The Night Tourist Read Free

left-hand corner, in ornate old-fashioned lettering, was printed: Sanitary & Topographical Map of the City and Island of New York. Prepared for the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens Association Under the Direction of Topographical Engineer Egbert L. Viele. In tiny printed letters in the lower left-hand corner was a date—1865. Underneath the date, in his father’s scratchy handwriting, was the name “Anastasia.”

III | Dr. Lyons
    Sitting on his bed in his pajamas, Jack anxiously pried open the frame that held his mother’s photo. The night before he had stashed the map inscribed with her name there. But in the morning light, he suddenly doubted that the map had been real. He was sure the whole night—the ice storm, the stranger, his leap out the window, the piece of paper he’d left behind, even the sounds of his father crying just before he fell asleep—had been a dream. But when he pulled open the velvety back of the frame, he found the map still lodged inside.
    A knock sounded on his door. “Jack? Are you up?”
    Jack quickly put the frame back together. His father opened the door and watched him fiddle with the metal tabs. “I’m just straightening Mom’s photo,” Jack said.
    From the way his father was glumly staring at the photo, Jack was pretty sure that he hadn’t seen the map. There was an embarrassed silence between them. “How did you sleep?” his father asked.
    Jack shrugged. “All right.”
    “You seemed jumpy last night.” His father sat down on the bed and studied the maps on his wall. “After you went to bed I called Dr. Lyons.”
    Jack put down the photo. “Doctor who?” He’d never heard of a Dr. Lyons before.
    “He’s an old friend, a doctor in New York. He wants to take a look at you.”
    Jack thought of the strange man jumping out of the window and frowned. “Does he think there’s something wrong with me?”
    His father waved a hand dismissively. “No. But I want him to see you, to give a second opinion. So I’m sending you to New York.”
    Jack was worried. Perhaps Dr. Lyons really did think there was something wrong with him. But then a larger realization dawned on him: he was finally visiting New York. He’d always wanted to go there, but his father had always found some excuse not to take him. It was the place where his mother had died. “Are you coming too?” he asked.
    His father shifted uncomfortably. “You need to go yourself. We’ll just put you on the train to Grand Central and you’ll take a cab to Dr. Lyons’s office. When you’re done, you’ll take the train back home. You’ll be fine.”
    “It doesn’t sound like a big deal,” said Jack, although he very much felt the opposite. He had flown alone to Greece to meet his father on a dig the previous summer, but there was something special about going to New York, his mother’s city, by himself. He tried to think of a way to say this to his father, but instead he just ended up staring at his mother’s photo. His last memory of New York was one of her. He remembered standing in front of a snow-covered fountain, holding the cord to his sled in one mittened hand and her hand in the other. They had sledded in the park all afternoon, and his cheeks stung. But when he tugged his mother’s arm to go home, she didn’t move. “Come on, Mom,” he said. But she didn’t seem to hear him, and when Jack looked around, he realized it was getting dark and that they were alone. “Mom!” he shouted. She immediately crouched down and smiled at him. “What?” He knew then that it was okay.
    But after she died, it was the moment when she wouldn’t answer him that he thought about most.
    After lunch, Jack and his father took a taxi to Union Station. As they stood on the platform waiting for the train, Jack opened up the Metamorphoses and reread the passage about the auspicium , or omen, that foreshadows Eurydice’s snakebite. During the wedding ceremony, a torch carried by Hymen, the god of