Chapter xlii
xlii
I HADN’T SEEN ERIC WEISS IN PERSON FOR YEARS , not since the one time he’d invited me out for a drink right after Darren and I split. This time, he asked if we could get together to go over the plan for the book and the gallery, and for the promotion of both. He’d taken point on the logistics and said it would be easier if we met in person.
“Sure,” I told him. “How about over coffee?”
It turned out he’d moved to Brooklyn, in Park Slope, so we met at Clever Blend on Fifth and Park Place. I recognized him immediately. He had a full head of dark brown hair that I wondered if he colored. Darren’s going gray at the temples, and I’m always suspicious when I see men older than he is without any gray hair.
“Hey,” I said, shaking his hand.
His smile was filled with warmth.
“Lucy!” he said as he sat back down. “It’s so nice to see you.”
“Same,” I answered. There were two coffees on the table.
“Now that we’re seeing each other in person, I feel like I should apologize for trying so hard to flirt with you the last time we saw each other. My wife and I were going through a rough time with our daughter, and …” He trailed off.
I can’t even imagine how my face looked when he said that—a mixture of confusion and surprise—and then I started laughing.
“What?” Eric said.
“Apology accepted, but honestly, I had no idea.”
“You had no idea?” he repeated.
“No idea you were flirting with me seven years ago,” I said. “My head just wasn’t there. It hasn’t been for a long time.”
Then it was his turn to laugh. “Okay, then. I guess I can stop feeling bad about that. It’s been eating at me for years.”
I smiled kindly at him. “I wish we’d had this conversation sooner, then, so you could’ve stopped feeling so bad years ago.”
He cleared his throat. “Well, now that that’s over …” He gestured toward a cup of coffee. “I took a risk and ordered for you,” he said. “But I’m happy to drink both and get you something else if I guessed wrong.”
“Oh!” I said. “Thank you. What did you order?”
“Medium roast, cold brew, black.”
I laughed again. “Well,” I said, reaching for the cup on my side of the table, “pretty much what I would have ordered myself.”
He smiled. “I remembered Gabe saying that you’d gotten into coffee at some point. Figured that was the safest bet.”
I picked up the cup. “To Gabe,” I said.
He clinked his plastic cup with mine. “To Gabe,” he echoed.
Then he laid out prints of your photographs.
“Okay,” he said. “So here’s what Joseph is planning for the gallery. Bashir has reached out to the other kids from the Lampedusa photos and has plans to photograph the two in Italy this week. He asked each of them to write their own story to post beside it. What they’ve done from then to now. Bashir also wants to share his payment for these particular photos with each person who’s in them. I was hoping you might be open to doing the same with Gabe’s photographs of them?”
“Of course!” I said. “Actually, they should have all of it. I don’t need it. I was planning to donate any proceeds from the show or the book to Tuesday’s Children, a charity I know Gabe felt strongly about. But I’m sure he’d be happy for them to have it.”
“I agree,” Eric said. “We’d also like to use this photograph.” He slid the one Bashir had taken of Gabe at the refugee center toward me. “This would be the then. The now would be—”
“His grave,” I said, remembering Joseph’s words.
“Or his son,” Eric said. “Bashir told me what you’d told him. About Samuel.”
I winced. I hadn’t thought that Bashir might share that with Eric, but why wouldn’t he. I hadn’t told him it was a secret.
“You know my wife was pregnant when he died, too. My daughter is only a few months older than your Samuel and her middle name is Gabrielle, after him. Hannah Gabrielle.”
That was the first I’d heard his daughter’s name, and it just about broke my heart open.
“That’s beautiful,” I said to him, tears in my eyes.
“In Judaism, it’s a way to honor people who have died, to name a baby after them, to keep their memory alive.”
“Does your daughter know about Gabriel?” I asked.
He nodded. “There’s a photograph of him in her bedroom; there has been since she was born. And another one of my wife’s aunt Hannah.”
I thought about the irony that Eric’s daughter grew up learning about you her entire life, while our son had only learned about your existence a few days before.
“That’s amazing,” I said. Then I paused. “I’d rather keep Samuel out of the show, though.” I took a deep breath. “Most people don’t know he’s Gabriel’s son. Actually, he doesn’t know yet.”
Eric’s eyebrows rose, almost as if the motion was involuntary, but then he nodded. “I understand. Maybe I’ll see if Bashir can take a photograph of an empty seat in our newsroom, an abandoned camera. We’ll figure something out. The photograph of his grave seemed too— depressing. Who would buy that image anyway?”
“That sounds better,” I said. “Did Joseph give you a date for the show?”
“We want to do it when the book releases,” he answered. “Which is timed for the month Gabe died. Right now, the publication date is scheduled for the first Tues- day in July. I think the show will likely open the following Friday night. So that would be July fifth.”
“A little more than two and a half months,” I said. “Sounds good.”
So much can happen in eleven weeks.