Chapter 5 The Ghosts of Yesterday

It wasn't that I didn't want to take my vacation-I did. Every year for the past seven years, I'd flown off somewhere far away. I just didn't want to be the girl scanning airports for a woman in an azure-blue coat, laughing loudly and waving her oversized heart-shaped sunglasses for me to catch up.

That woman was gone. And so was the girl who loved her unconditionally.

Now, there was only me-the woman who stayed late on Friday nights because she could, who preferred work functions over first dates, who kept spare tights and deodorant in her desk drawer just in case (even if she hadn't needed them yet). The woman who was always the last one in the building, so late even the motion-sensor lights gave up. And I was happy. I was.

Finally, I logged out of my computer, stretched under the flickering fluorescent light, and glanced at the clock-8:30 p.m. I needed to leave before security made their rounds and ratted me out to Strauss and Monique. Monique especially had a rule against working late on Fridays.

I grabbed my purse, double-checked that Monique had everything she needed for Monday's meeting, and headed for the elevator. Passing by the company's giveaway bookcase-stacks of extra galleys and final copies-I slowed. Most of it I'd already read. But one book caught my eye.

"destination travel: New York City"

It must have been a newer edition, and there was something ironic about reading a travel guide for a city you lived in. My aunt used to say you could spend your whole life somewhere and still find surprises. For a split second, I thought she'd love a copy-but as I slipped it into my purse, reality hit me like a brick. Ashamed for forgetting she was gone, I hurried to the elevator. I'd just donate it to a secondhand shop this weekend.

The lone security guard glanced up as I passed, used to seeing me work late. I headed for the subway and rode uptown, pulling out my phone on the familiar walk from the station to my aunt's apartment. It had become a comfort after Rose died-calling my parents on the way over.

After two rings, Mom picked up: "Tell your father it's perfectly acceptable to move my exercise bike into your old room!"

"I haven't lived there in eleven years, so it's absolutely okay," I said, dodging around a couple looking at Google Maps on their phone.

Mom shouted, making me wince, "SEE, MARK! I told you she wouldn't care!"

"What?" my dad called faintly in the background. The next I knew, he was picking up the phone from what I assumed was the kitchen. "But what if you come home, baby girl? What if you need it again?"

"She won't," Mom replied, "and if she does, she can take the couch." I massaged the bridge of my nose. Even though I'd been moved out since I was eighteen, Dad hated change. My mom loved repetition. They were a match made in heaven. "Isn't that right?"

Dad argued, "But what if-"

I interrupted, "You can turn my room into anything you want. Even a red room, if you want."

"A red... ?" Mom began.

Dad said, "Is that the sex dungeon in that movie?"

"MARK!" Mom shrieked, and then said,"Well, that is an idea..."

My father said, with a sigh that weighed about as much as all thirty-five years of their marriage, "Fine. You can put your exercise bike in there-but we're keeping the bed."

I kicked a piece of trash on the sidewalk. "You really don't have to."

"But we want to," Dad replied. I didn't have the courage to admit to my dad that home wasn't their two-story blue vinyl house on Long Island anymore. Hadn't been for a while. But it also wasn't the apartment I was walking to, slower and slower by the minute, as if I didn't really want to go at all. "So how was your day, baby girl?"

"Fine," I replied quickly. Too quickly. "Actually... I think Monique is retiring at the end of the summer, and she wants to promote me to director of publicity."

My parents gasped. "Congrats, sweetheart!" Mom cried. "Oh, we are so proud of you!"

"And in only eight years!" Dad added. "That's gotta be a record! While, it took me eighteen years to make partner at the architecture firm!"

"And it's just in time for your twenty-eight birthday, too!" Mom agreed happily. "Oh, we are going to have to celebrate-"

"I don't have the job yet," I quickly reiterated, crossing the street to the block where my aunt's apartment was. "I'm sure there will be other people in the running"

How do you feel about it?" Dad asked. He could always read me in this alarming way that my mom absolutely couldn't.

Mom scoffed. "How do you think she feels, Mark? She's ecstatic!"

"It's just a question, Martha. An easy one."

It was an easy question, wasn't it? I should feel excited, obviously-but my stomach just couldn't seem to unknot itself. "I think I'll be more thrilled when I finally finish moving in," I said. "There's just a few more boxes I have to situate."

"If you want, we can come this weekend to help," Mom suggested. "I know my sister probably left a lot of junk hidden places..."

"No, no, it's fine. Besides, I'm working this weekend." Which probably wasn't a lie, I'd find some work to do this weekend. "Anyway, I'm almost home. I'll talk to you later. Love you," I added, and hung up as I turned the corner and the towering building of the Monroe came into full view. A building that housed a small apartment that once upon a time belonged to my aunt. And now, against my will, it belonged to me.

I tried to stay out of it for as long as possible, but when my landlord said my rent would be increasing in the apartment I leased in Greenpoint, I didn't have much of a choice, here was my aunt's apartment, sitting empty in one of the most sought-after buildings on the Upper East Side, willed to me. So I packed all my things into tiny boxes, sold my couch, and moved in.

The Monroe looked like every other century-old apartment building in this city-a skeleton of windows and doors, having housed people long dead and long forgotten. A bone-white exterior with detailed trim work that looked vaguely mid-century, winged lions chiseled into the eaves and placed at the entrance with missing ears and teeth, and a tired-looking greeter just inside the revolving doors. He'd been there for as long as I could remember, and tonight he was sitting at the welcome desk, his hat slightly askew, as he read the newest James Patterson novel. He looked up as I came in and his face lit up-

"Lola!" he cried. "Welcome home."

Good evening, Earl. How're you? How's the book?"

"This Patterson guy never misses," he replied happily, and wished me good night as I headed for the brassy elevators. My heart hurt a little, how familiar all of this was-how easy, how much it felt like home. The Monroe always smelled old-it was the only way I could describe it. Not musty or moldy, just... old. Lived-in. Loved.

The elevator dinged, and I slipped inside. It was gilded like the lobby-brass accents, fleur-de-lis trim, and a cloudy mirror on the ceiling where a tired reflection stared back at me. My brown hair curled at the shoulders in the summer humidity, blunt bangs still looking like a 3:00 a.m. hack job done with kitchen scissors and heartbreak. The first time I stayed at my aunt's apartment, I was eight, and the whole building felt like something out of a storybook-like the kind of place Harriet the Spy or Eloise might live. Lola was the perfect name for a quirky children's book character, after all.

That first ride in this "enchanted" elevator, I clutched my too-big cherry-red duffel and Chunky Bunny, my stuffed animal I still kept. New places terrified me back then, but my parents thought I'd be better off spending the summer with my aunt while they moved us from Rhinebeck to Long Island. Even then, the ceiling mirrors were warped, and during the slow ride up, I found a spot where my face twisted into fun-house shapes.

My aunt had said in a conspiratorial voice, "That's your past self looking back at you. Just a split second, from you to you."

I used to imagine what I'd say to that split-second-behind self. That was when I still believed in all of my aunt's stories and secrets. I was gullible and fascinated by things that sounded too good to be true, a spark of something other in the mundane. A mirror that showed your past self, a pair of pigeons who never died, a book that wrote itself, an alleyway that led to the other side of the world, a magical apartment... Now the stories tasted sour in my mouth, but still, as I looked up at my mirrored self, I couldn't help but play along, like I always had.

"She lied," I told my reflection, her mouth moving to my words. If my split-second-past me was shocked by the words, she didn't show it. Because she already knew, too.