“Not weird at all. I like it.” She studied the necklace again, holding it up. “So this has come down through the generations?”
He nodded. She wasn’t the first girl to ask him questions about his father’s side of the family. But other girls’ questions always felt like birds pecking at him, wearing him down or tearing him open. Daisy’s curiosity was soft on his skin. She was a beautiful china cup on a table, quietly asking to be filled. And little by little, Erik was tipping over and pouring out.
“Do you remember your father wearing this?”
“Sure. All the time. If I was sitting on his lap I’d like, you know, play with it. I had a little story in my head, this is the pretty lady and this is her boat and she goes sailing in the boat and catches this beautiful fish…”
She held the chain back out to him and he took it, their fingertips touching. “When did he give it to you? You said you were eight when he left.”
He fastened the chain behind his neck again. “The story I know,” he said, “is my mom saw him one more time after he left. To sign divorce papers.”
He glanced down. Daisy had put her hand out, palm up on the table between them. “And sometime during the meeting—” he put his hand on hers. “—he gave this to her. To give to me. And she didn’t for a long time, she kept it put away. I was too young.” His other hand joined the first, holding Daisy’s, rolling it between his palms, running his fingertips along the edges of her nails. “Then when I was about sixteen, she gave it to me.”
“Did you want it?”
“I hadn’t seen it in years so at first it was like, ‘Oh wow, I remember this, the lady and the boat.’ But then I had to be sixteen about it, you know, prove he was no big deal to me. I told her I didn’t want it, I didn’t want anything of his. Screw him. All that shit.”
Under the table their ankles had cozied up together. It felt intimate and close there in the booth, holding her hands and feet, telling her secret things.
“What did she say?”
“She didn’t push it. Just reminded me it had been my grandfather’s too, and his father’s before, and back on through the generations. It was mine now, to give to my son if I ever had one. She said, and I still remember this, she said, ‘It’s an heirloom, it belongs to your name. Don’t let one asshole ruin it for you.’”
“Don’t let one weak link break the chain.”
“Right. I kept in a little box in my dresser for a while, and then my great-uncle died, my grandfather’s brother. And he was the last Fiskare brother, the last of his generation and… I don’t know. I was just moved to start wearing it.”
She leaned forward again, touched the chain, then put her chin on the heel of her hand. “For the record, you know what my favorite candy is?”
Which seemed a random question but then it hit him. “Swedish Fish?”
She nodded, smiling, and looked away, the color rising up in her face a little. He laughed. She looked back. And then they were staring again. And it happened again, just as it had in the theater yesterday. Time slowed, atoms and particles separating and recombining into a secret sphere around them.
“I like you,” he said.
Her hand out on the table again, between them, and he put his on it. “I like you,” she said, almost soundless.
They stared on through another timeless moment, after which she went back to her book, and he bent his head over his work again. They held hands on the table, held feet beneath. Erik had never been so relaxed with a girl, never known such comfort with another human being. He had no desire to leave this space, and yet within it, he was free. He could sit with her and feel what he was feeling, with no need to explain it, dismiss it or joke it away. Every time he looked up at her and thought, I love this, she looked up too, and her eyes seemed to nod at him.
Love Will Do That