Page 76 of Good Dirt

Escalators

A very is back in Paris and riding the escalator up from the ground level of the Musée d’Orsay. She is typing into her iPad. Former Beaux-Arts railway station renovated and converted …She looks up at the beams that crisscross the barrel-vaulted interior. She wonders how many old buildings in this city have been reimagined for completely new purposes. It can be more difficult and costly to rework a historic structure than to tear it down completely and start all over. But the results are like nothing else. It is somewhere between the ground floor and the upper level that Avery understands she needs a personal renovation. She needs to reimagine her own life. She is not getting on that plane tomorrow. She is not going back to Connecticut. Not yet.

Henry is halfway up the escalator on his way to passport control at JFK when he realizes two things. He’s glad to be home, glad for the familiar, and yet not. Nothing is quite the same. By the time he steps off the escalator he already knows what he must do as soon as he gets back to his apartment. There’s an artists’ residency he’s heard of. It’s a program where aspiring and practicing artists go to concentrate on their work. Henry has a project in mind for his photography. He thinks he may have a shot at getting in. He could take a leave of absence from his job. He’ll find a way. But first, he needs to do something else.

Ebby has gone back to the coast on her own. She is somewhere between the bathrooms on the upper level and the first step on the down escalator when she makes a decision. Looking down at the Atlantic Ocean, she watches the waves come and go, and wonders how long it takes for water here to make it all the way across to North America. She thinks about waves coming and going and feels her body being pulled toward the water. And she understands that she needs to go back to Connecticut. She needs to go see her parents. She needs to talk to them.

But not yet.