Just after my eighteenth birthday, I’d threatened to go to Philadelphia on my own. I had money, all of those birthday and bat mitzvah checks adding up to more than enough for plane tickets. I was legally an adult and there was nothing they could do to stop me.
My father had called my bluff. It was the first time I could ever remember him being angry at me, truly angry, not just annoyed. Annoyance made him raise his voice. Anger, I learned, made him speak quietly and deliberately. If you want to be independent and make your own choices, he had told me, then you can pay your way through college, too. Had he meant it? I wasn’t sure. But after our talk, I’d overheard him with my mother in the kitchen. She’d asked him something—I couldn’t hear the words, just her voice rising at the end of the sentence—and he’d said, in a maddeningly indulgent tone, puppy love. I’d been so angry that I’d had to dig my nails into the flesh of my palms.
Nimbly, Nana climbed off the stool, folded it up, put it away, then sat at the table, studying me. I held my breath, enduring her scrutiny, until she gave a single, brisk nod. “We can fly through Philadelphia.”
“Oh my God, thank you,” I said, and skipped around the table to hug her, excited and a little scared that, after all this time and all this trying, it was finally going to happen, and I was finally going to see him again.
•••
On the morning of our flight, I set my alarm for 4:00 a.m., so that I’d have an hour to do my hair and makeup before the car Nana had booked pulled into our driveway. The skies were a clear, cloudless blue, my suitcase was already waiting by the front door; all that was left was for me to pile my makeup and hot rollers and the Judy Blume novel that I’d bought for the plane—Smart Women, not one of her kids’ books—into my carry-on, the purple backpack I used for school. We were booked on an early-morning flight out of Miami International, which was full of people, mothers comforting crying babies, businessmen and flight attendants towing wheeled suitcases, and the slow-moving elderly, making their way tentatively through the security check. Dressed again in linen, black pants and a black jacket with a white top underneath, Nana moved through the airport with confidence, knowing exactly where to take our bags and who to tip, and how much. She had platinum and preferred status on all of the airlines, thanks to all the frequent-flier miles she’d amassed, so we’d be flying first class to Philadephia, then business class to London. In our seats at the front of the plane, Nana requested water and tomato juice, declined the flight attendant’s offer of a cheese omelette or fruit plate, but asked if we could both have napkins, silverware, and a plate. I watched as she unzipped her carry-on tote and removed a baguette, a small jar of honey, a chunk of soft cheese, and a bunch of green grapes.
“Never trust airline food,” she said, dividing the cheese and the bread. We ate, then Nana closed her eyes while I reread the last letter I’d received from Andy, the one I’d already folded and unfolded so many times that the paper had softened to the consistency of cotton.
Dear Rachel,
I can’t believe that I’m going to get to see you, after all this time. There’s so much I want you to see. I hope my neighborhood doesn’t scare you. I hope you get to meet my friend, Mr. Sills, who has heard so much about you that he says he feels like he knows you already.
I have missed you so much, for so long. All I want to do is hold you, but I think I should show you the city, too.
I will see you soon.
Andy.
I always signed my letters love. He usually just wrote his name. He was as stinting with that word as he was with the rest of them. My letters were long and detailed, almost like diary entries. I’d tell him what I did all day, and who had said what in English or chemistry or calculus, about the fight my brother was having with my parents over the car that he wanted that they refused to buy, and how I knew he was sneaking girls into the house when they were out and I was at school. I’d learned to expect just a handful of sentences from Andy, but I trusted that he loved me; that every Friday night he’d be on the phone to talk and to listen.
After we’d landed and collected our luggage, Nana led me to the cab line and directed the driver to the Rittenhouse Hotel, which overlooked a lush green park full of manicured shrubs and thickly leafed trees, fountains and sculptures and beds of flowers. The park was crisscrossed with stone paths, and the paths were lined with benches. Businessmen sat eating drippy sandwiches, with their ties tossed over their shoulders, and young mothers supervised their children as they dipped their hands in the water of a long, rectangular reflecting pool.