This was the wrong thing to say. I’ve seen photos of him and his brothers as kids in matching red sweaters tearing into presents wrapped in Santa wrapping paper. While they may not be Christian, June fully bought into the commercialized version of Christmas. I know Christmas is important to him, but why should I be the one who has to compromise? Why can’t he be the one to realize that my tradition is equally as important to me?
We drive for fifteen minutes in silence, both of us lost in our own thoughts.
Norwalk.
Darien.
Stamford.
I count ten exits before I try talking to him again.
“David,” I say.
“Just tell me, Hannah, what kind of future do you want?” He glances over and I can see the mix of hurt and anger in his expression. “And what place do I have in it? Sometimes I wonder if it’s always going to be like this—you’re the most important person in my life, but I can’t seem to fight my way to the top of your list.”
“I love you, David. You know that.”
“I do, and I love you, too. But what are we doing? Where is this going?”
As he lobs questions at me my head spins.
I stop myself from saying that I like how things are now, because clearly he doesn’t feel the same way. “I don’t know,” I say, finally. Not to hurt him, which I fear it will, but because the world already feels off its axis with Finn leaving. When I try to picture the future, it’s like looking into the murky blue of a Magic 8 Ball. Ask again later. I feel like the walls of our tiny rental sedan are closing in on me.
“Well, would you do me the favor of letting me know when you figure it out?”
“I . . . ,” I begin, ready to protest, but realize I can’t. It’s not an unreasonable request.
“Sure.”
We drive the rest of the way back to the city in silence.
Back in Tribeca, David drops me off at the apartment while he goes to return the rental car to the parking garage around the corner where we picked it up. I’m pretty sure we’re both relieved to have a few minutes to cool off.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” I say to Frank, the night doorman, on my way past his desk to the elevators. Before I can press the up button, I decide against it and walk back toward the front door.
“Did you forget something, Mrs. Becker?” Frank asks as I walk past his desk going the opposite direction. His honest mistake lands like a blow and I tamp down the urge to correct him that David and I aren’t married. Right now, we’re barely speaking.
Outside, I hang a right toward the West Side Highway. I have too much anxious energy to burn off, and I don’t particularly want to continue our conversation when David gets home. Maybe a walk will help clear my head.
Except by the time I get to Hudson River Park, I’m more mixed up than when I left our building. Maybe talking would help. I pull out my phone and press Finn’s name at the top of my favorites list.
nine
Finn
This year, November 22
For a few seconds after I wake up, I don’t know where I am. I blink at the navy blue wall in front of me. My apartment’s walls are white. I wanted to paint them, but I couldn’t. It says so in my lease. I glance down at the sheets. They’re covered in tiny cursive A’s, the Atlanta Braves logo.
Oh, right, I’m in my childhood bedroom. Now I remember.
I sit up to get a better look at the room. It was dark when I got in last night after an endless day of delays at JFK. Waiting suited me just fine—I had the final installment of the Throne of Glass series on my iPad and a bag of Combos from Hudson News. The longer the flight was delayed, the less time I’d have to spend with my family.
By the time a Lyft dropped me at my mother’s doorstep in Peachtree City, it was after midnight, and I barely had the fortitude to brush my teeth before falling into bed. Turning on the lights would only mean getting out of bed to turn them off again, so I used my phone’s flashlight to navigate to the bed and collapsed into a dreamless sleep without bothering to plug in my phone. The battery is at twelve percent, I need to find a charger.
The room is a time capsule. There’s a stack of paperback fantasy novels with cracked spines on the windowsill. My father hated those. “You’re too old for those sissy books,” he said. “Go outside with the other boys instead.” The only books he read were Jack Ryan novels. If something didn’t explode every twenty-five pages, by nature it was sissy. An ironic worldview for an accountant. But the allure of those “sissy” books was the hope that I might find a false back on an armoire or get a visit from an owl and find an escape hatch out of his house or, better yet, discover I was a changeling and not his son to begin with.
Instead of dealing with the unpleasant memories that are bubbling up, suppressed from the last time I was here, I take in the shrine to my younger self. On the walls are posters of Michael Johnson from the 1996 Olympics and the 1995 Braves World Series team. I was too young to remember either sporting event with any real clarity, but my father hyped both to near-mythic proportions to the point where his memories felt like my own. Later, Johnson was an inspiration, both the reason I tried out for the track team and the subject of many teen masturbatory fantasies.
The room hasn’t changed at all. But I’ve changed a lot. Except I still want to sleep with Michael Johnson. Well, maybe. I’ll have to Google him and see how he’s aged.
I feel sad for the boy who lived in this room. The boy who was desperately trying to win everyone’s approval, especially his father’s, and hide that he was gay, something he’d known with a fair degree of certainty since Ashley King’s twelfth birthday party when he spun the bottle and it landed on Billy Bradford. I leaned toward the center of the circle, counting my lucky stars. He was the cutest boy in our grade. Billy was less enthused. My classmates burst into peals of laughter at my gaffe. Boys weren’t supposed to kiss other boys. Everyone knew if it landed on a boy, you spun again.
Billy spent the rest of middle school telling anyone who would listen I was gayer than a fruitcake. Even if it was true, I wasn’t keen on another label to differentiate me from the mostly white student body in our affluent suburb.
When my father got wind of the rumors, he drove to Billy’s house to have a word with his father, man to man. The next day, Billy showed up at our door with an apology letter and a sheepish look on his face. He was so upset I almost apologized to him. I wanted to tell him he wasn’t wrong, but my dad was standing behind me in the foyer, supervising Billy’s apology.
I throw back the covers and cross the room to the dresser to find something to pull on over my boxer briefs. I wind up with a pair of Falcons pajama pants and am pleased they still fit, even if they’re snugger than I remember. I left my suitcase downstairs. Carrying it up felt like too much effort, plus I like knowing my packed bag is beside the door in case I need to make a quick getaway.
It’s strange being home. I never thought I’d be back here, let alone twice in two years. This isn’t home, I remind myself, this is the house I grew up in. My real home is a postage-stamp-sized apartment in the West Village above the third-best pizza place on the block, but not for long. I gave my landlord thirty days’ notice and have to be out by December 15. But I can only handle one panic spiral at a time, so I head downstairs.
* * *