“Why?” I ask. My eyes are fired up, but when they land on her soft, brown ones I find myself melting backward.
“Because we haven’t even gotten our starters yet,” she quips. “And no one is going anywhere.”
“I didn’t know you’d died until six months after,” I say. “Six months.”
“I got what I deserved,” he says.
“Don’t say that,” Tobias interjects. He’s staring at Robert with a mixture of benevolence and some kind of intensity I can’t place, and I realize, like so many times before, I don’t know what he means. Whether he’s being sympathetic or challenging.
“Look,” Jessica says. “Food.”
Three waiters appear with our starters. I instantly regret the salad. It looks like a piece of modern art. Sprigs of microgreens intercepting shavings of Parmesan. I wonder if Tobias will give me some of his crudo. He used to do that—put food on my plate without my asking.
“I would very much like to explain what happened,” Robert says when everyone’s starter has been set down.
“We’re still in history,” Conrad says. “I think that would be fine.”
I look across the table at him, and he raises his eyebrows at me. “What?” he says. “Is this all to talk about the weather?”
I shake my head. It’s not a yes or no—more like a giving in.
“Go ahead,” Audrey says. “We’re all listening.”
“I never had the chance to say good-bye,” he starts. “She kicked me out. Your mother never wanted me to come back.”
“You were a drunk,” I say.
I lift a sprig of greenery off my plate and put it in my mouth. It tastes like sand.
“I was,” he says. “Marcie wanted to have another baby. She wanted this whole life I couldn’t give her.”
“So you went and gave it to someone else?”
“I got help,” Robert says.
“That’s good,” Conrad interjects. “A man should be marked by his ability to grow.”
Life is growth. If we stop growing, we are as good as dead.
“Not all change is growth,” Audrey says. I look up at her. I feel like thanking her.
“I disagree.” This from Tobias. “The mere act of taking a chance, of changing, is by definition an act of evolution. And when we evolve, we grow. And that’s the point.”
“Of what?” I ask.
“Human existence,” Jessica says next to me. She spoons some tomato bisque into her mouth and then waves her hand back and forth across her lips in reaction to its heat.
I give her a weary look. Sometimes I wish she would just, no questions asked, be on my side.
“I’m not saying what I did was right,” Robert says. “But it was necessary. It was the only course of action. I had to leave.”
“Necessity,” Conrad repeats, but that’s it.
“I was five years old,” I say.
“I had to get help. I couldn’t change in the present circumstance. It wasn’t your mother’s fault. It just … didn’t work.”
“And later?” I asked. “What about then? Why didn’t you ever come back once you got better?”
“Because,” he says. “I met her. And then I was afraid.”
No one asks of what. We know. Losing the new life. Losing health. Losing her. Everything he had already lost didn’t factor in.
“It’s going to take more than one dinner,” I say.
“But Sabrina,” Robert says, looking directly at me for the first time since we sat down. “One dinner is all we’ve got.”
THREE
WE WERE STUCK IN THE SUBWAY underground. I’ve had a terrifying fear of small spaces since I was five years old, when I was locked in the cabinet under the sink. It was a babysitting-gone-wrong situation. Not her fault, just a game of hide-and-seek and a jammed door. It only happened once, but once was enough.
I was employing the tools I have. Breathe deep. Do not block your airway. Sit up straight. Keep your mind in check. Focus your breath. Understand that it is only a feeling and that you are safe and secure.
This too shall pass.
“Are you okay?”
There were only four people in our car. Thank God. Even though it was early and I hadn’t yet picked up my morning coffee, I had noticed him when I got on. I nearly dropped my tote bag. At first I thought it couldn’t be, but there was no mistaking him. His shaggy hair, ripped jeans, and scruffy chin. It had been four years since Ashes and Snow in Los Angeles, and now here we were on the other side of the country in New York, and it felt like I had finally arrived at the other point of a straight line.
Life in New York wasn’t all that bad. I was living with Jessica, and our college cohorts David and Ellie were there, too. David, now a banker, was always dating older, powerful, unavailable men. He was one of only three black men in his class at Goldman, which he said gave him an advantage. I’d never seen David not excel or get what he wanted—and the men of the city were no exception. Then there was Ellie, who was perpetually single and worked on the publicity scene for a popular jewelry designer. We went out with them often, to off-off-Broadway plays that were usually shitty but cost only twenty bucks. I had a degree. I was working as an assistant for a fashion designer who was planning a big comeback. She hadn’t been relevant since the late nineties, but she was launching a new line of swimwear that was putting her back on the map.
She would hit it big a year after I left, my timing always spectacular, but at that moment, heading uptown, we were working in the back of a cramped storefront. I wasn’t looking forward to spending the next eight hours in sweaty darkness.
But I also didn’t want to spend my day underground.
“I’m all right,” I said.
I looked up at him, expecting recognition, but nothing registered on his face. He was leaning against one of the metal poles.
“The average time for a train to be stuck is three minutes and thirty-five seconds.” He took out his cell phone. “I think you have about two left. Can you make it to two?”
I couldn’t tell whether he was being sarcastic or not. This was often a problem of ours. I wanted sincerity, just not the way he gave it. Not with that much honesty.
I shrugged and gestured to the empty plastic seat beside me. I always figured when I saw him again, he’d know it, too. He’d say, It’s you, and that would be that.
He sat down. “Do you live here?” he asked.
“Not specifically,” I said. His face was blank. “I mean I live in Chelsea.” I gestured absently toward the outside—whatever tunnel we were currently pinned to.
“Chelsea,” he repeated, like the word was foreign. Saffron. Indonesia.
“You?”
“Williamsburg,” he said.
“Sure.” That seemed exactly right. We’d have a lot of arguments over the years about Brooklyn versus Manhattan. It was my feeling that I hadn’t moved all the way here to live outside the city, especially back then, but for Tobias Brooklyn was the city. The only reason he was even on the subway that day, underground on Manhattan soil, was that he had just come from an interview at a gallery and was now headed uptown to go to a photography exhibit at the Whitney.
“Which one?” I asked when he told me. I knew the Chelsea gallery scene. Since I’d heard about Robert’s death, the year before, I had taken to wandering around our neighborhood. It was a thing I did to clear my head. Not that his death should have changed anything—I hadn’t seen him since I was a child—but it did, somehow. Just knowing the chance had been taken away for good.
I’d have dinner at the Empire Diner and stroll down Tenth Ave nue, up and down the Twenties, popping into whatever gallery was having an opening. It was a great place to get free wine.
“Red Roof,” he said.