Soldiers in uniform, guns and helmets, smoke and panic.
They pulled closer to Ellis Island, and the Statue of Liberty came into clear view. The Swedish volleyball girls smiled and posed for pictures. May imagined the ferry crammed with people, coughing and afraid.
“That’s not pleasant.”
“There’s a reason I spend most of my time socializing with bees.”
But she could hear the smile in his voice. He dropped one arm to wrap around her stomach, a band of steel beneath her breasts, and pointed with the other back toward Jersey City. “You know a lot of the Wall Street banks moved over there after 9/11? Most of those buildings are new, and the workers are over there now, even though the banks kept their Wall Street addresses.”
She craned her head around to get a better look at his face, trying to figure out what he was thinking, but his expression didn’t give much away.
“And then Ellis Island,” he said. “Did you go over there?”
May shook her head.
“The Delaware Indians used to get oysters there. Lenape, they’re called now.”
“Oysters?”
“The Indians. Half of Ellis Island was built up with landfill. I imagine that was bad for the oysters. But a bunch of the shoreline of Manhattan is that way—just a lot of rocks and garbage dumped in place and built right on top of.”
“They do that lots of places.”
“Yep. And then millions of immigrants went through Ellis Island, scared half to death that they’d get turned away. Trying to answer all those questions right, so they could have some kind of future they’d dreamed of.” He frowned. “It’s a nasty place, if you think about it. But now it’s supposed to be this symbol of freedom. You’re supposed to get on the ferry and check the Statue of Liberty off your list, as if it’s a simple thing. Like you’re going to see the statue, and your heart will swell with pride, and you’ll take a picture and then go buy a doughnut from the concession stand, right?”
“You are the single crabbiest person I’ve ever met.”
He chuckled and buried his nose against her neck. “Yeah, but I’m right, aren’t I? You came on the ferry thinking you were supposed to feel something, and then you didn’t.”
“Sort of.”
“So I’m wrong?”
“Not really.”
May looked at the flowing green gown of the Statue of Liberty. Her proud crown and her sightless eyes. Her raised torch.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
She tried to see what Ben saw. The Lenape Indians and their oysters. The immigrants pouring through the golden door onto the island, an unwashed, undifferentiated collection of foods and folkways and lives. Their mishaps and adventures, triumphs and sorrows.
The ferry going back and forth, day after day, year after year. On one trip, it carried a man with a machete. On another, it gave refugees from the terrorist attacks an escape from the unthinkable.
It wasn’t simple or pretty. Possibly that was his point—that the whole city was dense with history, layered and pulsing with life.
Alive. Real. The words kept coming back to her.
She thought of herself, lacing on her sneakers for a day of solitary tourism. What had she thought she would find when she left the house, if not the connections, the emotions that were missing inside the confines of Dan’s bedroom?
She’d resented the ferry because she hadn’t been able to walk aboard and block out everything she didn’t like about it—how loud it was, how obviously a spectacle. Ben was right that she hadn’t liked how her heart refused to leap into her throat at the sight of the country’s most famous national symbol.
She’d resented New York because she couldn’t find any way to flatten it to suit her fantasies, just as she hadn’t been able to shoehorn Dan into the dreams she’d moved here to impose on him.
This city—it wasn’t a simple place, or a familiar one. It wouldn’t change to suit her. But standing here with Ben, she wondered if it was possible that she could change. If she was already changing.
I want you, May.
She wanted him, too. Wanted more than him—she wanted to live in the world the way he did. Even thought it was harder. Because it was harder.