Truth in Advertising

MAKE THE MEMORIES LAST


The train heads north hugging the Connecticut coast for a time. Late-afternoon light. I’m going to Boston. Tomorrow we are going to sit in a room—the Dolans—and listen to our father’s last will and testament. Tonight, we will have dinner.

Now, though, sitting in the café car on the Acela, I wait for the conference call. The presentation is today. I told Ian I’d prefer to go to the meeting and call in to the reading of the will, but he wouldn’t have it. I told Ian about my father when I got back to New York from Cape Cod. It was early, in the office. He’d come in with coffees. We were going to crack it. We were going to best the lame ideas we had. This was the Super Bowl and we were going to make a name for ourselves with this spot.

I say, “My father died.”

Ian says, “Is this a joke?”

“No. Real this time.”

“Jesus, Fin. I’m so sorry. You okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m tired.”

“What happened?”

“He stopped breathing,” I say.

“Cut the shit.”

“He was old.”

“Who else was there?”

“Where?”

Ian says, “In the room. When he died.”

“No one. He died in the middle of the night. Then I went over.”

“It’s sad, man.”

“Yeah.”

Ian says, “Why don’t you take a few days off. I’ll tell Martin. He’ll understand.”

“It’s fine. It’s nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“How long have you known me? How many times have I mentioned my father?”

“Twice,” he says. “Both times to tell me he was dead.”

“Exactly. So. He wasn’t really a part of my life.”

“I don’t know what to say. Have you told Phoebe?”

“No. I will, though.”

We didn’t crack it. In the end, after two dozen more ideas from all of us, Martin narrowed it down to Al Gore and William McDonough, with 1984 as a distant safety. We were eager to sell Al Gore. Big shoot, lots of travel, great computer-generated graphics, work for two weeks in L.A., which would largely involve Ian and me playing Ping-Pong at the post-production facility and eating expensive dinners. And then we would win awards for our spot. That’s how we scripted it.

I stopped by Ian’s office before I left for Penn Station. “I’m off.”

“Good luck up there.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

I waited by the door.

I said, “The Al Gore idea is good.”

Ian said, “Al Gore is good.”

I said, “The others kind of suck, huh?”

Ian said, “They’re not great.”

“Is the Al Gore idea good?”

Ian said, “Not really.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, we’re not that good.”

I said, “That sounds about right.”

I turned to go but stopped.

I said, “It’s a good job, isn’t it?”

Ian said, “Yes.”

I said, “And we’re lucky to have it. Especially these days.”

“Yes.”

“But we don’t really like it anymore.”

“No.”

“And yet we don’t leave.”

“Nope.”

“Why is that?”

Ian said, “Fear. Laziness. Complacency. Mostly we don’t know what to do.”

I said, “We die, ya know. One day. We die.”

Ian said, “I know.”

Silence.

Ian said, “Listen, thanks for stopping by, this has been great.”

I said, “The ideas.”

Ian said, “Don’t worry. It’s no big deal. It’s just the Super Bowl.”

• • •

The train hits a straightaway and ramps up speed. Time for the conference call.

Martin, Ian, Alan, Jill, and Keita will be with the client. Several other clients from offices around the globe will call in.

I dial the number, say my name, hit pound.

Someone says, “Hi. Who was that who just joined?”

I say, “It’s Fin.”

The voice says, “Hey, Fin, we’re just waiting on a couple of others.”

I hear muffled talk as people gather, the beep as others join the call, their recorded name announced.

Perhaps my father has left us millions of dollars, money we never knew he had. Perhaps he has left us stocks that he bought in IBM decades ago, a nest egg, an apology. “I was looking out for you. I just had anger issues.” Maybe there are home movies, a box of Super 8 film that he secretly took, edited together, making a short film of our young lives, one he narrated, explaining everything.

Someone says, “Hey, everyone. I’m Carole. Some of you might not know me. I wanted to thank you all for calling in. It’s much appreciated. I know we have a lot of ground to cover and I hope everyone has the agenda, but I’d also like today to be informal enough for people to jump in. The other thing is confidentiality. What we’re talking about here is serious and proprietary and potentially huge for this company. You wouldn’t be on this call if you weren’t vital to this project. So what’s said here stays here. Who’d like to start us out?”

There’s silence and then laughing.

I’m wondering if Martin or Alan is going to do any setup but perhaps there’s no need since we all know why we’re here.

I decide to jump in.

I say, “Hey, everyone. It’s Fin Dolan in New York. Well, on a train from New York to Boston.”

Carole says, “Hey, Fin.”

“I thought I’d say a few words about our thinking.”

“Great,” Carole says. “Exactly what we were hoping for.”

Perhaps it’s the three cups of Amtrak high-octane coffee and the Sara Lee crumb cake I’ve had, but I’m feeling good. I want to lay the groundwork for the Al Gore idea. I want them to see the genius.

I say, “I think what makes this product so great is that it will have such an impact on the planet. On landfills and oceans. And I think we need to align ourselves with the environmental movement. Diapers can be green. That’s an amazing thought. You think of what a diaper is and does . . . and here we have something that won’t harm the environment. . . . How remarkable is that?”

There’s an unusually long silence and I worry that I’ve hit a bad cell zone.

It’s Carole. “I’m sorry. Who did you say you were again?”

“It’s Fin.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t see that name on our call sheet. You’re in Gentron’s New York office?”

“Gentron? This isn’t Snugglies?”

“Get off this call now or we will hunt you down and sue you!”

• • •

I check into a hotel using our company’s rate and take a long shower. Eddie has e-mailed us the name of a restaurant near where he works. It’s not far from the hotel.

Ian calls.

“Why didn’t you call in?”

“I did. Just to the wrong call. I was seconds away from being a tech billionaire. How’d it go?”

“Tough to say. Might have liked Al Gore.”

“Did they buy anything?”

“They’re having a think, getting back to us in a couple of days.”

“Was I missed?”

“No. There were half-a-dozen people on the phone and at least twenty in the room. You okay?”

“Fine. Why?”

“When’s the last time you guys were all together?”

“The first Clinton administration. We’ll be fine. We’re just like a family. Except for the caring part.”

• • •

There’s a sparse crowd, lots of seats at the bar, a few people sitting in the lounge area. A bitterly cold night a few nights into the New Year. I’m nervous.

The bartender is Grace Kelly. She’s Grace Kelly when Grace Kelly was twenty-five, a vision, the porcelain skin and the ice-blue eyes, the honest-to-God blond hair, a smile and a beauty that unnerves your internal monologue. Then she speaks. And what comes out is the world’s heaviest Boston accent.

“How ahh ya?” she says, which can also be pronounced How are you?

“I’m good. How are you?”

“Me? I’m supah. What can I get ya?”

“Beer would be great.”

“Sam Adams?” Except it comes out “See-aaaaam Adams.” Long soft vowels. It makes me love her more.

She draws the beer from the tap and I watch her. She is used to being watched.

“In town on business?” she asks as she puts the glass down in front of me.

I nod, do a kind of bobblehead doll move, back and forth. “Well, it’s certainly a kind of business.”

“That sounds intriguing,” she says with a flirty smile that makes my insides turn to jelly. “What do you do?”

Me? What do I do? I’m a fighter pilot. I’m a rescue diver. I’m a stunt man. I do stunt work. Hanging off cliffs, that kind of thing. Did you see the opening of Mission: Impossible III? That was me hanging off that rock. No. I’m with Oxfam America. I’m back in the U.S. to drum up money for a new project I’m working on. It will bring video games . . . I mean, water . . . to a village. I’m a vascular surgeon. No . . . don’t. Just tell the truth. I’m a copywriter and I’m in town because my father died. He died and we were estranged and now my family and I will hear his last will and testament. Say it.

“I’m in town to try to buy the New England Patriots.”

“You’re kiddin’!”

“I’m not. I represent a man, a very wealthy man, who has his eyes on them.”

“Wow. That’s amazing. You’re not going to take them away, are you? We love our Pats.”

I say, “No, no. We’d never do that.”

A couple has sat down at the far end of the bar.

She smiles and says, “Don’t go anywhere.”

Don’t go anywhere? What does that mean? Is she flirting? Is that possible? Or is she just being friendly? Is she propositioning me? What does she look like naked? Someone taps me. I look up and see a guy, late fifties, suit, tie undone, sitting a few stools away. He’s had a few drinks. He says, “James Dean dying in a Porsche accident?”

I smile. “Yes.”

He says, “Who cares, besides maybe Mrs. Dean and the guy’s agent? He made three movies and they were lousy. Rebel Without a Cause? How about rebel without a friggin’ clue? What a little girl in that red windbreaker. Brando read for that role.”

He nods. Grace Kelly is back and rolls her eyes and smiles.

“And what about Duane Allman?” he says. “The day he crashed his Harley-Davidson Sportster a few months after the release of Live at the Filmore East . . .”

He turns quickly to face me. “What day was that?”

“I have no idea.”

He says, “October 29, 1971. Where was it?”

“Belgium,” I say, though he’s not really listening.

“Macon, Georgia. The day he . . . well, something ended in this country. For me, anyway.”

He sips his drink. Brown liquid. He sings softly, in a not unpleasant voice.

“Lord, I was born a ramblin’ man, tryin’ to make a livin’ and doin’ the best I can . . .”

He’s looking straight ahead now. “Ever notice no one talks about Scope anymore?”

“The mouthwash?”

“Scope, Boraxo, wax paper, paper lunch bags, Colgate Tooth Powder. Came in a red tin with a little plastic cap. What happened to that stuff?”

“I guess people just stopped using it.”

“That makes no sense to me. How can you just one day stop using something like Scope?”

I shrug. Grace Kelly puts a fresh beer in front of me and winks.

He checks his BlackBerry. He types quickly with his thumbs. This is a man with a job. Perhaps he runs a company, is responsible for other people’s jobs. He makes decisions, determines what kind of ad agency is chosen. I fear he’s going to remove his pants. He puts the BlackBerry down.

He says, “I mean, seat belts, for Christ’s sake.”

He looks at me, as if those two words explain it all, as if they are a kind of genius answer to Fermat’s theorem.

“Seat belts,” I say, as if I understand what he’s talking about.

“Right?” he says. “I mean, we used to crawl around the station wagon like cosmonauts in a weightless environment. Adults would literally blow cigarette smoke in your face for fun. We drank whole milk with five tablespoons of Bosco in it. We ate Chips Ahoy like kids eat vitamins now. And look at us. We’re fine. Aren’t we fine?”

“I certainly think so.”

He picks up his glass, smiles, and clinks it against mine. He drinks.

He says, “I’ve gotta take a piss. Be right back.”

I say, “I can’t wait.”

And then I turn and look toward the door and see my sister walk in. How bizarre, I think. I am related to her. We have the same parents. We grew up in the same house. And yet she is a stranger to me. I read once that 99.9 percent of one person’s DNA is identical to another’s. I walk over as Maura hands her coat to the hostess. I watch her undo her scarf, stuff it in the arm of the coat, fix her hair by rolling it back behind her ears. I have watched her do these things a thousand times. The youngest always watches his brothers and sisters more than they ever know.

“Hi,” I say.

My voice jerks her head up.

“Fin. I didn’t see you there. Am I late? Hi.” A fast blinker, often nervous, high-strung. We hug, the awkward hug of strangers, the flat hand pat, slow repeat, on the back.

“Not at all. I just got here.”

The hostess seats us at a table for four and hands both of us an array of enormous menus—daily specials, wine lists—as if we’re taking part in a food-and-beverage convention. Maura has put on lipstick for this. She has done her hair, which she wears in the chin-length bob of a Boston suburban mom, sensible, non-sexual, kind-of-cute. She wears a canary-yellow sweater set with black pants. Her shoes are round-toed, comfortable slip-ons. She rubs her hands.

“This is nice,” she says, looking around.

I nod and smile. Our mother called her Honey Bee. She read me stories when I was little. She said, “Don’t ever let Mum see you cry.”

The waitress takes her drink order.

“Did you drive in?” I ask, though I had no knowledge that these words were going to come out of my mouth. I have a smile on my face like a game-show host. I want to slap myself.

“No. No, I took the commuter rail. Paul didn’t want me driving. Supposed to get three to six inches tonight. I hope Kevin’s flight lands.”

Maura has four kids. They have names and ages and she stays at home, having left a job in something or other at Fidelity. She used to go to church a lot. We talked about it once, a long time ago. She felt a connection. She used to go with my mother. Then the monsignor of her church was sentenced to prison for molesting dozens of young boys over the course of thirty years. Now she cleans obsessively. She loathes newspapers in the house, she told me. Her husband, Paul, is an engineer or a scientist or a programmer or a hedge-fund guy who invented a software program. He made a lot of money. They live in a house slightly larger than Finland.

“You look good,” I say, though this is a lie. She looks tired and stressed, older than I remember, a woman in deep need of yoga and a massage and a beach and sexual healing.

She rolls her eyes. “I look old. There’s Eddie.” She waves toward the front of the restaurant and I look to see my oldest brother, the man who knows everything. I stand and shake his hand. He leans over for a perfunctory kiss on Maura’s cheek, both of them turning away, skin barely touching. The waitress brings Maura’s drink.

Eddie says, “Grey Goose rocks, olives, please.”

It is striking to me how much Eddie looks like our father, though I would never say that out loud. He would be insulted, as if that were a criticism, as if somehow he and not his DNA were at fault. Eddie is a real estate lawyer. Three kids, separated last I’d heard. I don’t think he’s looked either of us in the eye yet.

Maura sips her wine, puts it down. I smile at the salt shaker. Maura picks up her drink and sips again. Eddie looks around.

Maura says, “How are the kids, Eddie?”

Eddie nods to the table. “Good. Good.”

Check, please.

Eddie says, “Where’s Kevin?”

Maura says, “On his way, I guess. If his flight landed.”

Or if he ever got on it in the first place. It is hard to say who took the worst from our father. Certainly not me. And he left Maura alone for the most part. It was Eddie or Kevin or my mother. My mother, though, could calm him sometimes. And Eddie was tough. Kevin . . . Kevin was mostly just confused that his father would treat him like that, that his own father seemed to hate him. He applied only to schools on the West Coast after high school. He just wanted to get away. He studied graphic design, somehow got a job at Apple. Now he has his own firm. He lives with his boyfriend. I get a card from them at Christmas. He used to call me Finneus.

The waitress brings Eddie’s drink. He eats an olive off the pick, sips the drink, clears his throat. Who are you? Where’s the person I knew? Where did he go? And am I different to him, as well? To Maura?

Eddie says to Maura, “How’s Paul? The kids?”

Maura says, “Good. All good.”

Eddie looks down at his drink and says, “Did he say anything?” Then he looks up at me. It hits me that I’ve not seen him in a long time.

“No. He never regained consciousness.”

Eddie nods.

Maura and I are looking at Eddie, waiting for him to say something. The same dynamic for as long as I can remember. He’s the oldest. We watch and wait and follow his lead.

Eddie says, “Were you there when he died? In the room?”

Maura exhales loudly, looks away, sips deeply from her drink.

I say, “No. It was late. I was asleep at the hotel. They called me.”

“And you went there?”

“No. I went to the hotel gym at three in the morning, did the Stairmaster.”

“Don’t be a wise ass.”

“Don’t ask me stupid questions.” It comes out too loud.

He glares at me across the table.

Eddie says, “Whatever. I don’t really give a f*ck.”

Maura says, “Language.”

I form my response and then tell myself not to say it but I say it anyway, as if I’m out of control, on a bad adrenaline rush. I’m running my tongue against the back of my lower teeth like I’m on coke. My neck is hot.

I say, “You’re asking a lot of questions for someone who doesn’t care.”

I can smell booze on Eddie’s breath, even from where I sit. He stopped for one on the way, perhaps the only way to face us, to face this. I’m four seconds away from walking out. This is why we never see each other. Because every time we do we revisit the past and sit in it, unable to do anything but flail and scream and injure ourselves. So much of our conversation is unsaid, spoken so long ago. We have nothing in common but a last name and a history that won’t let us go.

Again, I say the words without thinking. “Why weren’t you there? Why weren’t either of you there?”

They look at me like the witnesses must have looked at Eichmann on trial. Eddie, leaning across the table, face contorted. “Because he was a f*cking prick, that’s why. Because he killed . . .”

“Stop it.” Maura.

If you dropped the ambient noise you’d hear the three of us breathing heavily.

The waiter has a smile like he’s trying out for a Broadway show.

“How are we all this evening? I’m Gareth and I would love to tell you about our specials . . .”

I cut him off. “Hi. Sorry. We’re actually waiting on one more person. Maybe we could hear those in a bit.”

We sit in silence, waiting for the night to be over. I’m staring at the ceiling, so I don’t see Kevin walk in. He looks at the three of us, reads our faces.

“I see we’ve already begun.”

• • •

I oversleep and have to walk quickly to the lawyer’s office for the reading of the will. I pass a bank clock on the way and the readout says it is twenty-one degrees. The bellhop says I can get there faster on foot than by cab at this time of morning in this part of town. I get lost. The streets are a labyrinth in the old part of the city and I end up at the water twice. I’m frozen and stop in at a coffee shop, a pre-Starbucks time capsule.

There’s a Formica counter at which sits a handful of men who look like they’ve worked a nightshift, drinking bottles of Miller High Life. There is an older woman wearing two overcoats stirring her coffee and putting packet after packet of sugar into it. She has a newspaper folded to the crossword puzzle. “I read two hundred books a year,” she says to the newspaper. “I’m a writer and a poet and I’ve had my books published. In Israel. A rose is a rose is a rose. Who said that?”

I order a coffee to go for warmth more than anything else, and my cell phone rings. The display reads Amy Deacon.

“Amy,” I say rather cleverly. I’m in a mild state of shock. We’ve spoken once in eight months. That call did not go well. A call initiated by me, “checking in.” A mistake, having done what I did. I did it to assuage my guilt, she said.

Also, I’m not sure if it’s a general low-grade nervousness in my gut or the particularly potent coffee I gulped in the lobby of the hotel on my way out, but yet again my lower intestinal tract is warming up for what appears to be an Irish jig and I fear a Four Seasons–like toilet at this establishment is out of the question. The men laugh and one says, “Sully, you’re such an a*shole.” Only “a*shole” comes out “ahhs-hole.”

Amy says, “Hi, Fin.” I smile at the high pitch, the kindness in her voice. The older woman with two coats now seems to be staring at my crotch. I make a quick tactile examination of the area to make sure my fly is up and I’ve not accidentally urinated on myself, though to be frank, in my current state of lower intestinal agitation, I sense my penis retracting like wheels after takeoff.

“How are you?” she says.

We’d met on a plane. I was on my way to Cincinnati for a client meeting. Amy was headed to a conference on trauma therapy. A storm was over eastern Pennsylvania. We sat on the tarmac at LaGuardia for three and a half hours before the flight was canceled (foreshadowing?). We exchanged numbers. This was two years ago. Amy asked what my feelings were about children on the third date. I lied and said I’d always wanted them. It seemed the right thing to say. It seemed the thing normal people do: get married, have children, mow the lawn.

We started dating. We went to dinner. We went for drinks with friends (hers mostly). We went to weddings (also her friends). And during those Saturday-night weddings, dancing, too much champagne, I could see so clearly that she wanted me to ask her. And yet it was as if I were watching myself from across the room.

“What are you doing, Fin?” my alter ego would ask. This Fin is leaning casually against a tent pole, sipping a gin-and-tonic, wearing a white dinner jacket. This Fin is really good-looking and I wish I were more like him.

“What am I doing? I’m doing what people do. I’m at a wedding. I’m thinking about proposing to Amy, who I almost love.”

“You almost love her?” my other self asks doubtfully.

“Yes. Almost. That’s the best I can do. Real love? Movie love? That doesn’t exist, handsome Fin.”

“I’m not sure I agree with you, normal-looking Fin.”

“But this is what one does. I want to be a normal person. I want to do normal things.”

“You are in love with the idea of love.”

“That’s terrible, terrible dialogue.”

“You’re in love with the idea of romance, with the idea of Amy.”

And, of course, handsome Fin was right. Love is not the feeling you get at a friend’s wedding on Martha’s Vineyard on a perfect summer evening, you in a tux, Amy in a sexy dress. That’s called a buzz. Love is something else.

Always, deep down, in a place I rarely ventured, I felt anything but normal. I felt damaged and wrong. I felt hollow and different. I felt I was acting all the time. We look for family. If we have none, if people scatter and die, we look for family in other forms—friends, in-laws, coworkers. I’d found that in advertising, albeit in a slightly twisted way, in New York City. Now I thought I could find it in Amy and her family, that the being-in-love-with-her part would eventually come.

That first winter together, on the sidewalk at Central Park West and Sixty-third. That’s when she first told me she loved me. It was cold. We’d gone skating. We were waiting for the light to change. We were trying to figure out what to do for dinner. I’d taken her glove off and was holding her hand, blowing warm air on it, putting it to my face.

“I love you,” she said, looking at her hand.

I stopped blowing on her hands. My expression must have changed. And I like you very much! I wanted to say.

I had what I’m sure was an inane smile on my face. I knew I was expected to say something in return. I’d seen the movies, read the books. My mind searched for the words, unable to simply utter I love you, too.

What came out instead, though somehow she didn’t find it odd, was, “I have love for you, too.” Like a bad Russian translation. Though what may have saved me was the fact that I hugged her as I was saying it and my voice was muffled by the furry hood on her winter coat. What a terrible thing it is to not love someone who loves you. Far worse is acting as if you do.

I went through with it, never questioning any of it, convinced that if I simply kept taking steps forward I’d be okay, that I was doing the right thing.

In bed, deep into the night, I would wake and go and sit in the kitchen, in the dark, stare out the window, hold my breath, try not to make a sound, as the escape plan hatched itself. I had money in the bank. I could pack a small bag, a knapsack, be on a flight by midday, to Poland or Morocco or Vietnam, places where a person could live for long periods of time on little money. I had researched this. The złoty. Polish money is called the złoty. In Vietnam, the dong (unfortunate). I sat there in the dark, cold coming through the windowpane, the small rattle when the wind blew, shaking, my heart racing and a strange rash under my arms. And yet I was a willing participant in this entire charade. I made this happen, me, the person who’s supposed to be immune to false narratives, the person who creates false narratives for a living. “You make her happy,” Amy’s mother had said. Yes, and then I made her very unhappy.

With six weeks to go until the wedding, she found me in the kitchen one night, sitting on a chair by the window, converting dollars to złoty on a pad of paper.

“Honey?” she said, the slightly confused, mildly frightened voice one uses to speak to the insane. “What are you doing?”

I hadn’t known she was there and I looked up, terrified, a feral animal cornered.

“I’m fine,” I’d said, too loudly—and certainly not convincingly—considering the fact that I was naked, wide-eyed, and shivering.

Amy said, “You’re scaring me.”

I had to say it. I felt like I might vomit. My palms were sweating and my heart was racing, like I’d had eleven cups of coffee.

“I’m not sure I can do this,” I said, looking at the figures on the paper in front of me.

“Do what?”

I could take it back. I could dance around it. But she knew.

The light from the streetlamp was the only light in the kitchen.

She was staring at me, her arms folded tightly across her chest. I could feel it. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at her. Finally I said it again, slower this time, a dare to myself, to what tiny amount of courage I had left. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

She said, “Honey. People get cold feet sometimes. It’s . . . it’s a huge thing. It’s natural to be a little scared.”

“No,” I said. “It’s more than that.”

And perhaps it’s the way I said it, the tone of my voice. That’s the thing about a play. They’re not meant to be read. You read them in high school and in college, but often they don’t mean as much as when you see them on stage. You hear the actor’s voice, their inflection. It’s all about how we say a thing.

She stared at me, a woman looking at an accident on the highway, at a dead body, only to realize she knows the person lying there.

“What!?”

I said nothing, just looked at her. I’d hoped that she would understand what I myself didn’t quite understand; that I liked her a lot but that the idea of marrying her and being responsible for her happiness when lately, for some time, I had been unable to find any myself, well, that was just a little too much at the moment.

She’ll understand, I thought. It is one of the things that drew me to her, her empathy. This is her job, really, as a social worker, to listen and put herself in the shoes of other people, to help them help themselves.

Her face began to crinkle. She winced. Her hand went to her mouth and I realized, as she leaned back on the stove for support, repeating “Oh my God” through muffled sobs, that what she understood was that I was calling off the wedding.

That was eight months ago.

• • •

“I’m good,” I say now. “Yeah. I’m okay. I’m in Boston, actually.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

And here a memory comes to me clear and fast. I once told Amy my father was dead.

“We’re pitching Legal Sea Food. Do you know it? Amazing sea food restaurant. How are you?”

The old woman is sniffing the backs of her hands like a maniac, like she’s lost a scent.

“I’m great. Do you have a minute?”

Maybe we could have a coffee or a drink, I think to myself. Maybe we could have crazy dirty monkey sex. Maybe that’s why she’s calling, like she once did, to describe the color and satiny texture of her bra, the demi-cup, the fullness of her gorgeous breasts. Is it possible she’s been thinking about me? So what he backed out on the wedding. Other than that he was a catch.

She says, “I’ve actually been meaning to call you.”

There is a tenderness to her voice. The sadness and anger of the break-up long forgotten now. She is the kind of person who will only remember the good things—a far better, more nuanced, more emotionally mature person than I. She once said, “Fin, we all have an emotional toolbox. Our parents give us these toolboxes on our eighteenth birthday after years and years of filling them with all the wonderful tools we’ll need. Compassion, patience, empathy, courage, optimism, determination, confidence, altruism. Some of us have one of those big, red, shiny ones, like you find in the pit stop area of NASCAR races. And some have a good-sized household one. You have a little one, like a child might have. And inside there’s almost nothing. Maybe just like a ball-peen hammer and a broken measuring tape. But it’s not your fault, sweetie.”

I have giant words in my head when I think of certain people. For Ian it’s SECURE. For Martin it’s CONFIDENT. For Phoebe it’s LOVELY. With Amy the word KIND appears in big letters, maybe a strong, clean Helvetica. And I threw that away. And in this moment, like so many others, I regret everything and in the exact same moment wonder if maybe we could get back together, if only for tonight. And the mere thought of that floods me with a comfort that is palpable. My mood lifts. I can see her bright, warm, clean apartment, the working fireplace, the big bed with far too many pillows. Her tidy kitchen filled with All-Clad pots and pans and complete sets of dishes, glasses that match, place settings. A refrigerator with food in it. She buys flowers for no other reason than they look pretty on the table. And I think yes, perhaps we could talk all night in front of the fireplace and drink wine and order food. I could tell her the whole story, the story even I don’t understand, about how I’ve gotten here, to this distant, empty, emotionless place. I would purge my soul to her and she would listen, nod, comfort and affirm me. “Life is a process, Fin,” she would say, slowly, nodding. “You’re doing fine. Just a little slower than most.” And later, after much sex, we would sleep for many hours. And then I would leave, run screaming into the morning, wanting nothing more than to escape again.

“I wanted to call because . . . this is a bit awkward . . .”

I knew it. She wants to get together. I could be on a shuttle flight at five and in her apartment by seven.

She says, “I wanted to call because my boyfriend proposed to me New Year’s Eve and we’re getting married in a month. We’re flying to Paris. He’s rented the restaurant at the Crillon. He’s bringing my family and his family, some of whom live over there and . . . I’m rambling, I know, but I’m just so happy. And I wanted you to know that because I know how upset it made you to make me as unhappy as you did. I was really angry at you for a while, but I’m over that now. I wanted you to not feel bad about it anymore because looking back, not marrying you was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I wanted to thank you for that.”

It’s as if someone has just handed me a different script to my life. As if the one I was working from was the wrong one. In the old one I was someone with time, with a great job, with possibility ahead of him. It was a rollicking good comedy. This new one is a sad drama. The hero is almost forty, which means he’s almost fifty, which means his life is basically over and any chance of success long gone. And the truly sad part is that it’s his own fault. He thought he could live a life where you blamed fate for your lot. Father left. Mother died. Poor me. What he failed to realize is that there is no fate. There is only how hard you are willing to work to be happy. And in this new script, he’s a fool.

In the end all I can manage is, “I’m very happy for you, Aim. Honest.”

We hang up and I stand there, thinking I may shit myself. I see a door that says TOILET but underneath is a sign that says OUT OF ORDER.

I turn to see the old woman staring at me. She squints and says, “Did you hear the one about the most optimistic man in the world? He jumped off the Empire State Building and halfway down the window washers hear him say, ‘So far, so good.’”

She cackles and turns away.

• • •

We are in a small conference room at the law office. Sullivan, O’Neil & Levy is a working man’s law firm. From the looks of it the offices haven’t changed much in forty years. Beiges and browns on the walls, the furniture. Cheaply framed posters of Cape Cod, the Freedom Trail, the Boston skyline.

Tom Hanley introduces himself as my father’s attorney, shakes hands, smiles, looks us in the eye. A full head of snow-white hair, stocky, broad-shouldered, fat fingers. Two rings. One a large class ring. Boston College. The other a gold Claddagh ring with a diamond on his wedding finger. He keeps smoothing his tie over his belly, a nervous tic maybe. His tone is more like that of a parish priest about to say a funeral mass.

“Coffee? Water? Something stronger? The restrooms are just down the hall if anyone needs one before we start.”

He’s saying, I’m sorry. I know this is painful. I want to make it a little easier. Boston Irish. Don’t say what you’re feeling. Find another way to say it.

We take our seats. A woman who Tom Hanley introduces as Rosemary sits with a stenograph at the end of the table. And there, on the table in front of Tom Hanley, to the left of his yellow legal pad and gold Cross pen, sit the remains of our father.

“Okay,” Tom Hanley says. “This is the reading of the Last Will and Testament of Edward Lawrence Dolan, Senior. Present at the reading are Thomas Hanley, attorney at law representing the deceased, Rosemary Kelleher, stenographer, and the children of Edward Lawrence Dolan, Senior, Edward Lawrence Dolan, Junior, Kevin Francis Dolan, Maura Ann Dolan-Macaphee, and Finbar Thomsen Dolan.”

He pauses. It feels like church. Why do I keep needing a toilet?

“‘I, Edward Lawrence Dolan, a resident of Bradenton, Florida, and Hyannis, Massachusetts, hereby make this Will and revoke all prior Wills and Codicils. I was born May 17, 1926, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I am not currently married but I was previously married to Emily Kelleher Dolan from October 1955 to 1980 and the marriage ended by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1982. I have four living children.’”

Eddie is looking out the window. Kevin is looking at his iPhone. Maura is examining her nails.

It takes only a few blurred minutes to read through the will itself because there was nothing to bequeath. No money, no houses, no antiques, no art, no cars, no stocks or bonds. Except the letter.

Tom Hanley removes the letter from a binder and lays it out in front of him on the table. He sips from a glass of water. He looks at us. “We good?” No one says anything.

He reads. “‘My dear children.’”

Eddie, stage whisper: “Oh, give me a break.”

Kevin says, in a voice a bit too loud, “Eddie.”

Eddie shakes his head back and forth, stands, and goes to the window, hands in his pockets, back to us. Tom Hanley is unfazed. How many times has he sat in this room, read these kinds of documents to families? Hurt families, fractured families, loving families. Every time drawn back into the past, to the beauty of a memory, the pain, the ongoing tragedy of family. He seems like the kind of guy who’d be a great neighbor.

Tom Hanley continues. “‘My dear children.’”

He pauses, as if a small scold to Eddie, as if to say, You dumb a*shole, you still don’t get it, do you?

One day you will sit down and write out something that you know will be read after you die. If you’ve done it all wrong, they will be the words you hope will replace the actions of your life. I wasn’t a very good father. And I wasn’t a very good husband. If you think it is easy for me to write these words you are wrong. I tried. I swear to God Almighty I did. What I tell you now I tell you not as an excuse but so you might understand. Your mother and I grew apart. She stopped being in love with me years before I left. I couldn’t be the man she wanted or needed. I couldn’t get a handle on my anger or, for a long time, my drinking. But just so you know, I did not choose to leave. Though I believe it was for the best in the end, your mother asked me to leave. Your mother had met someone else.

Tom Hanley is channeling Anthony Hopkins because he knows to pause here, the perfect dramatic beat, not too long. He’s ready for this. He’s read the letter before today and knows the effect these words will have on us.

“He’s a liar!” It’s Maura.

“This is bullshit.” Eddie, turning from the window.

“Let him finish.” Kevin.

Tom Hanley sips from a glass of water and continues.

It doesn’t matter who, as he’s long dead. He was married at the time. It was not something that was ever going to be. But she did love him. Your mother was a good woman and a good Catholic and the guilt and shame of it was very hard for her. She told me. She told me I had ruined her life. She said that I had taken her for granted and that the children are afraid of me. She said things I will never forget and I sat there and took them because they were true. She asked me to leave and to leave you all alone. There are things that you do that you cannot change no matter how hard you try. The rest of my life is of little consequence to you now. I met people, they saw me as a good man. I liked that. But know this. There are things I did that were good. There are memories I have, as clear to me now as if they happened this morning. I can picture each of you as small children. I can feel you, in the middle of the night, holding you as you cried, feeding you a bottle, sitting in that chair in the den rocking you back to sleep. Hundreds of times over the years. And what do they count for? To you nothing. To me so much more than you can know. I do not ask that you forgive me. I wouldn’t if I was in your place. But I would ask that you try to understand that a person can make terrible mistakes. No one in this room is free of sin. You asked me to be more than I was capable of. I ask only one thing and it is of all of you. Or any one of you. I would like my ashes spread at sea, in the Pacific, 12 nautical miles from Pearl Harbor, latitude 21 degrees, 23 minutes north longitude -158 degrees, 57 minutes west. That’s where I was the day the war ended. I would say I’m sorry but I don’t think it would mean much. Your father, Edward Dolan.

Rosemary, the stenographer, has stopped typing but she continues staring at the machine.

Tom Hanley stands. “I’ll leave you alone.” He and Rosemary leave.

I have an odd capacity to escape reality. It makes life much more pleasant. Now, in this moment, I realize I have no intention of ever spreading my father’s ashes off the coast of Hawaii or the coast of Coney Island, for that matter. A Buddhist might say that I wasn’t living in the moment. I would reply to my saffron-robe-wearing meditator that with rare exceptions there are few moments I want to live in. I like escape. I like my made-up world.

No one says anything for a long time. Until Kevin says, “I was hoping for cash.”

• • •

How do you see the world? Is there music underscoring scenes of your life? Do you slow things down for intensity and drama? Speed them up for comedy? Do you rewrite dialogue, if, say, you’ve had a fight with your boss or your wife or some jackass who cut the line at Dunkin’ Donuts? In these rewrites are you wittier, more bold? I do and I am. It makes life more interesting for me, gives me a wonderful sense of false empowerment.

And yet I know I miss the far more interesting narratives, the narratives I will never know, of strangers. Because you can’t possibly know what’s going through someone’s mind when you pass them on the street, see them standing at a traffic light, looking around in front of an office building in downtown Boston, looking left, looking right, wondering where to go. I wonder what the four of us look like as we walk out of the building. Do we look like lost tourists? What do passersby see? Does anyone notice Maura’s fast blinking or Eddie’s slightly shaking right hand as he smokes a cigarette or Kevin’s near-constant text messaging to God-only-knows who. Does anyone notice my heart palpitations and sweating palms in the twenty-degree weather, holding a cardboard-beige box with several pounds of human ash, searching out a cab to Logan for the next shuttle to LaGuardia?

In a near-perfect example of Dolan family dynamics, we all walked out of the conference room without the box containing my father’s ashes before I returned for my gloves and saw it sitting there.

I say, “That was fun. We should do that again soon.”

Maura says, “I’m freezing. Can we get a coffee or something?”

There is a Starbucks across the street. We go in and eat cold sandwiches. We drink burnt, awful-tasting, nuclear-hot, overpriced coffee. The Carpenters sing, “I’m on the . . . top of the world lookin’ . . . down on creation . . .”

Eddie says, “He’s a liar. It’s not true.”

Maura says, “What if it is?”

Eddie says, “It’s not.”

Maura says, “But what if it is?”

It’s strange how it didn’t come as a shock to me. Strange how once I heard Tom Hanley say the words—“Your mother had met someone else”—it unearthed a vague memory, the seemingly chance encounter in the supermarket or the dry cleaner’s. “Oh you remember Mr. So-and-so, Finny.” A brief chat. I could sense her awkwardness with me standing there. I watched him watch her, thought nothing of it, but somehow, in the memory, I can see it differently, see the intensity with which he looked at her. Later, after my father left, there would be phone calls, a man’s voice. She would take the calls in her room. Not often. But enough for me—for all of us, is my guess—to remember, to sense at the time that something was happening.

Kevin says, “What does it change? He was still an a*shole. He still left. And good for her, by the way. I hope it is true. I hope she did find love.”

Maura says, “What about the ashes?”

I look at Kevin for some reason. He and Maura are looking at Eddie, waiting. I notice, in the cold light of Starbucks, the small scar near Kevin’s left eye. My father wore a ring, Golden Gloves. He’d been a boxer as a teenager.

Kevin says, “It’s insane.”

Maura says, “Even dead he never fails to disappoint. The gall. Eddie?”

Eddie says, “What? Are you asking me if I’m going to buy an airplane ticket to Hawaii and rent a boat and find this spot and spread my father’s ashes and say a few thoughtful words about what a great guy he was?”

I say, “So what do we do?”

Eddie says, “This is pretty common.” He was in the Marines. He knows about these things. “World War Two vets. Korean War vets. They ask that their ashes be spread, ask for burial at sea. If they saw combat, they’re entitled to a full military burial. I know a guy at the VA. He’s in veterans affairs.”

I say, “See, now to me, that sounds like a new drama on ABC. ‘Soldiers. Heroes. Lovers. It’s all part of Veterans Affairs. Thursdays following Everybody Loves Raymond.’”

Kevin snorts and sips his giant latte. Maura shakes her head and nibbles on a premade sandwich. Eddie looks at me like I have snot on my face. It’s like we’re strangers stuck on an elevator, waiting for help.

What happened was this. We stopped caring. I don’t know when, exactly. We were all hurt, suffering. Eddie, our legal guardian. Maura, our emotional guardian. Neighbors checked in, but we drifted inward, to our own worlds, needing no one. We crossed paths in the house occasionally, left a note when we went out, then left nothing. Then simply left. Eddie enlisted in the Marine Corps (feeling the need to prove himself a man, angry, instantly regretting his three-year stint), Kevin went to college in California, Maura to God. But not happy, all-encompassing God. Boston-Catholic God. Feel-bad-about-yourself God. I read, watched a lot of television, and learned to make up stories. We sold the house when I left for college. The occasional phone call turned into the rare phone call. Maura’s wedding was an excuse to get drunk. So was Eddie’s. Our friends became our new family, untainted by the Dolan history. Each of us tried to distance ourselves from our common past. From his leaving, from her sadness. Until what you end up with is four strangers with the same last name who look a bit alike sitting in a coffee shop counting the minutes until they leave each other.

A woman, mid-forties, long dark hair, sits alone, looking at the door. A man walks in. She stands and they hold each other as if no one else is in the room. They sit across from each other, leaning across the small table, faces close. She touches his face.

Kevin says, “I think that’s a good idea.”

Maura says, “Sounds good to me. Unless someone wants to get on a plane. Finny?”

Before I can answer, Maura says, “Why wouldn’t he want to be buried with his wife?”

Eddie shakes his head. “No. I wouldn’t have allowed that.”

Maura says, “It wouldn’t be your call, Eddie. Like it or not, they were married.”

A little too much edge. Eddie raises his eyebrows.

Sip the crappy coffee, look at the couple. What are they saying?

Maura says, “I’m just saying, okay?” She shakes her head slowly and looks away, annoyed.

It wasn’t always like this. And that’s what I don’t understand about time. Where did we go as a family? Because for a short period of time, after she died, we came together.

This one time. Not long after we buried our mother, Eddie got tickets to a Bruce Springsteen concert at the old Boston Garden. I remember I had a test the next day. “What are you going to remember in fifty years, my little man?” Eddie had said with a smile. The old Eddie. I’d never been in the Garden—never been to a concert for that matter—but I loved hockey, loved the Bruins. When we walked in, when the place opened up in front of me, what a thing that was. Those Stanley Cup banners hanging from the rafters, the Celtics World Champion banners, the energy of the crowd, the heat and the lights. It was gorgeous. We made our way up to the front. I couldn’t stop looking around.

“You stay by me, right?” Eddie said. Maura was holding my hand. Kevin was on one end and he’d somehow managed to get a couple of cans of beer in his coat. He and Maura snuck sips. He hated Bruce Springsteen. He was into Echo & the Bunnymen, The Clash, Joy Division. It was winter. Eddie was leaning over to say something to me when then the lights went down. The crowd went wild. Eddie had bought the album and listened to it pretty much nonstop. He loved “Thunder Road,” loved the song “Born to Run.” I loved “Meeting Across the River,” this sad song about a guy named Eddie. The lights came up on the stage as the music kicked in. Loud, fast, intense. “Born to Run.” Those drums, that horn. And Springsteen screaming into the mic. Everyone dancing in place, mouthing the lyrics. We all knew them. It felt incredible. I felt so alive. I turned to look at Eddie, to look at Maura and Kevin, to see if they were feeling this, too. Maura’s beautiful wide-eyed smile, those big green eyes, Eddie’s squint-eyed grin, just like our mother’s, slow nodding. Even Kevin’s face lit up. We didn’t need to say a thing. It had been a long, horrible few months. But here we were, together. Kevin draped his arm around Maura’s shoulder and Eddie put his arm around me and Maura wrapped her arm around my waist. We’d never done anything like that before and wouldn’t again. We weren’t huggers. We weren’t touchers. But in that one moment we were a family, together, the Dolans. And I remember thinking, If we could just stay like this.

I lean back in my chair now, the memory so sharp. I feel my eyes begin to well so I look to the ceiling, realize I’m touching my scar and quickly stop. I’d gotten it that day, the day my mother died. Did I mention that? I should have mentioned that. When I came home, Maura stared at me. She was smoking, which she never did in the house. Mother would kill her, I thought. She didn’t seem to notice the blood on my chin, my shirt.

“Finny,” she said. “There was an accident. Mum’s dead.”

She sat down on the kitchen floor. Dropped to the floor, really, sobbing. I sat down next to her. I didn’t want to get blood on her. I didn’t cry.

Now, at Starbucks, I put my hands inside the pockets of my coat and feel the plastic bag. I take it out and put it on the table.

I say, “They gave me this at the hospital. It’s what he had on him.”

I take the wallet out of the bag and empty the contents on the table. I take the picture out last. No one says anything. Not even Eddie has anything to say this time.

Kevin goes first, looks for a time, says, “Jesus.”

Maura takes it and stares and I can see her trying hard not to cry. She hands it to Eddie. He takes it and puts it down without looking at it, then can’t help himself and stares at it for several seconds.

Everyone wants to leave, to go back to their families, the families they chose.

I slide the box across the table to Eddie. “He’s all yours.”

• • •

Outside the plane window, Manhattan from three thousand feet. Silent and clear and a partial moon. The weather says it’s twenty-three degrees. We bank left at the Brooklyn Bridge, make our approach to LaGuardia. I made the last Delta shuttle.

The cab driver asks where to, and at first I’m not sure. Work comes to mind. Home. But neither is very appealing. I am suddenly hungry and in need of three glasses of wine. I give him the address of a place in SoHo, a small French place called Jean-Claude.

I have texts from Ian and Phoebe and a voice mail message from Keita.

“Fin. I hope your father’s better. I am here if you need me. Maybe we could have a drink or dinner. Tell me please and I will help. This is Keita, by the way.”

I call Phoebe.

“How are you?” she says.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called.”

“I’m so sorry about your dad. Are you okay?”

“Not really.”

She waits, the good listener.

I say, “Have you had dinner?”

“Fin, it’s ten-thirty.”

• • •

There are two other couples in the place, a bitterly cold Tuesday night in January. The tables, maybe twenty of them, are small, with squares of brown grocer-bag paper held down by silver clips at their edges. A candle on each table. A small zinc bar, the two waiters speaking French. One pours two glasses of wine.

Cornish game hen and risotto and for Phoebe a bowl of potato leek soup and very good bread and we’re on our second glasses of Bordeaux. She’s windburned from skiing and her hair is down and a mess and lovely and she has her glasses on because she’d taken her contacts out for the night. They were her father’s frames, dorky, forty years old. Bad imitations are available now at Barneys for $350.

I’m watching the waiters and she’s watching the beautiful couple in the corner and we’re close enough, the place small enough, to hear goodly parts of their conversation.

The music is low, Chet Baker, I think. I hear the gentle scrape of fork and knife against plate, of a chair moving against the wood floor as someone adjusts their position. I smell Phoebe’s perfume, faint at the end of the day. She’s leaning forward, arms splayed out on the table, head tilted a bit to one side, face open and inviting, flushed from the cold, the wine. I am intensely aware of this moment. Here I am, in New York City, in a restaurant, on a winter’s night, eating this food and drinking this wine, and I am alive and for a moment, just a moment, before it flits away, I am happy, feel, in fact, an overwhelming joy. And then, just that fast, as I try to hold on to it, to stay in it, the noise of thought pushes it away, like coffee spilled on a table, spreading out, covering everything. What have I been doing, why have I never been to Morocco, why don’t I speak Spanish, why can’t I kickbox, why didn’t I take a night course in philosophy/art history/Euclidean geometry, how is it that Eddie and Kevin and Maura are strangers to me? I watch my mind come back to the moment, unable to pick up the thread from before, the feeling from before. But right before it ends I want to touch her face, put my hand to her cheek, feel her lean into my hand. I need to tell her about the ashes. I need to tell her that my mother met another man, had an affair. I need to explain my confusion and anger. She’ll help me put it into perspective. I have heard that people can talk like this.

I say, “It was all a hoax. My father was there. We all laughed and hugged and then went to Olive Garden, whose new tagline is ‘When you’re here, you’ve made a horrible mistake.’”

Phoebe waits. I swirl wine in my glass, watching myself, a suave man in a restaurant swirling wine in a glass at dinner with a beautiful woman. Except I do it too fast and a small amount of wine jumps the rim and spills onto the table.

Phoebe says, “I’m sorry. That must have been awful. Especially the Olive Garden part.”

I smile. She listens to what I mean, not what I say.

The waiter comes by, wipes at my small spill, tops off our glasses without saying a word.

The beautiful couple nearby have been eating while also doing things with their iPhones. Now, the beautiful man says to the beautiful woman, “If you could be any animal, what would you be?”

The beautiful woman looks up from her phone and says, “I don’t know. Like, a deer, I guess?”

He nods. “That’s cool.”

He clearly wants her to ask him but she’s back to looking down at her iPhone.

He says, “You know what I’d be?”

“What?” she says, still looking at her phone.

“A plum.”

She looks up and stares at him, then nods and says, “Totally.”

They both go back to their phones.

Phoebe stares out the window and I yawn.

I say, “Do you ever think about dying?”

Phoebe says, “This is fun. I’m glad you called.”

I say, “Isn’t it funny that we all know that we’re going to die?”

Phoebe says, “Hilarious.”

The waiter brings a dessert, a crème brûlée. It’s a thing they do for people who eat there a lot. I go to take a bite but Phoebe knocks my spoon away and goes first.

I say, “Amy called me today.”

Phoebe says, “Your fiancée?”

“Former fiancée.”

“Why?”

“To tell me she’s getting married. To thank me for not marrying her.”

“Seriously?”

I nod and Phoebe tries, unsuccessfully, not to laugh.

She says, “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . you had a bad day, pumpkin.”

I say, “There was a moment . . .” But I stop.

Phoebe says, “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s stupid. It’s pathetic.”

“Tell me.”

“There was a moment when . . . I thought . . . this is stupid . . . when I thought she was calling to get back together. And there was this part of me that was actually a little excited about it. Not that I want to be with Amy. That’s not it. More just the idea that maybe I could . . . that I could get a second chance.”

“It’s not stupid. It’s a tiny bit sad and pathetic, but it’s not stupid.”

I think of her wedding photos. I take a spoonful of dessert.

Phoebe says, “Okay. If tomorrow were your last day to live, what would you want to do?”

“That’s easy. Work on a diaper account. You?”

Phoebe says, “C’mon. Last day on earth. You die at midnight. What would you do?”

I look to the beautiful people. No help there. The waiters. Nothing. The window. Nada. To Phoebe. “I don’t know.”

She reaches over, gently removes my hand from my face. I was touching my scar. I hadn’t realized.

She says, “You do that when you’re nervous.”

I’m embarrassed. I say, “What about you?”

Phoebe says, “I’m doing it. Hang out with my friends, my family. Wine would be involved. Possibly pot. And an eighteen-year-old Spanish bullfighter.”

She sips her wine and says, “‘I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die. Just think of all the projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it—our life—hides from us, made invisible by our laziness, which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly.’”

“Who said that?”

Phoebe says, “Frank.” She smiles. “Marcel Proust.”

I say, “How do you remember that?”

She says, “I printed it out, had it on my desk at work in Paris. I used to look at it all the time.”

“We’ll blow it up big, put it in the lobby. Except people would walk in, read it, and run screaming from the building.” I pause. “You still thinking about leaving?”

She nods.

I say, “That’s probably a good idea. I would if I wasn’t so insanely happy in my work. Any ideas about what you’re going to do?”

“No. Just thinking about it.”

A tidal wave of regret and fear sweeps over me. I have done it all wrong. I understand nothing. My stomach roils and my palms tingle and Phoebe is young and I imagine her life laid out before her. The real marriage this time. The one she wanted. With the right man. Fulfilling work, children, a home, me a distant memory. She’ll run into Ian in a restaurant/airport/Grand Central. They’ll talk, catch up. The older child will hold Phoebe’s hand, the little one on her hip. Pretty dresses. They’ll look like their mother. Ian will have left the agency years before, moved on, started his own design firm, gotten married in Massachusetts, spend August at his new place in Provincetown. Friends. Love. Joy. Fulfillment. And you, Phoebe? he’ll ask. Three children, she’ll say. A boy, the oldest, with his father, who we’re on our way to meet. He’s a former model turned yachtsman turned novelist. Just sold his second book to Hollywood. We live up on the Park at Seventy-ninth Street. Mostly we’re at our place in Maine. Do you ever hear from Fin? she’ll ask. Really? Cocaine? Wow. Without his pants? In a restaurant? Yikes. And still single? Still at that agency? Wow. That’s . . . horribly sad and pathetic.

I say, “You were married once.”

It comes out more like an accusation than a statement. I didn’t mean to say it out loud. The reaction is like a slap. She looks at me, trying to figure out how I know.

I say, “Christmas night. Looking through photo albums with your mother. It’s not a big deal. I mean . . . it’s none of my business.”

Phoebe says, “Yeah. I was married. What’s your point?”

Her voice is cold. I’ve never heard her like that before. She looks down at her wine, smoothes the table, takes a sip, looks away.

I say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean to be rude.”

She looks up, stares at me unblinking for what feels like a long time, as if she’s trying to decide something.

Phoebe says, “Our families knew each other. Had for years. We knew the same people, the same friends. It was comfortable. I thought I was in love.”

She hasn’t taken her eyes from mine and I’m afraid to take mine from hers.

Phoebe says, “I got pregnant right away. It was a mistake. We weren’t trying. That wasn’t the plan. Not then, anyway. We were twenty-four. But he was so excited. Nate. That was his name. This was all he ever wanted. But I was . . . I was terrified. And I just thought, ‘Ohmigod. What have I done?’ And then, right before I was three months pregnant, I lost the baby. And ya know. That word . . . miscarriage . . . I used to think, ‘Oh, how awful,’ of course. But it didn’t have real meaning to me before. Then you think you’re going to have a baby, even if you aren’t ready or are scared shitless, so when they . . . when they die . . . you change. You change a little.”

She drinks her water.

She says, “We went on for a bit, but he knew something was wrong. He took me on vacation. St. John. He thought it would cheer me up. That’s when I said I wanted a divorce. He fell apart. It was ugly. His family was angry. It was f*cking horrible.”

She takes a long drink from her wine.

“When it was done, I left for Paris. The Frenchman was perfect. He treated me like shit, which felt pretty good at the time.”

I say, “I’m sorry.”

Phoebe says, “It’s late. Maybe let’s call it a night.”

There’s so much more I want to say but I can’t seem to find the words.

• • •

We walk to the corner of Houston and Sullivan. The wind blows in gusts, cuts through your clothes. Phoebe has on one of those Russian hats, all fake fur and flaps. No one’s out. She puts her arm up and a cab cuts over two lanes and pulls to the sidewalk. The driver is talking animatedly on a Bluetooth and picking his nose. I open the door to the cab, smiling, lean over and give her a half hug, say, “Thank you for coming out tonight. I really needed it and your friendship means the world to me.” Close the door, watch the cab drive away, walk home, secure in the knowledge that while my father is dead and his ashes will be taken care of, I have good friends who care about me and I them.

But that’s not what I do. That’s not what happens.

She puts her arm up and a cab cuts over two lanes and pulls to the sidewalk. The driver is talking animatedly on a Bluetooth and picking his nose. She turns to give me a half hug and I lean in too fast, misjudging the distance, thinking she was farther away, and kiss her on the mouth, hard, awkward, horrible, getting part of her cheek along with lips and somehow smelling my own breath, a steamy potpourri of hen, wine, and airplane.

“Ow!” Phoebe says, covering her mouth, pulling away.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I put a gloved hand to my lip, thinking I may be bleeding.

She puts a hand to her forehead, confused, annoyed, and takes a deep breath.

I say, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Fin. You should go home.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Just . . . it’s late.”