“I accept that condition.”
“You do have a foot fetish. It’s becoming clearer and clearer.”
I sipped my hot chocolate. It was pretty good. He patted his knees to get me to put my feet up. I did. I told him to leave my socks on.
“When will you call your folks?” I asked.
“Oh, we’re not that kind of family.”
“What kind of family is that?”
“I don’t know. The kind that actually likes one another.”
“More pathology?”
“It’s what gives me my edge. Did you talk to your mom or dad?”
“Mom. But that’s the same as talking to both of them. They share relentlessly.”
He hit a nerve in my toe, and my foot jumped a little. We were back on our even keel. We were back on even a better keel, because now things were out on the table. For the first time, we had begun talking about New York not as a hypothetical destination but as a place we intended to live. It changed the music for both of us.
“Sleepy?” he asked. “Sometimes a foot massage makes me sleepy.”
“What are we going to do in Italy?”
“Eat spaghetti. Look around.”
“We’re going all the way to Italy to eat spaghetti?”
“It sounds pretty badass when you say it like that.”
“Your grandfather went there?”
He nodded.
“Then Paris?” I asked.
“Then Paris. And Raef and Constance will be there. And then the trip is over. Just like that.”
“It will be good to see them.”
“I wish they could meet up with us in Italy.”
“I guess there’s not enough time, really. Did I ever tell you I used to think Venice was on Venus? That it was a place on a different planet?”
“And you with a degree from Amherst.”
“I think it was just the Vs. I don’t know. I remember being disappointed when my friend told me Venice was a city in Italy. I didn’t believe her at first. I thought she was misinformed. I thought the gondoliers wearing striped shirts … I thought that was a space uniform.”
“You have your moments of strangeness, Heather.”
“It was an easy thing to mistake.”
“Like thinking an aardvark is a car ark. That’s what I thought when I was a kid.”
“An aardvark is a car ark? I can’t even pronounce that. It’s a tongue twister. What is a car ark?”
“I thought Noah built an ark for the animals, so why wasn’t there a car ark? Or, as I thought of it, as an aardvark.”
He held my toes. Things felt light and happy and solid. We still looked into each other’s eyes when my phone sounded. I glanced down and saw it was my father. I showed it to Jack, and he nodded and climbed out of the seat.
“All yours,” he said.
He kissed me lightly and headed back to the bar car.
31
“So tell me about Jack,” my father said. “Your mother says he’s accompanying you home.”
Accompanying, my father said. He made Jack sound like a valet.
I knew he had been put up to the call by my mother, by her insistence that he find out what this all meant. It was an old pattern with us. And, man, they worked fast.
“Jack is a man I met on a train to Amsterdam.”
“He’s an American?”
“Born and bred.”
“And your mother said from someplace in New England?”
“Vermont,” I said.
I hated giving him short answers, but I didn’t trust myself to go on at length. It was better to speak in short, declarative sentences without volunteering too much.
“And what are his plans? Do you know?”
“Regarding what?”
“Well, just his general plan. For life, I guess. Have you had that kind of discussion?”
“Dad, you’re prying.”
“I don’t mean to, sweetie. Sorry. I’m curious, I guess. So is your mother. This is a big step. You just graduated this spring.”
“I’m aware of that, Dad.”
I sipped my hot chocolate. I determined not to step into any traps with my dad. If he wanted answers, he would have to lead the conversation. After a pause, he continued.
“And with the new job—Ed Belmont’s team just went through the roof, by the way. Their sales, I mean. They had a big write-up in The Wall Street Journal. Anyway, Jack is going to be living with you?”
“We don’t know exactly, Dad. Probably. We only know we want to be together. That’s the crux of our plan.”
An intense, narrow headache lodged like a bullet in my front cortex. I put the cup of hot chocolate against my forehead, but that failed to help.
“And what is his line?” Dad asked.
“His line?”
“His trade, his ambition. What does he want to do?”
“He’s been following his grandfather’s journal through Europe. That’s what he’s been doing, mostly.”
“His grandfather’s journal?”
“His grandfather traveled through Europe after the war. Jack is retracing his steps with the idea of maybe doing a book. He loved his grandfather. Jack was a journalist before that at a paper in Wyoming.”
My father didn’t say anything. The tide of electric whatever-buzz that connected our phones made the sound of the sea swelling and subsiding.
“Okay, then, I guess you know best, Heather. We’re a little concerned—your mom and I—we’re a little concerned about the timing. You’re young, kiddo, and this is your first big love.”
“Dad, come on. Stop, please. I’m not doing this lightly. I’m not. Neither is Jack. We didn’t plan to meet or fall for each other. It just happened. We want to be together. He’s a great guy. You’ll love him. He makes me feel solid when I’m around him. I know it may take a little juggling at first, but I’m good at that. And don’t worry. I’m still fully committed to the job and my career. You don’t have to worry about that. I won’t embarrass you, I promise.”
“Nothing you’ve done has embarrassed me, sweetie. Don’t even think that.”
We didn’t have much more to say, at least not without getting into a major fritz with each other. I wasn’t going to defend Jack as an abstraction to my father. They would have to meet, to size each other up, have to do that maddening boy-boy thing that I never quite understood.
“How’s Mr. Periwinkle?” I asked to break the awkwardness.
“Doing fine, I guess. I haven’t heard anything to the contrary.”