I was thrilled. It felt like we were on our way to reconnecting, that we had set aside the hostility of the last few months and we were moving beyond it, and I knew this trip would be the reset button we needed. We had done so well in the Hamptons, I wanted us to have a little bit of that back—that fun and spunk and spontaneity that I thought defined our relationship. Home had gotten to be so pressurized—money, jobs, life. I wanted us to go somewhere where all that wasn’t hanging over our heads. Where we had more space and clear air. I would have the conversation Kendra and I had rehearsed the week before. In the space and open air, out of the city, Tobias would hear me. We’d figure it out.
That weekend we rented a car and went up to Lenox. Tobias drove and I rolled the window down. It was early November and still fall—crisp and cool, not yet biting—and the leaves hadn’t completely fallen. Upstate was a wash of gold and red and orange, and I reached out to put my hand over Tobias’s.
He lifted his thumb and rubbed my pinky. As soon as we left Queens behind us, I felt myself exhaling.
Jessica called. I hit ignore.
“You need to get that?” Tobias asked me.
“Nope,” I said.
He turned to me and winked.
Kendra’s parents’ cabin was up a hill that looked over a field of sheep and cows. It was small, one bedroom, one bath, with a little kitchen nook, a fireplace, and a screened-in porch. We had brought up groceries and wine, and I unpacked our provisions while Tobias went about building a fire.
Jessica called again. I missed it. My phone was now tucked into my purse, on silent, as it would stay for the rest of the weekend.
“Do you want a glass of red?” I called to him.
“Open the Nero d’Avola,” he said.
I found the wine opener in my bag. Kendra had said the cabin was fully loaded, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Forgoing wine for the weekend didn’t seem like it would help things.
Tobias went outside to gather wood from a pile by the side of the cabin, and I took the Gruyère and Gouda and grapes I’d bought and put them on a cutting board with some crackers and almonds—the spiced kind from Trader Joe’s I knew Tobias loved.
When he came back in I poured two glasses and brought one out to him, balancing the cheese plate on my wrist.
“Here, I got it.” He took the cheese board off me and set it on the mantel. I handed him a glass of wine and we settled down in a chair in front of the fireplace as he built the fire.
“Can I help?” I asked, sipping.
He cocked his head at me in that way he did that told me he thought I was crazy but he was charmed by it. Head tilted forty-five degrees to the left, one eye closed. “I don’t know, can you?”
“I’ll blow on it,” I said.
He arched his eyebrows at me. “Oh, you will, will you?”
“Maybe,” I said. I took another sip. I let my eyes find his over the glass.
“I think you should stay right there,” he said. He stood up and came over to me. He slid his hand onto my thigh and brought his lips up to kiss my cheek.
I pulled him down into the chair with me. We picked up where we’d left off over margaritas. I took his shirt off and ran my hands over his shoulders and down his back. He pulled my sweater over my head and kissed the hollow of my collarbone, the space between my ear and shoulder that drove me crazy.
All we needed was to stay this close. Right up against each other, without any space between us. If we did that, we were good. It was just the world—with all its loud chaos, its demands and people and air—that made us fight, that made us separate, that was driving us apart.
Tobias pulled back and looked at me. He hovered over me, so close I could smell the wine on his lips.
“Did I ever tell you about what happened after we met that day on the train?” he asked me.
He hadn’t. We had spent some time talking about the beach—our other beginning—but not that one.
“I got off at the next stop. I walked the rest of the way. I had to call Matty.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because,” he said. “I had to tell someone I had met her.”
“Who?”
“You.” He cupped my chin and brought his lips to brush over my eyelids, my cheekbones, the pad of my lips.
“Stay close to me,” I told him.
“Always,” he said.
He kissed my ear, then dropped his lips into the dip of my collarbone. I took his hand and led him into the bedroom.
Afterward we played Monopoly and drank two bottles of wine. Tobias made us pesto pasta with grilled chicken. I knew we needed to talk, but we needed this night more. We needed to remember what made us special and different and together. I wanted to make love and pasta and hold him in my arms.
We’d talk tomorrow, I reasoned.
Tomorrow.
11:05 P.M.
JESSICA IS HOLDING HER SHIRT OUT, and when I look over at her I see that her top is soaking. She’s leaking again and trying to conceal the milk stains.
“Excuse me,” she says. She collects her bag from where it sits on the floor and scurries into the bathroom. Watching her scuttle away, holding out her top, hits me straight in the gut. I wish we hadn’t fought just now.
“I need some air again,” I say. Conrad makes a move to stand, but Audrey puts a hand firmly on his shoulder.
“I’ll go,” she says.
It’s the first time she’s stood up tonight, and I notice her crisp black pants end at her ankles and she’s wearing a pair of black patent-leather ballet flats. She unhooks her Chanel sweater from where it sits on the back of her chair and loops it over her shoulders.
“After you,” she says, gesturing toward the door.
Once we’re outside, I want a cigarette. The one from earlier, with Conrad, has reignited my craving. I feel like I want to peel off my skin, roll it up, and burn it when Audrey takes out a pack.
“I don’t think this could possibly hurt me now,” she says, echoing Conrad earlier. “Would you like one?”
Her whimsical drawl has me nervous. I am alone with Audrey Hepburn.
“Please,” I say.
She lifts one, hands it to me, and takes one for herself. She lights mine first, then hers. We both inhale what can only be called excessively. Audrey exhales first; a cloud of smoke envelops her.
“That’s better,” she says, coughing a bit. “Non?”
I smile and follow suit.
“Do you know much about me?” she asks. She wants to know why she’s here.
“A little,” I say. “Mostly your work.” I know more—I know a lot—but it seems a strange thing to say, standing outside with her now. Because the truth is I don’t know, not entirely, why I chose to include her. Except that her movies represented something to me. Not just with Tobias, but with my father. One of the only things I had from him besides the watch was an old movie collection: Charade, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Sabrina.
She nods. “Did you know I was in Holland during World War Two? We thought it would be safe there, you see. We didn’t think they’d invade…” She trails off and puffs again. “It was a terrible time. Those five years we were barely fed. We used to crush up tulip bulbs and bake with them. I watched friends get carted off. My own brother was shipped off to work in Germany. Had we known what was coming, we may have all shot ourselves.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I did know, a bit. That must have been horrific. I can’t imagine.”
“But do you want to know what was worse?” she asks me.
“What could be?”
She shifts her weight, what little there is, delicately from one foot to the other. I’m transfixed—all at once reminded of her riding around Rome, singing in a flat in Paris.
“Decades later I started work with UNICEF, and before I died I traveled to Somalia. Seeing that famine, those children starving…” She swallows and I see, even in the lamplight, her eyes filled with tears. “It was worse,” she says. “Because I wasn’t in it with them. And I couldn’t fix it. Two million people starving.” She shakes her head and wipes at her eyes. “When you suffer alone it’s terrible,” she says. “But when you watch other people suffer, innocent people, those that cannot help themselves—it is worse.”
She looks at me, and I know what she’s saying, what she’s trying to convey. “Thank you,” I say. “For sharing that with me.”
“I was an introvert my whole life,” she says. “Quiet, reasoned. Perhaps it’s time to open up a bit.”
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
She puffs again. “Of course.”
“If you could do it all over again, all of it, what would you change?”
Audrey considers this. “I would have gotten married again,” she says. “A third time, to Robert. I loved him dearly. If I had to do it again I would.”