“It’s real,” Jessica says. “My boobs don’t lie.” She points to her milk-crusted shirt. “Plus,” she says. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
I feel my heart pull toward her, Jessica Bedi, my best friend. Somewhere deep in there, below the trappings of her life, is a woman who still believes in magic.
Anything is possible.
“I dare say it is,” Conrad says. “I feel a slight hangover coming on.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll have to find your way back,” Audrey asks him. She seems, all at once, concerned.
“Perhaps,” Conrad says. “But I know how to hail a taxi.”
I look around the table. This dinner began as a reminder of all I had lost, but as I watch them now all I can feel is profoundly grateful. For a father who never stopped loving me, for a movie star who gave a generation her grace and who gave us one dinner tonight, for a professor who challenges his students, and for a best friend who is still here.
“Thank you,” I say.
Conrad nods; Jessica clears her throat. Across the table, Audrey blows me the most delicate of kisses.
“Well, shall we?” Audrey asks. “It’s about that time.”
I look up at the clock. Twelve minutes to midnight.
“How should we do this?” I ask the group.
Conrad claps his hands together. “I’ll go first,” he says. He pushes back his chair and stands up, adjusting his suit jacket. “I expect a lengthy e-mail and perhaps a telephone call this week. I’ll wait for it.”
“You can count on it. Thank you for being here,” I tell him. “We needed you.”
He turns his attention to Audrey, who doesn’t seem to know whether to remain sitting or to stand. Conrad takes her hand. “It has been my supreme pleasure, Ms. Hepburn,” he says, kissing it gently.
“Oh,” she says. “Oh.”
Conrad shakes Robert’s hand, pats Tobias on the back, and gives us a little salute. He walks out the door. I follow his silhouette until it is lost down the street.
Next it’s Audrey. She stands and loops her little Chanel sweater over her shoulders. “It’s gotten chilly outside,” she says. She seems nervous now, without Conrad, and I feel a wave of affection for her, that she stuck this out until the very end.
“It has been an honor to spend the evening with you,” my father says. He stands with her. “I’ll walk you out.”
He looks back at me, and I want to tell him I’m not ready, that this should be the start, not the end. But our time is up.
“I’m thankful I got to know you tonight, Sabrina,” he says. “I’d say I’m proud, but I hardly feel responsible.”
“Say it anyway,” I tell him.
He comes over to me. He leans down so he’s right next to my ear. “My daughter,” he says, like he’s savoring the word.
He kisses me on the cheek, and then he’s gone with Audrey, out the door in the night air.
“And then there were three,” Jessica says.
“It’s always been a crowd,” Tobias says.
Jessica smiles. “I’ll go,” she says. She looks at her watch. “The baby will be up in forty-five minutes. Maybe I’ll make the feeding.” She slings her bag over her shoulder. “I’ll call you later,” she says. “Okay?”
“Yeah. Hey, Jess?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Thank you for coming tonight.”
“It’s our tradition, right?” she says. “Although next year is in trouble. I’m not exactly sure we can keep this one up.” She turns to Tobias. “Be good, okay?” She puts a hand on his arm. I see her eyes well up with tears.
“I got nowhere to go but up.” It’s a joke, but none of us laughs.
“I’ll see you,” she says, and leaves, the bells on the door jingling after her.
We’re alone.
Tobias turns toward me. “Should we walk a bit?” he asks.
I look at the clock. We have six minutes left.
“Yeah,” I say.
We put on our coats. Tobias holds the door open for me as we stroll out into the night. The white wicker bench is there, perched by the door. I wish we could sit on it, even for just five minutes more.
“I’ll walk you back,” he says.
“We won’t make it,” I say.
“Even so,” he says, and we head toward home.
TWENTY-SIX
IT TOOK ME A WEEK TO open the personal effects bag the hospital gave me.
We had the funeral on a Sunday, at the church in Park Slope where we were supposed to be married. Tobias’s parents picked up bagels and Jessica wrote and read a poem. We all wore color because I thought it’s what you do when you’re not trying to be somber, when you’re trying to celebrate life. But I was mourning. I was wearing a red dress, one Tobias had liked, but inside I felt black.
Matty came and sat next to me, and then after we walked the city for twelve hours, barely speaking. He seemed to understand that there were no words to make it livable and didn’t bother trying. We were together in that grief, and that was something. I was grateful for that. To be with someone else who had really known him.
Afterward I sat on the floor of our bedroom and slid the manila envelope out of the plastic wrapping. I took a breath in and held it, like I was preparing to go underwater. Inside was his cell phone, wallet, a subway card, and a ring box. I opened it immediately. It was not the ring I’d given him back but the other one, the first one we’d seen. The one we fought over, that was too expensive. He’d gone back and bought it.
The thought that still felt too hot to think, like if I gave it any time it would burn me alive, was what he was doing on my street corner. He came running out of nowhere, the driver had said.
He was running to me. And now, I knew, he was running across with this ring in his pocket. It could only mean one thing: he had come to get me. Our time apart had come to an end just as he’d decided he wanted us to be together.
My heart seized. I thought surely I’d die right along with him. In that moment, I wanted to. Because the alternative was just too cruel. To know, so clearly, that he was coming back to make it work. That he had saved up, presumably, over our time apart and bought this ring, the first we’d seen, to make a new promise, a bigger one—I didn’t know how to live with that.
The ring was beautiful, just as I’d remembered. I slipped it out of its black velvet seat and put it on my hand. It fit perfectly. It was dazzling—it picked up the afternoon light and sent it cascading everywhere—on the wooden floor below me, off the white walls. “It’s beautiful,” I said out loud.
I couldn’t explain why, in that moment, I thought about the old ring and what had happened to it. Had he brought it back to Ingrid and traded it in? Did he pawn it? Was it still somewhere buried underneath his stuff? Matty hadn’t gone through his things yet. We said we’d do it together, but I didn’t know when either of us would be ready, or if we ever would be. The thought of folding his jeans, taking down his shirts, sifting through his photos? Impossible.
I wore the ring all day, and then I put it back in its box and hid it under my bed where his photograph used to be.
12:00 A.M.
TOBIAS STOPS. NEITHER ONE OF US has said anything for a minute, and now here it is, upon us.
“Well,” he says. We haven’t yet made it home, but there’s one thing I have left to ask. It’s the question I’ve been waiting to ask him all night, since we first arrived at this dinner nearly four hours ago. It’s the only one left. But of course I know, don’t I? Even so, I need to hear him say it.
“Why were you there that day?”
He exhales and nods, like he knew it was coming, of course he did. “I was going to re-propose,” he says. “Set a date. Call our parents. Have a big wedding.” He smiles and lets out a small laugh. “I wanted the right ring.”
I think about the fight we had that day in the store. The way his pride was damaged. “It’s a beautiful ring,” I say.
His features are lit up in the moonlight, and I see him as that nineteen-year-old kid on the beach in Santa Monica. Beautiful and stubborn with everything ahead of him. “It wasn’t the right one, though,” he says. “I was still getting it wrong. The one we picked out together? That was ours.”