything slows down. I regret my decision to have come this way. It is longer, not as direct. In the distance I can see the half-built spire of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine rising proudly into the gray sky. The landmark's idiosyncratic presence has drawn me in since I was a child. I loved its wounded, unfinished pride. I had been allowed to wander the nave and aisles of this Gothic structure alone, always finding new things to discover in its complex mystery.

  "Go, Gabriella, explore and see what magic you will discover today in that building." My grandfather had always encouraged me.

  Was he challenging a search in the building or within myself I wondered? Once again I thought of the trust he had in me, his unquestionable knowledge that I was safe. I want to celebrate him and his many accomplishments, stand next to him as he receives the recognition he deserves. I know that I need to get back to my apartment and remember my promise to Emily, to be on time for the awards ceremony at the museum for my grandfather. But the draw of the cathedral is too powerful, so I change direction and run inside.

  Just for a few minutes.

  * * *

  15

  * * *

  THIS IS A PLACE where time stands still, where architecture endeavors to build a home for the spirit. Proof, that a building could be a symbol—of innovation, hope, and new ideas. A place where the eternal lived. A victory of ideas over gravity that brings space from silence, into the light.

  The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine at the edge of Columbia's campus was an example of this. The most solid forms become skeletal; mass melts away to achieve impossible heights in a structure that seems to reach for the heavens. The quality of light was different here, broken into prisms of color as it passed through the magnificent stained-glass windows and became animated with energy. The visits I had made to the great cathedrals in Europe had shown me the power of architecture to capture, in three dimensional form, the soaring and limitless spirit of the divine. The monumentality of the space reflected the abilities of the human mind, man's way of addressing the spiritual universe, answering the challenge it posed in the only way we could. By building things.

  Creating.

  My eyes follow the lines of the rib vaults, and I see the precise points where the thrust of the load is met by the vertical supports. The impossible height of the nave was the innovative engineering feat that characterized the Gothic style. Colored glass, a completely non-structural material, replaced the masonry wall. It is cold and dim, but the spirit of the place is powerful, beckoning those who have entered to see what they can find. My feet pad softly on the stone floor, worn by the many who have come before me on a similar search. Another one of the many secrets of this cathedral was that it was constantly in use for performances and rehearsals, where the echoes of music replaced the faint dissonant sounds of the city beyond its walls. This drew a variety of people from the streets of the city inside as the notes answered the questions of those who listened.

  I tighten the jacket around my body as my eyes adjust to the dim light. The sound of a haunting melody is being played in the small apse. The musicians are well beyond my line of sight, but I can hear the beautiful and strangely familiar music. I had occasionally stumbled upon rehearsals in the past and preferred to remain out of view, fearing that the condition of my audience would be considered trespassing on a product not yet ready for performance. I listen to the stopping and starting, the musician trying different expressions, and know I am witness to the embryonic moments of the creative process. Like the sketches undertaken before the execution of a painting, waiting to commit to canvas the final expression of an idea that has in it infinite possibilities. This is when you can see into the mind of the artist, their struggle and choices.

  The music is an arrangement for strings and piano. The sounds fill the space with the hearts of those playing. I sit on a cold stone bench and listen, caught in the spell of the melody. When the music ends, I turn and walk slowly down the side aisle. My fingertips skim the surface of the carved reliefs along the wall: varied biblical scenes that depict judgement, salvation, and even the suggestion of life beyond this earth. A timeless art form that transcends any one religion, looking for answers yet questioning the nature of reality.

  I stop and touch the cold stone. My fingers trace the lines of the flowing robes of a saint, the eternal smile and wings of an angel. Their unchanging forms permanently frozen in time. I can't leave without stopping to look at one of my favorite carvings in a dark corner of the nave. It is a scene from Genesis, the very act of God blowing the breath of life into man. The moment when Adam becomes a living being. This image is the essence of Kabbalah's teachings, the belief that there is an unmistakeable spark of the divine in every human being.

  "The moment mankind was given a soul," a low, familiar voice says.

  I spin around, stunned that I am not alone. I hadn't seen anyone else in the darkness of this part of the cathedral. The only sound had been the distant movement of chairs and voices as the rehearsal ended. Yet as I look up, I know immediately who it is.

  It's him.

  The man with the green eyes—from the classroom I had mistakenly entered. I remembered everything from that encounter. How he had looked right at me and how it made me feel. He has a stack of sheet music tucked easily under his arm, and I realize that he is the one who had been playing the beautiful piano melody. I try to read his expression, to look for something to interpret but find nothing.

  "I, I thought I was alone, I never see anyone in here. Not anyone who I speak with that is." I feel the need to clarify.

  I try to sound calm, unsure whether I am frightened by the realization that someone has been watching me or that I am happy in an unclear way that it is him. I had been unable to stop thinking about him, the mix up of my schedule, and my frustration at missing one of my first classes. He looks at me the way he did in the classroom. Pleased. As if he recognizes something in me. It's the smile that I remember and the powerful and overwhelming sensations that accompanied our first meeting. The weight of the silence between us is balanced out by the feeling that every nerve in my body is ignited by his presence.

  He touches a detail on the relief we are standing in front of as he turns his face away from mine. "Th
e energy of life being breathed into man. Do you agree?"

  I feel the magnetic pull of his arm as it passes me and returns to the side of his body. He waits with what seems like amusement for my response.

  "No." The words fall clumsily out of my mouth. "I have always believed in a scientific explanation." My voice trails off, dropping lower self-consciously. "Big Bang, Darwin . . ."

  I try to recall my grade-school science teacher's explanation of cause and effect in the world: a justified and factual explanation for every occurrence, clearly defined within the boundaries and parameters of science and technology. Measurable, predictable. Evolution, dinosaurs—I attempt not to sound like an idiot. I try to appear calm, rational, and sure but feel so knocked off balance by him.

  He smiles at me. "Really, cut and dry is it? All explainable—just that straightforward?"

  That accent, the subtle melodic tone in his voice. I try to concentrate on what he is saying and ignore the slight humor he seems to find in everything I do. Everything about him is making me really uncomfortable. The way he looks at me, into me, and through me.

  This is new. I am not used to answering questions in a place I had always cherished as my own private refuge, never wanting to share my solitude from the noisy streets of the city. Yet, I find myself standing with him, again. Suspended in time.

  We walk toward the back of the church together, and I feel his eyes on me. He watches my reaction to the jarring sculptures of heaven, hell, and judgement. I turn slowly to him and, as our eyes meet, I realize how ridiculous I must look. I try to straighten the hat on my head, my paint splattered jeans—even the way I stand. His eyes move from my face, in a slow meaningful inspection, down to my feet and back up again. I lean over to pick up my backpack, and my grandmother's cherished book of T.S. Eliot's poems falls out and lands on the cold stone floor between us. We reach down at the same time as we both try to retrieve the slim volume.