Chapter 37. Fisher
I try to see New York through Indy’s eyes, like I’m experiencing it for the first time again. I try so hard to make all the small shit matter. And in certain ways, it genuinely does. I take her to Broadway shows, seeing them for the first time myself. I take the time to absorb all the great tall buildings and the incredible food around every corner. Work has been different. I’ve enjoyed it most of the time, but it’s still been work. Somewhere along the way, getting the star back stopped mattering, or maybe it never did and I only thought it had to.
I try to remain steadfast and to remember all that I learned over the summer with Sage. Try to compartmentalize things into that ring of a journey and accept that that’s just where it had to end.
It never quite sits right, of course. Too many things slip through.
It’s the obvious things, at first. Like every time I work with a recipe that has those little green herbs bearing her name—which happens more often than you’d think. It’s cinnamon freckles on top of a dessert, and noticing the flowers that get brought to the restaurant every couple of days. Carlie frowns when I make the request for the first time, but obliges me by allocating some for my back office with each delivery, too.
It’s when Indy comes with me to work one day after class in early September, and Carlie happens to mention something to do with adding goose on the menu for fall. Indy shoots off the counter she’d been seated on, visibly stiffening. I have to discreetly shake Carlie off the subject. It’s awkward to explain.
A week after that, Indy and I are walking around the park and eating our newest favorite ice creams. My latest is an Earl Grey, hers is a marionberry cheesecake. We come around a corner and find the Hans Christian Andersen Monument, a secondary statue of a goose at his feet. We both throw away our treats in the nearby garbage, not even halfway done.
Marrow’s most recent reviews start rolling in, praising the new menu and the fresh approach. Praising me. It feels nice, I suppose. Nice, but not nearly as nice or as good as when I nail my mom’s stroopwafel recipe for Indy one weekend, or when she tries to make me dinner one evening, catches a kitchen towel on fire, and we laugh about it the rest of the night over Chinese takeout.
That same night, Indy opens up to me a tiny bit about Sam and summer. She tells me she had feelings for him but that she knew they were incompatible in the long run. Indy wants to see the world, Sam wants to end up in Spunes. She worries about falling for someone at her age, because back in Nebraska, that’s all she saw, time and time again. Young people falling young, getting stuck, and cutting their lives’ adventures short. I stumble with the right thing to say, but I end up telling her that I’m proud of her for having her priorities and for having her head on straight. It feels like a lie. I desperately wish I could talk to Sage about it.
The worst times are when I just want to hear what Sage would have to say about something. Or when I’m suddenly distraught when I think of something I don’t know about her. Like, why didn’t I ever ask her what her favorite color was or her favorite song? Has she ever been to a concert? What’s her go-to ice cream?
Is she doing okay? Jesus, is she doing okay?
Frankie is still there working on Starhopper, so I’ve gleaned what I can from him. I know that Silas’s recovery is going well and he was released to go back home last week. I know that Sage returned to work last week, too.
When I think I’m wearing on Frankie’s nerves, I’ve taken to calling the diner and ferreting out what I can from Walter.
“She came in with Ellis and Silas today for lunch!” he calls to share one day in late September. I clutch my phone so hard I think my fingertips bruise. “She looked like she was doin’ okay,” he says.
What does that mean, Walter?!I almost say. What did they talk about? What was she wearing? Does she wake up in the middle of the night like I do?
I thank him instead and try to go back to pretending.
Every time I think about calling her directly, it feels cruel. The more time that passes, it feels crueler. I break down when I look up her social media. All her Instagram has is pictures from around the farm, bouquets she’s arranged. I have to do some serious covert stalking on Micah’s page to find a photo of her face. I hold my phone and stare at the screen like a madman.
It’s October when everything changes.
Most nights when I get home, Indy is responsibly sleeping. Sometimes I’ll find her dozing off on the couch.
Tonight I walk in and find her pacing, with Sage’s book propped open in her hands.
“Have you read this?!” she says.
A little piece of me snaps. I’ve given Indy so much trust since we came back. We’ve been doing so well until this moment. “No, and that wasn’t yours to read, either,” I say angrily. “Give it to me, Indy. Right now.”
I reach for it when I notice she’s been crying. That she’s continuing to sob, actually. Big, shuddering, full-body cries.
“HAVE YOU EVER COOKED A GOOSE?!” she bawls. I flinch, jolting back with the book in my hands.
“What?!”
“HAVE. YOU. EVER. COOKED. A. GOOSE?!” she howls.
I don’t know what to do with my hands again. “Indy… I did my externship in France. Of course I have.”
She shrieks before it blends into a fresh wave of weeping.
“D-did you know g-geese bond for life?! D-d-did you know th-they can get—can get depression?!”
“I did not,” I clip. I try to pat her arm soothingly, but she jerks away with a scream.
“And I just LEFT,” she says.
“Indy, honey, sit down.”
“No,” she sniffs, then sucks in a deep breath, trying to pull herself together. “All these buildings everywhere make me feel trapped in all the time, and today was one of those days. And I guess… I guess I wondered where I could go see some birds other than all the freak pigeons waddling around. So I went to the park.”
“Indy, you are not supposed to go anywhere but directly home after school.” She’s been doing so well. She’s been great at checking in, and I’ve given her freedom and trust in return.
“Christ, man! I know!” she yells, cutting me a glare. “You’re missing the point!!”
“Which is…?!” I’m yelling back now.
“I thought I would go to the park, and I thought I would journal,” she explains. “It’s something we’ve talked about in therapy before. I w-wanted to go find some grass and some dumbass bird and give it a try. How come no one ever talks about how bad this place smells?!” she abruptly pivots.
“Wh—”
“It stinks! No one ever talks about how bad it stinks around all these humid streets! I never hear them talk about it smelling like hot garbage in the movies!” She’s belligerent now.
“So you… went to the park?” I ask warily, trying to get things back on track.
She drags her wrist across her nose wetly. “Yes,” she says. “I went to the park. I wanted to journal. Sage was always doing that and, well, you know. You get it. She just seemed to get it, I guess. She seemed to get life.”
I’m afraid if I open my mouth I’ll start crying, too. I grind my teeth together so hard my jaw creaks.
“I knew she’d given you that, and I just thought—I needed a prompt or, like, an example of what to write. So I took it. I’m sorry, but, Fisher, you need to look at it. And I’m so sorry—” She breaks off into another high-pitched wail and coughing sobs. “I’m sorry I pushed you to leave. If-if you wanted to stay—”
I pull her into a hug. “Shh, hey. It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. I had reasons to come back, too, okay? I did have a whole career and life I’d built here, and I thought I needed to hold on to that, too,” I say. “We would have had to agree on something together,” I add. “And anyone would agree that a cross-country move wasn’t something to do on a whim, all right?”
Her chin trembles, but she nods into my shoulder, then pushes back a few feet. “You just need to go through that,” she says again, pointing to the book. “But I think you were right. I think finding your people is what makes the difference,” she says with another heartbreaking cry.
“Or finding your bird?” I offer. Her shoulders fall, and she wails again. “Okay, okay, that was too soon, I know.” I try and fail to suppress a small laugh. “Let’s go get you a snack before bed.”
After I get her settled down, I sit beside her on the couch. “You know before, when you talked to me about Sam and about getting stuck? You know what I really wanted to say but worried it might be the wrong advice at the time?” I ask. She looks up at me from swollen, red eyes. “I wanted to say, ‘So what?’”
She frowns, her chin rearing back.
“What I mean is that, yes, some people feel called to do huge things, and yes, many of them are important and great and they have a great deal of money or great titles and see great things. And if you want that, I will support you getting all of it, however I can. But you know what the bravest thing of all is? The most extraordinary thing?” I let out a relieving breath I feel to my very soul, because I also know the truth in what I’m saying. “To live by your own standards and no one else’s. To be happy by your own measure. You want your own flock of geese and a garden in Spunes? You want to make the same people you’ve known your entire life a little happier just by being in it? By doing the small things? Maybe it’s that you see your flowers in their stores and on their tables and in their hands, like Sage. Maybe you love passing knowledge on to your community through books, like Venus and Athena do. Maybe you sign up for all the things around town, like your mom always did.” Tears stream silently down my face, but I laugh. “Remember when she petitioned to save that town rock? How proud she was?”
She tearfully nods.
“So. So what if you happen to meet the love of your life in some tiny town, and so what if you get stuck there? If it’s a life that’s filled with joy, by your standards? I can’t imagine a bigger, more fulfilling feeling.”
When Indy ventures off to bed, I pick up Sage’s notebook with shaky hands and make my way onto the couch once more.
I open up the cover and read the first page:
Sage Advice
Bits and pieces of advice I might leave you, for when I’m not there to tell you myself.
XOXO, Mom
I bring a fist to my mouth. She gave me what has to be her most treasured thing. Of course she did, this incredible woman who had to teach herself how to not overwater everything, who can’t stop herself from giving. The most generous person I’ll ever know. My heart pulverizes even more, and the knot in my throat hardens.
There are pages and pages of notes and advice. Words to remember when life doesn’t make sense, mixed in with more practical thoughts.
Things like:
Baked goods are always welcome, to literally anything. New neighbor? Need to say you’re sorry? Just want to brighten someone’s day? Bring them something from Savvy’s.
Or,
Life’s short. Go to the library. Live a million different stories and see a million different places in one. You might not have control over some things, but you can always foster your imagination.
There are some places marked with fresh tabs, and I know she’s marked them for me.
Busy hands and idle minds have knitted many a brow. Find a hobby to occupy your hands with, preferably outside. Sometimes thoughts just need space to roam before you can sort them through.
Sometimes courage is just quietly trying again, she’s written beside it. I know it’s her by the different handwriting alone, and my fingers press against the words like I might reach through and touch her skin again.
Another tab,
Time will always give the best advice. Take care of your moments and the years will follow suit.
I notice other small notes written in different-colored ink in the margins. A different handwriting from the original again, this one slightly varying over the years. It makes me imagine a younger Sage with her tongue between her teeth, a concentrated furrow in her brow as she curled over this notebook. Then a gangly teenage Sage, scribbling in it moodily. My sweet, beautiful, impossibly kind, and lonely girl trying to make sense of her world using notes from the past.
My chest feels heavy, every breath weighted and scraping me raw from the inside out. I miss her so much I think it could swallow me whole.
So, I keep reading.