They bring out dinner. A plate of steaming saffron risotto shaped into a perfect mound, delicate Parmesan-and-sage tagliatelle in a butter-cream sauce, and steak with a sprig of rosemary. Everything is so neat and orderly and for a moment I regret that we are not at some casual Italian bistro, some corner joint where we share everything, wine spills on the table, and everyone shouts over one another. There is something so familiar about those meals. Jovial. Maybe that would have lightened the mood. But then I remember Jessica asked me where I wanted to go on my birthday and I chose here. It’s been our tradition since we met—we take each other out on our birthdays. So many things have slipped through the cracks over the past few years, but this one has stuck around. All at once, I feel grateful for that. For whatever alchemy led us here.
“This looks delicious,” Robert says. “You know I came here once with … on business.” He clears his throat. “I remember it being good.”
“Heartily agree. The wife and I used to frequent it often,” Conrad says.
“Were the tablecloths red?” Audrey asks. “I remember them being red.”
“You’ve all been here?” I ask, stunned.
“Of course,” Audrey says. “It would have had to be somewhere we could find.” She winks at me. I feel the way I did when I first walked in: bowled over by what is happening here.
Conrad picks up his wineglass. “A toast!” he hollers.
“To what?” Audrey asks. She grabs at her collar. It is a little warm in here, or maybe the wine is finally settling. We’re drinking a deep Barolo now. Conrad has stealthily ordered another bottle.
“To sharing a meal together,” Conrad says. He shrugs, like it seems as good a toast as any.
“And making new friends,” Audrey adds.
“Thank you all for coming,” I say, because I cannot think of anything else.
“To Sabrina,” Robert says. He’s holding up his water glass with a mixture of pride and hesitation.
“Happy Birthday,” Tobias says.
“Yes!” Conrad says. “Happy Birthday.”
We clink glasses. Next to me, Jessica yawns. “I feel like we were just getting somewhere interesting,” she says.
“This has all been pretty interesting,” Tobias says. I can’t tell if it’s sarcasm; his tone is right on the edge. Fifty-fifty.
“I feel a lot of regret,” Robert says. The table falls silent. Jessica and Conrad begin to pick at their plates.
“There is a lot of loss here,” Audrey says. She reaches an arm across the table and squeezes Robert’s hand. “I can feel my own, in a way, as well.”
“Thank you,” he says. His voice sounds heavy. He clears his throat.
“Sometimes I think that the only true way we can ever know a thing’s value is by losing it.” This from Conrad.
Audrey looks at him. There is tenderness in her eyes. She’s become maternal in the last few minutes.
“So how can we ever be happy?” Tobias asks.
“Happiness is not constantly needing things to be at their full potential,” Jessica says.
“That’s depressing,” I say.
“That’s true,” Jessica says. She looks up from her plate. “Like I don’t get happiness from having a perfect day with Sumir. I get happiness from accepting that I rarely, if ever, have a perfect day with Sumir. My happiness is accepting that ninety-five percent of the time my life is deeply imperfect.”
Conrad winks at her. “Well done,” he says. He takes a forkful of scallop and pops it into his mouth. “Delightful,” he murmurs.
I wag a finger back and forth between them. “You two are the most positive people I know. In college you gave me a C because I, and I quote, ‘neglected to see the simple beauty and overcomplicated everything.’”
“Wasn’t so positive for you,” Conrad mutters, chuckling.
“You’re missing the point,” Robert says. He’s cutting his steak, and he puts his knife down.
I stiffen. He notices.
“The simple beauty, as you put it, is from things not always aligning. There is no simple beauty in perfection.”
“I disagree,” Tobias says. “To me the simplest beauty is nature. And nature is nothing if not perfect.”
Next to me, Jessica balks. “Oh, come on,” she says. “That’s so generic.”
“Is it? I think actually it’s pretty profound.”
“No,” she says. “It’s not profound. It’s easy to sit there and spout poetry about nature and its beauty, or whatever, but it’s immature. You guys have no idea what goes into having an actually simple life.”
“Enlighten us,” Tobias says. He sits back and crosses his forearms over his abdomen. His food remains untouched.
I feel, sitting here, physically pulled between them. Jessica loved Tobias, but she didn’t love the relationship we had. I thought it was because she didn’t understand it. It was so much less linear than anything in her own life.
Jessica straightens up. “An actually simple life means putting your husband’s shoes away when he leaves them by the door even though you’ve reminded him one thousand times. And not saying anything about it.”
“That just sounds like compromising,” I say.
“Not compromising,” Audrey says. “Compromise.”
We all turn to look at her. She gives us one of her dazzling movie-star smiles. “I was married, you know,” she says.
“What happened?” Those of us who love Audrey know the stories of her two marriages. Abuse, maybe? Jealousy. Regret. Her painful road to motherhood. Three miscarriages, a fall from a horse that left her in permanent pain. For someone with a perfect public image, Audrey had a tragic personal life.
“I had to dim my light,” she says grimly. “It was not an easy thing to be married to a celebrity. But it’s also not an easy thing to be married to darkness. Eventually I dimmed so far I extinguished.”
At this, Conrad laughs. It’s an odd reaction to her heartfelt sentiment. “You do have a way with words,” he says, half to himself.
To my surprise, Audrey smiles. “Why, thank you. I always liked writing. I did a little of it from time to time.”
“I’d like to return to this idea of compromise,” Robert says. He has his hand in the air, like we’re in a classroom.
“By all means,” Conrad says.
“How do you know at any given moment what is giving enough, and what is giving too much? As Audrey would attest, marriage for the sake of marriage is no prize at all.” Audrey nods. Jessica shifts.
“I think it takes work,” Audrey says. She takes a small bite of her food, chews, and swallows.
“How much?” Robert.
“I don’t know,” Audrey says. “I always gave too much or little—they were equally damning.”
“A lot,” Jessica says, a little frustrated. “It takes a lot of work.”
“You mentioned your wife,” Tobias says to Conrad. “You got married?”
“Naturally,” Conrad says.
“How long?”
Conrad sets down his fork. “Thirty-five years.”
“And?”
Conrad pauses for a moment. A move I recognize. He was always doing this in class: taking an opportunity for dramatic effect. “We never wanted to get divorced at the same time.”
“That’s brilliant,” Jessica says. She fumbles around in her purse and pulls out a half-bent Moleskine. “Shit,” she says, still looking.
Conrad unhooks the pen from his outside pocket and holds it across the table. Tobias passes it to her over me.
She writes it down hastily, tearing off the page and stuffing it into her pocket.
“What happened to the girl who used to write love is the answer on our bathroom mirror?” I ask her.
“Love is still the answer,” she says.
“It’s the questions that stop mattering so much,” Audrey says.
Will we work out? Can we sustain this? How could I possibly be with anyone else?
Those were the questions I used to ask myself all the time. I asked them constantly. I asked them at the door to this restaurant and I am asking them now, with him sitting beside me still.
EIGHT
“TOBIAS, THIS IS JESSICA. JESSICA, TOBIAS.”
“The famous man,” Jessica said.
Tobias cocked his head at her. “I hope that’s a good thing.”
“The best.” Jessica was sitting on the dirty white couch in our living room, her legs curled up under her and an oversized shawl over her shoulders. She’d bought it in New Mexico on a meditation retreat she’d gone on the summer before. I wanted to go but didn’t have the cash. For a week of camping and silence, five hundred dollars seemed like a lot of money. She’d sold her bedroom air-conditioning unit to help pay for it. The following summer she spent nearly entirely at Sumir’s.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Tobias said. He looked from Jessica to me and back. “Sabrina is pretty famous in my world, too.”
My stomach flipped.
“I feel like I already know you,” Jessica said. “I’ve been the captain of your search party.”