Chapter 35
Spring came into its own. Cut peonies appeared in the flower buckets outside bodegas.
The air was soft and warm. Emily encountered a million things that made her want to talk to Gen.
A bulldog wearing a cravat. Old running shoes on a sidewalk.
Free, said a note tied to the laces. A roughed-up copy of Memoirs of Hadrian in a used-book store.
She thought of texting Shipley and asking about Gen but didn’t.
She had to accept missing her. This second heartbreak set in like an infection, taking up a murky residence in her chest. There was no help for it.
It wouldn’t get better. Emily didn’t want it to get better.
Let it be chronic, she thought, as long as it’s mine.
Whenever she remembered the last time she saw Gen, she was struck by how utterly themselves each of them had been.
Gen with her uncompromising ways, Emily trying to compromise too much.
She thought about that game they used to play.
She could have said, before Gen left, Who is the you and who is the me?
That game was over now. The point had never been who was what—salt or pepper, window or door.
The point was the pairing. They had been saying, I belong with you, and now they didn’t.
Jack called. “We need to talk about our future.”
“Listen, Jack—”
“Let’s meet, go out to dinner. I have a babysitter for next weekend.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” he said cheerfully.
“It sounds like a date.”
After a pause, Jack said, still in that blithe tone, “I’d just like to clear the air.
Go over a couple things. No matter what happens, we’ll always be Connor and Stella’s parents.
Don’t you think we should do whatever we can for the kids, including taking time for each other, and going over the big questions? ”
“You need to understand that our marriage is over.”
His voice, though still light, became steely. “Maybe you haven’t considered all the factors.”
Anxiety pierced her like a hypodermic needle that flushed her veins. “Just say what you have to say.”
“It’ll be better in person. It would help me find closure.”
He had threatened her with one hand and offered what she wanted with the other.
If he had closure, maybe the divorce proceedings would move more quickly.
Maybe he would leave her alone. This had the hallmarks of a trap, but Emily agreed to meet, out of the need to know exactly what kind of trap it was, and the unreasonable hope that it wasn’t.
Gen appeared on a late-night talk show. She looked relaxed, ready to laugh. The top buttons of her shirt were undone, exposing the collarbone that Emily had kissed.
The host asked if Gen was dating anyone.
Gen shook her head, never losing her smile. “Too busy with training.”
“There were rumors about someone in New York.” The host held up his hands in mock defense. “None of my business, of course…unless you want to make it my business? Don’t be mad!”
“Hey, no worries. Yeah, I heard those rumors. I met up a few times with someone from back home, but we weren’t together. She was just somebody I used to know.” Gen shrugged good-naturedly, as if the subject were a trivial mystery or a joke that she didn’t quite get.
Emily had nearly finished a draft of her manuscript.
She was working in a café that played a classical radio station, the pieces selected by a man whose voice sounded like scotch and honey.
She would have dinner with Jack at the end of the week.
Focusing on the notebook helped her not worry about the dinner. It helped her not think about Gen.
The music changed to something that Emily immediately recognized. She set down her pencil and listened to the lithe piano, impatient for the deejay to speak again. When the music ended, he named what Violet had played for Emily more than fifteen years ago, after Emily’s first heartbreak.
Emily dialed the number Rory had given her. It included a country code, though Emily wasn’t sure which country +41 was. Violet picked up. “All??” When Emily hesitated, unsure how to respond, Violet added, “Grüezi? Pronto!”
“Hi. It’s Emily. From college.”
There was a silence before Violet spoke. Her voice wasn’t hostile, just curious. “Why are you calling?”
“I heard something you played for me. Schumann’s Kinderszenen . Part of it.”
“?‘Tr?umerei,’ probably.”
“That’s it.” The word sounded like trauma but the deejay had said that it meant daydream .
“Okay,” said Violet. “Well…it’s late here.”
“I wanted to thank you. I mean, to apologize. You were a good friend to me. Better than I deserved.”
“Deserved,” Violet repeated.
“A better friend than I was to you.”
“You think friendship is like balancing a checkbook? That I see it that way?”
“No, but—”
“No one balances checkbooks anymore.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What exactly for?”
“I’m sorry my husband said racist shit and I didn’t do anything about it.
Or acknowledge it to you. I’m sorry that you gave me so much support when I left him and then I failed your faith in me.
I’m sorry that I don’t know about your life now.
You said that it’s late there and I don’t know where ‘there’ is. ”
“Geneva. It’s central for gigs in Europe, and it always felt like home.”
“I’m sorry for disappearing.”
“Why did you?”
“I thought that I must have used up everyone’s patience. You were shocked when I went back to my marriage.”
“Obviously.”
“I knew it was a bad decision but it felt impossible to make a better one. If we’d stayed friends, I wouldn’t have been able to ignore my mistake. You wouldn’t have let me.”
“Were you able to ignore it?”
“Sometimes. It’s so stupid. When I married him, I thought that it would take away the loneliness I felt. Then I let him make me more lonely. I really missed you, Violet.”
“Why didn’t you say this years ago? It makes me mad that you didn’t. We could have had a conversation.”
“Can we talk now?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know you anymore.”
Emily asked her to describe the room she was in.
(The kitchen balcony, where Violet stood overlooking the wet street.) Where she kept her piano.
(It took up the entire living room; there was no space for a couch or dining table.) What she had had for dinner.
(Peanut butter and jelly. Violet had practiced until late and didn’t want to cook.
It was hard to find peanut butter in Switzerland—Europeans disliked it—but Rory shipped care packages.) Did she have a pet?
(No.) Plants? (Many, all dead, except one that was fake.) Partner?
(An on-and-off thing with an opera singer.) “She’s a charismatic tyrant,” said Violet.
“Rory says she’s a coloratura mob boss who makes me offers I can’t refuse. ”
“She?”
Violet laughed. She and Emily talked late, until Violet could hear the hum of morning trams carrying people to work.
She told Violet about Gen despite some reluctance.
Her loss felt sharp, heavy, shiningly private, as though what had happened was a cut gem she had swallowed to keep wholly hers, this one thing that Gen had left, which was the pain of her absence.
In college, Emily had wanted to recover from Gen.
Now she didn’t. She told Violet not for comfort, sensing that comfort might diminish the loss, and then Gen really would be gone.
She told Violet because of everything Violet had told her about her new life, and because she wanted Violet to trust her, which meant trusting Violet.
Violet said, “I guess some things don’t work even when you want them to.” Emily thought about how wanting can make a person feel deserving, as if the wanting is enough to shape reality, when in fact people want things they can’t get all the time, and she was no one special.
Emily chose the restaurant, convinced that if she didn’t, Jack would book an upscale one with a set menu of many courses that would chain them to the table for hours.
She made a reservation at a bare-bones New American restaurant in the theater district known for how expertly they got people out the door in time for their shows.
Here! Jack texted. Seated in the back. Text me a few min before you get here, ok?
Emily, unsure why he wanted forewarning of her arrival but not liking the thought of giving him time to prepare—for what?—didn’t text him, which was why—had he planned to meet her at the door with an explanation?—she was confused when the host said, “Oh yes, they’re already here. Right this way.”
They?
The two men at the table stood to greet her. “Hi, Ladybug,” said her father.
He was wearing the same suit he had worn to her wedding.
It was too formal for this restaurant and had become too large for him.
He had grown gaunt. His hair, always a point of pride, was still thick yet entirely gray.
It had been cut and brushed in the style of a younger man.
Jack, a hand companionably at her father’s back, beamed.
“What the fuck is this?” said Emily.
Both men lost their smiles.
“Jack gave me a call,” said her father. “Flew me out here. First class. I can’t thank you enough, son.”
To Emily, Jack said, “It always felt wrong: this estrangement. You don’t understand the effect you have on people when you cut them out. I don’t know what went wrong between you and your dad but he’s a good man. Talk it out. It’s never too late.” Jack’s gaze was earnest. “People can surprise you.”
“You mean you, ” said Emily. “This is about you.”
“You’re always carrying the past on your back. Don’t you want to stop? If you did, it would help you see the present more clearly. Everybody hopes that it’s not too late to set something right.”
“Won’t you sit?” said her father.
Emily sat with him. “Leave,” she told Jack.
“Emily,” her father chided.
“It’s okay,” said Jack. “I’m used to it.”
“You got what you wanted,” she said. “Your trick worked. Now go.”
Face flushed, he did.