Incredibly, no matter how late we’re out each night, it never hampers Veronica’s productivity. Every new morning, she’s up with her alarm and off to work on time. She heads up guest relations at a local resort. While she’s away each day, I wander the island. I poke my head into galleries and antique stores, bird-watch on park benches, sip coffee at outdoor tables. Sometimes I just take a leisurely stroll to nowhere at all.
And when Veronica returns home in the early evenings, we usually grab a bite and end up staying out way too late. These long nights have offered a welcome diversion from the turmoil in my head and heart. I’ve yet to ask my sister about the significant conversation she and Syd had without my knowledge. Turns out, fatherhood is, technically speaking, still a possibility for me. Part of me wishes Paige had never brought it to my attention. To learn that there’s this one last convoluted way for me to resurrect a little piece of the person I lost is proving impossible to ignore.
And so, tonight, before the festivities begin, I’ve decided—just now, while standing sleepily in Veronica’s narrow kitchenette—that I will make a trip to the market this afternoon for supplies. Tonight, my sister and I are going to stay home and have a proper meal together.
“I’m impressed,” Veronica says. We’re positioned at opposite ends of her glass coffee table, sitting cross-legged on the floor with couch pillows under our butts.
She’s nodding in appreciation, her mouth full of mahi-mahi and black rice. “There’s something sweet in here too,” she says.
“Navel orange.”
“Is that it? I never would’ve guessed.”
“I’m glad it worked out,” I say. “I found the recipe online.”
I used to love to cook this way for Syd. It gave my days purpose when I wasn’t working or auditioning. I’d scour the web for intriguing concoctions and venture out to Whole Foods in search of sumac or tamarind paste or whatever other ingredient I’d never heard of before. It’s been several months since I’ve had the spirit to try out an untested meal.
“You can cook for me whenever you want,” she says. “Seriously, this is the best home-cooked meal I’ve had in years.”
“It looks like it’s the only home-cooked meal you’ve had in years. Your spice rack consists of salt and pepper.”
She shrugs, guilty as charged. “Turns out you’re not a bad guy.”
“What?”
“On The Long Arm. I knew you couldn’t have murdered that man. You just don’t have it in the eyes.”
“Don’t underestimate me,” I say.
“I don’t.”
Veronica changes the subject yet again and starts describing how her bike tire was so flat she barely managed to ride it home. “That was Tim’s job,” she explains. “He made sure my tires were full of air. I always forget to check.”
“I’ll fill them up for you.”
She smiles in appreciation.
“What happened with him, anyway?” I ask, inching my way to the matter at hand. “You guys seemed pretty serious at first.”
“We were. I met him right after I moved here. He introduced me to a lot of people who are still good friends of mine. Plus, he hooked me up with the job at the resort. He was sort of my whole world. But I just started to feel suffocated.”
She relates the whole thing nonchalantly, more interested in her food than her story.
“So you’re the one who broke it off?”
“Yeah,” Veronica says. “And it’s a really small town, so it’s annoying. I’m surprised we haven’t run into him yet.”
“And you started dating him when?”
She calculates in her head. “It was about mid-December.”
I pause for a drink. “And around New Year’s was when Sydney asked you for your eggs, right?”
For the first time my sister looks thrown. It takes her several seconds to recover.
“He told me not to say anything,” Veronica says. “He said you’d be mad.”
“I’m not mad. I just wanted you to know that I know.”
She stares at me, unsure what to say next. “He said you guys had someone else that you really liked. Someone through the agency. He said you weren’t depending on me.”
I wish it were true. “We never found anyone through the agency. He just didn’t want you to feel bad.” Judging from her crestfallen face, it’s happened anyway.
She looks down at her food, the fork still in her hand but her attention elsewhere. “After he called me I didn’t hear anything else about it. I asked Mom and she said you guys were putting the whole thing on hold.”
“One of us was. That’s true.”
“He said you were going to call me, Gavin. I was waiting to hear from you. Why didn’t you call?”
I try to find the words. All I can say is “I don’t know.”
She drops her fork onto her plate and crawls to my side. Her arms come over my shoulders and around my neck. “I’m sorry.”
I am too. I should’ve called her, a year ago, seven months ago. I had so many chances, so much time. It seems so simple now. I would call, she would answer. We’d catch up for a bit, then I’d lay it all out. Tell her how scared I was to be a father. She’d tell me to get over it, that it was perfectly normal to have doubts, the same speech Syd and Paige gave me. She’d tell me she loved me, that she’d do whatever it took. Syd never would’ve had to resort to Mara.
Or maybe it wouldn’t have happened that way. Maybe she would have said no. At least I would have had peace of mind. We tried, we asked, time to move on. Syd and I would have gone to the next candidate, together. We would have searched as a team, never stopping until we found our perfect match.
And if we had never found that perfect one, so be it. We would have been able to sleep knowing we tried. We were true of heart. We were honest. We were open. We believed. What a rare thing, to believe. We were lucky. We could’ve been.
“You okay?” Veronica asks. It’s what everyone wants to know.
I ignore the question and say something that’s one hundred percent true: “I’m ready to go out.”
37
I’m all alone where the waves come onto the sand. The water rushes over my feet and it keeps my whole body cool in the hot sun.
If I move my eyes left or right, I’m not alone anymore because I can see all the sailboats. If I turn around I see my parents waiting just a couple of jump-rope lengths away. They’re sitting in beach chairs and Mom is reading her book and Dad is sleeping with his earbuds in his ears. This isn’t the vacation Mom wanted, that’s not happening until next year, but it’s a trip that Dad thought we should take right away after he pulled me off the stepladder in Home Depot.
It’s nice of Dad to take us here to Cold Spring Harbor for the weekend and show me Cannon Hill, which is the mansion that John Lennon and his family lived in when they wanted to leave the city and feel like they were on vacation. But my brain is still working the same way it always does, which means that visiting a new John Lennon place only reminds me of the other John Lennon places I’ve visited and the other people I’ve visited those places with. That means I’m thinking of him again. I don’t even like to say his name because he forgot all about me and that’s not fair because I can never forget about him.
Mom startles me. “Want to swim?”
“Not really.”