“Maybe I’m cured, or so they tell me. I guess you never know.”
I had no idea how to respond. The news was deeply distressing, but anything I might have offered would have been an empty platitude. Yet in a way I could not put my finger on, the information did not seem entirely new to me. I had felt it from the day we’d met: there was a shadow over her life.
“I’m Jonas’s pet project, you see,” she continued. “I’m the problem he wants to solve. It’s pretty noble, when you think about it.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said. “He worships you. It’s totally obvious.”
She sipped her wine and returned it to the table. “Let me ask you something, Tim. Name one thing about Jonas Lear that isn’t perfect. I’m not talking about the fact that he’s always late or picks his nose at traffic lights. Something important.”
I searched my thoughts. She was right. I couldn’t.
“This is what I’m saying. Handsome, smart, charming, destined for great things. That’s our Jonas. Since the day he was born, everybody’s loved him. And it makes him feel guilty. I make him feel guilty. Did I tell you he wants to marry me? He tells me all the time. Say the word, Liz, and I’ll buy the ring. Which is ridiculous. Me, who might not live past twenty-five, or whatever the statistics say. And even if the cancer doesn’t come back, I can’t have children. The radiation took care of that.”
It was getting late; I could feel the city changing around me, its energies shifting. Down the block, people were stepping from the theater, hailing cabs, going in search of drinks or food. I was tired and overloaded by the emotions of the last few days. I signaled the waiter for the bill.
“I’ll tell you something else,” Liz said as we were paying the tab. “He really admires you.”
This was, in some ways, the strangest news of all. “Why would he admire me?”
“Oh, a lot of reasons. But I think it comes down to the fact that you’re something he can’t ever be. Authentic, maybe? I’m not talking about being modest, although you are. Too modest, if you ask me. You underestimate yourself. But there’s something … I don’t know, pure about you. A resilience. I saw it the moment I met you. I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but the one good thing about cancer, and I mean the only thing, is it teaches you to be honest.”
I felt embarrassed. “I’m just a kid from Ohio who did well on his SATs. There’s nothing interesting about me at all.”
She paused, gazing into her glass, then said, “I’ve never asked you about your family, Tim, and I don’t mean to pry. All I know is what Jonas has told me. You never mention them, they never call, you spend all your breaks in Cambridge with this woman and her cats.”
I shrugged. “She’s not so bad.”
“I’m sure she isn’t. I’m sure she’s a saint. And I like cats as much as the next person, in the right quantity.”
“There’s not really much to tell.”
“I doubt that very much.”
A silence followed. I discovered that swallowing took a great deal of effort; my windpipe felt as if it had constricted. When at last I spoke, the words seemed to come from another place entirely.
“She died.”
Behind her glasses, Liz’s eyes were intently fixed on my face. “Who died, Tim?”
I swallowed. “My mother. My mother died.”
“When was this?”
It would all come out now; there was simply no stopping it. “Last summer. It was just before I met you. I didn’t even know she was sick. My father wrote me a letter.”
“And where were you?”
“With the woman and her cats.”
Something was happening. Something was coming undammed. I knew that if I didn’t move immediately—stand up, walk around, feel the beating of my heart and the action of air in my lungs—I would fall apart.
“Tim, why didn’t you tell us?”
I shook my head. I felt suddenly ashamed. “I don’t know.”
Liz reached across the table and gently took my hand. Despite my best efforts, I had begun to cry. For my mother, for myself, for my dead friend Lucessi, whom I knew I had failed. Surely I could have done something, said something. It wasn’t the note in his pocket that told me so. It was the fact that I was alive and he was dead, and I of all people should have understood the pain of living in a world that didn’t seem to want him. I did not want to take my hand away—it felt like the only thing anchoring me to the earth. I was in a dream in which I was flying and could not make myself land were it not for this woman who would save me.