The new leaves were about to burst forth on the trees in Central Park and soon there would be new buds everywhere. And her grandmother would not get to see them. How could she forget her?
Everything in her life seemed small, insignificant. She had to have that expensive new dress. Going out to the exclusive Surf Club, Friday nights suddenly did not matter anymore. Her job was senseless. How meaningless, to keep on top of ordering hundreds of supplies, day in and day out, stacks of paper growing beyond her desk, reaching to the corporate ceilings, all around her. It was not the real world. College was not the real world, once again. What was?
She surveyed the runners, the trees, the muddy track, the wide, wide Reservoir, blue as the sky today.
Tiny branches of unfamiliar plants grew along the edge of the Reservoir, outlined in the bright sunlight. Muddy feet padded the ground behind her. She made way for a jogger. She hid her face from the runners before her, young and old, out in full force onm this Spring day. Rollerskaters whizzed past on the street, below the track. Cyclists skirted its outer edges.
She remembered her grandmother. She had forgotten how much her grandmother loved her and her sisters, how she told them daily, how she showed it with every action and deed. Her grandmother! She yet felt exhilarated in her sadness, with the memory of her grandmother in full bloom.
She did not care for the beach, yet she loved to take her grandchildren, Sunday afternoons. Once, in immature frustration, Debbie had said she hated dresses.
"I think it's the most beautiful thing a woman can wear," Memere, their Canadian French colloquialism for grandmother, had said, her voice soft but strong.
When she was buried, so were all memories of her.
She was "living the high life." The glamour of it all paled when she thought of her beloved Memere.
She had been so involved with all the concerns of a seventeen-year-old when her grandmother died that she had hardly taken notice. She let her die, alone and pitiful in that terrible home. Why didn't she tear herself away from the phone long enough to visit her, that Saturday afternoon long ago? Why hadn't she brought to her that watercolor she softly requested? She had painted it herself. "Dream," it said, in large hollow letters filled in with scenery. She had felt relief for the poor woman who suffered and died an ungraceful death. And she had not shed a tear. Until today. How long ago was it? High school. Eight years ago. It was almost ten years ago.
The very birds gathered here at the Reservoir, soaring and dipping overhead, opted for the most breath-taking part of Central Park for their Spring arrival.
She regarded this New York thing as if looking at it through a telescope. The view began to spin until she was standing outside it, here on the edge of the Reservoir, for the first time since she had moved away from home. The picture was turned upside down as Debbie thought of her grandmother, of her childhood home, the small town of Seaville and her New York experience suddenly seemed encompassed in a small package: a picture postcard, the past few months boxed into one compartment of her life. She felt far away, as if the city and its enticements were no longer real.
What would Memere have thought if she knew now that her granddaughter were here in New York?
"All my love to a girl who will be a great success in life," the note came back to her from a card written, a long time ago. It must have been attached to a graduation gift or was it a birthday present? She couldn't remember. ("Traces of love...long ago...that didn't work out right...") {sic{ She looked to where the earth fell away, the ground becoming hilly. Several equestrians rode past her, their horses clumping heavily on the grass. She waited for one to pass, then headed toward the twin look-out towers of the El Dorado Hotel.
