Play On (Play On 1)

She silently pleaded with me, begged me.

“Angie …” Nausea rolled up inside of me. “Please.”

She sobbed harder. “He’s gone. My baby’s gone.”

As the bus traveled from Sighthill to Princes Street, I looked out the window, watching people as we slowly moved west toward the city center. I liked to people watch. I liked to imagine what their lives were like beyond the moments I witnessed. The bus stopped in traffic, and I noted an elderly couple walking down the busy street, holding hands, shoulders brushing, murmuring to each other with smiles on their faces.

Were they childhood sweethearts? An example of an epic love that you heard about, but never dreamed of experiencing? Sixty years, and still as in love as ever.

Or were they widowers, divorcees, who stumbled upon one another later in life, finally finding the love of their lives and enjoying it rather than regretting the years that had gone by without the other?

I smiled wistfully as the bus inched along, leaving the older couple behind.

“It’s bloody roastin’!” a woman across the aisle jolted me out of my musings as she shouted to the driver. “What aboot opening some windies, eh?”

This wasn’t entirely true. Although Scots and I had a differing opinion on what constituted hot weather, even I knew this month had been mild. And wet.

“Look, just because ye’er menopausal doesnae mean we aw have tae pit up wi’ it, awright?” a guy sitting behind her said.

Groaning inwardly, I hurried to put my earbuds in to block out the coming argument.

I was grateful to get off the bus, happy to walk on the paved sidewalk on Princes Street and follow it alongside Edinburgh Waverley train station. As Hozier’s Take Me to Church blocked out the sounds of the traffic and the bustle and chatter of the people passing me, I felt an ease settle over me. I loved being in the city. I loved escaping to it from my tiny one-bedroom apartment in the ugly gray council building a block from Angie’s house.

I guess that’s why I took the job in Old Town and didn’t get something closer to the apartment. Angie argued I was wasting bus fare. But I needed the escape.

Walking up the steep, curved street that led up onto the Royal Mile, as I passed my place of work I peered inside. Leah, the owner and my boss, was smiling and chatting with a customer. The mannequins in the window displayed vintage-style dresses and sweet cardigans. The boutique clothing store, called Apple Butter, was small but always busy because of its prime position on Cockburn Street (pronounced Co-burn, which is a relief because, seriously, who would name a street after something that happens to a guy when he jerks off for too long?). The road itself was cobblestone, much like the Royal Mile, and sitting on wide, high-heel-friendly sidewalks were independent, boutique-style stores selling jewelry, antiques, and clothes. There were also pubs and cafés, and a tattoo parlor.

I climbed swiftly up the steep hill, following the curve of it away from Apple Butter. Today was my day off and I had somewhere else I needed to be. The truth was I could catch a bus to my actual destination. But I liked the walk through the city, through Old Town.

Not far from the university buildings, I stopped in at my new go-to coffee place and headed straight for the bathroom. Once inside, I changed into dark green leggings, a dark green shirt with frayed short sleeves, and a jagged hem. I folded my jeans and sweater neatly, shoved them into my backpack, and stilled when I looked into the mirror.

The sight of my cool, hard, weary eyes frightened me.

My fear had come true.

Those were my mom’s eyes looking back at me.

I fingered the hair at the nape of my neck, wondering if she’d recognize me now.

I remembered the morning I got it cut.

“What have you done?” Seonaid stared at me in shock.

I felt numb to her shock. To any shock. “I cut it.”

She rushed at me, touching a short strand. “You didn’t just cut it. You massacred it.”

It was true. My long hair was no longer. I’d asked the hair stylist to give me a pixie cut. “Are you annoyed I cut it, or annoyed because I didn’t have you cut it?”

“We both know I wouldn’t have done it.” Seonaid shook her head at me, tears filling her eyes. She cried all the time. Enough tears for the both of us. “He loved your hair.”

“Well, he’s not here anymore.”

“Nora …” Her face crumpled and suddenly I was in her arms.

I hugged her back, my arms as tight around her as they could be, and whispered soothing words as she sobbed, hard, shuddering, wracking sobs.

“We need to go,” I whispered finally. “We need to get Angie.”

Reluctantly, Seonaid stepped back, wiping the pools of mascara from the corners of her eyes. I stopped to stare in the full-length mirror that hung on the wall by the front door. Jim had put it there for me when we first moved in. Straightening my black dress, I looked at myself, feeling disconnected from the image in front of me. Who was that young woman in the widow weeds with hair so short it made her eyes too big? Too big and blank, like all the emotion had been leached out that morning in the supermarket. I recalled crumpling to my knees in Angie’s arms in the international foods aisle. I remembered crying so hard I thought I’d never be able to breathe again. My tears then seemed to have taken all my grief with them as they splashed onto my clothes, onto Angie’s shoulder.

Now I felt … nothing.

I blinked, coming out of the memory. My hair was still pixie short. But I was no longer numb.

The feelings that overwhelmed me some months after Jim’s funeral were too much. Whatever strength had kept me moving, kept me going, wrapped up in the steel of nothingness, dissipated over time. Until the feelings started to seep through the diminishing steeliness. I didn’t want to deal with them because I was afraid of who I’d be once processing them was over.

So, how did a young woman go on after the husband she was planning to divorce died suddenly of a brain aneurysm at the tender age of twenty-four?

I straightened my costume, grabbed my backpack, strode out into the coffeehouse, and stood in line to order an Americano to go, all the while the staff barely blinked at what I was wearing. After a few months of the same routine every week, the baristas were used to me.

Coffee to go, I strode out into the world, unsurprised when no one paid attention to me as I strolled down the street past the university buildings. This was why I loved this part of Edinburgh, and the city in general. People were used to everyone marching to the beat of their own drum, and barely took notice of anyone dressed out of the ordinary.

I cut across The Meadows, the park behind the university buildings where, on sunny days, you could find people having picnics, playing soccer and other sports, and kids laughing and playing in the play area. The sky was overcast today, but it didn’t matter—it was Festival month. The Edinburgh International Festival, or the Fringe, I’d come to learn, completely engulfed the city during August. Streets were crammed full of tourists, and billboards, walls, and storefronts were covered in leaflets for stand-up comedy shows for famous comedians and ambitious newcomers. There were plays, one-man shows, concerts, book festivals, art events, and film premieres from all over the world. Jim used to hate it. He hated how we couldn’t get a seat in our favorite pub or restaurant in the city center, or how you couldn’t walk a beat without tripping over tourists. The only thing he did like was the pop-up beer gardens that appeared everywhere.

But I liked the Fringe.

I liked the energy and the vibrancy, the smells, and the noise.

I liked how easy it was to disappear in the crowds.

And The Meadows set up with tents and crowded with people was a much easier sight for me than the one that greeted me weeks before. Students, everywhere. Sitting with their backs against trees with textbooks open around them. I’d always looked away quickly because the longing inside me was a betrayal. I had no right to the feeling.

Before long I’d arrived at the red brick, late-nineteenth-century building that housed the children’s hospital. I passed through the accident and emergency department, and took the stairs to the same floor I took the stairs to every week.

Seonaid’s friend, Trish, was a nurse supervisor and the only reason I was able to dress as Peter Pan and visit the kids here. After Jim died, after it became harder to deal with the mess of emotions left behind, all I could remember was the measure of peace I used to feel visiting the children’s hospital back in Indianapolis. The joy it brought those kids when I turned up to entertain them made me feel like I was doing something worthwhile. Although I’d written to Anne-Marie to explain my sudden absence, I’d never stopped feeling guilty about abandoning those children.