She checks my face, waiting for confirmation. The charade is getting harder to pull off. I know I’m supposed to be an actor, but real-life performing is different. “Let me ask you, Claire. When you met with him, did he happen to mention why he was in town? Where he was coming from? Where he was off to next? Anything like that?”
“I don’t think so,” she says, flustered. Clearly these weren’t the types of questions she’d been anticipating. She refers to her phone, hoping to find the answers in the client profile she created. When that doesn’t work, she offers one resolute shake of her head.
I look over at Joan, who seems equally annoyed. No one is able to offer the level of detail she can. If only I could take her with me everywhere, I’d always have a complete vision of life instead of one riddled with holes.
Claire walks us through the kitchen and back to where the tour started. She’s still talking up the apartment, but we’re done listening. Joan looks bored out of her mind and I can’t keep my performance going for one more second.
“Thanks so much,” I say. “I’ll let you know.”
“Please do,” Claire says. “And again, this apartment is a pretty close comp to what I previously showed Mr. Brennett. I’m not sure what you thought of that one. Sometimes the pictures don’t do it justice. And honestly, I saw the pictures his photographer took and they weren’t nearly as good as the ones my guy shot.”
I’m not sure I heard her right. “What photographer?”
“The one he brought with him.”
I glance at Joan, who looks just as confused as I am, but for different reasons. “Do you remember his name?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” Claire says, retrieving the apartment keys from her purse. “And actually, if I’m remembering correctly, I believe it was a her.”
High above us, the glass top of a building blends with the blue summer sky. Lower, a dozen trees sway in elegant harmony. Surrounding voices join in a soothing white noise. For a moment, I can almost be fooled into thinking the world is at peace.
“So, are you going to buy that place?” Joan asks. She’s lying in the Washington Square Park grass, chewing on the soft pretzel I bought her from a street cart.
“No,” I say, seated behind her along the concrete perimeter.
“Then why were we looking at that apartment?”
I have to question whether I should be sharing so much of my life with this ten-year-old girl. I keep forgetting that she’s just a child, maybe because her parents seem content not to treat her like one. Maybe the fact that she is a child is what makes her so easy to talk to. Unlike an adult, she’s eager to listen and not eager to judge.
“Syd and I had talked about moving out here,” I say. “He thought if we were going to start a family, our child should have a relationship with its grandmothers.”
The problem was I finally had a steady gig in Los Angeles and wasn’t ready to move back east. Nor was I quite ready to be a father, even though I went along with the plan and participated in the process. Unlike Syd, I was relieved that we’d faced some setbacks on our journey to become parents. Actually, it was my own foot-dragging that caused part of the delay. And yet it would appear Syd couldn’t stop himself from preparing for the day when at last we could start our family.
I’m not sure what to make of the news that he wasn’t alone while he was looking at properties. I wouldn’t know where to start in trying to figure out who the photographer was. Syd had a massive network of creative types to call on: filmmakers, composers, designers.
“You’re being very quiet,” Joan says.
“I’m sorry.”
“Come sit on the grass.”
I join her on the lawn. The bristly blades tickle my bare legs. She breaks me off a piece of pretzel but my stomach is already at capacity with all the carbs I just consumed.
“Why don’t you tell me one of your Sydney memories?” Joan says.
And I was just getting comfortable. “Really? Right now?”
“Yeah. What’s your best memory? Your absolute favorite one.”
I think about it. And think some more.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess it would be just a regular night, him and me lying in bed, watching bad TV or something. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but honestly, I can’t think of many things I’d rather do right now.”
She’s not satisfied. “But what about one night that sticks out from all the rest?”
She’s right. I should have an answer. I should have a hundred answers. The question should be difficult because I have too many great nights to choose from, not because I can’t come up with a single one. All my memories of Sydney have been sucked into one swirling blur in my mind.
The disappointment on Joan’s face is nothing compared to what I feel inside. “Sorry. I’ll have to get back to you on this.”
“Think about it.”
“I will,” I say, but I don’t know if it’s true. I’m not sure I can take any more thinking. I’m still trying to figure out some way not to have to think at all. At least, not to have to think of him.
15
I don’t see Gavin at all the next day. He never comes upstairs, not even for a snack, and when I go downstairs to check on him, his door is shut and there’s no light glowing underneath. No matter how loudly I strum my guitar, he never opens his door.
Mom comes downstairs at one point and at first I think she’s going to tell me to stop bothering Gavin but instead she asks me how the song is coming. I say, “Fine,” and she says, “Can I hear it?” and I say, “No,” because it’s not ready.
And then Dad comes home for dinner and he also asks about my song and I tell him it’s going great, even though it isn’t. I still haven’t written a song that will hit Dad deep and make him want to raise the volume to Spinal Tap 11 and make me always fresh in his mind.
That was yesterday. Now this morning I hear a knock and Gavin is standing in my doorway and he’s doing his hand signal. His blackbird wings seem flappier today.
He walks into my room and pets my American Girl doll on the head (I don’t play with her anymore but Dorothy is still a member of our family). He looks into my open closet and sees how I line up my Converse from heel to toe, but he probably doesn’t realize I also line them up in the order I first got them:
Gavin sits down on my carpet between my bed and the wall. He looks too big to fit in that spot but there isn’t anywhere else to sit in my room except on the bed with me. He reaches into my crate full of stuffed animals and pulls out Wally, my oldest walrus.
“I’ve had him since I was a baby,” I say. “I can remember when Dad brought him home, but I don’t know the exact date.”
Gavin rubs his thumb on Wally’s coat, which has gotten very rough over the years.
“Did you know there’s a real live walrus on the loose?” I say. “He escaped from SeaWorld in Florida and I’ve been following him online. I wish I could meet him in the ocean and swim with him.”
“That might be dangerous,” Gavin says.
“But it would also be fun. I like to imagine things like that, swimming with a walrus or maybe—”
“Finding a unicorn?”