Chapter 27
“So the stupid fucker had to mansplain all over her instead of listening.”
“Dane, that’s an awfully judgmental way to view someone who’s confused about their feelings and facing an elderly parent’s health decline.”
Dane and Tom are hard to take seriously in their beach chairs, but apparently they’re having a conversation without me anyway. And somehow I’ve been conned into sitting on the roof, of all places.
After Eli left, I texted Dane to tell her what happened and then shut off my phone and crawled under the covers. The last time I cried, it was because J ( ... Eli. I have to keep reminding myself that he’s Eli) had written about how words can speak louder than actions. But today, in this instance, the actions superseded the words.
Dane was right when she said written words were more measured—my words today weren’t expressed as they should’ve been, so I let actions choose the course. And now I’m lonelier than I’ve been in a long time, because not only have I lost Eli but also there’s no way to keep talking to him under the guise of J without being dishonest.
I was letting that realization sink me deeper into my crying jag when I heard a loud knocking.
“You’re not the only one who can pound on a door, Nora Fischer!” Dane’s voice called out. “Come out, I got you every quintessential New York food carb I can think of, and I’m not going to let you drown yourself in misery alone.”
So somehow I find myself, at only ten in the morning after what’s felt like an excruciatingly long day already, sitting on the roof in a canvas chair, with a picnic blanket and a smorgasbord of food laid out in front of me. All while Dane, Tom, and Kwan debate the merits of my dilemma—because of course on a Monday morning, Dane thought two retired men would be available, and she was correct.
Meryl had joined only long enough to bring us a giant bottle of vodka (which I am absolutely, in no way touching) and give me a wet kiss on the nose. “Congrats on the sex, condolences on the abandonment,” she tutted as she scooted out the door.
So now I’m ripping off pieces of a chocolate-Nutella babka from one of my favorite bakeries, Breads, and trying to put myself in a sugar coma rather than listen to everyone debate the exact level of how sad my predicament is. But it’s not working yet.
I eye the cardamom bun from Sm?r Bakery and grab that one too. I’m double fisting pillowy carbs, and I’m not particularly mad about this part of my day. The sun is shining, and I’ve got fluffy, airy breads at my disposal.
So at least that’s one thing to be grateful for while a trifecta of busybodies dissects my life.
“When do you go to London?”
I snap out of my baked good trance at Tom’s words.
“Well, that’s what’s sort of nuts,” I say. “I’m going on Wednesday night. This event is on Thursday, and then I was going to stay for the weekend.”
“What’s happening to George?” Kwan asks, and Tom and Dane shoot him a look, as though he’s missing the point. “What?” he says to them. “If you’re stressed about your pet, you’re not yourself! She doesn’t need that extra layer.”
“Thank you, Kwan,” I say sincerely, tossing him a rugelach from the pile that he’s eyeing. Dane really did go all out on the carbfest. He catches it impressively with one hand, and I’m now wondering how an octogenarian’s reflexes can be better than mine. But that’s not the problem to think about today. “He’s going to a dog daycare that also does overnight boarding. He doesn’t love it, but it’s really nice, and he’ll be okay.”
“Why didn’t you ask me?” Kwan says, incredulous. “You take Lucy all the time!”
“Oh, I just don’t want you to feel obligated,” I point out.
I’m shocked when he immediately stands up. He’s not particularly tall, so whatever authoritative effect he’s trying to have is sort of muted by his short stature and the long time it took him to get out of the low beach chair. But he’s standing and looking disappointedly at me, nonetheless.
“Nora Fischer!”
“Why is everyone full-naming me today like I’m a child in trouble?” I muse.
But Kwan isn’t stopping there. “You can’t take care of everyone and then refuse to let others take care of you. This is getting ridiculous. I’ve talked to you about my issues with my daughter for years . You take care of my dog whenever I go to visit her. You introduced me to Dane when you heard I also loved pool. I’m not your patient, and I’m definitely not going to listen to some excuse about elders and whatnot. We are friends . And just because it took Dane ratting you out for you to start talking about some of your problems, doesn’t make them any less important. You’re not paying some strangers to take care of George when I’m right here and I’m happy to help.”
Dane looks gleeful, and Tom is watching with intense trepidation to see what happens next. Kwan keeps staring me down, I guess hoping I’ll eventually break.
I rustle off another piece of my babka, the chocolate-and-Nutella interior making my fingers sticky and forcing me to resist the urge to lick them like the toddler everyone’s treating me like. I hand a piece over to Kwan, and he gladly takes it. But he doesn’t break eye contact as he waits me out.
“Okay, okay,” I finally say, and he sits back down, triumphantly taking a big bite of babka. “I just didn’t want to bother you.”
“I’m an old retired guy. You’re not ever bothering me,” he says matter-of-factly.
“And you can bother us!” Tom interjects. “It’s okay to bother your friends. That’s kind of the whole point!”
I’m about to fidget my way to a thank-you to both of them when my phone rings. Dane snatches it out of my hand before I can even look at it and scoffs. “Oh hell no.”
“Who is it?” I ask, my sticky fingers now becoming more comical as I try to grab it back.
“It’s your mother, and we do not need this today,” she says, standing up and walking away from me. I try to get up, but it really is hard to get out of a canvas beach chair. I should’ve given Kwan more credit.
But Tom stands up first—far more elegantly than should be allowed—and motions to Dane to give him the phone. She hands it over without a second thought while I give her an elongated wave to indicate I’d prefer I get my own phone back.
They’re both ignoring me, though, and Tom lifts the phone to his ear. “Hello, Nora’s phone,” he says crisply.
After a beat he responds, “Oh yes, this is her friend Tom. She had to step away for a moment, and I saw you were calling and wanted to take a message for her.” He pauses and then laughs. “No, it’s not chivalrous at all. We’re just neighbors and I’m old fashioned.”
I can hear my mother chattering away on the other end, probably flirting with Tom. He nods along as he listens, but his face morphs from amusement to confusion the more she talks.
“I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible,” he finally says, and now I have absolutely no idea what’s going on. “Mrs. Fischer—”
I love that this man probably two decades her senior is calling her Mrs. Fischer. But his politeness doesn’t seem to be an obstacle for her to keep talking.
“Mrs. Fischer, I’m really going to have to interrupt you there,” he says, in a sterner voice than I’ve ever heard come out of Tom. “Nora is not your handyman. I know how much Nora does for you, because, well, my wife is a little bit of a gossip. And I’ve even heard how much Nora has had our own super do for you! But it’s not her responsibility to house you in her studio apartment because you’ve made some errors in renovation judgment. And I’m fairly certain Nora’s extensive psychiatric education does not equip her to come help you figure out your tiling errors. Really, Mrs. Fischer, you shouldn’t be putting all of that on your daughter.”
I’m frozen, with a piece of babka in my hand. It’s raised to go into my mouth, but I’m unable to move it. I must look ridiculous, but I can’t seem to force my body to do anything other than sit still, lest this upside-down conversation disappear. Is gentle Tom really scolding my mother right now? Using his most authoritative anchorman voice, which sounds like something out of a 1950s newsreel?
But he barely lets her speak before he continues. “I’m happy to relay your message, but I’m really going to insist on putting my foot down here. I’m under the impression that you and your husband are still in excellent health, correct?” He pauses, and I’m amused by the old-person-to-old-person way of discussing their ailments. “Well then, if you’re not able to afford your life, you need to reconsider your lifestyle. That’s just my two cents; obviously it’s none of my business, really. But I think someone should be looking out for Nora, and it’s disappointing that it isn’t you. Good day, Mrs. Fischer.”
He hangs up and looks over, as though he finally remembers there were three other people listening in on his conversation, all now standing stock still in response.
“What?” he says calmly.
“Tom, that was brilliant !” Dane shouts. “I wish I’d said that to Tina years ago. Truly badass.”
“Quite right,” Kwan says, nodding with immense approval.
I’m still standing here gaping. “Tom!” I finally blurt out, and he turns to me. He at least has the good sense to look a little sheepish. “What just got into you?”
But he keeps his ramrod posture intact. “We’re stepping in, Nora. You can’t go on like this. It’s admirable that you want to be there for your parents, but they’re taking advantage of your kind nature. This has to stop.”
“Damn,” Dane says quietly.
“Now that ,” Kwan emphasizes, “is being parental.”
“Okay, this isn’t a day to blow up every single piece of my life all in one go,” I point out.
“No, that’s true,” Tom says, and I love that Dane’s face looks like she was about to argue the point.
“So what am I supposed to do?”
I collapse back onto my beach chair, and on instinct all three of them pull theirs closer to me. Dane grabs the remaining babka and shoves it into my hand. A good first step, I suppose.
“You stand up for yourself,” Tom says with authority.
I start laughing, because the thought is so ridiculous. I’m hungover, predumped by my neighbor who I shouldn’t have slept with; my two major codependent relationships are with my dog and a person I only text; and I’m apparently being steamrolled by my parents way more than I thought.
“I think you did most of the standing there, Tom,” I argue.
“So you needed a little help with your parents, big deal.” He shrugs, like that telling off of my mom wasn’t a watershed moment. “That’s what friends are for.”
“Exactly my point!” Kwan says, pleased.
“I appreciate that,” I say, truly meaning it. Maybe there’s something to having adults in your life who try and take care of you . Kwan insisting on taking George and Tom blocking me from my mother might be the most restful things anyone could do for me. And maybe that’s my problem. I’m so loaded up with other people’s nonsense, but no one is taking my loads off. There’s only so much Dane can do—that I’ve ever let her do. It feels special to have other people gladly taking on that weight.
But it doesn’t shift my impending dread about what to do about Eli.
“I can’t bombard Eli right now,” I say, thinking out loud. “He has to help his mom get better and deal with his dad, and that’s a lot. I don’t need to be complicating his life any more.”
“Well, weren’t you guys planning to meet up?” Tom asks. “I mean, J and Eleonora at any rate.”
“We never confirmed a time,” I say slowly. “He was being so cagey about the whole thing. Like, he kept insisting we would get coffee, but didn’t want to pick an exact moment.”
“Well, that makes sense now that you know he actually lived in New York,” Dane points out.
“Yeah, but isn’t that a sign that something was off to begin with?” I ask.
“It’s not off. He’s a complicated fellow,” Tom sums up in just about the simplest diagnosis I’ve ever heard.
“Preach, Tom,” Dane cuts in.
Tom continues. “His life is in disorder, with losing his grandmother and still fairly recently going through a breakup. I wouldn’t hold it against him that he wasn’t ready to divulge that particular piece. You need to talk with him . Don’t make any more assumptions with half information.”
Kwan is sitting and nodding but looking contemplative. I turn to him. “You’re awfully quiet all of a sudden.”
He looks at me with a shy grin. “I was just thinking about my wife, Lina,” he says, and it makes my heart pang, realizing that even decades later, missing her can make him so wistful. “We met pretty late, all things considered. I was a little over forty, and she was a little under. We had so much activity in those years—we never wanted more than one child, so we were a happy little trio once our daughter arrived a few years later. I was always busy with my job. We were together twenty years when she got sick. I realized the other day that I’ve been living without her now longer than I had her. And she was only in a quarter of my life, total. Every year that percentage shrinks a little bit.”
He looks up at the clouds and gets lost in thought. None of the rest of us speak, that sentiment lingering and spreading, like a dandelion’s feathery seeds once they’ve been blown off the stem. It’s somehow so beautiful and so sad at the same time.
When he looks back over to us, I can see his eyes are shining, the memories pushing emotion to the surface. “I’d give anything to have another day with Lina,” he sighs.
And that there, that one sentiment, is all that matters, isn’t it? There’s no regret, no oversaccharine pretending that everything was once always perfect. But it’s the fact that, when we are without someone we love, the big problems don’t seem so big.
Dane reaches out and gives me a shove so hard I wobble the chair. “ Ow ,” I hiss back at her.
“I don’t think hitting is necessary to get the point across.” Tom gives a look of amused exasperation to Dane.
“All right, but let’s state the obvious,” Dane says and then turns to me. “You’ve gotta tell Eli.”
“You’re seeing him in London anyway, even if he doesn’t know yet that it’s you,” Tom points out.
“Yeah, but maybe I shouldn’t ...,” I venture, my mind a knot that seems impossible to untangle.
But Dane swats me again. “Stop being so self-sabotaging. He thinks he’s doing you some favor by unburdening you with his complicated life. And you think you’re doing him a favor by not complicating it even more with this bonkers secret. But that’s all a pile of nonsense, especially when he realizes you’ve been having a pseudo-long-distance-friendship-relationship for years anyway. He needs to know.”
“You have to give him the chance to know,” Kwan says.
I grab the last cardamon bun.
Because I need all the sugar I can get. It’s time to try and make a plan.