“See?” he says. “It’s no bother.”
Audrey pauses. I can see she’s considering it. And I hope she says yes. I want to hear her sing. It feels important, somehow. Her presence here is not just levity but something else, too. Audrey, for me, represents a time in which things were better. My parents together and Tobias and I—happy and in love.
“I’ll be off,” she says. “I haven’t done it in so long.”
“Just give it a go,” Conrad says. He squeezes her shoulder in a gesture of support.
And then she begins. Her voice is angelic, no more than a whisper, but it’s somehow richer and more authentic than it was in the film, or in the recording I have in my iTunes. I get the feeling that the people surrounding us can’t even hear. It’s like as soon as she begins we’re on our own island at sea.
“Moon river, wider than a mile…” As she sings I am transported to a time many years before this one—before Tobias or Jessica or Professor Conrad. It’s just me and Robert and Audrey. Her voice, its own memory. There is silence when she finishes, like a cloud of something delicate, spun cobwebs or gold, hangs over our table. Even Conrad seems at a loss for words. It’s Robert who speaks first.
“That was wonderful,” he says. “Thank you.”
She reaches across the table and takes his hand, and I see that, for the first time in my life, my father is crying. We are split open in the wake of Audrey’s voice, every one of us. What will flow into the cracks we do not yet know.
TWELVE
THE RELATIONSHIP WITH PAUL WAS FINE. Nice, even. I knew he was more invested than I was, but he never really showed it. We saw each other twice during the week and once on the weekends. We followed this rhythm week in and week out—never more, rarely less. I met his parents, but only because they happened to be in town and he had tickets to a Mets game. He didn’t cook, and neither did I, so we ordered in. We liked the same television shows and slept in on Sundays. He told me he loved me after seven months, at the Italian place on Carmine we went to regularly. I said it back.
Occasionally I heard from Tobias. He’d send me e-mails with links to articles I might like—never to his own work. I responded back a line or two. “Thanks” or “I like this” or “I hope you’re doing well.” We didn’t ask questions.
I had dinner with Matty a year in. He had texted asking if I wanted to get together. I had only seen him once or twice since Tobias left, and I missed him—he’d been my friend, too.
We met at the Indian place close to their old apartment we had gone to many times. Tobias obviously didn’t live there anymore, and neither did Matty, but we met there anyway. A pilgrimage to our past. He came in carrying a copy of Rolling Stone.
We ordered chicken curry and yellow lentils and saffron rice, and once we’d eaten a bit I asked about Tobias.
“He’s doing really well,” he said. He spoke quietly, like he was trying not to startle me, gauging how I’d take it. “I think the work stuff is really good.”
He didn’t mention any woman, and I was grateful. I wasn’t sure I could have handled that.
“I know he’d kill me if I told you,” Matty continued. “But I wanted you to see.”
He handed me the copy of Rolling Stone, which had been sitting on the table through dinner like a gun on the mantel. On the cover was President Obama. I opened it and went to the dog-eared page, which was the cover feature.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“It’s Wolfe’s credit,” Matty said. “But Tobias shot the whole thing.”
My heart swelled with pride and then tightened with sadness because he hadn’t told me. This was the thing he wanted most in the world, and I couldn’t be there to share in it with him. A thought crossed my mind: that we could have the things we wanted, just not together.
Matty sensed my emotion. “How’s Paul?” he asked. I remembered he’d met Paul at my birthday party a few months back and liked him.
I cleared my throat. “Good,” I said. It was true. “We’re going to Portland next week.”
We were going to stay for a long weekend, explore the city and do some hiking. We already had all our dinner reservations.
“Nice,” he said. “I love it there.”
“I’ve never been, but Paul says I will, too.”
I looked down at my food. Matty reached across the table and touched my arm.
“Hey,” he said. “You know I thought you guys were totally meant to be, but maybe it’s for the best, you know?” He swallowed. “He’s doing really well, and I think you are, too.”
I thought about work, my relationship. “Yeah,” I said. I touched the magazine on the table. “This is amazing. Obama. Wow.”
Matty grinned. He looked so proud. “Pretty cool. He’s doing Harrison Ford next week.”
After my dinner with Matty I thought about Tobias less and less. Knowing he was doing well, that he hadn’t moved for nothing, that we’d gone through this for a reason, helped. I liked Paul, maybe I even loved him. I was happy. I was just starting to believe that maybe it had been for the best when Tobias came back. It was Christmas. He had been gone in L.A. for twenty-three months and six days when he showed up at my apartment.
I was renting out the second bedroom to a girl named Rubiah who was getting her doctorate in physics at Columbia and was never there. It was easy rent, and I liked the occasional company.
I don’t know why he expected to find me there, but he did. I hadn’t gone home with Paul. My mother and stepfather had elected to go on a cruise for the holidays. She asked me along, but I get seasick. People with migraines should never set foot on boats. So I decided to spend the holidays alone.
I baked macaroni and cheese and made cookies. I was just settling down to watch a History Channel special Rubiah had DVR’d about the end of the Mayan calendar. It was 2014, and they were claiming the end hadn’t been in 2012 like expected, but was still coming.
He rang the buzzer. I heard his voice. “Hey,” he said. “It’s Tobias. Can I come up?” Just like that. Hey, it’s Tobias. Can I come up? Like the world wasn’t ending. Like it hadn’t already.
I waited for him in the doorway. My heart pounded so loudly it was preventing me from seeing. He took the steps two at a time. He always did. He showed up with a bag. “I just got off the plane,” he said.
It should have taken more. It should have taken explanation. Dates, times, plans. We had barely spoken in those twenty-three months. Not once in the last seven. But all I asked was: “How did you know I’d be home?”
“I took a shot,” he said.
He put his hands on my face. I didn’t even try and fight him. “Merry Christmas,” he said.
“Why are you here?” I said.
“It’s where you are,” he told me.
“You shot Obama,” I said.
He raised his eyebrow at me. He was smiling. “I believe Obama is fine and at the White House,” he said.
I shook my head. “I thought you were doing great.”
“I was,” he said. “But it wasn’t enough without you.”
All I knew was that I missed him. Just seeing him there, standing where Paul had stood so many times in the last two years—coming, going, never hesitating—it was everything that I had been missing. It felt like my life for those last two years had been a silent black-and-white movie, and here he was rushing in with sound and color—making the whole thing come alive. He was my destiny returned.
I kissed him, because I wanted to know that he was real. That he wasn’t some apparition. I had, at times, imagined a reunion exactly like this.
“Macaroni,” he said, his mouth still on mine.
I resented how confident he was. But it felt like confidence in me, in us. It wasn’t just his confidence that I’d take him back. It was my confidence that he had come back for me.
“Are you staying?” I asked.
“If you’ll have me,” he said.