“Okay, I’m sorry for your loss, Eleanor.” My mother hangs up her end of the line.
“We really wish you the best, Elsie,” my dad says. It catches me off guard, hearing the name out of his mouth. He is trying. It means that he is trying. “We just . . . we don’t know how to . . . ” He breathes audibly and restarts. “You know how your mother is,” he says, and he leaves it at that.
“I know.”
“We love you,” he says, and I say, “I love you too,” out of social convention rather than feeling.
I hang up the phone.
“It’s done now,” Ana says to me. She grabs my hand. She holds it to her heart. “I’m so proud of you for that one. You handled yourself really, really well.” She hugs me, and I throw my face into her body. Ana’s shoulder is a soft place to cry, but I’ve heard urban legends about the safety of a mother’s arms and that sounds pretty good right now.
“Okay,” I say. “I think I’m going to go lie down.”
“Okay,” she says. She cleans the plates from the table. Hers is an empty plate covered in maple syrup. Mine is clean but full of pancake. “If you’re hungry, let me know.”
“Okay,” I say, but I am already in my room, already lying down, and I already know I won’t be hungry. I look up at the ceiling and I don’t know how much time passes. I remember that his cell phone still exists somewhere. That the number didn’t die when he did. And I call it. I listen to him over and over, hanging up and dialing again.
JANUARY
It was a rainy and cold Saturday night. Well, cold for Los Angeles. It was fifty degrees and windy. The wind had started to sway the trees and make the rain fall sideways. It was only five o’clock but the sun had already set. Ben and I decided to go to a wine bar not too far from my house. Neither one of us cared that much about wine, but it had covered valet parking, so it seemed the most dry of the nearby options.
We made our way to the table, taking off our wet coats and mussing with our hair. It had been so cold outside that the inside felt warm and cozy, as if we were sitting at a campfire.
I ordered a caprese salad and a Diet Coke. When Ben ordered a pasta dish and a glass of Pinot Noir, I remembered that the whole point of this place was the wine bar.
“Oh,” I said. “Cancel the Diet Coke. I’ll have the same.” The waiter grabbed our menus and walked away.
“You don’t have to order wine if you don’t want wine,” Ben said.
“Well,” I said to him. “When in Rome!”
Our glasses came shortly after, filled halfway with dark red. We swirled the glasses under our noses, smiling at each other, neither of us having any idea what we were doing.
“Ah,” Ben said. “A faint smell of blackberry and . . . ” He sipped his drink in a reserved, taste-tester sort of way. “It has a woodsy quality to it, don’t you think?”
“Mmmm,” I said, sipping mine and pretending to contemplate. “Very woodsy. Very full-bodied.”
We both laughed. “Yes!” Ben said. “I forgot full-bodied. Wine people love saying things are full-bodied.”
He started to chug his down. “Honestly,” he said, “it all tastes the same to me.”
“Me too,” I said, as I sipped mine again. Although, I had to admit that while I couldn’t speak to the tannins or the base notes or whatever else people that know wine know, it tasted wonderful. After a few more sips, it started to feel wonderful.
Our food had just been served when Ben’s phone rang. He put it through to voice mail as I took a bite of my salad. He started to eat his pasta and his phone rang again. Again, he ignored the call. I finally caved and asked.
“Who is that?” I said.
“Oh,” he said, clearly wishing I hadn’t asked. “It’s just a girl that I dated a while ago. She drunk-dials sometimes.”
“It’s not even seven thirty.”
“She’s a bit . . . What is the correct way to say this? She is . . . a party girl? Is that the polite way to say that?”