Free The Daughters: A Novel by Adrienne Celt Page A

teacup thrown in the trash: they were all meaningful to me. But Ada, who understood her better than I did, wasn’t interested in my archeology. She gave me a look, and I changed my question. “Known what?”
    We skittered past a brightly lit series of brownstones, and I made a mental list of what I saw. A man swirling something in a glass. A dog curled up on a blue couch, alone. Two women standing front to back, one pulling up the zipper on another’s dress.
    “That little group.” Ada gestured upward, away. “Such a silly thing to do. You don’t need anything to belong to.” She put her arm around my shoulder. “You’re already part of something bigger.”
    I saw a mostly dark building with one bright room. It appeared in the distance like a beacon and seemed to grow warmer and warmer as it approached. A radiant den in a stone tomb. Just as we slipped by, I saw there were gauze curtains hung across the window frame. Light blue curtains, moving slightly, as though unsettled by the train. I was seized by a sudden urge to reach out and touch whatever lay behind them, because it was alien, because it wasn’t mine. But though I looked hard, the world behind the curtains remained indistinct, and we were gone too soon for me to see if I could peer into the space between them.
    At some point in our ride I fell asleep, my cheek crushedagainst the hard plastic window frame. I awoke to Baba Ada pulling on my elbow, ushering me quietly to my feet. In sleep I’d tucked myself up into a circlet, knees and hands all compressed into my coat for warmth. The train’s lights flickered momentarily off as we pulled up to an elevated wooden station, and I stood on creaky knees, trying to maintain my balance.
    “ This is Lawrence ,” declared the car’s speaker.
    “Hmm?” I asked Ada.
    “I had an idea.” She tightened her grip on my elbow, and the cold night air rushed around us. When we reached street level, she stopped and instructed me, “Close your eyes.”
    I was still only at the edge of consciousness and followed her lead through the streets as through lukewarm water, not really paying attention. Ada took care that I didn’t slip on black ice or ever feel the looming of a mailbox or parking meter in front of my forehead, and I trusted her to do it. As though she were my own subconscious, ferrying me across the boundary of sleep.
    “Keep your eyes closed,” she said, as my senses were enveloped by a sudden breath of cigarette smoke and body heat and human noise. “Stay here for a second.”
    I stood blind and still in the middle of a wooden floor, swaying with the crowd, locking and unlocking my knees. “Who’s that?” I heard from a strange voice nearby, making its way out of the general bubbling of conversation. But if a reply came I never heard it. Ada returned and took my hand again, guiding me forward. Whispering, “Excuse me, excuse me,” I brushed by soft, invisible bodies. I banged my knee on something hard. And then I found myself seated in a too-tall chair, instructed to open my eyes at last.
    It was still like a dream. Except that around me every face was amused, as though my presence was some wonderful joke. I was in a large and low-lit room, surrounded by tables full of menand women in evening clothes, facing a stage. Behind me, as I saw when I craned my neck, stretched a long rectangular bar, backed by mirrors and stacked with many-hued bottles of varying heights.
    The conversation stilled and the hushing of a drum brush called my attention to the front of the room. Somehow, without my noticing, a band had taken up residence in front of the red curtain. A bassist leaned against his upright, picking his teeth, while the trumpet player and pianist opened up the room with a low tune, tossing handfuls of chattering notes out over the drumbeat. The bassist cracked his knuckles and started plucking away, layering his soft haum haum haum under the present melody.
    And then she came, slipping out from a