“Mom. We should bring her the things we think are hers.” Next to Arizona there’s a pile of other things that she must have been gathering when I was pretending to be in a Cleveland snowstorm. Some bangle-y bracelets. A Knicks hat. A pouch of crystals. “And we could find out what she said to Dad, about love and change and stuff. And I don’t know, whatever else we need? We could do that.”
“Okay,” I say, because sometimes changing everything is really simple. “Let’s go to California.”
Arizona smiles, but I’m not kidding. I have the suitcase and the money saved up and the snap of interest that Bernardo caused when he started talking about running away together the other night. Without another pause, Arizona is on board. I can see it in her eyes and her shoulders that move back and down from their slumped-forward, sad position. We’re going. Like that.
And that’s what love is, I think. The automatic yes. The unthinking agreement.
The way people can be in two places one minute and one place the next. Like teleporting is possible.
Love is teleporting.
I’m totally figuring this all out.
forty-five
Arizona and I stay for the reception. Bernardo stands next to me in a black suit. He doesn’t have his scarf on.
“It doesn’t go with my tie,” he says.
His tie is yellow and paisley and his father’s, I’m sure. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in something that isn’t wholly his.
We dance to old Frank Sinatra songs that my dad loves, and Bernardo says he loves them too. “Oh,” I say. “I don’t.”
He looks taken aback, like he didn’t know I could have my own opinions on love songs. Or love in general.
“I love you in your dress,” he says instead of discussing the relative merits of old-timey love songs. Arizona and I are both in pale sundresses instead of our bridesmaid gowns. It’s better this way.
My dad looks so uncertain I wonder if he crossed his finger behind his back for the vows. I wonder if he’s already contacted his divorce attorney, probably the busiest lawyer in the city given my dad’s record, to discuss getting out of this whole thing ASAP.
He wasn’t made for unconditional love, maybe. Maybe none of us are, really.
“Do you want cake?” Bernardo says. I keep not telling him I can’t run away with him. I don’t know how to tell him about the in-between place I want to be. The different kind of love I want to have.
If I were from a different family, I’d ask my dad about his uncertainty and what percentage of love is supposed to be about doubt and what percentage about sureness. But we are not that family, and my dad can take a half step closer to being what I need him to be, but in his tux and red tie and red boutonniere and shiny gold wedding band, he is still mostly the old dad.
And he’s given me all the answers I need.
“I hate wedding cake,” I say.
If he loves me the way I want to be loved, I can make a mistake and be a different girl from the one he imagined, from the ideal one in his head. If he loves me the way I need him to, it will be okay that I’m not running away with him, that I’m going away with Arizona.
And if he doesn’t, that’s okay too.
forty-six
“Bernardo and I were going to go on the train too,” I say.
“Romantic,” Arizona says. She has a duffel bag and I have the tiny wheel-y suitcase Tess left behind. We brought them to the wedding and stored them in the special room at the Ritz that Karissa got ready in.
She didn’t even notice them. Or us at all.
We’d clinked champagne glasses, and Karissa said she hoped we could all move forward as a family. I conducted some kind of physics experiment with the glass flute. How hard could I squeeze it without it shattering?
Karissa looked pretty but not good.
“You’re next!” she said, filling our glasses and making us toast again. I think some small part of each of us, Karissa, Arizona, and me, thought this wasn’t going to happen after the last few days. So it felt more like a dream than a wedding, and we weren’t really there at all, in some ways. We were already on the train, across the country, trying to fix the broken parts of ourselves.
“We’ll come back, right?” I say, watching the city behind us from the train. Because New York City can’t possibly continue on without us. We are the ones keeping it alive, I think. With our cigarettes and dyed hair and cursing and stoop sitting and coffee inhaling, aren’t we the very essence of the city?
There’s no reason to say any of that to Arizona, who doesn’t smoke enough cigarettes or have cool enough hair to count. But she’s New York too, with her little heels and perfect outfits and sturdy boobs and sad eyes.
“Don’t think about next,” Arizona says, “when we’re still doing now.”
It’s possible she’s a prophet or a Buddha or something truly special and Important. But it’s also possible that she’s a little drunk from the open bar at the wedding and the promise-making shots we took and the champagne with Karissa, who I guess I don’t really know at all, and the way adventure feels when it’s moving through your veins.