She’s only ever let me talk about my HSAM to Dr. M. “So why did you let me do it this time?”
“Because you wanted to help people like Grandma and I thought I should at least let you try.” I can tell she wants to say something else but isn’t sure if she should. “Look, you’ve got a special thing and it’s yours and I know that. When you’re eighteen you can do whatever you want, but right now it’s my job to protect you. People call me up with all kinds of requests and some of them offer us money and it just doesn’t feel appropriate. You just have to trust that I’m trying to do what’s best for you and your future. I don’t always make the right decisions. But I’m trying.”
I guess Mom is just like Sydney because Sydney was a future person and it seems like Mom is also a future person because she loves to plan everything out before it happens. I wonder if that’s why they were such good friends.
“Do you miss him?” I ask.
“Who?”
“Sydney.”
She puts her smoothie on the table even though there’s a lot left. I know remembering hurts, just like Gavin says, but he and I both know that not remembering is even worse.
“Of course I miss him,” Mom says. “I miss him a lot.”
But she hasn’t been crying lately, not like when it first happened. If she ever starts to forget him, our song can remind her. “Our song is about him. Gavin is writing the lyrics.”
She thinks about this for a while. “I’m glad he’s writing again. I wish you could’ve seen him and your father play back in college. They were pretty amazing to watch.”
It annoys me that Mom gets to watch those memories but I don’t.
“How is Gavin?” she asks. “Does he seem like he’s doing okay?”
I’m only just getting to know him, so I don’t know the way he’s supposed to be. “He was pretty shy at first, and quiet, but he’s not like that as much anymore.”
“I can’t imagine,” Mom says. “Sydney was an important part of my life, but I only saw him once a year at the most. But Gavin…” Mom makes a whoosh sound like she’s blowing out a candle on a birthday cake except she doesn’t look like she’s having any fun.
“How come you and Dad never had another baby?” I ask.
She turns her head to me. “Where did that come from?”
“Me and Gavin were talking and I told him I wanted a sister or brother and he asked me if you and Dad ever wanted to have another baby.”
Mom is sitting up straight now. “And what did you tell him?”
“I said yes, you guys talk about it, but I didn’t think you’d ever actually do it.”
“Did he say anything else? Anything about becoming a father?”
“No,” I say, and I’m not sure why she’s asking. But then I remember. “Well, the woman in New York did say that Sydney and Gavin were going to start a family. Is that what you mean?”
Mom leans in. “What woman?”
“The woman who showed Gavin the apartment.”
She picks up her smoothie cup, but she doesn’t drink it. Actually, she’s not doing anything right now. She’s frozen.
“Mom.”
Her eyes are aimed at me, but it’s like she doesn’t know what she’s looking at. And then she says, “Sorry,” and she takes a very slow sip of her smoothie. “I just remembered, I have to tell your father something.”
She doesn’t say what it is and that’s okay, because she just reminded me that I have my own thing I need to talk to Dad about when he gets home later tonight. Today is Thursday, which means we’re only two days away from the weekend and that’s when Dad said he would record our song for the contest and I have to make sure he’s not going to forget.
This may be one of the last times we ever record in his studio. I remember when Dad and I took out a bunch of keyboards and we used our fingers and toes to play eight different C notes all at once and when I asked Dad why we were doing it he said, “To see how it sounds.” And I remember the day he taught me how to tune a snare drum by tightening and loosening those little metal knobs and I accidentally tuned the drum so low that it started to growl and that made me laugh so hard that I swallowed my gum.
Mom should be even more upset than I am about the studio closing because she has even more memories of Dad’s music than I do. She’s been watching Dad play ever since college. I look over at Mom and she’s frozen again and doing something I’ve never seen her do before: it’s her very own rock-star look. She’s looking out the window, but she’s not paying any attention to what her eyes are seeing. Actually, she’s staring so hard it’s almost like she forgot how to blink.
18
I’m deep in a digital daze—answering e-mails and skimming a heavy run of Twitter comments, the majority of which are complimentary, but a few contain alarming vitriol about everything from my lack of acting skills to my sinful sexual proclivities—when Paige throws open my door.
“Hello,” I say, taken aback by the sudden intrusion.
“Sorry,” she says. “I should’ve knocked.”
I didn’t see much of her yesterday. She took Joan to a doctor’s appointment in the morning and then to an afternoon playdate that stretched into dinner. Without Paige here to care for me, I returned to my bachelor ways. I ended up eating Chinese takeout in bed while streaming a movie on my phone.
After scanning my unkempt room, Paige locks eyes with me. “Get dressed. You’re with me today.”
We’ve been cruising down the turnpike for thirty minutes now (the same distance would’ve taken twice as long back home on the 110). Paige won’t tell me where we’re going, but I figure it out as soon as she veers off at exit 9. We’re going back to college.
Finding a spot to park on the New Brunswick campus is even harder than it was fifteen years ago. We walk down College Avenue toward the parking lot across from Voorhees Mall.
It’s clear from our trajectory, and the oily smell in the air, that Paige and I are about to dine at the Rutgers food mecca known as the grease trucks. It’s an outdoor cluster of permanently parked vehicles serving exactly the kind of fare you’d expect: food normally devoured by drunk students at two in the morning. Today it will be consumed by us at the embarrassingly adult hour of eleven thirty in the morning.
“I can’t believe these are still here,” I say, salivating.
“I’ve dreamed of this day for so long,” Paige says, possibly drooling.
“You’ve never been back?”
“Nope,” Paige says. “First time since we graduated.”
“I know exactly what I’m getting.”
She turns to me, wild with hunger. “Me too.”
We sit on the curb with our massive sandwiches, just like we did all those years ago. A Fat Darrell for me and a Fat Sal for her. There can be no doubt—we’ll be sick if we finish these sandwiches. Also true—we will finish them.
“This was a brilliant idea,” I say.
She nods proudly. “Thank you.”
Summer students pass by looking way too young to be attending college. Paige and I follow their movements, inspecting their clothes and affects.