Chapter 21 I Looked for You Inside of Everyone Else #4
A sad song came on with a droning male voice. “Who is this?” I asked as I took a sip of my beer.
“It’s The National. But, Matt, you said you wanted to talk, so let’s talk. You went to L.A. after your divorce: did you stay with your mom? How’s she doing? I think about her from time to time.”
“I went before I got divorced, actually. To take care of my mom. She passed away while I was there.”
Grace’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Matt. I’m so sorry. She was such a wonderful woman.”
My throat tightened. “It was ovarian cancer. Elizabeth thought Alexander should’ve stepped up, but he was too busy trying to make partner at the firm.
My mother was dying and her sons were fighting over who should take care of her.
So stupid.” I looked away. “My marriage was already on the rocks. Elizabeth was desperately trying to get pregnant, but I was thousands of miles away, across the country. I think, on some level, she thought I was trying to avoid her. I just thought she was being selfish. We were both angry and hurting, I guess.”
She nodded. “What happened after that?”
“While I was in L.A., watching my mother wither away, Elizabeth started having an affair with my friend and our co-worker Brad, a producer at National Geographic. Eight years of marriage—poof.” I made an exploding motion with my hands.
“Eight years? I thought . . .” She hesitated.
“What?”
“Never mind. I’m really sorry, Matt. I don’t know what to say.”
“You can tell me this: why did you leave?”
“Leave when?”
“Why didn’t you leave a note or a message when you went off to Europe? You just left.”
She looked confused. “What do you mean? I waited. You never called me.”
“No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t make any more calls. The only person I talked to was my mom because I could call her collect. I was out of cash. We got stuck in a village with a broken vehicle and hundreds of miles of rain forest around us. I just figured you’d understand.”
She looked shattered. “What about that article in that photography magazine? It basically said you had a job with National Geographic and you were going to Australia after South America.”
“Back in ’97?”
“Yeah.” She threw back her entire glass of wine. “There was a photo of you taking her picture and it said you were going to Australia with her for six months.”
“I’ve never even read this article you’re talking about, so I’m not sure what you mean. Elizabeth asked me to go to Australia, but I turned her down. I came back here to be with you after my internship was over, but you were gone.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I thought you were going to Australia. That’s why I ended up joining Dan’s orchestra.”
I was shaking my head now, too. “No, I didn’t go to Australia.
I came back at the end of August. I tried to call you before I left, but I couldn’t get through.
I went straight to Senior House, thinking you’d still be there.
When I couldn’t find you, I thought maybe you had moved to grad student housing, so I went to check with the registrar.
He told me you had deferred your grad school admission.
On my way back to Senior House, I saw Daria and she said you had joined Pornsake’s orchestra. ”
Grace started crying, full, quiet sobs into her hands.
“Grace, I’m so sorry.” I grabbed napkins from the dispenser on our table and handed them to her.
“I thought you were the one who left me. I didn’t know how to reach you.
I didn’t even accept the job at National Geographic until I found out you were gone. ”
She let out a laugh through her tears. “Holy shit. All this time . . .”
“I know. I tried looking for you a few times, but I could never find you online. I didn’t know until tonight that your last name was Porter.”
Grace was hysterical now. “I married Pornsake, Matt. He changed his last name to Porter.”
My heart was murdered. “Oh.”
“Not right away. I waited almost five years. He’s dead now. You know that, right?”
“No. How would I know that?”
“I wrote to you.”
“You did?” Elizabeth. Turned out she still hadn’t told me the whole truth. It was like I had fallen into some alternate universe, where Grace loved me and I was the one who had left. All these years I had spent depressed over losing her, yet all this time she had been trying to find me.
I reached across the table and took her hands in mine. And she let me. “I’m so sorry about Dan. He was very kind. How did he die?”
“Enlarged heart. He died with a damn smile on his face,” she said, proudly.
“Did you love him?” I knew I had no right, but I was dying to know.
“He was good to me.” She looked up at the ceiling. “I loved him in my own way.”
“Yeah?” I was getting choked up again.
Her eyes met mine. “Yeah. But not the way I loved you.”
“Grace . . .”
“What the fuck happened, Matt?”
“I don’t know anymore. I thought I knew. Elizabeth just told me she sent you a letter?”
“I got one letter from you, maybe in ’99 or 2000. The rest of my calls and letters went unanswered.”
“Elizabeth wrote that letter, not me. I swear to God, Grace, I never would have ignored your calls.”
“Well.” Her voice got very quiet, shrinking in on itself. “It’s too late now, isn’t it?”
“Why? Why does it have to be too late?”
“I would say fifteen years is pretty late. So much has happened to us and . . .”
I squeezed her hands. “Let’s get a piece of pie or pancakes or something, like we used to.”
“Are you insane?”
“Yes,” I deadpanned. “We need to get out of this place.”
“I don’t know . . .” She withdrew her hands from mine.
I looked at my watch. “Breakfast for dinner?”
She ran a hand across her face and sat up straight, putting some distance between us. I couldn’t tell if she was contemplating the idea or trying to think of a nice way to say no. I searched her eyes and she smiled. “Okay. I’ll go with you, on one condition.”
“What’s that, Gracie?” She laughed at the nickname and then her eyes started welling up again. “Please don’t cry,” I said.
“We have to forget for a little while who we are to each other. No talking about the past. That’s my condition.”
“Deal.” I left a fistful of bills on the table, grabbed her hand, and pulled her toward the door. But just before we left, I turned to her. “Wait. Let’s do a shot first. We’re young, the city is ours, you don’t have to wake up early tomorrow to teach, and I don’t have an asshole for a wife.”
“Sure. Why not?” Her cheeks turned pink. She suddenly seemed happier, younger. And though I had promised her we wouldn’t talk about the past, I couldn’t help but feel like we had traveled back to the best time of our lives.
We each had a tequila shot, left the bar, and found a little twenty-four-hour diner. “I think I want pie,” I said as we stared into the refrigerator case.
“Me too. You wanna share a piece?”
“Let’s share two pieces,” I said, practically daring her.
“You’re talkin’ dirty now. I like it. Let’s do a slice of chocolate cream and . . .”
“A slice of peanut butter?”
“That’s so perfect. I’m gonna eat the crap out of that pie.”
God, I loved her. “Same here,” I said.
We ordered and then sat in a green vinyl–upholstered booth. She traced the sparkles in the retro tabletop with her finger. “So, how are Alexander, your dad, and Regina?”
“Great. My dad will never retire. He and my brother are partners at the same firm. Alexander and Monica have two kids and a big house in Beverly Hills. Regina is the same, except her face is tighter.”
Grace laughed but then her smile faded. “I’m sad to hear about your mom. I really liked her. I felt like we were kindred spirits.”
I thought back to the days before I lost my mom.
She asked me what happened with Grace, and I told her it just didn’t work out.
I was confused as to why my mother was bringing Grace’s name up after so many years had passed.
She had no idea Elizabeth and I were having marital problems, but it was like she wanted me to know she still thought of Grace.
I think she must have felt that they were kindred spirits, too.
Elizabeth was never close to Mom, even after knowing her for a decade.
One visit, and Grace was in my mom’s heart forever.
“Yes. She went peacefully. My dad actually came to see her before she died. It was heartbreaking because, after all they went through . . . she still loved him. That’s why she never remarried.
I think, once everything was stripped away and he saw her near the end of her life, he loved her, too.
At least, that’s what he said to her. If he didn’t mean it, at least my mom died believing it. I came to respect him more after that.”
“I can understand that.” She said it as if she spoke from experience.
I took a deep breath. “Let’s talk about something happier.”
“I followed your career for a while and saw that you won the Pulitzer. What an amazing accomplishment, Matt. Congratulations.”
“Thank you. It was unexpected and hard to appreciate because, I think, at the time, I was in a really dark place.”
“That was before your mother got sick though, right?”
“Yeah. She got to see me accept the award. She and my dad were really proud.”
Grace was so interested, so compassionate.
I thought I had made up all those things about her in my mind.
How fitting her name was. How real, beautiful, and genuine she was in the flesh.
All those times I had stared at her photos and wished I could hold her, touch her, or just see her in person, in color, here she was, just like I remembered.
The slices of pie sat untouched between us. I stabbed a piece and held the fork up to Grace’s lips. “Pie makes everything better.”
She took the bite, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her mouth. I licked my lips, thinking about how she tasted—what it had been like to kiss her.
“That’s soooo good.”
“I know we aren’t supposed to talk about the past, but I’m dying to know what you did after we graduated. How was the orchestra?”