“Sure. Everything.”
Okay. She asked for it. “I still can’t see faces. I submitted a portrait to this competition that I should have won—handily—that’s guaranteed to come in dead last. I’m being menaced by my evil stepsister. I’m embarrassed to go back to my favorite coffee shop. My best friend eloped to Canada and left me dateless for what’s sure to be the most humiliating event of my life. My stepmother wants to build a relationship with me and she’s coming to the show over my vociferous objections. My dog is a thousand years old. I broke up with my fantasy fiancé. And the very cute guy in my building who I might genuinely be in love with kissed me senseless the other night and then fully disappeared.”
“Ah,” Dr. Nicole said.
“That’s all you’ve got? Ah?”
“Of all of those,” she asked next, “which one is the worst?”
“All of them,” I answered. Then I had an idea. “Any chance you could be my date to the art show? So I don’t have to go alone?”
It was a long shot, of course.
But she didn’t budge. “I find our work goes better in here,” she said, “when we don’t see each other out there.”
* * *
BY THE SATURDAY of the art show, it had been a full four days, fourteen hours, and twenty minutes since I’d had any contact from Joe.
It seemed pretty clear at this point that he’d moved on. Though I continued to hold out hope for Sue’s Sicilian grandmother scenario. Or maybe an unexpected car accident, like in An Affair to Remember. Or maybe some kind of head injury-induced amnesia?
There were still a few possible explanations that were forgivable.
Sort of.
Oh, well.
He was out of my life now, which was probably a good thing, I kept telling myself.
But I missed him anyway, is what I’m saying. Against my better judgment. I confess: I had moments when I felt tempted to call in sick to the art show.
I mean, how could you go to an art show that you were guaranteed to lose without any hope at all?
But on the other hand, how could I not go?
It’s one thing for dreams to shift slowly—for you to evolve and long for different things. It’s another thing to abandon your dream out of spite.
I thought about my mom. My courageous, kindhearted mom. She would have given anything to go to this exact show fourteen years ago. She would give anything to be here right now, fully alive, facing whatever life threw at her, and just cherishing it all.
Maybe the best way to hold on to her wasn’t to obsess over her paintings or wear her skates or listen to her music or copy her style or worry over what would happen when I finally lost Peanut. Maybe the best way to keep her with me was to embrace her spirit. To emulate her courage. To bring the warmth and love to the world that she always—fearlessly—had.
She had loved us without reservation. She adored us wildly. And laughed. And danced. And soaked it all up—every atom of her life—every moment of her time She felt it all. She lived it all.
That’s what I loved about her. Not just that she was a great mom or a great wife or a great dog rescuer. She was a great person. She knew some divine secret about how to open up to being alive that the rest of us kept stubbornly missing.
She’d wanted me to know it, too. She’d wanted me to say yes to everything. She’d wanted me to go all in.
But when she died, I went the other way.
I’m not judging myself. I was a kid. I didn’t know how to cope with losing her—or any of the hardships that followed. But I guess that’s the great thing about life—it gives you chance after chance to rethink it all. Who you want to be. How you want to live. What really matters.
I did want to go to the art show. I’d earned my right to be there. I didn’t, of course, want to be humiliated. But it was looking like I couldn’t have one without the other. And I just wasn’t going to let the things I was afraid of hold me back anymore.
I had no idea how that decision would turn out, but I knew one thing for sure: My mom would approve.
As the time approached, I zipped myself into her pink dress—much tighter and slinkier now. Sue had gifted me a makeover from her cousin who worked at Macy’s and a hair blowout from her cousin’s roommate.
I did it all.
If I had to go to this art show all alone, I would do my damnedest to look good.
There was, of course, still a chance that Joe might show up in a surprise twist and whisk me off like Cinderella. But as I clanked down the metal stairs from the rooftop in a set of gorgeous but actively painful heels, he was running out of time.
I walked down our long hallway, hoping to see him.
I rode down in the elevator, hoping to see him.
I walked out to the street in front of our building to meet my Uber, still hoping to see him.
Waiting there in the late-afternoon light—my hair done, a daisy behind my ear as an ode to my mother, and with so much mascara on that I could actually see my own eyelashes—I decided to try to text him one last time.
This would be it. My final attempt.
And then, when he didn’t reply, I’d call it: Time of death for my thing with Joe. Saturday night, seven P.M.
Then I’d go ahead and let myself mourn.
But after the art show.
And then, right there near the streetlamp by the crosswalk, as if the decision to give up had called forth some kind of magic from the universe, I saw him.
Joe. In his bowling jacket and his glasses. Coming out of our building. With a suitcase.
“Hey!” I shouted, my body walking toward him without my brain’s permission.
My Uber pulled up as I was walking away.
“Hey!” I called again.
Joe looked up, took in the sight of me in by far the fanciest getup any of us had ever seen, and held very still.
If I had wanted him to whistle or ogle or tell me I looked great—or even longed against longing for some kind of shift in his body language at the pleasure of seeing me—I would’ve been sorely disappointed.
The man was a total statue.
Fortunately, I didn’t want any of that. I just wanted to confront him.
I’d been having imaginary confrontations with him for days, of course. Where had he been? What was going on? Who the hell did he think he was?
But once it was really happening? I panicked.
For a second, no words came out at all. Finally, I managed: “I’ve been texting you.”
Useless. Joe’s body language stayed blank.
“And calling,” I added. God, now I sounded like Lucinda.
Joe just stood there.
At last I generated an interrogative: “Have you been sick?”
And at last, a response: “No.”
“Have you been … out of town?”
“No. But I’m leaving now.”
“You’re leaving town? Now?” I glanced down at his suitcase. “Right now?”
“Yes.”
I regrouped. “Do you happen to remember”—I felt a hitch in my throat—“that you were going to be my date to my art show tonight?”
Joe looked away, like he couldn’t stand the sight of me. The face might be unreadable, but the body language was unmistakable.
What on earth had I done to him?