There’s no answer, just some birds chirping. I raise my voice over them: “Gavin.”
He opens his eyes. The light blinds him at first, but then he sees me. His face turns reddish from the sun and he reaches around for his phone and headphones and says, “I think that’s enough for today.”
12
I’ve lost track of what Paige is saying. I see her standing there, sprinkling freshly grated cheese on top of something in a baking dish, her lips moving. But it’s as if someone has placed a pane of glass between us. I can’t hear the words coming out of her mouth.
It’s been happening more and more, ever since Syd died. I’ll be in midconversation with someone and I’ll lose the thread. By the time I realize I’ve drifted off, I’ve already missed so much.
“And we would obviously redo the flooring,” Paige says, “so it’s all the same.”
That’s right. She was explaining how she wants to knock down the half wall between the kitchen and living room to make their home more open concept. “That sounds great.”
“She’s been talking about this since February eighth, 2010,” Joan says from her seat at the kitchen table.
“Yes,” Paige admits. “But now we can finally do it.”
I’m tearing up pieces of kale and dropping them into a wooden salad bowl. I enjoy cooking, but tonight my heart’s not in it. Just handling this food reminds me how little I’ve cooked in the past month, how poorly I’ve been eating. And that leads me back to Sydney and the surreal conversation I had with his assistant.
I’m at a loss. I can’t imagine why Sydney would lie to me about going to New York for business. On second thought, that’s not true. I can imagine why and I have imagined it. It’s just that I’d rather not consider those unpleasant possibilities. All I know is that he wasn’t home with me.
“Here,” Joan says.
I stare at the peeler in her hands.
“For the cucumber,” she explains.
“Right. Thanks.”
Again this afternoon I was unable to resist Joan’s invitation into the past. Returning to the slow beginnings of my relationship with Syd reminded me that as open and honest as he was about most things, he could also be quite careful and deliberate. Especially with his heart, which had been badly broken before we met and which I had to prove myself worthy of being allowed to rebuild. Considering how long it took to gain his trust, I find it hard to believe he would do anything to jeopardize my trust in him. That’s what makes this whole thing so hard to comprehend.
I’ve done it again, drifted off while Paige is talking.
“I feel better putting money into the house now that the neighborhood is finally coming along,” she says. “It still has a ways to go, but you should’ve seen it when we first moved here. The idea of having a farmers’ market in Riverview Park was laughable.”
From what I’ve seen of the neighborhood so far, it’s mostly three-and four-story residential buildings with minimal commerce beyond a couple of bodegas and laundromats. This particular block features a real hodgepodge of exteriors, from brick to stucco to vinyl, the last of which adorns the Sully duplex.
“You can’t beat the scenery,” I say, gesturing out the kitchen window. The Sullys’ house is perched on the far east edge of an elevated neighborhood known as the Heights, offering a nearly unobstructed view across the Hudson River to Manhattan.
“That’s why we moved here,” Paige says, only half joking. She slides the pan of eggplant Parmesan into the oven. “Obviously, at the time Ollie needed to be close to the city for his music.”
“What do you mean, he needed to be close?” Joan barks. “Why do you say it like that? He still needs to be close.”
Paige turns away from her daughter. She calmly shuts the oven door and gives me a deadpan look. “How about some wine?”
“Syd had this big yellow boat of a car,” Paige says, her face glowing under the porch light. She and I are out back in the courtyard, bellies full and wine in our glasses. The sleepless city sparkles ahead. “I mean, it was the ugliest car I’ve ever seen. And like that wasn’t bad enough, the turn signal had broken off, so he had to use a popsicle stick to work the blinker.”
“No way.”
“I’m serious,” she says, the absurdity setting off a flurry of laughter.
I’m laughing too, but it’s nothing like what Paige is experiencing. I’m jealous of the mental picture she has of teenage Syd and his ugly car. “Do you have photos of you guys from back then?”
“Somewhere. I’ll have to dig them out.”
The story Paige is in the middle of telling is one I’ve heard before. It’s not like my time with Joan, where I’m hoping to learn something new. Indeed, it’s the opposite: I’m finding unexpected comfort in an old tale told by an old friend.
“He used to give me a ride home from school every day in that car of his,” Paige says. “Then my sister broke up with him and started dating someone else. Syd said he’d keep driving me anyway, which really irked Lauren. She had to go back to taking the bus while her freshman sister was getting a ride with a senior. She was convinced Syd was just trying to stick it to her by driving me. But the truth is, he didn’t seem all that upset about the breakup. He was never that into Lauren to begin with.”
“Did you wonder about him?”
“The thought never crossed my mind,” Paige says. “I was too busy falling in love with him. We were spending so much time together after school. My friends were jealous; they thought Syd and I were dating, and I let them believe it. I wanted it to be true. But it got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Is that when you kissed him?”
“Oh yeah,” Paige says with exaggerated humility. “He saw me coming a mile away. I wasn’t suave about it either. He basically just stuck out his arm and held me at a distance. He said I was like a sister to him. He drove me home from school the next day like nothing had happened. He would’ve kept driving me, too, if Lauren didn’t tell my parents. They didn’t like the idea that I was spending so much time alone with a senior. It didn’t change anything, though. He still gave me a lift. He’d drop me off down the street from my house, and we still talked on the phone.”
She pauses, bites the inside of her mouth. With her feet scrunched up on the chair, her whole body contracted, I have no problem picturing her as the fifteen-year-old girl with the older-boy crush.
“I went to his graduation. I have a picture somewhere. That summer I’d go swimming at the rec center where he was a lifeguard. I’d pretend to be drowning but he’d never save me. Then it was time for him to leave for Michigan. He said he’d call me and he did at first, but we lost touch. When we got close again, after college, he was dating Samantha. He was thinking about marrying her. I was so negative about it. I couldn’t control myself. Of course, then he broke it off and told me why.”
The crickets take over. Maybe it’s just one city cricket. His chirp is so insistent, I barely catch Paige’s next words.
“He was the best.”