I swallow what feels like too much oxygen, and my heart feels like
it might detonate inside my chest cavity. It couldn’t be that simple, could it? That he was out there, watching, doing what he needed to do for himself, but still minding us, tending to us along? From all reports, this seems entirely impossible, and yet…and yet. It gives me something to hold on to.
Tina reads my face. “Should I not have told you? Shit. I’m sorry, like I said, I talk too much.”
I exhale and gather my breath and stare at her for a beat. She perplexes me, Tina Marquis. On the surface, she is an epitomized Barbie doll, a Dallas cheerleader by way of upper-class Westchester. But slice beneath that skin, and it’s clear—from her corner office with view, to relaying just the story that I somehow need to hear—that she’s also much more than that. A contradiction when I was certain that people—Jasper, Rory, my mother, Peter—were easy reads from the start. I ease back in the leather chair and consider this: that people can still surprise you.
“Thanks for telling me,” I say. “Sincerely. I’d never have known this.”
“Are you sure it’s even true?” Sam says quietly. I’d forgotten that she was there. “You can’t forget that it might not actually be true.”
“But it might be,” Tina and I say at the same time.
“I guess that’s why we were best friends,” she says, grinning, her teeth the brightest shade of alabaster white. Then she flaps her hands—grounded and flighty at once. “Anyway, let’s get down to business before my phone starts ringing again. You wanted to know about the property I showed you.”
“Yes. I was, well, I’m hoping that it might trigger something.”
“Well, I called the current tenant and explained the circumstances, and he knew who you were. From the accident.” She dislodges some phlegm from her throat. “Said he’d be happy to have
you come by if you’d like later in the week. But in the meantime, this is what I have.” She moves some papers—flyers, a floor plan—across her desk.
“Anything look familiar?” Sam asks. Tina’s phone buzzes just then, precisely as predicted.
It is exactly as she described: a wall of cool brick, high, expansive ceilings. There are wide-open windows toward the back, with a view of the East River. Something about it feels familiar, and then I remember: my father’s paintings, the water, the vibrant fresh air were always his muses.
Tina cups her hand over the phone and whispers. “Listen, I’m sorry, this is a huge client whose deal just fell through. Can we talk later?”
I nod, and hoist myself to my feet, Sam with a palm on my back in case I falter.
“Should I set it up?” Tina asks, cradling the receiver between her neck and ear.
“Set what up?”
“The apartment—do you want to stop by and see it? Will it help?”
Will it help?
I consider. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess.
“So listen,” Sam says,
while we’re cabbing it to the gallery. “You know that I support anything that you want to do.
Anything.
Or maybe you don’t know that. Maybe you don’t remember that. But I hate to see you put so much stock in this one thing.”
“This is hardly one thing!”
“It’s just that before all of this, you never talked about your dad. Didn’t have this wild interest in chasing down his legacy.”
“I ran an art gallery entirely based on his legacy. So that can’t be true.”
She sighs and we both point ourselves toward our respective windows.
“I’m only saying that before, you wouldn’t have let this aspect eat you up.”
“Fair enough. Let’s let it go for now,” I say, though mean anything but.
What if he’d come back for me? What if he fought every last selfish urge and regretted to his core the permanence of his mistakes? Wouldn’t that, couldn’t that change everything? Change him? Change the past? Or maybe I did already know that he’d come back for me, only I’ve forgotten it after the accident.
I shake my head, the circular noise giving me a headache. How can I know who I am when I don’t even know what I knew? Don’t even know what was germane and what was relevant and what wouldn’t have changed anything even if I think it may have now?
Sam laughs. “You don’t fool me, Nell Slattery. I can see your mind working over there. I know you too well.”
“Okay, so what if I
do
want to dwell on it? What if he changed, realized how wrong he was? What if he came back at graduation and wanted to make amends.”
“What if he did?” The taxi pulls up to the gallery, and Sam reaches for her purse.
“Well, I don’t know,” I hesitate. “It seems like that should change something—change me, maybe.”
“Maybe it would,” she says, “though you always insisted that people never changed.” She wrinkles her nose. “I could swear, even, that you wrote a paper about it for a philosophy seminar we took our senior year.”
“I’m revisiting this theory. Tina confuses me, she’s nothing like who I thought she’d be.”
“That doesn’t mean your dad isn’t who you think he was.”
“Well, what about Peter?” I say, as I see Rory waving to me from inside the gallery. She’s gesturing at me to hurry up, flicking her wrist in a way that I find instantly annoying, like there’s no place more important for me to be than next to her at this very second. “Peter has changed.”
Sam says nothing. Rather, she opens her door to exit as an answer.
“You think he hasn’t?” I half-shout over the top of the cab, as she circles around the sidewalk to meet me.
“I think that he’s certainly made a good show of it. Been by your side. Stayed loyal.”
“Well, that’s something. I mean, isn’t that a change?” Rory is going apoplectic behind the front glass window. I stick up my index finger, telling her to
hold on
!
“That’s the easy part,” she says, before she links my elbow and we head inside. “What matters is that something else shifts, too.”
“Well, that’s the hitch of it all, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she says. “There’s always a hitch.”
20
“Don’t Stop Believing”
—Journey
I
push open the doors to the gallery, the wind chimes twinkling hello. Thanks to the caterer, the air wafts with the perfect scent of baked puff pastry and quiche lorraine, and the music for the evening is vintage Journey, which Rory had told me yesterday is meant to be both ironic and nostalgic. When I said I didn’t really get it, she snapped her jaw closed, reminding me of a tropical fish, and stomped out of the room.
“Do you know how behind we are?” she says now by way of greeting. Behind her, a waiter inadvertently clangs together two serving trays, and she and I both cast our eyes back toward him to ensure disaster hasn’t struck.
Disaster. Like that could be defined as a toppled station of pigs in a blanket.
“No, how far behind are we?”
If she senses my derision, she doesn’t betray it.
“We are very, very behind. We have approximately two hundred people showing up tonight for Hope’s first gallery show; we have the
American Profiles
crew coming—”
“Your idea, not mine,” I interrupt.
“What don’t you understand about publicity?” she says, adjusting the price placards in front of each work. “Publicity is publicity—you never got that. And now, the gallery is so hot, so in demand…” She does a double take. “What is that thing on top of your head?”
“It’s a beret.”
“Well, it looks like a sad, deflated pancake, and it needs to go.” She flutters her hand. “Along with the shade of purple of your sweater. There are clothes in the closet in the office.”
“What’s wrong with this shade of purple?”
“For grape jelly? Nothing. For our openings?” She sighs. “You’re the one who implemented the neutrals-only dress code here.”
Ah, well, that explains my closet.
“Well, I’m de-implementing it,” I say. “The sweater stays.”
“Fine.” She exhales. “The hat does not. Even without a dress code, it looks ridiculous.” There’s a knock on the front door, and Rory shouts, “It’s open!” and Jamie and two cameramen step inside.
“I’ll be in the back dealing with the bartenders,” Rory says. “Try to make yourself useful.” She tugs off the beret, which I have kept in place as she glides past.
“Hey,” Jamie says, and kisses me hello. “Want to go over the game plan for tonight?”
I glance around. Despite Rory’s instructions, I have nothing else to do. “Shoot.”
“Well, it shouldn’t be too hard. We’re mostly doing crowd shots, interviewing some friends and family. We want to see you back in your element.”
“So this is my element?” I spot Peter hustling across the street. He’s early.
“For our purposes, it is,” Jamie answers succinctly, impersonally,
and for a flicker of a moment I’m reminded that at the heart of this, he’s a reporter, on the gig of a lifetime.
The wind chimes clang once again at Peter’s arrival.
“Hey, babe.” Peter kisses me fully on the mouth.
“You’re early.” I kiss him back, and then he surprises me with an embrace. For a second, my arms flop by my sides until my brain catches up with the situation. I sink into his bear chest and inhale the fall air still hovering around him. “What was that for?” I say when he’s finally untangled himself from me.
“I’m just glad to see you back in your element.” His eyes mist on cue. The new, more sympathetic me is touched that he’s so invested in my recovery. The old, less softened me can’t help but be annoyed that it’s been a few months and still he finds himself shattered.
“Funny, that’s what Jamie just said to me, too.”
“This place is you. Everything about it.” His voice cracks.
Rory walks over and thrusts a clipboard in my hand before I can contemplate the weight behind his comment.
“You’re greeting people at the door,” she says.
“Isn’t that your job?” Peter asks.
“Not anymore, not when I have to be the one worrying about the rest of the details.” Her voice is sharp, like she’s pulled a muscle.
“Shoe’s on the other foot now, isn’t it?” he says, and I can’t tell if he’s joking or undercutting her. She glares and returns to the caterers.
“What was that?” I say, flipping through the list, recognizing few of the names.
“You took care of
everything
before the accident. It consumed you—you practically lived here. You picked out the paint color, you paid the bills, you agonized over the layout of where to place each piece of art. Like I said, it was you in your element.”
“Nell!” Rory yells. “Please come over here and tell them how to present the bar.”
“How to present the bar? Who cares how you present the bar?” I say when I reach her. “And by the way, what is your
problem
?”
“I’m stressed, in case you can’t tell. Word is out about us now—you’re not here to see the tourists line up, to vet the calls that still come in from the media.
You
may be oblivious to your fame, but I can’t be! And I could use your help.” Since the accident, curious collectors have flooded the gallery, another unforeseen perk from surviving the worst plane crash this side of the decade.
“So tell me what to do. Jesus Christ. How have you held it together for the past two months while I’ve been gone?” I say.
“This is our first show since then. Press—papers and magazines and journals—will be here. This is bigger than anything we’ve done before. It matters.” She’s spiraling into hysterics now, and I can see it, how I kept everything pinned down here, partially, simply, because she could not.
“So that’s it? That’s all that this is. Stress from our first show? Because this seems disproportionate to just some stress for a show.”
The wind chimes echo hello, and we both turn to see Anderson greeting Peter.
“Yes, for god’s sake, that’s all it is!” She lingers on both of them, then turns back to me. “Now please, tell them how you like the wineglasses, where you want the liquor, then go man the door. People are already arriving.”
I gesture to the bartenders once she moves out of earshot. “I really don’t care, whatever you think is best.” Then I lope over to Anderson, kissing his cheek.
“You clean up nice,” I say.
“Ditto,” he answers. Peter slides his hand around my waist.
“No date tonight? I’m pretty sure that I’ve been reading about your rotation on Page Six.” Peter smiles, a congratulation couched as a question. He raises his free hand to slap him five.
“Randy Andy!” the headline had blared just three days ago, covering Anderson’s exploits with yet another model, exploits he swore to me were untrue.
“Naw, not tonight. I had invites to two screenings but, to be honest, I just wanted a night off. Away from—you know—the scene, the craziness,” Anderson says, halfheartedly raising his own palm to meet Peter’s. It’s all a little pathetic, a little sad, this flimsy flop of their manliness. “Just wanted to be here to support the girl who saved my life.” He makes a bombastic gesture with his arm, like he’s a prince and I’m a courtesan, and we both smile at the showiness of it.
“And we’re honored to have you,” I say, mock-curtsying. “I’m manning the door,” I add.
“Well, that is one area that I have much expertise in,” he says. “Doormen, bouncers. I’ll help.”
“I’ll be at the bar,” Peter says. “Come find me.”
“These aren’t your thing?” Anderson asks him.
“I’m not the schmoozing type,” he answers, then glances away. “I usually skipped these before. Not…not that you minded,” he says to me. “You always just preferred to focus on work, not to have to entertain me.”
“Well, I’m laying off the booze for tonight, man, but I’ll catch you in there,” Anderson says.
I pat Peter’s shoulder, and then he wanders toward the martinis.
“So, things are going well with you guys?” Anderson asks, as we flank the doorway, waiting for patrons. “I mean, they seem to be going reasonably well.”
“Pretty solid, actually.” Things are actually pretty solid. Whether
we are back in heady love, well, no, not there, but yes,
solid.
We’re working toward togetherness, and my mother’s prophetic words that brilliant sunshiny afternoon at the hospital are starting to fulfill themselves. I’ve learned to trust him again, maybe not with my full soul but with enough of it that I can envision a day when I will. Give him my whole self. So what if he didn’t come to these events before? So what if I didn’t beg him to be there in the first place? I steal a look around. As glamorous as it is, and certainly it
is
glamorous, part of it feels off. Part of me feels off being here.